Prize of Gor

by John Norman

  Then he took her in his arms. He uttered a great cry of joy. He was not patient with her. Instantly was she penetrated. He cried out with pleasure, and exuberance, owning her, possessing her, his purchased slave. And then, clutching him, holding to him as tightly as she could, enraptured, as a used, ravished, shameless slave, chained and shackled, she yielded to him, and, oh, with the fullness of a slave’s yielding, with that yielding which a slave longs to yield, with that yielding which a slave must yield, with that yielding which can be known to no woman who is not a slave, she yielded, and she yielded, and yielded!

  “Are you a free woman?” he asked.

  “No, Master,” she cried. “I am a slave, your slave!”

  “Do you wish to be freed?” he inquired.

  “No, Master!” she said. “Keep me in your collar!”

  “Have no fear, my meaningless little barbarian,” he said. “I shall. I shall!”

  “Yes, Master!” she wept. “Yes, Master!” And then in his arms there writhed a slave, a mere slave, one I would come to know well, one whom her master would continue to call ‘Ellen’, as it pleased him to do, a tearful, grateful, ecstatic slave, she who was his, she who was I.

  And many times that night, in many ways, sometimes abruptly, sometimes lengthily, was she put to his purposes and pleasures. And so, too, did she serve him, frequently, in the commanded secret intimacies of her slavehood, eagerly.

  ****

  It is now time to close this narrative.

  It is written with the permission of my master. That such a thing, this writing, might be done was suggested to my master by his friend, Bosk, of Port Kar. I am deeply grateful to my master for permitting me to write this, and to that unusual, complex gentleman, Bosk of Port Kar, scholar and warrior, master of weapons and slaves, sometimes so fierce and terrible, sometimes so thoughtful and gentle, uncompromising but understanding, for suggesting that it might be done. The narrative, I fear is only too obviously a first-person story, though I have tried to tell it with some objectivity, largely in the third person, as perhaps befits a collared slave. To be sure, I fear my feelings have often intruded themselves. Indeed, sometimes I fear that I have spoken in the first person and not the third. This is then, I conjecture, a first-person narrative expressed largely, humbly, I trust, in the third person. Now, however, in these last remarks, with no presumption intended, I will speak in my own first person, not of the slave, Ellen, who is I, but as I, who am Ellen, the slave.

  This has been so good for me to write this story. I had to tell someone, if only myself.

  It is written on large sheets of rence paper, from the delta of the Vosk, in pen and ink.

  I do not know the fate of this manuscript, or if it has a fate, so to speak. One thing is clear to me, that it is surely unlikely that these things will be allowed to be known on my old world. These are not truths of the sort which are to be spoken on that world. Indeed, many, should the occasion arise, will attempt to prevent the publication of this manuscript. If, somehow, it should find publication on my old world, one must then expect it to be derided and denounced variously, with cuteness and cleverness, with subtlety and cunning, with virulence and hysteria. It belongs, you see, to a genre of manuscripts which are to be suppressed on that world. To the ignorant, fearful and weak these truths must, I suppose, seem frightening, perhaps as other truths concerning nature, long ago, the movement of the earth, the nature of the sun, the distance of stars, seemed so frightening. But these truths are not really so frightening, not really. No more than the beating of the heart, the circulation of the blood. But those who fear to learn need not consider these matters. Let them remain in ignorance, or labor with excuses and qualifications to maintain their sheltered enclaves of comforting sophistries, such fragile defenses against storms of fact. I do not object. I mean them no harm. Perhaps it is best for them not to seek the truth. There is always danger in seeking the truth, the danger that it might be found.

  So I would not expect this manuscript to be published on my old world. Who would dare to do so? Who would take the risk?

  Alas, Earth, that world, how beautiful you might have been!

  How sadly you tread now toward your gray future, toward the goal of the beehive, toward the ideal of the ant heap. Strange how democracy has come to be the choice between six and six, and twelve. I wonder if there are any left upon you now who can tear their way through the tapes of their conditioning programs and see reality clearly, vividly. Are there any left upon you now who can think for themselves? Must truth and reason be forever denied; must honesty be always outlawed? How strange it is to hail free speech and then make certain, simultaneously, that it shall not exist. I wonder if there are any individuals left on you now, or are there only the gangs, the masses and their masters?

  But let me put aside such tragic thoughts.

  Earth is no longer my world. Gor is now my world, a world on which I am a slave.

  In Ar, times are troubled. It remains unclear as to whether Marlenus of Ar, the great Ubar, is within the city or not. One hears many things, frequently conflicting. Sporadic resistance to Cosian occupation continues. Mercenaries grow ugly. Skirmishes occur between crowds and the garrison forces, the mercenaries and the Cosian regulars, but, too, sometimes between the mercenaries themselves and the Cosians. Myron, polemarkos, strives to maintain order. Reprisals occur. Buildings are burned, stores looted. Many free women of Ar are levied for the collar, branded and sent to Cos to serve foreign masters. Some are forced to serve as naked paga slaves, belled and chained, in the taverns of what was, prior to their embondment, their own city. Slaves, of course, no more than tarsks and kaiila, have Home Stones. Even if one day Ar should be returned to herself, and her former power and glory, these women would be kept as slaves, then simply being sold out of the city. Once a woman has worn the collar, truly worn it, you see, she is forever spoiled for freedom. She can never again be truly free for she, as a female, has known the touch of masters. And many slave girls, too, are being brought to the city to content and pacify the troops. And many, it seems, are harvested for this purpose from my old world, Earth. How their lives will change! Talena, acclaimed by some as Ubara, denounced by others as traitress, is seldom seen now in public. It is said she hides within the fortresslike Central Cylinder. I do not know what will be the issue of these complex, troubled matters. Much is kept from me, of course, as I am a slave. There is a saying that curiosity is not becoming in a kajira, and yet how well the masters understand our incessant and insatiable curiosity! But sometimes I think my master keeps much from me not simply because he enjoys keeping me, tormentingly, appropriately, as Goreans see it, in “slave ignorance,” but for my safety, as well. The less I know, the less I understand, the safer, or so he deems, I will be. In the storms of war and revolution it is, not surprisingly, the animals which have the least to fear. There is a joke in Ar now, that it is a good time to be a kaiila. Too, the testimony of slaves in Gorean courts is commonly taken under torture.

  I fear for the well-being of my master and his friends.

  Often there seems a calmness in the city, sometimes an unnatural calmness, but I do not doubt that intrigues abound, and that dark, hot currents, calculated and violent, turbulent and meticulous, seethe beneath the surface.

  How kind of my master to let me express myself, to let me tell this story, so remarkable to me, and yet, perhaps, not all that unusual or unprecedented. There is a business in women, of course. We have value. Apparently a large business. And I have little doubt but what it is excellently organized. Perhaps some of the mysterious, untraceable, coded radio signals on Earth, seemingly indecipherable, perhaps indexed to an unfamiliar language, so perplexing to terrestrial authorities, pertain to this form of merchandising, the transmission of orders, the reports of scouts, the arrangements for, and coordinates of, pickups, and such. In any event, it is clear that the ships of slavers ply the space routes. There is a road, a secret road, so to speak, between Earth and Gor. And I assure you, i
t is not untraveled. I know. If you are a female of Earth, and, perchance, somehow, despite all probabilities, you one day read this, despite all efforts to prevent that, despite all the efforts to keep these things from you, know that there is truly a Gor. These very words are being written in longhand, in the city of Ar, by one who was once much as you, but is now a collared slave. Know, too, proud, vulnerable woman of Earth, that you might be observed, yes, you, literally you, personally you, exactly you, you who are now reading this, observed, carefully observed, scrutinized and noted, perhaps in the bright, cool office where you work; perhaps at the beach, where you thought to tantalize men and flaunt slave curves with impunity; perhaps at the theater, you so elegant in your black dress and pearls; perhaps on the street, in your high heels and smartly tailored mannish suit, walking swiftly; perhaps going to or coming from the gym, in your shorts, your head back, your hair free, your bag upon your shoulder; perhaps while in the supermarket, in slacks, foolishly with a bared midriff, the “slave belly,” do you not know how men see that, pushing your cart, examining shelves, comparing wares, shopping; perhaps while buying gas, looking out the passenger-side window, smiling, as though innocently, delighting in tormenting the fellow at the pump with your putative seemingly carefree security and invulnerability; perhaps in quickly exiting a taxi, in your miniskirt, so strikingly reminiscent of a slave garment, did you know that, revealing a well-turned calf, a knee, perhaps even a swift, deliberately insolent flash of a supposedly inaccessible thigh.

  Are you aware of these things? Surely you are. Do you know how you look to men, who see you in such ways? Perhaps. Do you know how desirable you are, truly? If so, do you live in trepidation, fearing strong hands, thongs and a collar?

  Do you think these things go unnoticed, or are noticed only by weakened, helpless males of Earth, reduced and crippled, whom you secretly despise for what they have permitted to be done to them, whom to their anger you may freely, safely, insult, taunt and tease, and that without fear of consequences, brazenly displaying yourselves, delicious, provocative goods on which, culturally, they are not even permitted to gaze? Does it not serve them right? What fun for you! But then, of course, what have you to fear? You are not slaves. No. Or you are not yet slaves, not yet, not at least in a strictly legal sense. I leave aside the sense of the “natural slave,” she who in a natural world would, without a second thought, be fittingly embonded, who would find herself promptly, legally, in the collar in which she belongs.

  But these thing, you see, may not be going unnoticed, or noted fruitlessly, only to the misery of the observer.

  There are other possibilities, other authentic possibilities.

  Remember the mysterious, unaccountable radio signals.

  Someone, you see, may be watching you, you entirely unsuspecting, unaware, unwitting of this so significant a surveillance. Someone may be thoughtfully considering how you might look in sirik, that striking custodial device with its collar, the connecting chains, the wrist and ankle rings, or conjecturing, taking notes, on your likely value, as he watches you, what you might be expected to bring on the slave block, first, and then later, after having been suitably informed and trained. All your laws then, your politics, your ideologies, your legal remedies, your petty threats, your thousand devices to obtain power, to control, reduce, tame and destroy men, would be useless. Remember them, such seekings, such devices, when you are chained naked in a Gorean dungeon, collared, with other slaves, a mark burned into your thigh, waiting to be brought to the auction block.

  But with you, on the same chain, perhaps prized even more highly than you, their collars locked as securely as yours, their chains clasping as perfectly, their bodies as bared, may be other women, they selected as carefully as you, quiet, gentle, loving, needful, natural women, women less removed initially from their sex than you, women who disdained to strive to be facsimile males, such monstrous transmogrifications of human reality, those to whom grotesque propagandas could not speak, those who could never bring themselves to believe the catechisms of negativity, horror and hatred, those who had no difficulty in detecting the unsatisfying special nature and hollowness, the idiosyncratic party-serving nature of diverse bromides and slogans, the lies that others would impose upon them, but who knew themselves female, even from the beginning, despite all the propaganda and conditioning, female radically and profoundly, those who even on Earth have longed to fulfill their femaleness in the service of men, men who will understand them and treasure them, but will nonetheless give them the domination they crave, who will supply the masculine to their feminine, the yang to their yin, who will see to it that they are, as they desire to be, let it be stated explicitly, mastered, wholly, and beautifully, and uncompromisingly mastered.

  But even such women must expect the whip if they are in the least bit unpleasing. They, too, of course, are slaves, every bit as much as the others, total slaves.

  Many are the sorts who will be brought to Gor, for the tastes and interests of buyers vary. In the markets there is much diversity.

  There are apparently “want lists.” I wonder if your type appears on such a list. I wonder if you, as an representative of such a type, are now on such a list, a considered item, a proposed item, an item to be picked up, to satisfy a given request.

  The haughty will be reduced; the insolent will have their insolence taken from them; the inert will be awakened; the frigid will be enflamed, made helplessly, beggingly needful; the awkward will learn grace; the plain will learn beauty; those who sought to dominate will learn submission; those who sought to be served will serve.

  But there will be a common denominator. All will be owned, all will be slaves. All will learn, sooner or later, totally, their womanhood.

  Gorean free women can be difficult and troublesome. But the pain that Gorean men will accept from their free women, in deference to their freedom, and their sharing of a Home Stone, they do not, and will not, accept in their slaves.

  That is something to be remembered, if you are brought to Gor. To be sure, you would quickly learn it.

  Perhaps you will be selected. Perhaps, unbeknownst to you, you have already been selected. I wonder. Perhaps your papers have already been prepared. That is an interesting thought. I wonder if they will come for you.

  It takes little time to heat the iron that will mark you.

  Perhaps a collar is waiting for you, just the right size, snugly fitting, but not tight. The common collar is not uncomfortable. You will not, of course, be able to slip it. It will be on you, lightly, almost unobtrusively, but securely, I assure you. I wonder how it will be engraved. If someone has already spoken for you, you, specifically, it may already be engraved. Most women, of course, are surrendered to the markets.

  The lock on the collar, as most of you will now be aware, is normally at the back of the neck. You will be taught to keep it there. If one looks closely, one will see it there, beneath your hair.

  The Gorean slave girl must be extremely careful about such things, even small things, such as the positioning of her collar lock. She is not a free woman. She is to be pleasing to her master in both appearance and demeanor.

  I think there is little advice to give you, at this point.

  Most of what you need to know will be made clear to you. I might warn you, however, in general, that the men of Gor are much unlike the men of Earth. You will not have been prepared for them. They have not been broken and tamed. Do not think you can deal with them as you have the men of Earth. Do not attempt to manipulate them unless you are prepared to accept the consequences. Remember that they will see you as what you are, and what you will soon understand yourself to be, and only be, a rightful slave.

  To be sure, although the men of Gor tend to be larger and stronger than the men of Earth, I am sure the primary differences between them are largely cultural. Doubtless on Earth, somehow, despite all, there are true men, masters, and rare and precious they must be, but such are abundant, indeed, almost universal, on Gor. A Gorean youth,
for example, is early accustomed to the care and management, the training and disciplining, the hooding, binding, chaining, and such, of female slaves. There are even games, held within large low-walled enclosures, with spectators in attendance, in which lads compete, each hunting another lad’s slave, she doing her best to elude capture, that her own master may score more highly than her pursuer. These contests are timed. A given lad’s time is determined by how long it takes to capture his fair quarry, bind it helplessly, hand and foot, and hurl it, futilely thrashing, squirming and struggling, to the sand before the judges. Any girl of whom it is suspected that she did not do her best to elude capture is whipped.

  Why do we make excellent slaves?

  We make excellent slaves, perhaps in part, at least at the beginning, because we know we will be whipped if we are not. And to be sure, even later, if we are not fully pleasing, we know we will be whipped. We are, after all, slaves. But do not misunderstand such things. Gorean men, while demanding and severe, are seldom cruel. It is not in their nature. That sort of thing, I think, is more common on Earth, where, unfortunately, I fear that some males, hopefully few, see women less as wondrous and delicious properties, less as fascinating, attractive, beautiful, desirable domestic animals, less as possessions to be sought, owned, relished, celebrated, treasured, and mastered, than as something alien to be hurt, oddly enough, incomprehensibly, for one’s pleasure. Whatever this may be, or its explanation, it is not Gorean. The Gorean master seldom, if ever, inflicts gratuitous pain. What would be the point of it? Similarly he would not abuse children, torture small animals, or such. Goreans would simply not understand such things. If they did understand them, they would doubtless account them offenses against honor.

  To be sure, the slave may be whipped for any reason, or for no reason. This comprehension helps her understand that she is a slave. It adds a flavor to her existence.