Black Beauty Chapter Six.

Black Beauty[1]

Peony D. Beckside

With appreciation and thanks to John Norman for creating the wonderful world or Gor, in which this story is set.  Also to ‘Emma of Gor’, the fanfic blogger, for the use of some of her characters and concepts.
 

Chapter Six: Denouement!

Master’s popularity these days is almost frightening!  Everywhere he goes he is mobbed.  I hear many cries of ‘Castartius for Ubar!’, Be the best Ubar, Castartius, etc.  So flocked by well-wishers is he, that if I’m not to be lost in the throng I must be kept on a leash.  As a barbarian, an Earth-girl slut, I should be so offended, incensed by that.  After all, it’s only dogs, and other animals that are leashed.  I giggle to myself.  Here on Gor, I am an animal, only an animal, legally so anyway.  Such is my love for Master that being on his leash is almost like an honour!  

Master could just as easily have me stay at home, chain me or kennel me to make sure I stay, but he seems to like having me along with him; as a kind of pet, I suppose.  Yes, I’m his loving adoring pet, and I don’t mind who knows it.  Not that a slave has any say in the matter.  If a Master wants his slave to accompany him on a leash, then accompany him on a leash she must.  Me?  I adore it that I get out and about, seeing the sights and sounds, experience the hustle and bustle of this exciting place.  I should be used to it, the amount of time that I have been here, the number of times I’ve accompanied Master on his errands around town.  I think that it’s the difference between it and the cities I knew back in the USA that give this place its charm.  It’s so vibrant!  I once visited Miami.  Right in the very heart of Downtown, on a street corner, there were chickens pecking for whatever they could find.  Chickens!  Among the polished skyscrapers, the retail heart of the city had effectively deteriorated into a virtual ghost-town.  I found it most surreal!  Here, I don’t get the feeling that this place would ever deteriorate to that level.  Clearly Miami is not loved, as the cities of Gor are.

I know that I am admired.  I see the outright stares of appreciation.  Gorean men don’t glance at women, slave girls, with furtive glances as the men of Earth do.  Of course free-women despise us slaves, we capture the lustful looks that they wish they should have, but dare not court, for fear of themselves becoming slaves.  As a black-skinned woman, the descendant of those before me who were enslaved from Africa to the ‘New World’ of North America, after centuries of discrimination, I should be offended at the very concept of slavery.  ‘Never Again!’ Should be my motto.  Here I cannot hold to that absolutism.  It was a shock suddenly finding myself not just on another planet, but a slave, the very concept of anathema, too.  I very quickly learned that fighting against what was.  Down that road lies only pain and death.  I will never be the equal of a free-woman, but I’m not sure that I want to be.  They seem to lead such hemmed-in lives. So do I of course, but in a different way.  I do however have the solace of regular and good sexual pleasure.

The difference here on Gor is that apart from the discrimination of being a slave, I am not looked down on because of my skin colour!  Here on Gor, there doesn’t seem to be any racial discrimination.  Gorean men, appreciate my beauty as much as they would a ‘white’ person.  I can be proud of being the equal of my ‘sisters in bondage’ at least.  I may be a ‘second-class citizen’, but I’m not a second-class, second-class citizen!  Doubtless I’d get a clip round the ear or worse, if Master could read my thoughts.  Citizen?  Second-class or not?  What arrogance!  I have to remind myself that I’m an animal, legally so anyway.  I am though a gorgeous one! Sleek, desirable, an asset of some worth on a man’s chain.  A monetary asset, as well as enhancing his prestige.

Today I am excited.  I have been bid to bathe, to beautify myself.  The slave cosmetics that I have been given to use are of the bright colours that complement my dark skin.  Strong in the yellows, oranges, reds and golds.  Even back on earth, the cosmetics that the coloured girls used would not really work on ‘white women’ and vice-versa.

I have been given a new camisk of the finest slave-silk, in the bright yellow of my Master’s caste colours. It’s utterly scandalous!  Or at least, by the standards I grew up with, it is.  It’s so sheer and brief that little of my ‘charms’ will be hidden.  I’ll have to be very graceful and careful if I’m not to show my ‘all’.  It flows across my skin so much easier than the simple rep-cloth one I normally wear.  Nowadays, such a skimpy and revealing garment is being almost ‘over-dressed’.  Even without its links to Master’s clan, the yellow silk is the perfect colour to highlight my ebony skin.

I’m excited, because today Master is to be enthroned, or whatever they do here, as the new Ubar.  I know that the word Ubar means something like ‘Supreme Leader’, perhaps even ‘War Leader’; rather than ‘Administrator’, which would be the position in peacetime.  Indeed, though there seems to be little privation in the city, I gather that this city, Argentum I believe it’s called, is at war with a nearby city called Torcadino.

Master looks marvellous this morning!  He’s freshly barbered, his caste robes give him a grandeur unsurpassed.  I’m proud to be his slave.  He secures my wrists behind my back with jewelled slave-bracelets.  The leash too, is decorated with citrine, heliodor, yellow topaz, yellow sapphire, even yellow diamonds!  I’m sure that even bound in this manner, perhaps for some men because I’m bound in this manner, I am stunningly beautiful.

Today also, is the unveiling of the city’s new Western Gate.  Yes, the one that I’d discussed with him, offering suggestions, that very first day he called me to his drawing office.  The city has decided that the two events can be held simultaneously, in the new square just inside the new gate.

The gate itself is swathed in cloth, hiding its lineaments.  Doubtless Master wants to make a big show of the unveiling.

The square is a packed throng of people.  There is a raised platform facing the square, that which backs onto a narrow alley.  On the platform there is an ornate curule chair.  I kneel at the side of the chair back straight, thighs spread widely, as is my default kneeling position.  Master attaches my jewelled leash to a ring on the chair.

The speeches begin.  I take little notice.  It is not my place to question, not even to analyse what free-persons say, unless such affects me.  I have only one function, to be beautifully decorative, and in being so enhance the standing of my Master.

At a certain point, as anticipation builds, Master signals and the shrouding cloth reveals the new gatehouse.  It’s as if I have been struck by a bolt of lightning!  From somewhere the words fly out of my mouth!  They are not consciously spoken.  There has been no intellectual decision as to whether I should speak or not.  The words have been said before I realise I’ve said them.  My voice rings out, everyone can hear!

“Master!  It’ll fail!  Where are the hammer-beams, the buttresses?  You know the weaknesses, the stress-points, the fracture loads!”

I don’t consciously remember that day in Master’s drawing office when he’d shown me the initial design for the gatehouse, the design here built into stone.  The memory bullets into my brain.  At his instruction I’d told him why it wouldn’t work.  What he’d said then seemed so unambiguous: ‘As for your idea.  That’s precisely what has been decided.’

I hear wailing!  I think that it’s me.  A cascade of other memories collapses into my brain.  I am inundated, overwhelmed, drowning in the utter horror of those memories.  All of my uncertainties that things were not as they should be, come crashing in on me.

The image of me kneeling in chains before Udumi Ayeola in the office of Steel World Inc. washes before me.  I hear her voice as if she is here in front of me, telling me:

‘You will be taken to Gor.  You will be trained as a pleasure slave.  Things have moved on, since the Gor books were first published.  During the journey, you will be subliminally taught the basics of the Gorean language.  You additionally will be indoctrinated with the image of a man, a Builder.  When you see this man in real life, you will feel an overwhelming desire to be owned by this man.  You will do and say whatever is necessary for him to buy you.  You will, at some point during your ownership, betray this man.  At a certain point, an opportunity will be presented to you.  Into your mind will come the method by which you are to make that betrayal, and the compulsion to do so.  Of course any parts of this conversation that pertain to this mission will be erased from your brain.  You will not remember that this is an operation.  To you the desire to be owned by this man and the betrayal will be automatic and natural.  Also, once you have committed the betrayal, you will forget all about it.  Only the effects of the betrayal will exist.  You will be able to deny any involvement, because to you there never was a betrayal.  No matter how much they torture you, the knowledge won’t be there for them to find.’

I realise that I have become, to use an Earth fairy tale analogy, ‘the boy who pointed out that the Emperor was wearing no clothes’.  All of Udumi Ayeola’s prophesies or promises have come true, with the exception of forgetting about the betrayal.  I remember how the evil bitch had me imprisoned, whipped, and shipped here to Gor.  It’s clear that somewhere, probably during the journey, I’ve been brainwashed, partially mind-wiped or some such thing.  The conditioning that I have received has however not been perfectly done, for I have not forgotten the betrayal that I have committed.  A stray thought flits through my brain.  Did I ever really truly of my own volition loved Castartius.  Was my infatuation for him just clever mental programming?  Give him his due, he was not an unkind Master.  Nor was he displeasing to look at.  I realise that I’m thinking of him in the past as having lost him, or him having lost me.

Master!  Even though I’ve betrayed him, he’s still the only rock of sanity that I can cling to.  He is not here!  Where has he gone? Have the crowds caught him, perhaps tearing him apart for his betrayal of the city?  I hear a man’s voice.

“Take her!  Take the slave to the Justice Cylinder!”

It’s all too much, the flood of memories, the loss of Master’s reassuring presence.  I remember no more.