Prize of Gor

Chapter 9 SHE PERFORMS BEFORE HER MASTER, AND CONCLUDES THE PERFORMANCE SUITABLY

There were cries of interest, and pleasure, when she reappeared in the marbled audience chamber. She stood just within the doorway, timidly, uncertainly.

“How oddly she is garbed,” whispered one of the women.

She was prodded forward by Tutina’s switch, until she stood within the yellow circle. It did not seem appropriate, somehow, to kneel, as she was dressed.

How strange she felt, to be dressed in this manner, in this place.

She felt that, dressed as she was, it might be permissible to speak, but she did not dare to do so.

“You are going to perform,” said her master.

“How?” she whispered.

“To be sure,” he said, “you cannot play the kalika, nor do you know the dances of the yearning, begging slave girl.”

She began to suspect how, on this world, slaves might perform for men, how men might use them for their entertainment.

“That is how,” said the young man to those gathered about him, “she appeared in her classroom, when I was a student, and she a teacher.”

“So strangely garbed?” inquired a man.

“The garb is not so strange for her world,” said the young man, “but the intent of her particular garb is to act as the banner of a disposition. It is proclamatory; it speaks a message. Its intent is to present a formal, tidy, cool, businesslike, professional, rather severe image, not simply one demanded by a conformist, socially prescribed ideology, one in accord with politically recommended proprieties, but, beyond that, one she felt it important, interestingly, to impose upon herself. The garb bespeaks her pretensions, of course, certain delusions, and such. But, too, in a way it bespeaks her fear. It is a defensive facade, just like the ideology she adopts for a similar purpose.”

“Her fear?” inquired a fellow in blue and yellow robes. At that time she did not know the significance of blue and yellow robes.

“Her fear of her own sexuality, which she is terrified to recognize, and insists on hiding.”

“Yet the excitement of her body is not altogether concealed,” said the fellow in blue and yellow robes, appraisingly.

“She is at war with herself,” said the young man. “She has deeply ambivalent feelings about her own body, its beauty and needs, her own emotions, the true meaning of her sex.”

“That war can be ended here,” smiled a man in yellow robes, those of the Builders.

She felt herself again the center of attention, as she stood in the circle.

When Tutina had closed the door behind them she had ordered her to her knees before her, near three packages on the floor. Her kneeling young charge, to her amazement, noted that these packages, sealed with tape, bore names and slogans with which she was familiar on Earth. She herself was familiar with these stores, and had shopped in them several times. She remembered the aisles, the counters, the crowds. Attentive to the injunctions placed upon her in connection with this narrative the names of these stores are omitted. Certainly they would be immediately recognized, at least by many familiar with a certain city.

The young charge looked up at Tutina, questioningly.

Tutina raised her switch menacingly, and the young charge put down her head, quickly, and cringed, but Tutina did not strike her.

“With moneys given to me by the master,” said Tutina, “I made these purchases, according to his instructions.”

Her young charge put out her hands and, with the tips of her fingers, touched the crinkling paper of one of the packages.

Then the young charge felt Tutina’s switch beneath her chin, lifting it. She looked into Tutina’s blue eyes.

“You are not now sitting on a chair, are you?” asked Tutina.

“No, Mistress,” said her charge. She addressed Tutina as “Mistress” because Tutina, obviously, was in authority over her. She had learned, in the last few days, to address her instructrices similarly.

Rank, distance and hierarchy are ingredient in Gorean social arrangements. The intricate stratification of society tends to produce social stability. The myth that all are equal when obviously they are not tends to ferment unrest. Each desires to climb the invisible ladder he claims does not exist. In Gorean society, with its emphasis on locality and neighborhood, with its diverse Home Stones, each with its own history and traditions, with its many castes and subcastes, each with its acknowledged privileges and rights, and obligations, respected by all, political upheavals, social disruptions, are not only rare, but to most Goreans almost incomprehensible. There is little cause for such things, little interest in them, little place for them. They just do not fit. In Gorean society there is no nameless, faceless, anonymous, ponderous, swarming many ruled by a secret few. Too richly formed, too proud, too self-respecting, too intricately structured, too much like nature herself, is Gorean society for that. Too, there are the codes, and honor.

“It was because of you,” said Tutina, “that I was beaten.”

Her charge remembered her outburst, on a far world, it seemed long ago now, objecting to the fact, it seemed so strange at the time, that a frightened woman in a white gown had been permitted to sit on a chair.

“I was beaten!” hissed Tutina.

“I am sorry, Mistress,” whispered her charge.

She did not doubt but what Tutina, for that lapse, had been put under discipline. She did not doubt but what the young man was fully capable of taking a whip to a woman who did not please him.

“And how I was forced to serve you, and you acting so superior to me,” exclaimed Tutina angrily, “you treating me with such contempt, and you then only an ignorant, nameless slave!”

“Forgive me!” begged the frightened, kneeling charge. “I did not know, Mistress!”

“I now wear the talmit,” said Tutina, indicating the fillet on her brow, binding back her long, luxurious blond hair. “So fear, stupid little slut. Know, ankleted little slave bitch, that upon the least provocation you will feel my switch, richly!”

“Yes, Mistress,” wept her charge, cringing, putting her head down. Like any low girl, she feared the wearer of the talmit.

“Now,” said Tutina, seemingly somewhat mollified, “remove your tunic. Open the packages. Dress.”

****

And so she stood now in the circle, before the curule chair.

The garments she wore were really muchly as they had been, so many years ago.

She wore a black, jacketed, skirted suit, with a cool, front-buttoned, rather severe, rather mannish white blouse, buttoned high about her neck. Her hair was drawn back severely, bound tight, and bunned, at the back of her head. She wore black, figured stockings, rather decorative, and shiny, black pumps, with a narrow two-inch heel.

“One thing is missing,” said the young man in the curule chair. He motioned her forward.

Into her hand he placed two small, plain, lovely golden loops, bracelets.

“Put them on,” he told her.

She slipped them on her left wrist. He knew, of course, that that was where they went. She did not wish to be beaten.

“Return to the circle,” he said, “and, hands at your sides, turn slowly for us.”

She did as she was commanded, and then again faced him, and the others.

She knew herself displayed.

She wondered if a nude slave girl on an auction block could feel more acutely conscious of her exhibition.

She did not know these people, even these sorts of people. How different they were from what she knew, in their naturalness, in their laughter and assurances, in their colorful robes and miens, all this so different from the tepidities, apathies, lethargies, and gray conformities of her old world! She had not known such people could exist. To her they were alien, not only linguistically but, more importantly, more frighteningly, culturally. This is what human beings can be, she thought, so different from those of Earth! She was not on her own world. And she was in a very different culture, one with different laws, customs, and values. Things were so unfamiliar. What could she, given no choice, brought helplessly here, be to these people?

What could one such as she be on this world?

She feared she knew.

How strange it is, she thought, to be fully clothed, according to one’s culture, so decorously, even primly, and yet, here, in a different culture, in an identical garmenture, being presented, being put on view, to feel so exposed, to feel oneself an eccentric object of curiosity.

She would have preferred her tunic, however brief. Then she would at least have better fitted in with her surroundings; she would then have felt less anomalous, less conspicuous, more congruent with her lovely milieu. There were others of her status in the room, and surely they, at least, were appropriately garmented, were accorded the simple, natural garmentures, so brief, so clinging, so revealing, which seemed to be culturally prescribed for those of their station, which station she had no doubt was hers, as well. They were attractively, and suitably, garbed, at least for what they were.

So why not she?

Why not she?

Too, she knew, and this did not displease her, at all, that she was quite attractive, perhaps even extremely so, in the tunic. That had been evident from the appraisals of guards.

In their eyes she was clearly a female.

She had no doubt about that.

And one of great interest.

That, too, had been clear.

Sometimes the guards had bound her, with colorful cords, sometimes in exotic fashions, and had then ordered her to free herself, but she had been unable to do so. But how their eyes had glinted upon her, as she had twisted, and reared up, and fell back, and squirmed and writhed, in her unsuccessful attempts to elude her constraints! To see her so before them, bound so helplessly, so predictably and absurdly futile in her commanded struggles, had given them much pleasure. Once she had intended to defy them, to remain quite still, but she was then switched, and so, again, she had addressed herself, now stung and weeping, desperately to efforts she now realized were foredoomed.

She recalled the words of the young man, on Earth, now her master on Gor, that he had thought she would be very pretty in such cords, later, when she would be luscious, helplessly bound in them.

Certainly she had been helpless in them, in those so simple, so soft, so attractive, so colorful bonds.

Am I, she asked herself, “luscious”?

She well remembered the eyes of the guards.

Perhaps, she thought.

And she was not displeased.

What female, and particularly one such as she, on this world, would not wish to be attractive, even luscious?

She shuddered.

She recalled that the young man on Earth, now her master, had suggested to her that her very life might depend on such things.

How often in history, she thought, it had been only a woman’s beauty which stood between herself and the sword. How grateful she might be then when she felt her hands roped behind her and a leash put on her neck!

The other girls in the room, those such as she, were in their tunics!

Why was she not then in her tunic?

Long ago she had ceased to feel such a garmenture was inexcusable and insufferably improper, that it was scandalously outrageous. To be sure, she supposed in some sense it was still all these things, and by intent, but now, too, it seemed appropriate, delicious, provocative, maddeningly exciting, sexually stimulating to the wearer and doubtless, too, to the bold and appraising onlooker beneath whose gaze its lovely occupant found herself without recourse. But even on Earth she had, she was now aware, viewed such garmentures rather ambivalently, perhaps even hypocritically, viewing them, or pretending to view them, on the one hand with the prescribed indignation and rage, and, on the other, wondering curiously, and excitedly, what she herself might look like, so clad. And she wondered, too, if some of the cumbersomely clad free women in the room, several even veiled, might not envy the others, their sisters, the freedom of their simple garmentures. And, too, what woman, in her heart, does not desire for her beauty to be displayed, does not desire to be seen, and understood, and openly relished, as the special and exquisite treasure she is? Are we not all forgivably vain? In any event, it was such as men would have for them. They were dressed as men would have them dressed, such as they, if they were to be permitted clothing. But why then not she? Most were kneeling, some not. They did not wear anklets. About their throats, rather, closely fitting, locked, were flat, slender metal bands, slave collars.

She envied them their collars. Not all animals, you see, are collared. The collar is for special animals. It was a visible statement that they were worth something. They had been found of interest; they had been found worthy of being purchased and owned. The collar, thus, in its way, is a visible acknowledgment of value. A terrible insult, on this world, to a free woman, is to tell her she is not worth a collar. To be sure, how would one know that, if one had not seen her? But she herself had only an anklet, the role of which, it seems, was more notational than anything else, little more than a way of keeping track of her in this house, whatever sort of house it might be.

Why did they not let her, too, kneel, or stand, inconspicuously aside, scarcely noticed, deferent, ready to be summoned, at so little as a snapping of the fingers of the free?

“Girl!” snapped her master.

She looked up, frightened.

“Now,” he said, “you will perform. How is your Gorean?”

“Not good enough, Master!” she said.

“You will use it,” he said. “There are very few present who can understand English.”

“What am I to do?” she asked.

“We are your students, we are your class,” he informed her. “You will lecture to us. Tell us all about men and women, and social artifacts, and roles, and such things, how conventional everything is, and political and capricious, and how the human species, alone of all the other species, has no nature, and how genetics is meaningless, and biology false, and endocrinology irrelevant, and so on, and how anything can be anything, and everything is nothing, and nothing is everything, and how the true is false, and the false, true, and such. Raise our consciousnesses, indoctrinate us, convert us.”

She was silent, in consternation.

He had spoken to her in English, of course.

“Those garments,” said the fellow in the blue and yellow robes, “do not really conceal her figure. Surely her loveliness is detectable within them.”

“As I am sure she knew,” said the young man.

“The things on her feet are pretty,” said a fellow.

“How can she keep her hair up like that?” asked another.

“She has a very pretty face,” said another.

“She has a small, trim, excellent figure,” said another.

The young man lifted his hand for silence. These brief remarks just preceding had all been in Gorean, of course. They had been spoken casually, with no particular intent in mind that she should understand them. But, of course, by now her Gorean was sufficient to follow them. She heard them with mixed feelings, and apprehensions. It is a strange thing to hear oneself referred to in such a fashion, so objectively, so casually. Did they not know she was a person? Did they think that she was an object, an animal on display?

“Begin,” said the young man.

Hesitantly, frightened, she began.

“As I told you,” warned the young man in English.

She moaned. He would have nothing less than that she attempt to honestly and forthrightly make clear to those in the room what she had taught for many years, what her colleagues in the movement expected of her, what she had been commended for, the views on which her standing, reputation and prestige had been founded, the sorts of things she had abundantly published, in journals created specifically to accommodate and broadcast such views, the ideology to which she had, in effect, given her life.

Occasionally he helped her with a word in Gorean; occasionally he prompted her, reminding her of this or that, for clearly he wanted her to express her position as forcibly and plausibly as the subject matter might admit.

He asked her upon occasion to move about. She did so, now acutely conscious of her figure within her clothing. Never on Earth had she been so much aware of the movements of her body within her garments, or how they rested upon it, or clung about it. But here she was much aware of such things. How frighteningly, how vulnerably soft and beautiful it was, shielded within her garments, she sensed. Twice he asked her to gesture, in such a way that he might hear the tiny sound of the two bracelets striking against one another, as though so accidentally. That sound was very meaningful to her, particularly under the circumstances, and she did not doubt but what it was similarly meaningful to him.

“Thank you for the lecture, slave girl,” he said, when she was done. “Now remove your garments.”

She first removed the jacket, and put it on the floor beside her. She then removed her pumps, and put them side by side, beside the jacket.

She then regarded him.

At a small gesture, she continued.

She unbuttoned the blouse, beginning with the high collar, and then slipped it from her shoulders.

More than one of the men present struck their left shoulders with the flat of their right hand.

She looked at the young man.

“They are expressing approval,” he informed her, in English.

She wore a white brassiere, which hooked in the back, and had two narrow shoulder straps.

She then unfastened the black skirt, and dropped it about her ankles, then stepped away from it, and lifted it to the side.

Interest was expressed in the garter belt. She freed the stockings from it, unfastened it, put it to the side, and then, sitting on the marbled floor, rolled the stockings down, and removed them.

As she removed the stockings, there could be no mistaking the loveliness of her thighs, the sweet bend of her legs at the knees, the turn of her calves, these lovelinesses each, slowly, in turn, being bared.

She then, again, stood. She was clad now in only brassiere and panties, except, of course, for two bracelets, and a locked ring, on her left ankle.

“Loosen your hair,” he said.

She did so, and shook it loose. It was very beautiful, dark brown, and glossy. She swept it back behind her with two hands, with a lovely gesture.

There were expressions of pleasure, of admiration, from several of those in the room.

She was clearly a lovely slave.

She went to slip the two golden loops from her left wrist, but the young man shook his head, almost imperceptibly, negatively.

She stiffened, but obeyed.

Those it seemed would be left her, at least for the time.

She slipped the shoulder straps of the brassiere over her arms, where they hung for a moment, and then she pulled the brassiere down.

“Excellent,” said the fellow in the blue and yellow robes.

She blushed.

Even had she not known the word, she would have understood him, from his tone, and expression, only too well.

Some of the men struck their left shoulders. Some of the women present uttered small sounds of admiration.

She realized suddenly that that of which they approved, her body, was not hers, that her body, and, indeed, she herself, was another’s property.

She turned the brassiere about, until the hooks were before her, at her belly.

She then unhooked it and dropped it with her other garments.

Suddenly tears sprang to her eyes and she looked piteously to the young man in the curule chair, that he might leave her some sop to her modesty, that he would not be merciless with her, not publicly, not before this throng.

But his eyes were stern.

Then she stood bared before him, a naked slave, save for two loops of gold on her left wrist, and an anklet of steel.

“Now,” said he to her, “my lovely young instructor with your Ph.D. in gender studies, you may crawl to me, naked, on your belly.”

She went to all fours, and then lowered herself to her belly. Then, inch by inch, she approached the dais, ascended the steps, and was then before him.

“More closely,” he said, “and spread your hair over my feet.”

She brought her hair forward, and put her head at his sandals, her hair about his feet.

“This, now,” he said, “is truly you. This is how I wanted you, and how you wanted to be, even then, so long ago, at my feet, a slave.”

She looked up at him tears in her eyes.

He removed the two golden loops from her wrist. She now wore only the steel anklet.

“Lick and kiss my feet, slave,” he said.

“Yes, Master,” she said.

“And thus,” said he, “you are the living refutation of your own ideology.”

“Yes,” she whispered, “— Master.”

After a time, to her consternation, he pulled his feet away from her soft tongue and lips, her tears and her hair.

“Guard,” said he, “take this slave away, and see that the last phase of her treatment is concluded.”

“Surely there is no more, Master!” she cried.

“Oh yes,” he said, menacingly, “I have something very special in store for you, slave girl.”

She was dragged naked from the room.

Outside the door she, still held, was permitted to bend down and seize up her tiny tunic, that which she had left in this place, when she had donned the other garments. The paper wrappings, the tape, the cardboard boxes, were still there, where she had left them.

She was then drawn naked, rudely, through the corridors, her upper left arm, hurting her, in the powerful grip of the hurrying guard. She clutched her tiny tunic in her right hand, but could not put it on. She was taken through the corridors much as she had seen other naked beauties, save that she was not bound or chained.

Faces, some of them frightened, of young women, peered at her from behind bars.

In a short time she was in her kennel area and was urged up the steel ladder until she reached her tier, at which point she was forced to crawl painfully on all fours over the steel grille work until she reached her kennel.

In a moment she was locked within.

She tried, hysterically, to thrust the anklet from her, but could not do so.

She began to weep.

She turned about, kneeling, and clutched the bars, crying.

After a time she drew on her tiny tunic, and moved some straw about in the kennel. She then lay down, wrapping herself, as she could, in the short, thin blanket.

She wept.

He had had the fullness of his vengeance on her, surely. It seemed that she could not have been more thoroughly reduced and humiliated.

And yet she knew that she had been thrilled to be at his feet, a helpless, subdued, submitting, dominated slave.

It was what she was, she realized, and what she most profoundly wanted to be, and had always wanted to be, a slave.

What did he have in mind for her?

She did not know.

All she knew was that he would do what he wished with her, and that she was his slave.