Kajira of Gor (39 page)

to his will, not mine. He had literally given me no choice. He had forced my

yielding. He had made me come to him and rather, I was afraid, like a slave. I

was a bit disappointed in one way. It was I who was in the position of the

slave. I had wanted to serve him, to please him, to bring him pleasure. Instead

I myself had been forced to feel pleasure and even, choiceless, to yield.

“Did I please you?” I asked.

“Yes,” he said. I licked and kissed at his shoulder in gratitude. Even though he

had given me little opportunity to please him he had still, apparently, found me

pleasing.

Women, I supposed, might be found pleasing by men in many ways. Perhaps that is

one way for a woman to be pleasing, I thought, that the man does with her what

he wishes, that he chooses, as he wishes, to please himself with her.

I kissed him, helplessly. He drew back a bit from me. I saw a chain snapped onto

the common chain of the women.

At the end of this shorter chain there was an open collar. It was then put about

my neck and snapped shut. I touched it. I was now on the same chain with the

other women.

He stood up. I lay at his feet, on the floor of the slave wagon, on the blanket,

chained. I had been well had. I did not know what he would do with me now.

Perhaps it would amuse him to turn me over to the authorities now. I did not

know.

“Do you still claim to be a free woman, Tiffany?” he asked.

“Why?” I asked.

“Because you have the responses and reflexes of a slave,” he said.

“I claim nothing,” I said, vanquished and chained.

“Are you really free?” he asked.

“it doesn’t matter now, does it?” I asked.

“Not at all,” he said.

“What do you think?” I asked him.

“I think you are a slave,” he said.

“I am not branded and collared,” I reminded him, “except, of course, for the

holding-chain collar.”

“We will do something about that,” he said, “outside of Ar.”

I looked at him, startled. Quickly I scrambled to my knees before him, the palms

of my hands on the floor of the wagon.

“Accustom yourself to calling free men ‘Master’ and free women ‘Mistress,’” he

said

“Yes, Master!” I said.

“And you are low girl here,” he said, “so you will address your chain sisters as

‘Mistress’ as well.”

“Yes, Master!” I cried.

“You are a mill girl now, Tiffany,” he said.

“Yes, Master! Thank you, Master!” I sobbed, and put down my head, covering his

feet with kisses of gratitude.

He then withdrew, taking the lantern with him. Durbar accompanied him.

I then lay down with my chain sisters. I tried to gather my thoughts. I had been

captured, and this terrified me. Furthermore I now could entertain few realistic

thoughts of escape. I did not think that any mysterious men would suddenly

appear to free me, as at the camp of Miles of Argentum. Similarly these men

seemed to be professionals in the handling of women. I did not think they, like

Speusippus, for example, would be likely to use a wooden trunk for a slave

kennel.

Furthermore I knew the security in the mills, behind those high, gray walls, was

for most practical purposes absolute.

Similarly, there presumably I would be branded, collared and, if permitted

clothing, put in distinctive garb. Thus, even if one did manage to get beyond

the wails, one would presumably be apprehended swiftly and returned to the mill

masters.

Similarly the mills had their own sleen, both for patrolling the yard at night

and, if need be, trailing slaves. No, girls did not escape from the mills. Too,

I was horrified at the thought of going to the mills, for they were one of the

lowest and hardest slaveries on Gor. That would be the end of Tiffany Collins, I

feared, a slave in a Gorean mill. On the other hand I had, honestly, and

joyfully, kissed at the driver’s feet for the mercy shown to me. Had he turned

me over to the authorities I would doubtless have eventually been returned to

Speusippus as his strayed Lita, and then conveyed by him, probably in chains, to

Argentum, there presumably to be commended to the attentions of the impaling

spear As it was, in the mill, in Ar, I should be hidden and safe. There, though

a slave, I would be concealed, fed and protected. I did not think anyone would

think of looking in a mill for the Tatrix of Corcyrus, and certainly not one in

Ar. My feelings were thus mixed in this matter. I was relieved, too, in a way,

of course, that I now no longer needed fear capture. It had happened to me. I

must now abide its consequences. Too, no longer now need I forage for food and

shelter as an ignorant, naked fugitive, often fearful, miserable, cold and

hungry. I supposed it had been only a matter of time until someone had caught

me. Perhaps it was just as well that it had happened as it did.

But whatever might be the pros and cons of this matter they were now mostly

academic. I had again, as a matter of fact, fallen into the power of men. I lay

in a slave wagon.

Their chain was on my neck.

I wondered, too, on what sort of creature it was that they had their chain.

I did not think that I was the same Tiffany Collins as I had been earlier.

The second fellow who had had me, the leader of the two drivers, had taught me

much. I now knew, to some extent, what could be done to me. I did not think I

was likely to forget it. I could be forced to yield myself to a man as a slave.

This made me feel very helpless. Men are, I supposed, the masters. But, too, I

remembered clearly that wild, surging, overwhelming sensation I had felt. I

certainly, desperately, wanted to feel that again. Too, I sensed, it frightening

me somewhat, but also exciting and intriguing me almost to the point of madness,

that behind that sensation there might be others, indeed, that there might lie

beyond that sensation almost indefinite vistas of kindred emotions and feelings.

who, I wondered, has plumbed the depths of feelings’ oceans or has successfully

mapped the countries of love? I found that I, and this frightened me, wanted to

submit to men and yield to then’ as a slave. This was not a simple matter of

sentience, incidentally, but involved an entire matrix of feeling, thought and

emotion. I wanted to love and serve, to be fully pleasing not merely in a sexual

manner but in all ways, to ask nothing and give all. But, too, it must be

admitted that powerful physical feelings were also involved. I bit at the

blanket and squirmed.

“Lie still,” said a woman.

“Yes, Mistress,” I said. “Forgive me, Mistress.”

I must not let them make me a slave, I thought. I must fight these feelings,

these sensations. I must try to be more like a free woman, I told myself. I must

try to be inert and cold.

But what chance will I have, I asked myself, if I am branded and they put a

collar on my neck, and I am subject to the whip, and to the uncompromising

disciplines of Gorean masters?

I must not permit them to light slave fires in my belly, I thought.

But what can I do if they should simply choose to do so, I thought. Then they

would be lit, and that would be all there was to it, I told myself. Then,

Tiffany, poor girl, you would be a slave for certain. “You are already a slave

for certain, Tiffany, and you know it, a voice seemed to say from within me,

that voice which in the past had seemed to speak to me, too, though usually in

the quarters of the Tatrix, as when it had ordered me, and I had complied, to

kiss a whip or the slave ring. “Perhaps,” I said to the voice, to myself.

It was near dawn now. The wagon would proceed east on the Argentum road, reach

the Viktel Aria, and turn south.

Then, in time, it would arrive in Ar. Soon I would be enslaved, legally. I would

be, totally, legally, a slave on Gor.

I found myself looking forward to the collar and the brand. They were now

unavoidable. I would have no choice in the matter. They would simply be put on

me. I hoped I would look well in my collar. I hoped I would look well in my

brand. Most women are stunning in them, and I did not think I would be

different. I wondered if I were truly a slave.

I wondered if the collar and brand belonged on me. “Per haps,” I thought. I

hoped it would not hurt too much to be branded. It was the mark that stayed, of

course, not the pain.

“You are awake,” whispered a woman to me.

“Yes, Mistress,” I said.

“You may be pretty,” she said, “and the men may like you, but do not think that

you are better than us.”

“No, Mistress,” I said.

“You are a little slut,” she said.

“Yes, Mistress,” I said.

“And you are going to be a work slave, too, my dear,” she said.

“Yes, Mistress,” I said.

“Now go to sleep, barbarian slut,” she said.

“I will try, Mistress,” I said.

for a moment or two, suddenly recalling the wild sensations the driver had

induced in me, I inadvertently moaned and moved.

“Be quiet!” said the woman.

“Yes, Mistress,” I said. “I am sorry, Mistress!”

Then I lay there frightened, chained, on the blanket, on the boards of the wagon

bed, under the overhead tarpaulin. I turned and grasped the blanket. I bit at

it. My thighs moved.

I was afraid.

I feared that already slave fires had been lit in my belly.

24
   
The Mill

I stood in a long line, single-file, of some twenty girls. We were all naked. We

were in the yard of one of the linen mills of Mintar, of Ar.

I heard the second of the two heavy gates close behind us.

I looked back, and about me, across the yard, at the high walls, with their

guard stations.

“Do not even think of escape, Tiffany,” said a girl behind me, Emily.

“There is only one way out of here,” said another girl, behind her, “and that is

to please your way out.”

Almost any woman, I supposed, could become pleasing.

And even women who, objectively, seemed rather plain, I knew, as their attitudes

changed, and as they became submissive, and yielding to their femininity, in

their deepest emotions, could become beautiful. Still, of course, in a mill, few

would know this. Such a woman, I supposed, aching for a man’s touch, might be

kept indefinitely in the mill, working her long hours of tiring labor, her left

ankle chained to the loom. The mills, incidentally, like certain other low

slaveries, such as those of the fields, the kitchens and laundries, serve an

almost penal function on Gor. For example, a free woman, sentenced to slavery

for, say, crimes or debts, may find herself, once enslaved, by direction of the

court, sold for a pittance into such a slavery. Such slaveries also provide a

place to utilize women who are thought to be good for little else. Most women,

after a short time in such a slavery, strive to convince masters of their fuller

potentialities for service and pleasure. If the woman prefers to remain in such

a slavery, of course, that, too, is found acceptable by the masters.

“But that, too, is dangerous,” said another girl, “for if you are too pleasing,

the whip masters will hide you and keep you for themselves.”

“You are all sluts,” said a large, ugly woman, Luta, a few spaces back.

A whip cracked, and we all jumped, frightened. We were naked. We did not want to

feel it. “No talking in line,” said a man. We were then silent. Luta need not

have spoken as loudly as she had. I do not think the man would have minded it if

we had spoken quietly among ourselves.

I was afraid of Luta. She was large and strong, and I could tell she did not

like me.

“Next,” said a man at a table, and we moved up one space.

Only two of the girls in this line had been in the slave wagon on the Argentum

road with me, Emily and Luta.

Though Emily bore an Earth-girl name she was Gorean. On Gor Earth-girl names are

commonly used as slave names. If you have an Earth-girl name it is probably,

somewhere on Gor, being used as a slave name. Similarly, if you were to go to

Gor and give that to them as your name they would assume immediately that you,

too, bearing such a name, were a slave. And, indeed, if you were taken to Gor, I

suppose you would be.

“Next,” said the man at the table. We moved up another space.

I was not now collared. It had been removed from me a few Ehn ago, before I had

been assigned to this line. I had worn it for only a few Ahn. Outside of Ar we

had stopped at the office and holding area of a man associated with the various

enterprises of Mintar, including his mills. There we were to be divided up and,

with others, transferred to closed slave wagons. One does not usually take an

open slave wagon on the streets of Ar, in deference to the sensibilities of free

women. While others were in the holding area I was taken by Tenrak, which was,

as I had later learned, the name of the leader of the two drivers, to the shop

of a metal worker.

There something was done to me. Then I was returned to the holding area, now a

slave. At the holding area I was put in a transfer collar. The others were

already in theirs. These collars were color-coded for our destinations, some

girls being delivered to one place and some to another. There is an ordinance in