Free Plunder of Gor by John Norman

fellow. “Get on your knees.”
    All of us knelt, except the woman who had run to the elevator. I was suffused with strange, indescribable emotions.
    In the kitchen, on the linoleum, I had been on my knees before the men, for a few moments, but this seemed quite different. That had been, however disturbing, little more than a brief transition between the attitude of a prone, bound prisoner, and that of a wrist-tied, standing prisoner. It was natural that I would have been knelt, that the bonds on my ankles could be removed, making it possible for me to stand upright, before my bitting. There had been little or nothing of anything expected, fitting, or institutionalized in that posture.
    This, however, was quite different.
    â€œYou are before men,” had said the fellow. “Get on your knees.”
    Why should we, women, or, at least, our sort of women, be on our knees before men?
    I recalled the brute from the office, he spoken of as Kurik. “Why are you standing?” he had asked, and had informed me that, as he was a free man, I should have been kneeling before him, as I was a slave. I had denied that I was a slave, of course.
    â€œDo you think I do not know a slave when I see one? You lack only the collar,” he had said.
    â€œGet out!” I had said.
    â€œYou might look fetching in a slave rag, or a slave tunic,” he had said, “and, perhaps better, clad only in your collar.”
    â€œGet out!” I had said.
    I was kneeling.
    I was shaken, half fainting. I had never felt such emotions, such feelings. I was kneeling before men. Could it be, I wondered, that I belonged so?
    Could it be that I was a slave?
    I do not mean, of course, in some legal sense, but in some far more profound sense, a sense in which an explicit legal imposition of servitude would be little more than a technicality, however fearful a technicality, which would recognize, acknowledge, and confirm, in a formal manner, something ancient, something underlying, deeper, and more basic, more real, than statutes, pronouncements, and rulings, something true of my very being.
    â€œI will not kneel, no, no, never, never!” cried the woman who had run to the elevator.
    â€œRemove her clothing, and lash her,” said the man.
    Two of his fellows, those without switches, started forward.
    â€œNo, no!” she cried. “I am on my knees! I am on my knees!”
    At a gesture from the leader, the two fellows stepped back, being then as they had been before.
    â€œYou are women,” said the leader. “It is time you learned what you are for.”
    Several of us looked wildly to one another. But Paula’s eyes were bright. Her lips were slightly parted. She looked ecstatic.
    â€œThere are many worlds,” said the man. “You are now familiar only with one, a polluted, dismal world spoiled by selfishness, thoughtlessness, and greed, a barbarian world defiling nature and poisoning seas, a world in which men and women must be fitted to the machine, rather than the machine to men and women. But there are other worlds, better worlds, other civilizations, better civilizations, higher civilizations, civilizations in which nature is not abhorred and denied but celebrated and accepted, civilizations not opposed to nature but allied with her, supportive of her, promotive of her, civilizations in which, recognized, abetted, and enhanced, nature may flourish.”
    I could make little of these words.
    How could one understand such things?
    â€œOne such world,” he said, “is Gor. It is to that world you will be transported, shipped as the merchandise you are for her markets. You are being transmitted to Gor not because of your guilt, understand, though it might be deservedly so, not for your naive contributing to the desecration of a world, nor for your mindless participation in a pathology that mocks nature, but in virtue of the simple right of the stronger to acquire, own, and master the