Prize of Gor by John Norman Read Free Book Online Page A

stupid.
    “But I suppose,” he said, “you will prove capable of learning.” He glanced down at Tutina, kneeling to his left. “What do you think, Tutina?” he asked.
    “I am sure she will learn quickly,” said Tutina, her head down.
    The young man returned his attention to the older woman. “Interesting, how you sit,” he said.
    She looked at him, puzzled.
    “I thought that subscribers to your ideology methodologically affected bellicose facades of what they mistakenly believe to be masculine body language, for example, leaning back, and throwing the legs apart, indicating, supposedly, their masculinity, and openness, their lack of inhibitions, and such, their repudiation of femininity, for feminists seem to seek to be the least feminine of all their gender. And yet you sit there in a manner undisguisedly, and, I suspect, naturally feminine.”
    She held her knees the more tightly together, and trembled. She felt so open, and vulnerable. She did not care what he thought! Perhaps it was because the gown was all she had to shield her body from his gaze. Too, it was muchly open in the back. Or, perhaps, it was because she now had a different, frightened sense of herself. She now wore an anklet.
    “How did you enjoy La Bohème ?” he asked, rather as he had, earlier.
    “I thought it was beautiful,” she whispered.
    “I, too,” he said. “Beautiful!”
    She regarded him, helplessly, pathetically.
    “There are other forms of song dramas, elsewhere,” he said. “They, too, are very beautiful. Perhaps, suitably disguised, or unobtrusively positioned, in order not to produce offense, you might be able to see one, or another, of them.”
    “What do you want of me?” she begged. “Why am I here? What are you going to do with me?”
    “I shall explain a small number of things to you,” he said, “a portion of what I think you are, at present, capable of understanding. Later, of course, you will learn a great deal more. Some of what I say may seem surprising to you, even incredible, so I would encourage you, despite your possible impulses to do otherwise, not to interrupt me frequently or inopportunely. If necessary, I will have Tutina tie your hands behind your back and tape your mouth shut. Do you understand?”
    “Yes,” she whispered.
    “First,” he said, “you have been unconscious, for better than forty-eight hours.”
    She regarded him, startled.
    “That is partly a function of your age,” he said. “Younger individuals recover considerably more quickly.”
    Then there are other individuals, she thought.
    She remembered the performance of La Bohème . As she had planned she had arranged to have a seat for that performance as close as possible to the seat she had occupied for the earlier performance, that of Richard Strauss’s Salomé . To her delight, the couple, the young man and his companion, too, had had seats comparable to those of the first performance. Though she had scarcely managed to take her eyes from the couple during the performance, and had sat there, breathing quickly, heart beating rapidly, tense, nervous, excited the whole time, she had had no intention of approaching them again. She recalled, smartly, her rebuff, earlier, at the hands of the blonde and the civil tolerance, no more than that required by simple courtesy, surely, of the young man. But, interestingly, to her delight, and alarm, the couple, after the performance, seeming to see her for the first time, had smiled at her, rather as if acknowledging that they had met her before, and pleasantly. Thus encouraged, feeling almost like a young girl, timid, shy, bashful, almost stammering, she had dared to approach them, ostensibly to chat, inconsequentially, about the performance. They had permitted her to apologize for her forward actions of some days ago, not that such actions really required any such apology, and had expressed interest in her small observations, and speculations, particularly the young man. The blonde,