Free Fighting Slave of Gor by John Norman Page A

spent several months on your world. Are you afraid you are going to be lashed?"
    "Yes, Mistress," I said.
    "It was there," she said, "that I learned the nature of the males of Earth, and to despise them."
    "Yes, Mistress," I said.
    I heard a tiny sound again, very similar to the first.
    "I have replaced the whip on my belt," she said. Then she came again in front of me, where she might look down on me. The whip hung again at her belt.
    "I'm not going to whip you now," she said.
    "Thank you, Mistress," I said.
    "What is your name?" she asked.
    "Jason," I said. "Jason Marshall."
    "You have no name," she said.
    "Yes, Mistress," I said.
    "But `Jason' will do," she said. "You are Jason."
    "Yes, Mistress," I said.
    "The name is now a slave name," she said, "put on you because it pleases me."
    "Yes, Mistress," I said. I was now a named slave.
    She went to the side of the cell. There, on a shelf, were two shallow pans. They had been there before. She carried one of them over to me. It contained, as I now saw, pieces of meat. She held the pan in her left hand and, with her right hand, picked out a piece of meat.
    She looked down at me.
    "The transition to slavery will be easier for you than for a true man," she said, "but it will still, doubtless, not be easy for you."
    I looked up at her, miserably.
    "Feed, Jason," she said, putting the piece of meat in my mouth.
    "I have been to Earth," she said. "I have seen the males there. There are so few men among them. Is it so hard, I wonder, to be a man. Why is it that so many of the males of Earth have given up their manhood, and pretend to rejoice in their mutilation. Doubtless there are complex historical causes. It is interesting, the grotesque shapes into which culture can shape a tortured biology."
    As she spoke, she continued to feed me.
    "But I feel no pity for you sorry males of Earth," she said, "for you have permitted this to be done to you. What despicable weaklings and cowards you are. You have little left to you but the vestiges of your manhood, and you let even those, bit by bit, be taken from you."
    She thrust another piece of meat in my mouth.
    "Poor, pretty Jason," she said. "He does not know what to think." She smiled at me. "I will tell you a secret, Jason," she said, "you were a slave before, but did not know it. You were the slave of a culture, of values, of propaganda and women. Your chains were invisible, so you pretended they did not exist. But did you not, nonetheless, feel their weight? Are things so different here than there for you? There is, surely, little true difference. The whips here, of course, are of real leather, and the chains of honest iron. When you feel them you need not pretend they are something other than what they are." She stopped feeding me. "They are precisely what they seem," she said, "true leather and iron. And you are precisely what you seem to be, a slave."
    "Yes, Mistress," I said, miserably.
    She then put the pan of meat down on the stones, where I might reach it. She then went back to the shelf and brought the other pan to where I knelt. She placed it within my reach, on the stones. It contained water.
    "Put your head down and drink," she said. "Do not use your hands."
    I put my head down and drank.
    "Stop," she said.
    I stopped
    She then, with her foot, white in that high, bootlike, thonged sandal, slid both the pan of meat and the pan of water out of my reach.
    "The slave is completely dependent on the master or mistress," she said, "even for food and drink."
    "Yes, Mistress," I said.
    She then, again, with her foot, slid the pan of meat and the pan of water to where I might reach them.
    "Say `Thank you, Mistress,'" she said.
    "Thank you, Mistress," I said.
    "Put your head down again, and drink," she said.
    Again I put my head down and, frightened, drank.
    "Oh," she said, "how I despise you, and how I shall enjoy working with you."
    I trembled.
    "Look up, Jason," she said.
    I looked up.
    "Look into my eyes," she said.
    I did so. It was