by John Norman
When she had stood before him some days ago, she supposed it had been some days ago, perhaps as long as two weeks ago, it had not been the same. She had been before him, so to speak, but not in this way before him.
“Do you enjoy your present accommodations?” he asked.
“They are doubtless as you have decided they will be,” she said.
She felt stronger now than she had before. She suspected that she could now better withstand, and resist, the lack of food, at least for a longer time. She did not think that he could now so easily bring her to helpless futility before him. She was stronger now. She did not care, of course, to put the matter to a test. She accepted that he could change her diet, or limit her intake of food, or deny it to her altogether, as he might please. That lesson had been learned. She understood that, sooner or later, he could bring her to her knees, or belly, whimpering, begging, groveling for a crust. But, still, she was stronger now.
This time, too, she had been hooded, and dragged from a narrow table, but she had been placed in a different cell.
Her new cell was quite different from the former cell. It was much smaller, some seven feet by seven feet. There was no mat of woven fiber on the floor; the floor was bare, and hard, consisting of heavy blocks of fitted stone, such as those in the corridor. There was no furniture in the cell, no cot, no stool. There was a flat mat, on which she might sit, or sleep. She had a blanket.
“Your curves have now reappeared,” he said, casually, idly.
She stiffened.
He had not seen her, as far as she knew, since their last interview in this room.
“You bled, as I understand it,” he said.
“Yes,” she said.
When this had happened she had cried out, and had been alarmed, not understanding what had occurred, it had been so long, and so unexpected. But the women who were now her teachers, three of them, different from before, only one of whom spoke English, and that a broken English, had laughed at her, thinking she must be very stupid. But they had found her water and cloths, that she might clean her leg, and a rag which she might insert into her body. They made her clean the floor of the cell. After all, it was she who had soiled it. Perhaps, surprisingly, the flow had not been negligible, at all, as one might have expected, it beginning again, but had been abundant. She wondered if, while she had been unconscious, it, or things associated with it, had begun again, only she would not then have been aware of such changes in her body.
“While we are on such matters,” he said, “I would suppose that it was explained to you that you will later be given a particular drink, the name of which is unimportant now, which will temporarily, but indefinitely, preclude any possibility of biological conception on your part?”
“Yes,” she said. “But I fail to understand the need for such a drink. I myself can manage such things. I am the mistress of my own body.”
He smiled.
“Was it also explained to you that there is another drink, one which one might think of as a releaser of sorts, which will not only restore your possibility of conception, but ready you for it, indeed, prime you for it, so to speak?”
“Yes,” she said, embarrassed.
“And thus make you available, if one wishes, for utilization.”
“I do not understand,” she said. “No, no one said anything about “utilization.”
“I see,” he said.
“What do you mean by that?” She regarded him, apprehensively. “What do you mean by “utilization”?”
“Forgive me,” he said. “I have been unnecessarily obscure. You are, of course, available for a large number of diverse utilizations, in theory, I suppose, for an infinite number of utilizations. The utilization I had in mind was “stock utilization.”
“Stock utilization!” she said.
“Yes,” he said.
“I do not understand,” she said.
“As in “livestock,” he said.
“I do not understand,” she said.
“Some men cannot be blamed for wishing to increase their holdings,” he said.
“Holdings!”
Again, he smiled.
“Please!” she said.
“Your ankle looks well in its ring,” he said.
She looked down at the steel cuff on her ankle. It was on her as fixedly as ever, as efficiently, as perfectly, as it had been on her former world, in the house where she had worn the white hospital or examination gown, in the house where she had been given the first injection, while lying on her right side before his desk.
She regarded him. “I see you do not choose to clarify these matters,” she said.
“Your perception is correct,” he said.
“You cannot mean!” she whispered.
“Such things will be decided not by you, but by others,” he said.
She turned white.
“Yes,” he smiled.
It was perhaps at that moment that she began to suspect what she might be, and what might be done to her.
She recalled a remark he had made of the hated Tutina, whom she had not yet seen on this world, that he had “bought her.”
“No,” she cried. “This cannot be!”
“What?” he inquired.
“What am I?” she asked. “What is my status here?”
“Can you not guess?” he asked.
“There is still no chair for me here,” she said.
“You are being permitted to stand,” he pointed out.
“Please!” she begged, her momentary pretense to strength and resolution gone. She felt confused and weak.
“You have seen yourself in your cell mirror, of course,” he said.
“Yes,” she said. There was a mirror in the new cell, rather like that in her former cell, on the right, of polished metal, as one faced the gate.
“How old would you say you were?” he asked.
“I do not know,” she whispered.
“If I were to see you on the planet Earth,” he said, “I would conjecture that you were somewhere in your late thirties, say, thirty-seven or thirty-eight. I would say thirty-eight. When you were acquired, you were fifty-eight.”
“Fifty-five,” she said.
“Fifty-eight,” he said.
She put down her head. It was true.
“I see that you retain something of what must once have been considerable beauty,” he observed. “Certainly many men would find you of great interest even now.”
She blushed, brightly and hotly, all of her body, that exposed, bursting into uncontrollable, involuntary flames of outrage, resentment, embarrassment, and pleasure. She was not dismayed to learn that she might be, once again, after so many years, found attractive.
“Do like your new garmenture?” he inquired.
“It is that in which you have seen fit to put me,” she said.
Her new garment was relatively modest as such garments go. Certainly a younger woman would have been likely to have been put in less. It was a tunic, but rather reserved for such. It was simple, plain and white, its material again, as that of her former garment, of the wool of the bounding hurt. Its hemline now came a bit above her knees. It had a rounded neckline, rather like that of her former garment, but it was, scooped somewhat more deeply, perhaps a bit less reluctant to hint at concealed delights. Interestingly, it was the first garment she had been given which was sleeveless. The baring of a woman’s arms, on the world on which she now was, was normally regarded as revealing and sensuous. Indeed, women of a status, or station, above her own commonly veiled themselves when appearing in public, particularly those of the high castes. She did not know this at the time, of course. Men on this world, it seems, tended to find the short, rounded, lovely arms of women attractive. It might be mentioned that in her new quarters, she was no longer permitted sandals. They had been taken from her. She now went, as had her various instructrices, in her various quarters, barefoot. Bared feet on women, on this world, are also regarded as sensuous, and provocative.
He regarded her.
She was attractive in the tunic.
It was all she wore, except, of course, the anklet. That device now, due to the absence of footwear and the shorter nature of her new garment, appeared even more striking, more meaningful and lovely, on her ankle. Aesthetics were surely involved here, but, too, other matters, matters having to do with deeper things, meanings and such. In any event, there was the softness of her small foot and then, above it, close about her slim ankle, the encircling, locked steel, and then the beginning of the delightful curve of a bared calf. It all went together, he thought, beautifully, and meaningfully. He did not find this surprising, of course.
“How are your lessons progressing?” he asked.
She shrugged, angrily. “Doubtless you have your reports,” she said.
She was not much pleased with the turn that her lessons had taken, save for her continuing instruction in the language. She was now being taught to do things, many things, rather than, primarily, to learn things, to apprehend and understand facts, lore, and such. Her education, of late, did not seem fitting for an intellectual.
“I am a not a wife,” she said, angrily.
“No,” he granted her.
Taken from her cell and instructed in special rooms, she had been given lessons in cooking, in cleaning, sewing, laundering, and such, domestic labors, labors such as were vehemently denounced and eschewed by scions of her ideology as demeaning, degrading, boring, repetitive and meaningless, who then hired other women, either directly or indirectly, to perform them for them. With respect to cooking she had prided herself on “knowing only the basics,” but it seems that here, on this world, her skills did not extend even so far. Most of the cooking seemed to be done in small ovens and over open flames, attentively, almost a serving at a time. Cooking, here, involved cooking, actually, and not, for example, the simple heating of tasteless materials extracted from colorful packages. She discovered that cooking was an art, and required mastery, as any other art. She had never thought of it in that fashion before. Similarly, she learned that the skills of needlework of various sorts were indeed skills, and not at all easy to acquire. How often her instructrices despaired of her, as being ignorant, stupid and hopelessly inept. Finally, in misery, in tears, she had denounced them as low, vulgar, stupid women, far beneath her, women who, unlike herself, might aspire to labors no higher than the menial and servile, labors unfit for such as she, an educated, highly intelligent woman, a woman important on her own world. “Ignorant, pretentious barbarian!” cried one of the instructrices, angrily. Then to her consternation she was seized by her other two instructrices and dragged to the side of the room, where she was thrown down, on her back. There was a low, horizontal wooden bar there, raised some six inches above the floor, by means of metal mounts at each end. She had not understood its meaning. She would now find out. Her ankles were placed on the bar, and lashed to it. Her hands were held on each side of her, and she could not rise. “No!” she cried. The first instructrix had fetched a supple, springy, flat stick, about a yard long, some two inches in width, and about a quarter of an inch thick. “No, no!” she cried. Then she squirmed, and writhed in misery, bound and held, crying out, weeping, begging for mercy, while the first instructrix, again and again, angrily, struck the bare soles of her exposed, fastened feet, stinging them until they burned like fire.
When the first instructrix had finished she put the stick away in a nearby cabinet but then fetched forth from the same cabinet three long, supple, leather switches, giving one to each of her fellow instructrices, and retaining one for herself.
Lying on her back, no longer held but her ankles still bound to the wooden bar, unable to rise, she looked up, apprehensively, at the switches.
“We have been forgiving, and tolerant, of you,” said the first instructrix, “because of your ignorance, and stupidity, but that is now at an end. No longer do you deserve our patience, and lenience.”
She looked up from her back, tears in her eyes, questioningly, her ankles still bound to the bar.
“Yes,” said one of the instructrices, “in this phase of your training the bastinado, the switch, is authorized.”
“Training?” she asked.
“Yes, training, little fool,” said the third instructrix, not pleasantly.
“In the next phase, and thereafter,” said the chief instructrix, “the whip, close chains, torture, anything.”
“Will you now attempt to be pleasing?” asked the second instructrix.
“Yes,” she said.
“Say it,” snapped the second instructrix.
“I will attempt to be pleasing,” she wept.
“Fully?” she was asked.
“Yes, yes!” she wept.
“Release her,” said the first instructrix.
She drew her legs, painfully, from the bar, the straps untied. “I cannot walk,” she moaned.
“Crawl,” said the second instructrix.
“Be pleased we are not men,” said the third instructrix, “or you would not only walk, but you would dance, dance, frenziedly, and to switches!”
She crawled back to her lessons.
Later in the day she could rise to her feet and walk, awkwardly, painfully.
When it came time to return her to her cell she was muchly returned to normal, and the pain, though still there, as a burning when she put the soles of her feet down, was not excruciating.
“Cross your wrists, before your body,” she was told. Her wrists were then tied together, in the center of some fiber, and the two ends of the fiber were then taken behind her, and knotted behind her back, so that her wrists were held pinioned before her, at her waist.
“Now, proud, noble barbarian woman, woman so important on your own world,” said the first instructrix, “return to your cell.”
No sooner had she turned about, to make her way to the cell, than she cried out in pain for the first instructrix had struck her a sudden, sharp stinging blow across the back of the right calf. Then, laughing, pursuing her, running behind her, taking turns, striking one calf and then the other, the other two joined in the sport, and she fled weeping before them, on burning feet, crying out in misery, in shame, frequently and muchly stung. She ran stumbling, weeping, into her cell, through the opened gate, and even pressed herself desperately, piteously against the opposite wall. They desisted then, untied her, and left, closing the gate behind them, it automatically locking with its closure.
She rubbed her wrists, and hobbled to the metal mirror at the right side of the cell. She regarded the image in the mirror. It revealed less the image of a dignified, mature woman than that of a frightened captive. She put her face closer to the polished surface. Her hair now, she noted, was mostly dark. She stepped back and regarded the figure in the rude mirror. It wore a tunic. How outrageous! Yet she did not think it unattractive. Suddenly she trembled, though not altogether in fear. Doubtless there were dangers on a world such as this. She had considered many possibilities of such, as her instruction had progressed. But now, for the first time, she realized that there might be special dangers on such a world for such as she, for lovely, vulnerable, perhaps even beautiful, creatures such as she saw reflected in the mirror. Might they not, she feared, stand in some special jeopardy. What if, say, they were desired by powerful, mighty men, and she had little doubt there were such men on this world. What might then be their fate on such a world?
Her lessons became somewhat more troubling later. For example, she was taught, in theory at least, how to bathe a man, the oils, the strigil, the sponges, the deferences, the touchings, the beggings, the handling of the towels, the words to be spoken at different times, the final grateful prostration of herself following the honor of having been permitted to bathe him, and such. A block of wood served as a surrogate for the male figure. But, even so, she felt herself frightened, and aroused, tenderly and gently ministering to it, following the instructions of her instructrices.
“You will be better at
bathing a man than cooking for him,” observed one of the instructrices, wryly.
She also learned how to brush clothing, and clean, soften and polish leather.
The duties she was taught were common to most women of her sort, of whatever variety, but tended to be especially associated with such as served in the towers, in the high cities, in the cylinder cities.
Needless to say there were many other sorts of duties, too, in which women such as she were expected to be proficient, duties, and services, in which, indeed, they were expected to excel. Indeed, these other duties, at least for such as she, were duties commonly regarded as far more interesting and important than less exotic, homelier labors, such as cooking and laundering.
At this point, however, she knew nothing of that further aspect of her instruction, or training.
Her teachers, incidentally, were changed with each phase of her education, so to speak. Some may have had diverse aspects of expertise. Certainly not all of them could speak English. But, she suspects, they were more likely frequently changed in order to preclude the formation of closer associations with her, associations which might lead to friendship, and, consequently, a possible diminution of the professionalism, the rigor, of the instruction.
One might also mention that, from her new, smaller cell, she was occasionally able to see other women, often in custody, sometimes even hooded, in the corridor. Some, with those she could tell, she thought might be in their forties, others, as she had been, in their fifties. She saw at least one woman who must have been in her sixties, and one who seemed pathetically older, frail, unconscious, being gently carried past in the arms of an attendant. She also saw, but turned away immediately, in horror, several younger women in the corridor, perhaps in their teens or twenties, not instructrices. Their hands were tied together behind their backs. They were incredibly beautiful. They were naked. They did not wear anklets. Rather there were narrow metal collars on their necks. One group of such were literally chained together by the neck, and their hands, behind their backs, were not tied, but held in metal cuffs.