Dancer of Gor

I heard Tupita gasp in anger, tied to my right. She had been the "first girl" in a much-frequented tavern in Brundisium. Then she shrank back, very quiet. She was afraid she might have attracted their attention. Sometimes a slave wants very much to attract the attention of a man, but sometimes, too, she does not. Sometimes she hopes that he, at least officially, will not take notice of her. It is not pleasant to be cuffed. Too, the whip hurts. I myself, too, however, though I was more restrained than Tupita, was not much pleased either. I had been first, at least for a time, on at least some of the lists at the baths in Brundisium. Too, I had been a fine dancer, one of the finest, I suspect, in Brundisium! If they could have seen me curling about a man" s feet in an alcove, licking and kissing them, then inching upward, piteously, hopefully, then kneeling beside him, looking up, kissing, licking, pleading, I do not think they would have been so quick to dismiss me as a mere "pot girl." Tela, too, I am sure, was angry. After all, not only had she once been a rich free woman, of high family and significant station, of a fine city, Lydius, but even after her capture, and her prompt reduction to total and absolute bondage, she had been found so beautiful, so luscious and desirable, that she had been chosen over many women for the rectangle of red silk in the tent of Aulus. Mina and Cara, too, I think, were not too pleased. Certainly the beauty of neither was negligible, and I am sure they were both well aware of this. Both, and I am sure they understood this, would be likely to bring a high price on the slave block. Had there been originally any doubt in the minds of these fellows as to our desirability, or potential, those doubts, surely should have been dispelled earlier, in the authoritative, intimate examinations to which we had all been helplessly subjected. What more would they have wished to do, put us to their full pleasure? Perhaps they could take us home for a week on a trial basis! "Very well," said the little fellow. "Consider them pot girls, cleaning slaves, laundresses, what have you, it matters not to me. Put them to your lowest servile tasks. Whip them back when they would crawl pleading on their bellies to your couches! What does it matter to me!"

I think we were all startled to hear him exclaim in this fashion. Certainly we were exquisite slave flesh, all of us! I doubted that there were many slave bars on Gor to which five women such as we were fastened. To be sure, almost all female slaves on Gor must expect to be put to domestic labors, cooking, sewing, cleaning, washing, ironing, and such. We were women. Even free women, in households without slaves, perform such labors. How, then, could we expect to be exempt from them? Sometimes even high pleasure slaves in the palaces of Ubars must, if only to remind them that they are slaves, on their hands and knees, stripped and chained, scrub floors. Still, surely we were good for far more than such things. Did the beauty of our faces, and our slave curves, not suggest that? Surely the first and most essential office of the female slave, and, indeed, of any sort of female slave, is to be pleasing to the master.

"But," said the small fellow, "whatever you choose to call them, or however you choose to think of them, we made a bargain!"

"You have no Home Stone," said the bearded man.

I shuddered. In such a fashion he had informed the small fellow that he was not such that one need keep faith with him. There is a Gorean saying that only Priest-Kings, outlaws and slaves lack Home Stones. Strictly, of course, that is an oversimplification. For example, animals of all sorts, such as tarsks and verr, as well as slaves, do not have Home Stones. Too, anyone whose citizenship, for whatever reason, is rescinded or revoked, with due process of law, is no longer entitled to the protections and rights of that polity" s Home Stone. That Home Stone is then no longer his. This suggested to me, again, that the small fellow might have been cast out of Tharna, perhaps exiled or banished. He did not seem to me a likely candidate for an outlaw, at least in the fullest sense of the word. Indeed, the fellows with whom he was dealing, such rough, dangerous, unkempt brutes, seemed to me much more likely candidates for such an appellation.

"Beware," said the small fellow.

The leader of the five men regarded him, puzzled. "What then is your Home Stone?" he asked.

The small fellow looked down, angrily. He pulled up a handful of grass. "You do not have a Home Stone," announced the leader, with a grin.

"Twenty-five silver tarsks for the women," said the small fellow. "And meat, much meat!"

"You do not have a Home Stone," grinned the leader.

"Five for each," said the small fellow, "not three!"

"Very well," said the leader.

"Good!" said the small fellow.

"Not three," said the leader, "but two."

"No!" cried the small fellow.

"Then one for each," said the leader.

"Beware!" cried the small fellow.