“Have you had your slave wine?” he asked.
“Yes,” she said. She shuddered. She had been knelt and held, her head forced back, and cruelly held so by the hair, and her mouth forced open, and the spike of the wooden funnel forced between her teeth. Then the wretched, foul stuff was poured into mouth, her nostrils at the same time being pinched tightly shut. When she had to breathe she must imbibe the slave wine. Afterwards her hands were tied behind her, that she might not induce its vulgar emission.
“You cannot now conceive,” he told her. “If a releaser, as one speaks of it, is later administered, which is a quite sweet, flavorful drink I am told, you will again be able to conceive. Conception in slaves, of course, is closely supervised. They are crossed, mated, and bred only as, and precisely as, masters desire.”
She nodded.
Masters must be careful of their stock.
“Sometimes, in rural areas,” he said, “there is a breeding festival, and slaves from miles about, hooded and bound, carefully selected, of course, on leashes behind wagons, in crates, and so on, are brought to the breeding grounds.
He could breed me, she thought.
“It is a time of much feasting and merriment,” he said, “much like a fair.”
He could literally breed me, she thought. I wonder if he will breed me.
She looked at him. Before he had been as he was now, much as he had been as a student, at least physically, but she had been, say, in her late twenties. She knew now, of course, given their last encounter, that he could own, dominate and master her, even were he as he was now, and she older, she in her late twenties. The principle of her femininity had been helpless before, and overwhelmed by, the principle of his masculinity. She would have obediently writhed at his feet and obeyed him in all things. He would, even then, have been the total and categorical owner of, and master of, her womanhood. She had sensed that even in the classroom, so long ago. She knew how she would have been, on any terms he might have set, helplessly his. But now she was only, say, eighteen or nineteen, and he, surely, somewhere in his early twenties. Now he was older, and even more mature, than she. She was now no more than a girl before him.
Could he like me, she wondered.
Has he plans to keep me for himself?
I love him, she thought.
“How do your lessons proceed?” he asked.
“I trust, well,” she said. “But there is something I do not understand.”
“What is that?” he asked.
“I sense that there are many things I do not know, that there are many things that I am not being taught.”
“That is true,” he said.
“I am still very naive, very ignorant,” she said.
“True,” he said.
“Would I not be more valuable if I knew them?” she asked.
“Certainly,” he said.
“Why am I not taught them then?” she asked, puzzled.
“Think,” he said.
“In order that I remain naive and ignorant, in order that I remain negligible, in order that I remain meaningless, that I remain nothing, that I not be more valuable?” she asked.
“Do you like your present accommodations?” he inquired.
“Doubtless they are in accord with the directions of Master,” she said.
“Certainly,” he said.
“Master is cruel to his slave,” she said.
“You could have been put in close chains, or in a slave box, or a slave pit,” he said.
Her new accommodations were a tiny slave cage. It was some four feet, by four feet by four feet, formed of closely set metal bars, a half inch or so in thickness, except for the floor, which was of metal. She could not stretch out her body fully within it. The bars were somewhat narrow, one supposes, with that half inch or so in thickness, but they were fully and perfectly adequate for holding a female. It was not unlike the sort used by many hunters in the field, in their base camp, for the temporary confinement of their catches. There was no straw in the cage, but she had been permitted to retain her blanket.
“Each time,” she said, “you have treated me more cruelly, granted me fewer privileges, been harsher with me!”
“The better to accustom you to your bondage,” said he, “slave girl.”
“Do you not like me, Master?” she asked.
She looked at him, trying to read in his visage some glimmering of emotion, some small sign of his feelings.
He had brought her to this world, he had remembered her, he had made her his slave.
Surely then he must have some feeling for her.
I am his, I love him, she thought.
How could he have known that I wanted to be owned, and ravished, and mastered? Why else would he have ankleted me, and imposed his will upon me? She realized, as many professedly sharing her ideology, how foolishly naive it was, how little account it took of the biotruths of human existence. Men, if they were not crippled, were ambitious, jealous and possessive. She knew that her sex, by nature, belonged to them. They did not wish to relate to their women as contractual associates, but as masters. They wanted to own them. Men truly loved only that which they owned, that which was fully theirs. They treasured their possessions, their dogs, their tools, their books, their homes, their cars, their women. How can what does not belong to a man wholly be treasured by him? When his heat is upon him does he wish to fence and banter with a contractual associate? Nay, he wishes in covetous, exultant lust to bind and master a slave! She wondered in how many marriages, in the secrecy of their homes, wives were the slaves of their husbands. But here on Gor, she thought, slavery is explicit, acknowledged, sanctified in tradition and law, and here men are the masters, at least of women such as she. And the women, she thought, how many there must be, as she, who longed to be owned, who longed to obey and serve, who would give all, all their beauty and devotion, all their helpless, surrendering love, to the man they longed to meet, who would put them at his feet, and make them his, their master.
She looked up at him.
He looked much as he had before, robed, and such, save that now, as he reclined in the curule chair, across his knees there lay a whip.
She spread her knees a bit more widely, as she feared that she had, inadvertently, let them close a bit.
She was deeply stirred, so kneeling before him, so clad, with no nether shielding, with her knees so spread.
She needed no one to tell her that bondage was sexually arousing to a woman. Frigidity she knew was not acceptable in a female slave. Inertness was forbidden to them. Passivity was not tolerated. Inhibitions were not permitted. If necessary, such culturally inculcated impediments to the flames of love could be lashed from their bodies. They would be given no choice but to become their natural, hot, animal, yielding female selves. They would have absolutely no choice. They must become what they were, the female to the male, the slave to the master.
“May I speak?” she asked.
“Yes,” he said.
It is not uncommon for a slave girl to ask permission to speak. She is, after all, a slave. To be sure, there is a great deal of variation in such matters, among masters and slaves. Delicate considerations are sometimes involved, and much depends on a given context, the occasion, the location, who is present and such. The slave, particularly after a cuffing or two, tends to develop a great sensitivity to such things. Some slaves are permitted a liberty of speech by their masters which is not obviously inferior to that enjoyed by a free woman, until a stern look puts them to their knees, reminding them of what they are. And it is a rare slave who has not, upon occasion, her master’s patience at an end, been put upon her knees, facing a wall, gagged, her hands tied behind her back, or perhaps, bound hand and foot, her mouth taped shut, thrown naked on a bed. Too, the Master may gag his slave “by his will,” and then she must serve in silence.