Prize of Gor by John Norman Page A

said, angrily.
    “No,” he granted her.
    Taken from her cell and instructed in special rooms, she had been given lessons in cooking, in cleaning, sewing, laundering, and such, domestic labors, labors such as were vehemently denounced and eschewed by scions of her ideology as demeaning, degrading, boring, repetitive and meaningless, who then hired other women, either directly or indirectly, to perform them for them. With respect to cooking she had prided herself on “knowing only the basics,” but it seems that here, on this world, her skills did not extend even so far. Most of the cooking seemed to be done in small ovens and over open flames, attentively, almost a serving at a time. Cooking, here, involved cooking, actually, and not, for example, the simple heating of tasteless materials extracted from colorful packages. She discovered that cooking was an art, and required mastery, as any other art. She had never thought of it in that fashion before. Similarly, she learned that the skills of needlework of various sorts were indeed skills, and not at all easy to acquire. How often her instructrices despaired of her, as being ignorant, stupid and hopelessly inept. Finally, in misery, in tears, she had denounced them as low, vulgar, stupid women, far beneath her, women who, unlike herself, might aspire to labors no higher than the menial and servile, labors unfit for such as she, an educated, highly intelligent woman, a woman important on her own world. “Ignorant, pretentious barbarian!” cried one of the instructrices, angrily. Then to her consternation she was seized by her other two instructrices and dragged to the side of the room, where she was thrown down, on her back. There was a low, horizontal wooden bar there, raised some six inches above the floor, by means of metal mounts at each end. She had not understood its meaning. She would now find out. Her ankles were placed on the bar, and lashed to it. Her hands were held on each side of her, and she could not rise. “No!” she cried. The first instructrix had fetched a supple, springy, flat stick, about a yard long, some two inches in width, and about a quarter of an inch thick. “No, no!” she cried. Then she squirmed, and writhed in misery, bound and held, crying out, weeping, begging for mercy, while the first instructrix, again and again, angrily, struck the bare soles of her exposed, fastened feet, stinging them until they burned like fire.
    When the first instructrix had finished she put the stick away in a nearby cabinet but then fetched forth from the same cabinet three long, supple, leather switches, giving one to each of her fellow instructrices, and retaining one for herself.
    Lying on her back, no longer held but her ankles still bound to the wooden bar, unable to rise, she looked up, apprehensively, at the switches.
    “We have been forgiving, and tolerant, of you,” said the first instructrix, “because of your ignorance, and stupidity, but that is now at an end. No longer do you deserve our patience, and lenience.”
    She looked up from her back, tears in her eyes, questioningly, her ankles still bound to the bar.
    “Yes,” said one of the instructrices, “in this phase of your training the bastinado, the switch, is authorized.”
    “ Training ?” she asked.
    “Yes, training, little fool,” said the third instructrix, not pleasantly.
    “In the next phase, and thereafter,” said the chief instructrix, “the whip, close chains, torture, anything.”
    “Will you now attempt to be pleasing?” asked the second instructrix.
    “Yes,” she said.
    “Say it,” snapped the second instructrix.
    “I will attempt to be pleasing,” she wept.
    “Fully?” she was asked.
    “Yes, yes!” she wept.
    “Release her,” said the first instructrix.
    She drew her legs, painfully, from the bar, the straps untied. “I cannot walk,” she moaned.
    “Crawl,” said the second instructrix.
    “Be pleased we are not men,” said the third instructrix,