Kajira of Gor (30 page)

gear. “You can see she is a slave, returning to her master.” I then hurried

away. In the darkness they had not detected that I lacked a brand. Too, they had

not noticed that my neck was not encircled by a slave collar.

I was now in consternation. I did not see how I could proceed.

People seemed to be getting up now about the camp.

“Ena!” called a girl, hurrying to catch up with another.

I stepped back into the shadows.

A tall, slim girl, naked, turned about. A bit of slave silk dangled languidly

from her left hand.

The new girl was short and lusciously bodied. She wore a brief, silken slave

tunic, fastened with a single tie at her bosom. A single tug frees the tie and

allows the garment to be parted for the view and pleasures of a master. Both

women wore collars.

“And how did the night go?” asked the new girl. “Were you well used?”

“Yes,” responded the taller girl, dreamily. “And you?”

“Superbly,” said the shorter girl.

The two girls then began to walk down the lane between the tents.

L my head down, my hair about my neck and shoulders, hopefully tending to

conceal the bareness of my neck, the absence there of a steel circlet, fell into

step behind them, seemingly, I hoped, only another slave on her way back to her

master.

I soon became aware that this must be a lane leading to the chains.

Other girls, soon, here aid there, entered it, before and behind me, and between

me and those who had been directly before me.

“And what of the resistance you -intended to offer?” one girl was asking

another.

“It was crushed,” said the other. “He did not choose to accept it. Then he made

me serve him well.”

“It is the fifth time you have served in his tent since we left Argentum,” said

the first girl.

“Yes,” said the second. “think he likes you,” said the first girl.

“Perhaps,” said the other.

“Do you think he will buy you?” asked the first girl.

“it matters not to me,” said the other. “I do not care, one way or the other.”

“There are stains on your face as though you bad been crying,” said the girl.

“And it does not seem to me that you have been beaten.”

“Oh?” asked the other.

“You pretentious tarsk sow,” laughed the first girl, “you were begging him to

buy youl”

“What if I was!” said the other, tossing her bead.

“And when did you beg this?” asked the girl.

“After my resistance bad been crushed, and he made me serve him without

compromise as a slave,” said the other, and again this morning, before we

parted.”

“You seem pleased enough now,” observed the girl.

“Tassy,” said the other, “he is going to make an offer for me!”

“That is marvelous, Yitza!” said the first girl.

“But will Myron let me go?” asked the second girl.

“I do not know,” said the first. “Such matters are between the men.”

The second girl moaned.

“Look at it this way,” said the first girl. “If we did not wear collars we would

not even know the touch of such men as Rutilius. Too, if we were not slaves and

sent to their tents, we would not even know what to do. We would be only

ignorant free women.”

“How I sometimes pity free womenl” laughed the second girl. “They are so

stupidl”

“But fear them, Yitza,” said the first girl, “for they are free and you are

enslaved.”

“Of course,” said the second girl, shuddering.

“And remember that they hate you,” said the first.

“I know,” said the second.

A man stepped out, into the center of the lane. I stopped, frightened. But his

attention was on another.

“Yeela,” said lie.

A girl, addressed by a free man, fell to her knees before him.

“I have paid fee for you,” he said.

“it is early, Master,” she laughed. “Would you lie to a poor slave?”

“Perhaps,” lie said.

“If you have not, know that you will be charged,” she laughed. “I am not for

freel”

But then he had crouched down and taken her in his arms. She was thrown beneath

him, grasping at him, to the dirt. Frightened, I took my way about them. I tried

to hide among other girls. I hoped that no man would decide to pull me out from

among them.

“What is for breakfast?” I heard one girl asking another.

“I have heard,” said the other girl, who was a shorter one, “that each of us

will have five berries put in our gruel this morning.”

“Good,” said the first.

Alp

“If no bad reports are received on any of us,” added the second.

“I was pleasing,” said the first.

“So, too, was I,” averred the second.

“If Jasmine is not fully pleasing again,” said the first girl, “I think I will

pull her hair out.”

“And so, too, will the rest of the chaint” laughed the second girl, the shorter

one.

Jasmine, I suspected, would soon learn to be pleasing. Certainly it would be in

her best interests to be so. She would probably have to spend at least a portion

of every day within the reach of her chain sisters. Doubtless soon she would be

begging them for counsels in sensuality, for tricks and techniques, that she

might improve herself and become less inadequate as a slave.

“He took away my clothes,” one girl was telling another, “but then he did not so

much as touch me. He made me serve him, rather, in small and menial ways. I must

cook Sullage for him. Then I must launder and iron a tunic. Then I must dust his

goods and clean and tidy his tent. Then I was made to sew, and then clean and

polish his leather.”

“And how did you feel,” asked the girl to whom she was speaking, “performing

these small tasks for him, suitable for a slave?”

“Gradually, serving him helplessly, then lovingly in these fashions, I became

more and more aroused,” she said. “Then, finally, after the polishing of the

feather, I could stand it no longer. I threw myself to my belly before him,

juicing like a larma.”

“Did he then content you?” asked the other girl.

“Yes,” said the girl, “though the brute made me squirm a little first.”

How well that master had understood sex, and the sexuality of the female, I

thought. He apparently understood something of the pervasiveness and totality of

female sexuality. They had been, in their way, having sex together for hours,

before he even touched her. Well had he understood the woman, and her needs and

desires to be pleasing, and to submit and serve in many ways. It was the total

woman, in her wholeness, which he, to her joy, had chosen to dominate.

How terrible, I thought, to be a slave!

“Would you like to be sent again to his tent?” asked the other girl.

“Yes,” said the girl. “Yesl Oh, yesl”

What a meaningless slut she wasl How pleased I was that I was not a slave!

“You, Slave!” called a voice.

I stopped in my tracks. I put my fists before my mouth, in terror, but, too, to

hide my neck.

“Not you, you!” said the voice.

I quickly hurried on, trembling. It seemed that any moment I must be discovered.

“I must see him again,” the girl in front of me was saying.

“Why?” asked the other.

“I think he is my love master,” she breathed.

“It is more likely that you are his love slave,” laughed the other.

“He must call for me again!” said the girl.

“You are, of course, entitled to hope that,” said the other, “when you lie

alone, chained in your place.”

“He must!” she wept.

“Perhaps he will have you summoned again to his tent,” said the second girl.

“I must see him again!” she said.

“That will be decided by masters,” said the second girl. How horrifying to be a

slave, I thought. How pleased I was that I was not a slave.

Swiftly, then, seeing more men waiting further down the lane, sonic with loops

of chain in their hands, I slipped to the side between the tents. I could see

women lining up down there, too, being put in wrist or throat coffle, each one

doubtless reporting in, and in the proper position, to the appropriate slave

master.

I skirted a large cooking area. I could smell freshly baked bread, and the

cooking of eggs and meat.

I made my way among tents, every sense alert, sometimes crawling on my hands and

knees.

It was still quite dark. Here and there, there were morning fires. The moons

were down.

I cried out in misery. A sleen, snarling, leapt toward me, but was stopped by

its chain.

I continued on my way, treading narrow valleys between mountains of sacks,

narrow aisles separating cliffs of boxes.

“Where are you going, little lady?” called a fellow from above me.

He was standing on boxes, carrying a box. I had not even seen him.

“The chains,” he said, “are behind you and to your right.”

Swiftly I sped away, in the general direction he had indicated. Then, when I was

confident I was out of his sight, I resumed, as nearly as I could, given the

bundles, the boxes and crates, my original direction.

Then I found myself in a blind alley, a place where the passage was closed by a

sheer wall of boxes, several feet over my head. I hurried back and tried another

passage. It, too, to my misery, was blocked. Then I suddenly realized I had lost

my direction. Between the boxes, at places, darknesses in the darkness, there

were narrow cracks. I did not know which ere passages and which were mere places

where several boxes had been removed. I struck with my fists at the wall of

boxes.

Then, suddenly, I heard a tarn scream, and not more than o or three hundred

yards away.

Too, I saw a lantern approaching behind me.

I darted through an opening, came to a wall, and crouched between two boxes.

I saw the light of the lantern on the boxes ahead of me, a WO it was lifted at

the passage I had entered.

“She came this way,” said a voice.

I heard the two men entering the passage.

“There she is!” said one of them. I gasped, in terror.

Then I heard a sudden scrambling. “I’ve got you, you little she-sleen!” he said.

I heard a small body flung to the dirt. Then I heard the snapping on of slave

bracelets.

“Turn her over,” said a voice.

I heard a body moked.

“She’s a pretty one,” said a voice. “Read her collar.”

“Our little thief is Tula, of the chain of Ephialtes,” said the other voice.

“I stole nothing, Masterl” cried the girl.

“Thrust up her tunic,” said the first voice. “Now split your I legs, Tula. Good

girl. Now, what were you saying?” girl

“It was only one pastry, Master,” said the girl. “For all Tula! Do not beat

herl”

“Keep those legs wide, Tula,” said the first voice. con

“Yes, Master,” whimpered the girl. imp

I then listened, with misery, while the two men, one after hap the other, in the

narrow passageway between the boxes, used brutal, forceful use of her almost

overwhelmed me psychologically. How helpless, how dominated are slavesl I

touched then myself. To my horror, I, too, was wet. I gritted my teeth. I her

hoped they could not smell me. I trembled. I tried not to feel, with

It was almost as though they, in inflicting themselves on that pathetic slave,

were subjecting me, as well, to those in so debasing, masterly thrusts. Yet, of

course, they were not, pum in this, to my scandal, I felt keen frustration. I

found myself, envying her. I wondered what it would be like to be held not in

the arms of such brutes, a cringing vessel for th pleasure, choiceless but to

rhapsodically succumb. time forced such thoughts from my mind. Surely I must n

such thoughts. Surely they were appropriate only for a slave

I looked up, miserably. The sky was becoming gray n

In a few minutes, perhaps, the cage would be lowered.

my absence would be noted. girl.

Me entire camp, then, and its vicinity, I did not doubt, would be subjected to

an inch-by-inch search, one that it uld be impossible to elude.

I had failed to escape.

“On your feet, Tula,” said one of the men.

“Tula has served you well, has she not?” begged the girl. I heard her pull at

the slave bracelets.

“Put down her tunic,” said the first man.

“There,” said the second.

“When we called to you to stop, Tula,” said the first man, “you ran. Have You

ever run away before?”

“I was not really running away,” said the girl. “I just did want you to catch

me.”

“Must a question be repeated?” asked the first man.

“No, Master,” she said, quickly. “I have never run away before!”

That is fortunate for you,” said the man. shuddered, crouching between the

boxes. The first time a runs away she is commonly only beaten. Many girls, m

they first go into a collar, do not realize that escape, for practical purposes,

is impossible for them, or how easily, imonly, they can be picked up and caught.

The practical ~ossibility of escape is a function of several factors. Perhaps

one of the most important among them is the closely nature of Gorean society. In

such a society it is difficult to establish false identities. Other factors

which might be A are the support of the society for slavery, the absence i place

to run, so to speak, and the relentlessness with such slaves are commonly

sought.

Other factors are such as the distinctive garb of the slave, the encirclement of