The Totems of Abydos

by John Norman

  It disturbed Brenner, of course, that the woman should be seen in the company of such tools and implements.

  The door to the room was ajar and the porter thrust it open with his foot, that Brenner and Rodriguez might enter. In the room were two more women who, looking up, as they entered, and then looking down, quickly completed their work, turning down the second of the two beds in the room. Something in the attitude of the women had suggested to Brenner that they might be frightened of the porter. The porter put their bags inside the room. The two women now hurried out, one of them glancing over her shoulder at Brenner as she left. The porter had not acknowledged their presence. They were dressed the same as the woman he had encountered in the hall, and so he came to understand that their dresses were, in effect, a sort of livery or uniform. Both, too, as had the woman in the hall, had worn the tiny decorations on their left ankle, the sturdy little chain, with its lock, and disk. As one of them had left Brenner had heard a tiny, metallic click, presumably that of her disk, or its fastening, interacting with the chain.

  Brenner looked after them.

  “Maids,” explained Rodriguez.

  “Maids?” said Brenner.

  “Yes,” said Rodriguez.

  This, too, upset Brenner, as such work had been outlawed for women on the home world, where it was regarded, in its servility, and meniality, as demeaning. Such work, on the home world, was now done by men.

  “I do not understand,” said Brenner.

  “This is Company Station,” said Rodriguez, by way of explanation.

  “But they are women,” said Brenner.

  “It is fit work for them,” said Rodriguez.

  “Surely you are joking,” said Brenner.

  “Not at all,” said Rodriguez. “Let them get down on their knees and scrub floors, let them dust and clean, and sweep, and cook, and launder, and sew. Such servile tasks are fit for them.”

  “I cannot believe what I am hearing,” said Brenner.

  “I am not a politician,” said Rodriguez. “I am an anthropologist.”

  Most positions of importance and authority on the home world, as far as Brenner knew, were now occupied by women. There were many explanations for this, such as the remote successes of various militancies and activisms, numerous discoveries of rights, countless stunning advances in social, political, and economic justice, landmark decisions by judiciaries, reformations in education, institutionalization of much-needed public conditioning programs, media control, censorship, the domination of major political parties, and the eventual control of all significant political processes, at least on the surface. Further, as every schoolchild knew, the natural superiority of women, and their right to rule, and be dominant, had been demonstrated scientifically in a number of ways, for example, by means of carefully conducted experiments, as a consequence of numerous tests of various design, and by open, objectively conducted public-opinion polls. Interestingly enough, in spite of an apparent control of power on the home world it was rumored that many men remained in positions of power in the metaparty, if it existed, and, indeed, interestingly, that certain women in the metaparty served these men in secret, much as might slaves masters. He knew a number of highly placed women. He wondered if some of them, in secret, had their masters. Then he dismissed such a horrid thought. There were some reservations about the scientific aspects of matters, of course, such as the difficulty of replicating certain crucial experiments, of which little more than the purported consequences were published, difficulties connected primarily with the classified nature of the experimental designs and controls. There were similar reservations on the part of some with respect to the reliability and, more importantly, the validity, of the tests. Historians, largely in obscure monographs, often privately published, had noted interesting correlations, spanning several thousand years, between the pronouncements of objective science and the requirements of various political establishments. The ports at which the ship of science called were often determined by the rudder of politics. Similarly the cargos it carried and the goods it pretended to deliver were often determined by those who, in effect, owned the ship.

  Some social scientists, perhaps in virtue of the limitations of their less vast perspectives, tended to find difficulties elsewhere, as, for example, in the redefinition of the parameters to be assessed. For example, if one changes the meaning of a locution ‘A’ to that of locution ‘B,’ while retaining the original expression ‘A,’ it is natural one would then discover numerous bits of interesting and important information about A’s, never before noticed. For example, if one changed the meaning of, say, ‘tigrons’ to that of ‘tidwit’, then it turns out, of course, that the true tigron would have the properties of a tidwit. To be sure, this is not likely to have any effect on what used to be called a tigron, and, as a consequence of reformational definition, was no longer a tigron, unless, of course, it could be convinced that it must either be, or pretend to be, a tidwit. Recalcitrance, or dissent, of course, would be rare in science, for various reasons, for example, the objective nature of the enterprise and the publicness of its validation procedures. The control of access to graduate education, and the control of professional certifications, appointments, reappointments, tenure, fundings, grants, staff, facilities, equipment, outlets for publication, and such, would also be helpful. Lastly it might be mentioned that various attempts to reform language itself had been attempted, the object being to make it impossible for divergent axiological viewpoints to be expressed, and, ideally, and more importantly, if all went well, even to be thought. This program, for better or for worse, had been largely unsuccessful, because language, in its cognitive richness, as always, and even in its engineered versions, proved itself better adapted to be the accomplice of thought than its jailer. Too, for example, the removal of a word, say, ‘tigron’, if one wished to do so, from a language, did not, after all, remove tigrons. It would just make it a bit more of a bother to talk about them. Too, the hole left in the lexicon tended to draw attention to itself. And so the old words, or variants of them, would return, to talk about the old things, which had not gone away. To be sure, the linguistic reformers still had at their disposal numerous time-honored devices, such as slander, denunciation, and censorship. But it is aside from our narrative to enter into detail on these interesting matters.

  Rodriguez obtained the fiscal number of the porter, and punched him a credit. He had had his Commonworld credits, as had Brenner, converted to company credits. This had been done in their in-processing at the agent’s office, at the depot.

  The porter then turned about and left the room.

  Brenner closed the door, carefully, after him, and locked it, fastening it, too, with a chain.

  “You do not tip the maids for their services,” said Rodriguez.

  “Their services?”

  “No,” said Rodriguez, throwing his bag on one of the beds, and opening it.

  “Changing sheets, and such,” said Brenner.

  “And such,” said Rodriguez, absently, tossing some linen on the bed.

  “Their dresses,” said Brenner, the word sounding strange in his mouth, “are rather revealing.”

  “They are intended to be such,” said Rodriguez, attending to his business. “If you think that sort of thing is revealing you should see slave garb, when they are permitted garb.”

  Brenner thought to himself that Rodriguez had probably seen slaves, real slaves. Brenner was uneasy even with the thought of such. He had heard that such women were even branded.

  “Did you notice the maids?” asked Brenner.

  “Of course,” said Rodriguez.

  “They are a comely lot,” said Brenner.

  “They are picked to be comely,” said Rodriguez. “There is a bell there,” he said, pointing. “You can ring it, if you want maid service.”

  “‘Maid service’?” asked Brenner.

  “Yes,” said Rodriguez.

  “I do not understand,” said Brenner.

  “Su
rely you noted that they were barefoot, and noted their left ankles.”

  “Yes,” said Brenner. “They wore some sort of ornament there.”

  Rodriguez came about his bed and went to the wall where he pushed in the button for maid service.

  In a moment or two there was a small knock at the door, and Rodriguez, loosening the chain, drawing back the bolt, had it open.

  One of the maids was there.

  “Come in,” said Rodriguez.

  She entered.

  He closed the door, behind her.

  “Get on the bed,” said Rodriguez. “On your stomach.”

  Brenner almost cried out with protest, but no sound escaped him.

  The maid, with no hesitation, but apparently with some apprehension, with some timidity, obeyed.

  Rodriguez had put her on Brenner’s bed. Brenner noted this with dismay, and, to be sure, another feeling which he would been hard put to describe. To be sure, there was some point in this. There was already a suitcase on Rodriguez’ bed.

  Rodriguez then, with his left hand, brushed the maid’s uniform up a few inches, revealing more of the backs of her legs. Brenner gasped. This thing, small in itself, had a very great impact for Brenner. He had never seen so much of a female before, except perhaps in the performance circles of his imagination, and on the sales blocks of his dreams. She lay very quietly on the freshly made bed, which she had helped turn down but moments ago. Her small hands, at either side of her head, clutched the sheets. “Look,” commanded Rodriguez, seizing her left ankle in one hand, and pulling it up, bending the leg forward. “See?”

  Brenner looked at the ankle, encircled closely by the small, stout chain. Certainly it could not be slipped, not as it was on her. Too, with misgivings, he regarded the cylindrical lock. That lock, if he were not mistaken, actually fastened the chain on her ankle.

  But Rodriguez’ interest, it seemed, was in displaying the small metallic disk, about an inch in diameter, which was fastened to the chain. “See?” he asked.

  On the disk was a tiny number, but this number, more importantly, was below another sign, larger, impressed in the metal. “Do you know this sign?” asked Rodriguez.

  “Of course,” said Brenner. It was one of the best-known signs in this portion of the galaxy. It was the company logo.

  “This, in effect,” said Rodriguez, shaking the ankle in his grasp for emphasis, as though this might the better impress the matter on Brenner, which forcible motion brought a small cry from the woman and was accompanied by a tiny jingling from the disk on the chain, “is company property.”

  “The chain, the lock, the disk?” said Brenner.

  “What they mark!” said Rodriguez, impatiently. “The woman!”

  “She is a free person,” said Brenner.

  “She is a contract slut,” said Rodriguez. “You can tell that from the chain. “For all practical purposes she is company property.”

  He then, angrily, flung the woman’s ankle back to the bed. It struck the covers with a sound, and the disk made a tiny noise against the chain. Brenner observed that she had a small foot, and then, closely about her ankle, was the chain, and then came her calf.

  “It’s part of your job to make our stay here pleasant, isn’t it?” asked Rodriguez.

  “Yes, sir,” she whispered.

  “Do you understand “maid service” now?” asked Rodriguez.

  Brenner thought it wise not to respond. It was at this point, incidentally, that he decided he would not remain at the hostel that evening but would accompany Rodriguez outside, even in the weather, to find a bar.

  Rodriguez dropped his hand to the back of her thigh, and touched it, gently.

  Her eyes opened very wide, and she made a tiny sound.

  Again Rodriguez touched her.

  She closed her eyes, and uttered a tiny moan.

  “Get your ass down,” said Rodriguez.

  She moaned, and pressed herself further down, into the covers.

  “You can ring for her later, if you want her,” said Rodriguez.

  “No, no!” said Brenner, alarmed.

  “Get out,” said Rodriguez to the maid.

  Quickly she left the bed, and pausing only a moment to smooth down her skirt, she hurried from the room.

  Brenner, sweating, locked the door after her, and put the chain in place.

  He turned about, to face Rodriguez. “How could you have done that?” he asked him.

  “What?” asked Rodriguez.

  “What you did to her!” said Brenner.

  Rodriguez looked at him, puzzled. “I didn’t do anything to her,” he said.

  Brenner regarded him, aghast. But Rodriguez, carrying a robe, was making his way to the bath. A little later Brenner heard the shower running.

  For a time Brenner did not even sit on the bed. He stood there, rather, looking at it, and at the place where the maid had lain. There were some small disarrangements in the covers there, sloping up to the sides. Too, there were some tiny wrinkles where she had clutched the sheets, her small hands on either side of her head. He tried to look away, but he found it difficult to do so. He recalled the hem of the dress, as it had been pushed a little above the back of her knees, and the disturbing exquisiteness of what had consequently met his view. The wholeness of what had been revealed had been particularly striking to him, the way the curves, from the foot to the ankle, to the calf, to the back of the knee, and above, blended into one another. He had suddenly understood how, on some barbaric, monstrous worlds, men could kill for the possession of women. To be sure, he did not think that the women of the home world, so miserable, frustrated, smug, inhibited, petulant, and cold, would be in great danger. It was hard to imagine them stripped and roped in the grass, prizes awaiting the outcomes of savage contests. Still, he did not know. They were, after all, women. Perhaps, somehow, under proper conditions, their psychological disarrangements, or improvements and perfections, so carefully wrought by subtle, pervasive conditioning programs, might be torn down and the female might then be freed to find herself as she might be in and of herself, as a female. Then Brenner dismissed such horrid thoughts. But found it hard to forget the chain and disk, with the lock, on the maid’s ankle. Too, he remembered how she had made tiny noises when Rodriguez had touched her. He scarcely dared conjecture what might have occasioned them. One of the great breakthroughs of the past several millenniums had been the scientific proof that human beings did not have sexual needs, but that such needs had been invented by insidious men as devices wherewith to dominate, oppress, and enslave women. Accordingly, even if, as Brenner seemed to, one had such needs, one must realize that they did not exist. Certainly almost no one on the home world would admit that they had such needs, and the public admission of such in a public figure was tantamount to disgrace and ruin. Many biologists and even social scientists, who, because of the sensitivity of the issues with which they dealt, could usually be relied upon to produce findings congenial to, and supportive of, current political orthodoxies, whatever they might be, had lost posts for pretending to have come up with politically dubious results. For a time some recusants had embraced a “Two-Truth Theory,” namely, that there was scientific truth and political truth, which many scientists accepted because it let the chips fall where they might, rather than in prescribed configurations, but the dishonesty of this distinction was quickly detected by various political establishments. This was succeeded by the “Two-Opinion-One-Truth” Theory, which was to the effect that there was only one truth, the political truth, whatever it might be on the world in question, but that there might be two opinions, according to one of which truth might seem to be “A” and according to the other of which truth might seem to be other than “A.” This approach, too, was quickly suppressed in the best interests of the community, party, people or whatever, and replaced with the “One-Opinion-One-Truth” Theory, which, in an intellectual tour de force of unity, simplicity, and elegance, successfully restored one qualified opinion, identical wi
th the one correct truth, the political truth, whatever it might be at the time. The theory, incidentally, that human beings lacked sexual needs superseded a somewhat less politically effective theory, which had earlier also been indisputably proven scientifically, the theory that there was only one sex, the human sex. This theory had been quite useful in its role of reducing gender differences which, because there was now only one sex, the human sex, were then regarded as either minimal or nonexistent. The flaw with this theory was that one then had to recognize two varieties of human sexuality, or two sorts of individuals, for example, the egg-carriers, or “eggers,” as it was said, and the sperm-producers, or “spermers,” as it was said. Astute, politically progressive critics saw in this a concealed version of the old, troublesome two-sex theory which had been so politically divisive, in which men, in particular, thinking of themselves as different from women, might find it more difficult to recognize that that their true best interests lay in the inhibition, suppression, and denial of their own sexuality, in the surrender of manhood, or, perhaps better, in merely discovering that hundreds of thousands of generations of masculine forebears had been mistaken as to its nature. The new theory that sex did not exist, and thus that sexual needs did not exist, was clearly superior. Men and women were now seen as “sames” or “identicals.” To be sure, there might be certain anatomical differences amongst human beings but these were negligible. For example, some people were taller than others, some had different-size feet, and such. It is interesting that populationalism remained a political issue in a world in which sex did not exist. But, as some historians had pointed out, generally in underground monographs, such apparent discrepancies in world views have not been unprecedented. Brenner, it might be mentioned, recognized that he himself had sexual needs, or, at least, seemed to have them. Often however, particularly on the home world, he had felt very isolated in this particular. And naturally it would have unthinkable to have uttered an admission to this effect. And so Brenner, and perhaps others, pretended not to have sexual needs. And, though Brenner did have the decency to be sensitive about these needs, he was not one of the more moral sorts who struggled not to have them. As usual, the most moral, or, at least, the most socially controlled, tended on the whole to be the most afflicted, miserable, and guilt-ridden, fighting to be whatever the current stereotypes told them they should be, lying awake at night tormented, troubled, and weeping, denouncing themselves for countless slips, errors, shortcomings, failings, and inadequacies, punishing themselves in orgies of self-castigation, self-contempt, self-scorn and such, which activities provided some gratification, but not much, and, of course, frequently resolving to do better but, for one reason or another, and probably for a very good reason, usually not managing it.