|
 Love OfHere are relevant references from the Books where Love Of is mentioned. I make no pronouncements on these matters, but report them as I find them. Arrive at your own conclusions. I wish you well, Fogaban Click a heading to jump down to that listing. Main Headings Love of a City Love of a Tatrix Love of a Tether Love of Belonging Love of Belongings Love of Blood, Steel and Power Love of Bondage Love of Bonds Love of Brand Love of Clothes Love of Collar Love of Collaring Women Love of Dance Love of Earrings Love of Family Love of Friends Love of Gor Love of Kaissa Love of Laughter Love of Learning Love of Life Love of Mankind Love of Markets Love of Master Love of Men Love of Mistress Love of Needs Love of Owner Love of Peace Love of People Love of Plays Love of Poetry and Music Love of Self Love of Sensations Love of Serving Love of Ships Love of Shopping Love of Silk Love of Singers Love of Slave Fires Love of Slave Name Love of Slave Orgasm Love of Slavery Love of Song Love of Speaking Love of Stories Love of Submission Love of Suls Love of Tarns Love of the Caste of Mariners Love of the Leash Love of the Sea Love of the Whip Love of Wearing Chains Love of Work
"In the guise of Murmillius," I said, "Marlenus of Ar, as things went from bad to worse in the city, in the midst of corruption and crime, gathered about himself a following." "He gave the men of Ar," said Hup, "something to identify with, a hero, mysterious and overwhelming, a hero to sway their imaginations. He won the love of the city." I had begun to fall in love with the Gorean city. It was so vital and alive. "We, Titus, and I," said Plenius, "if possible, will go only so far as territory controlled by Ar. We shall then put him on a road, with a stick." "Even so," I said, "the risks are considerable." "He is our captain," said Plenius. "You will then attempt to make your way independently to Ar, by an alternative route?" I asked. "It is the city of my Home Stone," said Plenius. "What they do," said Labienus, "they do not from duty, but love."
"Hail Sheila, Tatrix of Corcyrus!" I heard. "The people love you," said Ligurious. "You are loved," said Ligurious. "Yes," I said. "I am loved." I waved happily at the crowd. I dismissed then the rantings of the lunatic from my mind. "Those will be guardsmen," said Ligurious, "issuing forth to disperse the rabble." "Yes," I said. I could see a double line of guardsmen, with shields and spears, exiting through the gates. In a moment, too, I could see men and woman fleeing across the square. "Those are small groups of dissidents," said Ligurious. "Pay them no mind. You are loved in Corcyrus." "It is a ram," said he, "doubtless slung from a cradle, drawn by ropes, doubtless with a will by citizens of Corcyrus. "It sounds far away," I said. "It is at the outer gate," he said. "The citizens of Corcyrus love me," I said. "In this cage, Lady Sheila," said Miles of Argentum, "you will be paraded through the streets of Corcyrus, exhibited in our triumph. Doubtless you will enjoy receiving the love and devotion of your people. You will, thereafter, be transported in this same cage to Argentum. I might mention to you that the bars of this cage, like the chains you wear, are not of pure gold, but of a sturdy golden alloy. Similarly, portions of the cage, like the floor and the interior of the top, and the gilded cone ring, are of iron. You will find that the holding power of these various devices is more than adequate, by several factors, to hold ten strong men. Incidentally, allow me to commend you on how well you look in chains. You wear them beautifully enough to be a slave."
I jerked the tether on her throat. "This is a tether," I said. "It is to be well incorporated in your dance. You are a tethered slave. Do not forget it. You may fight the tether, you may love it. It may confine your body, you may use it to caress your body, an invitation to your master, a surrogate symbol of his domination of you.
Then to my astonishment she smiled up at me. "It is good to belong to you, Tarl Cabot," she said. "I love belonging to you." "I love belonging to you, Master," she whispered. She loved belonging to a man, as his helpless, vulnerable, utter property. How free she was then, kneeling at his feet, and how right, and perfect!
The doll which she had so loved, which she had had from her mother, which she had so jealously protected in her compartment that she had attacked me with the slave goad at the kill point, lay on the tiles before her, torn asunder, destroyed.
"I am indispensable to Pa-Kur!" she said. "Are you?" asked Florian. "He loves me!" said Dorna. "He loves blood, steel, and power," said Florian, "and you, while beautiful, are only a slave."
It is no wonder then that we sometimes kiss our finger tips and press them to our collars, that we humbly lift and kiss the bracelets that link our wrists so helplessly, so closely, together. Do we not admire the unslippable shackles on our trim ankles, fastening them in such proximity to one another, so inhibiting our movements? They have been put on us at the pleasure of the master. Are we blindfolded? Are we forbidden to speak? Are we gagged? Are our wrists tied behind our backs? Must we kneel naked before him? We are his. Let those who can understand these things understand how it is that a slave can love her bondage, and that she would never exchange it for the jejune inanities and boredoms of freedom - how it is that she can lie contentedly, happily, at the foot of a man's couch, chained to his slave ring. Sometimes Ellen loved to be bound, for this so assured her of her nature, and her subjection to the domination which so excited her, which she found so delicious. It thrilled her to be so at the mercy of a man, his to be done with as he might please.
I could not deny that I loved bonds, both of a physical and social sort, those tangible evidences of my womanhood, and my place in nature. He might bind me, I supposed, merely to secure me for the night. On the other hand, I hoped that he might now bind me not for the night but rather for the evening, either in such a way as merely to make clear to me that I was a slave, little more than a symbolic binding, or even in such a way that I should be utterly helpless to resist his attentions, whatever they might be. "I love being bound, helplessly," she whispered. "That is because you are a slave," he said. "Yes, Master," she said. "I am then so mastered. I am then so dominated, so much at your mercy, so helpless, so categorically yours, so uncompromisingly and categorically owned."
"I love my brand," she said. "Most girls do," I said. The true slave knows that her slavery, her natural slavery, is not a matter of the brand and collar, which have more to do with legalities, but of herself. She may love her brand and collar, and beg them, and rejoice in them, but I do not think this is merely because they make her so exciting, desirable and beautiful; I think it is also, at least, because they proclaim publicly to the world what she is, because by means of them her deepest truth, freeing her of concealments and deceits, cutting through confusions, resolving doubts, ending hesitancies, making her at last whole and one, to her joy, is marked openly upon her. He must never know that she was so helplessly his, that she loved her brand, his collar on her neck, that she longed to be pinioned helplessly in his bracelets, that she wanted his shackles, that she longed to be neck-chained at the foot of his couch, that she hoped even, sometimes, for the admonitory, flashing bite of his whip. I knelt beside her, and spoke to her, softly, earnestly. "Love your collar, your marking," I said. "They show that you are, of all women, the most exciting, and desirable. Pity free women. You can be a raw, and perfect, female. This is your fulfillment, to be owned, and to have no choice but to serve, and be pleasing. It is what we, as women, are for. It is what we want to be."
He went to a chest at the side of the room, and drew forth a small, gray garment, which he threw to me. I caught it against my body. I shook it out, happily. "You kept it, Master!" I laughed, delighted. It was the brief slave tunic, sleeveless and gray, which I had worn in the house of Kliomenes, so long ago, in Corcyrus. "Yes," he said, "for when you were my true slave." "I love it!" I said. To some, I suppose, it would have seemed a scandalous rag, unseemly and degrading, but I found it very beautiful, not only because of the lovely and sensitive way in which it enhanced and displayed the beauty of the female figure but because of memories with which it was associated, memories which, for me, at least, were very precious. I loved the tiny garment! It was the first that I had had since I had come to Gor. In it much of me was still bared, my legs, my hips to the waist, my shoulders, and so on, and it left little doubt about the lineaments of my form, but I loved it. Slave silk, and certainly that sort which is commonly worn in page taverns and upon occasion in brothels, when the girls are permitted clothing there, is generally diaphanous. It leaves little doubt as to the beauty of the slave. Some girls claim they would rather be naked, claiming that such silk makes them "more naked than naked," but most girls, and I think, even those, too, who speak in such a. way, are grateful for even the wisp of gossamer shielding it provides against the imperious appraisals of masters, even though it must be pulled away or discarded instantly at a man's whim. Too, I think most girls know that they are very beautiful in such silk, and this, I suspect, is why they love it, and treasure it so. "Yes," she said. "Let us come again and again to the surface. And garb me variously!" "Perhaps," I said. "But never forget," she said, "as you have garbed me now!" "You do not object?" I asked. "No," she said. "I love it!" The scantier and more revealing the garb in which I placed her the more she seemed to love it. In any event, the Lady Constanzia and I were similarly attired. Yes, I thought, she was beautiful. And how right that collar looked on her neck! How she had looked at it in the mirror, and adjusted it, this morning - so carefully, so admiringly - with such approving vanity! She loved it, the pretty little bitch! I was dressed precisely as she had been in our first outings, in the rags I had selected for her, those which I had specially selected, in my slave girl's vengeance on a free woman, to display her as a low slave. I had wished her to burn with shame and humiliation in them but she had loved them. I touched his own cloak. I felt it lovingly. How warm it would be. I looked up at him. I would love to have it wrapped about me, I naked within it. It would be almost as though I were within his bonds. Most slaves, we should note, love their tunics, their ta-teeras, their camisks, and such. Usually they wear them with pleasure and pride, as visible tokens of their interest to men, as badges, unassuming as they are, of their desirability. In them they are exciting and beautiful, and they are well aware of this. How could the slave not be frightened of her body, and yet thrilled with it? It is soft, beautiful, yielding, and alive. It is obviously a source of great pleasure to masters, who command it and put it to their purposes, as they will, and if the masters consent, and are kind, it is a source of untold rapture to herself, as well. It is little wonder that the slave loves her body, and her tunic. "A slave's garment!" said Darla. "I love it," said Donna. "In it I am myself, and more free than I ever was!"
Indeed, it is enough merely to threaten such a girl with return to Earth to make them do anything." He smiled. "They love their collars." It did not surprise me, however. She was becoming more beautiful each day, as she, not knowing it herself, and repudiating the very thought, was coming to love her collar. She was a slave. "What do you think now of your collar?" I asked. "I hate it," she said. "And I love it!" "You love your collar?" I asked. "Yes," she said, "I love it." She looked up at me. "I love being a slave," she said. "I love being enslaved. I love being forced to yield, and to obey men." I had once been Tiffany Collins, of Earth. I was now a collared slave girl on Gor. I touched the collar. It was light, but, too, it was efficient and inflexible. I supposed it would not do to tell anyone but I loved it on me. I felt, somehow, it belonged on me. It was right, I felt, somehow, on me. But, too, sometimes I was terrified to wear it. I knew that it meant that I was owned, and at the mercy of men. "You know you have spoiled me forever for freedom," she said. "Oh?" I said. "I now want my collar," she said. "I love it. I want to serve, and love. It is what I am." "You are a female," I said. The true slave knows that her slavery, her natural slavery, is not a matter of the brand and collar, which have more to do with legalities, but of herself. She may love her brand and collar, and beg them, and rejoice in them, but I do not think this is merely because they make her so exciting, desirable and beautiful; I think it is also, at least, because they proclaim publicly to the world what she is, because by means of them her deepest truth, freeing her of concealments and deceits, cutting through confusions, resolving doubts, ending hesitancies, making her at last whole and one, to her joy, is marked openly upon her. "I love my collar!" she wept. "I love my collar!" I was indeed a new slave. I had undoubtedly much to learn. But I did not think that I was really a stranger to the collar. I had, I was confident, as all women, an instinctive grasp of its import. I felt that I had, thus, in a sense, understood it even before it was on me. Had I not considered it in countless thoughts? Had I not worn it in a thousand dreams? To be sure, it doubtless had many meanings, rich and complex, subtle and deep, which only gradually, bit by bit, as they were revealed to me, I might come to understand, and love. No one but a frustrated free woman would denounce, or punish, a girl for loving her collar. She dared not tell him that she loved to be in a slave collar, to be a slave. In any event, Ellen was not discontented in her collar. It belongs on me, she thought. And I love it! I belong in a collar! I love it! I love it! He must never know that she was so helplessly his, that she loved her brand, his collar on her neck, that she longed to be pinioned helplessly in his bracelets, that she wanted his shackles, that she longed to be neck-chained at the foot of his couch, that she hoped even, sometimes, for the admonitory, flashing bite of his whip. I love my collar, but should I not seek to return to my rightful Master? Might he not search for me? So do not forget this meaning of the collar. The female slave is not permitted to forget it, nor does she wish to forget it. She loves it. She can be, at last, freely, openly, honestly, the sexual creature she has always desired to be. Let us consider again, briefly, the "daughter of the household." As we recall, as we left her, she had been cast into the markets, and was only goods. To be sure, interestingly, the girl, herself, is not displeased. Perhaps it would not do to tell her family, but she loves her collar. She is, of course, acutely aware of how she had shamed and humiliated her family, and perhaps, to some extent, regrets this, but, too, she felt a certain rightness in kneeling before her brothers and sisters, in her rag and collar, and serving them, and such. "I love my collar," she whispered. "Most slave girls love their collars," I said. "Many would not trade them for the world." "I see," she said. "They are certificates of their attractiveness, that they are of interest to men, that they have been found worth collaring." "I see," she said. Cecily loved her collar. Had she been capable of owning property, it would have been her proudest possession. "Many were the civilized women, educated and refined, and barbarian females, illiterate and primitive, not even able to speak Gorean, brought, shackled, to the markets of Ar, lamenting their fate," she said, "but before Tor-tu-Gor had run half his course, they had only one thing in common, their submission to masters, the love of their collar, and the fear that they might be freed." Your collar has been put on my neck! It is locked on me, and I cannot remove it! But I do not want to remove it! I want it there for all to see, that all may know that I am a slave, and that you are my master! I love my collar! I am proud of it! I want to be owned! I want to be possessed, utterly, and without qualification. "Thank you, Master," she said. "That is what I want. I want your collar on my neck, and I want it there, locked, as on the neck of any other slave, for I am only another slave. No more! That is what I am, and want to be. How happy you make me! I am grateful! I will try to be worthy of wearing your collar. Thank you, Master. I will love my collar." "I now know my collar," I said, "and want it, and love it." I wanted the collar, and belonged in it, and was in it. I loved that it was on my neck, closed and locked. It was there. I could not remove it. I did not wish to remove it. I was a slave. "I am a slave," I said. "Would you wish to be otherwise?" he asked. "No, Master," I said. "Why?" he said. "Because I am a slave," I said. How vital I now was. How I loved my collar! Only after my collaring had I begun to live. "I love my collar," she said. "I love being a slave." "That is fortunate," I said, "for the collar is on your neck." I knelt beside her, and spoke to her, softly, earnestly. "Love your collar, your marking," I said. "They show that you are, of all women, the most exciting, and desirable. Pity free women. You can be a raw, and perfect, female. This is your fulfillment, to be owned, and to have no choice but to serve, and be pleasing. It is what we, as women, are for. It is what we want to be." I loved the collar! How I would strive to be a pleasing slave! I know I am in a collar. I have learned my collar. I love my collar. "I love my collar," I said. "I would not change it for a necklace of diamonds. I am a slave, a natural slave. I have known this even from girlhood. I want to be owned, to belong, to be a possession. I want to be dominated, mastered. I want to be rightless. I want to surrender to a man, wholly, to be his, wholly, his animal, his property. I want to kneel, kiss, caress, obey, love, and serve." I loved my collar. Yet how vulnerable and helpless one is when collared! "They love their collars and hunger to be owned," said Sakim. "Many women find love in the collar," I said.
I knew that men, the beasts, Gorean men, at least, loved to have their collars on intelligent women.
"You want to go to the alcove, don't you?" he asked. "Yes, Master," I said. "And you would dance and beg for it?" he asked. "I love to dance, Master," I said, "but even if I did not, yes, I would dance and beg for it!" "I am a belly dancer," I said. "And do you love to belly dance?" he asked. "Yes," I said. "Say so," he said. "I love to belly dance," I said, reddening. But then I looked at him, gratefully. I was a belly dancer! I was! And I did love to belly dance! How free I suddenly felt, and happy, that I had now said these things, that I had confessed them to myself, honestly, openly, in my native language. The dance in the circle, as one might have gathered, was not the stately dance of free maidens, even in which, of course, the maidens, though scarcely admitting this even to themselves, experience something of the stimulatory voluptuousness of movement, but slave dance, that form of dance, in its thousands of variations, in which a female may excitingly and beautifully, marvelously and fulfillingly, express the depths and profoundities of her nature. In such dance the woman moves as a female, and shows herself as a female, in all her excitingness and beauty. It is no wonder that women love such dance, in which dance they are so desirable and beautiful, in which dance they feel so free, so sexual, so much a slave. "You love to dance?" I asked. "Yes, Master," she said. "But as a slave?" I asked. "It is what I am, Master," she said, looking up at me. Yet, too, I did not want to betray the dance. I loved it. It is so beautiful. I wanted, thusly, to suggest, within my limits, at least, something of the richness, the complexity, the profound sensuousness of such dance.
She turned her head from side to side, the loops swinging. "Many slave girls," I said, "once they become used to earrings, come to love them, and even beg them of their masters." "I love mine," she said. I thought of the slave girl, Dorna. The earrings had been quite attractive on her. I suspected that she might now be quite fond of them. That seems to be the way it is with the women of this world. They fear them. Then they love them. To be sure, they also made her only a pierced-ear girl.
"Your mother?" he asked, his eyes concerned. "Dead, years ago," I said. My father regarded me evenly. "She will be the last," he said. "I had no right to let her love me." "Father!" she wept. "My daughter," he said, and took the girl gently in his arms. "I love you, my Father," she said. And Parp uttered a great sob, his head falling against the shoulder of his daughter. But I would not destroy the egg not only because it contained life but because it was important to my friend, whose name was Misk and is elsewhere spoken of; much of the life of that brave creature was devoted to the dream of a new life for Priest-Kings, a new stock, a new beginning; a readiness to relinquish his place in an old world to prepare a mansion for the new; to have and love a child, so to speak, for Misk, who is a Priest-King, neither male nor female, yet can love. The girl now approached us, behind the tables, and Saphrar leaped to his feet and bowed low to her. "Honored Aphris of Turia, whom I love as my own daughter," he said. "I was raised in that house," she said "with love, though I was only slave, and Samos was to me almost as a father might have been. I was permitted to speak to, and learn from, scribes and singers, and merchants and travelers. I had friends among other girls in the house, who were also much free, though not as free as I. We had the freedom of the city, though guards would accompany us to protect us." "You are my mother," she said. "You must not talk to me in this way!" "Perhaps you are right," said the woman. "And perhaps I would not myself even dare to do so if I were not here with you, naked, in a collar, too, with a number on my breast." "It is shameful for you to speak so!" said the girl, angrily. "I want you to live," said the woman. "And I want you to be happy, truly happy." "Shame!" scolded the girl. "It is my love that prompts me to speak so," said the woman. "You are only another woman in a collar," I said. "And, soon, you will be going your different ways. Besides, I do not think she is your equal in these things. Perhaps sometime she might possibly be your equal. I do not know. Perhaps you, in your love, could hope that for her, and even give her training, and advice. At present, however, dear lady, it is you, I assure you, who are the prize, you whom strong men would relish most on her belly before them. Who knows? Perhaps you will both find yourselves eventually in the same household. It might be interesting to see you competing for the favor of the same master. I have little doubt it would be you, properly enslaved, my dear, and not she, who would be most often drawn by the hair to the master's couch." The woman sobbed. "What has been the relationship between you and your daughter?" I asked. The woman did not respond. "I gather it has been distant," I said. "I gather that your love for her has been little reciprocated, that your sacrifices, your concerns and efforts in her behalf, have been little understood or appreciated. I gather that she, in the customary, unquestioning self-centeredness and vanity of her youth, seemingly so inevitable in the young, has given little concern to your feelings, to your reality as an independent woman and human being, that she has scarcely thought of you, or understood you, in these ways, that she has, typically, much taken you for granted, considering you often as little more than a convenience, a tool and fixture, in her world, as little more than her servant and satellite." "I do not ask for your respect," said the woman. "Neither do I need it, nor any longer want it. There are things better and deeper than respect. That I have now learned. Too, when we are both enslaved, neither of us will be entitled to that commodity. Our conditions then, I assure you, will be far deeper and more biological than respect. I ask, rather, your understanding, and a little love." "Are we slaves, Mother?" asked the girl. "Yes," said the mother, kissing her. "Now, rest." "I love you, Mother," said the girl. "I love you, too, very much," said the mother. "Good night, Mother," whispered the girl, "261." "Good night, 437," said the woman gently, "my daughter." I proceeded on toward the raised platform over the main gate, where the impaling spear, flashing in the sun like a polished needle, was mounted. I passed another lad, too, also, in my opinion, too young to be on the wall. Better these fellows had been running about the windy corners of the markets, looking for the veils to blow about the faces of free women or pursuing slave girls, pulling up their brief skirts, playing "brand guess," or busying themselves playing stones or hoops behind the shops. He was crouching beside a pile of stones, building stones, and tiles. It is hard to throw these with accuracy without standing above the crenelation. This exposes the caster, of course. He seemed lost in his thoughts. I wondered if he had been on the wall before. I supposed he had a mother, who loved him. "You are thinking," I said, "of how well your mother would look at your father's feet, branded and in a collar." "I love her very much," he said, "but it is where she belongs." "My father does not understand me," she said. "No fathers understand their daughters," I said. "They only love them." "You saw to what an extent he would go to accommodate himself to Cosian will," said Marcus. "To protect his daughter," I said. "Surely you, in his place, in his helplessness, lacking your sword, your skills, would have done as much, or more." "I do not want his protection," said the girl. "He keeps me from myself!" "He sees you in terms of one ideal," I said, "while it is actually another, one more profound, which you manifest." "I do not want to go back to him," she said. "He loves you," I said. "I despise him!" she said "It is true that sometimes strangers understand a woman better than those closest to her, and see what she is, and needs. They see her more directly, more as herself, and less through their own distorting lenses, lenses they themselves have ground, lenses which would show her not as she is but as they require her to be." "I hate him!" she said. "And love him," I said. "You will always love him."
She turned, still clutching the hanging in her fist. Her eyes were filled with tears, but angry. "You returned me to Tharna," she said, almost as if making an accusation. "For the love of my friends," I said. "And honor!" she said. "Perhaps honor too," I admitted. "By the love I bear you, and by the love you bear me," said Drusus Rencius to Miles, "hear me out. That woman is not the Tatrix! She sat upon the throne! She appeared in public as the Tatrix! She sat in court as the Tatrix! She conducted business as the Tatrix! She was known as the Tatrix! But she was not the Tatrix!" "She betrayed me to the chains of Ionicus!" said Mirus. "False! False!" cried Hendow in fury. "It is true," said Mirus. "I swear it by our love." "You are losing blood, old friend," said Hendow. "I do not think you will long be able to stand. Perhaps then, while you have the strength, you will wish to attack." "By the love you bear me," said Mirus, weakly, "do not kill her." "Who here loves Ar?" I asked. There was no response from my party. "Who then," I said, "loves the scribe Hemartius?" There were cries of assent.
It was a strange but rapid journey, and as we leaped chasms and seemed almost to swim in the cold air I told myself that Misk and his Priest-Kings and the humans that were engineers in the Nest were losing the battle that would decide whether men and Priest-Kings might, working together, save a world or whether in the end it would be the sabotage of Sarm, First Born, that would be triumphant and the world I loved would be scattered into fugitive grains destined for the flaming pyre of the sun. Goreans care for their world. They love the sky, the plains, the sea, the rain in the summer, the snow in winter. They will sometimes stand and watch clouds. The movement of grass in the wind is very beautiful to them. More than one Gorean poet has sung of the leaf of a Tur tree. I have known warriors who cared for the beauty of small flowers. I was in love with the Gorean world, though I found it in some ways rather fearful, primarily, I suppose, because it permitted female slavery. Even in the little I had seen of it I had found myself falling in love with this world, with its honesty, its truth and beauty. It seems paradoxical to me at first, of course, to discover that these men, with their great love of nature, would think nothing of keeping a cowering, cringing woman chained at their feet. I had soon come to understand that these mysterious juxtapositions, these seeming paradoxes, this thing, the love of flowers, the subjugation of women, and such, is all of a piece. Ellen lifted her arms gratefully to the city, the sky, the world. "I love you, planet Gor," she cried. "You are so beautiful. "This is now my world," cried out Ellen. "I am only a slave, but I am here, and now this world is mine, too! It is mine, too! You are mine, too, dear world, and I love you, though on you I am but a slave! But on such a world what could a woman such as I be but a slave? On such a world a woman such as I could be only, and am worthy to be only, a slave!" Ellen then knelt down, at the edge of the roof, knelt down in gratitude, before the world of Gor. "You are now my world," she said. "You are beautiful. I love you. I rejoice to be here." And see how these men love their world and their cities, their fields and forests, how they keep them, how they care for them, and love them, how they will not destroy them, how they will not cut and burn them, nor diminish and exhaust them. There are surely worse worlds than this." Goreans love and respect nature. Crimes against her are regarded as peculiarly heinous. "The air," she said, "exhilarates me!" "The air has not been fouled," I said. "Goreans love their world." The Gorean, incidentally, is not a soiling and a plague upon his world, nor is he so arrogant as to deem himself superior to it, its guardian or steward. He regards himself, rather, as a part of her, as much so as a leaf, or tree, but an unusual part, of course, a part which knows itself a part. He is a partaker of its warmth and cold, its winters and summers, its light and darkness, its day and its night, its storms and serenities. He loves his world but he does not understand it for what it is not. It is beautiful but, too, it is awesome and terrible. With equanimity, not caring, it brings forth life and death, flourishing and destruction, growth and decay. It is a world that contains not only the beauty of grass and the blossoming of the talendar but the fangs of the ost, the coils of the hith, the jaws of the larl, the frenzies of flocking, feeding jards, the sudden, wrenching, twisting strike of the nine-gilled shark, the claws of the sleen, the beak and talons of the tarn. Many Goreans, I suppose, might seem callous, heartless, or cruel to many of Earth, but they commonly, as those of Earth often do not, love their world, love growing things, trees, grass, flowers, and the world itself, the day and night, the seasons, the wind and sky, the stars, the sound of water in brooks, and live animals, birds, and such. They care for their world and the living things within it. Perhaps this is foolish, but it is a common Gorean way. Who is to say which way is best? Or does it matter? But Goreans will kill for their way. Goreans view themselves as within nature, perhaps as a part of nature; surely, at least, they respect her and love her, and it would never occur to them to scorn and deny her; they live with her, not against her; on the other hand, we commonly view ourselves as outside of nature, and surely, on the whole if not against her, apart from her. She is alien to us, the home without which we could not live, and is left unnoticed. Gor is an incredibly beautiful, natural world, much as Earth might once have been. Indeed, Goreans love beauty, light, and color.
Centius of Cos, on the other hand, was an older man; no one knew how old; it was said the stabilization serums had not taken their full effect with him until he had seen fifty winters; he was slight and gray-haired; he was quite different in personality and character from the young Scormus; he was quiet, and soft-spoken, and gentle; he loved Kaissa, and its beauty.
The girl laughed merrily. I love to hear the sudden glad music of a woman's laughter, that laughter that so delights a man, that acts on his senses like Ka-la-na wine.
Yet, in spite of his incomparable eccentricities, his petulance and exasperation, I felt drawn to the man and sensed in him something I admired - shrewd and kind spirit, a sense of humor, and a love of learning, which can be one of the deepest and most honest of loves. It was this love for his scrolls and for the men who had written them, perhaps centuries before, that most impressed me about Torm. Torm, my friend of the Caste of Scribes, had been to such fairs to trade scrolls with scholars from other cities, men he would never have seen were it not for the fairs, men of hostile cities who yet loved ideas more than they hated their enemies, men like Torm who so loved learning that they would risk the perilous journey to the Sardar Mountains for the chance to dispute a text or haggle over a coveted scroll. It took not much time to purchase a small bundle of supplies to take into the Sardar, nor was it difficult to find a scribe to whom I might entrust the history of the events at Tharna. I did not ask his name nor he mine. I knew his caste, and he knew mine, and it was enough. He could not read the manuscript as it was written in English, a language as foreign to him as Gorean would be to most of you, but yet he would treasure the manuscript and guard it as though it were a most precious possession, for he was a scribe and it is the way of scribes to love the written word and keep it from harm, and if he could not read the manuscript, what did it matter perhaps someone could someday, and then the words which had kept their secret for so long would at last enkindle the mystery of communication and what had been written would be heard and understood.
I regret only that none return from the Sardar, for I have loved life. And on this barbaric world I have seen it in all its beauty and cruelty, in all its glory and sadness. I have learned that it is splendid and fearful and priceless. I have seen it in the vanished towers of Ko-ro-ba and in the flight of a tarn, in the movements of a beautiful woman, in the gleam of weaponry, in the sound of tarn drums and the crash of thunder over green fields. I have found it at the tables of sword companions and in the clash of the metals of war, in the touch of a girl's lips and hair, in the blood of a sleen, in the sands and chains of Tharna, in the scent of talenders and the hiss of the whip. I am grateful to the immortal elements which have so conspired that I might once be.
"You must return to your work," I said. "Men need you." He laughed bitterly. "The little that men have," I said, "is worth your love." "Who am I to care for others?" he asked. "You are Flaminius," I told him, "he who long ago loved men and chose to wear the green robes of the Caste of Physicians."
I had seen much of Corcyrus in the past few days. Drusus Rencius, for the most part, had been an attentive and accommodating escort. I loved the markets and bazaars, the smells, the colors, the crowds, the quantities and varieties of goods, the tiny shops, the stalls, the places of business which at times were so small as a tiny rug on the stones, on which a peddler displayed his wares. Drusus Rencius had permitted me, with coins, helping me, to bargain. I had been very excited to come back to the palace with my small triumphs. I loved shopping, and looking, even when I was buying nothing.
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 loved the smell of my master's body, which was in the furs, surrounding me with its excitement. The aura of his ownership enveloped me. I felt warm, and protected, and stimulated as a slave girl, warm in my master's furs. "Lola," said the Lady Gina, "begin at the far end of the line of male slaves. Tell each that you are his slave. Kiss them. Tell them that you love them. Address them as Master. Then, kiss them again." "How I despise the men of Earth," said the girl to me. "How I love my Gorean master!" "I love my Gorean master," breathed the girl. "Buy Beverly, please!" "I love you, my Gorean master," she said. "I love you, my Master," she whispered. "I love you, my Gorean master." "I thank you for my collar, my Master," she whispered. "I am yours, and I love you." "I love you, my Gorean master," she said. "I love you, and I am yours." The Gorean master keeps us well on our knees, and we love him for it. Many slaves, it must be understood, love their masters with a love that few free women, with their concern for status, self-image, self-containment, balance, commensuration, and proportion, could equal. "No, Masters!" cried Iris. "Do not fight! Not for me! Let no one die for a slave!" She flung herself to her knees before me. "Do not fight, Master!" she wept. Then she sprang up and hurried to Alan, and knelt before him. "Do not fight, Master!" she wept. "I love you!"
"Men," she laughed, "understand so little." She put down her head. "Men are fools," she said, "and women are greater fools, for they love them." "I love men," she said. "They are so strong, so magnificent. I love being commanded by them. I love obeying them. I love knowing that if I displease them in the slightest, I will be whipped or slain. I had not known such feelings were possible." "What sort of woman are you?" asked Imnak. "One who wants to kneel at the feet of men, and love them," she said. "I love men, and wish to serve them, fully," she said. "Lewd and shameless slut!" I cried. Indeed, I wanted, myself, to rid myself of its narrownesses, its contaminations, its uglinesses, as quickly as I could. I supposed I was a wicked, worthless woman and, far worse, only a despicable natural slave, but something deep in me, fundamental in me, profound and ancient in me, loved men, and I did not want to make them small, and nothing, but I wanted, rather, to please them, to obey them, to serve them, to give my all to them, to make them strong and proud, grand and glorious, to make them happy. I lay there then and loved the men of Gor. I had not really, in spite of strong feelings and intuitions on Earth, begun to understand my sex until I was imbonded, until I found myself in my place in nature, subservient to men. Men had done much to me on Gor. They had imperiously, for their amusement and pleasure, summoned forth from me my latent slavery, a slavery which on Earth I had hardly dared acknowledge. They had taken a woman of Earth and lit slave fires in her belly. They had taught me how to feel. They had required that I show my slavery, and yield to it, wholly and honestly. They would let me he the slave I was, lovingly and helplessly. I loved them for it! I kissed the master eagerly. "I love men," she confessed, seemingly scarcely daring to whisper it. "Are you ashamed of that?" I asked. "Should I not be?" she asked. "No," I said. "You are no longer a free woman. You no longer need conceal your feelings. You may now openly and freely admit your interest in men and your love for them." I love men, she thought, and I want to serve them and please them. Dispositionally she had longed to submit to males, serve them and love them. Genetically, she desired to love and serve men; in the Gorean milieu she had learned ways of doing so. Men, for their pleasure and amusement, kindle the tinder of our needs. As it pleases them, and doubtless because it will improve our price, they set slave fires in our belly. And then they step aside, as though noticing nothing, while these fires periodically rage. They make us the victims of our own needs, and use them to bring us choicelessly to their feet. How cruel they are! How I need, want and love them! "Men on this world have demonstrated their dominance over me, and their refusal to accept insubordination," said Ellen. "I love them for it!" The slave loves men, and wishes to be found pleasing.
"Elicia!" I cried. "Elicia Nevins!" I cried, weeping with joy. I threw myself into her arms, sobbing. And she put her arms about me. I could not control my emotions. The ordeal was now over. I shook, half choking, half sobbing. Behind me now was the steel of slave bracelets, the fear of the whip, the misery and degradation of the slave girl. "I love you, Elicia!" I cried. "I love you!" I would now be free. Soon, with Elicia's help, I would be returned safe to Earth. She had rescued me! "I love you, Elicia!" I wept. The woman thrust me from her, and I, startled, slipped back, losing my footing, to the tiles. I was on my knees. I looked at her, puzzled. "It is well," she said, "that a slave girl loves her mistress."
"You should not have such needs," I told her. "I have them," she said. "Change them," I said. "I cannot," she said. "Surely you desire to do so," I said. "No," she said, "no longer, I love them. They are the deepest part of me."
"Please, Melanie!" cried the Hinrabian. "Do not hurt me! Do not hurt me!" The girl approached her with the knife. "You loved me," whispered the Hinrabian. "You loved me!" "I hate you," said the girl.
"I have had the good fortune to be chosen for wall duty," said a youth to his fellow. "I myself volunteered for it," answered the other. "Such things are the least we can do," said the first. "By means of them Ar will become great," said the other. "Not all values are material," said the first. "By means of such things we shall visibly demonstrate our love of peace," said the second. "Without such things," said the first, "our protests of love and brotherhood would be empty." "As we are both lovers of peace," he said, "and both lack amity with Cos, resenting its exploitations and villainies, we should be friends, and allies, not foes."
"Good friends are priceless," said a man. "So, too, are fine enemies." "Great enemies," said a man, "make great peoples." "Do not be concerned, Mitakola," said Cuwignaka. "I do not think I understand them either. They are my people, and I love them, but I, too, may never understand them." Indeed, only this morning I, unveiled, in a large, open, silken palanquin, borne by slaves, Ligurious at my side, had been carried through the streets of Corcyrus, behind trumpets and drums, flanked by guards, through cheering crowds. "Your people love you," had said Ligurious. I had lifted my hand to the crowds, and bowed and smiled. "You will never believe the difficulty I had in escaping from the Central Cylinder!" she said. "It is almost as though I were a prisoner there. Seremides is so careful! His spies are everywhere. Who knows who they are, or which of them is watching you at any given time? Whom can I trust? It is hard to leave without an escort of a company of guardsmen. What do they fear, I wonder. The people love me." "Do not kill me!" she wept. It was not irrational on her part, of course, to fear an assassination plot. Even if she believed herself generally popular within the city, perhaps even much loved within it, she would realize that these sentiments might not be universal. For example, the increasing resistance to Cosian rule in the city, the growing insurgency, the actions of the Delta Brigade, would surely have given her cause for apprehension, if not genuine alarm.
"Even if these plays are not great dramas," I said, "of the sort of which perhaps Andronicus dreams, they are a genuine part of the vital and living theater. They are a place, whether at a crossroads or in a Ubar's hall, where theater exists. In this sense they are not only a part of its tradition and history, but are, humanly, for all their vulgarity and bawdiness, rich and precious. It would be a tragedy if they were not, in one sense or another, however unworthily or inadequately, remembered." "It is impossible that they should be lost," said Boots. "I know of a world where they were," I said. "At any rate," said Boots, "I did give her permission, and the materials, too, to make at least a few jottings pertinent to these matters." "Excellent," I said. "Do you think me weak?" asked Boots. "No," I said. "It is a good idea." I looked to Telitsia, kneeling with Rowena before us. "Why did you want to do this?" I asked her. "I have learned to love them," she said. "I found them precious. I did not want them to perish."
"You are quite a wit," observed Boabissia. "Thank you," I said. But, from the tone of her voice, I suspected her compliment was not to be taken at face value. I think she was prejudiced somewhat by her affection for the stocky larl, Hurtha. I did not think it was to be explained by her love of poetry. And doubtless millions of female slaves have been picked out for others, matched to others, to the best of the purchaser's ability, a slave who sings and recites, and plays the lyre, for a fellow who loves poetry and music, a skilled dancer for a fellow who is fond of dance, a brilliant, informed, educated slave, perhaps once of the scribes, who, now collared and without caste, would be a delightful little beast to have in a scribe's house, affording her master many pleasures, those of conversation and intellectual engagement, as well as those which she, inevitably subdued, will provide at his slave ring, moaning and thrashing in his arms."
"I wonder who truly loves himself, and women," she whispered, "he who is true to himself and his nature, refusing to deny it or pretend it doesn't exist, and who fulfills women, as what they really are, or he who betrays himself, who lies to himself and who denies the true needs of woman?" If they wished me to serve, I must serve! I was not such as she! But then I, for anything, would not have wished to be such as she! I had learned my womanhood! I would never, never surrender it, not now that I had tasted it, not for all the garbage and politics in the world. I had learned it at the hands of strong men, their precious gift to me, an inestimable treasure, men to whom I would be forever grateful. I had now found myself, and accepted myself, and loved myself! I was not a man, or a kind of man. I was a woman, something radically different and wonderful. "Surely," said he, "you are not only aware of your beauty, but you must be excited by it, happy with it, and proud of it, and love it." How could the slave not be frightened of her body, and yet thrilled with it? It is soft, beautiful, yielding, and alive. It is obviously a source of great pleasure to masters, who command it and put it to their purposes, as they will, and if the masters consent, and are kind, it is a source of untold rapture to herself, as well. It is little wonder that the slave loves her body, and her tunic. They come to a new understanding of their bodies, and are at peace with them, perhaps for the first time in their lives, and rejoice in them, and come to love them, and come to see them as delicious and lovely contrasts to the sternness and power, the rudeness and brutishness, of the male bodies, to which they will be forced to submit. "The slave," I said, "is not her own woman. She is her master's woman. Too, whereas she may well think well of herself, rejoice in herself, celebrate herself, love herself, as well as the master, for how can one love another if one does not love oneself, and so on, she is not likely to have self-respect and self-esteem in the senses that I think you understand such things. She is, after all, an animal. And certainly she is not permitted dignity. She is a beautiful animal, and whereas she has far more attractions than, say, a she-tarsk, she has no more dignity than a she-tarsk." A slave, I was muchly pleased. We love our bodies, and our beauty, and are thrilled to be choicelessly displayed as the slaves we are. What free woman would not, in our place, wish to be brazenly exhibited to the eyes of men as the treasure she is?
"I had not known such sensations could exist," she had said. "They are attainable only by the slave," I told her. "They are the surrender and submission spasms of the owned woman, the girl who must yield absolutely and totally, holding nothing back, to her master." "I see, Master," she had said. "They cannot, in the nature of things, be attained by the free woman," I said, "for she is her own mistress, not the slave of a master." "Yes, Master," had said the girl. "Did you like them?" I asked. "I loved them," she said. I love strong sensations, she thought. And I now know that they can exist. I love being a woman, she thought. I want to be owned, and dominated, she thought. Only here, on this beautiful, natural world have I understood, for the first time, my body, my mind, my feelings, my deepest being, my very soul, my sex.
"I love serving you, Master," said Winyela. "Even if you did not like serving me," said Canka, "you would do it, and perfectly." "Yes, Master," she said. "For you are a slave," he said. "Yes, Master," she said. "And your slave." Too, she exists for the pleasure of men, understands this, surrenders to it, wholly, and humbly, and takes great pleasure in it. She loves to serve, to obey, and please. It is what she wants to do. It is her life.
Let it suffice to say that to the Gorean sailor his ships are living things. Were they not, how could he love them so? War galleys were not announced, and, shallow-drafted, commonly used the low piers. When a new round ship docks its arrival is usually announced by the bar. At such a time, those with business, or who hope for business, as well as the idle and curious, may visit the piers. One might see docksmen there, as well, looking to pick up coin. If it were later in the day, paga girls might be sent to the wharves, to solicit custom for their master's establishment. There are often boys about the docks, too, in ragged tunics, who love to see the large ships, and hope, one day, to learn the trade of the sea. I loved the sound of the timbers of the ship, creaking, the sound of the long yard, responding to the wind, the occasional snap of the canvas.
I had seen much of Corcyrus in the past few days. Drusus Rencius, for the most part, had been an attentive and accommodating escort. I loved the markets and bazaars, the smells, the colors, the crowds, the quantities and varieties of goods, the tiny shops, the stalls, the places of business which at times were so small as a tiny rug on the stones, on which a peddler displayed his wares. Drusus Rencius had permitted me, with coins, helping me, to bargain. I had been very excited to come back to the palace with my small triumphs. I loved shopping, and looking, even when I was buying nothing.
The Wagon Peoples sometimes are also willing to barter silks to the Turians, but commonly they keep these for their own slave girls, who wear them in the secrecy of the wagons; free women, incidentally, among the Wagon Peoples are not permitted to wear silk; it is claimed by those of the Wagons, delightfully I think, that any woman who loves the feel of silk on her body is, in the secrecy of her heart and blood, a slave girl, whether or not some master has yet forced her to don the collar.
In spite of some reservations the Poet, or Singer, was loved on Gor.
"Have you experienced slave arousal?" I asked. "Master?" she asked, looking up. "Have the slave fires been lit in your belly?" I asked. She was, after all, a relatively new slave, and had been a house slave, apparently primarily consigned to domestic duties, serving table and such, and was now a field slave, whose primary services would presumably lie in such labors as the carrying of water and the hoeing of suls. It was not as though she had been in the attentive and exacting ownership, for example, of a particular master, who would see to the summoning forth and cultivation of these intimate, exquisite, exigent latencies which once initiated seem to blossom and grow of their own lovely, imperious will, which cannot be suppressed or silenced, and which make a girl so much their prisoner, more so than collars and chains. "Sometimes," she said, "I sense their beginnings in me." "How do you feel about them?" I asked. "I love them," she said, "but I am afraid of them."
"I name you 'Alice'," I said. "Thank you, Master," she said. "You wear the name now as a slave name," I said. "I know," she said. "Do you like it," I asked, "now wearing your old name, but now afresh, put upon you as a degraded slave name?" "I love it," she said. "It is delicious. It makes me quiver with desire." "The name reeks of sex and slavery," she said. "Forgive me," I said. "Like 'Fina' and 'Janice'," she said. I put down my head. "It was the choice of the pit master," I said. "He is perceptive, and has excellent taste," she said. I looked at her, startled. "I love it," she said. "It is just right for me. It will do wonderfully well."
"Did you like it, slave?" asked Hendow. I had never seen him like this. "Yes, Master," I whispered. "Is that all?" he asked. "I loved it," I whispered, terrified. "What was it you loved?" asked Hendow, angrily. I looked at him, aghast. I was bashful, and shy. I was timid. I was from Earth. I did not want to say such words. "She is a new slave," said Mirus. "Perhaps -" "Be silent!" said Hendow. Mirus stiffened, as though he had been slapped, I was startled. How could Hendow have spoken to a free person in this fashion? Never had I seen him as he was. "With your leave," said Mirus, coldly. "Stay," said Hendow. "I did not know the slave was of interest to you," said Mirus. "She is meaningless, as is any other slave," said Hendow. "Of course," said Mirus. Then Hendow looked at me, again. His eyes were fierce. I must answer. It was painful for me. On Earth I had even been reluctant even to describe the liberating sort of dance I loved so much by such an expression as 'belly dance'. I quailed before that gaze. It was the gaze of my master. "My slave orgasm," I whispered. "Speak up, slave," said Hendow. "My slave orgasm," I said. I shuddered to hear such words coming from me. "And you want more of them, don't you?" he asked. "Yes, Master," I said, my eyes suddenly filling with tears. How helpless I was before such men. "And desperately so?" he said. "Yes, Master!" I wept. "You perhaps understand now," he said, "that there is more to slavery than collars and chains."
The sixth week of the training was spent, as several of the former, before the mirror, but this time repeating over and over, aloud, "I love being a slave girl. I love being a slave girl." The objections of girls to slavery, I have noted, are usually not objections to the institution which, in the sweet heat of their bodies, they love dearly, and fear only to lose, but to a given master. Given the proper master they are quite content. In the proper collar a woman is serene and joyful." "I love being a slave," said the girl, looking up at me. The more beautiful and vulnerable she is the more likely it is that her beauty will be seized and dominated, and ruthlessly exploited, by masters. Consequently, though I loved my apparently increasing beauty, and desirability, and was incredibly thrilled with it, and my new attractiveness, I was not unaware that it was attended with risks. "I think I will love being a slave girl," she said. "I went to sleep with a pot wench," I said, "and I awaken with a pleasure slave." She laughed. Then she said, soberly, "I love being a slave, Master." "That is well," I said, "for on this world you are a slave, and you are going to continue to be a slave." "Yes, Master," she said, trembling. Then she said, "I am content, Master." "Continue your work, Slave Girl," I said. "Yes, Master," she said. I then let her pleasure me, fully, not so much as touching her, that she might learn to please completely, without being so much as granted the least kiss or caress of the male beast. Slave girls are forced thus, sometimes, to serve, totally, unilaterally; it helps to impress their slavery on them. She then lay beside me. "Do you still love being a slave girl?" I asked. "Yes, Master," she said. "What do you think now of your collar?" I asked. "I hate it," she said. "And I love it!" "You love your collar?" I asked. "Yes," she said, "I love it." She looked up at me. "I love being a slave," she said. "I love being enslaved. I love being forced to yield, and to obey men." "Do you like being a slave?" I asked. "I love it," she said. Then she had said, "Please, Master, rape me again," and I had done so. "You are fond of your slavery?" I asked. "I love my slavery, Master," she said. "You enjoy being a slave?" I asked. "I am a slave," she said, "and I love it." "You have ruined me for freedom," she said. "Do you object?" I asked. "No," she said. "I want to be a slave. I love being a slave." "I, too, of course, am only a slave and a slut," said Teela. "And I love it!" Then she kissed us both. Then she drew back from us. "You will be slaves out there before free men," she said, "Too, there will be no free women present. Revel in your womanhood and manifest it shamelessly!" "You are cruel, all of you!" cried out Linda, the blond Earth-girl slave of Samos, springing to her feet. All eyes turned towards her. "You put us in collars! You take away our clothes! You make us serve you! You do with us as you please!" She looked beautiful, in her brief tunic, barefoot, her body filled with passion, her small fists clenched, in her collar. "And you love it!" laughed a man. "Yes!" she cried. "I love it! You cannot know how I love it! I come from a world where there are almost no true men, a world where manhood is almost educated and conditioned out of existence. I come from a world of love-starved women. I did not know what true men were until I came to Gor, and was put in a collar! Here I am disciplined and trained, here I am owned and fulfilled! Here I am happy! I pity even my free sisters of Gor, who are so far above me, for they cannot know the overwhelming joys and fulfillments which are mine, and I pity a thousand times more my miserable free sisters of Earth, so far away, longing for their collars and masters!" "Slaves," I said, "are generally quite open, and loving about their bodies. They tend to understand themselves, and their nature, and love it." He had spurned me and sent me, his despised "modern woman," doubtless in disdain and amusement, to the chains of others. I would have liked to have seen him again, perhaps to try to convince him, humbly, that I had learned my lessons, that I had profited from his instruction, and what he had done to me, that there was, even now, this soon, very little of the "modern woman" left in me. And, eventually, I supposed, there would be none of it left in me. He had said that it could be taken from me, and I now had little doubt not only that it could be, but that it would be, and totally. I was now outside, probably in a walled court. I could feel the air on my body. My feet were bare. I realized, with a shock, I loved what was being done to me. I did not know whether to weep with the power of men over me, or cry out with joy. I did know I was a slave, and, in spite of its vulnerabilities and terrors, loved it. "You like being a slave," he said. "I am a slave," I said. "Thus I must acknowledge what is in my secret heart, confessing it openly, then finding my happiness and fulfillment in it." "You slut," he said. "You like being a slave." "Yes, Master," I said. I supposed that I needed not tell him that I loved it! But I, myself, was not a free woman. I was only a slave. I loved the freedom, and liberation this gave me, to be a full woman. I loved being a slave! I loved it! "I ask the commutation of the sentence of impalement in the case of the Lady Claudia of Ar's Station." "You do not ask for her freedom?" he asked. "Of course not," I said. "She is guilty." "You have no objection then," he said, "in view of her guilt, if a terrible and grievous penalty is inflicted upon her?" "Of course not," I said. "Even a fate 'worse than death'?" he smiled. "Who speaks of it so?" I asked. "Do not some free women speak of it so?" he asked. "And are not those the very women who first bare their breasts to conquerors and beg the privilege of licking their feet?" "Perhaps, upon occasion," said Aemilianus. "If it were truly a fate worse than death," I said, "or even so unfortunate a lot, it seems it would be very hard to understand their happiness, their emotional fulfillments, their ecstasies, their willingness to die for their masters." "Perhaps then," he said, "for all its demands and duties, it is not truly a fate worse than death." "Perhaps not," I said, "else, after a time, they would not love it so." "On your stomach," I said. She obeyed immediately, unquestioningly. "I love being a slave," she said, "and serving!" But then I saw in her eyes, she half laughing, half crying, that whatever had been her motivation, whether some or all of the things I had wondered about, or even others, that she had only wanted the reassurance of the whip, the reassurance of the inflexibility of the will of men, that she must now obey, and was truly a slave. Moving as she did, and being what she was, a slave, was the deepest and most wonderful thing in her being, and she reveled in it, and loved it! He may then have a slave as beautiful as he wishes, and as perfect as he wishes. Indeed, let the woman, the more beautiful, and the more exciting and desirable she becomes, be kept at least as strictly, if not all the more strictly, in the toils of her master. Why permit a jewel lenience, or even think of it, when even the commonest of slaves is ruled with a rod of iron? Does she think the master weak? Show her she is wrong, indeed, if anything, let her discover that her beauty, far from weakening her master, serves rather, by his will, to ensure the fixity of the discipline to which she finds herself subject. This she will love. "But what if you had a harsh master, one cruel or unfeeling." "I would still be a slave," she said. "I would still love my condition. It is what I am." "You are a female slave," I said. "Yes, Master," she said, wonderingly. "That is it, I am a female slave. I have now become a female slave." "Do you object?" I asked. "No, Master," she said. "I love it!" But I suppose, by now, it is evident to all that I am a kajira, or sa-fora. But of course it is not evident! How could it be? Forgive me. You do not know these words. Aside from the words, of course, my condition, my status, is doubtless clear to you. Would it not be clear from the speaking of chains, and collars, and such? You may find it objectionable. I do not. I love it. In it I find my fulfillment, my happiness, my joy! Perhaps you think what I am is degrading, and perhaps it is, but, if so, it is a delicious, precious, joyful degradation which I treasure, and in which I thrive and prosper, and one I would not, at the expense of my very life, have otherwise. It is a thing of softness, heat, devotion, obedience, service, beauty and love. But naturally my mind raced ahead. I had learned in the pens that I was unusually beautiful and desirable. Similarly I had trained quickly and exceedingly well. Too, though I was often terrified, I, on the whole, loved my new life. "You lick and kiss well," he said. "Thank you, Master," I said. I loved to render such obeisance to men. It seemed, somehow, so very real, and fulfilling to me. "I think you are a true slave, Janice," she said, softly. "Yes," I said. "I am a true slave. I was true slave even before I was brought here and collared." "You love being a slave!" she said. "It can be terrifying to be a slave!" I said. "You love being a slave!" she said. "Yes," I said. "I love being a slave!" Oh, yes, you enslave us for your gratifications and pleasures, you monsters, you beasts! But what you do not know is that we love our bonds, and our belonging, and our being owned, and being helplessly subject to the magnificence, the glories, even to the whip, of your total, uncompromised mastery of us! "It is more than that," I wept. "I am a slave inwardly, in my need, and in my love, and in my nature! It is what I am! Despise me for it, if you wish! I am a natural slave, a rightful slave, and here, on this world, in my collar, I have found myself at last! Hate me! Hold me in contempt! But I am a slave, and I love being a slave! I love it! I love it! Do not try to force me to be what you want me to be! Rather accept me for what I want to be, and am! - one who knows she belongs at the feet of men! - and desires to be at the feet of men! - their slave! - their loving slave!" I am a slave, and I love being a slave, but surely I dare not admit that to any man. Then Ellen laughed to herself. She loved being a slave. It was her joy, her meaning and fulfillment. She would be nothing else. She would not barter her bondage for all the world. I have the vanity of a female slave, who exists only for men! I do not care! I do not object! And I love it! I love it! I love it! "Yes," she admitted to herself, "I am a vain slave. And I am exquisite, I think, and I am beautiful, I think. Or perhaps so! And in any event I love being owned and I love being a slave!" You sought to destroy her, to reduce and ruin her, but you have succeeded only in giving her the dearest, the most precious and greatest fulfillment a woman can know! I love being what I am, being joyfully, willingly, helplessly, given over wholly to love and service. She loves her sense of lowliness, her sense of being her master's slave. I am a slave, and that is what I want to be. I would not be otherwise. I love being a slave, she whispered to herself. I love being a slave. And I love my master. "Our bondage is a way of life," she said. "We want to belong, to be owned, to kneel, to submit, to serve, wholly and helplessly. Our servitude, our submission, our categorical surrender, our helplessness, is important to us. We love being what we are. Our brands, our collars, are precious to us. Our bondage is our freedom, our servitude our liberty." "I love being a slave," said the brunette. "We all do," said Corinna. "Your name is Lita, is it not?" "It was," said the brunette. "But the master has named me anew. I am now 'Cecily'." "I want to be a slave," she said, "and love being a slave. I am a slave. I desire to be what I am. How can I be happy otherwise? To be sure, I am terrified, too, to be a slave. For I know what may be done with me, and how I may be treated. But I am content in a collar, for it is that in which I belong." Here I could be what I always sensed I was. Here it seemed I had found myself. I found I loved what I was. And there was no doubt about what I was, no confusion, no uncertainty, no ambiguity. I was slave. How free I then was! Everything was now objective, and natural. I was in my place, and I wanted to be there, for in it I was myself, and fulfilled. I loved being a slave. It was what I was! Let other women scorn me, if they wish. I loved being a slave. How glorious to be a property, helpless, and owned by men! "I love my collar," she said. "I love being a slave." "That is fortunate," I said, "for the collar is on your neck." No longer was I ashamed, for I wanted my slavery and loved my slavery.
"No one knows from whence songs come." It is enough, and more than enough, that they come. They dispel the cold, they illuminate the darkness. They are welcomed, in the darkness and cold, like fire, and friendship and love.
But perhaps we should all be grateful when granted permission to speak. Women love to speak. It is one of our great pleasures. Slave girls, of course, are seldom reticent creatures. They, the most extraordinarily feminine of their gender, with their lively minds, their unusual quickness and high intelligence, as is well known, love to talk. It is hard to stop them sometimes, they love so to talk. . It is hard to stop them sometimes, they love so to talk. Often masters charge them with prattling endlessly, mindlessly and interminably. But that charge, I think, is unfair. Certainly there are many things of interest, and worth talking about, or at least very pleasant to talk about, and delightful to talk about, other than problems of agriculture and engineering. And do not men speak among themselves, too? Are they really so different? Certainly slave girls delight in conversation. They love to talk to one another, and to their masters, until perhaps silenced. Women love to speak, and they do it articulately, and beautifully. It is a joy to hear them. It is a lovely part of their life. Slaves, of course, as other women, love to speak, and suffer when not permitted to do so. They are denied one of the loveliest and most precious of their pleasures, and gifts. It is a torment to a slave to not be permitted to speak. Most masters love to hear their slave speak, are interested in her slightest thoughts, and often attend to her views. As is well known we speak well, and love to speak. It is one of the delights of our being. Accordingly few things more impress our bondage upon us, and with greater keenness, than the fact that our speech, as other aspects of our being, is subject to our master's will. Slaves, as noted, love to speak. She is gagged. She desires desperately to speak but cannot do so. She has been denied the use of one of her most delightful and prized assets, her marvelous speech; she is a woman; she loves to speak; As women are commonly nimble-tongued and quick-witted, and are loquacious, skillful speakers, and love to speak, there are few things which more impress upon them that they are slaves than this possible curb on their speech. Consider a warrior without weapons or a carpenter without tools.
Sometimes a man bequeaths his story to his heirs; some stories, for example, have been in families for generations; sometimes, on the other hand, he will give it to someone who loves it, and whom he thinks, in turn, will tell it well.
Slaves, after having learned they are slaves, having learned their collars, love the rituals, attitudes, and postures of submission. They find them natural, appropriate, exciting, reassuring, and profoundly fulfilling.
The sul is a large, thick-skinned, starchy, yellow-fleshed root vegetable. It is very common on this world. There are a thousand ways in which it is prepared. It is fed even to slaves. I had had some at the house, narrow, cooked slices smeared with butter, sprinkled with salt, fed to me by hand. We had loved them, simple as they were.
Though I sensed I was to die, I was not ill pleased at the manner. Hideous though the death might seem to the sliver masks of Tharna, they did not know that I was a tarnsman, and knew these birds, their power, their ferocity; that in my way I loved them; and that as a warrior I would not find a death by tarn ignoble.
Be warned, for the wine of Thassa is a heady wine. She may send you gentle winds and shelter you in her great arms, bearing you up, or should she please, break you and draw you down, destroying you, to mysterious, unsounded deeps. In her cups you may find many things, the unalienable riches of moonlight on water, her whispering in long nights, against the hull, her unforgettable glory in the morning, the brightness of her noontide, the transformations of her sunset and dusk, her access to far shores, the sublime darkness of her anger, the lashing and howling of her winds, the force and authority of her waves, like pitching mountains. She is the love of the Caste of Mariners. She is a heady wine. Her name is Thassa.
Occasionally he would leash me in the house, either fastening me to one ring or another, or having me perform, as the animal I was, on the leash. In the training house I had been taught to perform on a leash, give a master pleasure on a leash, and such. A slave comes to love her leash. On a leash, usually naked, a woman is in little doubt of her slavery.
"Do the men of Port Kar love the sea?" I asked. "Yes," she said, "they do." In these days, in myself, I found little that I could respect, but I did find that I had come, in my way, to love the sea, as is not uncommon with those of Port Kar. I looked to the horizon, noting the other ships. They were beautiful with their masts and sails. I understood then how it could be that men might love the sea. Gorean sailors, as the sailors of Earth, speak of her as she.
In short, the slave, as most slaves, had very ambivalent feelings toward the whip, that unmistakable symbol of the mastery, that he was master and they were slave. They loved and revered it as a symbol of their treasured bondage, of the preciousness of their collars, put on them, and kept on them, by masters, but would do much to evade its stroke.
"I would love to wear your chains, Master," she whispered.
"You must return to your work," I said. "Men need you." He laughed bitterly. "The little that men have," I said, "is worth your love." "Who am I to care for others?" he asked. "You are Flaminius," I told him, "he who long ago loved men and chose to wear the green robes of the Caste of Physicians." I wanted him to see me performing these tasks. Too, I would have loved to do small tasks for him, even if he did not see me do them, such things as sewing his tunic or, as I had for Aulus, polishing his boots. Even those who are not expected to be pleasure slaves, even pot girls, and kettle-and-mat girls, must know how to please a master, and as the slave they are. Domestic tasks, too, I had been instructed in, to some extent, cooking, cleaning, sewing, and such, tasks that I would once, as a free woman, have regarded as beneath me, for a slave is many things to a master, tasks that I now loved as they would help me, in their humble way, to better serve a master but there is no doubt that the central point of my training, its predominant emphasis, had been oriented to the central purpose of the slave, which is to please the master, and as the slave she is. |       
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