“May I speak?” asked Ellen.
There was no answer, so she remained silent. She did not know if she were alone or not.
It was hot in the hood, stifling. Her small hands twisted behind her, in their bonds. She could feel the leash dangling between her breasts.
After a time she heard a man approach. She looked up in the hood, struggling a little.
“Master?” she asked.
“It is pleasant to hear that suitable, appropriate word on your tongue, kajira, particularly as addressed to me,” said a man’s voice.
Ellen sobbed with relief, then fear.
It was the voice of Selius Arconious.
“May I speak, Master?” she asked.
“It is suitable that you should ask permission to speak,” he said. “It is good that you have learned at least that much. And, as I recall, you remembered to ask permission to speak on the block. But apparently you did not remember to wait until you had received that permission before you dared to speak. Had you also remembered that you might have saved yourself a cuffing.”
Ellen was silent.
“You are a stupid slave,” he said.
Ellen was silent.
“Yes, you may speak,” he said.
“Portus Canio and Fel Doron are in this camp, in chains,” said Ellen, hastily, fearing to be interrupted, the words spilling out. “They were on some obscure mission northward. They were betrayed by Tersius Major. It seems he is in the service of Cos. Beware of Tersius Major! Portus Canio and Fel Doron are even now awaiting transportation to Cos or Tyros, perhaps to the quarries!”
“Do not concern yourself about such things, slave girl,” said Selius Arconious.
“Portus Canio and Fel Doron are your friends!” said Ellen.
“I attempted to dissuade them,” said Selius Arconious. “But, nonetheless, they have inadvertently played their role in such things.”
“I do not understand,” said Ellen.
“Curiosity is not becoming in a kajira,” said Selius Arconious.
“What brought you to this camp?” asked Ellen.
“An impulse to travel,” said Selius Arconious.
“Please untie me, Master,” Ellen begged. She pulled a little against the loops of narrow leather which held her wrists behind her.
“No,” he said.
“Please, then,” she said. “Remove, at least, my hood!”
“No,” he said.
“I beg it, Master,” said Ellen.
“No,” he said.
“Did you come to seek me out? To buy a slave?”
“Curiosity is not becoming in a kajira,” he said.
Her heart leapt. Could he care for her? She was in torment, confused as to her feelings for him, who now owned her.
“It is a long way from Ar,” she said. “We are far from Ar!”
“Do you wish to have your bonds and hood removed?” he asked.
“Yes, Master!” she said.
“Remain in them,” he said.
“Yes, Master,” she said. “Master.”
“Yes,” he said.
“You bought me.”
“Yes,” he said.
“Surely for some purpose.”
“Or purposes,” he said.
“Why did you buy me?”
“Are you so stupid as not to know?” he asked.
“Please, Master!”
“Perhaps I thought you would look well under my whip.”
“Do you not hold me in contempt, do you not hate me?”
“No,” he said. “You are beneath contempt.”
“Oh,” said Ellen.
“And why,” he asked, “should one hate a pretty, curvaceous little piece of slave meat one owns? There would be no point in it.”
“Yes, Master,” said Ellen.
“And what are your feelings, slave girl?” he asked.
“My feelings do not matter, Master,” said Ellen.
“True,” he said, quietly.
“I will do my best to serve my master well,” said Ellen.
“I am sure of it,” he said. And he laughed, and the laugh made Ellen’s blood run cold.
“How could you afford me?” asked Ellen.
“I think you will soon know,” said Selius Arconious. “Indeed, I suspect, within hours, the entire camp will know.”
“I do not understand,” said Ellen.
“It will not be wise to remain long in the camp,” said Selius Arconious, “but, unfortunately, there is no help for it. If all goes well, we should be able to leave in a few Ahn, hopefully in the early morning.”
“Yes Master,” said Ellen. She understood nothing of what was going on. But then it is not uncommon for masters to keep their slaves in ignorance.
“Master,” she said.
“Yes,” he said.
“Thank you for buying my whip strokes from the scribe, at the dancing circle,” said Ellen. “Otherwise I fear I would have been whipped.”
“You should be whipped,” he said.
Ellen was silent.
“Before a woman is sold, it is common to starve her of sex,” said Selius Arconious.
“Perhaps, Master,” said Ellen.
“Was that done with you?” he asked.
“Yes,” whispered Ellen.
“I thought so,” he said.
Ellen put her head down, in the hood.
“Then your sexual needs have been long left unsatisfied,” he said.
“Yes, Master!” said Ellen. She lifted her head to her master, pathetically, blindly in the hood.
The thought crossed her mind that the sexual needs of her sisters on Earth, in their countless thousands, in their millions, in the loneliness of their empty, sterile freedoms, were similarly, commonly left unsatisfied. How much tragedy there was on that barren world! Did the women there not understand the meaning of their anxieties, their depressions, their displacements, their projections, their confusions, their sense of futility, their anomie, their emotional starvation, their sense of loss, of estrangement, of lack of connection, of unreality? The arms of ideology are cold and ultimately unsatisfying. There were women on that world who did not even understand the meaning of their misery and who found themselves forbidden to search for it in the most obvious place, in the denial of nature, in the frustration and starvation of their most basic personal needs. The natural human female, Ellen supposed, is not a social artifact, despite what she had been taught to mindlessly repeat, not a construct of social engineers who neither understand her nor care for her, creatures interested ultimately only in their own power and influence; she is not, ideally, a twisted, inadequate, unnatural, pathetic, neurotic replica of a different sex; she is rather herself, a creature of nature, needful and beautiful, in her way unique, precious and glorious; are the codes of nature so hard to read? Are these things truly such perilous secrets? Why should they be so dangerous to recognize and enunciate? Why should it be so dangerous to even speak of them? Why should conformity be enforced with such relentless hysteria? Why should careers be destroyed, appointments be denied, positions lost, for lack of orthodoxy? Who could these truths frighten, only those who can profit from their concealment. Not since the insane asylum of the Middle Ages has sexuality been so feared and deplored. There were women on Earth, Ellen understood, who, literally, had never experienced an orgasm. And there were countless millions, as the statistics would have it, who lived in a veritable sexual wasteland, in a parched, lonely erotic wilderness.
But Ellen was not on Earth any longer.
She was a slave on Gor, and her sexual needs, as those of other slaves, had been, whether she willed it or not, uncovered, displayed and ignited. In her belly the slave fires had been lit and now, irremediably, with an insistent, frequent periodicity, powerfully, irresistibly, they emerged, squirmed, and cried out piteously for their satisfaction.