“Such things are not possible on Earth,” she said.
“They were,” he said, “and may be again. Propaganda mills, as you know, may be quickly adjusted. Reality occasionally intrudes. Houses of cards do not well withstand the winds of a changing world. Obvious historical imperatives may dictate policy, at least to those capable of understanding them, and with the power to act upon them. The media will run like dogs to the whistles of their masters, whether it be their audiences, their advertisers or the state. What is seen as necessary will be adopted. Falsity and absurdity can be defended, so why not truth and practicality? If certain words are offensive, those particular words need not be used; I prefer them because I like to speak plainly; I prefer ‘master’ and ‘slave’ to ‘servant of the people’ and ‘citizen’.”
“You have never spoken to me like this before,” she said.
“This is a memorable night,” he said lifting his wine glass to her. “I do not think you will ever forget it.”
“For me?” she asked.
“For all of us,” said her companion, he, too, lifting his glass to her in a pleasant salute.
“Putting aside deeper matters,” said Mirus, “you expressed interest in Ellen and in the fact that she must serve naked.”
The woman looked at him. She, too, had lifted her glass of wine, though, to be sure, merely to take from it a tiny, dainty sip.
“We are all familiar with war,” he said. “In war, it is a familiar practice for the victors to despoil the conquered. They take from them what they desire, whatever seems of value. For example, in this fashion, it has been a familiar practice of victors to take the women of conquered men from them and make them their slaves. Surely you are aware of this.”
“Of course,” said the woman.
Ellen wondered if the woman was aware of her companion’s gaze, of how his eyes seemed to glitter upon her.
Would she not have screamed in terror, and fled?
“You are perhaps also aware that at the victory feasts of conquerors not unoften the women of the enemy, the women of the conquered, and, ideally, those formerly of the highest station, the most aristocratic of the enemy’s women, those of the richest and most exalted blood, the noblest and the proudest, the most envied, as well as the most beautiful, all now embonded, must serve their new masters.”
“I knew something of this, vaguely,” she said.
“But did you know,” he asked, “that they must serve their new masters naked?”
“Yes,” she said, reddening, “I knew something of that.”
“Well,” said Mirus. “That is much what is the case with our little Ellen here.”
“You have taken her from conquered men?” she asked.
“In a sense, I suppose so,” he said. “For the men of her world have for the most part been conquered by their women. Thus they are conquered men, or many of them. And all I have done is to take one of those “conquering women” and bring her here, to return her, for my amusement, to her place in the order of nature. I thought I might let her see what it is like to be among true men.”
Ellen trembled.
She was a slave — utterly — and on Gor.
“Ellen, of course,” said he, “is not of the upper classes, or such, such as yourself, though we occasionally take in such, but she makes an excellent example of a type. She was a feminist, and was accordingly, in a sense, engaged in a war with men. To be sure, not an open war, not an honest, war. That war, however, for her, is over. And so she is for me a prize of war. She lost. To the victor belong the spoils. I have made her mine, as a slave. Thusly, compatible with historical precedent, I have her serve at my feast, my victory feast, naked.”
“Bravo!” said the other man.
“Have we not business to attend to?” asked the woman.
“But supper is not yet over,” said her companion. “Surely you would not deprive us of further courses, nor of our dessert?”
“No,” she laughed. “Of course not!”
“Ellen,” said Mirus.
“Sir?” said Ellen.
“You will continue to serve,” he said. “After dessert, we will have the coffee and liqueurs at the coffee table.”
“Yes, Sir,” said Ellen.
****
“It is beautiful,” said the woman, she in the off-the-shoulder white gown, admiring the twenty weighty double ingots of gold.
They had been carried in, ingot by ingot, and stacked on the rug, near the coffee table, by two guards.
“These, too,” said the woman’s companion, “were, as I recall, a part of our arrangement.” He produced a small leather pouch and, loosening its draw strings, opened it. Into the palm of his hand he poured a small shower of scintillating diamonds.
“Lovely!” she exclaimed.
He returned them, carefully, to the pouch, and handed them to her. She put them into her small, white, matching dress purse.
“Thusly are you paid,” said her companion.
“Even were you not heretofore a rich woman,” said Mirus, “you would be now.”
“You are surely generous,” laughed the woman.
Tutina stood nearby, smiling.
Ellen was to one side, standing. She had not yet been given permission to clear. She had struggled, during the evening, to understand the conversation. It was in English and so there was no difficulty in her following the words, only the meanings. It was not as though they took care to speak guardedly in her presence, for she was only a slave. It was rather that they understood so much among themselves, and took so much for granted, that to the uninitiated, to the outsider, such as the slave, Ellen, it very little made sense. Too much was implicit. Ellen did gather that clandestine business arrangements of considerable scope were afoot. The concerns, or tentacles, of whatever combine or conglomerate, or organization, was involved seemed to have far-reaching ramifications, ramifications affecting worlds. Surely it had its representatives, or outposts, or offices, on her former world as well as on this, her new world. Many highly placed individuals on both worlds, it seemed, for example, on Earth, in government and business, were not only apprised of, but implicated in, these matters. They extended far beyond the trivia of harvesting lovely women for vending in Gorean markets. The business of capturing, transporting and selling well-curved, helpless living flesh might, she suspected, be little more than a byproduct of more serious enterprises. To be sure, it doubtless had its at least minimally significant place in the economy of their schemes. There was doubtless money to be made in such matters. Her collar, for example, was quite real. She accepted that she was property, and could be sold. There was no gainsaying that. On the other hand, she was confident that her master would not sell her. Surely he had not brought her here to sell her, not after their relationship of long ago. She suspected that he must somehow love her, though perhaps in his own hard, severe, uncompromising, possessive way. Surely she loved him, and, doubtless, even from the first, though such things had not been so clear to her then, as a vulnerable, submissive slave. I think he loves me, she thought, though this may now be unbeknownst to himself. And even if he did not love her, she had little doubt that he “found her flanks of interest.” And this did not dismay her. Rather she welcomed it. She, his slave, wanted to be an object of commanding, unabashed lust to him, wanted to be to him an object of powerful, violent sexual desire. On this world she had become so aware of the stirrings in her own blood, confronted with his physicality, that she, in her own complementary, soft, vulnerable, beautiful physicality, longed to be taken in his arms, longed to yield to him as the property he owned, longed to be put ecstatically, in rapture, to the ruthless pleasures of her beloved master.