Ellen felt herself regarded, and she put her head down.
“I was the first,” said Mirus, “to have her put where she belongs, in a collar.”
“I think the men of Earth must be stupid.”
“Many, doubtless,” said Mirus.
“If you were surprised at how well she did in the dance, as you claimed,” said the spokesman, “why would you have had her danced in the first place?”
“I expected her to do badly,” said Mirus. “Particularly for the ba-ta circle. I wished not only to shame her, but to have her fail miserably. I wished that her dancing, that of a mere Earth girl, for one knows what they are, to be an enraging, pathetic joke on the sand. Thus she would be not only humiliated that she must dance as a slave, but, beyond that, an excruciating shame for a woman, that she would be humiliated that she had failed to please, that she had danced so badly. I then expected to have the pleasure of seeing her, for her temerity in intruding on the ba-ta circle, so unworthy a slave, well and lengthily lashed.”
Ellen shuddered. How miserable she would have been under the lash!
Was there no end, she wondered, to the hatred, the vengeance, of Mirus?
But how little he understood her!
In bringing her to Gor and the collar he had undoubtedly intended, for his satisfaction, his pleasure, his amusement and revenge, to place her fully and irremediably in that situation which he supposed would be the most abject, degrading and miserable of any in which a human female might find herself, and particularly one such as she, the situation of categorical bondage, a situation of obedience, fear, submission, helplessness, and service, a situation in which she could be bought and sold, a situation in which she would be no more than vendible collar meat, vulnerable and rightless, subject to the kennel and cage, to chains and the lash. And so it had been his intention to inflict upon her what he supposed would be the most miserable of lives for a human female, and particularly for one such as she, a life of unutterable terror, misery, lamentation, humiliation, and shame, the life of a female slave.
But how little he understood me, and understands me, thought Ellen.
He did not understand, she was sure, that he had, however unintentionally, and doubtless much against his will, brought her not to misery and ruin but to herself, to a happiness she had never hitherto realized could exist, brought her to a meaningfulness and a fullness of life which she would never have dreamed possible, brought her to her radical, fundamental, basic womanhood, brought her to her fulfillment and joy, brought her to the liberation of the collar.
Oh, yes, she thought, I know the terror of the collar. I certainly know it now, for there are men here who would kill me. But it would surely be the same, were I a free woman. The slave is safer, by far, almost always, than a free woman, for the slave, as she is an animal, is not likely to be killed; rather she is likely merely to change hands, as might a kaiila or tarsk. Do not free women, in the fall of a city, often tear away their clothes and cast themselves naked before the conquerors, begging to be kept as a slave? Do not others find collars and attempt to conceal themselves amongst slaves, but are then seized and bound by the slaves and presented naked to the conquerors, exposed in their deceit. And do those slaves not enjoy administering the first whippings to their former mistresses! To be sure, the slave, and her life, belongs to the master. But seldom would she have it otherwise. The usual fear of the female slave is a simple one, that she may fail in some respect to be fully pleasing to the master, in which case she must expect to be punished.
And it can be miserable to be a slave, of course, thought Ellen. There is little doubt about that. One is so helpless, one is so vulnerable. She remembered incidents in the house of Mirus, many in her training, her sometimes almost hysterical despair of ever being able to please her instructors, their impatience with her, her deferent and lengthy serving of formally clad diners, she naked and in a collar, her abuse at the hands of Mirus, her writhing under his whip, the ease with which she was drugged and sold, the heat of Targo’s shelf, the fear of masters and the great tarns, the dust of the coffle, the cruel encirclements of tight, coarse ropes, the weight of chains, the sting of the switch, the stroke of the lash, so many things. But I would not do without even such things, she thought. I would not exchange my collar for the world. It belongs on me. I could not be happy otherwise. Do not such things confirm on me what I am? Am I not then, even in my distress, reassured?
So much depends on the master, she thought. It is little wonder that slaves hope for a private master, one who will notice them, who will speak with them, who will care for them, who will be kind to them, one who will stoke their slave fires and force them to flame with helpless ecstasy, but, in all, one who will well rule their slave, one who will keep them in strict, unrelenting, perfect discipline, and never let them forget what they are, and can only be, a slave.
It is little wonder that slaves come so often to love their masters, and with that passion and devotion which one can find only in a slave.
What slave does not seek her love master? What man does not seek his love slave?
But commonly the slave must strive to conceal the flames of her love, as she is only a slave. Let the master not suspect her presumption and insolence, that she, so unworthy, should dare to love a free man. It is enough that she should be no more than his needful, helplessly submitted, ecstatic toy. And what a fool he would be, on his part, a free man, to love a mere slave! She does not wish to be bound, taken to the market, and sold.
And yet, in all, how many masters, to the chagrin of free women, come to care for their lovely chattels!
And what, thought Ellen, of all this talk of humiliation, shame, degradation, and such. I suspect such things are usually more in the mind of free women than in the mind of the slave. Certainly free women often, in their envy and jealousy, do their best to discomfit a slave, to shame and humiliate her, to treat her as a worthless, degraded object, and so on. But men prefer us. We are the women they want. We are the women they buy.
But, of course, thought Ellen, we can feel humiliation, shame, degradation, and such things!
Are we not slaves?
We must obey instantly, unquestioningly.
We may be used as men please.
And sometimes men force us to experience our own worthlessness, particularly if we are women taken from the enemy, or despised barbarians, good only for servile labors and collar pleasures. Men can enjoy humiliating us. They can see to it easily enough that we burn with shame. They can see to it that we are well reminded that we are slaves, that our condition is abject, that we are vulnerable, that we are helpless, that we are rightless, that we are banded chattels, that we are now no more than animals. They can well enforce upon us a recollection of our meaninglessness and degradation. At their hands we are trained and dominated. But, is it strangely, we can find a fittingness, and a reassurance and comfort in being despised, in being demeaned, in performing humble tasks, the scrubbing of a floor, the polishing of boots, the tidying of a room, the laundering of a tunic, the bringing of the master’s sandals to him, crawling, in our teeth. And we can beg for the most humiliating and shaming of ties and chainings. And it is easy for them to bring us to the point where we will beg shamelessly, lifting our bodies to him, rearing upwards toward him, as the most vulnerable and degraded of slaves, for what may now be but the tiniest touch of the tip of a finger. And sometimes in the midst of our humiliation, our shame, our fervent beggings, our welcomed and sought degradation, we have experiences forever beyond the ken of the free woman, the raptures of the mastered slave.