by John Norman
Claudia Tentia Hinrabia, though she had now been gone months from the House, had been kept for better than two months in the cell for Special Captures. In this time her head had been shaved at various times. She was commonly permitted to wear lavish and luxurious robes of concealment, save for hood and veil. The bracelets and chain on her wrists, during this time, save in dressing and in the bath, were never removed. And during such times, before the bracelets and chain were removed, a steel slave anklet would be placed on her left ankle, in order that there be no time that her body would be completely free of slave steel; this anklet she wore even in her bath; it would be removed only after the bracelets and chain had been replaced.
Each evening five lovely, long-haired, uncollared serving slaves would come to her cell, to bathe her and perfume her, to prepare her for love. These girls, under the instructions of Cernus, were extremely deferential, save that they were continually to amuse themselves at the prisoner's expense, making sport of her shaved head, laughing and joking about it among themselves. Four times Claudia Tentia Hinrabia had attempted to kill one of the girls but the others would easily overpower her; and the Hinrabian must endure her bath and her perfuming; when finished the girls would lock her raiment in a chest and then draw a slave hood over her head, locking it in place, and the Hinrabian, stripped, perfumed, hooded, chained, must wait for he for whom she has been prepared.
After two months of such treatment, Cernus, perhaps because he wearied of her body, or because he felt she was now ready, now at the height of her hatreds and miseries, ordered her sent to Tor, where, I heard, she was collared, marked and publicly sold during the ninth passage hand, that preceding the winter solstice. It was thought she would probably return to Ar within two months. There had been nothing clandestine about her sale, and it was unlikely that she would not be able to convince her master, eventually, that she was of high family in Ar and might be richly ransomed. If he were not convinced of her story one of the agents of Cernus would make a good offer for the girl, pretend to be convinced of her identity and hastily return her to Ar. It would be better, of course, if her master, bound to be ignorant of the intrigue, would undertake this business himself.
The time, during this period, seemed to me to pass with incredible slowness. Ar lies in Gor's northern hemisphere; it is rather low in her temperate latitudes; the long cold rains of the winter, the darkness of the days, the occasional snows, turning to black slush in her streets, depressed me. Each day I became more and more angry at the time that was passing. I spoke to Caprus again but he, now irritated, reiterated his position, and would speak with me no more.
Sometimes, to while away the time I would watch the girls in training.
Sura's training room lay directly off her private compartment, which might have been that of a free woman, save that the heavy door locked only on the outside and, at the eighteenth bar, it became her cell.
The training room was floored with wood, laid diagonally across beams for additional strength; one twelve-foot area of the room was a shallow pit of sand; against one wall were various chests of raiment, cosmetics and retention devices, for girls must be trained to wear chains gracefully; certain dances are performed in them, and so on.
To one side there was a set of mats for Musicians, who almost invariably were present at the sessions, for even the exercises of the girls, which were carefully selected and frequently performed, are done to music; against one wall were several bars, also used in exercise, not unlike a training room in ballet except that there were four parallel bars fastened in the wall, which are used in a variety of exercises. Near the chests of raiment and such were several folded mats and sets of love furs.
One entire side of the room, the left, facing the front, was a mirror. This mirror was, as might be expected, a one-way mirror. Various members of the House might observe the training without being noted from behind this glass. I used it sometimes myself, but at other times, sometimes alone, sometimes with others, would enter the room and sit near the back. Sura encouraged males to observe, wanting the girls to sense their presence and interest. And, though I do not think I would have told Elizabeth, her performances with men clearly present, and she knowing it, were almost invariably superior to those in which she did not know herself observed.
There were several men, including myself, who visited the training area with some frequency. In the past two months, in particular, I noted two young Warriors, guards, recent additions to the staff of the House. Their names were Relius and Ho-Sorl. They seemed likable, capable young men, something above the average cut of the men in the employ of Cernus the Slaver. I supposed they had succumbed to gold, for slavers pay high for their hired swords.
The staff, incidentally, had been increased in the last month, largely due to the increasing number of slaves being processed by the House but perhaps also, in part, in preparation for the approaching spring, which is the busiest season on the Street of Brands, for then, after the winter, slave raids are more frequent and buyers wish to celebrate the New Year, beginning with the Vernal Equinox, by adding a girl or two to their household. On the other hand, the single greatest period for the sale of slaves is the five days of the Fifth Passage Hand, coming late in summer, called jointly the Love Feast.
I recalled a girl once known, named Sana, who had been sold in Ar during those days, who had become the consort of Kazrak, once Administrator of Ar. I knew that Cernus intended to market Elizabeth, and the two other girls, on that feast. It is thought to be good luck to buy a girl on that feast, so prices tend to be high. Long before that time, however, I hoped, with Elizabeth and Caprus, to be free of the House.
The training of a slave girl, like the training of an animal, tends to be a grueling task, calling for patience, time, good judgement and sternness. These numerous latter qualities Sura possessed in plenty. Many were the evenings, particularly in the beginning, when Elizabeth would return to my quarters, and Virginia and Phyllis to their cells, in tears, stinging from the slave goad, confused, convinced that they could never please their harsh mistress. Then they would make some small progress and be rewarded with a kind word, which they found they could not help themselves from receiving with joy. The techniques employed were relatively transparent, much as the kennel technique had been with Virginia and Phyllis, and the girls objectively, rationally recognized what was being done to them, but yet, to their frustration and anger, they could not help, in the moment, responding as they did.
"I fear the goad," Elizabeth had told me one night. "I am afraid of it. I know it is foolish, but I am afraid. I will do anything that woman tells me, if only she will not touch me with the goad. I hate her. I know what they are doing. But yet I cannot help myself. I want desperately to please her."
"It is not irrational to fear the goad," I said. I had once been struck with a tarn goad and knew substantially what her pain must be; further, the shower of yellow sparks, though perhaps in itself innocuous, was, conjoined with the sudden pain, terrifying.
"I'm being trained like an animal," said Elizabeth, putting her head to my shoulder.
I held her head on my shoulder. What she said was to a large extent true, for she was being conditioned to certain responses by pain and rewards. Indeed, sometimes the girls would be forced to compete among themselves, with small candies as prizes, and each would find herself, to her subsequent horror, striving eagerly to outdo the others, that it might be she to whom Sura would throw the sugared pellet. Sometimes Sura would let the men observing determine which girl should receive the pellet, that they might learn how to win men's pleasure.
The conditioning, of course, was subtle, as well as gross, being a combination not simply of torment and reward, but including the intended inculcation of an image and understanding of themselves as well. In its most primitive expression this was begun in the first two weeks of the girls' training. The first week, surprisingly, consisted of nothing but the girl kneeling before the great mirror, in the position of a Pleasure Slave, for
several Ahn a day. During this time they wore only their collars, and in the case of Virginia and Phyllis the slave anklets on their left ankles. The point of this, as Elizabeth and I supposed, was simply to accustom them to seeing themselves as slave girls.
In the second week, they knelt in the same fashion, but had been forced to repeat, out loud, incessantly, the ritual phrase, "I am a slave girl. I am a slave girl. I am a slave girl." Virginia and Phyllis must needs do this in English, Elizabeth in Gorean.
In the third week, the education became somewhat more subtle and Flaminius visited the girls for their training hours, and discussed, with ingenious subtlety, first in English and then in Gorean, certain views of history, of natural right, of orders of human beings and of relations among the sexes. The upshot of these disquisitions, predictably, was that what had happened to them was appropriate given certain laws of intraspecific competition, of conflict and dominance, of the rightful order of nature. They were the women of inferior men who had been unable to protect them; such men would be conquered when one wished; their women belonged to those who could take them, who would be the victorious; hence they were of slave stock, by nature; that this sort of thing had occurred always, and would always occur; that it was right and just; that as natural slaves they must now bend all their efforts and intelligence to the pleasures of their masters; there was also a strong dose of masculine superiority thrown in, and the common Gorean contention, and arguments relating to it, that women are by nature slaves, deserve to be such and are fully content and pleased only when this is so.
Flaminius, for a time, accepted and encouraged counter-arguments, patiently, as though waiting for the girls, when their simple minds permitted it, to understand the truth of what he said. Phyllis, I learned from Elizabeth, was particularly wrathful, when permitted to be so, with Flaminius. Phyllis, it seemed, to Elizabeth's amusement, had actually, on Earth, been a rather serious, ardent feminist. She had, as a matter of fact, hated and resented men. Virginia, on the other hand, had been a shy girl, fearing men. Needless to say, both presented Sura with different problems, which in a Gorean girl seldom occur.
Elizabeth would sometimes, in these weeks, come back to the compartment and relate, with amusement, the subtle exchanges between Phyllis and Flaminius. In her opinion, and perhaps rightly, the positions of both were subtle combinations of truths and half-truths; Phyllis seemed to regard men and women as unimportant differentiations off a sexless, neuter stock, whereas Flaminius argued for a position in which women were hardly to be recognized as belonging to the human species. I expect both, and I am certain that Flaminius, recognized the errors and exaggerations of their own position, but neither was concerned with the truth; both were concerned only with victory, and pleasing themselves.
At any rate, to my satisfaction, but Elizabeth's irritation, Flaminius commonly had the best of these exchanges, producing incredibly subtle, complex arguments, quoting supposedly objectively conducted studies by the Caste of Physicians, statistics, the results of tests, and what not. Phyllis, unconvinced, was often reduced to tears and stuttering incoherence. Flaminius, of course, was practiced and skillful in what he was doing, and Phyllis was not difficult to catch and tangle in his well-woven nets of logic and supposed fact.
During this time Virginia would usually remain silent, but she would occasionally volunteer a fact, a precedent or event which would support Flaminius' position, much to the anger of Phyllis. Elizabeth chose, wisely, not to debate with Flaminius. She had her own ideas, her own insights. She had learned on Gor that women are marvelous, but that they are not men, nor should they be; that they are themselves; that they are independent, magnificent creatures; that it takes two sexes for the human race to be whole; and that each is splendid.
Following some two weeks of these discussions, which seemed to me at the time, at any rate, to be a waste of training time, Virginia Kent, who had feared men, had come to weigh seriously, if not to accept, certain of the theories of Flaminius, Phyllis to fight them and reject them as hateful slanders, and Elizabeth to regard them as an entertaining and stimulating hodgepodge of sophistry, reality, nonsense and propaganda. All three girls, in the last week, were taught certain standard answers to certain standard questions put to them by Flaminius, whether they agreed with them or not. These questions, to which simple, standard, memorized answers were to be promptly volunteered, were put to them over and over, until they, even Phyllis, responded without thinking. Certain of these questions and answers, suggesting their nature, would be:
Q: What are you?
A: I am a slave girl.
Q: What is a slave girl?
A: A girl who is owned.
Q: Why do you were a brand?
A: To show that I am owned.
Q: Why do you wear a collar?
A: That men may know who owns me.
Q: What does a slave girl want more than anything?
A: To please men.
Q: What are you?
A: I am a slave girl.
Q: What do you want more than anything?
A: To please men.
There is, beyond these, an entire set of questions and answers, some of them considerably more detailed, and involving standard responses to simple questions pertaining to such matters as history and psychology.
The truly sinister aspect of even this portion of the girls' training did not become evident to me, or to Elizabeth, until the entire week was spent again before the mirror, seeing themselves as slave girls, and repeating, aloud, these questions and answers, as though putting them to themselves; as though, with Flaminius gone, it was they themselves, the girls, who were putting these questions to themselves, and responding with almost hypnotic automatism; it was probably easiest on Elizabeth, who knew that she was playing a part, that she would be, sooner or later, carried to safety, but even Elizabeth, more than once, awakened with a cry in the night, clutching me, whimpering, "No, no, no."
The sixth week of the training was spent, as several of the former, before the mirror, but this time repeating over and over, aloud, "I love being a slave girl. I love being a slave girl." At last, after this cruel and almost interminable repetition, utilizing simple psychological principles, intended to brand into the girls' psyche the identity of a Pleasure Slave, the girls began the period of exercises, many of which would, for certain periods of the day, be carried through the next months. During the next weeks and months the lessons of Flaminius were never again touched upon, except occasionally, for her amusement, by Sura, who would suddenly cry to one of the girls, at the same time brandishing the slave goad, such a query as "What do you want more than anything?" to which the girl, to her shame and astonishment, would find herself crying out in fear, "To please men!" Then Sura would say, "Then learn what I am teaching you," and they would respond, fearing the goad, "Yes, Mistress!"
In the hours that Virginia and Phyllis were not in training, and the training hours are only five Ahn a day, they were, particularly in the beginning, intensively drilled in Gorean. Elizabeth, on the other hand, usually assisted Caprus in his office. Later, when the girls became reasonably proficient at Gorean, they were permitted the freedom of the House baths, which they enjoyed, and the liberty to move about the House rather as they pleased, saving that they must be locked in their cells by the eighteenth bar.
The foods given them also changed with the advance in their training, and the desire to have varied, tasty fare, and sometimes a small bowl of Ka-la-na with their supper, drove them to perform well. Further, each must eat the same, so pressure was brought on each to come to a given level, for the food of all remained the same until each had attained the desired next level of training.
By the end of the twelfth week of their training they were eating well, generally low-calorie foods, nourishing, a good amount of protein, diets supervised as carefully as those of racing tarns or hunting sleen; Elizabeth was the only girl who had, so to speak, a compartment of her own, with a door that might be shut, rather than simp
le bars, and so the three girls often, when possible, would come to the compartment, for some moments of privacy. At these times they would, as well as possible, converse in Gorean; Elizabeth taught them much; she did not permit them to know she spoke English; I would often leave the compartment at these times but sometimes I would remain. Elizabeth led them, to some extent, not to fear me, leading them to believe that she had so well served me that she had, to some degree, engaged my affections. I think she did not realize how true her words were.
In the beginning, when moving about the house, the girls had been permitted only the garb customarily worn in the sweat and motion of the training, a rectangle of silk, about a foot long, thrust into a silken string knotted about the waist; Virginia and Phyllis would not even leave their cells so clad until Elizabeth called upon them, so clad herself, ordering them forth; Phyllis had been tearfully furious that she should be so seen, Virginia terrified; but, on the orders of Elizabeth, who spoke with authority, they followed her forth, frightened, but heads high and shoulders back, and soon they were delighting in the sights of the house, for they had seen little but the kennels, the training room and their cells; it had been a good day for them; each was female and Elizabeth had taught them that this was a permissible thing to be.
"These men are slavers," Elizabeth confided to them. "They have seen women before."
Later, in the eighteenth week of their training, they were given brief silken slave livery, sleeveless, fastened by the loop on the left shoulder. Virginia and Phyllis were give white livery, Elizabeth red. It was at this time also that Virginia and Phyllis had been given their lock collars, white-enameled, and that the slave anklets, the identification bands, had been removed from their left ankles. Elizabeth, at the beginning of her training, had simply exchanged her yellow collar for a red one. She had already been a lock-collar girl.