such a way as to touch one another, at the tips scarcely more than a needle's width.
'What is that?' I asked. 'A punch,' said Targo.
'Put your head back,' said the leather worker.
'No,' I whispered. 'What are you going to do?'
'Do not be afraid, El-in-or,' called Ute. 'It is nothing.'
I wished she would be quiet.
'What are you going to do?' I asked, frightened.
'Someday a master may wish to put a nose ring on you,' explained Targo. 'This way you will be ready.'
'No!' I screamed. 'No! No!'
The other girls looked up, from their own misery, puzzled, watching me. 'No! I wept. 'Please! Please!'
'Put your head back,' repeated the leather worker, irritated.
Targo looked at me puzzled. He seemed genuinely disappointed. 'But you are brave,' he said. 'You are the brave one.'
Suddenly I went to pieces, horrified, hysterical. 'No!' I screamed. I tried to scramble from the platform. The leather worker seized me. 'Hold her!' he said. 'Bind her,' said Targo.
I, held by the leather worker, cast wild eyes on Targo, 'No, Master!' I implored. 'Please!' but already my ankles were being tied together. Another guard pulled my hands behind my back and my wrists were lashed together. 'No!' I screamed. 'No!'
Two guards held me by the arms on the platform. Another guard put his left arm about my throat, from behind, and with his right hand in my hair, pulled my head back, holding it still.
I could not scream. The guard's arm on my throat was tight.
'Do not move,' commanded the leather worker.
I felt the back of the claws of the punch enter my nostrils, distending them. There was a tiny, sharp click. Tears burst into my eyes. I felt acute pain for an instant, and then a prolonged, burning, stinging sensation.
Everything went black, but I did not faint, held in position by the guards. When I opened my eyes, blinded with tears, I saw the leather worker approaching my face with a tiny, steel ring, partly opened, and a pair of pliers.
As I was held he inserted the ring in my nose. It was painful. Then, with the pliers, he closed the ring, and turned it, so that its opening, where the closed edges met, was concealed within, at the side of the septum.
I began sobbing with pain, with misery and degradation.
The guards released me. One untied my ankles.
'Gag her,' said Targo.
I was gagged. My wrists were not unbound, they fearing perhaps I would have torn at the ring. Perhaps I might have.
A guard, not much pleased with me, dragged me stumbling, eyes filled with tears, moaning with misery, from the platform. He threw me, half stumbling, into the wall, among the other girls. I struck the wall, and slid down it, to my knees. I could not believe what had been done to me. Everything almost went black again. I shuddered and shook, tears running from my eyes, leaning against the wall. 'Next!' had called the leather worker.
Ute, who was looking at me with puzzlement, as were the other girls, rose to her feet and went obediently to the block.
When she returned, she, too, wore a tiny, steel ring in her nose. There were tears in her eyes. 'It smarts,' she said to Inge.
I looked at Ute, piteously. Could she not see what had been done to me, to me! Ute came to me and took me by the shoulders, and I sobbed against her, uncontrollably.
'Do not cry, El-in-or,' she said.
I pressed my head against her shoulder.
She held my head to her shoulder.
'I do not understand, El-in-or, ' she said. 'The most terrible thing you do not mind. You are then very brave. And they you cry about a little nose ring. It is not like having your ears pierced.'
'El-in-or is a coward,' said Rena of Lydius. 'Next!' called the leather worker.
Rena rose to her feet and went to the platform.
The piercing of the ears is far more terrible,' said Ute. 'Nose rings are nothing. They are even pretty. In the south even the free women of the Wagon Peoples wear nose rings.' She held me more closely. 'Even free women in the south,' she insisted, ' the free women of the Wagon Peoples, wear nose rings.' She kissed me. 'Besides,' she said, 'it may be removed, and no will ever know that you wore it. It will not show.' Then Ute's eyes clouded with tears. I looked at the tiny steel rods holding open the wounds in her ears. She wept. 'How can I ever hope to become a Free Companion,' she wept. 'What man would want a woman with the pierced ears of a slave girl? And if I were not veiled, anyone might look upon me, and laugh, and scorn me, seeing that my ears had been pierced, as those of a slave girl!'
I shook my head, and against pressed my head into her shoulder. I understood nothing. I knew only I, Elinor Brinton, once of Park Avenue, once of the restaurants and boulevards of New York and the continent, now wore in my nose a tiny ring of steel.
Inge went next to the platform, her hands still bound behind her back, that she not disturb the tiny rods in her ears. She submitted to the fixing of the ring gracefully.
She did say to Targo. 'But I am of the scribes.'
He said to the leather worker. 'Put the ring in her nose.'
She did not protest.
Lana went next to the platform. When she returned, she threw back her head, and placed her hands behind her head. 'Is it not pretty?' she asked.
'It would be more beautiful if it were of gold,' said Rena of Lydius. 'Of course,' said Lana.
'But it is pretty,' said Inge to Lana. 'You are so beautiful, Lana.' Lana smiled.
Inge looked at her timidly. 'Am I pretty?' she asked. 'Yes,' granted Lana, 'the ring is prettya€”and you are pretty.' Inge looked at her gratefully.
'What of me?' asked the Lady Rena of Lydius.
'You are beautiful,' said Inge.
I did not lift my head from Ute's shoulder. I did not want anyone to see. One after the other of the girls went to the platform.
Afterwards we were fed. Inge and I were unbound, and I was ungagged. We knelt in a circle, eating from the wooden bowls of bread and stew. We were given no utensils. Our fingers served to pick out meat and bread, and the gravy we drank. The girls chatted, and most seemed to have forgotten the ordeal of the morning. If they had not forgotten it, there was very little they could do about it. Further, they knew that with their ears pierced, they might bring a somewhat higher price, and thus, perhaps, obtain a somewhat better-fixed master. Some prudish slavers, scandalized by ear piercing, refused to have it done to their girls, but Targo, doubtless because of the gold involved, had insisted upon it. Many Gorean men apparently find pierced ears in a girl extremely provocative. Craftsmen of the metal workers, men specializing in the working of gold and silver, were concerned to work out new forms of jewelry for slave females. It was said that a year ago in Ar, Marlenus, Ubar of that city, had created a sensation at a banquet given for his high officers, by presenting a slave-girl dancer before them who, though she was not in his private pleasure gardens or compartments, he had had put in earrings. Today, however, better than a year later, it was not uncommon to see a slave girl wearing, and insolently, such jewelry, even in public.
I had no objection to earrings. Indeed, if I could find an attractive pair, or pairs, I was confident I could wear them to my advantage, to please a master, to perhaps obtain my way, to perhaps help me dominate him. If I could not engage his affections, I would have him then, would I not, at my mercy? I would bend my efforts to do so, and when I had done so then I might, by granting, or refusing to grant, my favors, or the fervor of my favors, control him and, though I wore the collar, own Him! How else could a woman fight on Gor? She is not as strong as a man! She is at their mercy. The entire culture puts her at his feet. Well I was beautiful enough, and intelligent enough, to fight, and surely to win! I was truly a slave girl, and that I knew, but my master would learn that a slave girl could be a dangerous foe. I would conquer him. So I mused. The only thing that I did not take into my considerations was the Gorean male. He is unlike the men of Earth, on the whole so weak and pliable, so reasonable, so compromising, so much in need of recognition and affection, or its pretense. The only thing I failed to take into my calculations was that the Gorean male, whether by culture or genetic endowment, is unlike the typical man of Earth. He, unlike the typical man of Earth, though not unlike all, is a natural master of women. There was a time in my life when I would not have understood this, or how it could be. There was surely a time in my life when I could not have believed this, when I would have found it preposterous, absurd, incomprensible, false. But at that time I had not been brought to this world. At that time I had not been in the arms of a Gorean male.
'Eat,' urged Ute.
I had scarcely touched the stew in the wooden bowl.
'We will wear the nose rings,' said Ute, 'until our training is finished. Then, when we leave Ko-ro-ba, they will be removed.
'Where did you hear this?' I asked. There are often rumors carried about the pens and cages.
'I heard Targo telling one of the guards,' she whispered, looking about. 'Good,' I said. I reached into the bowl. No one ever need know that Elinor Brinton, of Park Avenue, had once had a steel ring fixed in her nose. Pleased, I joined Ute in eating.
Afterwards, after we had been hooded and taken to our private training pens in Ko-ro-ba, I trained well.
It was well I had eaten, for the work was difficult. Perhaps Targo wished to take our minds from the events of the morning. In the evening, at the private pens, we were fed well and our group, myself, Ute, Inge and Lana, were among those groups given pastries following our meal.
I was pleased with my performance. It was right that we should be rewarded. I was, indeed, rather pleased with my performance in general.
Sometimes I was irritated by the instructor, herself a slave, when she would commend me. 'See,' she would say to the other girls. 'That is how it is done! That is how the body of a slave girl moves!' but I wanted to learn, that I might use my skills to enhance my fortunes on Gor. As a warrior applies himself to the arts of his weapons, so I applied myself to the arts of the female slave, which I was. I became sleek and more beautiful from the diet and the exercises. I learned things of which I had not dreamed. Our training, because it was limited to a few short weeks, did not include many of the elements that are normally included in a full training. I remained ignorant of Gorean cooking and the cleaning of Gorean garments. I learned nothing of musical instruments. I remained ignorant even of the arrangements of small rugs, decorations and flowers, things that any Gorean girl, slave or free, it likely to know. But I was taught to dance, and to give pleasure, and to stand, and move, and sit and turn, and lift my head and lower it, and kneel, and rise. Interestingly, and sometimes not altogether to my pleasure, I found the training becoming effective. In the early
