by John Norman
She wondered if she were now to be named. The name, of course, like an anklet, or a collar, would simply be put on her. It would be merely a slave name, hers by the decision of the master, a name subject to whim or caprice, subject to change at any time. Yet it would be her name. It would be her name as much as any such name, for example, one put on a pig or dog.
But he did not name her.
She remained, for the time, a nameless slave.
She wondered why there were so many people in the room.
He spoke to the assembled throng. He spoke in the language she had been learning and he did so fluently. Kneeling, she struggled to follow him. She was sure that she figured somehow in what he was saying. Sometimes, as he spoke, one or another of the men, or women, looked at her and laughed. This made her uneasy. He had a slight accent in the language. She thought that she would, even if she had not known him, have been able to conjecture with plausibility that his native tongue might be English. To be sure, there were many different accents in the house, and even, as far as she could tell, among those who natively spoke the language she had been learning. Doubtless they came from different areas, or walks of life, or such.
His remarks, to her uneasiness, had been greeted with much amusement.
When he finished, all eyes turned upon her. She was now the focus of attention. She felt very vulnerable, in the tiny garment, all she wore, save for the anklet, kneeling on the marble floor, before the dais. She trembled. Surely it was more common, she thought, for slaves to be simply kneeling to one side, inconspicuously, unobtrusively, waiting to serve.
“Did you follow what I said?” he asked her, in English.
“A little,” she said, in her new language.
“I told them,” he said, “of the pathological world from which you derive. I told them how you were once a teacher. I could not explain to them very clearly how you had, when I first knew you, been a proud, young, new Ph.D., with a degree in gender studies. That is not an easy concept to convey in Gorean.”
Gorean, she thought, of course! That is the name of the language. But there are other languages, as well, doubtless, spoken on this world.
“I am afraid their concept of gender studies is not yours. Their concept of gender studies would have more to do with the care, feeding and training of slave girls, how one puts them through their paces, and such, but I did give them some idea of the matter, of your certification, its ridiculously pretended importance, the eccentric, warped, and politically laden subject matter, such things. And now, you are going to perform for us.” He clapped his hands, sharply. “Tutina!” he called.
She looked up, wildly. Perform? Tutina? She, here, on this world? Yet it was only that she had not seen her here. She had no reason for supposing that she was not on this world, and, indeed, many reasons for supposing that she would be here. Surely she was too desirable to have been left behind. And, after all, had her own master not once “bought her”?
She was suddenly dismayed. Then her master must have at least two women!
She heard sharp commands in a female voice, coming from behind her and to her left. They were in the language she had now learned was called Gorean. For an instant they seemed just inarticulate, angry noises to her. Why could they not have been uttered in English? Then, suddenly, after a moment’s delay, she understood them.
“Here, slave girl, here, to me, hurry!”
Swiftly she leaped to her feet, turned, and ran to Tutina, who stood near the entrance to the room. Even had she not been trained she might have fallen to her knees before that stern, looming figure.
It was indeed Tutina! But it was a Tutina far more formidable, and terrifying, than the one she had scorned on Earth. Her figure was even more striking than on Earth. Doubtless she, too, perhaps after some unavoidable leniencies or lapses on Earth, had, on this world, been subjected to the discipline of a prescribed diet and a regimen of exercises. Tutina was more fully clad than she, but rather as she herself had been in her former presentation before the young man whom she had recently learned owned her, in a sleeveless tunic which came just above the knees. Tutina, as she, was ankleted. Tutina’s blond hair was bound back with a woolen ribbon, or fillet, which went completely about the head, across the brow, and was knotted behind the back of the head, two ends then dangling downward, each about six inches in length. It was a talmit, indicating some authority among slaves, rather as “first girl.” In her right hand she carried a long switch. The young Ph.D. in gender studies feared that implement. She had felt it frequently enough from impatient instructrices. Tutina’s eyes flashed like blue flame. With a gesture she indicated the opened door, and her terrified charge quickly rose to her feet and went through the door, which Tutina closed behind them.
Chapter 9
SHE PERFORMS BEFORE HER MASTER,
AND CONCLUDES THE PERFORMANCE SUITABLY
There were cries of interest, and pleasure, when she reappeared in the marbled audience chamber. She stood just within the doorway, timidly, uncertainly.
“How oddly she is garbed,” whispered one of the women.
She was prodded forward by Tutina’s switch, until she stood within the yellow circle. It did not seem appropriate, somehow, to kneel, as she was dressed.
How strange she felt, to be dressed in this manner, in this place.
She felt that, dressed as she was, it might be permissible to speak, but she did not dare to do so.
“You are going to perform,” said her master.
“How?” she whispered.
“To be sure,” he said, “you cannot play the kalika, nor do you know the dances of the yearning, begging slave girl.”
She began to suspect how, on this world, slaves might perform for men, how men might use them for their entertainment.
“That is how,” said the young man to those gathered about him, “she appeared in her classroom, when I was a student, and she a teacher.”
“So strangely garbed?” inquired a man.
“The garb is not so strange for her world,” said the young man, “but the intent of her particular garb is to act as the banner of a disposition. It is proclamatory; it speaks a message. Its intent is to present a formal, tidy, cool, businesslike, professional, rather severe image, not simply one demanded by a conformist, socially prescribed ideology, one in accord with politically recommended proprieties, but, beyond that, one she felt it important, interestingly, to impose upon herself. The garb bespeaks her pretensions, of course, certain delusions, and such. But, too, in a way it bespeaks her fear. It is a defensive facade, just like the ideology she adopts for a similar purpose.”
“Her fear?” inquired a fellow in blue and yellow robes. At that time she did not know the significance of blue and yellow robes.
“Her fear of her own sexuality, which she is terrified to recognize, and insists on hiding.”
“Yet the excitement of her body is not altogether concealed,” said the fellow in blue and yellow robes, appraisingly.
“She is at war with herself,” said the young man. “She has deeply ambivalent feelings about her own body, its beauty and needs, her own emotions, the true meaning of her sex.”
“That war can be ended here,” smiled a man in yellow robes, those of the Builders.
She felt herself again the center of attention, as she stood in the circle.
When Tutina had closed the door behind them she had ordered her to her knees before her, near three packages on the floor. Her kneeling young charge, to her amazement, noted that these packages, sealed with tape, bore names and slogans with which she was familiar on Earth. She herself was familiar with these stores, and had shopped in them several times. She remembered the aisles, the counters, the crowds. Attentive to the injunctions placed upon her in connection with this narrative the names of these stores are omitted. Certainly they would be immediately recognized, at least by many familiar with a certain city.
The young charge looked up at Tutina, questioningly.
T
utina raised her switch menacingly, and the young charge put down her head, quickly, and cringed, but Tutina did not strike her.
“With moneys given to me by the master,” said Tutina, “I made these purchases, according to his instructions.”
Her young charge put out her hands and, with the tips of her fingers, touched the crinkling paper of one of the packages.
Then the young charge felt Tutina’s switch beneath her chin, lifting it. She looked into Tutina’s blue eyes.
“You are not now sitting on a chair, are you?” asked Tutina.
“No, Mistress,” said her charge. She addressed Tutina as “Mistress” because Tutina, obviously, was in authority over her. She had learned, in the last few days, to address her instructrices similarly.
Rank, distance and hierarchy are ingredient in Gorean social arrangements. The intricate stratification of society tends to produce social stability. The myth that all are equal when obviously they are not tends to ferment unrest. Each desires to climb the invisible ladder he claims does not exist. In Gorean society, with its emphasis on locality and neighborhood, with its diverse Home Stones, each with its own history and traditions, with its many castes and subcastes, each with its acknowledged privileges and rights, and obligations, respected by all, political upheavals, social disruptions, are not only rare, but to most Goreans almost incomprehensible. There is little cause for such things, little interest in them, little place for them. They just do not fit. In Gorean society there is no nameless, faceless, anonymous, ponderous, swarming many ruled by a secret few. Too richly formed, too proud, too self-respecting, too intricately structured, too much like nature herself, is Gorean society for that. Too, there are the codes, and honor.
“It was because of you,” said Tutina, “that I was beaten.”
Her charge remembered her outburst, on a far world, it seemed long ago now, objecting to the fact, it seemed so strange at the time, that a frightened woman in a white gown had been permitted to sit on a chair.
“I was beaten!” hissed Tutina.
“I am sorry, Mistress,” whispered her charge.
She did not doubt but what Tutina, for that lapse, had been put under discipline. She did not doubt but what the young man was fully capable of taking a whip to a woman who did not please him.
“And how I was forced to serve you, and you acting so superior to me,” exclaimed Tutina angrily, “you treating me with such contempt, and you then only an ignorant, nameless slave!”
“Forgive me!” begged the frightened, kneeling charge. “I did not know, Mistress!”
“I now wear the talmit,” said Tutina, indicating the fillet on her brow, binding back her long, luxurious blond hair. “So fear, stupid little slut. Know, ankleted little slave bitch, that upon the least provocation you will feel my switch, richly!”
“Yes, Mistress,” wept her charge, cringing, putting her head down. Like any low girl, she feared the wearer of the talmit.
“Now,” said Tutina, seemingly somewhat mollified, “remove your tunic. Open the packages. Dress.”
****
And so she stood now in the circle, before the curule chair.
The garments she wore were really muchly as they had been, so many years ago.
She wore a black, jacketed, skirted suit, with a cool, front-buttoned, rather severe, rather mannish white blouse, buttoned high about her neck. Her hair was drawn back severely, bound tight, and bunned, at the back of her head. She wore black, figured stockings, rather decorative, and shiny, black pumps, with a narrow two-inch heel.
“One thing is missing,” said the young man in the curule chair. He motioned her forward.
Into her hand he placed two small, plain, lovely golden loops, bracelets.
“Put them on,” he told her.
She slipped them on her left wrist. He knew, of course, that that was where they went. She did not wish to be beaten.
“Return to the circle,” he said, “and, hands at your sides, turn slowly for us.”
She did as she was commanded, and then again faced him, and the others.
She knew herself displayed.
She wondered if a nude slave girl on an auction block could feel more acutely conscious of her exhibition.
She did not know these people, even these sorts of people. How different they were from what she knew, in their naturalness, in their laughter and assurances, in their colorful robes and miens, all this so different from the tepidities, apathies, lethargies, and gray conformities of her old world! She had not known such people could exist. To her they were alien, not only linguistically but, more importantly, more frighteningly, culturally. This is what human beings can be, she thought, so different from those of Earth! She was not on her own world. And she was in a very different culture, one with different laws, customs, and values. Things were so unfamiliar. What could she, given no choice, brought helplessly here, be to these people?
What could one such as she be on this world?
She feared she knew.
How strange it is, she thought, to be fully clothed, according to one’s culture, so decorously, even primly, and yet, here, in a different culture, in an identical garmenture, being presented, being put on view, to feel so exposed, to feel oneself an eccentric object of curiosity.
She would have preferred her tunic, however brief. Then she would at least have better fitted in with her surroundings; she would then have felt less anomalous, less conspicuous, more congruent with her lovely milieu. There were others of her status in the room, and surely they, at least, were appropriately garmented, were accorded the simple, natural garmentures, so brief, so clinging, so revealing, which seemed to be culturally prescribed for those of their station, which station she had no doubt was hers, as well. They were attractively, and suitably, garbed, at least for what they were.
So why not she?
Why not she?
Too, she knew, and this did not displease her, at all, that she was quite attractive, perhaps even extremely so, in the tunic. That had been evident from the appraisals of guards.
In their eyes she was clearly a female.
She had no doubt about that.
And one of great interest.
That, too, had been clear.
Sometimes the guards had bound her, with colorful cords, sometimes in exotic fashions, and had then ordered her to free herself, but she had been unable to do so. But how their eyes had glinted upon her, as she had twisted, and reared up, and fell back, and squirmed and writhed, in her unsuccessful attempts to elude her constraints! To see her so before them, bound so helplessly, so predictably and absurdly futile in her commanded struggles, had given them much pleasure. Once she had intended to defy them, to remain quite still, but she was then switched, and so, again, she had addressed herself, now stung and weeping, desperately to efforts she now realized were foredoomed.
She recalled the words of the young man, on Earth, now her master on Gor, that he had thought she would be very pretty in such cords, later, when she would be luscious, helplessly bound in them.
Certainly she had been helpless in them, in those so simple, so soft, so attractive, so colorful bonds.
Am I, she asked herself, “luscious”?
She well remembered the eyes of the guards.
Perhaps, she thought.
And she was not displeased.
What female, and particularly one such as she, on this world, would not wish to be attractive, even luscious?
She shuddered.
She recalled that the young man on Earth, now her master, had suggested to her that her very life might depend on such things.
How often in history, she thought, it had been only a woman’s beauty which stood between herself and the sword. How grateful she might be then when she felt her hands roped behind her and a leash put on her neck!
The other girls in the room, those such as she, were in their tunics!
Why was she not then in her tunic?
Long ago she had ceased
to feel such a garmenture was inexcusable and insufferably improper, that it was scandalously outrageous. To be sure, she supposed in some sense it was still all these things, and by intent, but now, too, it seemed appropriate, delicious, provocative, maddeningly exciting, sexually stimulating to the wearer and doubtless, too, to the bold and appraising onlooker beneath whose gaze its lovely occupant found herself without recourse. But even on Earth she had, she was now aware, viewed such garmentures rather ambivalently, perhaps even hypocritically, viewing them, or pretending to view them, on the one hand with the prescribed indignation and rage, and, on the other, wondering curiously, and excitedly, what she herself might look like, so clad. And she wondered, too, if some of the cumbersomely clad free women in the room, several even veiled, might not envy the others, their sisters, the freedom of their simple garmentures. And, too, what woman, in her heart, does not desire for her beauty to be displayed, does not desire to be seen, and understood, and openly relished, as the special and exquisite treasure she is? Are we not all forgivably vain? In any event, it was such as men would have for them. They were dressed as men would have them dressed, such as they, if they were to be permitted clothing. But why then not she? Most were kneeling, some not. They did not wear anklets. About their throats, rather, closely fitting, locked, were flat, slender metal bands, slave collars.
She envied them their collars. Not all animals, you see, are collared. The collar is for special animals. It was a visible statement that they were worth something. They had been found of interest; they had been found worthy of being purchased and owned. The collar, thus, in its way, is a visible acknowledgment of value. A terrible insult, on this world, to a free woman, is to tell her she is not worth a collar. To be sure, how would one know that, if one had not seen her? But she herself had only an anklet, the role of which, it seems, was more notational than anything else, little more than a way of keeping track of her in this house, whatever sort of house it might be.