John Norman - Fighting Slave of Gor

"Master," I heard her beg. "Master."

I went to her side.

In the half light, she thrust the dark blanket down about her thighs. She half sat, half lay, on the lower portion of the blanket. She looked at me. She tried to put her small hands out, to clasp me piteously behind the neck. But I caught her wrists, and held her hands from me. "Master," she begged. "Please, Master." Her body, small and curved, was beautiful in the half light. Her breasts were marvelous. I noted the sweet turn of her body where the curve of her belly yielded to the flare of her hips.

"What is wrong with you?" I asked. Her small strength was no match for mine.

"Please have me, Master," she begged. "Please take me, and as a slave!"

I looked at her small body, and at the collar of steel on her throat.

"No," I said.

She stopped struggling, and I released her wrists. I rose to my feet and stood regarding her. She knelt now, trembling, on the blanket.

"I am a man of Earth," I told her.

"Yes, Master," she said, her head down.

I was angry, and frightened. My heart was pounding.

"You have nothing to fear from me," I said.

"Yes, Master," she said.

Surely she must know that she had nothing to fear from one such as I, who would treat her with dignity and respect.

Why, then, was I terrified of her, she only a slave? I think it was because I feared she might release in me things which I feared to understand, because I feared she might release in me something proud and savage, something which would be a stranger to apologies and pretenses, something long-forgotten and mighty, something which had been bred in caves and the hunt, something which might be called a man.

I looked upon the girl, the kneeling slave. For an instant I felt a surgency of power.

Then I recalled that I must not be a man, for manhood was prohibited and forbidden; it was something to be belittled and ridiculed. One must not be a man. One must rather be a person. Lions must be snared, and castrated and bled. There is no place for them among the flowers. Let lions be taught it is their function to draw the carts of sheep. Let them then be rewarded with bleats of approval.

But, for an instant, looking upon the girl, I had felt stirring within me something dark and mighty, uncompromising and powerful, something which told me that such beauties as now knelt before me were the full and rightful properties of men.

Then I thrust such thoughts from my mind.

"I do not understand you," I said, angrily.

She kept her head down.

"I have treated you with kindness and courtesy," I said. "Yet you persist in behaving like a slave."

"I am a slave, Master," she said.

"I do not know what you want," I said. "Should I tie you to the bars, that the urts may feed upon you?"

"Please do not do that, Master," she said.

"That is a joke," I said, horrified that she might have taken me seriously.

"I thought it might be," she said, softly.

"Speaking of jokes," I said, "what a splendid jest have we two tonight played upon our jailers."

"Master?" she asked.

"They put you in with me that I might punish you, and yet I have not done so. I have treated you with gentleness and courtesy, with kindness and respect."

"Yes, Master," she said, "it is a splendid joke."

"Apparently you are having difficulty sleeping," I said. "I, too, am restless. If you like, we may have a conversation."

She put her head down, silent.

"Would you like me to tell you of the women on my world," I asked, "who are fine and free?"

"Are they happy?" she asked.

"No," I said. "But neither are the men," I added hastily.

"Surely some men and women on your world must be happy," she said.

"Some, I suppose," I said. "I shall hope so." There did not seem much point to me to tell her in detail of the broadcast misery on my world, its pettiness and frustration. If one judges a civilization by the joy and satisfaction of its populations the major civilizations of Earth were surely failures. It is interesting to note the high regard in which certain civilizations are held which, from the human point of view, from the point of view of human happiness, would appear to be obvious catastrophes.

"You are safe with me," I told her. "I shall not demean you by treating you like a woman."

"Why is it demeaning to be treated as a woman?" she asked.

"I do not know," I said. "But it is supposed to be demeaning to treat women like women."

"Oh," she said.

"They are to be treated like men, the same," I said. "It is insulting not to treat them like men."

"Who has told you this?" she asked.

"Men," I said, "some men, and women who are much like men."

"I see," she said.

"Thus it must be true," I said.

"I see," she said.

"Yes," I said.

"I am a woman," she said.

"What you want does not matter," I told her.

"I see," she said.

I was silent.

"It would seem to me very insulting to treat a woman as though she were a man," she said.

"No," I said.

"Oh," she said. She looked at me. "But are not men and women obviously different?" she asked.

"Statistically, of course," I said, "there are vast and obvious differences between them, both psychological and physical, but some men can be found who are very feminine and some women can be found who are extremely masculine. Thus, the existence of such feminine men and such masculine women proves that men and women are really the same."

"I do not understand," she said.

"I do not really understand either," I admitted.

"If a man can be found who is like, a woman and a woman can be found who is like a man does this not suggest, rather, that men and women are really different?"

I was silent.

"If an urt could be found which was like a sleen," she said, "and a sleen could be found which was like an urt, would this show that urts and sleen were the same?"

"Of course not," I said. "That would be preposterous."

"What is the difference?" she asked.

"I do not know," I said. "There must be one."

"Oh," she said. "And," she said, "would not the feminine man and the masculine woman, by their comparative rarity, tend not to cancel out the obvious differences between men and women but rather, in their relative uniqueness, tend to point up the contrasts and differences even more vividly?"

I began to grow irritated. "The contrasts, over time," I said, "will grow less. Education now, on my world, is oriented toward the masculinization of women and the feminization of men. Women must become men and men must try to be like women. That is the key to happiness."

"But men and women are different," she said. She looked sick.

"They must behave as if they were the same," I said.

"But what of their true natures?" she asked.

I shrugged. "Their true natures are unimportant," I said. "Let the heads be shaped by boards. Let the feet be bound with tight cloths."

"But will there not come a time of screaming," she asked, "a time of rage, of lifting of the knife?"

I shrugged. "I do not know," I said. "Let us hope not." I did know that frustration tended to produce aggression and destructiveness. It did not seem unlikely that the frustrations of my world, particularly those of men, might precipitate the madness and irrationality of thermonuclear war. Aggression, displaced, would presumably be ventilated against an external enemy. But the trigger would have been pulled. It would be unfortunate if the last recourse left to men to prove to themselves that they were men was the carnage of contemporary, technological conflict. Yet I knew men who hungered for this madness, that the walls of their prisons might be destroyed, even though they themselves might die screaming in the flames.

But perhaps they might reclaim their surrendered manhood before they themselves, and their world, became the helpless victims of its thwarted furies.