Tal, Goreans,

Greetings, visitors,

Welcome once again to the Booknotes column. Elinor Brinton, having been taken to Gor and fallen into the clutches of Targo, a slaver, was just beginning to get used to the idea that she was never going home and was going to become a man’s slave some time soon - and didn’t seem as unhappy about it as at the outset - when she was abducted once again, this time by a band of Panther Women, none other than the famous Verna and her band. What on Gor they can possibly want with her, we have yet to learn and so does Elinor, and if we want to find out, we had better take another bracing plunge into the pages of “Captive of Gor”.

Chapter Nine

The Panthers’ sisterly solidarity is apparent right from the word go - they plainly despise Elinor for allowing herself to be the slave of a man, and when she asks to join their band, Verna’s response is to insist that Elinor may do so only by winning a knife-fight to the death. She is, unsurprisingly, afraid to do so, and we may well conclude that she has reason. At any rate, once she fails to take up the offer, she is sneered at even more and is obliged to confess herself a slave and the inferior of the Panthers. Verna now sees fit to inform Elinor that they have been hired by a man to capture her.

In defiance of those of on-line Gor who would have it that Panthers must be radical feminist lesbian separatists, it is soon plain that these are very strongly heterosexual and uncomfortably aroused by the mere sight of men. They interrupt their journey to stop at a forest clearing, where Elinor is temporarily made fast to a hitching post and looks on as the Panthers, Verna last of all but by no means least, begin a wild, erotic dance by moonlight. This seems like an odd way for them to sublimate their sexual urges, but a graphic description of sixteen beautiful naked women masturbating like wild monkeys would, I suppose, have been a little out of character for Norman.

At any rate, Elinor is somewhat comforted to see that the proud Panthers are as helpless in the face of their own desires as she is, and maybe even more so, and she even dares to tell them that they moved as if they had been slave girls. This earns her a slap, but Verna only says “We are women”, and refuses to punish her further.

They are mildly worried when they scent a sleen, but it doesn’t seem to be interested in them at present, and they come to a forest hut where Elinor is to be handed over. One of Verna’s band has been repeatedly suggesting that Elinor should be killed, and this time Verna seems to agree, but Elinor begs for her life and acknowledges herself slave. But being made to confess herself slave to a woman renders her more hostile to the notion that she might be a man’s slave, which is something of a retrograde step, and perhaps just a touch allegorical. However, as she is being handed over to her purchaser, she is stricken by a sudden fit of indignation that she should have fetched only one hundred arrow points. It seems to her that she was worth more, and this amuses the Panthers, as though they are familiar with the notion that she who argues about the price has already determined what kind of girl she is.

Elinor now enters the hut and begins screaming in terror, for reasons that will be divulged in the next chapter.

Chapter Ten

Remember our clown and his trained beast from Chapter Eight? Here they are again, and it’s the sight of the beast that has made her scream. Obligingly, the man still has his clown face on, which doesn’t really make narrative sense but does save some explaining. Once he has washed his face, he addresses Elinor in English, and she recognises him as one of the two men who abducted her from Earth.

He begins a sort of one-man Mister Nice/Mister Nasty routine on Elinor, with the aid of the beast to reinforce his Mister Nasty persona, and they enjoy a quiet smoke together, which isn’t something she’s been used to over the last few weeks, while he fills her in on some plot background. It was not by accident that she was left behind when their flying saucer was shot down - the rest of the girls were taken away to safety, but Elinor was kept to one side, to be collected later, though we don’t know why as yet.

Their deliberations are interrupted by the sound of a sleen outside, which they guess is the one that the Panthers scented, but the man claims that they will be safe in the hut, and continues with his explanation of what he wants Elinor for. The mere realization that there is something that he wants of her leads Elinor to suppose that she can bargain, manipulate and control, and he allows her to believe that this is so for a few moments before slapping her across the face and threatening to have the beast eat her. She pleads for mercy and begs to be commanded, and he just has time to inform her that she is to be placed in a wealthy house and there poison its master when the sleen makes a determined attempt to break in. The window-shutter is smashed to pieces and the sleen begins to wriggle sinuously through, when the beast leaps upon it and, after a brief, savage fight, kills it.

To the man’s apparent horror, the beast begins to feed on the dead sleen, and ignores the man’s command to leave it alone. Elinor shrieks at it to obey its master, which slightly artificial phrasing doesn’t altogether stand up to rigorous examination. But using that form of words gives the beast a great feed line. Interrupting what was looking like a feeding frenzy, it retorts “I am the master”, at which the man and Elinor alike flee in panic.

Chapter Eleven

We rejoin Elinor when she is once again in the possession of Targo, with the hope that the author will fill us in on what has happened since we saw her last. She is having her ears pierced, and earns Targo’s commendation for bearing this with what seems like excellent courage, although we know that, as an Earth woman and an American into the bargain, it is only that she doesn’t view ear-piercing as anything to get upset about. Many other girls are less sanguine about this treatment, and one after another of them tries to find some reason why Targo should spare her, without success.

Ear-piercing is a Turian custom, and Elinor fills us in on some of the news about Turia, which we last saw in Book Four having its Home Stone spared by Kamchak and being let off with a little light looting, pillaging and burning. It is, she tells us, thriving once again and the main centre of commerce south of Gor’s equator. Meanwhile the various slave girls are weeping and wailing over their ear-piercing, much to Elinor’s contempt and disgust. And she has aligned herself with the spiteful Lana since we saw her last, which won’t have done her attitude any good.

Her come-uppance is not long delayed. Culturally adapted to pierced ears, she is horrified when she also has her nose pierced, a thing Gorean women don’t mind at all, and she loses all the Brownie points she had been accumulating and it is now her turn to earn the contempt of her fellows, although Ute, who has a kind heart, offers her more comfort than she deserves. Thus treated, they are returned to the slave pens of Ko-ro-ba, where they are being trained.

Lana and Elinor, who have been shirking their work, are given a lesson by Ute and Inge, who put a leash on their nose-rings while they are asleep and make them clean the cage that the four of them share. Once they have complied, and promised to mend their ways, Ute re-emphasises her nice nature by forgiving both of them for having been lazy and spiteful, and they continue with their training. Elinor still has an inner determination to have things her way, but now considers that her best chance of doing this is to become a superbly-trained slave, and this she is doing, to the extent that only Lana is her better (and Lana, we know, had a head start in the House of Cernus in Ar). Unfortunately she has a lot of Lana’s nature, and is soon caught lying when she and Inge get into a fight. This, sad to relate, will be a habit of hers for some time to come.

We learn now that Elinor’s flight from the hut was not long-lived. She had no idea how to fend for herself and no plans, and it was not long before she was captured, by one of Targo’s men as it opportunely turned out. The guard who recaptured her is pleased to gossip with her, and tells her that Marlenus, the great Ubar of Ar, has come to the forests to hunt - to hunt Verna, indeed - and Elinor privately wishes him every success. As for herself, being returned to the slave-chain of Targo feels like a home-coming to her, for she has kissed her hopes of return to Earth goodbye.

Elinor indeed now views herself as a slave girl, for her encounter with the Panthers has taught her that, but she is resolved to keep a little private place at the core of herself and to make men do as she wants.

Soon the news reaches the slaves that Verna has indeed fallen captive to Marlenus, and Elinor rejoices loudly over this, wanting Verna to find out what it is like to be a slave; but her emotions seem to be rather confused. And as she weeps in rage and frustration, we’re also given a few pass notes on a notorious outlaw called Rask of Treve, who has already troubled Targo. He has lately been giving Ko-ro-ba something of a bloody nose too, no doubt much to the annoyance of one Matthew Cabot. Rask is a young, daring, brilliant, devil-may-care bandit, conspicuous even by the standards of the bandit city of Treve, a fantastic swordsman, and a stud-muffin who never uses any woman more than once, claiming that this is enough for him to drain her to the dregs and leave her with no fresh novelties to show him. He can teach slavery to any free woman, and teach new depths of helplessly submitted slavery to a slave, and probably has to have a slave or two following him around just to mop up the spilled testosterone.

But for now it is still one long round of slave training, with just the visit of a slaver named Soron, of Ar, who comes to view Targo’s chain. One by one the slaves urge him to buy them, but he’s not buying, and this annoys Elinor enough that she takes it out on Ute by swiping a pastry from her.

Their time in Ko-ro-ba draws to a close and to Elinor’s delight she has the ring removed from her nose. She wants to share her joy with Ute and Inge, but they snub her, and she has no-one to turn to but Lana, who of course sets about charging a high price for her friendship. Elinor lies unhappily awake for a while before dozing off into an uneasy dream in which Soron of Ar features largely and disturbingly.

Chapter Twelve

Once again Norman indulges his peculiar penchant for fast-forwarding some period of time, and having then set the scene, taking a retrospective look at what has happened in the interim. This can be an effective narrative device, but now and then he seems to over-use it somewhat. So to put things in the right order, what has happened is that Inge has been provoked into a fight with Elinor and has beaten her easily, which has lowered Elinor a long way in the pecking order. This happened while they were watching the triumphal arrival of Marlenus’s hunting party at Ko-ro-ba, complete with his many catches of live big game, male outlaws (now enslaved) and Verna’s band of Panthers. Inge and Ute were both stricken with a large dose of slave belly at the mere sight of the hunters, and Elinor dropped one catty remark too many for Inge’s liking.

Elinor’s considerable distress at this downturn in her fortunes is tempered by the sight of Verna herself, caged and helpless, and she vents some of her spite on the Panther queen by goading the other slaves present - most of the slave population of Ko-ro-ba - to torment her and attack her. This Verna bears stoically. And a few days later, when their paths cross again, Elinor has the chance for further meanness in person, but gets no other response out of her than a disinterested “You have pierced ears”. But she comforts herself with the thought that she has shown Verna her superiority, as she likes to think of it, and given that by now none of the slaves in the caravan will have anything to do with her except the egregious Lana, she needs all the sops she can get.

She is, of course, the authoress of her own misfortune, though circumstances haven’t been favourable, and she persists in returning evil for good even to Ute, who has been well-disposed to her up to now and ever ready to give her another chance. She is, as we rejoin her, repaying Ute’s kindness as they are put to picking berries. She thieves out of Ute’s bucket when her back is turned, so as to do less work, and also commits the gross offence of eating some of the berries herself, all the while congratulating herself for her cleverness.

However, this is interrupted when a massive attack comes in, one hundred tarnsmen under the formidable Haakon of Skjern, and to save his caravan and his life Targo sets the slave-girls to flight. Ute realizes that she and Elinor have not been spotted, and this gives them a chance to escape, but they are thonged together and so will have to flee as a pair or not at all - and the second alternative is not acceptable to Ute. As the other slave girls are hunted down and spectacularly lassoed by flying tarnsmen, Ute and Elinor head for the tall timber.

At this juncture we must leave our intrepid duo for the time being; but whether Ute’s bravery and intelligence will be enough to compensate for Elinor’s fundamental uselessness, and whether Elinor will start to grow up a little instead of measuring her own worth by the amount of petty meanness she is able to get away with, we shall have to wait and see. Wherefore I invite the reader to join me next month for another foray between the covers of “Captive of Gor”.

I wish you well,

Socrates