It might be noted, In passing, that when a woman has been embonded she is then understood as, and taken as, unmitigated, a slave. That is what she then is. For example, let us suppose that several women of a given city, say, A, are now slaves in a given city, say, B. Let us then further suppose that these women are recovered, so to speak, in a raid perhaps, or perhaps in war, perhaps in B’s having fallen. The women will not now be freed. They will be kept as slaves, for that is what they now are. Did they not permit themselves to be captured? Well, then, let them remain in bondage! That is where they belong, and should be! And furthermore, given the irritations and embarrassments involved, they are likely to be considered the lowest of slaves, and treated with great severity and harshness. What a mistake it was that they had been permitted to be free, ever! Usually they are only too eager to be sold from their former city, and serve gratefully in a less hostile, less bitter, less rancorous environment, where they will be simply accepted as the slaves they now are. Similarly, if a fellow captures a woman and carries her out of the city, and enslaves her, he may return with her to the city, she is now his unquestioned slave.
Let us now return to our captured free woman before the “committee of peers.” Let us suppose, as willusually be the case, that she is adjudged satisfactory, if only minimally so, as will be made clear to her, to wear a collar in her captor’s city. The tarnsman then, and his companions, those who failed to draw the inning lot in the hunting game, are feasted, with their officers, at the table of the very ubar or administrator himself. This is a great honor. The feast is served, of course, by slave girls. One of the, a rather new slave girl, is, as you may suppose, permitted no clothing. She wears only her collar. At the height of the feast she is put through her paces, between the tables. She is then returned to her serving, but you may imagine the difference now in her serving, as she now comprehends what she had to do, and how she is now seen. She will also, later, be expected to dance. She hesitates? The whip cracks. She dances. And after this she is again returned to her serving, simply as might be another dancer, no more and no less. And again, as you may well imagine, there is again a difference, one anew, in her serving, for she has now been forced to dance, a nude slave, subject to the whip, before masters. She touches her collar. She cannot removed it. She now has some sense as to what it means.
After the feast the tarnsman takes her home in his bracelets. She takes her place at his slave ring. The chain is locked on her. She looks up at him. She is his. She serves.
Some free women seek the collar, having come to understand that only in it can they find their fulfillment and happiness, and, paradoxically, at last, strangely perhaps, their most profound freedom.
Sometimes, in a foreign city, a free woman will elude her guards and thrust her way into the precincts of a paga tavern, precincts within which free women are seldom, if ever, found. She picks out a man, perhaps one she has noted earlier, and perhaps even followed, and finds irresistible, and kneels before his low table, unwinding her veils and parting her robes. He considers her. Is she acceptable, is she of interest? Would he have any objection to owning her? Tears form in her eyes. Her eyes plead. She offers him her most precious gift, herself. Will he accept it? “Collar!” he calls to the proprietor. One is brought. He locks it on the neck of the supplicant and conducts her to one of the alcoves, often dragging her, bent over, by the hair, that she may have some understanding as to how her life has now changed. In the alcove then, within moments of the closing of the collar, her training, to her joy, has begun.
The free woman knelt very straight. She craned her neck. “I can see very little from my knees,” she said.
‘You are as a slave,” I said. “No one cares whether you can see very much or not.”
This was the first time the free woman had been this modestly garbed, such as it was, on one of our jaunts above. I had usually managed to gratify myself by having her slave-garbed in a way far more revealing than I was. I had enjoyed doing this to her, as she was a free woman, and I only a slave. But, instead of being distressed by this, she had always seemed to welcome it. The scantier and more revealing the garb in which I placed her the more she seemed to love it. I did not understand her. But then the notion of being “modestly garbed” I surely a relative one. On Earth, the garb in which we found ourselves, its brevity, its neckline, its lack of a nether closure, and such, would presumably have been regarded as scandalous, particularly in busy, public places. Indeed, even in certain Gorean cities, it might have counted as such. But it was not so here. Men in this city, whatever city it was, whereas they might have regarded our tunics as “appealing,” would certainly not have regarded them as scandalous; if anything, for this city, they might have seemed a bit decorous; indeed, many men in this city, I had noted, seemed to enjoy displaying their slaves with a particularly exotic brazenness, often to the mere belly string and slave strip. The girl dare not object, for she is a slave. She knows that it will be done with her as the Master pleases. Too, I had seen more than one nude slave on her leash; that, however, is rare, and is usually done as a punishment. Sometimes, however, after an enemy city has fallen, her women, now enslaved, are denied clothing for some six months, at the end of that time they are inordinately grateful, should the least of tunics be cast to them; supposedly we are not permitted modesty, but we are, of course, sensitive to such things. Indeed, one of the most effective controls our masters have over us is with respect to our clothing, its nature, and, of course, even if we are to be permitted any. In some cities, as I understand it, the state involves itself in such matters; for example, in some cities it is a matter of public ordinance that slave tunics may not be longer than a certain amount; this ordincance is presumably motivated not only by a desire to draw a clear distinction between the free woman and the slave, but to distract the attention of the roving tarnsman, the slavery, the commercial girl jobber, and such, from the glorious free woman, directing it to the meaningless slave, whose charms are more easily discerned.
Whatever be the case here, it is a mater of fact that “slave strikes” more frequently target slaves than free woman.
I know this now, but idd not realize it at the time. Indeed, I was shortly to be apprised of an exception to this rule, though, at the time, I did not understand that it was an exeption.
And, in its way, I suppose the exception, as it is said, “proved the rule.” In any event, in contrast to the rule, its anomalous character drew a great deal of attention to the very rule it violated.
Or would, for those who understood such things.
I knew so little of this world!
When I did understand it I became aware, more seriously than hitherto, of the nature of the men in this city-of their skill, ferocity and pride, and their sense of honor.
The men of Gor, our masters, tend to take honor very seriously.