“Hold,” said the officer.
The paunchy fellow returned to the spot in front of the officer.
“That is he,” said one of the guards with him.
“No offense meant, good sir,” said the paunchy fellow. “A mere jest!”
“You are Boots Tarsk-Bit,” said the officer, consulting an inked handbill, clipped with other papers, “Actor, Entrepreneur, and Impresario, of the company of Boots Tarsk-Bit?”
“At your service,” said the paunchy fellow, bowing low. “What may I do for you?”
The girl was now kneeling beside me, with her head down. She had assumed this position immediately upon the appearance of the officer and the guards.
“We are here in connection with the matter of a license,” said the officer.
“Yes?” said the paunchy fellow, Boots Tarsk-Bit, pleasantly.
“Do you have one?” asked the officer.
“Would you care to come to my quarters?” asked Boots. “We have some lovely larmas there, and perhaps you and your men would like to try my Bina and Brigella.”
“In the license,” said the officer, “there is the provision that girls associated with companies such as yours, if slaves, may be commanded to the apartments and service of whomsoever the council, or a delegated officer of the council, directs.”
“I scarcely ever read all the provisions of the licenses,” said Boots. “Such things are so tedious.”
“Do you have a license?” asked the officer.
“Of course!” said Boots, indignantly. “They are required, as is well known. No fellow with the least sense of ethics would think of being without one.”
“May I see your license?” inquired the officer.
“Certainly,” said Boots, fumbling about in his robes. “It is right here—somewhere.” He examined his wallet. “Somewhere,” he assured the officer. “Alas,” he said, after the second ransacking of his robes, and his third examination of the wallet, “it must be in my quarters, perhaps in the wardrobe trunk. I shall return in a nonce. I trust that I shall not discover that I have been robbed!”
“Hold!” said the officer.
“Yes?” said Boots, turning back.
“According to our records,” said the officer, “you have no license. You did not petition to perform, and you did not obtain a license.”
“I remember distinctly obtaining the license!” said Boots.
The officer glared at him.
“Of course, it might have been last year,” said Boots. “Or maybe the year before?”
The officer was silent.
“Could I have neglected such a detail?” asked Boots, horrified. “Could such a thing have slipped my mind? It seems impossible!”
“It is not really so hard to believe,” observed the officer. “It has happened three years in a row.”
“No!” cried Boots, in horror.
“It is folks like you who give scoundrels and rogues a bad name,” said the officer.
“What are you writing?” asked Boots anxiously.
“A disposition order,” said the officer.
“To what effect, may I inquire?” pressed Boots.
“Your properties,” said the officer, “including your actresses, will be confiscated. They will look well in state chains. You yourself will be publicly flogged in the piazza, and then, for five years, banished from Port Kar.”
“It is carnival time,” I said to the officer.
“Captain?” he asked.
“What is owed?” I asked.
“The licensing fee is a silver tarsk,” he said.
“Surely,” I said to Boots Tarsk-Bit, “your players have taken in a silver tarsk?”
“No,” he said. “We have, so far tonight, taken in only ninety-seven tarsk-bits, not even ten copper tarsks.” Coinage on Gor varies considerably from city to city. In Port Kar, and generally in the Vosk Basin, there are ten tarsk bits to a copper tarsk and one hundred copper tarsks to a silver tarsk.
“Surely you have some money saved,” I said.
“Not enough,” he said. “We live from day to day. Sometimes there is nothing to eat.”
“More than a silver tarsk is actually involved, Captain,” said the officer. “There is the matter of the last two years, as well, considerations of interest, and the customary emoluments.”
“I am ruined,” said Boots Tarsk-Bit.
“Let us not be hasty, officer,” I said. “Boots Tarsk-Bit is an old friend of mine, a friend from long ago.”
Boots looked at me, startled. Then he nodded, earnestly. We had known one another for quite some time now, at least ten Ehn.
“If you wish, Captain,” smiled the officer, “I shall not pursue the matter further.” He knew me. He had been with the fleet on the 25th of Se’Kara.
“Boots, of course, as is well known,” I said, “is an honest fellow.”
Boots looked startled.
“He always pays his debts,” I assured the officer.
“I do?” asked Boots. “I do!” he then said quickly, firmly, to the officer.
“So pay the man,” I said.
“With what?” inquired Boots, speaking to me in an intense whisper.
“With your earnings,” I told him.
“They are not even ten tarsks!” hissed Boots to me, his eyes bulging.
“Check the pots of your Bina and Brigella,” I said.
“I have checked them,” he said.
“Check them again,” I said.
He turned away, and then turned back, to stoop down and pick up the copper pot by the Kaissa table.
“Leave it,” I said.
He shrugged and then, straightening up, took his leave.
“He will doubtless be back for it,” smiled the officer.
“He cannot, in any event, escape from the city,” said one of the guards.
I reached down and picked up the pot from beside the Kaissa table.
I looked down at the slave kneeling on the tiles of the piazza beside me, naked and in her collar, clutching the pastry. “You may now eat the pastry,” I said. “You may now finish it.” “Thank you, Master,” she said, happily. She had now been under my total command for something like half of an Ahn.
I put three silver tarsks into the pot. “These cover the licensing fees for three years,” I said. I then put another silver tarsk into the pot. “This,” I said, “should more than cover any interest due on the debts outstanding.”
“More than enough,” granted the officer.
“This tarsk,” I then said, slipping it into the pot, “is for the Master of Revels.”
“You are most generous, Captain,” said the officer, impressed. “That is more than is normally expected.”
“And this tarsk,” I said, “is for you and your men.”
“That is not necessary, Captain,” protested the officer.
The coin dropped into the pot. “It is carnival,” I smiled.
“Thank you, Captain,” said the officer.
“Thank you, Captain,” said the guards.
I replaced the copper pot beside the Kaissa table.
I looked down at the slave. “Have you finished the pastry?” I asked.
“Yes, Master,” she smiled.
“Clean your fingers. Suck and lick them,” I said.
“Yes, Master,” she said. I was growing hot for her. I must soon get her to a rack.
It is not only slaves, of course, who are afflicted by the heat of need. The mere sight of a slave can enflame a man, and drive him half mad with passion. He can scream with need, longing to get his thongs or bracelets on one. Sometimes he cannot rest until a given slave is his, chained nude to the slave ring at the foot of his couch, his to do with as he pleases. Fortunes can be spent for a desired female. Men sometimes kill for them. Wars can be fought for them. Cities can be bartered for them. And surely the luscious creatures, though no more than animals bearing brands in their lovely hide, are aware of their desirability, their attractiveness
, their importance, and meaning to men. Surely they know the effect they can have on men. Can fire not have a sense of its effect on straw? Are they not aware of the impact on a man of the mere sight of them. Can they be ignorant of the igniting appeal of their particular configuration on a male? Can they not understand how he sees them, how he notes, and responds to, and relishes, the smallness of their feet, the slimness of their ankles, the curves of their calves, the sweetness of their thighs, the width of their hips, the narrowness of their waist, the delicious, expanding ascent therefrom, culminating in the lovely amplitudes of their bosom, with its alluring vulnerability and softness, the smallness and delicacy of their hands, the softness of their forearms, and shoulders, the excitements of their throat, the sensitivity and beauty of their face, the glory of their hair? Can they be puzzled that men bid strenuously upon them? Consider, too, their glances, their smiles, a gasp, a tiny whimper, a moan, the brightness of an eye, the trembling of a lip, their smallest movements, of a wrist or ankle, the lifting or turning of a head, the inadvertent flaring of a hip, the pointing of a toe, so curving the calf. Can they be ignorant as to how they appear to men? Can they be ignorant as to how they are viewed, as excruciatingly desirable, as properties, acquisitions and prizes, as fit to be owned? Can they be ignorant of these things? I do not think so. Surely they know, these sinuous, little beasts, what treasures they are, even though they are well aware that their throats are encircled with slave bands. What enormous power they have, these tormenting beauties, though they can be bought and sold from blocks! Subject to the whip, subject to the kennel and cage, they are yet capable of setting brother against brother, of sundering alliances, and dividing ubarates. They are powerful, and powerless. They are meaningful, and meaningless. They are slaves. In the end, however, it is well to remember that, for all their power and beauty, they can be stripped, and put to one’s feet. In the end it is they who must kneel and kiss the whip. In the end then, it is they who are owned. In the end then their power is gone; it is then nothing, and their beauty is all, and it is ours. In the end, they are ours, wholly. They are our slaves.
Thus it is, and thus let it be.
“It is no use, kind sirs,” said Boots Tarsk-Bit, returning, carrying the two empty coin bowls. “They are empty.”
“What of that pot?” asked the officer, indicating the one beside the Kaissa table. “That contains earnings accruing to your troupe, does it not, from your Kaissa booth?”
“Alas, it contains only three tarsk bits,” lamented Boots Tarsk-Bit.
“Do you trust him?” asked the officer of one of the guards.
“Not I, Sir,” responded the guard.
“Open it,” said the officer.
“Very well,” shrugged Boots. Then, as he picked up the kettle, a strange look suddenly came over his face. He shook it. From within it came the unmistakable clink of several coins.
Feverishly he drew a key out of his wallet. In a moment he had unlocked the padlock on the chain and drawn it, sliding through the handles, rattling, free. He removed the lid from the kettle.
“Sly scamp, rotund rogue,” scolded the officer. “You have been holding out on us.”
Boots, his eyes wide, sorted through the coins in the pot.
“What is there?” asked the officer.
“Three tarsk bits,” said Boots, “—and five silver tarsks.”
“Three silver tarsks for licensing fees, present and past, one for interest, and one for the Master of Revels,” said the officer.
Boots counted out the coins and handed them to the officer.
“Is there nothing for myself and my men?” asked the officer.
Boots drew the last silver tarsk out of his sleeve and, sheepishly, handed it to the officer. I had not seen him place it there. He had done it very skillfully.
The girl at my feet now held my leg in her arms and kissed at my leg, whimpering.
“It seems a slave is ready for pleasure,” grinned the officer, looking at me.
“Perhaps,” I said, as though nonchalantly.
“The rack, Master,” she whimpered. “Please take me to a rack!”
“I see that you wear the favor of a free woman,” observed the officer. He referred to the rich, light, colorful scarf thrust through the eyelet of my robes.
“Yes,” I said. I recalled the richly robed, veiled, wheedling free woman whom I had permitted to place it there. What a churl I would have been, considering how prettily she had begged, and she a free woman, not to have accepted it.
“Take me to the rack, Master, please, I beg it!” said the girl at my feet.
“I see that you, too, have accepted the favor of a free woman,” I said.
“Yes,” he said, grinning. The favor he wore was different from mine, both in border and color. In the game of Favors, of course, the favors are supposedly unique to the given woman, in pattern, material, texture, color, shape, decoration, and so forth. If they were not unique in this fashion they could not act as practical counters in the game. Similarly, of course, they would be less efficient in manifesting the results of the deeper competitions involved, those competitions in which women desperately strive against one another, each to prove themselves more desirable to men than the others. Each woman desires to be more pleasing to men than the others. This is significant. It is in their nature.
“It is interesting to me that free women play the game of Favors,” I said.
“It gives them a way of flirting,” he said. “Too it gives them an opportunity to put themselves, in a way, at the mercy of the male, to engage in petitioning behavior, suing for his indulgence. In this it is not difficult to see a form of symbolic submission, a making of themselves dependent on his will. Too, of course, it gives them a way of testing their desirability and publicly proclaiming, or advertising, it.”
“Luscious, vain creatures,” I observed. I myself had earlier speculated along these lines. To be sure, the game of Favors, like most games, customs and practices, was undoubtedly complex and multiply motivated. Too, sometimes things take on additional meanings and values as they are enriched in a historical tradition or more deeply or variously interpreted in different contexts.
“It also, of course, gives them a way of establishing rankings among themselves,” said the officer, “which is probably about the best they can do until they find themselves enslaved, put naked on blocks and priced.”
“I agree,” I said. That certain games, such as that of Favors, provided a mechanism for establishing desirability rankings among females, something in which they seemed much interested, seemed clear.
“What do you think of free women?” asked the officer.
“I didn’t know there were any, really,” I said. Goreans have a theory that there are only two sorts of women, slaves and slaves.
“You know what I mean,” he said.
“I suppose they are all right,” I said. They were all right, I supposed.
“Slaves are incomparably superior,” he said.
“That is true,” I said. There was no comparison.
“Please, Master, take me to a rack,” begged the girl at my feet.
Freedom, with its inhibitions, inertnesses and hostilities, tends to produce a blockage to the emergence of the depth female. In bondage this blockage is removed, freeing the woman to find her natural fulfillment, her fulfillment in the order of nature, that of a slave at the feet of her master.
“Please, Master,” begged the girl. “I beg to be taken to a rack.”
I pulled her by the arm to her feet.
“Happy carnival,” I said to the officer.
“Happy carnival!” said he.
“Happy carnival,” said I to Boots Tarsk-Bit.
“Happy carnival,” said he.
I thrust the slave ahead of me, and we pressed through the crowds. In a few Ehn we had crossed the piazza and come to the racks. There were two sorts, refined, adjustable strap racks, with beddings of flat, soft, crisscrossed straps, with sturdy stud-and-
eyelet securing straps, and simple net racks, little more than sturdy wooden frames within which was slung a netlike webbing of rope. In these racks, if one wishes to secure the woman within the webbing, simple cords are used. There were also some trestles. I took the slave to one of the net racks. The strap racks were all in use.
I saw the free woman who had worn the brief cloth about her hips near the racks.
I threw the slave on her belly on the netting and then turned her to her back. I had her place her wrists and ankles through the netting in certain fashions. I did not bother securing her in position. I then joined her on the netting. In moments, gasping, looking at me wildly, gratefully, she was in the throes of slave orgasm. To arouse a free woman to the point of orgasm, even the sort of which she is capable, takes, usually, from a quarter to a third of an Ahn. The reflexes of the slave, on the other hand, for psychological reasons, and because of her training, can be much more easily, profoundly and frequently activated. This is not really surprising. The free woman, after all, is a free woman, and the slave is a slave.
“Buy me,” said the slave, intensely. “You have money. Buy me, please! I will serve you well!”
I kissed her, and withdrew from her; in a moment I stood beside the rack, adjusting my robes.
“May I break position, Master?” she asked.
“Yes,” I said.
She removed her hands and feet from the netting, slipped from the rack and came to kneel before me. She put down her head, and kissed my feet. The marks of the rope, where she had lain on the netting, were on her body. She then looked up at me. “I did not mean to be forward, before,” she said. “Please, forgive me. Beat me, if you wish.”
I lifted her to her feet, and kissed her. “It is all right,” I said.
She looked at me.
“Go, seek out your own master,” I said. “See that you give him even more pleasure than you did me.”
“Yes, Master,” she smiled, and turned, disappearing into the crowd. A slave girl’s first duty is to her own master.
“Paga?” invited a fellow, reeling by.
We exchanged swigs from our botas, I from his, he from mine.
I saw the free woman standing, watching, she with the brief bit of cloth about her hips. I looked at her. It was interesting, I thought, that she had now come to the vicinity of the pleasure racks. Our eyes met. I looked imperiously to the rack. She shrank back, in terror. When I looked back again she was half crouched over, her head in her hands, her body shaken with fear and sobs. I then left the area of the racks. It was about that time that I caught sight, once again, of Henrius and Vina. In a small space, with Henrius and some men about, to the music of some nearby musicians, the men clapping and keeping time, she was dancing. She did well. She might have been a nude, leashed, harnessed street dancer, one of the lowest forms of dancer on Gor. Soon, I suspected, Henrius would take her to a rack, or perhaps back to his holding. She was an incredibly lovely young slave, and loved him from the depths of her heart. Her perspiration had run in trickles through the paint on her body. I watched her for a moment. How real and alive she was, the slave.
Players of Gor Page 8
