Where is a slave to run? Indeed, when a slave is chained, if we are interested in custodial matters, it is commonly done not so much to confine her, though she is confined, and perfectly, and knows it, but to prevent her theft, for she is property. It is no great challenge for a male to subdue and carry off an untended slave. The two most common reasons for binding slaves, which is very frequently done, are, first, mnemonic, and, second, stimulatory. Binding, thonging, chaining, and such, makes it exceedingly clear to them that they are such that such things may be done to them, that they are subject to such things, that that is what they are, slaves. When the girl is helpless, and knows herself such, there can be little doubt about what she is, that she is a slave. Thus they are frequently bound, caged, and such. Secondly, bonds, in virtue of reinforcing the slave’s sense of her lesser strength, her vulnerability, and helplessness, are sexually stimulatory. They know themselves then objects vulnerable to, and readied for, sexual predation. This is related to the radical sexual dimorphism of the human species, the obvious complementarity of the sexes, and the dominance/submission ratios pervasive in nature. That the slave is helpless, then, not only accentuates the acuteness and viability of these natural responses, but intensifies them, exponentially. Surely Pertinax and I had had ample proof of this matter when we returned that afternoon to our quarters. The slave is likely to very well understand what is done to her, and why, but this avails her naught. She is still helpless, and a slave. Too, if her slave fires have been kindled, as is likely to be the case, she desires and needs the pleasures of her bondage. It is not unusual for her, left in her bonds, to beg for sexual relief.
Too, it might be noted, as a passing, prosaic observation, that when a woman’s hands are tied together behind her back she is likely to get into little trouble. It would not do, for example, on such a tour, to have them fussing about, rearranging objects, straightening things, folding things, picking up things, handling things, noting textures, and such. Having them on a neck bond, too, of course, keeps them together. Thus they are not likely to wander off, become separated, and find themselves lost in the labyrinthine companionways of the great ship.
“Cecily,” I said.
“Master?” said the English girl, formerly a student at an Oxford College, the name of which, as mine, shall not be noted.
I regarded her, I standing, she kneeling.
She was a lovely slave.
She looked up at me, to attend my words.
We had been selected for one another by Priest-Kings, to be irresistible to one another. Her shallow, empty, pretentious life on Earth had changed overnight, so to speak, she retiring one evening, smug in her beauty, indulged and practiced in the pleasures of despising, attracting, and tormenting men, and awakening, to her astonishment and terror, unclothed, pressing her small hands against the thick, stout, transparent walls of a containment capsule on the Prison Moon, one of the three moons of Gor. This capsule she found occupied by two others, myself, and a beautiful, young, human female from a Steel World, a Kur pet, who was unspeeched. The English girl had been placed in the capsule to bring about my downfall. Who could long resist her? And should she fail in this there was the Kur pet, in her way a primitive human animal, as innocent and sexual as a cat in heat. In one way or another, then, my honor was to have been lost, as, sooner or later, given the imperatives of nature and the provocations to which I was exposed, I must be unable to resist, as I must feast upon one or both of these delicacies, putting one or both of them, again and again, to my pleasure. Neither, you see, was a slave, at least legally. Both were free, at least legally. And therein lay the difficulty. I have little doubt but what, sooner or later, I would have taken the proud, vain, selfish English girl in my arms, and she would learn what it would be to be used by a Gorean warrior, and as might be a mere slave. This denouement did not materialize, however, because, as recounted earlier, Kurii raided the Prison Moon and freed me, a raid which had had me, interestingly, as its very object. During the raid the English girl, hoping to avoid death, had declared herself slave. She intuitively understood that as a free woman she was worthless, save perhaps as food to the beasts, but might, as a slave, have whatever worth a slave might have. Intuitively she sensed she might have that value, some value, however minimal, as a female slave. But the cry, too, had seemed to come from her heart, as an outburst from the depths of her heart, releasing a tension that might have been pent-up for years, a cry of enormous relief, a cry that seemed to suggest she had at last cast aside a dreadful, encumbering falsity, that at last a great weight, an immense burden of fear and denial, had been cast from her. As many women, if not all, she had recognized from puberty onward that there were two sexes, quite different, and devastatingly complementary to one another, and that she had, from whatever source, slave needs. She was well aware of these needs, for years, in many ways, from dreams from which she awakened suddenly, discovering she was not truly in chains, that her lips were not truly pressed to a master’s whip, from persistent fantasies from which she tried to flee, but to which, in fascination and fear, she must constantly return. How often she dreamed of herself, and fantasized herself, helpless in the power of dominant males, as no more than their possession, their prize, and plaything, their slave. Hating the tepidity, the ineffectuality, the weakness of the males she knew she took out on them her spite and disappointment, torturing them as only her beauty made possible. She did not hate men, truly, but only males who refused to be men, who would not see to it that she was put to their feet. But how soon, after her declaration on the Prison moon, she had tried to unsay her confession! But the words once spoken are irrevocable, for the speaker is then a slave. She was later branded and owned by male cohorts of the Kurii. Torn between her lingering pretenses of freedom and her slave needs, she had been found insufficiently pleasing by her masters, and was to be cast to eels in a pool in a Pleasure Cylinder, associated with a Steel World. She had begged my collar. I consented to the piteous pleas of the slave, and would honor her with my collar, which I then locked on her neck. That night, chained in an alcove, at my mercy, she was taught, finally and well, what it is to be a slave. A natural slave, she had become a legal slave; then, a legal slave, she had become a true slave.
“Cecily,” said I.
“Master?” she said.
“Go to the cabin,” I said, “remove your clothing, completely, and lie in the berth, and wait for me.”
“Yes, Master,” she said, and leapt up, hurrying to the ramp.
“Cecily,” I called.
“Yes, Master?” she said.
“And first lay out the whip,” I said.
“Yes, Master!” she said, and was then up the ramp.
I had no intention of using the whip on her, but this small ritual has its effect on the slave, reminding her she is a slave, and readying her and loosening her for use. Sometimes, in the use of a slave, one might ask, “Do you see the whip?” “Yes, Master,” she might say, “it is on its peg.” “Do you wish it to remain there?” she might be asked. “Yes, Master,” she responds, with fervency. “Are you being sufficiently responsive?” he might ask. “It is my hope that I might be found pleasing,” she says. “Excellent,” might say the master. “Yes, Master,” she might exclaim. “Yes, Master! Yes, Master!” Then perhaps her mouth needs be covered, with the flat of one’s hand, that her cries may not be obtrusive. To be sure, it is often pleasant to hear her cry out, weep, gasp, and moan, she in your arms, beside herself in helpless, uncontrollable ecstasy.
“Jane,” said Pertinax, “go to my cabin and lay out the whip, and then wait for me, naked, in the berth.”
“Yes, Master!” said his Jane, happily, and hurried after Cecily.
It is not unusual for a master to have his slave await him, naked, in the furs. The wait, and her nudity, well impresses upon her that she is a slave. Too, when he arrives, she is heated, needful, and ready for him.
And if the whip is at hand, so much the better.
“Would you not enjoy having Saru in your berth, naked, waiting for you?” I asked.
“- Yes,” he said.
“Good,” I said.
“She is a slave,” he said.
“Do not forget it,” I said.
“No,” he said.
“And could you use the whip on her?” I asked.
“Yes,” he said.
“Excellent,” I said. “Unfortunately she belongs to Lord Nishida.”
“I am well aware of that,” he said.
“Do you think she would make a nice gift for a
“I do not know,” he said. “Perhaps.”
“Perhaps you would like to receive her as a gift,” I said.
“She is from Earth,” he said.
