John Norman - Rogue of Gor

I turned to go.

“Master,” she said.

I turned again, to face her.

“You have made much of the fact that I am an Earth girl and a slave,” she said.

“Yes,” I said.

“There is another girl in whom you are interested, isn’t there,” she asked, “an Earth girl?”

“Perhaps,” I said.

“Is she a slave?” she asked.

“No,” I said. I had freed her.

“That is unfortunate,” she said.

I shrugged.

“Does she have a Home Stone?” she asked.

“No,” I said.

“Then enslave her!” she said.

“She is different from you,” I said.

“Is she pretty?” she asked.

“Yes,” I said.

“Then she is not so different,” she said. “Have I seen her?”

“Long ago, once,” I said, “at the restaurant. She was with me.”

“She!” laughed the girl.

“Yes,” I said.

“She was very pretty, Master,” she said.

“Yes,” I said.

“Is she on Gor?” she asked.

“Yes,” I said.

“And free?” she asked.

“Yes,” I said.

“I do not like that,” said the girl. “Why should I be a slave, and she be free?”

“If she were here,” I said, “you would have to kneel before her, and obey her.”

The collared girl shuddered. Slave girls fear free women, greatly. There is little to wonder about in this. Free women, perhaps envying them their collars, are often extremely cruel to them.

“Do you think she would make a good slave?” I asked.

The girl smiled. “I think she would make an excellent slave, Master.”

“I shall have to keep that in mind,” I said.

Swiftly the girl knelt before me. “I assure you that she is a slave,” she said. “I remember her. She is a slave. It is wrong for her not to be put in a collar. She is a slave, truly. Thus she should be made a slave, and be used, and treated and handled accordingly.”

“You do not know her,” I said.

“Perhaps it is you who do not know her,” she said.

I smiled.

“I am an enslaved woman,” said the girl. “Do you not think that one slave knows another?”

I laughed.

“Take her in hand,” she said. “Take away her clothes. Put her in a collar. Throw her to your feet. Use her. You will see!”

I smote my thigh, laughing, in the Gorean fashion, so preposterous were the urgent words of the lovely, kneeling slave. How preposterous it was even to think of the lovely Miss Henderson as a slave.

The girl knelt back, on her heels. “I assure you, Master,” she said, “she is as much, or more, a slave than I!”

“Watch your tongue, Girl,” I said, angrily, “lest it be slit.”

She shuddered, and put down her head. “Forgive me, Master,” she whispered.

“She is different from you,” I said. “You are only a shameful and degraded slave.”

“Do you wish her to be herself,” she asked, “or to conform to some alien image which your culture has devised for her?”

I did not speak.

“She is not a man,” she said. “She is a woman.”

“They are the same,” I said.

“That is stupid,” she said.

“I know,” I said. Then I said, angrily, “I know that she is not a man. I know that she is a woman.”

“And if that is so,” she said, “how do you consider her differently, how do you treat her differently?”

“I don’t know!” I said.

“Perhaps Master is indeed from Earth,” she said.

“I was once from Earth,” I said. “I must respect her.”

“Do not respect her,” she said. “Fulfill her.”

“How?” I asked.

“Make her your full and total slave,” she said.

“I cannot,” I said.

“Surely Master knows he is of the dominant sex,” she said “and that it is those of our sex who must submit.”

“I know that it is true,” I said, “but it is my duty not to believe it.”

“Can it truly be one’s duty not to believe the truth?” she asked.

“Yes,” I said. “It is important to hold the correct opinions, whether they conform to reality or not.”

“Perhaps such opinions subserve the purposes of ambitious and eccentric minorities,” she said, “and that is doubtless an important point in their favor, but they do not seem to advance the cause of a civilization congenial to the nature of the human species as it is in actuality constituted.”

“It is important to cater to the few,” I said, “though it may, in time, spell doom and pain to the many.”

“That is madness,” she said.

“It is the principle on which my world is based,” I said.

“That is no longer your world,” she said.

“How do you know?” I asked.

“I could tell, a few Ehn ago,” she said, “by how you held me.”

I shrugged.

“Abandon disease and madness,” she said. “Return to the order of nature.”

“To look upon truth, openly,” I said, “could be a fearful thing.”

“Yes, Master,” she whispered, and put her head down, the collar on her throat.

I reached to her hair and, twisting her head, she crying out, threw her to the furs. “But it might not be unpleasant to do so,” I said, and then took her.

Almost instantly she had writhed in my arms, surrendering as a female slave to her master.

Then, trembling, held, she looked up at me. “You took me well, Master,” she said.

I laughed, pleased with my conquest and triumph over her. I then knew what was the order of nature.

And she, too, knew it well.

“The other girl,” she whispered, “is she unpleasant or difficult to get on with?”

“Perhaps,” I said.

“Do you find her at times a bother, or troublesome?”

“Yes,” I said.

“May I make a suggestion?” she asked.

“Yes,” I said.

“Buy a whip,” she said.

“Do not forget you are a kept woman,” I told her.

“Kept woman!” she cried.

“Precisely,” I said.

“I do not care to think of myself as a kept woman,” she said.

“Unfortunate,” I said, “for it is exactly what you are.”

“Where were you last night, and today?” she demanded.

“I owe you no accountings,” I told her. “Is my supper ready?”

“I have already eaten,” she said.

“Is my supper ready?” I asked.

“You may prepare it yourself,” she said.

“The house is dirty,” I said.

“Such work is not mine to do,” she said. “If you wish such work done buy yourself a slave.”

I had rented a small house a few blocks from the wharves. It had an upstairs and a downstairs. It was small, but stout, as are most Gorean dwellings. On the small earnings I made at the wharves it was somewhat expensive for me, but it was not altogether impractical. There were two bedrooms upstairs, and there was a hall, living room and kitchen downstairs. Miss Henderson’s bedroom had a porch, which overlooked a small garden, surrounded by a high wall.

“Would you be pleased,” I asked her, “to return to inn?”

“The house is not unpleasant,” she said, “but it has certain distressing features.”

“And what are those?” I asked. I thought the house was rather nice, considering the modesty of the budget which must needs sustain its rental.

“My couch,” she said, “in the master bedroom, has a heavy iron ring set in its base.”

“That is a slave ring,” I said. “Surely you know its purpose.”

“Yes,” she said, acidly.

Such rings are commonly used for chaining slave girls, generally by the neck, to the foot of their master’s couch.

“And, too,” she said, “I do not like the slave kennels in the hall.”

I shrugged. “It is a Gorean house,” I said.