by John Norman
“Could you not remind him that I am here, Master?” said Ellen.
“Do not be silly,” said Gart.
“Forgive me, Master,” said Ellen.
Gart made as though to turn away.
“Master!” called Ellen.
“Yes,” he said, turning about.
“If you should see him, tell him that Ellen is ready to beg!”
“What does that mean?”
“He will understand, Master.”
Gart fingered the whip at his belt.
“Please do not make me speak, Master,” pleaded Ellen.
“Is this the standard begging?” asked Gart.
“I do not know what the standard begging is, Master,” said Ellen.
“To please a man, any man,” said Gart.
“Yes, Master,” whispered Ellen, head down.
“And you are now ready to so beg?”
“Yes, Master.”
“Then you are not only truly a slave, which is obvious, but you are prepared to acknowledge that you are truly a slave,” said Gart.
“Yes Master,” said Ellen.
Gart removed his hand from the whip.
“If I see him, I will mention it,” said Gart. “But I doubt that it will be of much interest to him.”
“Yes, Master. Thank you, Master.”
“Return to your work, slave.”
“Yes, Master.”
Ellen had arrived at a bold plan. That she was in the iron belt must be meaningful, an indication of her master’s interest in her, his solicitude for her, his reserving of her deflowering, or her “opening for the uses of men,” for himself alone. He must want her, as a special slave, perhaps even a preferred slave! He had put her in the laundry, why? He must be waiting for her to respond affirmatively to the question put to her that evening after supper, an affirmative response that would indicate her interest in, and desire for, sexual experience, in and for itself. What could that response mean, other than the fact that one was at last brave enough, courageous enough, to break through the shackles of Earth conditioning, to admit explicitly to oneself and others that one was a sexual creature, a human female with genuinely human female needs. Surely it could mean no more than that. Too, he presumably wanted her before him naked and kneeling, and uttering such a formula, to further humiliate her, to further pursue his program of vengeance upon her. That would give him an opportunity to again subject her to scorn, another opportunity to exhibit his contempt for her, another opportunity to force her to recognize the debasement, the degradation, to which he had brought her. She must, before him, confess herself the lowest of slaves. She must acknowledge freely what she had now become, make clear to herself, and others, her own abjectness. Very well, she thought. So be it! If that is what he wants I shall give it to him, and meaningfully, and freely. I am a slave. Why should I not admit it? Apparently I must stay where I am, in the laundry, as a naked, sweating work-slave, until I do this. I acknowledge that his will is stronger than mine. Of course it is. My will is nothing. It is that of a slave. He is master, I am slave. I do not want to remain another minute in this place. I will do anything he wants, anything to escape the misery of this room, the tubs and the heat! But, she told herself, smiling inwardly, I think this is in the nature of a test. He must like me. Perhaps he loves me! Once I beg to serve a man, any man, he will be satisfied, and then, of course, keep me for himself, for himself alone. I love him so! I want to be his slave and serve him. Even from the first time I saw him, so many years ago, something in me wanted to be his slave!
Later that day Gart was again out of the room.
Nelsa was now working at a nearby tub. The black woman, with the chain collar and disk, who was awaiting her consignment to a black merchant, was now carrying the ewer.
“So the little slave is now ready to beg?” asked Nelsa.
Ellen pretended not to hear.
“Slave,” sneered Nelsa.
“I did not tell on you, for nearly scalding me this morning,” said Ellen. “Perhaps I will do so when Gart returns.”
“Thank you for not telling on me,” said Nelsa, turning white.
“Perhaps I will do so when Gart returns,” said Ellen.
“Please do not do so,” said Nelsa.
“I understand,” said Ellen, “that if I had been damaged, you might have been boiled alive. As I was not damaged, I gather that your actual punishment may be less severe.”
“Please do not tell on me,” pleaded Nelsa.
“I think Gart likes me,” said Ellen.
“Please do not tell on me!” begged Nelsa.
“Please, what?” asked Ellen.
“Please — Mistress,” said Nelsa.
“I shall give the matter thought,” said Ellen, tossing her head.
“Thank you, Mistress,” whispered Nelsa.
“Now, get back to your work, slave,” said Ellen.
“Yes, Mistress,” said Nelsa.
“You are a stupid little slave, Ellen,” said Laura, the redhead.
“I think that Gart likes me,” said Ellen.
“Do not speak his name!” warned one of the sisters from Venna. “You could be beaten. One refers to free men as “Master” and free women as “Mistress,” unless given permission to use their names.”
“And that permission,” said the other sister, “is almost never granted. What free person would want their name soiled by the tongue of a slave? I never let my slaves refer to me by my name.”
“I think that Gart likes me,” said Ellen. “I have never been out of the house. Tomorrow I think will ask him to let me be one of the girls who airs and dries the washing, on the roof.”
“Bold slave!” said Laura.
“I think I can have men do what I want,” said Ellen.
“Beware,” said Laura. “Do not forget you are a slave!”
“Men are the masters,” said one of the sisters from Venna.
“They are the masters,” said the other sister, pleadingly.
“Perhaps,” said Ellen, lightly, tossing her head. “But we shall see, shan’t we?”
“Have no fear but what you will see, you stupid little slave,” said Laura.
“But I am a pretty slave, and a clever slave,” said Ellen.
“You are a pretty slave, yes,” said Laura. “You are a very pretty slave. But you are not a clever slave. You are a stupid slave.”
Ellen smiled, and tossed her head, dismissively.
When Gart returned to the room, the slaves, including Ellen, returned to their work.
Chapter 13
THE ROOF;
SHE IS SUMMONED BEFORE HER MASTER
“How beautiful!” exclaimed Ellen.
The wind swept about her, whipping the long, white, ankle-length, sleeveless gown she wore about her body. She was barefoot.
She looked out, over the city.
Above her there raced white clouds in a bright blue sky.
“I have never seen anything like this,” whispered Ellen, touching her collar.
“Do not go too near the edge,” said Laura.
There was no railing.
“This world is so beautiful, and so fresh, and so marvelous,” said Ellen, “and here I am a slave.”
To tread such a world, thought Ellen, is worth a brand and a collar, a thousand brands and a thousand collars. What a privilege and joy to be brought here! Do those who are native to this world understand how wonderful it is? I did not know such a world could exist! She reveled in the freshness of the air and the beauty of the sky, and city. How different this was from the gray, crowded, unkempt, polluted, unloved, filthy, squalid city with she was most familiar from her former world.
“How beautiful it is,” she called to Laura.
Laura came to stand beside her. “It is beautiful,” said Laura.
“It is so much more beautiful than most of the cities of my former world,” said Ellen.
“Perhaps those cities have no Home Stones,” said Laura.
“You two had best be attending to your work,” called Nelsa.
On the broad, circular roof, some fifty yards in diameter, there were numerous, sturdy, tiered racks of poles on which levels of laundry might be dried, and, between these racks, were numerous swaying lines, from which a great deal more wash, like flags, shook, flapped and fluttered in the wind, held to the lines with simple, numerous, wooden, hand-carved clothespins.
Gart, when he had acceded to Ellen’s request to work on the roof, had assigned several of the girls close to her the same duty. Perhaps he thought they were friends. He would not know that Nelsa hated Ellen, fearing that she might tell her secret, about the threatened scalding. Nor would he know that Ellen, in Laura’s opinion, was little more than a petty, vain, stupid, self-important, ignorant, scheming, meaningless little bit of slave fluff. On the other hand, as an astute work-master, well accustomed to dealing with female slaves, he may have assigned the group as he did in order to reduce jealousy, diminish resentments, and such. After all, he could not always be in the laundry. Perhaps, too, he recognized Ellen’s youth and vulnerability, her newness to the collar and such, and thought he might as well do what he could, within reason, to protect her. Too, there was no denying that she was an extremely pretty little slave, and this may have had something to do with it. This is not to say that she did not feel his whip when she shirked her work. It is one thing to be very pretty; it is quite another not to be fully pleasing. Another possibility, of course, is that this would be Ellen’s first venture to the roof, and he thought it well to have some of her associates, slaves she knew, slaves with whom she would be expected to be able to communicate, for whatever reason, in her vicinity.
Ellen stood rapt on the roof, the wind moving her long, sleeveless garment about her, gazing across the city, in awe, tears in her eyes.
“You had best return to your basket and begin to hang the clothing,” said Laura, turning away, going back to her own basket.
Ellen lifted her arms gratefully to the city, the sky, the world. “I love you, planet Gor,” she cried. “You are so beautiful. Here the world is new. Here one begins again. What an honor, what a privilege, what an incredible gift, just to be able to see you, just to be permitted to be here! How unworthy are the women of Earth to know your glory and beauty! What could a woman such as I be on a world such as this but a slave? On such a world what else could we be? Oh, thank you, Masters, for bringing us here, if only for your own purposes, if only to have us as slaves, if only to have us in our collars, abjectly serving, licking and kissing, naked at your feet! I thank you, oh Masters! I thank you, I thank you!”
“Ellen!” called Laura, impatiently, from back amongst the lines of swaying, fluttering clothes.
“Yes, yes!” said Ellen.
She looked out across the city. The building on whose roof she stood, and it had been a long climb to the roof from the laundry, bearing the heavy basket, was very similar to most of the other buildings she saw in the city. It was one of the “high cities,” a forest of cylinders, a city of towering, spaced cylinders, many of them in bright colors, and, joining these cylinders, at various levels, like light curving, colored, rail-less traceries in the sky, were numerous bridges. She could see individuals on many of the bridges. Too, there were individuals in the streets below. In the distance, too, between the cylinders, many of which must have been twenty or thirty living tiers, or stories, high, she could see walls. She thought they, too, must be very high. Too, their tops seemed almost like roads. She did not doubt but what two wagons might pass on them. Though it was far off, she thought she could see, like specks, some individuals here and there on the walls. Occasionally there was a flash, as might have resulted from the sun’s being suddenly reflected from a metal surface, perhaps a helmet, a spear point, a shield. There must have been parapets, and, discernibly, here and there, there were small towers, which may have been guard stations. Some of these towers jutted partly out from the walls, which would expose the sheer declivity of the architectural escarpment to view. Why would a city need walls, she asked herself. Ellen, who at that time was not only new to her collar, but largely ignorant of the nature of the world on which she found herself, did not understand the darker or more problematic meanings of what she saw, or, perhaps better, the full implications of what she saw. She saw little more than the beauty of the city, its style, its color, its grace, its splendor. She did not understand at that time that the considerations which had been involved in the design of the city were not merely aesthetic, and such, but military, as well. Most of the towers were, in effect, keeps. They were stocked, fortress towers. Many could not be entered at the ground level. The bridges amongst them were narrow and could be successfully defended by a handful of men against hundreds. And the bridges, given their construction, could be easily broken, thus isolating the individual fortresses from other, similar fortresses, which might have fallen to an enemy. To reduce such a city, with primitive weaponry, tower by tower, might well require an army, and, conceivably, an investment of years of effort and expense.
“This is now my world,” cried out Ellen. “I am only a slave, but I am here, and now this world is mine, too! It is mine, too! You are mine, too, dear world, and I love you, though on you I am but a slave! But on such a world what could a woman such as I be but a slave? On such a world a woman such as I could be only, and am worthy to be only, a slave!” Ellen then knelt down, at the edge of the roof, knelt down in gratitude, before the world of Gor. “You are now my world,” she said. “You are beautiful. I love you. I rejoice to be here.” She put her hands on her collar, lifting it a little on her neck, almost as though offering it to the world on which she found herself. “Thank you, world, for existing. Help me to be a good slave!” She looked out over the buildings. “Oh, world,” she said, “understand me, and be kind. You are the world of which I have always dreamed! On you, beautiful world, let me fulfill the deepest and most wonderful, and most hidden, of my needs, those needs I was always forced to deny on Earth. Here I can be, and must be, the slave I have always longed to be. Oh, give me virile masters who will own me, powerful men whom I must fear, and whom I must obey instantly and with perfection, subject to them in all things, men who will take my womanhood in hand and see to it that it is fulfilled, to its fullest most helpless measure, men who will dominate me without mercy, who will exact ruthlessly and choicelessly from me all that I long to give!”
Ellen then rose up, and, standing, looked out over the panorama of the city and the hills and fields beyond.
She thought she saw a bird in the distance, and watched it for a moment. Yes, it was a bird, clearly. It was difficult to judge its distance. Something seemed awry with the perspective. She thought it must be some hundred, or two hundred, yards away, but, oddly, too, it seemed as though it might be as far away as the walls, perhaps even further. She was puzzled.
“Ellen!” called Laura, sharply.
“Yes!” said Ellen, and, turning about, she ran to the large wicker basket of laundry she had carried to the roof. It was back among the lines and flapping clothes. She reached into the basket and took out the small clothespin bag, lying on the damp laundry, and slung this over her right shoulder, so that its opening was at her left hip, so that she, being right-handed, might easily reach into it. Then, one by one, she began to lift up and shake out the washed, damp garments, and hang them on the line, fastening them there, carefully, with the lovely hand-carved clothespins, for Goreans are prone to lavish attention even on small things, spoons, knives, cooking prongs, and such, anything to make the world more beautiful. It would not do, of course, to allow a garment to fall to the surface of the cylinder. She felt like singing, but, in a collar, slave, was not certain that it would be permitted.
Many times, she knew, one must even ask permission to speak. One, after all, was slave. Having to ask permission to speak, when it seemed such permission was likely to be required, thrilled Ellen. She loved having to ask permission to speak. Few things brought more
clearly home to her her bondage, that she was a mere slave, owned, and subject to the domination of masters. She loved this power of men over her, this very clear insignia of her servitude, this standing evidence that she was helplessly subject to the mastery, that she belonged to men. She might be denied speech; she could be silenced at a word. How different from free women, she thought, certainly those of Earth, and, doubtless, those, as well, of this world! But she loved this token of her condition. How well it reminded her that she was what she wished to be, slave.
How often on Earth she had entertained, however guiltily, the secret, fascinating, delicious thought of being owned, of being the helpless, rightless slave of a powerful, uncompromising master! How fearfully, and eagerly, she would have tried to please him, in all ways! She might have hoped for a caress. Certainly she did not wish to be whipped! And now she belonged to a category of females susceptible to such strictures, a category of females who might be bought and sold, bartered or bestowed, without thought, as the sleek, shapely beasts they were.
She was thrilled to be categorically subject to men, and this small thing, that she might speak only with permission, as few other things, especially as she was a woman, for we so desire to speak, and so delight to speak, spoke to her of the reality of her sometimes-resented, but fundamentally longed-for subjugation. How she resented at times being silenced, but how much more precious then was the opportunity to speak when it was seen fit to be granted. Too, interestingly, she found that being denied speech, being frustrated, and such, excited her sexually. Perhaps this was connected with male domination, which elicits female submissiveness, and an eager, petitionary, receptive readiness that can be almost painful. The sexes are not identical, and each becomes most itself when it refuses to betray or misrepresent itself to itself. Perhaps this has to do with nature, and its nature.
In any event, Ellen was not discontented in her collar. It belongs on me, she thought. And I love it! I belong in a collar! I love it! I love it!
She wished she knew some Gorean songs. Surely some masters would permit her to sing, if she were happy! Some masters, she supposed, would enjoy having their girls singing about their work. She hoped soon to serve a master, and that it would be Mirus. Some girls, she knew, were taught to sing, others to entertain with instruments such as the lute and lyre, and others, it seemed, many, were trained in the dances of slaves. Her own training, she understood, though it had seemed extensive to her, had been almost minimal, quite basic. She wondered if there were some special reason for this. “We will teach you a little,” had said one of her instructrices. “Hopefully you will then be able to survive at least the first night at a master’s slave ring.” Ellen wondered if Mirus, her master, would be pleased, if she were to dance before him as a slave. Had he wondered what she would look like, long ago, when she was his teacher, she wondered, if she were to so dance before him, barefoot, in a bit of swirling silk, in necklaces and coins, in armlets, with bracelets on her wrists and bangles on her ankles, to the flash of ringing zills, summoned, commanded, fearful, begging to please, his. Had she hinted at that, or her slaveness, when she had worn the two small bracelets? Perhaps, she thought. I would like to dance before masters, she thought. It is my hope that I would please them. But, alas, I cannot dance! I cannot even dance the social dances of Earth, let alone the dances of the displayed female slave. The sunlight was pleasant, the air was cool. She thought it must be early spring, assuming this world had a periodicity of seasons.