Tal Goreans,
Greetings visitors,

Welcome once again to the Booknotes column. Last month in “Slave Girl of Gor” we met Judy Thornton, newly arrived on Gor with only fragmentary memories of how she came to be there, and we watched as first a passing stranger saved her from two men who would have killed her, and then that same stranger branded her and took her to his bed. This was in some contrast to the previous girl-narrated book, “Captive of Gor”, and we may as well go on and see how the story unfolds; evidently it is no mere rewrite of the earlier book.

Chapter Four

Awakening on the morning after, Judy reminisces on a night in which she has received what might be called “a thorough seeing-to”, and she is by no means unhappy with her changed station. She examines her new brand with a sense of wonder that matches the sexual awakening she has just been given, and as she does so, her still-dozing master seizes her by her hair and draws her head to his waist, with what purpose we may well guess.

Before dawn Judy is being acquainted with the other duties of a slave girl under the tuition of Eta, whom we briefly met last time, and soon she is dressed in clothing suitable to her status, a “Ta-Teera” as she learns, and she sees her reflection and is amazed at the sensuous creature she has become. Language lessons begin without delay, and this gives Judy the chance to answer a question that has been puzzling her since she was nearly murdered. Her captors at the time were asking her about “Var Bina”, and when she asks Eta the same question she is shown some “Bina” - cheap slave beads - though this does not go very far towards explaining why in the world a pair of complete strangers should have been asking about such.

That night, Judy’s romantic notions receive a large dent. Previously she watched Eta playing “Girl Catch” with the various men in the camp, and just when Judy had satisfied herself that she was the treasured love-object of their captain and her saviour, she finds herself also hooded and belled and made to play the same game. Four men, one after the other, succeed in catching her and have the use of her. When the game is over she is miserable and expects Eta to comfort her, but is further disappointed, and begins to realize in what low regard she is held.

After her master has finished making what seem to be military plans, he calls for wine from her, but is plainly not about to take her to his own bed, just as she was adjusting to the notion of what she now is and consoling herself with her pride in the man who owns her, and in response she throws a tantrum. Eta is horrified at the sight of this - Judy is too much the innocent to realize what danger she is putting herself in - but her master shows her surprising patience and gentleness. However, just as Judy is thinking that she has melted his cold heart, he hoods her and throws her to his men for their further enjoyment.

Later, after she has been unhooded, she reflects in misery on the latest humiliation she has suffered, brought to orgasm against her will by one of the men who have used her, amid an insistent and unavoidable conviction that she deserved it. Unable to bear this, she tries to flee through the thorn hedge that partly encloses the camp - that part of it not shut off by a cliff wall - and gets stuck. Her master, releasing her, wordlessly offers to allow her to go, and when she refuses, he flings her to the ugliest man in the camp and orders her to please him; his intent is plain though she cannot understand the words. And she not only does please him but is brought to orgasm again while her master watches.

Finally she and Eta are left alone as the men retire, and she thinks about the lessons that she has been taught, and comes to the conclusion that it is all very right and proper, and falls asleep under the three moons, delighting in her slavery. De gustibus non est disputandem.

Chapter Five

We jump forward a while, to when Judy has learned to speak intelligible Gorean. She is disguised as a free woman and insinuated into the night-camp of one Lady Sabina, a Gorean bride on a journey with her full retinue on the way to meet her groom, Thandar of Ti. Judy fills us in on some background which need not concern us much. After an interlude in which the Lady discovers one of her slave girls in a clinch with one of her men, and gives the “naughty, salacious slave” a beating, Judy appears on the scene and promptly runs away.

This is a distraction engineered to draw off the Lady Sabina’s guard, of course, and it also gives Judy the opportunity to tell us a quick Just-So Story about primitive women trying to run away from primitive men, a selection process ultimately resulting in women who cannot outrun men (since the women who can have been bred out of the gene pool). And indeed she cannot outrun the guards, and is soon caught, but she has served her purpose. Her disguise is soon penetrated; but while the Lady Sabina’s guards are attempting to rescue her, Judy’s master comes back and, as an afterthought, helps himself to Lady Sabina’s goods and slave girls. Thereupon they are all marched swiftly away.

Chapter Six

At a place called Tabuk’s Ford, five weeks later, we are introduced to Sul paga (or what they would call “potcheen”, potato whisky, in Ireland) and a sturdy peasant called Thurnus. This man farms a smallish private holding some four hundred pasangs from Ar and is blessed with a bloated shrew of a Free Companion named Melina. We also at last learn the name of Judy’s master: Clitus Vitellius, a Warrior of Ar. Thurnus amuses himself by touching Judy intimately, as if to test Clitus Vitellius’s willingness to honour custom by lending Judy to him, and then puts Judy to one side and gets on with the serious business of sleen trading. He has established that Clitus will conform to convention and he repays him by declining to demand his rights; in such a manner strong men take each other’s measure.

Chapter Seven

It is a few hours later, and all of Clitus Vitellius’s girls are preparing to entertain the young manhood of Tabuk’s Ford in a village-wide game of Girl Catch, distressing one of the girls, named Slave Beads. This is Judy Thornton’s cue to step back a few weeks and fill us in on the plot, and my cue to inveigh against this too-often-resorted-to literary device (and the reader’s cue to inform me that I have mounted this soapbox enough, and should just get on with doing my job).

Evidently, Judy has been an assiduous student in the last few weeks, since not only her spoken Gorean has come on a treat but also her grasp of Gorean history and the current state of its politics, especially as it pertains to Ar. True, this is Clitus Vitellius’s city, but on the other hand it is likely that the total time he has spent discussing such matters with a barbarian slave girl would not amount to enough to soft-boil a vulo egg.

At any rate, Lady Sabina’s abduction was no mere act of random brigandage but a politically-motivated act, aiming at preventing a companionship that might have cemented an alliance against Ar. This is not much comfort to Lady Sabina, whose pleas for freedom fall on deaf ears and a rhetorical question as to whether she truly means to ask Clitus Vitellius to betray Ar. His intention is to enslave her and thus at a stroke permanently nullify her political value, and he is not slow to do so. And since (see above) the last two syllables of Lady Sabina’s name felicitously mean “Slave Beads”, he does not have far to search for a suitable name.

This news is imparted to us (along with the current state of the strategically-important Margin of Desolation and the political ambitions, past and present, of Ubar Marlenus) intercut with scenes from the present time in which the girls are prepared for their sport, the peasant boys examine them, and the game is begun. On this occasion Girl Catch is less blind-man’s buff, more hide-and-seek, and on being given their head start the slave girls all seek various hiding places. Slave Beads, because of having recently been free and of high station, though of the Merchants and therefore not High Caste, is particularly anxious not to be caught; but since this is a contest between slave girls and free men, we can state with abundant confidence in whose favour the dice are going to be rigged, and Judy, at least, is not slow to realize this.

She has plenty of smarts and no shortage of chutzpah, however, and resolves upon the bold stroke of hiding in the very furs of her Master. Of course, should Clitus Vitellius be annoyed about this, she has worse to fear than being clumsily raped by a clueless peasant boy, but she opts to gamble on impressing him with her boldness. She and her master have, Judy thinks, been growing closer in recent days, to the extent that she is prepared to bet on her ability to read his mood; and when he arrives, it seems she has chosen well, for he does not punish her.

Instead he amuses himself by arousing her, while forbidding her to “yield” (the author’s quaint expression used to refer to orgasm, though he uses that word too) until he is good and ready for her to do so; he expresses surprise that he should concern himself with such a common, almost valueless, barbarian slave; he tells her of other Earth girls he has owned and either sold or given away. Judy does not yet have a name - her previous name ceased to be hers the instant she was branded, and she has not yet been given a new one - and, after enquiring about her “complicated” barbarian name, he decides that he will name her. (It’s odd that Clitus Vitellius should consider the name “Judy Thornton” any more complicated than his own; on the other hand, there is no rule that states that free men are obliged to be logically consistent in dealing with slave girls, either.) And since she has the Dina brand upon her thigh, he has no more difficulty in naming her than he had with Slave Beads.

This accomplished, Clitus Vitellius declares himself disturbed by the extent of his interest in her, and after she has begged his collar and confessed her helpless, choiceless love for him, he coolly informs Dina (as she now is) that he is going to give her to Thurnus the Peasant.

Chapter Eight

She is not completely useless to Thurnus even when he has owned her for only a short time, even before Clitus Vitellius has departed, for she is good enough to serve as sleen quarry in a demonstration of the beasts’ hunting prowess, and should she not have been quick enough to lock herself in the cage she now occupies, she would have made good sleen feed too.

Impressively, for someone who has hardly even seen a sleen, Dina is well-informed enough to tell the reader a good deal about the natural history of this creature, as well as weeping for the hopes of slave girls ever to free themselves on a world that contains trained sleen.

Thurnus, of course, knew very well that Dina had no chance of effecting a real escape during the demonstration, but he also observed that Dina did not realize this until after actually trying to escape. He punishes her with a couple of blows and warns her with an absolute economy of words that the penalty for any future such attempt will be hamstringing. But he is plainly not outraged with her, and only orders her to his hut.

On the way she encounters Bran Loort, a burly youth who seems to be leader among the pre-adult peasants of Tabuk’s Ford, and his designs on her are plain to see. For now, though, he suffers her to pass. She arrives at the hut just in time to see Clitus Vitellius preparing to depart, and desperately pleads with him not to leave her behind, reiterating her helpless love for him. Clitus Vitellius, though, only drives her head into the dust, not violently but inexorably, and stonily informs her: “You are a slave girl in the village of Tabuk’s Ford.”

And on that note, as Dina is left weeping in the dirt, we must leave her to contemplate her future as the slave of Thurnus the Peasant and undertake to return next month to observe the continuing trials and tribulations in the life of the eponymous “Slave Girl of Gor”.

I wish you well,

Socrates