of
these things. She was a mere slave and thus appropriately kept in ignorance. Let
them please and serve. That is enough for them.
“Well?” smiled Marcus.
I did not respond to him. I thought of a woman, one now high in Ar, one for whom
I had once mistakenly cared, a vain, proud woman who had once, thinking me
helpless and crippled, mocked and scorned me. I though of her, and chains. It
would be impossible to obtain her, of course. Yet, if somehow, in spite of all,
I should obtain her it was not even my intention to keep her but rather, as a
gesture, merely dispose of her, giving her away or selling her off as the least
of slaves.
“I see,” said Marcus.
“Master?” asked Phoebe, turning before Marcus.
“Yes,” he said, “you are very pretty.”
“Thank you, Master,” she said, “for giving me a garment.”
(pg. 26) “For permitting you to wear one,” Marcus corrected her.
“Yes, Master,” she said.
“For at least a moment or two,” he said.
“Yes, Master!” she laughed.
“You have an exquisitely beautiful slave, Marcus,” I said.
Phoebe looked at me, gratefully, flushed.
Marcus made an angry noise, and clenched his fists. I saw that he feared he
might come to care for her.
He whipped the cord, some five feet in length, from his shoulder.
Phoebe approached him and held her wrists, crossed, before her. “Am I to be
bound, Master?” she asked. In extending their limbs so readily, so delicately,
for binding, slaves express and demonstrate, their submission.
“Do you like the garment?” he asked.
“Whose use I may have, if only for a moment,” she smiled. “Yes, Master. Oh yes,
my Master!”
“Are you grateful?” he asked.
“Yes, Master,” she said. “A slave is grateful, so very grateful.”
“It is not much,” he said.
“It is a treasure,” she said. I smiled. To her, I supposed, a slave, such a tiny
thing, little more than a brief rag, would indeed be a treasure.
“You understand, of course,” he said, “that its use may be as easily taken from
you as given to you.”
“Yes, Master,” she said.
“Do you wish to retain its use?” he asked.
“Of course, Master,” she said.
“You now have an additional motivation for striving to please,” he said.
“Yes, Master,” she smiled. The control of a girl’s clothing, and many other
things, such as her diet, chaining, name, whether or not her head is to be
shaved, and so on, are all within the purview of the master. His power over the
slave is unqualified and absolute. Phoebe, of course, was muchly in love with
Marcus, and he, in spite of himself, with her. On the other hand, even if she
had been, as he sometimes seemed to want her, the hating slave of a hating
master, she would still have had to strive with all her power to please him, and
in all things, and with perfection. It is such to be a Gorean slave girl.
“Do you think me weak?” he asked.
“No, Master!” she said.
He regarded her, torn with his love for her, and his hatred of the island of
Cos.
She lifted her crossed wrists to him, for binding.
But he did not move to pinion them. The cord, of course, (pg. 27) was not for
such a purpose, though that was a purpose which it could surely serve.
She separated her wrists timidly, and looked him, puzzled, with love in her
eyes.
“I am eager to be pleasing to you,” she said.
“That is fitting,” he said.
“Yes, Master,” she whispered.
“For you are a slave,” he said.
“And yours,” she said, suddenly, breathlessly, “yours, your slave!”
He looked at her, angrily.
“I exist for you,” she said, “and it is what I want, to please and serve you.”
She was much in love. She wanted to give all of herself to Marcus, irreservedly,
to hold nothing back, to live for him, if need be, to die for him. It is the way
of the female in love, for whom no service is too small, no sacrifice too great,
offering herself selflessly as an oblation to the master.
He