by John Norman
I liked the word, and the fact that the free woman might object to it made me, perhaps, like it the more. Certainly it did not dissuade me in the least from my view. It is a good word, an apt word, an excellent word.
Strip.
How excited and thrilled I had been to be stripped by my master, Clitus Vitellius, he tearing away the Ta-Teera, when his need was upon him. How I, his slave, had longed for and welcomed my irresistible and categorical baring at his hands, my stripping!
"Strip me!" she said.
"Yes, Mistress."
"Without my permission?"
"Yes, Mistress," I said.
"I am not a slave!" she said.
"Nonetheless, Mistress, you would be stripped, as clearly and completely stripped as perhaps that which you most despise, say, a vended slave, a property girl on a sales block. They would then have you before them, your captors, precisely as they wanted you, naked—suitably naked."
"Suitably?"
"As loot, and captive, you understand," I said.
"Outrageous!"
"I am sorry, forgive me, Mistress, but you would nonetheless then find yourself before them as I have suggested—precisely as it pleased them for their purposes to have you before them—naked, 'slave naked.'"
"I?" she cried, "I? Slave naked! How dare you use such words of me! As naked as a slave! I? Slave naked!"
"Yes, Mistress," I said.
"You have spoken vulgarly before me," she said.
"Forgive me, Mistress!"
"How could I, a free woman, be 'slave naked'?" she cried.
"I fear, Mistress," I said, "as easily as a slave."
"Slut!" she cried.
"Forgive me, Mistress!"
To be sure, each could be as naked as the other. But, as I thought of it, I did not think that the nudity of a free woman and that of a slave were really comparable. Perhaps the free woman could not be truly "slave naked." There are at least three reasons for this. The first is that the slave's limbs and body are likely to be vital and shapely, for she is trained, exercised, dieted and rested, to keep her in prime condition for her master; she is, after all, a lovely animal and thus is subject to a management and care which, while appropriate for an animal, would be unthinkable to impose upon a free woman; too, of course, care is lavished on the condition of her pelt, commonly a wealth of hair, of slave length, and on her skin, which is usually soft and smooth, and often without blemishes; the second reason distinguishing the nudity of a slave from that of a free woman is that the slave, like a dancer, is expected to move gracefully, and is trained to do so; she learns to move sensuously and beautifully; one wonders if some of the secrets of ballet, the turning out of the hip and such, were not brought to Gor at some time or another; to be sure, they may have been discovered independently; the free woman, on the other hand, is usually ignorant of these subtleties, and her movements tend to be comparatively awkward and clumsy, stolid and halting; these differences show up most clearly, of course, when both females are naked, or briefly, lightly clothed; one of the advantages of the robes of concealment on Gor is doubtless to conceal the crudity and ineptness of the movements of the free woman; even when neither woman is obviously moving there is a difference; the slave girl lies beautifully, turns her head in certain ways, may subtly turn a hand in a given way, slightly raise her knee, say, just a little, even use her very breasts and belly in her breathing in such a way as to enhance her attractiveness, and so on; the third major reason for the difference between the nudity of the slave and that of the free woman is perhaps the subtlest of all, and that is that they are "seen" differently. The slave is seen as a slave, and the free woman as a free woman. The slave is seen as a lovely property which may be purchased or stolen, owned and mastered; she has no standing in the eyes of the law; she is rightless and vulnerable; she belongs to the master and must obey and serve him; she exists to please; that is her purpose; she must hope to well fulfill it; she is in great danger if she does not; she lacks the prerogatives and powers of the free woman to tease, insult, torment, humiliate and frustrate as a small, weak, petty, frustrated nature may find gratifying. The free woman may trifle with the feelings of a man; the slave girl may not; rather, she obeys and hopes desperately to please. The very sight of a female slave, particularly as they are likely to be garbed, and must move, would be likely to stun a man of Earth; nothing has prepared him to believe that such women exist; one of the things that would be most likely to startle him, if not trouble him, perhaps cause him initial discomfort until he came to understand it, and reconciled himself to it, and came to relish it, is their profound femininity; they are true women, natural women, not artificially produced, socially engineered artifacts claimed to be "true women," artifacts designed to promote particular political agendas; on Earth, women are supposed to be aggressive, virile, masculine, and such, presumably to forward the power ambitions of unhappy, biologically unsuccessful women, but also, one supposes, to compensate to some extent for the biological vacuum created by the success of negativistic conditioning programs engineered to produce wide-spread male confusion, guilt, self-conflict, self-sacrifice, and devirilization, this useful for the political purposes of particular groups which intend to profit from the reduction of, and possible extirpation, of authentic, rather than surrogate, masculinity. In any event, the Gorean culture is designed to celebrate and enhance nature, not to frustrate her, not to sicken and poison her; in nature there is complementarity; there is dominance and submission; that is in the genes of a thousand species, including our own; if the dice of genetics ever, long ago, rolled the options of equalities and identities it is clear that those numbers did not prove to be winning combinations; genetics suggests; nature selects; and nature, in her impassive, insouciant, ruthless patience, in her merciless indifference, over her thousands of years, did not select for failure; she selected, rather, for complementarity, for dominance and submission, for adaptation, satisfaction, efficiency, health, viability, life, and love. Nature rejected is life denied.
Yes, I thought, they are different, the free woman and the female slave. The female slave is true to her deepest nature; she is exquisitely and vulnerably feminine; she is the most feminine of women; her purpose, destiny and meaning is love; she exists for love.
And so, I thought, it is not strange the free woman and the female slave are seen differently, the one with respect, and commonly with indifference, the other with keen interest; the one with courtesy and esteem, the other with desire and passion; one as a citizen, the other as a delicious animal; one as a civic associate, and the other as a purchasable, inestimably precious sensuous treasure.
"Mistress is right!" I cried. "Even were her clothing taken from her and not so much as a thread left upon her body she could not be 'slave naked. ' She is a free woman. She could not be 'slave naked'! Forgive me, Mistress!"
"So," she screamed. "You think I could not be 'slave naked'! You think then I am less beautiful than a slave!"
"Forgive me, Mistress!" I wept.
"I am beautiful," she cried, "very beautiful!"
"I am sure you are, Mistress!" I cried. For all I knew she would look well on a chain, and, after she had been whipped a little, and had learned a few things, she might look very well there.
Most slave girls, of course, begin as free women. Although there are bred slaves they are, statistically, rare. To be sure, many Goreans believe that all women are bred slaves, slaves that nature has bred for man.
"Would that I had a slave whip!" she cried.
I was pleased, muchly, of course, that she lacked access to this implement.
"You are an insolent slut!" she cried. "And you must be punished!"
"No, Mistress!" I cried in the darkness. "I am not insolent! Forgive me, Mistress!"
"Here, come stand before me, here, in the darkness," she said.
I approached her. She put out her hand, and touched my face, then put her left hand in my hair, to hold me in place. I sensed her pull the glove from her
right hand, with her teeth, and then place it in the cincture of her robes.
"Put your arms down at your sides," she said, "and keep them there."
"Yes, Mistress," I said, and closed my eyes, tensed.
She then, several times, with her small, ungloved hand, struck me, slapping me viciously, first on one cheek and then the other. My head moved, and twisted, with the blows, but, held by her hand in my hair, must remain essentially in place. Tears sprang to my eyes. Then, after a time, her hand probably painfully stinging, she desisted. "You may kneel," she said. "Yes, Mistress," I said, at her feet. "You deserved your beating, did you not?" she asked. "Yes, Mistress," I said. "You may then thank me for beating you," she said. "Thank you, Mistress," I said, "for beating me."
"I am a free woman," she said. "That, what you said, that sort of thing, you remember, cannot be done to me."
"Yes, Mistress," I said.
"Can it?" she asked.
"I fear it can, Mistress," I said. "Forgive me, Mistress."
"My freedom, my station," she said, "puts me above the risk of such indignities."
"I fear in that particular Mistress might be surprised," I said.
"But why would they do that?" she asked. "Why would they—men, beasts—strip me?"
It was not hard, in the darkness, to detect the curiosity, the suppressed excitement, in her voice, in that question, seemingly so appropriate, so innocent. I gathered that beneath those cumbersome, ornate robes piled and cinched about her, there was a woman.
"May I speak," I asked.
I thought I now understood the fury with which she had struck me, again and again, but moments ago. I had touched in her, however innocently or inadvertently, something in her with which she was familiar, something which terrified her.
"Certainly," she said.
"They would strip you, Mistress," I said, "—to see if you were pleasing."
"Oh!" she cried, angrily.
But surely she had expected that answer.
And I do not think that she was truly displeased.
"And if I were?" she asked.
"Mistress would have been made a slave," I said. "Forgive me, Mistress," I added.
"And if I were not 'pleasing,'" she asked.
"I do not know, Mistress," I said. "The enemy are men of Port Kar. Perhaps you would be thrown to the sharks."
She made a small noise of fear. It pleased me to hear it. I think she understood her womanhood a bit more clearly now than perhaps she had before.
"It is my hope," I said, "that Mistress would be found pleasing."
"I am afraid of being a slave," she said.
"Yes, Mistress," I said.
"I do not know if I would be of interest to men," she said, "—for myself, I mean."
"We must hope that the brutes, the beasts, would find Mistress of interest," I said.
"You are a lovely Kajira," she said. "It is easy to see why men find you of interest."
Her remark startled me, by its unexpectedness. It did not seem to me cruel, sardonic, disparaging. It seemed rather the remark merely of another woman, one frightened, curious, unsure of herself.
"Some men," I said, "seem to have found me of interest. In any event, my collar is well on me."
"I wonder what it is," she said, "—to wear a collar."
"The collar itself," I said, "is light, and pretty, and not at all uncomfortable. Soon one pays no attention to it. One even forgets it is on one. But, of course, it is on one."
There are many sorts of collars; some, for example, are bands of metal, some rings of metal, some chains of metal. All lock, of course, and cannot be removed by the girl. To be sure, there are other collars which might be removed, if given the master's permission, sometimes a leather string, for example, or a bit of ribbon. What is most important, of course, is the meaning of the collar, not its material or whether or not it is locked. Collars, incidentally, are almost always placed upon the slave, or removed from the slave, by the master. The act of either collaring or uncollaring, it is generally understood, is his to perform. The slave without a collar is, of course, no less a slave. But the collar is pretty, and helps her to keep in mind, clearly, her status. Gorean slaves are almost always collared, and wear lock collars. This not only has its profound erotic effect on the slave and others, but it usefully, from the point of view of merchant law, identifies her as a slave. The collar, too, commonly, will contain information as to whom the slave belongs. It may also bear her name, that she wears by the will of her master. Bondage may also be betokened by such devices as bracelets and anklets.
"I do not know if I could be pleasing," she said.
"If Mistress would live," I said, "Mistress must do her best."
"Yes," she whispered.
"Perhaps Mistress, in the secrecy of her own compartments, before her mirrors, has considered her features, and throat and body. Perhaps she has wondered what she would look like—in a collar, or chained."
She made no response to this. We were alone in the darkness. I felt sorry for her, that she should be ignominiously confined in the hold with no more company than a slave girl. But then perhaps she preferred even such company, to the lonely terrors of a dark hold.
One could hear the water about the hull, the creak of the timbers.
Outside, from time to time, from the movement of ships, the cries of men, the hiss of catapults, it was clear that men were still at their games, that war was still afoot on the deep, green precincts of beautiful Thassa, the sea.
How magnificent, but incomprehensible, are our masters!
"You are a barbarian," she said, after a time. "I can tell that from your accent."
"Yes, Mistress," I said.
"But I am Gorean," she said.
"They will chain you as quickly, and as thoughtlessly as I," I said. "What we have in common is that we are both women."
We did not speak then for some time. Occasionally I heard a small sound from her. I thought she was afraid.
The next time food and water was brought, she shared it with me. She let me feed myself, with my own hands.
* * * *
"Let us not speak further," she said, "of the terrors of bondage."
"As Mistress wishes," I said.
This puzzled me, as we had not been speaking together for some time, about anything.
But in a moment, in the darkness, she spoke again, eagerly.
"Is it so frightful to be a slave?" she asked.
"No, Mistress," I said.
"How can that be?"
"I am a woman," I said.
"I do not understand," she said.
"I wish to relate to strong men," I said, "to masters who will own me, and use me. I respond to male domination. I want it. I need it. I wish to be mastered, to have no choice but to obey, to selflessly love and serve, to give all to the master, and hope to be pleasing."
"But you are subject to the whip!"
"Deliciously so," I said. "We understand its symbolism, but of course, too, its stroke. When I feel the lash of my Master I know that I belong to him. Few things so impress my bondage upon me as his right to lash me, and, of course, the stroke of the proprietary lash itself."
"Does it not hurt?"
"Of course, it hurts," I said.
"Are you frequently whipped?" she asked.
"No," I said. "If the Master is pleased, why should he whip his slave? To be sure, we may occasionally be bound and lashed, lest we forget that we are slaves, to remind us that we are slaves."
"Frightful," she said, but her voice belied her word. It was easy to tell that the slave in her, the slave which was basically and radically she, longed for her master.
I then pitied free women.
* * * *
"If we are rammed," she said, frightened, in the darkness, "and the men do not remember to open the hatch, or do not have time to do so, what will occur?"
"Sometimes," I said, "the planking is opened widely. Perhaps we could escape."
"It would
not be likely that we would be successful," she said.
"No, Mistress," I said.
We heard the count of the oar master increasing. There was not much other noise on deck.
Then we felt the ship, perhaps half of an Ahn later, suddenly veer to one side. We heard some oars snapped.
"I want to know what is going on!" screamed the free woman. She pounded on the closed hatch. None paid her attention.
About a quarter of an Ahn later, suddenly, we heard the screaming of men and, not more than three or four Ihn afterwards, to our horror, the wall of the hull, opening into the hold, with a wrenching sound of rupturing wood, suddenly burst inward, toward us. We could see nothing at first but were struck with a torrent of cold, swirling water. We screamed. Then we could see some light, and the horizon, and the bow of a ship against us, and the curved ram of the predator amongst our planking. The attacker backed his oars and the ram, its work done, splintering more wood, withdrew and settled away from us. The hole in the hull was more than a yard in width. Water flowed through, making it impossible to approach. Suddenly it seemed we were to our waists in water. The ship rocked back and we saw the sky and the water stopped flowing inward, and then it rocked back again, and the water, smoothly, in a broad flow, swirled in.
We climbed the steps of the hold, each screaming.
The hatch was flung up and we saw the sky. An officer stood there, with unsheathed sword.
We climbed to the deck, scrambling, wildly. He seized the free woman by the arm. He pulled her toward a longboat. None paid me attention. The attacking ship had withdrawn, seeking other prey. I saw that there were many ships about. It was early in the morning, apparently. Wisps of fog hung upon the water, and fog was high in the north. Ships engaged. I heard shouting, and, on another ship, the clashing of weapons. Within a hundred yards there may have been as many as four or five ships. Two were aflame. Men began to crowd into the two longboats. One slid, capsizing, into the water. The free woman was handed down into the other. Men fought to right the capsized boat. The stern of the ship began to settle in the water. Men leaped into the water and began to swim toward other ships. I ran to the rail to look after them. I did not see the second ship, from behind me, from amidships, approaching. It was itself a ship of Cos, running, and could not, in the time, given the proximity of the ships, turn sufficiently aside. It, too, struck the ship on which I stood. I screamed, and fell, thrown to the deck. It tilted, and I slipped backward. I scratched at it, as though to climb it toward the bow. Then I caught the railing and, as I felt the ship slipping back into the water, the bow lifting high, I pulled myself over the railing, slipped into the water, and swam from the side of the ship. The mast of the struck ship, lowered, had come loose from its deck lashings, and had plunged through the railing and slipped into the water. It was that mast which I seized, lifting my head and arm above the water. It turned in the water, twisting, and was half submerged when the ship disappeared but, in a moment, it lifted again to the surface. I was not fifty feet from a burning ship. The water was filled with wreckage. I heard signal horns, and saw flags on the signal lines. I saw two men fighting in the water. Then, suddenly, the fog from the north began to move more steadily in about us. The burning ship seemed dim in the gray fog. I heard more signal horns. There was shouting in the water. Then it seemed there were none about me. I cried out. The burning ship sank beneath the water. The horns were now farther off. Men who had been near me in the water seemed now to be gone. I was suddenly alone.