by John Norman
“I will go to the Iron Collar,” said Barzak. “I can buy some drinks for some good fellows, get them drunk, bring them back, and who knows. If they are drunk enough, we might make a sale.”
“Go then,” said Targo.
“I will need some coins,” said Barzak.
“Solicit rather in the crowd,” said Targo.
Barzak grinned and shrugged.
“What is the name of the girl in the tavern?” asked Targo, shrewdly.
“‘Jill’,” said Barzak.
“A barbarian name,” said Targo.
“She is civilized,” said Barzak, irritatedly. “The name was put on her as a punishment name. To be sure, I think it heats her loins.”
“Ladies,” said Targo to his charges, “I can diminish your rations and add weights to your collars. It is my impression that you have been listless on the shelf, save perhaps when some handsome fellow strolled by. We do not really have enough gruel on hand for you to wait until the rich, handsome master of your hottest, most squirming dreams wanders by. As soon as you spot a fellow with a wallet, whether he is misshapen, lame or whatever, of any caste, and smell, who comes within five paces of the shelf, kneel, call out, lift your hands, smile, wriggle, make yourselves as pleasant and congenial as she-urts can. You are cheap girls. You are bargains. That is a selling point. Remember, too, Barzak’s whip has already been warmed, heated nicely, and will be deliciously supple. It has already had one taste of hide today. And doubtless it is more than ready and eager to use its five tongues to lick the same, or another, pretty back.
Ellen shrank back in terror. She remembered the whip, in every tissue and fiber of her body. She had now learned, despite her background on Earth, her studies, her publications, her career, and such, that here, on this world, in her youth and beauty, she was susceptible to the whip; that she was simply and categorically subject to it, that it could be used upon her. She was slave. She was now ready to do anything to be pleasing. She was now desperately concerned to be pleasing. Perhaps this was because she had felt the whip. Let those who have not felt it fail to understand this or scorn her. Its instructive and admonitory value where slave girls are concerned is incalculable. It is one of a large number of devices and techniques for improving a girl.
Targo came about the shelf and stood before Ellen, he on the ground, she on the shelf. She went to first position, unbidden, which seemed appropriate. “I know that this is your first day on the shelf, little she-urt,” he said, kindly, “but I want you to learn quickly and make a good impression. You are not really stupid, are you?”
“I do not think so, Master,” said Ellen.
“I am not sure that you fully understand your collar,” he said, “but I think you will learn quickly. Remember you are a slave girl, precisely a slave girl, and only a slave girl.”
“Yes, Master.”
“Do you know the call?” he asked.
“‘Buy me, Master!’?” she said.
“Yes,” he said. “Now, when a man approaches, I want you to kneel as you are, though perhaps with your knees more widely spread, and smile, and lift your hands to him and call out, and beg and plead prettily. Too, try to show need. Small tongue movements are good, exposing the palms of your small hands to him, a bit of plaintive, judicious wriggling, such things.”
“Master!” wept Ellen.
“And remember,” said he, paying her no attention, “you may be touched and handled in any manner the customer wishes, and must perform for him, assume dictated postures, and such, in any way he wishes. The only thing you need not do is serve his pleasure, completely.”
“Yes, Master,” she said, in misery.
“Serving his pleasure completely must be cleared through either myself or Barzak, and there may be a charge for that.”
“Yes, Master,” said Ellen, in horror.
Shortly thereafter both Targo and Barzak disappeared into the crowd.
Ellen suspected that they were both heading for the Iron Collar. Perhaps they would pool their resources to make a bid for Barzak’s Jill. Perhaps they could sell her, unless they had other plans for such a one.
“The Masters are so stupid,” said the girl to Ellen’s left. “Do they really think we are going to attempt to allure an unwanted master?”
“Not in their absence,” laughed another, two rings to Ellen’s right.
“To make a sale they would have us interest a tharlarion,” said another.
“I’m hungry,” said another.
“There will be no gruel for us tonight,” lamented another.
“Zara and Cotina had to open their cavernous mouths and fling their little tongues about,” said another, bitterly.
“Be silent, shelf girl,” said the girl to Ellen’s left.
“We have not been ordered to silence, she-sleen,” said the first. “I can speak as I wish!”
“We would see about that,” said the girl to Ellen’s left, “if my chain could reach you!”
“You are not Mistress!” said the one.
Ellen realized that a first girl must not have been appointed, though she knew that she herself, given her youth and her newness on the chain, would be subordinate to the others.
“If I get my hands on you, we will see who is Mistress!” said the girl to Ellen’s left.
“Take one hair from my head or give me one scratch, and you will be whipped!” said the other.
The girl on Ellen’s left turned away, sitting, and looked out upon the crowd, sullenly.
“I am Ellen,” said Ellen to her.
“I do not like barbarians,” said the girl.
“Forgive me, Mistress,” said Ellen.
“I am Cotina,” said the girl.
“I am Zara,” said the girl, two rings to the right.
“I am Lydia,” said the girl who had been critical of Cotina and Zara. “I do not like barbarians either.”
“Forgive me, Mistress,” said Ellen.
“She is Cichek, she is Emris, and she is Jasmine,” said Cotina, indicating the other girls on the shelf.
“Mistresses,” said Ellen, deferentially. They looked away.
“They do not like to be shelved with a barbarian,” said Cotina. “It is insulting.”
“Forgive me, Mistresses,” said Ellen.
“What does it matter?” asked Lydia, bitterly. “We all wear collars. We are all morsels for men, all tidbits of slave meat.”
“It is still insulting,” snapped Jasmine.
“Forgive me, Mistress,” said Ellen.
“Mistress,” said Ellen, to Cotina, “what is the Curulean?”
“It was a fortress and palace, the ancestral domicile of the first Hinrabians,” said Cotina, “but, for years now, it has been the major slave market in Ar.”
“Do you think I might be sold there someday?” asked Ellen.
“You are very pretty,” said Cotina, “perhaps in four or five years, or six or seven years, or eight or ten years, you might be thought worthy of the Curulean.”
“Not for the central block,” said Jasmine.
“Who knows?” said Cotina.
“But I have been “stabilized,” said Ellen.
“You were prematurely stabilized?” asked Cotina.
“I have been stabilized,” said Ellen.
“As you are?”
“Yes.”
“It was done deliberately?”
“Yes.”
“Someone must have hated you very much,” said Cotina.
Tears came to Ellen’s eyes.
“You will never be more then than you are,” said Lydia, “only a pretty girl. No man would want you, except perhaps as a pretty little thing, a pretty little servant, a pretty little maid, to have about the house.”
“Do not underestimate the lust of men,” said Cichek.
“But who could take her seriously as a female?” asked Lydia.
“That is a different matter,” said Cichek.
Ellen put her head in her hands and wept.
He who had been her master had seen, it seemed, to her lot on Gor.
He had known, undoubtedly, exactly what he was doing, and had done it.
It had been his decision, not hers, as she was his slave, and he had made it as he had.
“We could all be sold in the Curulean,” said Emris. “Surely we are as fair as those she-sleen on the chain.”
“That is for the Masters to decide,” said Zara.
“We are all worthy of the Curulean,” said Jasmine, “except perhaps the child.”
“I am not a child!” said Ellen.
“Except perhaps the girl,” said Jasmine.
Ellen could not deny that she was a girl, in at least two senses, first in the sense of her youth, the sense which Jasmine had undoubtedly conceded, and, secondly, in the sense that she, as the others, was a female slave. In the first sense, her youth certainly did not militate against her sexual desirability. She knew that. There had been large, full-length mirrors, sometimes wall-size, in several of the training rooms. There had been no mistaking the lovely, exquisite, sweetly curved, collared image that she had seen reflected in the mirror. Too, the responses and attitudes of her male trainers, as well as the frequent condition of their bodies, had left no doubt in her mind that her body, whether she wished it to or not, now constituted a powerful stimulus in the sexual equation, a stimulus of considerable potency. Whether she wished it or not she knew that she was now extremely stimulatory to men, extremely attractive, extremely desirable. And, too, of course, her desirability was considerably increased by what she was, that she was a female slave. Men saw her, and wanted her, badly. She had even been put in the iron belt. Secondly, aside from her youth, as noted, she was a girl in the sense that she was a female slave, the sense in which all female slaves are girls. The expression ‘girl’ in such contexts is rich and delicious. It has a lovely reductive or demeaning sense in which it discriminates between the slave and the free woman, and calls attention to the lowliness, the unimportance and the meaninglessness of the slave. Indeed, free mistresses will invariably refer to, and address, their serving slaves, and such, even those of their own age, as “girl.” Secondly, the expression ‘girl’, at least in the usage of men, has not only the aforementioned connotation but, even more powerfully, and independently of the age of the female, the commendatory suggestion of extreme sexual desirability. It functions as a term of interest and praise. It is not a chronological classification; it is a signal that he regards her as lying within an ideal prey range for his aggressive dispositions. Of two women the same age, a man will think of one as a girl and the other as a woman. The one he wants will be the one he thinks of as the girl, for he sees her as young and desirable, still young enough to be eager and ready, and sexually stimulating, and the other, in which he has no interest, he is content to let call herself a woman, or whatever she wishes. It is interesting to note, in passing, that women who are interested in men, and are still in the sexual market, so to speak, often think of, and speak of, themselves and their female friends as “girls.” At one time Ellen, in virtue of her ideology, was forced to denounce this, but she now understands it. In any event, the female slave is thought of as a girl, a slave girl.
“But we find ourselves chained on a shelf,” said Cotina.
“I do not want to be a slave,” said Zara. “I do not want to be chained on a shelf!” She jerked at her ankle chain, but as helplessly as had Ellen. She, too, was a helpless, chained slave.
“Be grateful that you are permitted to live, slave girl,” said Cotina.
Ellen wondered if she herself desired to be a slave or not. Certainly she did not want to wear so cruel, high, thick, and heavy a collar, one in which she could scarcely lower her head, in effect, a punishment collar. She did not want to be chained on a public shelf. On the other hand, it seemed clear to her that whether she wanted to be a slave or not, she was a slave, and not by dint of the collar, or brand, but by dint of her deepest nature. What was wrong with her? Don’t you want to be free, she cried to herself. Was she not supposed to cry such things to herself? Was it not expected? Didn’t she want to be free? Surely she knew that her society had insisted that she must want to be free, so what was it, deep within her, deeper than her society, more profound than convention, that wanted rather to love and serve, to be owned will-lessly, to be mastered and dominated? But then she realized that her male-dominated society had imposed its values on both sexes, that it had generalized its own preconceptions. What was good for the male must be good for the female, and so on. Were they not the same, were they not identical? Was it not like the foolish, ignorant male who, finding his female lover suddenly, impulsively, on her knees before him, looking up lovingly, rendering him the homage and obeisance her nature yearns to give, sweatingly, embarrassedly hurries her, scolding, to her feet, admonishing her, in effect, to act more like a man. And so she, shamed, rises up, still trying to please him, despite his denial of her momentarily exposed depths. His will, it seems, is that she not be a woman before him, for that seems to frighten him, but something else. Is it a woman he wants, truly, or not a woman, really, but something else, perhaps a pseudo-male? So Ellen lay on the cement shelf. No, she thought, the thought charming her, I do not want to be free. Is that truly such a heresy, for a woman, or only a heresy for those who insist that women are to be like men, and for male impersonators, so to speak? I have been free, I know what it is like, and its values. I know what it is to be free. I have experienced freedom. I know what it is like. But I have also been, and am, a slave, and know what that is like, at least to now, and its values. And, oh, there are values, profound values, connected with my bondage. I suspect that I have only begun to sense them. Let those who wish to be free, be free, and let those who would be slaves be slaves. Are we not even to be allowed the freedom to be what we most wish to be? If not, what sort of freedom is that? The freedom to conform to an alien stereotype, an image imposed from without? I am a natural slave. I think I have known that for many years, but my slavery was denied me. Now, at last, I find myself on a world on which I can, and indeed must, express my deepest, most fervent nature. I am a slave, and I love being a slave, but surely I dare not admit that to any man. How fearful to be at the feet of a man who knows you are a true slave! How would he treat you? With what contempt, and lust?
But, lying on the shelf, looking out on the crowd, she became apprehensive. I am a slave, she thought. I am chained. I am naked. I am at their mercy. They can do with me what they want. And she suddenly felt very vulnerable. She no longer wore the iron belt. She drew her legs up, close to her body. The cruel security, the protection, the safety of the iron belt was gone. All her softness now, with its sweet, delicious curves, with its delicate intimacies, was exhibited openly. She, the whole of her, was chained on a public shelf. She was vulnerably displayed, well displayed, completely displayed.
“A warrior,” whispered Emris. Then she called out, “Buy me, Master!”
Ellen looked up, and gasped. A tall, broad-shouldered man in scarlet, massively handsome, had approached the shelf. His sword belt, scabbard and helmet crest were black.
“He is of Ar,” whispered Cotina to Ellen. Then she knelt, knees wide, and called out, “Buy me, Master!”
Zara scrambled forward, as she could.
Emris, Cichek, Jasmine and Lydia, too, almost instantly knelt, and drew as close to the man as their chains would permit. Only Ellen, frightened, remained lying down, her knees drawn up. She had not seen her sister slaves like this. “Buy me, Master!” called out Zara. “I am Zara, if it pleases Master! I beg to be purchased! I am skilled! I can serve you well! Oh, buy me, Master! I beg to be permitted to serve you!”
“Do not concern yourself with her, Master!” called out Lydia. “I am better!”
“No!” cried Zara.
“I saw him first,” said Emris.
“Be silent,” said Cotina.
“I beg your collar, handsome Master!” cried Cichek.
“See my blond hair an
d blue eyes,” called Lydia, lifting her hair and displaying it. “I alone am fair of these on the shelf.”
“She is cold,” said Jasmine.
“My belly is hot,” said Lydia. “I juice at a touch!”
“I am from the valley of the Vosk,” said Jasmine. “My belly flames!”
“I would juice at the sound of your footfall,” cried Zara. “I would tear at my chains to reach you!”
“I beg to writhe in need before you!” said Emris.
“See my shapely limbs,” said Cotina, presenting her right side and leg for his consideration.
How different were the slaves before such a man, thought Ellen. Look at Zara, thought Ellen. She is as much a slave as the others. A moment ago she was protesting her bondage and now she is half beside herself, beseechingly, with the desire to be this man’s slave. Clearly what she wanted was not freedom but a slavery of her choice.
“Put me through slave paces, Master,” called Emris. “Let me exhibit a slave before you!”
“Buy me, Master!” begged Cichek.
“No, me!” said Cotina, lifting her hands, pleadingly.
“No, me!” said Lydia.
“I!” called Jasmine.
“I am a natural slave, a slave in my heart,” said Zara. “I have wanted to be a slave since childhood, Master! Buy me! Make me your slave!”
“She is no different from us,” said Cotina. “We are all natural slaves. Choose then the best and most beautiful of us all, Cotina, me!”
Ellen was startled at the eagerness, the zeal, the openness, the competitiveness, of the slaves. The man was not of the Merchants. He would not be rich. Would they not want to be purchased by rich men, that they would have a softer, easier, more pleasant life? Would a rich man not have many slaves, so that there would be less work for any given girl? Would such then not be the ideal master for any slave, a rich man? What then was it about this man? He would not be rich. And yet they wanted to throw themselves to his feet.
Ellen looked into his eyes, and then, quickly, looked down, frightened. In his eyes, she had seen that he was one before whom a woman could be only a slave, one who would know well how to master a woman.