“Surely there must be uses to which you could still be put,” said her companion.
“I hope so,” she said, warmly.
“I am sure of it,” he said.
“I do crave excitement,” she said. “I want stimulation. I hate being bored.”
“I suspect,” said her companion, “that there is more excitement in store for you, and I doubt that you will, in the future, lack for stimulation. And whatever your problems might prove to be in the future, I doubt that boredom will rank high amongst them.”
“You are such a dear, Jeffrey,” she smiled.
“Surely I can be rewarded with another kiss,” said her companion, as though plaintively.
“Naughty boy!” she chided.
“Please,” he wheedled.
“Very well,” she said. Again she touched him briefly on the left cheek, a flick of a kiss, a tiny peck. “There!” she said.
How beautiful and white her shoulders, thought Ellen. How she must excite a man. I wish I were so beautiful. I wonder what a man would pay for her, a great deal I would suppose.
“I fear it is late,” said her companion, the man called Jeffrey.
“Yes,” she agreed.
The woman then bid good-night to Mirus and Tutina.
“The gold will be delivered to your chamber, where you will be spending the night,” said Mirus.
“Thank you,” she said.
Various leave-taking pleasantries were exchanged. Ellen, in this leave taking, to her relief, was ignored.
“On the way to your chamber,” said her companion, “there is another chamber, too, which I would like to show you.”
“Very well,” she said.
A moment later, Tutina, too, with a glance at Mirus, left.
Then Ellen and her master were alone.
He went to the long table, and took the chair at the head of the table, which he had occupied during dinner, and pulled it a bit away from the table. He then sat within it, seemingly lost in thought.
Ellen supposed that he had drawn the chair away from the table, before reposing in it, to enable her the more easily to clear the table. It only became clear to her later that he had wanted the chair more in the center of the room, for a different reason, that there might then be a cleared space before it, on the rug.
When the guests had departed the two guards returned and, ingot by ingot, picked up the gold, and, slowly, carefully, carried it into the next room. A broad, flat wagon was there, too large to fit flat through the smaller door, that leading from the room to the corridor and kitchen. There was another portal, one wider and more auspicious, in the room, a double door of some dark wood, that through which the guests and Mirus had originally entered. Ellen had, of course, used the smaller door in her serving, that giving eventual access to the kitchen. Interestingly, the woman’s companion, conducting her, had exited with her through the smaller door. That led to the corridor, and thence to the kitchen, and various other corridors, and to several areas more in the back of the house.
Ellen worked to clear the table.
She did not rush to do this.
At times, at least, she was sure that her master’s eyes were upon her.
Whereas a slave may be forced to humiliating haste, perhaps crawling in terror before the strokes of a whip, unseemly hurryings, the industrial frenzies, so to speak, of technological cultures, are generally alien to the Gorean consciousness. Theirs is not a clock-ridden culture; on Gor life tends to be genially paced, regulated more by the season of the year and the position of the sun; it is not conceived of in terms of metaphors drawn from factories, in material terms, in terms of input and output, in terms of units of product processed over units of time. Its rhythms are less the periodic turbulences of rush hours, the blinkings of colored, regulatory lights, carefully timed, the staccato clickings and hammerings, the stops and starts, of the assembly line, than those of tides, and winds, and clouds and rain, the appearance and disappearance of stars, the comings and goings of light and darkness, the cycles of hunger, the cycles of desire, those of the beating of the heart and the circulation of the blood.
Ellen did not hasten in her work but took care, rather, to do it well. To be sure, she knew that clumsiness was not tolerated in a female slave. If she should drop a plate or break a glass, or spill a beverage, or even move awkwardly, she knew she might expect to be tied to a ring and beaten.
Above all, though this may seems strange to some, the female slave is not permitted to move with the abruptness, the clumsiness, the awkwardness, the gross, unconscionable, offensive, mannish motions permitted to a free woman. As a female slave she is expected to be muchly aware of her very different, very lovely, very special body, so exciting and wondrous, and to carry it, and present it, beautifully. She is not a free woman. She is a female, and must move as such. The female slave is a female, and thus femininity is required of her. She is trained to be aware of her body and to move well. Sometimes men do not know why they are so exciting, but sense, somehow, that each movement, each nuance of expression, bespeaks subtly their profound, released femininity.
And so Ellen worked, muchly aware that she was a slave, muchly aware that she was in the presence of her master.
She had never felt so beautiful and feminine as she had on Gor.
Never before had she even begun to sense the depths of her sex. There had been nothing of this, surely, in the courses she had taught, in the texts she had read.
Strange, she thought, how those who on her world made so much of women were oblivious, as far as she could tell, of these things, to these sensations, and feelings. Perhaps they had never met a true man, she thought.
She wondered if women of her own world, or many of them, realized that they might be graceful and beautiful, and feminine. Did they understand that even small labors, like clearing a table, might be performed beautifully, gracefully? Did they understand that anytime, at their various activities, even, say, during their day, at their various forms of work, or play, or whatever, they might be beautiful, and graceful, and women?
Or did they fear the scorn, the ridicule, the cruelty, of the female haters of their own sex?
She hoped that her sisters on a far world might one day become conscious of themselves, truly, despite what might be the consequences attendant upon such an awakening.
“You move well, slut,” snarled Mirus.
She had not doubted that he was watching her.
“Is master aroused?” she asked.
“You will rue that,” he said.
“You have had me trained,” she said, “at least to some extent. I find that I move unconsciously now in certain ways. I do not even think of it any longer. Given my training, how could I help but move as I do now? Surely you do not object. And did I not move in this way now, did I not now move in a way natural for my body, would I not be beaten?”
“Continue your work,” he said.
“I shall be finished shortly,” she said.
She did not know this at the time but many Goreans can tell the difference between free women and female slaves, even when the latter are clothed in the garments of the former, so internalized, so ingredient, so manifest is femininity in the female slave. Sometimes fleeing female slaves, runaways, attempting to escape hated masters in the clothing of free women are simply stopped, unceremoniously, and stripped, their brands and collars then revealed. They are then returned to the dreaded mercies of their masters. The garmenture of free women and slaves, of course, differs considerably, that of the slave tending to be far briefer and more revealing. Incidentally, a slave can be slain for putting on the garment of a free woman. It is permissible, though frowned upon, for a free woman to put on the garb of a slave. Also, it is quite dangerous to do so. Many free women, so garmenting themselves, as an adventure, thinking to have the run of the city, to go into areas forbidden to free women, to see the insides of paga taverns, and such, have, to their horror, found themselves, gagged and blindfolded, struggling futilely in the tight ropes of slavers.