Dancer of Gor

I though how amused Teibar might have been, to have thought of me, his hated "modern woman," as he thought, being sold, and being sold in this place, a place fit for her, a sales barn, where tarsks, four-legged, and two-legged, like herself, were sold. I wondered if Teibar knew I would be sold in this place. He was doubtless privy to the records of the house. But he may have left their service before I was consigned to the wholesaler outside Brundisium. But it could be this was a common clearing point for their slaves. It could be, too, he had retained contacts with the house. He might very well know I was here. He may have even, for his amusement, arranged that it would be here, or in a similar outlet, that I was sold, influencing the orders in some fashion. Perhaps that I was here, naked in a sales barn, my wrists manacled over my head, being bid upon by strangers, was part of his vengeance on me. At the least he would have known that this, or something similar, would be done to me! How amused he must be, when he thought of such things, his haughty, pretentious "modern woman." as he thought, she whom he held in such contempt, to her dismay and terror, and miscry, now being sold naked from a slave block, into absolute bondage!

Then I became aware of someone, or one or two men, actually, calling up from the floor. It was not bids they were calling. I tried to understand them. I did not know if it were their accents, or I simply, in my confusion, my misery and distress, had suddenly lost almost all my command of Gorean. I could not really understand them.

The chain slackened above me and my arms fell, somewhat. The auctioneer put his whip on his belt, held me by the left arm in his right hand, and, with his left hand, reaching up, lifted the chain between my manacles off the lower hook of the short chain, that attached to the strand of the double chain overhead. His hand on my arm kept me from collapsing to the sawdust. My hands were down, the chain on the manacles now against my thighs. He said something to me, but I did not understand it. Then he reached in front of me and gathered the chain between my manacles into his hands and lifted my wrists up, bending my arms back. He put my wrists back, behind my head, and then released the chain on the manacles, letting it drop behind my neck. "Clasp your hands behind the back of your head," he said. I understood him now. "Bend back," he said. "Display yourself." I obeyed, of course. Too, the whip was now again in his hand. "Flex your knees," he said. "Now, turn," he said. "Do not forget our friends to the right," he said. I then displayed myself, again, identically, at the right side of the block. I did not think the other girls had been removed from the chain, or not many of them, given the speed with which the line had moved. Why should I be favored in this respect? The bidding had been interrupted at eighty-eight tarsks, whatever that meant. I did know that there was apparently something about me, perhaps unfortunately, which many Gorean men found of interest. I do not thing this was simply a matter of figure and face, though I think these appealed to a Gorean taste, but perhaps something else, something deeper, which they seemed to sense about me, some sort of possibility, or potentially, or something which I myself did not fully understand, or yet understand. Sometimes he touched me with the whip, calling attention to a curve or flank. Teibar" s "modern woman," I thought, is now displaying herself naked to Gorean buyers. He then had me kneel and bent me back, painfully, my hair back to the sawdust, to the center, and then the left, and then the right, before the buyers. He then had me straighten up and unclasp my hands from behind my head. He then lifted the chain forward, over my head. It then hung, between my wrists, a little below my neck. He let me lower my hands. My hands then, and the chain, were again on my thighs. My hands chained as they were, I could not both keep them on my thighs and maintain a full, open-kneel position. I looked up at him, from the sawdust.

Men were calling out, from behind the railing, and some from the tiers. To my surprise the auctioneer removed a key from his belt and removed the manacles from me. I rubbed my wrists. There were marks on them where the manacles had cut into me, when I was lifted to the block.

The auctioneer cracked his whip.

I looked up at him, from the sawdust. I was to be put through slave paces. I tried to put from me what was being done to me.

I wanted to go back to the library.

The sawdust was in my hair, and its particles clung to my sweating body. "Yes," I thought, "I can find that book."

I was on my belly, naked, in the sawdust.

"Yes," I thought, "there was quiet, shy Doreen in the library, going quietly about her duties, there, walking about, returning to the reference desk, over that flat carpet, from the information desk, past the xerox machines." I rolled in the sawdust.