Prize of Gor

Chapter 14 SHE WAITS, BEFORE BEING PRESENTED BEFORE HER MASTER

“Stand still,” said one of the instructrices.

“Oh!” said Ellen, as the comb was pulled through her hair yet again, and again. The other instructrix then began to brush the hair, yet again.

“Hold still,” said the second instructrix.

“She is fine,” said a guard.

“What do men know of such things?” asked the first instructrix.

Ellen felt her hair smoothed and arranged carefully about her shoulders. “There,” said the first instructrix. “Now hold still, little she-urt.”

“She is a pretty one,” said the second instructrix.

“I think so,” said the first.

“You were not to paint her lips, her eyelids, you were not to enhance her with cosmetics?” said the guard.

“No,” said the first instructrix.

“She is pretty,” said the guard.

Ellen was brief-tunicked.

This garment was cut at the sides, to the waist. In this way the brand can be occasionally glimpsed and, when the slave kneels, if she is a pleasure slave, a bit of cloth may fall between her spread thighs.

She had been cleaned thoroughly in the Chamber of Preparation, her body scrubbed and her hair washed.

She was sparkling.

“Do you like the perfume?” asked the first instructrix.

“It is a slave perfume,” said the guard.

“Of course,” said the first instructrix. “She is a slave.”

“Do you like it?” asked the second instructrix.

“Yes,” said the guard. “It must be a good one. It is hard for me to keep my hands from her.”

“Do not disarrange her, please,” said the first instructrix.

Ellen edged away from the guard a little.

She pulled a little, futilely, against the bracelets, which held her hands confined behind her back.

“How does it feel, little tasta, to be out of the iron belt?” asked the first instructrix.

“Good, very good, Mistress,” said Ellen.

“Such things are so weighty, so bulky, and unpleasant,” said the first instructrix. Ellen gathered that the instructrix must once have had first-hand knowledge of what it was to be locked within such a thing, to be fastened in such an apparatus.

“Yes, Mistress,” said Ellen.

“But you now feel very vulnerable, don’t you?” asked the first instructrix.

“Yes, Mistress,” said Ellen. She inched a little further from the guard. It was he who, in the Chamber of Preparation, had removed her long gown, and had then removed the iron belt. She wondered if it had been necessary for him to feel her waist, and her hips, and thighs, as he had, when he had done so. The apparatus had been discarded, dropped to the stones of the floor of the Chamber of Preparation, with a clatter. She had then, after a moment, after having been examined by him, as a Gorean master considers a slave girl, been drawn by the hair across the room and plunged bodily into a tub.

“Bracelets,” said the first instructrix.

Ellen turned her back to the first instructrix, and lifted her wrists a little, so that her bracelets might be checked.

She felt her wrists lifted a bit, and the steel checked. There was a tiny sound of metal links.

The steel was tight on her small wrists.

That was not necessary, but it left her in no doubt that she was helpless.

She also did not doubt but what the tightness was intentional, and responsive to some instruction.

Slave bracelets were usually snug, but seldom tight.

Sometimes they were even rather loose, suggesting to a foolish girl the possibility of slipping them. But shortly, to her frustration, she learns she is held perfectly. The master, for his amusement, has been playing with her, and, in his way, instructing her.

Such small things help the new girl, in particular, to realize she is a female slave.

A girl who has better learned her collar is never in any doubt about such things.

Bracelets, chains, and such, incidentally, induce a sense of helplessness and vulnerability in the female, which sensations, whether she wishes it or not, increase her receptivity.

To be sure, they also hold her with perfection.

Her master had apparently decided that the bracelets would be tight, that it would please him to have her brought before him extremely conscious of her utter helplessness.

How faraway was the classroom!

There were six tiny links joining the bracelets, one for each letter in the Gorean spelling of ‘kajira’.

The key to the bracelets was on a tiny string looped about her collar, not that this did Ellen any good.

“They are pretty bracelets,” said the guard.

“We think so,” said the first instructrix.

Slave bracelets, designed for women, are often light and pretty, and are sometimes matched to outfits and such. Some, for high slaves, are bejeweled. Some might be worth the ransom of a Ubar. They can be matched to collars, as well, and shackles, and such. Some bracelets are fitted with lock rings, which can be snapped into one another, if and when desired. This resembles the leather slave cuffs worn by some girls in paga taverns. Similarly, some collars, leather or otherwise, have rings to which such snap rings may be conveniently fastened. To be sure, something as simple as leather binding fiber, such as commonly belts the common camisk, well serves for the general purposes of ready tethering. Common, too, are leashes. The style, grace, attractiveness, and lightness of slave bracelets does not detract from their utility. They are more than adequate to hold a female, and with perfection. Not all slave bracelets are pretty, and such, of course. Some are quite plain, and these might be preferred by some men for their slaves, perhaps for reasons of instruction, or economy, or to avoid an appearance of ostentation, or such. Too, warriors, tarnsmen, slavers, and such, might prefer plainer custodial devices for early captures, transportation, simple holding, and so on. Sometimes no more than a string, nose-ring and thumb cuffs are used. Men, on the other hand, as one would suppose, are commonly held in heavier gear, for example, in heavy manacles.

“This tunic is certainly very short,” said the first instructrix. She tugged a bit at the cut sides of the tunic, to draw it further down the thighs. Ellen stood very still. The first instructrix had little success.

“You must be careful how you move, Ellen,” said the first instructrix.

“Yes, Mistress,” said Ellen.

Ellen was barefoot, as female slaves are often kept.

“Is it not past the eighteenth Ahn?” asked the first instructrix, timidly.

“I do not think so,” said the guard. “I have not heard the bar sound.”

“You may kneel, Ellen.” said the first instructrix, “but do not disarrange yourself.”

“Thank you, Mistress,” said Ellen.

She then knelt on the hall side of the door to the audience chamber, near the wall, and back a little, that she might not block the entrance. Several times she had been presented to her master in that chamber. But that had been before she had been made a work-slave, before she had been sent to the laundry.

She knelt there in the shadowed half darkness, in the light of a pair of flickering wall lamps. She pulled against the bracelets that held her hands behind her back. She did not want to go back to the laundry.

Surely anything would be better than going back to the laundry.

Or that is what she thought at the time.

I have informed the work-master, she thought, that I am ready to beg. How kind was the work-master! How grateful I am that this information has been brought to the attention of my master. Am I ready to beg? Surely I must beg, no matter how shameful, how demeaning, how revealing, this may prove to be! I pretended not to be willing to beg, and I was sent to the laundry. My master is so strong! He has conquered! I am now ready to beg!

He must love me.

He remembered me, he brought me to this world, he restored me to youth and beauty, for I know that I am beautiful, though perhaps not so beautiful as countless others; and he gave me a beautiful name; surely that means something; and he made me property, and he owns me, now literally owns me; surely then he must desire me, and want me, for his very own! He must then want me in the strongest, fiercest, most commanding, most complete, most possessive sense in which a man can want a woman, want me as his uncompromised property, his slave.

And that is what I am, his slave.

I love my master. I want to serve him, and please him, with my whole being, with my whole body, with my whole heart and soul. The master is the meaning of the slave’s life, and she rejoices in her collar, that she belongs to him. What an incredible privilege, what an incredible honor, to be the slave of such a man! What an incredible joy to be fulfilled by him, to be owned and mastered by him! How pallid by comparison are boring and meaningless lives; how tepid the quotidian familiarities of contractual partners, each taking the other for granted; how fragile the regimens of arguable legalities; how delicate the cobwebs of convention, sunderable upon a whim; how wearying the tiny testings and battles of implicit competitors, the specified, adjudicable relationships of explicit contractees, each suspicious of, and concerned to outdo, the other. I can understand, she thought, how the same woman might be one man’s wife and another’s conquered, mastered, loving slave. Let such husbands, such weaklings, cry out in misery, she thought, learning that their pampered, bored, spoiled, troublesome, nagging wife is another man’s kneeling licking, begging slave. Another, at the mere snapping of fingers or an imperious gesture, receives from she whom he has never taken the time or interest to truly know, she whom he has never questioned as to her depths and needs, she to whom he has never intimately and truly spoken, she whom he has never attempted to understand, but has insisted upon seeing only from a distance, through the distorting prisms of convention, frequent, delicious, loving, abject services, services of which he has feared even to dream.

Let him, if he will, in defense of his failures and futility, denounce and castigate her, she whom he has never had the strength to own. Or, alternatively, let him buy a whip, put her to her knees and claim her.

But here, on this world, thought Ellen, unlike such a woman, I am a slave not only by nature, and appropriately, but under explicit, recognized law. I can be legally bought and sold, and given away, and such. Here I am simple, categorical, uncontested property not merely in the secrecy of a chamber, hidden away from an ignorant, uncaring, complacent, insensitive world, but in the full daylight of the cultures of a planet. Here, on this world, my brand, my collar, my mode of being, are everywhere accepted, acknowledged, recognized and understood. On this world I am, in the full sense of the law, explicitly and perfectly, slave.

It must be near the eighteenth Ahn, she thought. How can I conduct myself within?

It seems that I must beg, and shamefully beg. It seems he must have that of me. For some reason it seems he must have me so humiliated, so reduced, so baring myself before him, as no more than a piteous, worthless begging slave. But he must know, aside from that, aside from the idle repetition of a formula, that I am fully, and only, a slave. Surely that cannot make me more a slave than I am. Surely no woman could be more a slave than I. But surely no slave wants to serve just any man. Surely I am not unique in that. Surely we are entitled to find some masters preferable to others. And even if, in some sense, we are not entitled to find some masters preferable to others, it is surely a fact, which we cannot help, that we would prefer some masters to others. One cannot help that. Surely the slave who must, to her misery, in fear of her very life, proffer perfectly the most delicious and intimate of services to the most hated of masters knows that. Why then must we beg thusly? But, perhaps, she thought, it is not that we would not choose our masters, were it in our power, but, alas, it is the masters who choose us. It is rather that they would have us beg contrary to our deepest wishes, thereby acknowledging their power over us. Or perhaps it is merely a way of them having us acknowledge our reality as sexual beings, that we, as women, want, desire and need sexual experience, in a pervasive, general, organic, biological manner. Or perhaps it is a test which, once passed, is done with, and we may then enter the arms of our beloved master as no more than a surrendered slave, nothing held back, a slave now confessed as needful in general but, in the specific case, blissful within the arms of a beloved master.

The eighteenth bar then began to sound, ringing out its strokes.

“On your feet, little kajira,” said the first instructrix.

What does he want of me, wondered Ellen, wildly, struggling to her feet. Whatever he wants, I want to give him, but I do not know what he wants! Does he want me to again refuse to beg, and will he then, proud of me, I having then proven my worth before him, that I am still much like a free woman, keep me for himself, or does he want me to beg? If I do not beg, will I then be returned to the laundry, perhaps for ever, perhaps to be never again given a chance to please him? Or does he want me to beg, that he will then have evidence of his power over me, and that I explicitly acknowledge myself a worthless slave, or that in begging I will have acknowledged that I have sexual needs or is it that my begging is merely a test for my suitability to wear a neck-chain at his slave ring?

The bar continued to ring.

Ellen felt the comb, and then the brush, at her hair, and her hair was again, hurriedly, arranged about her shoulders. The cut hems of her tiny tunic were drawn down a little, but sprang back when the second instructrix released them. She felt her wrists drawn back, and together, in the bracelets. This, she suddenly realized, much as in placing the hands behind the back of the head or the back of the neck, accentuated her figure; and so, too, of course, might other things as well; she recalled the manner in which she had been instructed to carry the basket of laundry, particularly if two hands are used. The erect, graceful posture of the slave, too, as she commonly carries herself, as a dancer, has a similar effect.

The bar continued to ring, the notes carrying throughout the house.

“Are you a virgin?” asked the first instructrix.

“Yes, Mistress,” said Ellen.

The instructrix laughed.

The expression the instructrix had used, if it were to be translated literally into English, was ‘white-silk’. The complementary expression is ‘red-silk’. These are expressions used, incidentally, only of slaves, not of free women. It would be a great insult to refer to a free woman as either “white-silk” or “red-silk.” That would be terribly vulgar. Duels might be fought about such things. Expressions more suitable to free women, in Gorean, are ‘glana’ and ‘metaglana’, or ‘profalarina’ and ‘falarina’. But even these latter expressions have Gorean connotations, reflecting the views of a natural world. In the first case, the condition of virginity is regarded as one to be superseded; and, in the second case, it is regarded merely as something which comes before something else, something of greater importance, as an antecedent phase or prologue, so to speak.

“And your master has summoned you before him this night!” she laughed.

“Yes, Mistress,” said Ellen.

“And you are out of the iron belt!”

“Yes, Mistress,” said Ellen, apprehensively.

“Do not be surprised, little virgin,” she laughed, “if you are red-silked this night!”

The other instructrix laughed, as well.

Ellen regarded them, despite herself, reproachfully, offended, shocked, scandalized.

Her expression much amused them.

“See the little barbarian!” laughed the first instructrix.

“Do you think you are a free woman?” laughed the second. “You are not! You are a little she-urt, a little she-tarsk!”

“Yes!” said the first.

Ellen looked down, angrily.

Ellen’s virginity was important to her. She had thought to award it, if ever, only in some lovely and romantic context of her own choosing. But now she realized that it, as she, belonged to a master. She was now an animal, a domestic animal. Her virginity, accordingly, was of no more interest or importance to society, or an owner, than would be that of a pig.

She struggled futilely in the bracelets.

The last stroke of the bar rang out, and the eighteenth Ahn had been announced in the house.

The guard took her by the left, upper arm, and, opening the door to the audience chamber with his left hand, drew her within.