As a slave she knew she was subject to such things. They could be done to her.
Too, I deserve to be whipped, she thought. I have richly deserved many times to be whipped. Doubtless thousands of times. But no man has whipped me. There are so many things for which I should have been punished, but never was. On Earth, she thought, a woman is never punished, no matter what she has done, no matter how cruel and nasty, how vicious and petty, she has been, no matter how much hurt she has brought about, no matter how much injury she has inflicted, no matter how much misery and pain she has caused, no matter how many lives she may have ruined or destroyed. But here, on this world, she suspected, it might be different, at least for women such as I. Here, I have learned, she thought, I might be whipped for dropping a plate, or not having responded instantly to a command. For such tiny things I could be put as a slave under the leather.
I am your slave, she thought. Prove to me that you are my master. Whip me. The slave may be beaten by her master. Let me learn that I am a slave. Beat me, that I may truly know I am a slave!
He stood behind her, not speaking.
“Master?” she asked.
“To your belly,” he said.
She was then prone, before him.
“I had thought, often,” he said, “of having you before me as you are, a naked slave at my feet.
“The war is over, for you,” he said.
“War?” she asked.
“Do not those of your ideology dare to use that sacred, holy, terrible word, that word for nature’s last and fiercest arbiter, that maker and unmaker of states, that creator and destroyer of cultures, singing songs of armies, and blood and steel, that ultimate and terrifying tribunal, with all the marches, the charges and rides, and the sacrifices, all the horror, all the triumph, all the glory and the shame, the tenderness and cruelty, the best and the worst, the highest and the lowest, the grandest and the most despicable, the most loved and most hated, that moment when beasts and gods look into mirrors and each sees the other, do not those of your ideology dare to use that word, that name for the most fearsome and terrible of all institutions, for its trivial, pretentious, absolutely safe, risk-free, puerile machinations, for your petty political threats, your jockeyings and maneuverings, for your sneakings about, and trickery, and burrowings from within to deprive an entire sex of its birthright?
“Well,” said he, “if it is a war, it is one that is over for you. You have lost. You have been conquered. You have been taken and in an ancient, time-honored tradition of true war you have become the slave of the victor. You are spoils, pretty girl, understand that, and to the victor belong the spoils!
“Fear, feminist,” said he.
“I am not a feminist!” she cried. “Such things are behind me!”
“They are more behind you than you can possibly now understand,” he said. “Where are you?”
“I am on the planet Gor!” she cried.
“Know then that you are on the planet Gor, slave girl,” said he.
Then the whip began to rain blows upon her.
She screamed and scratched at the marble, and turned from her stomach to her side, and back, and tried to fend the blows, weeping.
“So,” said he, pausing, “the little feminist beneath the whip.”
“No!” she cried. “I am not a feminist. I am a slave, your slave. Please do not strike me further, Master! Please be merciful to your slave!”
Then, again, as she screamed, and cried, and writhed before him, he put the leather upon her.
“Know yourself owned,” he snarled.
“Yes, Master, yes, Master!” she wept.
She was now a beaten slave. She had no doubts now that she was owned. She had been beaten by her master.
He threw the whip to one side.
“The beating was nothing,” he said, angrily. “It was not the five-bladed Gorean slave lash. You were not even tied at a ring.”
She looked up at him in horror, from her side, bright stripes upon her body.
“Were you given permission to break position?” he asked.
Instantly she went again to her belly, being then as she had been before.
“Do you think you will soon beg to give pleasures to a man?” he inquired.
She put her cheek down to the marble, sobbing.
“I have made you the age you are,” he snarled, “so that you will be no more than a bit of fluff in the markets.”
He looked down upon her.
The anklet was on her.
“To be sure,” he said, “a bit of pretty fluff.”
“Guard!” he called.
The guard came forward, from near the door, where he had kept his post.
The young man, he in the brown tunic, he who had wielded the whip, the girl’s master, indicated the slave at his feet. “This is Ellen,” he said. “Her anklet may now be removed. But first, of course, see that she is branded and collared.”
The guard reached down and then lifted the youthful slave to her feet. She seemed dazed, and in disbelief. He permitted her to bend down and retrieve her small tunic, but not to put it on. Then he indicated she should precede him from the room, and she did so, uncertainly, stumbling sometimes, sobbing, returning to her cage.
Chapter 11
A SUPPER IS SERVED, IN AN UNUSUAL APARTMENT;
SHE IS SPOKEN WITH BY HER MASTER
“What a pretty little thing she is!” laughed the woman. “Is she to serve us?”
“Yes,” said Mirus.
“What monsters you men are!” laughed the woman.
Ellen, crouching down, set forth the plates of hors d’oeuvres and the tiny glasses of sherry on the coffee table before her master, Mirus, and his guests, a man and a woman. Tutina sat nearby, in an arm chair, with purple upholstery.
It had been explained to Ellen how she was to serve, how to speak, if spoken to, and how to conduct herself throughout the evening. In the adjoining room there were two guards, with their own supper. That room gave access, as well, through a short corridor, to the kitchen. A serving cart was used to bring the food from the kitchen, through the corridor and adjoining room, into the apartment.
Ellen had been quite startled to see the apartment, entering it for the first time, for it might well have been one on Earth, in the house or mansion of some leisured, comfortable, wealthy individual. Surely it was tastefully and elegantly appointed, and the quality of the rug, the furnishings, and such, was, without being obtrusive, obvious. The oddity of it was that it was on Gor. She had been reminded, entering it for the first time, of pictures in large, glossy magazines, the sort claimedly and pretentiously devoted to the arts of gracious living, those magazines intended to supply apparently desperately desired and much-needed instruction to the ignorant affluent, informing them in what ways they might most appropriately expend their abundant resources, what should be the nature and location of their residences, how they were to be landscaped and furnished, what automobiles they should buy, the type of music and artwork which should be in evidence, what books and how many, how their pantries were to be stocked, the arrangements of tennis courts and pools, many such things. Doubtless, she supposed, serving, there must be some reason this room has been designed as it has. She wondered if it were some subtle joke, some irony. But, if it was, it had apparently been lost on the woman in the room whom she did not know. Perhaps that woman was used to such surroundings, and took them for granted, not really seeing them any longer. Generally one does not see, really see, one’s familiar surroundings. One takes them so much for granted. Perhaps, on the whole, that is just as well. But sometimes she supposed that even husbands and wives, on her old world, did not really see one another any longer, either, but simply took one another for granted, much like the walls, the furniture. Such things would be muchly different, of course, she supposed, if their relationship were to be changed, radically, for example, if the husband were to make his wife, at least in the secrecy of his own home, an obvious, explicit slave. Is that not what many vociferous proclaimers of her former ideology maintained that wives were, anyway, slaves? How silly that was, what infantile semantic slight of hand! Is there no better way to abolish the family and surrender children to the centrally designed, and centrally directed, conditioning programs of the state, the state they expected to put to their own purposes, using it, with its legal monopoly on violence and coercion, to promote their own self-serving agendas? So saying, they seemed to believe that they had manufactured an argument against marriage, refuted matrimony with a lie. But, she wondered, suppose men believed that lie. It did not follow from that, that if they should take it seriously, that they would immediately forgo their genetically conditioned proprietary inclinations, selected for in millions of years of primate evolution, and promptly terminate long-term, intimate relationships with desirable women and abolish families. Rather, might they not choose to accept that view of the matter, the feminist view, so to speak, and rearrange the institutions of society accordingly?