by John Norman
“No,” she said.
“Put back the old ribbon then,” I said. “It is all right. I do not mind!”
“It goes to another girl,” she said, “one who is white-silk.”
“I am white-silk!” I said.
“What are you afraid of?” she asked.
“The men, the guards,” I said. “They may think me red-silk!”
“The market,” said an instructress, “is now slow for white-silks.”
“I do not understand,” I said.
“Do you not think you have been white-silk long enough?” asked an instructress.
“Mistress?” I said.
“Oh!” I cried, startled, for something of cloth and leather, enclosing, muchly opaque, was pulled over my head, from behind, by one of the instructresses. I heard it buckled shut, and the sound of a tiny padlock being snapped shut, doubtless linking two rings.
“Steady, steady!” warned an instructress.
“Position!” snapped another.
And then I knelt, as I had before, in position, hooded.
“Should we remove her garment?” asked an instructress.
“The men will do that,” said another.
“Stand up, Allison,” said the first instructress, gently. I felt her hand on my upper left arm. I was then being guided from the training room, and turned left, and, in a moment, I felt the smooth, worn, flat tiles of the corridor beneath my bare feet. We made two further turnings, and then we stopped.
“Here,” said the first instructress.
I heard a door opened, and I was conducted within, and released, some feet within the portal.
Where was I?
“Mistresses!” I pleaded. “Mistresses!”
I heard the door shut, and, from the outside, a bar put in place.
“Mistresses!” I cried.
I stood in the room, perhaps near its center, alone, hooded, frightened, disoriented.
“Mistresses! Mistresses!”
I turned, and felt my way, hands extended, stumbling, toward the door, which was heavy, and shut, and locked, barred on the outside.
I pounded on the door, and cried out, again and again, but, if any heard, none responded.
I attempted to tear the hood from my head, but such are not meant to be removed by such as I.
I, fearing to fall, went to all fours, that I might explore my small world. In short order, I felt a carpet, and then furs, and cushions. Such things seemed luxurious, and abundant. Here and there, too, I felt chains, and wrist and ankle rings. At one side of the room, I reached up, and, bit by bit, felt the structure of a heavy, low, sturdy trestle.
I tore futilely at the hood.
I was in the Room of White-Silk.
“Do you not think you have been white-silk long enough?” had asked an instructress.
I trembled. I heard a soft moan, mine.
Helpless, and hooded, I realized what I was here for, what was to be done to me.
I lay on the cushions alone, for a time.
I supposed the guards, some of them, perhaps some who had noted me, or were curious about me, would visit me, when convenient, perhaps with the turn of the watch, when their duties were done.
I am not sure how long I lay alone in the room, hooded, amidst the cushions and furs.
Bars rang, and midbars.
I was tunicked. I did not know if the tunic would be left to me. It might be. It is a simple thing for a master to thrust up the short skirt of the tunic, to the slave’s waist. I wondered if they would be quick.
I clutched at a silken coverlet.
My fingers clenched it.
I dared not cover myself.
The masters might not be pleased.
They might wish to look upon my legs, my ankles, my arms, my throat.
Accordingly, I dared not cover myself.
I knew that a slave is usually expected, on a couch, on a slave mat, on furs, to wait naked, wholly uncovered, for her master.
Tunicked, one is already half naked.
I would not cover myself.
How long must I wait, alone?
Then I seemed suddenly to awaken.
The door had been opened.
I knew they would not talk to me. I must not realize who they were. It is better that way. Awareness is better reserved for a master.
I struggled to my feet.
I sensed there were several in the room.
They must have brought lanterns or lamps. I heard the fire strikers snap more than once. Too, I heard some tiny sounds, some suggesting the placing of lamps on shelves, others the hanging of lanterns on ceiling hooks. I sensed men looking at me, and moving about me. They said nothing. There would not be a great deal of illumination, but it would be soft, and ample, that of lamps and lanterns, two or three, I supposed.
“Masters?” I said.
I was not answered.
I felt my left ankle grasped, and I stiffened. A shackle was closed about it. Some loops of chain were thrown down, beside me. I gathered there was a good length of chain between the shackle and its ring. I do not know why I was shackled. Perhaps because I was a slave, and it was thought fit that I be shackled. I wondered if, later, the wrist rings and ankle rings would be used. I supposed that the length of chain allowed me would not be sufficient to allow me to reach the door, which might now be unbarred. I wondered if others, guards, passing by, might enter.
I knew little of how free women were handled. Perhaps much depends on the caste, or city. I had never encountered a Gorean free woman in any meaningful way, though, from time to time, one had visited the house. At such a time, if one were near, we must kneel in first obeisance position, head to the floor. I had been aware of little more than the almost inaudible sound of a soft slipper on the tiles, a rustle of silks passing me. My knowledge of free women was limited almost entirely to the hints, and gossip, of instructresses, which I had overheard. I gathered that there was little love lost between the slave and the free woman.
I sensed the men standing there, about me.
I did not know if I should kneel, or not.
Should I assume obeisance position, first obeisance position, kneeling, head to the tiles, hands to floor, perhaps second obeisance position, belly to the floor, palms down, beside my head, where one might reach inch forth, to press one’s lips to his feet?
How slave I felt, waiting.
I wondered how free women were handled, or if they were handled, so to speak, at all.
Gorean men, I knew, preferred slaves.
That is the way, I gathered, with men.
They prefer us, slaves.
I sensed myself scrutinized.
I was aware of light, dimly, on my right, through the hood. A lamp or lantern was lifted near me. I felt a warmth on my right shoulder. That would be from the lamp or lantern.
I would be in the light.
I knew that men liked to see their slaves.
They delighted in each nuance, and inch, of them.
In the house I had grown accustomed to being regarded openly, and appraisingly, by the guards. How different it was from Earth! There was nothing secret, quick, shy, sly, or furtive about it. We were regarded with the innocence and interest that one might regard an animal, and, in the case of the female slave, an animal which one might consider owning, and having at one’s slave ring. At first I had been considerably disturbed at the frankness, the openness, the length, of such assessments, particularly if commanded, turned about, and posed, but of course, a slave, I dared not complain, nor evince, in any way, any objection to such detailed, candid perusals, even handlings. I had no wish to be cuffed, or beaten. This was not Earth, in which a battery of social and legal weaponry might be invoked against any fellow so unwary as to dare to look honestly, openly, frankly, naturally, on a woman.
I, of course, might be so looked upon, certainly here, on this world, on Gor, as I was an animal, a slave.
I was not a free woman, a person, a citizen, the possessor of a Ho
me Stone. I was not a proud creature of dignity and station. I was not the sort of woman who was to be treated with esteem and respect, even awe, to whom would be accorded the many honors befitting her position. I was not veiled in public, that men might not look upon my beauty. I was not wrapped in the lengthy, ornate folds of the Robes of Concealment, that the lineaments of my figure should not betray the delicate canons of modesty, or no more so than might provoke inevitable speculation. I was not encircled with conventions and formalities; I was not one for whom strong men were to step deferently aside, who might be carried in a palanquin, for whom ways were to be cleared, one who was expected, I gathered, at least if of high caste, to speak boldly, even sharply, and with haughty contempt, one expected to hold oneself, and move, in stately disdain, one mighty in presence and power. I had gathered from the instructresses that such women, certainly those of high caste, of such exalted nobility, so taken with themselves, commonly prided themselves on their self-containment, their self-control, their freedom from many human weaknesses, their superiority to many of the elements commonly found in the nature of the female. In particular, many felt they must, as persons, view themselves as above a variety of allegedly lower, or baser, considerations. Accordingly, they would compete with one another, it seems, each attempting to outdo the other with respect to their imperviousness to the liabilities commonly associated with a lower nature, an animal nature. Many, I gathered, particularly of high caste, held themselves superior to sex, which they professed to find demeaning. It is difficult, I supposed, to regard oneself as an equal to, or a superior of, a male when one is smaller, softer, and weaker, and finds oneself clasped in the arms of such a beast, helpless, unable to free oneself, its prisoner, one’s softness clasped forcibly, mercilessly, to its hardness, the beast beside itself in its rage of possession and joy. And how unfree then should she feel herself if she sensed what it might be, so held, to be owned and mastered? How she must resist her body, her dispositions, her inclinations, her desires, her emotions, her feelings, lest they betray her, lest they threaten treason to her dignity and personhood. Accordingly, it was said that amongst many free women the taint of carnality was to be eschewed, even violently, as a thing of embarrassment and shame, unworthy of a free woman. One’s slave is to be denied, hysterically, if necessary. To acknowledge her, is it not to acknowledge that one should be suitably collared, that one is already, so to speak, in the collar. Accordingly, when the society’s demands were to be met, and the more embarrassing, regrettable aspects of companionship satisfied, those having to do with matchings, lines, alliances, and such, the proper free woman was to enter into carnal congress with disdain, resignation, and reluctance, or feigned disdain, resignation, and reluctance, insisting, at least, that such lamentable congress be as brief as possible, and take place in complete darkness, preferably while substantially clothed, and surely beneath coverlets. To be sure, theory and profession were one thing, and reality another. Upper-caste women doubtless were subject to the same needs and drives as other women, and I would learn that affairs and assignations were not infrequent amongst them, and that many free women, particularly those most sensitive to the demands of their codes, who had most internalized society’s expectations with respect to their behavior, often lived a life of frustration, loneliness, and misery, speaking the secrets of their needs only to the silence of damp, tear-stained pillows. Demands on lower-caste women, on the other hand, were less, as befitted their inferior status, and such women were more likely to enjoy a life of open flirtation, even of comparative vulgarity and bawdiness. Indeed, it was often thought that lower-caste women, for all their jollity and looseness, or perhaps in virtue of it, commonly tended to live a more genuinely satisfactory life than their sisters of the higher, nobler castes. To be sure, much depends on the particular woman, the caste, the city, and sometimes, I understand, even the neighborhood or district within the city, as a Gorean city, as many cities, often contains a medley of subcultures. I had encountered something of these distinctions on Earth, and even in the sorority, in which we had tended to pride ourselves on our station, our aloofness, and, in a sense, our frigidity. “No man will ever turn me into something like that,” I had heard, “some gasping, whimpering, squirming, moaning, begging plaything!” I had taken her seriously until I had inadvertently come upon her in one of the house’s bedrooms, late, during a party, naked, on her knees before a male, his belt wrapped and buckled about her neck, her hands tied behind her with a stocking, leaning forward, kissing at his legs, begging to be touched again. She had turned about, seeing me, tears in her eyes, frightened, agonized, discovered. I had turned away. Oddly, I did not feel dismayed at what I had seen. Rather, as I hurried back to the party I found myself wondering if a woman did not belong at a man’s feet, and if I, Allison, did not belong at a man’s feet, the feet of some man, or, perhaps any man. I assured her the next day I would keep her secret. She had graduated the following spring.
I stood very still.
The men were about me.
I could sense the light of the lamp through the hood.
There is a joke that in the light of a lamp even a free woman is beautiful.
And I was not a free woman.
I was such that I had been selected for the collar of Gor.
I knew that we were hated by free women.
I knew that men preferred slaves.
“Masters?” I said.
There was no response.
“It is a mistake, Masters,” I said. “I should not be here. I am white-silk. I am white-silk.”
The tunic was then torn from me.
Chapter Eight
It was two days after my red-silking that I was again hooded. I was aligned with other girls, I supposed some five or six. My wrists were pulled behind me and I was back-braceleted. I had not been permitted clothing after my red-silking. The ribbon, however, was removed from my collar. It is the common presumption that a female slave is “red-silk.” My head was forced up, and the house collar, now a new house collar, submitting to a bolt and key, was thrust up, under my chin. This new house collar was quite different from the original house collar in which I had been placed, the high, heavy, iron collar, which had been hammered about my neck. That had been removed in the house’s metal shop the morning following my red-silking. I was much pleased to be relieved of the original collar. The new collar was not the light, lovely, secure embondment signification of the common collar but it was a considerable improvement over its high, weighty predecessor. The removal of the original collar suggested that my sale might be imminent. This speculation had proved to be warranted. One role of the original collar was presumably to encourage a girl to do well in her lessons, that she may the sooner be brought to the block. Would such a collar not be likely to produce such an effect? Should it not make one eager to escape the house? Yet I, personally, feared to leave the house, as I knew not what might be found for one such as I outside its walls. In the house there was a certain comfort, and security. One supposes that a girl might be left uncollared, of course, between the conclusion of her training and her departure from the house, as she is marked, and in the house, and her escape is unthinkable, but Goreans, it seems, do not see it so. They feel that a kajira should be in a collar, and know herself collared. It helps her to keep in mind that she is a slave. Too, a kajira soon comes to understand that it is appropriate for her to be collared, that she belongs in a collar. Is she not a slave? Too, without a collar, she might feel naked, insecure, and frightened. What terrible things might happen to her, were she to be mistaken for a free woman! I then felt another collar, a coffle collar, for one could sense the weight of the attendant chain, a light chain, for we were women, snapped about my neck. The house collar was then removed.
“What is happening, Masters?” I asked, in the coffle, back-braceleted, unable to see, for the hood.
My question received in response only the sharp sting of a switch on my right shoulder.
I realized, then, as I s
hould have before, that I should be silent. Had I been given permission to speak? Too, is it not said that curiosity is not becoming in a kajira?
When we began to move we began our climb to higher levels of the house, and this continued so, for some Ehn. I heard us pass through some four gates, and, from the sound of it, from the weight on the hinges, two heavy portals, and then, after the second portal, the last, I suddenly felt the fresh air, and wind, of what must be the streets, and I sensed the warmth of the sun, Tor-tu-Gor, on my body. We were out of the house!
“Surely you know what you are doing here,” an instructress once said to me.
“Mistress?” I had said.
“You are a slave, are you not?” she asked.
“Yes, Mistress,” I had said.
“And only a slave?” she said.
“Yes, Mistress,” I said, “only a slave.”
“And what is a slave?” she asked.
“Mistress?” I asked.
“A property,” she said. “Goods, merchandise.”
“Yes, Mistress,” I said.
“So now you surely know what you are doing here?” she said.
“I am being trained,” I said.
“For what?” she said.
“That I may be pleasing to a master,” I said.
“We would like you to live past your first night at his slave ring,” she said.
“I will try to be pleasing,” I said.
“Very pleasing?”
“Yes, Mistress!”
“Wholly pleasing, in every way?” she said.
“To the best of my ability,” I said.
“So, then,” she said, “what are you doing here?”
“Mistress?”
“You are goods, merchandise,” she said.
“Yes,” I said, “I am goods, merchandise.” It was true; that is what I now was.
“So now you understand what you are doing here,” she said.
“Mistress?” I said.
“You are being readied for sale,” she said.
I well knew myself a slave, of course. I had sensed this even on Earth, and there was obviously no doubt about it here, on Gor. Here I might or might not wish to be a slave, but, in either case, it was what I was. Here my will was nothing. Whether I might kiss my fingertips and press them to my collar, or sob and scream, and try to tear it from my neck, it was on me. And my thigh was marked, with the Kef, the most common slave brand on Gor, a mark which showed all who might look upon it what I was, and only was, kajira. Still I had not thought, actively, or very actively, of being sold.