“It was a test, slave girl,” said he, “and you failed it miserably!”
“How a test, Master?”
“I thought I would give you some laxity, to see if you could handle it, to see what you were really like. And I found out! You are nasty, small, petty and vain!”
“No, Master!” cried the slave.
“You tried to manipulate me, with sorry feminine tricks,” he said.
“No, Master!” she wept. But well did she recall, to her misery, a thousand omissions, slights and provocations. She recalled how she had challenged him to prove himself her master, to sell or give her to another, who might provide the master to her slave, to place her into the possession of one who was a man.
“Even today,” he said, angrily, “you did not ask permission to remain at the road, but announced that you would do so. Do you know the penalty for such insolence? You dallied in returning to the camp, until the work was largely done. Do you know the penalty for such truancy? You did not kneel when entering our presence! Do you know the penalty for such disrespect? You deserve to be left in the forest for sleen! On the road, itself, earlier, you ran beside a slave and discomfited her, and risked calling the attention of armed men to yourself. You are fortunate that the discipline of the guards was such that you were not thonged, tethered to a pommel, and taken along for an evening’s raping.”
“She tossed her head at me, insolently,” said Ellen. “She was haughty!”
“Surely that is a small thing,” said Portus Canio, “a squabble amongst slave girls, nothing with which masters need concern themselves.”
“So, too, it seems to me,” said Fel Doron.
“Yes, Masters! Thank you, Masters!” said Ellen.
“That leaves, of course, many other shortcomings,” said Portus Canio.
“True,” said Fel Doron.
Tears burst from the eyes of the slave. She was helplessly tethered, tied for whipping.
“Surely you care for me, Master!” she cried.
“You are petty, small and nasty!” he said. “You deserve only the whip and chain.”
“I want the whip and chain,” she cried out, suddenly, startling herself. She wept. “Without it how can I know that I am female and yours?” she whispered.
A bit of wind moved through the leaves, overhead. She felt it on her back, too, where her hair had been thrown forward, before her body.
Suddenly, in terror, she realized the meaning of that.
Nothing, no matter how trivial, would be interposed between her back and the whip.
“But I want love, as well!” she cried.
He laughed, sardonically, skeptically.
“It is true!” she cried. “And I love you! Yes, I do! I love you, Master! I love you, Master! Surely you love me, too, if only a little?”
“No,” said he, angrily, “but I lust for you, and you will be well taught what that means at the foot of my couch!”
“Surely you care for me, if only a little, Master!” she said.
“No,” said he, angrily.
“Oh, no, no, Master!” wept Ellen.
“Strive to be worthy of being cared for,” said Portus Canio. “Many men will feel a fondness for a kaiila or a pet sleen, so why not for a slave? Let yourself strive with all your might, with all your intelligence, with all your zeal and diligence, with all your helplessness and vulnerability, with all your service and beauty, for the least touch, for a gentle word, a kind glance.”
“Prepare to be whipped, slave girl,” said Selius Arconious.
“Do not whip me, Master!” begged Ellen.
“Are you in a collar?” asked Selius Arconious.
“Yes, Master!”
“Is it a slave collar?”
“Yes, Master!”
“Then you are a slave?”
“Yes, Master.”
“Whose collar is it?”
“Yours, Master!”
“Then whose slave are you?”
“Yours, Master!”
“Prepare to be whipped,” said he.
“Wait, Master!” she cried.
The lash did not fall.
“Recall that I am from Earth, Master!” she wept. “That is a different culture from yours. The women of Earth, certainly most of them, are not accustomed to being slaves. They would not even understand what it is to be a slave!”
“Every woman,” said Selius Arconious, “understands what it would be, to be a slave.”
“I am other than your Gorean women!” cried Ellen. “I am more delicate, more sensitive, finer! Your culture is primitive, a culture in which such a thing as the beating of a slave may be accepted, but I am not of that culture. In deference to my background, my upbringing, my education, my refinement, such things should not be done to me! They are not for me! I am above them! I should not be subjected to such things. They are inappropriate for me! Your culture is barbaric. You are barbarians! I am not a barbarian! I am civilized! I am a civilized woman!”
“‘Girl,’” corrected Selius Arconious.
“Yes, Master,” she said.
“It is you who are the barbarian,” said Portus Canio, matter-of-factly.
“It is true, Master,” acknowledged Ellen, “that Gorean is not my native tongue.”
“Thus,” said Portus Canio, “you are a barbarian.”
“Yes, Master,” said Ellen, twisting in the ropes, “in that sense.”
The usual criterion on Gor for a barbarian is one who does not speak Gorean, or, perhaps better, whose original language is not Gorean. Ellen, for example, who is now fluent in Gorean, continues to be thought of as a “barbarian.”
“In more than that sense,” said Portus Canio.
“Yes, Master,” granted Ellen. Ellen knew that those brought to Gor from Earth were accounted barbarians in a sense stronger than one merely linguistic, one having to do with a remote and commonly little-understood point of origin. Many Goreans, incidentally, assume that “Earth” is a remote locale or land on their own world.
“You speak of yourself as civilized,” said Portus Canio, “say, in contradistinction, from Goreans?”
“Yes,” said Ellen, a little uncertainly.
It is hard to participate in such a conversation when one is on one’s knees, bound naked at a pole, and has a whip somewhere behind one.
“Your world is civilized?” asked Portus Canio.
“Yes, Master,” said Ellen.
“On the trail, from time to time,” said Portus Canio, “Mirus and I whiled away many a pleasant Ahn in conversation.”
“Yes, Master?” said Ellen, apprehensively.
“You recall Mirus?” he asked.
“Certainly, Master,” said Ellen, “— Master Mirus.”
Ellen was now much on her guard. Had it been a trap? A slave girl does not address a free person by their name, but will use the expressions ‘Master’ or ‘Mistress’, or, sometimes, if referring to one’s owner, ‘my Master’ or ‘my Mistress.’ Similarly, in referring to a free person, one would commonly use expressions such as ‘Master Publius’, ‘Mistress Publia’, and so on. If asked, say, her master, the slave might respond, ‘My master is Selius Arconious, of Ar’, or such.
“I am not at all certain that your world is civilized,” said Portus Canio.
“Master?”
“I gather you do have mighty machines, and such.”
“Yes, Master.”
“But there are, as I understand it, no Home Stones on your world.”
“No, Master, or I would suppose not.”
“How then can it be civilized?”
Ellen was silent.
“Mirus spoke to me of monstrosities of indiscriminate death, contrived by the clever and mindless, of crowdings, of manipulations, of hatreds, pollutions, diseases and famines. He spoke of the ruination of lakes and forests, of the extinction of life forms, of a world being poisoned. He spoke to me of a world in which brothers might kill brothers, or friends friends, were a particle of power or profit to be gained, a world in which nature is scarred, wounded and betrayed, a world in which human beings do not know one another, nor do they care to do so, a world in which fidelity is scorned and honor mocked.”