Dancer of Gor

"Yes, Master," I said. I did not really understand what he was saying. I did realize, of course, and had realized this shortly after the beginning of my training, that my value might depend not simply on what I was, in myself, but even on the sort of woman I was, say, that I was a barbarian, and the relative abundance or scarcity of that commodity in the markets. Similar considerations apparently pertained to such matters as hair colors and body types. If these things were so, then I supposed that it was natural that my virginity, or lack of it, might also, at least in some cases, affect my price. My master, I noted, did not seem to be personally interested in my virginity, only in what it might mean to him in terms of its possible commercial value.

"But even if it were not for that," he said, "it is probably that you would have brought more that your lovely terrestrial compatriots."

I looked at him.

"Most Gorean men," he said, "would regard you, exhibited on the block, knowing only that much about you, as superior slave meat."

I shuddered.

"I think," he said, "in that market, that night, even if you had not been a virgin, you would have brought more than your friends. I would have thought you might have brought something in the neighborhood of a tarsk eighty or a tarsk seventy."

"But there was a bid of two for me," I said, "before your bid." "That seems a high bid," he said. "Perhaps it was the bid of someone new to the markets, perhaps one who had not seen many women vended, who did not realize how beautiful any woman is when she is put through merciless slave paces." I blushed, naked before him, in his collar.

"You bid two and fifty," I whispered.

"That is because I saw in you what others, at the time, did not," he said. "I saw in you the dancer, one I can use in the tavern. I saw in you, too, the helpless pleasure slave, who could be made the prisoner of her own passions, becoming an obedient, eager, grateful, spasmodic animal in her master" s arms." I blushed crimson.

"I think, he said, "that in time you might become a five-tarsk girl, perhaps even a ten-tarsk girl."

I looked up at him, frightened.

"You want to cover your breasts with your hands, don" t you?" he asked. "You want to clench your knees tightly together."

"Yes, Master!" I begged.

"Remain kneeling exactly as you are, pleasure slave," he said.

"Yes, Master," I said.

"And so," he said, "although the price I paid for you might have seemed high it was, from my point of view, in virtue of what you are, and will become, a splendid bargain."

"Yes, Master," I whispered.

"Are you pleased," he asked, "aside from questions of the price I paid for you, or my reasons for it, to learn that you are valuable, that you might well bring a price in the neighborhood of two silver tarsks in an open market?"

I did not know, precisely, how to respond to this question. It seemed that I was, as I had hitherto suspected, of genuine interest to Gorean men, or at least so many of them. Should I find pleasure in this, or a cause for alarm? Gorean men are generally such as to know how to handle women. They know what to do with them. Yet I did not think I would really want to be in the arms of other sorts of men.

"You have been asked a question," my master reminded me.

"Forgive me, Master," I whispered. I looked up at him, shyly. "Yes," I whispered, "I am pleased. I am extremely pleased."

"Vain she-tarsk," he said.