“I do not understand fully what has been done to me,” she said.
“In what way?” he asked.
“Am I — immortal?” she asked.
“Certainly not,” he said. “You are quite mortal. I might, if I wished, for example, feed you to sleen, or cast you to leech plants.”
She did not believe that the animals called “sleen” existed, thinking them part of the mythology of the world, and she had not heard of “leech plants,” but the tenor of his remarks was sufficiently clear.
“You have been returned to a former condition of your body, and have been stabilized at that point,” he said. “That is what has been done to you.”
“Will I stay like this?” she asked.
“Yes,” he said, “unless your nose and ears are cut off, or such,” he said.
She looked at him with horror.
“You will try to be a good little slave, won’t you?” he asked.
“Yes, Master!” she said. “Master,” she said.
“Yes?” he said.
“Why did you make me this age?”
She was surely, as one would think, were one to look upon her, something like eighteen years of age, perhaps nineteen, at most.
“Why do you think?” he asked.
She resolved to speak boldly before him.
Her belly flamed before him. He was her master.
“I think, Master,” she said, “that you cared for me, that you remembered me, that you had never forgotten me, that you came for me, that you carried me away by force, that you made me your slave because you wanted me, because you desired me, and loved me. And that you have made me this age in order that you would now be more mature than I, that I might now be no more than a girl to your man, a most fitting object for your chains.”
“No,” he said. “I brought you here because I hate you, because I despise you, because I scorn you, because I hold you in utter contempt. That is why I have brought you here and made you a slave.”
“No!” she cried.
“But you said that you found my flanks of interest!” she said.
“That is the only thing about you which could be of the least interest,” said he, “slave.”
She buried her face in her hands, weeping.
“Knees,” he said.
Quickly she spread her knees again.
“But there are two reasons I have had you made the age you are,” he said. “First, I was curious to know what you would have looked like at this age. Now I know, and I acknowledge that you are a pretty little slave, a well-curved, youthful, little slave. The second reason I have had you made the age you are is because you will now be, though you are admittedly pretty, a meaningless, negligible little slave to almost anyone. You will not bring a high price in markets. You will be poor goods. You will be purchased, presumably, by low, ignorant fellows, for small coins, who will put you to repetitive servile labors. Most slave girls are as in their twenties. Even they will look down upon you, as no more than a pretty girl, one who need not be taken seriously, one unimportant and largely worthless.”
She sobbed, holding her face in her hands, not looking at him.
“This, too, is the reason that I have not had you taught more, the reason I have not had you more thoroughly trained. I want you to be largely ignorant and valueless. And thus I will cast you into the terrors and realities of a world which will seem utterly strange to you.”
“You hate me?” she asked.
“Stand,” said he. “Disrobe.”
She stood, her eyes burning, tears streaming down her face. She reached to the disrobing loop at the left shoulder and tugged it, dropping the garment about her ankles. She stepped from it, it lying then beside her, a small atoll of cloth on a calm marble sea. She stood before him, weeping, but erect, gracefully, as she had been taught. She knew how to stand before a man.
He took the whip, which had lain across his knees, and cast it the floor before her.
She looked down at it.
He then stood, rising from the curule chair. He put aside his ornate robes, as of state or office. He stood then above her on the dais, in a simple, belted brown tunic.
She had not realized how large he was, or exactly in this way, as he was now revealed before her, or how formidable he was, how fine, how supple and muscular he was, how sturdy were his legs, how long and powerful his arms. He had large hands. She had realized before, of course, that he was large and strong, but now she gasped, looking upon him. She had not seen him like this before, revealed in this way, in a tunic. It was a simple garment, but how revealingly, how casually, how splendidly it displayed the mighty frame it housed. She was terribly uneasy then, stirred profoundly, these thoughts disturbing her deeply, by the sturdy legs, the width of the shoulders, the strength of the arms. He was disturbingly physical and she, to her horror, found herself thrilled to the quick by the very sight of his body. How wonderful to wear the chains of such a man, she thought. How wonderful it would be to lie embonded in his arms, will-less, ravished, yielding helplessly. She looked at him, and trembled. She had not seen him this way before. She saw him now as Gorean, a scion of this world, and herself as what only such as she could be on such a world, a slave.
“Fetch the whip,” he said.
She went to her hands and knees, and, putting down her head, picked the whip up, delicately, in her teeth.
She looked up at him, the whip between her teeth.
He motioned that she should bring it to him.
Slowly, head down, she crawled to him, and then, after crawling up the steps of the dais, she lifted her head to him.
He took the whip from her and held it before her. Obediently, delicately, she began to lick and kiss the whip. There were the gentle kisses, some prolonged, some as light and quick as the shiftings of sunlight and shadow among stirring leaves, some as bright and unexpected as the pattering of momentary, shimmering drops of rain, some as tender as the falling of the petal of a flower, and the other kisses, the swirling, begging, meaningful kisses, the kisses almost beside themselves, uncontrollable, and the petitionary kisses, reluctant to draw away from the shaft; and there were the movements of the tongue, the tiny dartings, the teasings, the supplications, the tastings, the long, and the short, and the circular caresses, the placatory caresses, the caresses of yearning, and begging and total submission; and she moved her hair about the whip, and thrust the side of her face lovingly against it, rubbing against it, and then looked up, tears in her eyes, at her master.
Angrily he pulled the whip away from her.
“Position!” said he.
She backed down the steps of the dais, crawling, and then went, crawling backward, to where her garment lay on the floor and then knelt beside it, in position, looking at him.
Is he afraid, she asked herself.
He has nothing to fear from me. I am only a slave, his, and I love him with all my heart.
“You do well with the whip,” he snarled.
“Thank you, Master,” she said.
Some have suggested that there is more to the kissing of the whip, and many such things on this world, than may be readily visible on the surface, that such things, in their way, are meaningful, that they, in their way, have symbolic dimensions, that they, in their way, express truths, relationships, acknowledgments, and such. I leave such speculations to the reader.
Her belly flamed before him.
How grateful she was to him, that he had permitted her to kiss his whip.
Without symbols, she wondered, would it not be difficult to live on more than the surface of our being.