I was now some twenty men from the table.
"Look," called a man.
Two parties of men, one party from each of the tents, began to make their way toward the amphitheater. Somewhere in those parties were Scormus of Ar and Centius of Cos. The chief officer of the caste of players, with representatives of both Cos and Ar, would be waiting for them on the stone stage of the amphitheater, with the helmet.
I breathed more easily. I was confident now I would have my bet placed before the draw. If Scormus should draw yellow, and I were to place my bet after this fact was generally known, I would stand to win almost nothing, even should I wager a good deal.
"Hurry!" called a man. "Hurry!"
The two parties of men had now, from opposite sides, entered the amphitheater.
"A silver tarsk on Scormus of Ar," said the man from Cos, who stood now at the table.
"They will be raising the standard of Ar or Cos any moment!" cried a man.
In moments I was two men from the table. Then there was only one man before me. "Next," called the odds merchant.
I stood before the table.
"Fourteen to one favoring the champion of Ar," he said.
"Fourteen hundred tans of gold," said I, "on Ar's champion."
"Who are you?" asked the odds merchant. "Are you mad?'
"I am Bosk," I said, "of Port Kar."
"Done," said he, "Captain!"
I signed his sheet with the sign of the bosk.
"Look!" cried a man. "Look!"
Above the amphitheater, on its rim, a man lifted the standard of Ar.
I stepped aside. There was much shouting. Men of Ar in the crowd embraced one another. Then, beside he who bore the standard of Ar, there stood one in the garb of the players, the red and yellow checkered robe, and the checkered cap, with the board and pieces slung over his shoulder, like a warrior's accouterments. He lifted his hand. "It is Scormus!" they cried. "It is Scormus!" The ysrnng man then lifted the standard of Ar himself.
Men of Ar wept. Then the young man returned the standard to him who had first carried it to the amphitheater's rim and withdrew from sight.
There was much cheering.
Next," said the odds merchant.
The next man then stood before the table.
"Thirty-six to one, favoring the champion of Ar," he said.
The man groaned.
I grinned, and left the vicinity of the tables. I would have preferred to have had better odds, but I had managed to place my bet before they had more than doubled against poor Centius of Cos. I stood now to win a hundred golden tans. I was in a good mood.
I turned my steps toward the main market. I would look at the goods on the long wooden platforms. Perhaps I would buy a girl for the night and sell her in the morning.
In a few minutes I saw the silken summit of the gigantic sales pavilion, its pennons fluttering, its blue and yellow silk billowing in the wind.
I saw male slaves thrusting a cart filled with quarry stones. It left deep tracks in the rain-softened earth.
I smelled verr, closed in shallow pens, more than a pasang away. The air was clear and sparkling.
I came to the great sales pavilion, but it was now roped off and quiet. There was much activity, and bustle, however, among the platforms. Here and there slaves were being thrown food.
I mingled with the crowds among the platforms. There are hundreds of such platforms, long, raised about a foot from the ground, far more than one could easily examine in a day's browsing. They are rented to individual slavers, who, reserving them before the fairs, would rent one or more, or several, depending on their riches and the numbers of their stock. Small signs fixed on the platforms identify the flesh merchant, such as `These are the girls of Sorb of Turia' or `These slaves are owned by Tenalion of Ar'.
I penetrated more deeply among the platforms. A girl, kneeling and naked, heavily chained, extended her hands to me. "Buy me, Master!" she begged. Then I had passed her and she was behind me. I saw two girls standing, back to back, the left wrist of each chained to the right wrist of the other. "Handsome master, consider me!" cried a girl as I passed her. Most of the girls knelt or sat on the platforms. All were secured in some fashion.
"Scandalous," said a free woman, to another free woman, who was passing near me.
"Yes," said the other free woman.
"Candies! Candies!" called a hawker of sweets near me in the crowd. "Candies of Ar!"
"Buy this candy of Ar, Master!" laughed a chained girl to me. I roughly fondled her head, and she seized my wrist suddenly in her chained hands and desperately began to press kisses upon it. "Please," she wept. "Please!" "No," I said. I pulled my wrist away and continued on. She sobbed, and knelt back in her chains.
"I will make you a superb love slave," called another girl to me. I did not respond to her.
On a rounded wooden block a naked slave girl knelt, her wrists braceleted behind her. Her head was back. One of the physicians was cleaning her teeth.
By another platform a slaver's man was moving along the platform. He carried a large, handled copper tureen filled with a watery soup. The slaver's beauties, chained together by the neck, knelt at the edge of the platform. Each dipped her cupped hands twice into the tureen, and lifted them, drinking and feeding, to her mouth. They then licked and sucked their fingers and wiped their hands on their bodies.
Sales take place at night in the pavillion, from a sawdust-strewn block, under the light of torches, but girls may also be sold directly from the platforms. Indeed, many girls are sold from the platforms. Given the number of girls at the fair, and the fact that new ones are constantly being brought to the platforms, it is impractical to hope to market them all from the block. It is just not feasible. At the end of every fair there are always some hundreds of girls left unsold. These are usually sold in groups at wholesale prices In sales restricted to professional slavers, who will transport them to other markets, to dispose of them there.
"Do you think you could make me kneel to you?" asked a girl sitting on a platform, with chained neck and ankles, her knees drawn up, chewing on a larma fruit. She smiled at me, over the fruit, Then she turned white. "Forgive me, Master!" she cried. She had seen my eyes. She knelt before me on the boards, trembling, her head down. Would she be permitted to live? The fruit lay discarded beside her. I took the fruit and bit into it. I watched her for a time, and then I said, "Lift your head." She did so. I threw the fruit back to her, and she, fearfully, caught it. She held it In her bands, looking at me. "Finish it," I said, "and then, for an Ahn, lie on your belly." "Yes, Master," she said.
I looked up, beyond the crowds and platforms. From where I stood I could see the great palisade, and the black, snow-capped mountains of the Sardar.
I moved on, pushing past a man who was examining the legs of a slave girl, feeling them. He was considering her purchase.
"Where are the new slaves?" asked one man of another.
"They are on the western platforms," said the respondent. Those platforms are commonly used for processing and organization. Girls are not often sold from them. They wait there, usually, when they are brought in, before they are conducted to their proper platforms, those on which they will be displayed, those having been rented in advance by their masters.
Since I had time to spare I took my way to the western platforms. If something good might be found there perhaps I could find on which platform she was to be vended, and might then arrange to be at that platform when she arrived. As soon as the locks snap shut on a girl's chain at the platform she is available to be bid upon. Perhaps I would find something good.
I was soon at the western platforms.
It is easy to tell among girls which are familiar with their condition and which are not. Once a girl truly understands that she is a slave, and that there is no escape for her, once she understands it truly, emotionally, categorically, intellectually, physiologically, totally, deeply, profoundly, in every cell in her beautiful body, a fantastic
transformation occurs in her. She then knows she is truly a slave. She then becomes wild, and free, and sexual, and cares not that he might be scorned by the free either for her miserable condition or helpless appetites; she knows she will be what she must; she has no choice; she is slave. Women, in their heart, long to submit; this is necessary for the slave girl; she must submit or die; submitted, she is thrilled to the core; she lives then for love and service, bound to the will of her master. The joy of the slave girl may seem incomprehensible to the free but it is a reality.
I heard the lamentations of girls in chains.
It must be clearly understood that the life of the slave girl, of course, can often be far from joyful.
After all, she is slave. Her wills mean nothing.
She can be bought and sold.
She is subject to the whip, and torture and even death should the master please.
She does not know who will buy her.
Her condition is objectively degrading.
Often she must labor with perfection to please a harsh master to whom she is nothing.
The glory of the slave girl is that she is a slave; and the misery of the slave girl is that she is a slave.
But all in all chains are right for a woman. They belong in them.
I looked at some of the new platforms. I could easily detect girls who were fresh to the collar. They were clumsy and tight, not yet liberated and free, not yet women.
Even as I walked about the new platforms wagons, drawn by draft tharlarion, waited to unload their lovely wares. The markets of the Sardar fairs are large and important ones in the Gorean economy. Most of the wagons were common slave wagons, with a parallel bar running down the center of the wagon box, about which the ankles of the girls were chained; others, however, were flat wagons fixed with an iron framework; two lines of girls kneel back to hack on such a wagon, their ankles and necks locked into the framework; on the flat wagons I saw the wrists of the beauties were braceleted behind them.
I inspected more of the new platforms.
It is painful for a girl to be locked in the framework of a flat wagon but, of course, she is well displayed enroute.
On some of the new platforms the women were still clothed or partly clothed.
I was about to leave the area of the western platforms when I saw something which interested me, a set of four girl.
I walked casually over to the vicinity of the platform, standing back somewhat.
Three were dark-haired and one was blond. The wrists of each were chained; the ankles, too, of each were chained. Their wrists were separated by some six inches of chain, their ankles by about a foot of chain.
They were kneeling.
They wore collars, fastened together by a chain.
What I found interesting about these girls was that they wore Earth raiment.
The girl on the end, blond, wore very brief denim shorts, faded and blue. They were low on her belly, revealing her navel and tattered about the hems. They had round metal snaps. She wore a blue, workman's shirt, the tails of which were tied under her breasts, to display her midriff. She was tanned, and blue eyed. Her blond hair was loose and there were tiny rings in her ears. The next girl, dark-haired, lovely, wore black, feminine slacks; these were apparently of some synthetic Earth material; the left leg of the slacks was torn from the knee downward; she also wore what had probably been a soft, red, turtle-necked pull-over; it, too, was rather feminine; perhaps that is why it had been half torn from her; her right breast was exposed; when I looked at her she looked down, frightened, and with one chained hand drew a shred of the pull-over before her, to conceal herself; I smiled; how meaningless was the gesture; did she not know where she was; she was on Gor; she was on the platform; she, too, wore ornaments in her ear lobes, tiny jewellike disks, very small; the next two girls, too, were both dark-haired, and dark-eyed, and were attired, save for the colors of their shirts, identically; both wore blue trousers of denim; both wore flannel shirts, one a plaid flannel and the other a beige flannel; both wore small earrings of gold. I thought, of course, of the girl in the house of Samos and the raiment she had worn, which had been burned in her presence. She and the last two girls would have been extremely similarly attired; they all wore, or had worn, the male-imitation uniform which I gathered must be popular among such girls, girls apparently striving to copy a masculinity which hormonally and anatomically would be forever denied to them; better to be an imitation man they seemed to reason than to dare to be what they were, women; it seemed to me permissible that a woman should he a woman, but I suppose the matter is more complex than this simplicity would suggest; I wondered if such girls feared the promptings of their sex, the stirrings in them of a biology antedating the caves; but perhaps male imitation was only an unconscious step, a scarcely understood phase, ingredient to the possibly inexorable unfolding dynamics of a machine culture, a step or phase leading to what would be the proper fulfillment of the needs of the machine, sexless, tranquil, utilizable units, suitable components, functionality and neuterism triumphant. The machine and the animal must, I suspect, forever be at war, or until one conquers. On Gor slaves know to whom they belong.
I looked at the girls on the platform. How little they would understand a biological world. And yet each wore adornments in her ears, which required the literal piercing of her ears, the softness of her beauty yielding therein to the emblematic spike of penetration. On Gor only slave girls have pierced ears. On Gor these girls, with pierced ears, could be only slaves. Yet how feminine was this, that they had had their ears pierced, they, though girls of Earth. Gorean free women often envied slave girls their pierced ears, though this would seldom be admitted. How barbaric that an ear should be pierced that it may wear an adornment selected by a master. Their ears had been pierced. I admired this small, almost meaningless symbol of their femininity, this small, pathetic gesture protesting to the machine and the lies that they were really women; too, I recalled the undergarments of such girls; they, too, protested the cause of their beauty in the alien country of the machine. From the lineaments of the garments they wore I did not think, however, that their masters had permitted them their customary undergarments. Certainly the dark-haired girl in the torn red pull-over had no longer been permitted her brassiere. It is common to permit a Gorean slave girl only one layer of clothing, if any. That they had been permitted to retain for the time what they now wore rather than, say, brassiere and panties, or nothing, was doubtless due only to the whim of the slaver who owned them.
"I wish to speak to someone," said the girl on the end, addressing a slaver's man who was passing them. He stopped, surprised that she had dared to speak.
"Send someone to me who is in authority who speaks English," she demanded.
He cuffed her. "Be silent," he said to her, in Gorean. The girl had been struck back in her chains. She seemed utterly startled. Her eyes were wide. She put her fingers to her mouth. There was blood there.
"He hit me," she said. "He hit me."
The girls looked about themselves, frightened. The girl in the brief shorts, the blond on the other end, knelt back, making herself small.
"He hit me," said the girl who had been struck. There was a strange, frightened look in her eye. She looked after the man, and then looked again to the other girls.
"Yes," whispered the girl in the torn red pull-over, shrinking back in her chains.
The girl who had been struck again looked after the fellow who had cuffed her. There was a look in her eyes which was akin to awe. Then again they looked at one another, frightened. I gathered they had never seen a girl cuffed before. It might be done, they realized, to any one of them.
The girl in denim shorts, whom I would have originally thought would have been the least frightened of her native sexuality, looked at the others. "What if they make us kiss them?" she asked. "What will we do?"
"Kiss them," said the girl in the torn red pull-over.
"Do you think they will want anything like that?"
asked the dark-haired girl in the plaid flannel shirt.
John Norman - Counter Earth12 Page 7
