Prize of Gor by John Norman

be!”
    “What?” he inquired.
    “What am I?” she asked. “What is my status here?”
    “Can you not guess?” he asked.
    “There is still no chair for me here,” she said.
    “You are being permitted to stand,” he pointed out.
    “Please!” she begged, her momentary pretense to strength and resolution gone. She felt confused and weak.
    “You have seen yourself in your cell mirror, of course,” he said.
    “Yes,” she said. There was a mirror in the new cell, rather like that in her former cell, on the right, of polished metal, as one faced the gate.
    “How old would you say you were?” he asked.
    “I do not know,” she whispered.
    “If I were to see you on the planet Earth,” he said, “I would conjecture that you were somewhere in your late thirties, say, thirty-seven or thirty-eight. I would say thirty-eight. When you were acquired, you were fifty-eight.”
    “Fifty-five,” she said.
    “Fifty-eight,” he said.
    She put down her head. It was true.
    “I see that you retain something of what must once have been considerable beauty,” he observed. “Certainly many men would find you of great interest even now.”
    She blushed, brightly and hotly, all of her body, that exposed, bursting into uncontrollable, involuntary flames of outrage, resentment, embarrassment, and pleasure. She was not dismayed to learn that she might be, once again, after so many years, found attractive.
    “Do like your new garmenture?” he inquired.
    “It is that in which you have seen fit to put me,” she said.
    Her new garment was relatively modest as such garments go. Certainly a younger woman would have been likely to have been put in less. It was a tunic, but rather reserved for such. It was simple, plain and white, its material again, as that of her former garment, of the wool of the bounding hurt. Its hemline now came a bit above her knees. It had a rounded neckline, rather like that of her former garment, but it was, scooped somewhat more deeply, perhaps a bit less reluctant to hint at concealed delights. Interestingly, it was the first garment she had been given which was sleeveless. The baring of a woman’s arms, on the world on which she now was, was normally regarded as revealing and sensuous. Indeed, women of a status, or station, above her own commonly veiled themselves when appearing in public, particularly those of the high castes. She did not know this at the time, of course. Men on this world, it seems, tended to find the short, rounded, lovely arms of women attractive. It might be mentioned that in her new quarters, she was no longer permitted sandals. They had been taken from her. She now went, as had her various instructrices, in her various quarters, barefoot. Bared feet on women, on this world, are also regarded as sensuous, and provocative.
    He regarded her.
    She was attractive in the tunic.
    It was all she wore, except, of course, the anklet. That device now, due to the absence of footwear and the shorter nature of her new garment, appeared even more striking, more meaningful and lovely, on her ankle. Aesthetics were surely involved here, but, too, other matters, matters having to do with deeper things, meanings and such. In any event, there was the softness of her small foot and then, above it, close about her slim ankle, the encircling, locked steel, and then the beginning of the delightful curve of a bared calf. It all went together, he thought, beautifully, and meaningfully. He did not find this surprising, of course.
    “How are your lessons progressing?” he asked.
    She shrugged, angrily. “Doubtless you have your reports,” she said.
    She was not much pleased with the turn that her lessons had taken, save for her continuing instruction in the language. She was now being taught to do things, many things, rather than, primarily, to learn things, to apprehend and understand facts, lore, and such. Her education, of late, did not seem fitting for an intellectual.
    “I am a not a wife,” she