The Earth girl, a slave on a barbarian planet, clutched the blanket about her.
I looked up. On the cliff above me, I could see, crouching, the guard. He was not watching me.
I looked at the cliffs, at the thorn brush.
I sat on the ground, the blanket about me. I knew I was a slave girl, legally, irrefutably; the brand told me that; but I wondered on a deeper question, one beyond legalities and institutions; I wondered if I were truly, in my heart, a female slave. This question troubled me deeply. I had, since my branding, experienced profoundly ambiguous feelings on this matter. It was as though I were trying to understand myself, my deepest emotions and needs. At times I had been on the brink of surrendering myself to myself, acknowledging to my horrified conscious mind forbidden truths, long-denied realities, speaking of a venerable, long-suppressed, antique nature, one antedating huts of straw and limestone caves. I did not know what dispositions slept latent in my genetic structures, dispositions inapt and out of place in the artificial world within the strictures of which I had been conditioned. A nature, like the growth of a tree, the shape of a bush, may be clipped and thwarted. The seed poisoned does not grow; the flower immersed in acid does not bloom. I wondered what might be the nature of men, and what might be the nature of women. I know of no test in these matters, unless it be honesty, and what leads to joy.
Perhaps I would not have considered these matters save that I was unable to drive from my mind the recollection of an event which had occurred late in the sordid abuse to which I had been so brutally subjected. I had been thrown to my master's men. One after another had raped and beaten me, and thrown me to the next. I was handed about as an object. Fierce was the discipline to which they subjected me. Though I wept for mercy, and cried out, none gave ear; no consideration nor lenience was shown to the piteous slave girl in their power. Then, strangely, late in this abuse, the event occurred, which even now troubled me. I lay on my back, weeping, my head bound in the blanket, thrashing and squirming, struck, held, unable to withdraw from, helpless to withstand the plunging discipline of the brute to whom I had been last thrown, and it had occurred. I suddenly felt an indescribable sensation. First, it seemed to me, incredibly, that this was fitting, what was being done to me; I had been proud and vain before men; what did I, truly, expect men, such men, men on a world such as this, to do about that? As his force struck me, I felt, strangely, "Be disciplined, Woman." I was half choked in the hood. Then, to my amazement, I welcomed the abuse I felt. There was, beyond its sense of fittingness, seeing that I, a woman, had displeased strong males, and must thus be punished, a sense of profound complementarity; the abuse, if he chose, was simply his to give, and mine to bear; he was a man, I was a woman; he was dominant; I was not; it was his to rule, mine to submit. I experienced then, degraded and abused though I was, with a flood of elation, primitive organic, animal, primate complementarity, the complementarity of man and woman, the complementarity beyond mythology and rhetoric, the complementarity of he who takes and she who is taken, of he who has, and owns, and of she whom he has, whom he owns, and makes his. With a cry of joy and misery then, from the depths of the hood, rearing from the dirt as I could, I clutched him; I felt my body locked to his; then I felt my body, as though of its own will, suddenly, spasmodically, grasp him; I could not begin to control the reflexes which he had triggered in me; they jolted and exploded in my body; I clutched him, helplessly; I was his.
Men laughed. "Kajira," said one.
Then I was thrown to another, I sat in the silent camp, wrapped in the thin blanket, thinking. "Kajira," had said one of the men.
I was angry. I could not forgive myself for having yielded to one of the men. I tried to tell myself it had not happened. It could not have happened. Thus, it had not happened. Yet I knew, in truth, it had happened. I had yielded to one of the men. In his arms, I, who was, or had been, Judy Thornton, had yielded to one of the men. An abused slave girl had wept and bucked in the arms of a master. It had been I. How ashamed I was! I asked myself what could it mean? Could the feelings which had overwhelmed me be denied? Could the sensate truth, the splendor of biological submission, so different from the truth of a man, which is that of domination, in whose glory I had been wrapped, be denied? I resolved that I must not permit myself the weakness which would make a mockery of my personhood. I must not again yield to a male. I thought of Elicia Nevins. How she would have laughed had she seen Judy Thornton, her lovely rival, on her back in the dirt, a branded slave girl, squirming in the throes of submission to a male, so shamefully helpless in his arms, uncontrollably, not the mistress of herself, yielding to his manhood.
I knew then I must escape. It would be difficult, for I was branded.
I looked up at the guard. He was not watching. I crept to the cliff wall. I examined it in the moonlight. At no point could I crawl more than a yard up its surface. I scratched my fingernails on the granite.
I turned to the wall of thorn brush. I feared it. It was high and thick.
The guard was not watching. The camp was not his concern. His concern was elsewhere, with possible approaches to the camp, the fields beyond the valleys.
I cried out with misery. I screamed, frightened. The brush sank beneath me. It would not support my weight. My right leg was deep in it, my right arm. I turned my head to the side, keeping my eyes closed. I felt the thorns. They seemed to tear at me. I was half immersed in the brush. I was caught. I dared not move. I began to weep and scream.
My master was first to my side. He was not much pleased. I immediately fell silent.
Another man came, bearing a torch, lit from the stirred ashes of the fire. Some other men arose but then, seeing it was only a slave girl, returned to their furs and tenting. Eta hurried over to me, but a curt word from my master hurried her back to her rest with dispatch.
"I'm caught, Master," I whimpered. Only too obviously had I been trying to escape.
In the torchlight he pulled my head back, by the hair, to clear it of the thorns. He did not want me blinded. I managed, suffering long scratches, to extricate my right arm. He looked at me. I was afraid he was going to leave me as I was. I could not pull my right leg back because of its position in the brush. I had no leverage, as I stood, to lift my leg out. "Please help me, Master," I begged. I had no wish to remain caught in the thorn brush until morning. It was embarrassing, and I was helpless, and it was painful. "Please, Master," I begged, "help me."
He lifted me up, in his arms, in this action freeing my leg, though it was cut and scratched. In the instant I relished being in his arms, held by him. My weight was nothing to him. I loved the feel of his strong hands on my body, holding me up, lightly, from the earth, which I, thus carried, could not touch unless he permitted it. I, naked, boldly put my head against the shoulder of his tunic. Then he had placed me on my feet.
I did not meet his eyes. I felt small before him. It had been obvious I had been trying to escape. I did not know, at that time, what might be the penalty for a girl who attempts escape and is so unfortunate as, as is nearly always the case, to be recaptured. Slave girls almost never escape. The major reason for this is the steel collar, which, obdurately encircling her neck, read, promptly identifies her master and his city. Almost no one, of course, would think of removing a collar from a girl, unless it would be to replace it with one of his own. This is because she is a slave. Girls may also be hunted down by trained sleen, tireless hunters. If a girl should elude one master, she will, customarily, soon fall to another. A successful escape, infrequent event that it is, seldom amounts, from the girl's point of view, to more than an exchange of collar and chains. Almost any man on Gor will hasten to put his collar on a loose, beautiful female. Where is she to run? What is she to do? All in all, escape is not a reality for female slaves. They are slaves. They will remain slaves. Too, they are branded, which further makes escape, for almost all practical purposes, an impossibility for them. Interestingly, ear piercing, too, can make it difficult for an escaped girl to elude detection. Ear piercing, interestingly, from an Earth point of view, is regarded by most Gorean women, slave and free, as more degrading than the brand. Slave girls native to Gor dread it terribly, perhaps because it is so visible, the piercing of their flesh being so flagrantly erotic; what man would even think of freeing them if they had pierced ears? They beg their masters not to pierce their ears. Their pleas, those of slave girls, are commonly ignored. Their ears are pierced. Afterwards, it might be mentioned, they are usually pleased with the piercing of their ears, and grow quite proud of this erotic dimension added to their beauty; not displeased are they either with the lovely adornments which their master may now order them to fix upon their body; free women, it is no secret, in many respects, envy their enslaved sisters, their beauty, their joy, their attractiveness to men; this may explain why free women are often quite cruel to slave girls; most imbonded girls fear greatly that they might be purchased by one of the dreaded free women. I have wondered sometimes if free women on Gor might not be happier if their culture permitted them to be somewhat more like the slave girls they so heartily despise. It seems a small enough thing that a free woman might be culturally permitted to have her ears pierced and, thus, be permitted earrings. Would it make so much difference? But the bonds of culture are strong. On Earth a free woman would not think of having herself branded, though it might improve her beauty; similarly, on Gor, a free woman would not consider having her ears pierced. Among slave girls, however, ear piercing, inflicted upon them by the will of their masters, is becoming widespread on Gor; one might say it is gaining considerable popularity among masters, which accounts, of course, for its growing frequency in the female slave population of the planet; it is a custom which derives, I am told, from the city of Turia, which lies in Gor's southern hemisphere, an important manufacturing and trading center.