Witness of Gor Page 14

  But how terrible was this world!

  In it I had once actually been put in a collar, a steel collar, which I could not remove!

  How I had treasured it!

  Oh, there were dangers here, doubtless. And I did not know how many, or of what sorts. How ignorant I was!

  But I did not think I was discontent, really, to be here. I did not even mind the cell, really. Such as I must expect to be kept in such places. Surely it would not do, to let us run around as we might please.

  I thought of some of my friends, on my old world. We had, of course, gone about together. I had had classes with some of them. But it was interesting how I now thought of them. I did not think of them now so much as they had been, on the bus, in classes, in the library, in labs, wandering about with me in the wide, smooth halls, and corridors, and courts of one or another of an endless list of shopping malls, patronizing garish restaurants whose claim to fame was the speed with which inferior food could be served, and such, but rather how they might be now, if they, like myself, had been brought to this world. How would three rows of thonged bells look, jingling on the left ankle of a bare-footed Sandra? Wouldn't Jean look well, in a common camisk, carrying a vessel of water, balanced with one hand on her head, as we had been trained to do? And surely Priscilla would be fetching in a tiny bit of yellow silk, all she would wear. And Sally, plump, cuddly little Sally, so excitable, so talkative, so self-depreciating, so cynical with respect to the value of her own charms, let her wardrobe for the time be merely a collar, and her place only the tiles at a man's feet. Let her kneel there in terror and discover that her previous assessments of her desirability, her attractions, were quite in error, and that, in such matters, much depends on the health of men, their naturalness and their power. I now thought of my friends, you see, rather in the categories of my new world. I wondered what prices they might bring, on a sales block. Certainly all were lovely; certainly all would look well in collars. It was my speculation that they would all, all of them, my lovely friends, my dearest friends, bring excellent prices.

  Men would want them all.

  But what if I had to compete for the favor of a master with them? That would be different. It would then be every girl for herself.

  I heard, suddenly, from far off, out of sight, to my right, a shrill, birdlike cry.

  I grasped the bars and pressed myself against them, looking up, and to the right. I saw nothing.

  The cry had seemed birdlike, but, even far off, it was too mighty to have had such a source.

  Then, a moment later, closer, I heard the same cry.

  Again I pressed myself to the bars. I could see nothing, only the sky, the clouds.

  I wondered what had made the sound.

  My thoughts then wandered to some of the men I had known on my old world. I wondered, too, what they might look like, clad not in the enclosed, hampering, eccentric garments prescribed for them by their culture, but in freer, more natural garb, such as tunics, and, as I had sometimes seen in the house, robes, and cloaks, of various sorts, things which might, in a moment, be cast aside, beautifully and boldly freeing the body for activity, for the race, for wrestling, for bathing, for the use of weapons, for the command of such as I. But whereas it seemed natural to think of the women of my world, or some of them, clad as I was, it seemed somehow foolish, or improbable, to think of the men of my world in the garmenture of the men of this world. It did not seem appropriate for them. I doubted that they could wear it honestly, if they could wear it well. I thought that they, given what they were, might be unworthy of such garments. But perhaps I am unfair to the men of my old world. Doubtless on that world, somewhere, there must be true men. And I did not think, truly, that the men of my old world were really so different from the men here. The major differences, I was sure, were not biological, but cultural. I had been given a drink in the pens, for example, the intent of which, as I understood it, was to prevent conception. This suggested surely that the men here were cross-fertile with women such as I, and, thus, presumably, that we, despite the seeming considerable differences between us, were actually of the same species. The differences between the men of this world, so self-confident, so audacious, so lordly, so natural, so strong, so free, and those of my old world, so little like them, then, I assumed, must be, at least primarily, differences of acculturation. On my old world nature had been feared. It must be denied, or distorted. Civilization was the foe of nature. On this world nature had been accepted, and celebrated. It was neither distorted nor denied. Here, civilization and nature were in harmony. Here, it was not the task of civilization to disparage, condemn, and fight nature, with all the pathological consequences of such an endeavor, but rather to fulfill and express her, in her richness and variety, to enhance her and bedeck her with the glories of customs, practices and institutions.

  I suddenly then heard again, this time so much closer and terrible, from somewhere to the right, perhaps no more than a hundred yards away, that dreadful shrill birdlike cry or scream. I was startled. I was terrified. I stood behind the bars, unable even to move. Then I suddenly gasped with fear. My hands were clenched on the bars. Moving from the right toward the left, some yards above the level of the ledge, some seventy or so yards out from it, I saw a gigantic hawklike creature, a monstrous, titanic bird, of incredible dimension. It must have had a wingspan of some forty feet in breadth! It is difficult to convey the terribleness, the size, the speed, the savagery, the power, the ferocity, the clearly predatory, clearly carnivorous nature of such a thing! But the most incredible thing, to my mind, was that I saw, in the moment or two it was in my visual field, that this monster was harnessed and saddled, and, astride it, was a helmeted figure, that of a man!

  I almost fainted behind the bars.

  How grateful for the bars was I then!

  The figure astride the winged monster had not looked toward the mountain, the ledge, the cell.

  What had lain in this direction had apparently not concerned him.

  Indeed, what could be of importance here, what worth considering?

  I clung to the bars. My holding to them kept me from falling.

  Such men existed here!

  I felt giddy.

  Men who could master such things!

  I staggered back from the bars. My fingers went to my throat. Surely there must be a collar there! But there was not. I pulled down, frightened, on the edges of my brief skirt. I wanted then, somehow, to more cover myself. But, of course, the gesture, given the brevity of the tunic, was futile. I felt my thigh, through the tunic. The tiny mark was there, identifying me for any who might have an interest in the matter, as the sort I was. I put my finger tips then again to my throat. It was now bare. But I did not think that it would be long, in a place such as this, where there were such men, without a collar.

  Suddenly certain of my memories, or seeming memories, of my journey here, made more sense. I, sometime ago, hooded, had been bound hand and foot, wrapped in a blanket, and strapped, apparently, in some sort of basket. I had felt as though it were borne through the air. I had thought I had heard great snapping sounds, doubtless now the beating of wings, and certain cries, doubtless, now, of such a creature, or of one somewhat like it, utilized for draft purposes.

  I was terrified of that gigantic bird.

  And I was property in this place, where there were such things, and men who could master them.

  I was afraid.

  I did not wish to be fed to such a thing.

  But surely it was unlikely that I had been purchased and brought here, apparently from so far away, for such a purpose.

  But then, perhaps strangely, perhaps unaccountably, I became excited, sexually.

  I returned again to the bars, and, again, grasped them.

  I thought again of my friends. I wondered if they ever thought of me. I wondered if they wondered, sometimes, what had become of me. I was not the same I knew. I was now much different. What would they think, I wondered, if they could see me now,
in such a rag, in such a place, captive, and more than captive, animal and property, behind bars. Never would they suspect, I speculated, that their friend was now other than they had known her, that she was now quite different, that she was now subject to the collar, that she was branded. Would they be able to grasp now that she must obey, that she must please and serve? No, they could presumably not grasp such things. But I understood them quite well. How thrilled I was to be here, and, too, to be what I was. I had seen the great bird, in all its magnificent power and savagery. And I had seen its rider, too, paying me no attention, so careless of the cells. How exotic was this world! How beautiful it was! How exciting it was! How thrilling it was! How different it was! And I was here, and as what I was. I pressed myself against the bars, trembling. I wondered then again if my friends could have understood something of what it was to be a woman such as I, on a world such as this. Perhaps, I thought. They, too, are women.

  What would it be like, I suddenly wondered, to compete with them? Surely they were lovely, all of them. What if they, too, were here? Would we not, suddenly, find ourselves divided against one another? Yes, I thought. We would. We would all strive to be the best, the most pleasing! Alone together, in our silks and collars, in our locked, barred, lovely quarters, we might still be friends, chatting, gossiping, sharing intimacies. But before men how could we be other than competitive slaves? And how would this affect us, when we were again alone? "He likes me more!" "No, he does not!" "Did you see how he looked at me?" "I did not notice." "I want that silken scarf!" "No, it is mine to wear!" "Oh, you knelt prettily in your serving!" "I knelt as I must!" "No!" "Yes!" "Collar meat!" "Collar meat!" "Slave!" "Slave!" "It is I who will be taught to dance!" "But as a slave!" "Of course, little fool, what do you think we are?" "It was I who was called to the furs of the Master the night before last!" "But not last night!" "The Master was distracted!" "You are supposed to be the distraction!" "I can do better!" "You had better, or you will be lashed, slave!"

  There must be other women such as I, I suddenly thought, in this place! Surely I could not be the only one! There had been sixty women, as it had turned out, in my group in the pens, divided into ten groups of six each, each group under a whip master, the groups sometimes training together, sometimes separately, under the tutelage of various others, some coming and going, switching about, teaching different matters, others concerned to teach specific subjects, and so on. We had all been from Earth. As soon as we had begun to learn our new language, we could, of course, as permitted, converse. We thus learned much about one another. Too, there had been five of us who spoke English as a native language, and some others who knew it as a second, or third, language. We had been separated from one another, however, on the chain in the corridor, and early in our training. Of the five who spoke English natively, two were from America, I one of them, two were from England, and one was from Australia. Among the other Earth languages represented amongst us were French, German, Dutch, Italian, Greek, Spanish, Mandarin Chinese, Cantonese Chinese, and Japanese. But those in the pens, which were apparently large, were mostly native to this world. We of Earth constituted a small minority amongst them. We regarded the girls of this world as incredibly beautiful, from what we saw of them, but we did not really regard ourselves as so inferior to them, particularly as our training progressed. One becomes more beautiful, of course, with the training, not simply as one learns to move, to care for one's appearance, and such, but, I think, even more importantly, as one begins to find oneself in one's natural place in the order of nature, as one's tensions and confusions are reduced, as one begins to discover what one really is, as one becomes gradually truer to oneself, and so on. Beauty, as is well known, begins within. Some of our teachers were girls of this world, of the same sort as we. They, too, had their collars; they, too, were subject to discipline. Our lessons were varied. Some were in homely domestic matters, such as the making of bread and the sewing and laundering of garments. Others were, from our point of view, at least those of the Western girls, more exotic, such as the proper fashion in which to bathe a man, one of the first things we were taught, and the proper use of the tongue. The latter skill is useful, for example, if one's hands are tied behind one's back. But I mention these things primarily to make it clear that there were large numbers of us in the pens. Too, sometimes new girls would be brought in, naive, ignorant, cringing, terrified, in their chains, as we had once been, and other girls, more trained, would be taken away, presumably to other places of incarceration, perhaps where they might await their display and sale. How superior we felt to the new girls being brought in, and how frightened we were, too, fearing the time when we, like the more thoroughly trained girls, might be removed from the security of the pens, to what fates we could scarcely conjecture, in an unfamiliar, foreign world. No, I did not think I would be the only woman such as I in this place. There was clearly a place and role for my kind on this world. I did not doubt but what we were numerous. To be sure, I did not think that my kind, in origin, from Earth, would be common here. We, I gathered, were quite rare, though it seems not as rare as once we were. Some men, we gathered, actually preferred us. A market for our kind, it seems, though perhaps a small one, had, over the years, opened up. Our predecessors here, it seems, had proved that we could be of interest, and, I gather, of considerable interest.

  Not all women here, of course, were such as I. I have mentioned that I had seen two, earlier. They had toured, with guides and guards, some of the cleaner, more respectable areas in the pens. They were apparently esteemed visitors. They had been richly robed, even veiled. Perhaps they were part owners of the enterprise. I did not know. We were not told such things. Before them we prostrated ourselves, in our nudity and collars, to the very belly. We were less than dirt before them; we were animals, things to be despised and held in contempt, things unworthy the notice of such lofty creatures. I recall wondering, however, as one passed me, and I saw the regal, swirling hem of that sparkling robe, if the concealed ankle within it would look well clasped in slave steel; I supposed that it would wear a shackle well; why not, was she not a woman? When they had passed, and I dared, I lifted my head a little from the damp stone and looked after them, they, in their layered veils, in their cumbersome splendor, in their glorious, elaborate ornateness! How perfect, how superior, how arrogant they were! But were they truly so different from us? I doubted it. Let them be stripped, I thought, angrily, and knelt down, and collared, and feel a stroke or two of the lash! I conjectured then that they, as quickly as we, would hasten to obey, and strive desperately to be found pleasing.

  Did they not know that men were their natural masters, and that they might, as easily as we, if men chose, find themselves in chains and collars?

  But surely legally, and socially, institutionally, culturally, we were not such as they. They were not such as we. Between us lay a mighty chasm.

  I shall later, briefly, recount what happened when one of these women turned back, to stand before me. I suspect she had noted, or sensed, that I had dared to lift my head and look after them. Perhaps she had suspected what might have been my thoughts, thoughts inappropriate in a slave. To be sure, perhaps it had merely been something about me which had annoyed her, scarcely noticed, in passing. Perhaps, in my eagerness and curiosity to see them, for I had not seen free women of this world before, I had allowed some imperfection in my position, say, with respect to the angle of my body, the backs of my hands beside me, resting on the stone, the touching of the stone with my forehead? But then, again, perhaps it was merely a whim on her part, or a tactical device, randomly applied, to assess the quality of our training. I do not know, nor do I think it is important. In any event, for whatever reason, she had suddenly turned back, and I had not yet lowered my head. I had been caught by surprise! I gasped in misery, and quickly put my head down. But it was too late. An imperfection had been detected in my position! Too, my curiosity had been evident, and curiosity, it is said, is not becoming in such as we. Yet I wonder who, o
n this wide world, is likely to be more zestfully and earnestly inquisitive, more delightfully curious, than we! That is natural for women as a whole and it is certainly natural for us, who are the most female of all women. I shall briefly speak of this later, as it may shed some light on an aspect of Gorean society.

  But it was not such women here, of course, that I was concerned with. They doubtless had their own world. Rather was I concerned with women here who might be such as I! It was those with whom I must compete!

  How strange, I thought, what I had become!

  I wondered what my friends, Sandra, and Jean, and Priscilla, and Sally, might have thought if they saw me at a man's feet, clad as I was, tendering there the ministrations of one of my kind.

  They, too, of course, if were they here, would soon enough hurry to do so!

  There were the chains, the whips.

  But what if they, secure in my old world, locked in that gloom, held within those walls, should see me so? I wondered if they would be startled, or shocked, or scandalized, or dismayed. And what if they saw how willingly, how eagerly, how joyfully I did this! But I thought, rather, that they, somehow, if only after a moment or two, beneath the immediate, superficial crusts of their conditioning, on some deep level, would feel something quite different, not shock, not scandal, not dismay, but something genuinely different, perhaps at first even frighteningly so, a tremor of understanding, an unspeakable thrill of recognition. I suspected then they would feel envy at the openness, the naturalness, of this, the beauty, the rightness, of it. Was this truly so strange to them? It is not so hard to understand. Had they not often been, if only in their dreams, in such a place? I could conceive of them being here, each of us in our collar, glancing shyly, one to the other, looking down, happily, scarcely daring to meet one another's eyes. We had no choice, you must understand, given what we are. Might we not even meet, perhaps while on errands, or laundering at a stream or public basin, and discuss those who held total rights over us? In their hearts, if they knew, I did not doubt but what they would envy me, how free I was here, and what I could do. Too, was it not natural that we should belong to such men! But they, such men, of course, in one sense, would take us apart quite from one another. Our group, as it had been, would be broken up. We would find ourselves separated, each from the other, each of us now with a different destiny and fate, each of us having now to relate to a man, and a different man, hopefully, and what might these men have in common, other than the fact that we were theirs, that they held total rights over us?