Read Online Smugglers of Gor by John Norman - Free Book Online Page B

fulfilled, without which they could not be women? Why did they not kneel them, and inform them that they were women, and now, owned, would be treated as such? Did they think they were not women, that they were something else, neuters, sexless creatures, or such, inert cultural contrivances? Did they not realize what it might be, to have one at their feet, collared, owned, trained to their tastes, hoping to be found pleasing?
    It is very pleasant.
    It is also pleasant, of course, to take a Gorean free woman and teach her the collar, and kindle her slave fires, until she crawls to you, begging, indistinguishable from a barbarian, and then like them, forever then a slave.
    They are all women.
    There is no real difference.
    They are all women.
    The golden stater was thrust toward me.
    I thrust it back.
    “No?” he asked.
    “No,” I said.
    He replaced the coin in his wallet.
    “It is men such as you,” he said, “which we want, and will have.”
    “I think not,” I said.
    “Do you know who I am?” he asked.
    “No,” I said.
    “Tyrtaios,” he said.
    “I do not know the name,” I said.
    “Let it be known that you have refused Tyrtaios,” he said.
    “Why?” I asked.
    “It may explain much later,” he said.
    “And serve as a lesson to others?” I asked.
    “Perhaps,” he said.
    “Weapons are at the door,” I said. “Do you wish to meet outside?”
    “I wish you well,” he said, and, rising, turned about, and left. I saw two others rise, as well, and follow him through the portal.
    A proprietor’s man approached, and lingered by the table, looking toward the portal through which the three men had exited. He did not look at me. He said, softly, “Beware.”
    “Paga,” I said.
    “I will send a girl,” he said.
    “Master,” she said, a moment later, kneeling. It was the same woman, she from Asperiche.
    “Knees,” I said.
    She widened them, reddening.
    Did she not know how to kneel before a man?
    “Paga,” I said.
    “Yes, Master,” she said, rose, and, with an angry jangle of bells, withdrew.
    She seemed to me insufficiently deferential.
    She had lied before, and I had not had her lashed.
    Did she still think she was a free woman? Had she not yet learned she was a slave?
    Lying is permitted to the free woman, not the slave.
    I supposed she was the sort of slave who would misinterpret a forbearance as weakness, the sort of slave who would abuse a lenience.
    That is unwise on their part, for it is easy enough to remind them of their bondage, fiercely, and with unmistakable clarity.
    I thought of another woman, one first seen in a large emporium, on the world Earth. I recalled that she, in the warehouse on Earth, had looked well at my feet, stripped, on her back, as I had turned her, looking up at me, bound hand and foot, clearly ready for processing.
    I trusted she would not be so foolish.
    If she were, the whip would quickly instruct her in deportment.
    Yet vanity in a woman is charming, even endearing. Let them lie about their sales price, the wealth and position of their master, the loftiness of their former station, and such.
    But it is quite another thing to be in the least bit displeasing.
    It is interesting to see how carefully some, at first, will tread a line, flirting with a master’s patience, practicing a deference akin to insolence, and then to note their dismay when they discover that the line has been moved by the master in such a way that they find themselves clearly on its wrong side, the whip side. Informed that their games are done, they then strive to be wholly pleasing, as the slave they now know themselves to be.
    It is so much easier for all concerned then.
    Perhaps they merely wished to be taught their collar.
    If so, their wish is granted.
    The slave is not a free woman. She is a property, a belonging, an animal one owns. One expects total pleasingness from her, deference, and subservience, instant and unquestioning obedience, and, at a word or the snapping of fingers, the