Savages of Gor by John Norman Page B

Puritanism, with its latent social power, bequeathed from one generation to the next, can serve unaccustomed masters. The only practical answer to these dilemmas is not continued suppression and censorship, but a society, a world, in which nature is freed to thrive. It is not a healthy world in which civilization is nature's prison. Nature and civilization are not incompatible. A choice need not be made between them. For a rational animal each can be the complement and enhancement of the other. For too long has the world been under the domination of the grotesque and insidious. One fears mostly they may begin to believe their own lies. They think they herd sheep. It is possible, unbeknownst to themselves, they walk with wolves and lions.
    The merchant regarded the girl at the wall. Under his gaze she straightened herself. "Yes," he said. "I see that you are feminine. Accordingly, you will be appropriately branded."
    "Thank you, Master," she said.
    "It will be the common Kajira mark," he said, "indicating that you are beautiful, but only another slave girl."
    "Thank you, Master," she said. I thought the cursive Kef, sometimes referred to as the staff and fronds, beauty subject to discipline, would look well upon her thigh.
    "I am already branded, Master," said the girl at my feet. She looked up at me. It was true. She wore the Kef high on her left thigh, just under the hip. This is the most common brand site for a Gorean slave girl.
    "She bellies to you," said the man. "She likes you."
    "Perhaps you have warned her that if she does not belly to the first man in the market she is to be whipped," I smiled.
    "No" chuckled the man, "but it is true that I have denied her the touch of a man for two days." The sexual relief of a slave girl, like her clothing and her food, is also something under the total command of the master.
    The girl whimpered in frustration. "No, Master," she wept. "You are the sort of man to whom I would belly naturally. To see you is to want to belly myself before you."
    "Master," said the girl at the wall, addressing me, "if I were not bound, I, too, would belly myself before you."
    "Excellent!" said the merchant. "This is the first time she has spoken so. Apparently you are the sort of man she regards as a desirable master."
    I said nothing. A girl in a market knows she is to be sold. Accordingly she will often try to influence a man she finds attractive to buy her. If he does not buy her, she knows she may be bought by one who is worse. Most girls, of course, prefer to be bought by a man who is exciting and attractive to them, one whom they would find irresistible, one whom they would desire to serve, rather than by one who is gross and disgusting to them. To be sure, as slave girls, they would have to serve either perfectly. The decision as to whether the girl is to be purchased or not is, of course, in the final analysis, totally the man's In this respect the girl must wait, and is absolutely helpless. In this respect she has as little personal control over her fate as an inanimate, displayed object in an emporium on Earth.
    The girl at the ring pulled against the bonds on her small wrists, leaning toward me. The girl at my feet looked up at me. I felt the chain on her neck across my right foot.
    "Have they names?" I asked the merchant.
    "No," said the merchant, "I have not yet named them."
    "The trader. Grunt" I said, "you speculate has ventured northward?"
    "Yes," said the man.
    I kicked back the girl at my feet. Whimpering, she crawled back to the wall, where she lay curled at its foot, watching me. The other girl, fastened by the wrists to the ring, shrank back against it. She looked at me with horror and fear, but, also, with another expression in her eyes, as well, one of fascination and awe. I think then she realized a little better than before what it might be to be a slave. She would be subject to discipline. Our eyes met. I saw in her eyes that she now realized that she, like any other slave