Authors: John Norman
Tags: #Science Fiction, #Fiction, #General, #Fantasy, #Adventure, #Erotica, #Gor (Imaginary Place), #Outer Space, #Slaves
Captive of Gor (14 page)
head. Ute had taught me to walk without spilling it. I enjoyed the men watching
me. Soon I could carry wine as well as any girl, even Ute.
The building where I would wait on these days was the house of a physician. I
was taken through a corridor to a special, rough room, where slaves were
treated. There my camisk would be removed. On the first day the physician, a
quiet man in the green garments of his caste, examined me, (pg. 93) thoroughly.
The instruments he used, the tests he performed, the samples he required were
not unlike those of Earth. Of special interest to me was the fact that this
room, primitive though it might be, was lit by what, in Gorean, is called an
energy bulb, and invention of the Builders. I could see neither cords nor
battery cases. Yet the room was filled with a soft, gentle, white light, which
the physician could regulate by rotating the base of the bulb. Further, certain
pieces of his instrumentation were clearly far from primitive. For example,
there was a small machine with gauges and dials. In this he would place slides,
containing drops of blood and urine, flecks of tissue, a strand of hair. With a
stylus he would note readings on the machine, and, on the small screen at the
top of the machine. I saw, vastly enlarged, what reminded me of an image
witnessed under a microscope. He would briefly study this image, and then make
further jottings with his stylus. The guard had strictly forbidden me to speak
to the physician, other than to answer his questions, which I was to do promptly
and accurately, regardless of their nature. Though the physician was not unkind
I felt that he treated me as, and regarded me as, an animal. When I was not
being examined, he would dismiss me to the side of the room, where I would
kneel, alone, on the boards, until summoned again. They discussed me as though I
were not there.
When he was finished he mixed several powders in three or four goblets, adding
water to them and stirring them. These I was ordered to drink. The last was
peculiarly foul.
“She requires the Stabilization Serums,” said the physician.
The guard nodded.
“They are administered in four shots,” said the physician. He nodded to a heavy,
beamed, diagonal platform in a corner of the room. The guard took me and threw
me, belly down, on the platform, fastening my wrists over my head and widely
apart, in leather wrist straps. He similarly secured my ankles. the physician
was busying himself with fluids and a syringe before a shelf in another part of
the room, laden with vials.
(pg. 94) I screamed. The shot was painful. It was entered in the small of my
back, over the left hip.
They left me secured to the table for several minutes and then the physician
returned to check the shot. There had been, apparently, no unusual reaction.
I was then freed.
“Dress,” the physician told me.
I gratefully donned the camisk, fastening it tightly about my waist with the
double loop of binding fiber.
I wanted to speak to the physician desperately. In his house, in this room, I
had seem instrumentation which spoke to me of an advanced technology, so
different from what I had hitherto encountered in what seemed to me a primitive,
beautiful, harsh world. The guard, with the side of the butt of his spear,
pressed against my back, and I was thrust from the room. I looked over my
shoulder at the physician. He regarded me, puzzled.
Outside the other four girls and their guard were waiting. I was leashed, given
a burden, and, together, we all returned to Targo’s compound.
I thought I saw a small man, garbed in black, watching us, but I was not sure.
We returned, similarly, to the physicians house on the next four days. On the
first day I had been examined, given some minor medicines of little consequence,
and the first shot in the Stabilization Series. On the second, third and fourth
day I received the concluding shots of the series. On the fifth day the
physician took more samples.
“The serums are effective,” he told the guard.
“Good,” said the guard.
On the second day, after the shot, I had tried to speak to the physician, in
spite of the guard, to beg him for information.
The guard did not beat me but he slapped me twice, bringing blood to my mouth.
Then I was gagged.
Later, outside, the guard looked at me, amused.
I stood facing him, head down, gagged.
“Do you wish to wear your gag home to the compound?” he asked.
(pg. 95) I shook my head vigorously, No. If I did wear it back Targo would
surely inquire, and I would doubtless be beaten. I had seem him, once or twice,
tell a girl to ask a guard to beat her. The girl is then strung up by the
wrists. And the guard uses not the handful of leather strap with which Lana,
only with her woman’s strength, had struck me, but the five-strap Gorean slave
whip, wielded with the full, terrible strength of a man. I had no desire to feel
it. I would be compliant, swift to obey and be pleasing in all things. No, I
shook my head, no!
“Does the little slave beg her guard’s forgiveness?” he asked, teasing me.
I nodded vigorously. Yes. It was hard to be a slave girl. Men tease you, but, in
an instant they may change, and their eyes grow hard. You must be careful what
you say, what you do. They hold the power of the whip. I knelt to him, putting
my head down to his feet. Then, as I had seen Lana do once, I gently took his
leg in my hands and put my cheek, head down, against the side of his leg.
“All right,” he said.
He untied the gag. I looked up at him, gratefully, my hands at his hips, as I
had seen Lana do.
He suddenly seized me by the arms and lifted me to face him.
Suddenly, with terror, I realized I was going to be raped.
“Ho!” said a voice, that of the other guard. “It is time to return to the
compound.”
Angrily, my guard released me and I staggered back.
“She is white silk!” said the other guard, laughing uproariously.
The other girls, leashed behind him, were laughing.
My guard, however, with a great laugh, seized me and, like a naughty child,
threw me across his knee. He then beat me, soundly, with the stinging flat of
his hand, until I cried for mercy and wept.
I was only too happy to be leashed again and carry a burden.
The girls, even Ute, were laughing.
I was annoyed, humiliated.
(pg. 96) “She’s a lovely, isn’t she?” said the guard who had interfered.
“She is learning the tricks of the slave girl,” said my guard, grinning,
breathing heavily.
The other guard looked at me. “Stand straight,” he said. I did so. “Yes,” he
said, “she makes a lovely wench.” And he added, “I would not mind owning her.”
I walked back to the compound, proudly, with the deliberate, taunting, insolent
grace of the slave girl. I knew then that men wanted me, the leashed animal
carrying her burden, Elinor Brinton.
I did not, of course, try to speak again to the physician.
On the fourth day I received the last in the Stabilization Series. On the fifth
day the physician had taken his tests and pronounced the serums effective.
When I left his house on the fifth day I heard him tell the guard, “An excellent
specimen.”
The fourth and fifth days I was permitted to carry wine back to the compound.
It was true that I had never felt as healthy in my life as I did then, nor had
the air seemed as clear and pure, the sky so blue, the clouds so sharp and
white. I suddenly realized, climbing the ramps of Laura toward the compound,
leashed, under guard, carrying a jar of wine on my head, balancing it with my
right hand, among my sisters on bondage, breathing the fantastic air of Gor,
that I was happy. Through barefoot, though thonged by the throat, though
branded, though clad in a camisk, though a degraded slave, at the mercy of men,
I felt, perhaps for the first time in my life, paradoxically, vitally and
joyously happy. I now thought more often of men. I knew now that they found me
attractive. And, startlingly for the first time in my life, I, too, began to
find them attractive, deeply and sensuously attractive, even excitingly so. One
would carry his head in a certain way’ another laughed well, openly, heartedly;
another had sturdy legs; another had long, fine arms and strong hands, a fine
chest and head. I found I wanted to look upon them, to stand near them, as if by
accident, to touch them, as if inadvertently, perhaps in brushing past them.
Sometimes (pg. 97) they would discover me looking upon them, and I, responding
to their grin, would look down, swiftly, shyly, sometimes I would be pleases
when, among the other girls, they would throw me their leather or sandals to
clean. I did so, excellently. I did not object either, at the stream on stones,
near the compound, to washing their garments. I liked to handle them, to feel
the strong fabric that had clung to their sweet strength. Once Ute caught me
holding the tunic of the guard who had watched me at the physician’s against my
cheek, my eyes closed. She squealed with delight and leaped to her feet,
standing between the flat rocks in the water, pointing at me. The other girls,
too, looked, laughing, slapping at their knees. “El-in-or wants a master!”
squealed Ute. “EL-in-or wants a master!” I pursued her into the stream splashing
water at her, and she fled away, stumbling, and then turned and fled back to the
bank. Ute, and the others, stood there, laughing and pointing at me. I stood
knee deep in the swift stream. “El-in-or wants a master!” they cried. Laughing.
I stood in the stream, furious, fists clenched. “Yes,” I cried, “I want a
master!”
Then, angrily, I returned to my laundry, and so, too, did the other girls. But I
felt there was now something different. I listened to them chat gaily together,
pounding and rinsing the fabrics, in the sunlight, at the edge of that swift
stream. And I, too, Elinor Brinton, worked with them. My hands were in the cold
water, immersing the fabric, and lifting it and wringing it, and pounding it on
the rock, and immersing it again, in simple, ancient rhythms. What was it that
was different? I wore my camisk, belted with binding fiber, naught else. I knelt
as they. I worked as they. There was no penthouse here, no Maserati, no wealth,
no mighty buildings, no roar and drone of engines, no screams of planes, no
clouds of choking smoke. There was only the laughter of the girls, the bubbling
of the stream, the work, the blue sky and white clouds, the wind and the bending
grass, clean air and, somewhere, the call of a tiny horned gim, the tiny
purplish owl.
I stopped working for a moment and took a deep breath. (pg. 98) I was no longer
angry. I felt the binding fiber, in its double loop, tight against my body. I
stretched. I felt my body luxuriously protesting the rough fabric of the camisk.
I wonder what man would tear it from me.
“Work,” said a guard.
I returned to my work, Elinor Brinton, one slave girl among others, primitively
washing the clothes of masters at the edge of that swift stream on a beautiful,
distant world.
I knelt there on the flat rock, pounding and rinsing the fabric, in the fresh
air with the bright blue sky overhead. I listened to the sound of the stream. I
looked up and saw the sky. I put down the wet fabric and suddenly stood up on
the rock, throwing my arms into the air and laughing. The girls looked at me,
bewildered. “Yes! Yes,” I cried. “I am a female!”
I stood on the rock in the sun before the rushing stream, my arms raised, eyes
closed.
Then I opened my eyes to the blue skies.
“Yes! Yes! Yes!” I cried, to all the skies of Gor, and all the stars and all the
worlds. “I want a master! I want a master!”
“Return to your work,” said a guard.
Swiftly, lest I be beaten, I knelt again on the rock and returned to my washing.
I laughed.
The other girls, too, laughed.
I was happy.
Ute, slapping fabric on the flat rocks and rinsing it in the cold water, began
to sing.
I was happy. I was one with them.
I found myself looking forward eagerly to my sale. I found myself wondering,
curiously, what it would be like to be owned by a man. Sometimes, when the other
girls were not looking, I put my hand to my throat, as though his collar were
there. I pretended to trace the lettering on the collar, which proclaimed me
his. I did not even have an objection to being sold in Laura. It seemed to me a
simple, wild, lovely place, with the glorious air and sky, the forest to the
north, the river to the south. I loved its ramps going (pg. 99) down to the
river and winding among the warehouses, the painted, carved wood on its
buildings, the black shingles, the smell of bosk on the ramps and the creak of
wagons, the smell of fish and salt, and glistening tharlarion, from the river,
the smell of hides and fur, and sawed lumber, at the docks. And her men I liked,
in their rough cloaks and tunics, vital, supple, strong men, large-handed and
laughing, men who worked with their hands and backs in the clean air and on the
river. I wondered if he would take me with him on journeys and sometimes, where