Dancer of Gor

"Yes, Master," she said, now at the foot of the descent ramp, shivering, holding her arms about herself. Ila, we noted, to our satisfaction, was now properly deferential. Too, she was quick to obey. It seemed she had learned her lesson yesterday, that she was, like us, a woman and a slave. As she had been the first into the first cage yesterday, and we had had, for the most part, to back out of the narrow enclosures, it was natural that she had been at the head of our group this morning. i, for what it was worth, whether it was meaningful or not, whether it was a tribute to my beauty, or an indication of my assumed esthetic inferiority to the others, or a matter of accident, of simple happenstance or original positioning, with no significance, or height or whatever, was again at the end of the group. To be sure, I was neither the tallest nor the shortest of the group. One of the Gorean girls, Tutina, was smaller than I. It was, thus, I think, only an accident in its way, at least with respect to what was going on this morning, that Ila had been chosen to be the first to enter the fluid. The man had not even seemed to remember that she had been refractory, or resistant, the day before. He was thus kindly, I think, letting her begin again. I plunged from the incline of the ramp, from my hands and knees, into the dark liquid, on my belly, as had the others before me, and the tarsks before them. I was suddenly almost totally immersed. I cried out, sputtering, raising my head. It was shockingly cold. It seemed foul. My head went under again and again I desperately raised it. I then had my feet under me, and stood up, the fluid about my waist. I was then, by a man" s hand in my hair, pulled from my feet forward, and again into the liquid. It was stinging my eyes and nose. My eyes were filled with them. I could barely see. I thrashed forward and then, wildly, reaching about, seized the side. I pulled myself, then, clinging to the side, the fluid swirling about my neck, toward the other end. Apparently they wanted us well immersed. At the center point a man seized me by the hair and, to my acute distress, forced my head under the fluid, for a terrible second or two, and then released me. I then, moving forward, getting my feet under me, climbed stumbling, falling, splashing, up the end of the container, and pulled myself, at last, gratefully, onto the descent ramp. In a moment I was standing with the others, in the dirt, in the open courtyard, near the foot of the descent ramp. I was freezing. My teeth were chattering. I held my hands about myself, trembling with cold.

"This way," said the man.

Hurriedly we followed him. I looked about. I wondered if the others could possibly be as miserable as I was. I was extremely sensitive to cold, and to feelings of almost all sorts. I wondered if one of the criteria for selecting a woman for slavery might be her tactile sensitivity. I myself, I know, am extremely sensitive to such things as textures, for example, the feel of silk or leather, or a manacle, on my body. It is sometimes almost as though my entire skin was a single, extensive, sheetlike, marvelous tactile organ. Too, I reacted to the feel of a man" s hands on me, even in handling me in so simple a manner as to put me in a cage. These types of skin sensitivity, of course, make us much more alive to our environment. Indeed, part of our training was to increase our awareness of subtle sensations. These features and capacities, too, of course, made us more sensitive to both pain and pleasure. Thus, they put us all the more, it seemed, at the mercy of masters. I looked about. Surely none of the girls could be as miserable as I! But I saw them, in their misery, in their cruel discomfort, regard me as well. I wondered if they were thinking the same thoughts as I. We were all terribly miserable. We were all such, it seemed, as to be helplessly at the mercy of our sensitivities, tactile and otherwise, of our helpless responsiveness, and our feelings.

"This way," said the man.

We were very pleased to follow him into a large, wooden building.

"This is the annex to the sales barn," he said. "The exposition spaces are here."

I hardly heard him, so eager I was to get within the building. Within, in the center of the building, in the center of its dirt floor, was a fire pit, in which blazed a cheerful fire. His stick, held out, prevented us from running toward it. Then, amused, he lowered the stick, and we ran to stand near the fire, crowding about it. Blankets, too, rough and brown, were there, in piles, and, permitted, at a gesture of the stick, we seized them up and clutched them gratefully about us, drying our bodies, and our hair.