For months through assiduous application, through attentivness and study, through a selfless love and serve, such a woman may labor to convince the brute who owns her that she is worthy to wear his collar. then perhaps one day he looks down upon her kneeling before him. His hand touches the side of her head Was it a gentle gesture? She takes his hand and presses her lips, sobbing, fervently to it. He takes her by the arms and presses her back, gently, to the tiles, a love slave. When he is finished with her he takes his whip and orders her to her knees. Perhaps he strikes her, perhaps he puts the whip to her mouth and she kisses it. Well then does she know she is still a slave. He turns away. She, kneeling, her had down, smiles shyly, happily.
"My name was Beverly Henderson," she said, "and I am from a world called Earth. Doubtless you have heard something of it.I assure you that it exists. I was captured there by slavers and brought to Gor, that I might wear a collar and learn to serve true men — such as you, Master, who are so strong that you have stripped me, and bound me and put me at your feet, your slave."She smiled, "No man of Earth," she said, "is strong enough to do that."I smiled.
"The women of Earth," she said, "are starved for strong men. I cannot tell you the restlessness, the misery and frustration they feel. The men of Earth are not true men. Perhaps they were long ago, but that is now history. Now they are weak and ineffectual. Manhood among them is measured by its lack. No longer are they capable of true manhood."
I doubted what she said, but surely, I had no intention of explicitly gainsaying her. I thought it best to let her speak.
"Females," she said, "are the natural property of men such as Goreans, not of men such as those of Earth. It is men such as Gorean and not men such as those of Earth who recognize the meaning of our beauty and simply take us, and make us serve them. But I have bathed Master and now kneel naked and bound before him, I tell him nothing.She squirmed in the close confines of the loops of braided yellow cord. They held her well.
"I was taken to the House of Andronicus in Vonda," she said. "There with other girls from Earth, more than fifty of us, I was branded.
I remember one of the girls, pulled sobbing and in pain from the rack, crying out joyfully, "I am a slave girl!" How startled and strange seemed her cry. Yet I too, later, after I had screamed and sobbed, and had been pulled, my thigh stringing from the iron, from the rack and found myself alone, chained on the straw by the damp wall, was filled with strange emotions. Though I could scarcely admit it to myself I knew, with wild strange feelings, that I was glad that I too had been branded.
"You were born for the brand," I whispered to myself, "and now incomprehensibly, wonderfully, on this strange world, it has at last been put upon you. In your pain, rejoice, slave girl. Youi are now publicly marked, clearly and incontrovertibly as what is your secret heard you have always been. Serve you Masters well, slave girl."
I sat on the couch. My fists were clenched. Did she not know she was from Earth!
"Most of use, of coures, including myself, dared not yet admit we were pleased with our brands. We lamanted together, pretending to bemoan the misery of our plights. Our masters, of course, did not give us a great deal of time to indulge our self-pity. We must be prepared for markets. We were then separated and sent to different training rooms. There I was forced to kneel and was put in a house collar. I was then chained at a ring and given my first whipping. Thus did I learn what the last might feel like upon me and that I was under discipline. My slave reflexes were tested and found, as is the case with most Earth females, initially inert. Held on my knees, my head held back, my nose pinched shut, my mouth forced open, slave wine was poured down my throat. I must needs swallow. I was then hooded and men were called in, who abused me, as it pleased them. Then a day later, still hooded, I was returned to the central dungeon."
She paused. "I have not been struck," she said. "Therefore I gather that I have the Master's permission to continue." "How beautiful y ou are," breathed a girl in the dungeon to me when I had been unhooded. "How beautiful you are," I whispered seeing her. "Were you whipped?" she asked. "Yes," I said. "I too," she said head down. I looked about the dungeon at the girls there. How soft and beautiful they were in their collars. The collar, as Master well knows, considerably enhances the beauty of a woman. "Were you raped?" asked the girl, a lovely blonde. "Yes," I said.
"They used me well." "I too," she said. "I enjoyed my rape," said a redhead, collared, in an ankle ring and chain, lying near us in the straw. "Slave!" hissed another girl to her. "Yes, slave," smiled the redhead. My intimacies sprang aflame when I heard her words. How bold she was! I myself would not have dared to admit such a thing to another woman! What might she thing of me? I had not even, scarcely, dared to admit to myself, or recall, that in the arms of the fifth man my body had clapsed his and my arms, and I had in the darkness of the hood, a moaning slave, subdued, cried out with pleasure.Then, too soon, they had been finished with me. That night I had lain in the darkness of the hood, hungry, recollecting the sensations they had induce in me. Now, though I could scarcely admit this to myself, I feared, and feared correctly, that the first fires of a slave's passion had been ignited withing me. I had know that I was a slave and a true slave, before they had touched me, but I had not know until they took me in their arms, how helpless and low a slave I could be."
I could scarcely believe my ears. It seemed that Miss Henderson, without thought before me was confessing herself a slave. She was from Earth!
"What is to be done with us?" asked one of the girls. "I think we are to be readied for markets," said another girl. There was then a beating on the bars of the dungeon and we knelt. A man entered, with a whip. Our training began."
She smiled at me, "We were taught to kneel and to crawl, to move and to walk. We were taught the use of our hands, and of our total body, and our hair, and of our mouth and tongue. We were taught many things. The first words of Gorean I learned were, 'I am a slave girl. But our Masters did not waste much time on us. Our new Masters, those who would buy us, could teach us more. The night before we were to be sold, we were permitted to speak to one another. We kissed one another and cried for we knew that we might soon never see one another again, and we did not know what lay before us, outside the confines of the House of Andronicus, in the harsh world of Gor.None of us, of course, had been sold before. Intereseting, however, we were looking forward to our sales. It was not just that we wished to be out of the House of Andronicus. It was rather, I think that we were now eager to belong to Masters. You see Master in the past few days, a startling transformation had come over us.
Few of us mentioned this, but I think there was not one among us who did not clearly recognize it. We had become, honestly, female slaves.
Here we may distinguish between two concepts of slavery, that which can be imposed and constitutes an absolute and legal condition, and that which is instinctual and innate, which under certain conditions, can be manifested and released. The fullest slave, of course, is she who is a natural slave, and then beyond this, truly wears the collar, that slave who is a slave by nature and whose slavery, released, is then confirmed and fixed upon her openly, publicly, by all sanctions of custom and law, for all the world to see.
What we discovered, Master, all of us, in the dungeons and training rooms of the House of Andronicus, was that we were natural slaves. There our slavery had been by such devices as brands and collars, and whips and hoods, fully, for the first time, released in us and made manifest. Many of us were timid and thrilled to discover that we were natural slaves. At last there could be an end to the lies and pretenses. At last we could stop fighting ourselves and pretending to be what we were not. We now, though women of Earth, could admit to ourselves what we knew we were, categorically and absolutely legal slaves, lovely propertieis, which might be barted and sold, and who might figure in transactions which would be upheld in any court of law. This we found frightening, but absolutely thrilling. It so confirmed our slavery upon us! There was no escape for us! Even if we should pull at our chains, or cry or rebel, we would still be only troublsome slaves, who might then be disciplined and brought swiftly into line. any person on the street, seeing us, would know what w were. Even children would know us as mere slaves, for categorically and legally that is what we would be. Owned animals, that is what we would be! You are a man, Master, so perhaps you cannot understand or fully understand, how exciting it is for a woman to be owned, to find herself a slave. But I am a slave, and a natural slave, and a legal slave. I am fearful. But I am joyful!"