Prize of Gor

by John Norman

  Yes, he could. He was master.

  But I love him, she thought. I love him!

  But of what interest or importance might that be, the foolish love of a helpless slave, to one such as he, a master?

  “You understand,” he said, “that this begging has nothing to do with whether you are a slave or not. That is a matter of indisputable fact. Similarly, personally and psychologically, your condition is well-established and well understood. You are a natural slave.”

  “Yes, Master.”

  “That was apparent the first moment I saw you.”

  “Yes, Master.”

  “And now you have been fittingly embonded.”

  “Yes, Master,” said Ellen.

  “The begging then is for your benefit, slave girl. It is admonitory, and instructional. Still it will be amusing to hear you so beg.”

  “You have such power over me!” she wept.

  “Such is the relationship in which you find yourself,” he said, “slave girl.”

  “Is it not a way, simply, for me to confess that I am a sexual creature, that I have sexual needs, and,” and here Ellen put down her head, and lowered her voice, “— and that I desire sexual experience?”

  “You have not yet begun to understand your sexuality,” he said.

  “Yes, Master,” she said.

  “And do you, little Ellen, desire sexual experience?”

  She was silent, in consternation.

  “Speak up, now, loudly, clearly!”

  “Yes, Master,” cried Ellen. “I desire sexual experience!”

  In that moment it seemed as though a great burden had been lifted from her. She regarded her master, in terror.

  “You need not fear you will be a stranger to sexual experience,” he said. “You are a slave girl on Gor.”

  “Is the begging not some sort of test, Master?” asked Ellen.

  “Perhaps, in a way,” he said.

  He wants me, she thought. He wants me to beg, and then, when I have been so reduced, so humiliated, have so degraded and debased myself, he will be satisfied and keep me for himself. He will then keep me as the slave he wants and as the slave I long to be, worthless but helplessly his, helplessly devoted, helplessly loving. He will then, this test passed, keep me for himself, put me to his slave ring and own me, completely. At his slave ring, chained there by the neck, he will teach me undreamt of dimensions of my collar and begin the fuller mastering of a surrendered, conquered, helpless slave.

  Perhaps, she thought, suddenly, wildly, I could pretend to be his slave; I could merely let him think that he is my master! Could I not keep myself a free woman, though branded, though in my collar? But then she almost choked with the silliness, the absurdity, the meaninglessness of this. How foreign to her reality would be such a pretense, how irrelevant to fact would be such a silly inward game! It would be a falsification of truth. Who cared if a dog or a pig pretended not to be owned? Reality remained unchanged. Too, how dishonorable to deny truth! How unworthy, as well as stupid, in the face of facts, to lie to oneself! No, she knew she was owned, owned in fact, owned in perfect, clear, indisputable fact. That was what she was, slave. And she knew, too, that that was what she had always wanted to be, to be owned, and to serve. She acknowledged that she was a natural slave, and that she had now been, as her master had called to her attention, fittingly embonded. Too, she did not believe that she could, even if she wished, even if it were possible, even if it were permitted, keep a corner of herself to herself. The masters seemed capable of looking through a woman, of understanding her better even than she understood herself. They seemed to have an uncanny sense of her emotions, of her thoughts and feelings. Could she hide nothing from their gaze? This had been brought home to her even in her training. Why could Gorean men not be more like the men of Earth, and look at a woman and not really see her? Perhaps that was because they did not own their women. It is hard to hide from men when one is stripped before them and fiercely questioned. Gorean men seemed interested, as Earth men were not, in paying attention to their women, in spending time with them and listening to them, and, in virtue of delightfully prolonged intimacies, understanding them, learning them, knowing them, truly understanding them, learning them, knowing them. Perhaps that is because they own them, and it is well known the attention and care, and the devotion of sorts, which men lavish on their possessions. Who does not wish to know everything there is to know about his property, about his treasure? Too, of course, this makes it much easier to master the female. The skilled master can read a woman like a book. One cannot hide from him. It seems there is no nook or cranny in a woman’s soul into which the master, whip in hand, cannot enter.

  They make us slaves, and we are slaves.

  Ellen, for whatever reason, because of her intelligence, or her dispositions, or whatever it might have been, had made the transition from freedom to slavery with relative ease. That is perhaps because she had been sensitive to the appropriateness of slavery for her, on some level or another, since puberty. On Earth she had been, in effect, like countless others, a slave without a collar.

  In some women, of course, their slavery is more suppressed, more deliberately concealed, more desperately denied and hidden, than it is in others. They are perhaps more frightened of themselves, and more in ideological and cultural bondage, than an emotionally freer woman, more in touch with her deeper self and feelings. But it is said that even in such women there eventually comes a moment in their bondage when the emotional cataclysm occurs, when the breakthrough takes place, when the depths of the unconscious open up, when the surgent, rising earthquake of the liberated spirit totters and collapses the fragile, brittle walls of their psychological prisons, when the moment of truth blazes before them like sunrise, and shuddering and sobbing with gratitude and misery they understand themselves for the first time in their lives, understand that they are women, and belong to men, men who will see to it that they fulfill their natures. They must then accept what they are, with all its marvels, beauties and vulnerabilities. They are not men. They are quite different, quite wonderfully different. They can then no longer hide, either from themselves or others. How unfortunate that this insight comes so late for some women, say, as they lie sobbing, beaten, their wrists bound to a whipping ring anchored in heavy planks, or as they lie cold and hungry, curled up, clutching a tiny blanket about themselves, on the cement flooring of a kennel, or as they are drawn by the hair to the height of an auction block and find themselves displayed as an object for sale, displayed, and fully, to frenzied, bidding men.

  “Are you ready to beg, slave girl?” he asked, severely.

  “Yes, Master,” said Ellen.

  He then turned to the side, where, some yards away, across the room, there was a narrow ancillary door.

  “Ho!” he called.

  In a moment or two there proceeded through the door two men, clad in blue robes. One carried a small rectangular board on which he held some papers. At his belt there hung a small case, containing at least pens, and a tiny horn, which, as Ellen later realized, was an inkhorn. Ellen had seen such papers before, when she had been examined in great detail, apparently partly to ascertain identifying marks, subjected to numerous measurements, and fingerprinted and toeprinted. She had little doubt that they were her slave papers. Such papers, as may have been mentioned, are unnecessary and are not kept on the vast majority of slaves. They can provide a convenience to buyers and sellers, however, as they will provide a good deal of information, with respect to background, caste, education, languages, training levels, physical descriptions, collar sizes, ankle-and wrist-ring sizes, and such, on the slave in question. Sometimes brochures and sales sheets for public postings are compiled from them by judicious selections. Such papers assume greater importance, of course, in the case of pedigree slaves or exotics. The bloodlines of some pedigree slaves go back several generations. Collectors, too, tend to be interested in the background of exotics, for example, who bred them, and where they were bred
, and such.

  Ellen had scarcely a moment to note the two entering men, in their blue robes, before she was ordered to first obeisance position.

  She was then kneeling on the rug before the dais, on which reposed the curule chair, her head to the rug, the palms of her hands on the rug, too, on either side of her head.

  “Are you eager to beg?” he asked.

  She almost lifted her head but did not dare to lose contact with the rug. She wanted so much to look into his eyes, but she did not dare. She was aware of the two blue-robed men, to the left of his chair, to his left, as he was facing her.

  “Yes, Master,” she said.

  “Speak up,” he said.

  “Yes, Master!” she said.

  “Identify yourself, and your master, clearly, and specify, clearly, what you are doing,” said one of the blue-robed men.

  “I am the slave girl, Ellen. My master is Mirus, of Ar. I kneel before him. I am eager to beg.”

  “You may beg,” said her master.

  “I am Ellen,” she said, “the slave girl of Mirus of Ar. I beg to please a man, any man.”

  Tears burst from her eyes. She trembled. It was done! She had begged to serve a man, any man! How shamed she felt, how humiliated, how debased, how degraded. How worthless she was, she thought. How could she now be anything but the lowest and most worthless of slaves, in the eyes of her master, in the eyes of the witnesses, in her own eyes, in the eyes of anyone? She heard the pen moving on the paper. That she had so begged was now on her papers. The second man in blue robes added a note, or signature, or certification, to the papers.

  This is what he wanted, she told herself. What more could he want? Scorn me now, Master, she thought. Now, she thought, you can hold me in contempt to whatever degree might please you. How could I be such now that you might despise me more? You have made me nothing! Your vengeance on me, my Master, if vengeance it is, is surely now complete!

  “Thank you,” said Mirus to the two men who, shortly, withdrew.

  “Position,” said Mirus.

  Ellen struggled to first position, sobbing, her body shaking with misery. She wanted to throw herself to the floor, covering her face, sobbing.

  First position, she thought. I must hold my head up.

  He wants to see my face, she thought.

  It must be red, and tear-stained. Does that please him?

  She dared to look at her master. His expression seemed noncommittal. It was hard to read.

  “I have begged,” she sobbed.

  “As I knew you would, slave girl,” he said.

  “Please be kind to a slave!” she wept.

  “Why?” he asked.

  She choked back a sob, and looked past him, past his shoulder, past the curule chair, to the wall several yards behind.

  “May I speak, Master?” she sobbed.

  “For the moment,” he said.

  “I have begged,” she said. “Now I beg to please my Master.”

  “In what way?” he asked.

  “In any way he may desire,” she said.

  “Oh?”

  “I beg to be permitted to enter your arms.”

  “You wish to please me — sexually?” he said.

  “Yes, Master.”

  “Second obeisance position,” he said.

  Ellen went prone, before him, her hands at the sides of her head.

  “You may now speak, and speak clearly, slave girl,” he said.

  “I am Ellen, the slave girl,” she said. “I belong to Mirus of Ar. I belly before him, my master. I beg to please him — sexually.”

  “But you are a virgin,” he said. “That would lower your price.”

  “Master?” said Ellen, startled.

  “To be sure,” he said. “It does seem a bit silly. Why should some men want to be the first to open a slave? What difference does it make? The slave will probably have very little feeling the first time. It may even cause her pain. Later she may jump and juice, and scratch, and beg for the least caress. Why should one not pay more for that, since it is the enjoyment of a much more delicious, more helpless, more eager pudding, and yet when one locks one’s chains on such a one and thrusts her back to the furs, one simply takes her responses for granted, giving it not another thought. It is all very strange.”

  “Master?” asked Ellen.

  “To be sure,” he said, “I have already lost money on you, for had I had you returned to, say, your early twenties, you would doubtless bring a better price. You would be taken more seriously as block-meat.”

  “Please do not speak of a slave as such,” she wept.

  “But, as it is, you are something like eighteen. Who could take you seriously? You are no more than a pretty girl.”

  “But even so, perhaps master finds me of interest,” she said.

  “Oh you are learning to be a slave,” he growled.

  “Forgive me, Master,” said Ellen. She feared something in his voice. The work-master’s voice had occasionally taken on such a tone, usually shortly before he had rudely seized, and tubbed, or put to his pleasure, one of his charges, often the now-abducted Nelsa.

  “No, no,” he said. “You are learning. It is perfect.”

  “Thank you, Master,” she said, hesitantly. She knew that she had aroused men in her training, but they had not been, she gathered, authorized to seize her, and make use of her, to assuage the passions and tensions she may have aroused in them. They must seek out other slaves. The other slaves had not seemed to mind. She wondered if she might ever become like that, so grateful for the touch of a man, even if it were not she in the first place who had aroused his passions. It was said that young men enamored of free women, perhaps having glimpsed an ankle, or a bit of throat or chin as the wind indiscreetly lifted a veil, sometimes sought out the girls in the paga taverns to lessen the pangs of love, to lessen their miseries. Many times clutching, grateful, gasping slaves heard the names of women they did not know cried out as free men used them to climax their pleasures. Briefly there flashed through her mind the tarnsman from Brundisium who, apparently enamored of a free woman, had taken a different action, seizing the woman, to make her his slave, she then to be herself perhaps no more to him than a paga girl. And later she, Ellen, had even been put in the iron belt, probably as she had progressed in her lessons and had become, if only unconsciously and inadvertently, far more desirable, far more provocative, feminine, and sensuous. She was pleased, of course, but a little frightened, to know that she had this effect on men. But now she was alone with her master. No longer was he her defense and shield. And there is none to defend or shield the slave, you see, from the master. She was utterly vulnerable. Anything might be done to her. She was his.

  “But it pleased me,” he said, “to have had you made as young as you are, to give you such a meaningless, trivial age, a mere lovely eighteen, though I cost myself some coins in the business. It was a delicious part of my vengeance upon you.”

  “Vengeance, Master?” she said.

  “Yes,” he said.

  “Master?” she asked.

  “And so,” said he, thoughtfully, as though pondering some matter, “what would be the loss of a coin or two more?”

  “I do not understand what you are saying, Master,” whispered the slave.

  “Yes,” he said, apparently having come to some decision. “Why not? Yes, what is a coin or two, measured against the pleasure of teaching you what you now are, a worthless slave, of instructively demeaning you even further, of reducing your value yet again, even in a market, and thus exacting an even sweeter, richer, more delicious vengeance upon you?”

  “Master?” cried the slave, frightened.

  “Turn about,” he said. “Face away from me, kneeling. Put your head to the rug. Clasp your hands behind the back of your neck!”

  “Please, no, Master!” she wept.

  “Good,” he said. She heard him, she now facing away from him, head down, hands clasped behind the back of her neck, rise from the curule chai
r. She heard, too, the fall of garments upon the chair, dropped to the side, the robes heavier, the tunic almost inaudible.

  He crouched behind her.

  She felt the tunic pulled up and thrust forward, and down, until it was about her head and clasped wrists.

  “Please, no, Master!” she begged.

  “So,” said he, “here we have our little feminist, poised for the penetration of her master.”

  “I am no longer a feminist!” she wept. “I have learned that I am a woman!”

  “A girl?” he asked.

  “Yes, Master, a girl! A girl! You have done that to me!”

  “So here we have my former teacher then,” he mused, “prettily positioned. You look well, former teacher. I like you like this. What former student would not like you like this?”

  “Please be kind, Master!”

  “And, too, of course, here we have our little Ph.D., with her doctorate in gender studies, kneeling down obediently, facing away, awaiting the penetration of her master. Did they teach you of this in your gender studies?”

  “No, Master.”

  “Such studies were then incomplete, were they not?”

  “Yes, Master,” she sobbed.

  “And, of course,” he said, “we have here, too, our pretty little slave girl.”

  She felt his hands seize her, about her narrow waist. He was extremely strong, and she did not doubt but what there would be marks on her body, from where he held her.

  “Please, no, Master!” she begged. “Not like this, not like this, Master! I beg you! Not like this, my Master!”

  “Who begs?” he asked.

  “Ellen, Ellen, the slave, begs!” she wept.

  “Whose are you?”

  “Yours, Master!”

  “Speak more clearly,” he said.

  “Ellen, the slave, your slave, the slave of Mirus of Ar, begs her master, begs you, her master, Mirus of Ar, for mercy!” she wept.

  “You have a pretty ass, slave girl,” he said.

  “Please do not speak so, Master!”

  “You have been complimented,” he said.

  “Thank you, Master,” she wept.