Free Beasts of Gor by John Norman Page B

fruit. She smiled at me, over the fruit, Then she turned white. “Forgive me, Master!” she cried. She had seen my eyes. She knelt before me on the boards, trembling, her head down. Would she be permitted to live? The fruit lay discarded beside her. I took the fruit and bit into it. I watched her for a time, and then I said, “Lift your head.” She did so. I threw the fruit back to her, and she, fearfully, caught it. She held it In her bands, looking at me. “Finish it,” I said, “and then, for an Ahn, lie on your belly.” “Yes, Master,” she said.
    I looked up, beyond the crowds and platforms. From where I stood I could see the great palisade, and the black, snow-capped mountains of the Sardar.
    I moved on, pushing past a man who was examining the legs of a slave girl, feeling them. He was considering her purchase.
    “Where are the new slaves?” asked one man of another.
    “They are on the western platforms,” said the respondent. Those platforms are commonly used for processing and organization. Girls are not often sold from them. They wait there, usually, when they are brought in, before they are conducted to their proper platforms, those on which they will be displayed, those having been rented in advance by their masters.
    Since I had time to spare I took my way to the western platforms. If something good might be found there perhaps I could find on which platform she was to be vended, and might then arrange to be at that platform when she arrived. As soon as the locks snap shut on a girl’s chain at the platform she is available to be bid upon. Perhaps I would find something good.
    I was soon at the western platforms.
    It is easy to tell among girls which are familiar with their condition and which are not. Once a girl truly understands that she is a slave, and that there is no escape for her, once she understands it truly, emotionally, categorically, intellectually, physiologically, totally, deeply, profoundly, in every cell in her beautiful body, a fantastic transformation occurs in her. She then knows she is truly a slave. She then becomes wild, and free, and sexual, and cares not that he might be scorned by the free either for her miserable condition or helpless appetites; she knows she will be what she must; she has no choice; she is slave. Women, in their heart, long to submit; this is necessary for the slave girl; she must submit or die; submitted, she is thrilled to the core; she lives then for love and service, bound to the will of her master. The joy of the slave girl may seem incomprehensible to the free but it is a reality.
    I heard the lamentations of girls in chains.
    It must be clearly understood that the life of the slave girl, of course, can often be far from joyful.
    After all, she is slave. Her wills mean nothing.
    She can be bought and sold.
    She is subject to the whip, and torture and even death should the master please.
    She does not know who will buy her.
    Her condition is objectively degrading.
    Often she must labor with perfection to please a harsh master to whom she is nothing.
    The glory of the slave girl is that she is a slave; and the misery of the slave girl is that she is a slave.
    But all in all chains are right for a woman. They belong in them.
    I looked at some of the new platforms. I could easily detect girls who were fresh to the collar. They were clumsy and tight, not yet liberated and free, not yet women.
    Even as I walked about the new platforms wagons, drawn by draft tharlarion, waited to unload their lovely wares. The markets of the Sardar fairs are large and important ones in the Gorean economy. Most of the wagons were common slave wagons, with a parallel bar running down the center of the wagon box, about which the ankles of the girls were chained; others, however, were flat wagons fixed with an iron framework; two lines of girls kneel back to hack on such a wagon, their ankles and necks locked into the framework; on the flat wagons I saw the wrists of the