by John Norman
“I have been had many times when I was a she-urt,” she said. “I have lain for paga attendants, hoping to be thrown a handful of garbage. I have been raped by vagabonds. Many times did I pleasure Turgus. Yet never did I feel anything like what you did to me.”
“Of the three types of experiences you have mentioned,” I said, “the nearest to what you recently felt occurred when you hoped to be thrown garbage by paga attendants.”
She looked at me with wonder. “Yes,” she said, “how did you know that?”
“Because in that experience you were most under the domination of a man, dependent on him even for food. Would he or would he not throw you a few scraps? Would you be sufficiently pleasing to win from him even a few shreds of garbage?”
“Yes,” she said. “It is the woman in the position of submission and subordination.”
“Doubtless sometimes they even ordered you to dance naked before them,” I said.
“Yes,” she said.
“What occurred later then,” I asked, “when they had you?”
“I reached orgasm quickly,” she said.
“Of course,” I said. “But still you were free. If you wished you could starve for another day, or you could seek garbage elsewhere, or beg, or fish for scraps in the canals.”
“Yes,” she said.
“You see,” I said, “you were not totally dependent on them. You were not totally helpless. You were not their slave.”
“Are you going to let me eat tomorrow?” she asked, suddenly, apprehensively.
“Perhaps,” I said. “I will make that decision in the morning.”
“Yes, Master,” she said.
“Do you begin to see what I am saying to you?” I asked.
“Yes, Master,” she whispered. “I could not have earlier had the feelings you induced in me.”
“Yes,” I said.
“Master,” she said.
“Yes,” I said.
“The very nearest thing to what I recently felt occurred on the northern walkway of the Rim canal, when you, not a vagabond, but a strong, free man, who had subdued both Turgus and myself, simply took me and used me for your pleasure.”
“I recall,” I said. “Too, I recall that you responded well. considering that you were at that time only a free woman.”
“You treated me as a slave,” she chided.
“I saw the potential slave in you,” I said. “Accordingly I handled you as I would have handled a slave.”
“That is why I could not help responding to you as I did,” she said.
“And yet,” I said, “that did not compare with what you recently felt.”
“No,” she said.
‘That is because before you were a free woman,” I said. “You did not then truly belong to men.”
“I do now,” she said.
“Yes,” I said. “Now you are a slave.”
“That is the difference,” she said.
“Yes,” I said.
“The orgasm was rudimentary?” she asked.
“Yes,” I said. “Just as you could not, as a free woman, attain to the heights of the rudimentary slave orgasm recently inflicted upon you so, too, you, as a new slave, cannot yet attain to the overwhelming and degrading ecstasies familiar to a girl longer in the collar.”
“Yes, Master,” she said.
“You have a long way to go in slavery, little Sasi,” I said.
“Yes, Master,” she said.
“But in a year or two,” I said, “I think you will be superb. And beyond that it is just a matter of continued growth.”
“Does any woman ever learn her full slavery?” she asked.
“No,” I said, “I think no woman ever learns the fullness of her slavery.”
“I want to be a good slave,” she said.
“Men will see that you are,” I said.
“Yes, Master,” she said. “Master,” she said.
“Yes,” I said.
“May I please have my ears pierced, Master,” she begged.
“Would you be so degraded a slave?” I asked. Ear piercing, on Gor, is regarded in most cities as the most degrading thing that can he done to a girl. It is commonly done only to the lowest of pleasure slaves. Compared to it, fixing a ring in a girl’s nose is regarded lightly. Indeed, among the Tuchuks, one of the Wagon Peoples of Gor, even free women wear nose rings. These matters are cultural, of course.
“Yes, Master,” she said.
“Why?” I asked.
‘That I might be kept always a slave,” she said.
“I see,” I said. A girl with pierced ears on Gor might as well, for all practical purposes, give up even the slimmest of hopes, should she entertain them, of freedom. What Gorean man, seeing a woman with pierced cars, could treat her as, or accept her as, anything but a slave?
“Please, Master,” she said.
“I will have it done in Schendi,” I said. Usually, a leather worker pierces ears. In Schendi there were many leather workers, usually engaged in the tooling of kailiauk hide, brought from the interior. Such leather, with horn, was one of the major exports of Schendi. Kailiauk are four-legged, wide-headed, lumbering, stocky ruminants. Their herds are usually found in the savannahs and plains north and south of the rain forests, but some herds frequent the forests as well. These animals are short-trunked and tawny. They commonly have brown and reddish bars on the haunches. The males, tridentlike, have three horns. These horns bristle from their foreheads. The males are usually about ten hands at the shoulders and the females about eight hands. The males average about four hundred to five hundred Gorean stone in weight, some sixteen hundred to two thousand pounds, and the females average about three to four hundred Gorean stone in weight, some twelve hundred to sixteen hundred pounds.
“Thank you, Master,” she said.
She then lay quietly beside me, on the blankets. The sea bag was to my right.
“Are you going to lock me in my cage tonight, Master?” she asked.
“No,” I said, “tonight you will sleep beside me.”
“Thank you, Master,” she said.
“At my feet,” I said.
“Yes, Master,” she said.
Sailors called the watch.
The wind was soft in the triangular sails. Though it was night Ulafi had not had them furled on their yards. The sea hooks, the light anchors at stem and stern, had not been thrown out. We would not lay to. Here the sea was open and the light, from the moons and stars, was more than ample. The Palms of Schendi, though it was night, continued to ply her way southward. Ulafi, for some reason, seemed eager to reach Schendi.
“I love being a woman,” said the girl. “I love being a woman.” She kissed me.
“You are a slave,” I told her.
She kissed me again. “They are the same,” she whispered.
I rolled over and seized her. Almost instantly, this time, she attained slave orgasm. Then she looked up at me, frightened, and I touched the side of her forehead, brushing back some hair.
“I so fear the slave in me,” she said.
“You so fear the woman in you,” I said.
“They are the same, Master,” she said. “They are the same.”
“That is known to me,” I said.
She lifted her lips to mine, and kissed me softly. “Yes, Master,” she said.
“To my feet,” I said.
“Yes, Master,” she said. She crept tremblingly to my feet.
“Curl up,” I told her.
“Yes, Master,” she said.
I then threw the second blanket, the top blanket, over her, covering her completely. When a blanket, or cloak, or covering of any sort, is thrown over a slave like this she may not speak or rise. She must remain as she is, silent, until the master, or some free man, lifts the covering away.
I then lay on the blanket, my hands under my head, looking up at the canvas and stars. With my foot I could feel the girl. Her breathing told me that she was soon asleep.
It
was the first time, since her enslavement, she had slept outside of a cage.
She was an excellent little slave. I was pleased that I had picked her up.
After a time, restless, I got up and paced the deck. Ulafi was not asleep. He was on the stem castle. Two helmsmen stood below him, on the helm deck. The only other hand awake, as far as I knew, was the lookout, some forty feet above me, on the ringed platform encircling the mainmast, the taller of the two masts.
I walked over to the cage of the blond-haired barbarian. She, I felt, was the key to the mystery, that device whereby I might locate Shaba and the fourth ring, one of the two remaining light-diversion rings, the secret of which had apparently perished long ago with Prasdak, the Kur inventor, he of the Cliff of Karrash. The fifth ring, according to Samos, was still somewhere on one of the steel worlds. It would not be risked, we speculated, on Gor or Earth. Perhaps it served to keep order on some steel world. Shielded in invisibility an executioner could come and go as he pleased. If we could acquire once more, of course, the Tahari ring, the fourth ring, which had been brought to Gor by a Kur faction intent upon preserving the planet from destruction, we could, presumably, have it duplicated in the Sardar. The use of such rings, If their use were permitted by Priest-Kings, might well make it difficult or impossible for the Kurii to function on Gor. With it their secret strongholds might be penetrated. With it one man might, in time, slaughter an army. I was pleased that the fourth ring had been brought to Gor. Without it, given to me by a dying Kur warrior, I doubted that I could have survived to prevent, some years ago, the detonation of the explosives in the steel tower, in the Tahari. Explosives that were intended to destroy Gor and the Priest-Kings, that the path to Earth might be cleared for conquest. But the faction that would have been willing to destroy one world to obtain another was, we speculated, no longer in the ascendancy on the steel worlds. Half-Ear, a war general of the Kurii, whom I had met in the north, had not been of that faction. Kurii now, it seemed reasonably clear, were again intent upon the possibilities of invasion. They sensed the weakness of Priest-Kings. Why now should they think of destroying a world which, like a ripe fruit, seemed to hang almost within their grasp?
I looked at the blond-haired barbarian. I was surprised to see that she was not asleep. Usually a girl in training sleeps well. She, has been worked hard and is tired. But she was not asleep. She knelt in the small cage, her fists on the bars. She was naked; I could see the moonlight on her flesh, striped by the shadows of the bars, and glinting .n the shipping collar locked on her throat. She was looking up at me. I smiled to myself. Clearly she was not sleepy.
If she had been mine I would have dragged her from the cage and thrown her upon the deck.
She looked over to where Sasi lay under the blanket. She looked at her, wonderingly. Then she looked at me, again. “I heard her cry out,” she said, in English, half to herself. “What did you do to her?”
She had heard, an hour ago or so, Sasi’s cry, emitted in the throes of her first slave orgasm, acknowledging her surrender to me as a slave girl.
“What did you do to her?” she asked, in English. Surely she must know, or suspect, what had been done to Sasi. Would not any woman know?
“What?” I asked in Gorean. I crouched down by the cage.
She drew back from the bars. “Forgive me,” she said, frightened, in English. “I was only talking to myself, really. I did not mean to bother you, Master.”
“What?” I asked in Gorean.
She collected herself. “It is nothing, Master,” she said, in Gorean. “Forgive me, Master.”
Her Gorean was still terribly limited. I saw her look again to Sasi, under the blanket, and then to me.
As she knelt before me, within the cage, I saw her straighten her back and draw back her shoulders, lifting her breasts. How beautiful they were. I do not think she even realized she had done this. It was a slave’s act, displaying her imbonded beauty before the gaze of a free man. Yet I do not think she was even aware of what she had done.
I looked at her ears. They had not been pierced. I had never known a female agent of Kurii who had been brought to Gor with pierced ears. That was no accident, of course. Pierced ears in a girl mean to a Gorean that she is a slave among slaves. I looked at her. If I owned her I would have her ears pierced. That would be sufficient guarantee, on Gor, that she would always be kept in a collar.
She opened her knees, slightly, before me, as she knelt. This was done unconsciously. What a naive slave she was, doubtless still priding herself on her freedom.
Some Earth girls, of course, brought to Gor as slaves, as lovely meat for the flesh markets, did have their ears pierced. Some of them did not learn for months why it was that they were treated with a roughness and contempt far beyond that of their imbonded sisters, subjected to a harsher authority and put beneath the rudest predations of a master’s lust. And yet the answer was simple. They were pierced-ear girls. It is said that the ear piercing of slaves, on Gor, originated in Turia. Certainly it was practiced there. After the fall of Turia the custom spread northward. It is now relatively common on Gor, for pleasure slaves. Slavers have discovered that a pierced-ear girl commands a higher price.
I looked into the eyes of the blond girl. She had looked again at Sasi, and then had lifted her eyes to mine. Her lower lip trembled. And then she put her head down, quickly.
I saw that she wished that it had been she, and not Sasi, who had been subjected on the blankets to the pleasure of a master. But she would not, of course, admit this to herself. Sasi, a slave, had served the pleasure of a master. She, a slave, had not. Sasi had been called to the blankets; she had been left in her cage.
Ulafi had not had her thrown to the crew. He had purchased her for another. She was to be shipped intact to her buyer in Schendi, he who had placed her on order.
She lifted her head, and our eyes met I saw her small right hand tremble. It lifted timidly from her thigh. She wanted to reach out, through the bars, to touch me. Then quickly she drew her hand back.
She put down her head.
I thought that whoever eventually owned her would be a lucky fellow. She had excellent slave potential.
I would not have minded having her in my own collar. She had grown considerably in beauty, just on the voyage.
She lifted her head again.
I looked again into her eyes. Yes, I thought, excellent slave potential.
Again she looked down. “I find you so attractive, you brute,” she said, miserably, in English, much to herself. “You are so attractive to me,” she said. “I hate you, you are so attractive to me,” she said. “You make me weak. I hate you.”
“What are you saying?” I asked her, in Gorean as though I could not understand her.
She looked at me, boldly. But she spoke in English, which she believed I could not understand. “I do not know what is going on in me,” she said. “My clothes have been taken. I am caged. I wear a collar. I have been branded. I have been whipped. I am being trained as a slave. And yet I find you attractive. I am no good. I am no good. I want to he before you and lick your feet. I want to serve you, fully, and as a slave!” She looked away. “I hate myself,” she said. “I hate you! I hate all of them! And yet something in me is beginning to sense happiness, joy, fulfillment. How terrible I am!” She sobbed. “perhaps I am a slave, truly,” she whispered. Then she shook her head, tears in her eyes. “No, no, no, no, no,” she said. “I am not a slave!”
“What are you saying?” I asked her, in Gorean.
She looked at me, and brushed back her hair. “Nothing, Master,” she said. In Gorean. “Forgive~ me, Master,” she said. “It is nothing.”
“Nadu,” I said.
Swiftly she knelt before me, in the tiny cage, in the perfection of the position of the pleasure slave.
“Good,” I said. She had assumed it instantaneously, fluidly, beautifully.
“Thank you, Master,” she said.
“It is now time to sleep,” I told he
r,
“Yes, Master,” she said, and curled up on the sheet-iron square which floored her cage.
I looked at her. Her legs were drawn up. Her toes were pointed. Her belly was sucked in, slightly. Her body was a beautiful armful of slave curves. She had not been taught to do that. I looked into her eyes. She was a natural slave, I saw, as is any woman. Too, I saw that she suspected it. I then took the tarpaulin, which lay to one side. I unfolded it, and threw it over the cage, and then tied it down, fastening it to the four cleats at the corners of the cage, covering her for the night.
6. Schendi
“Do you smell it?” asked Ulafi.
“Yes,” I said. “It is cinnamon and cloves, is it not?”
“Yes,” said Ulafi, “and other spices, as well.”
The sun was bright, and there was a good wind astern. The sails were full and the waters of Thassa streamed against the strakes.
It was the fourth morning after the evening conversation which Ulafi and I had had, concerning my putative caste and the transaction in Schendi awaiting the arrival of the blond-haired barbarian.
“How far are we out of Schendi?” I asked.
“Fifty pasangs,” said Ulah.
We could not yet see land.
The two girls, on their hands and knees on the deck, linked together by a gleaming neck chain, some five feet in length, attached to two steel work collars, these fitted over their regular collars, looked up. They, too, could smell the spices, even this far from land. In their right hands, grasped, were deck stones, soft, white stones, rounded, which are used to smooth and sand the boards of the deck. Earlier they had scrubbed and rinsed and, with rags, on their hands and knees, dried the deck. Later, when finished with the deck stones, they would again rinse and, again on their hands and knees, with rags, dry the deck. Had sailors been doing these things they of course, would have dried the deck by simply mopping it down. This was not permitted to the girls, of course. They were slaves. The boards almost sparkled white. Ulafi kept a fine ship. Behind the girls stood Shoka with a whip. He would not hesitate to use it on them, if they shirked. They did not shirk.