"Yes, Master," she whispered, frightened.
"You are property," I said.
"Yes, Master," she said.
"A treasure," I said.
"Your treasure," she said.
"Yes," I said.
"How strange it is to be helplessly owned," she marveled, "to be subject to sale or exchange."
"Do you find it thrilling?" I asked.
"Yes, Master," she said.
"Who owns you?" I asked.
"You do, Master," she said.
"Whose are you?" I asked.
"I am yours," she said, "literally."
"Yes," I said.
"Take your girl, Master," she said. "She begs you.
"Very well," I said.
"This is what it is to be a slave," she whispered. "Slavery is more than your touch, but without your touch it would be nothing."
I kissed her, softly.
"It is your touch," she said, intensely, "which makes a girl a slave!"
"The touch of any master," I said, "can turn a girl into a slave."
"Do you leave me no pride?" she wept.
"None," I said, "for you are a slave."
Her breathing became more intense.
"Do not disturb the others in the hut," I cautioned her.
"Yes, Master," she whispered. Then she again yielded, intensely, helplessly.
Afterwards she lay against me, soft and warm, and small and lovely. "Do you know what I would do now," she asked, "if you were to throw your chains before me?"
"No," I said, kissing her.
"I would kneel," she said, "and I would lift them in my hands, and-"
"Yes?" I asked.
"And then I would kiss and lick them," she whispered.
"Of course," I said, "you are a slave."
"Yes, I am a slave, Master," she said.
"Sleep now," I said.
"Master," she said.
"Yes," I said.
"I am not afraid now," she said, "to go out on the ice."
"Why not?" I asked.
"You will be with me," she said.
"It will be dangerous," I said.
"I am not afraid. You will be with me," she said. Then she said, "Thank you for letting a frightened girl enter your furs tonight."
"That is all right," I said. I rolled over.
"You are kind," she said.
"Beware," I said.
"Forgive me, Master," she said, suddenly frightened. "I meant no harm. It was a small slip. I did not mean to insult you. Please do not whip me for it."
"Very well," I said. I was tired. Too, it did not seem to me that her remark, inadvertent and perilous as it may have been, impaired the discipline in which I held her. Kindness is not always a weakness you must understand. Indeed, it, and its withdrawal, may be used to better control the girl. To be sure, the master who is harder to please gets more from his girl than the master who is easy to please, but, nonetheless, I think kindness is not out of place upon occasion toward a bond girl. Indeed, in a certain context a kind word can almost cause such a wench, collared and at your mercy, to faint with love. I do not think I am a particularly kind or unkind master. I think I am in the normal range where such matters are concerned. Kindness is acceptable, in my opinion, provided the girl knows that she is kept within the strictest of disciplines. I want no more from a girl than everything. If I own her, then, like any other Gorean master, I will simply see that I get it. Beyond that, I may be kind to her or not, as I see fit. Sometimes, of course, kindness is cruelty, and a certain harshness may be kind. One must know the girl. The truly kind master, I think, is he who treats the girl in such a way that she is forced to fulfill her needs in their radical depth and diversity; he gives her no choice but to be a woman, in the full meaning of this word, which is the only thing that can truly, ultimately, make her happy, If a woman were a man perhaps the way to make her happy would be to treat her like a man. If she is not a man perhaps treating her like a man is not the way to make her happy. It may seem hard to understand but the man who truly cares for his slave is often rather strict with her; he cares for her enough to be strong; sometimes she may resent or hate him but, too, she is inordinately proud of him, for what he makes her do, and be, and she loves him for his strength and his will; in her heart she knows she is the slave of such a man; how can she not love the man who proves himself to be her master? But the natures of men and women are doubtlessly complex and mysterious. Perhaps women, after all, are not women, but only small, incomplete men, as many women and men, espousing the current political and economic orthodoxies on the matter, the required, expected views on the matter, would insist. I do not know. And yet how peculiar and surprising would such a perversion appear against the expanse of history.
"Sleep now, sweet slave," I said.
"Yes, Master," she said.
I lay awake for a time, wondering on the natures of women and men, and then I was pleased that I was on Gor, and not on Earth. I kissed the lovely slave beside me, but she did not know I kissed her, for she was asleep. I thought of Karjuk, and the ice. The word 'Karjuk', incidentally, in the language of the Innuit, means 'Arrow'. The wind began to rise outside. I did not care to hear the wind, I hoped it did not presage a storm. Then I fell asleep.
25
We Go Out Upon The Ice; We Follow Karjuk
It was bitterly cold. I did not know how far out on the ice we were.
"Shove!" called Imnak. Imnak and I, and the girls, tipped the sled over a slope of pack ice, it tilting and then sliding downward.
"Wait!" called Imnak to Karjuk.
Karjuk stepped off the runners of his sled and called to his snow sleen, dragging back on the tabuk-horn uprights at the rear of the sled, by means of which he guided the snow vessel.
There were three sleds in our party. Karjuk had his own, and his own snow sleen. The second sled was Imnak's, and the third was Ram's, brought with him from the south, which the men of the permanent camp had drawn to the camp fol him. Imnak's sled was drawn by a snow sleen borrowed from his friend, Akko, and Ram's sled was drawn by another snow sleen, replacing the one the Kur had slain outside the camp. He had purchased it from Naartok for Bazi tea. Karjuk sledded alone; so, too, did Ram: Imnak and I brought up the rear with Imnak's sled, fashioned long ago at the remains of the wall. The four girls traveled with us, usually running as we did, with the sled. Sometimes, as they grew exhausted, we would permit one or another of them to ride upon the sled.
Karjuk lifted his hand, to again commence our journey.
"No, wait!" called Imnak. He was looking up at the sky. No storm had yet struck, but the sky was growing overcast. We had been five days now upon the ice. A storm, for days, had foreboded, but it had not yet materialized. In this we had been fortunate. As I may have mentioned the arctic night is seldom completely dark. Indeed, the visibility is often quite good, for the light of the moons, and even the stars, is reflected from the vastness of the ice and snow. I looked about at the irregular and jagged shapes, wierd and mighty, yhich loomed about us, of the pack ice, eerie in the deep shadows, and bright, strange light of the moons and snow. We stood small in the midst of incredible and fearful geometries. There was a beauty and a menace in these gigantic structures, fashioned by the bitter gnawing of the wind and the upheavals of the sea stirring beneath us. Sometimes we could feel the ice move. Sometimes we bridged, carefully, leads of open water, broken open by the groaning, shifting ice, soon to close again, almost beneath our feet.
Imnak pointed upward, back toward the south. We could not see the stars there. Cloud cover obscured them.