The Totems of Abydos

by John Norman

  “Yes,” she said. “As contract women we were well put through our paces.”

  Brenner looked at her.

  “There were men of our own species in the house, of course,” she said, “buyers, and assistants to buyers, and such, who would help to appraise us.”

  “I see,” said Brenner.

  “It seems you find the vending of my contract of interest,” she said, shyly.

  “Were you appraised highly?”

  “I think so,” she said. “But I am not even sure of the value of the units involved, their relationship to the Commonworld credit, and such.”

  Brenner nodded.

  “I did not bring as high a price as she whom your friend now doubtless has well at his pleasure,” she said.

  “The blonde woman?” said Brenner.

  “Girl,” she said.

  “Your contracts were vended in the same sale?”

  “Yes,” she said.

  “Was she struck?”

  “Three times,” she said.

  “It seems she was less quick than you, to grasp what was required of her.”

  “Perhaps,” she said.

  “Perhaps she is less intelligent than you,” said Brenner.

  “Perhaps,” she said. “I do not know. But in the end she obeyed as quickly and perfectly as the rest of us.”

  “The rest of you?”

  “Yes,” she said, “all of us who were being exhibited, whose contracts were being sold.”

  “I see,” said Brenner.

  “Perhaps you would have enjoyed seeing her perform—naked,” she said.

  “Perhaps,” said Brenner.

  “As she doubtless is for your friend now,” she said.

  “Perhaps,” said Brenner.

  “Perhaps you would have found it amusing,” she said.

  “Perhaps,” he said. To be sure, he would have been, he did not doubt, much more interested in seeing the brunette perform. He looked at her. She put down her head, and blushed, beautifully, all of her body that was not covered with the silk.

  “I think that on many worlds your contract might have fetched a higher price than hers,” said Brenner.

  “On the worlds of which I suspect you speak,” she laughed, “I gather that it would be we, indeed, ourselves, and not our contracts, which would be vended.”

  “Perhaps,” said Brenner.

  She smiled.

  “On such worlds, as I understand it,” he said, “they buy the female, and that is what they are really interested in, the female, and the female female, so to speak, she who is most female, biologically, hormonally, emotionally, and such. That is what they are out to acquire, what they are bidding for, what they covet and desire, what they truly want, the real female, the female female, so to speak.”

  She smiled.

  “How truly frightful, how truly dreadful—for that sort of woman, the true female, for the female female, so to speak,” said Brenner.

  She put down her head. “Perhaps not,” she said.

  “You were exhibited—on a block,” he said.

  “Yes,” she said. “On Damascus.”

  He regarded her. He found her face very beautiful, so softly rounded, with the dark eyes, looking up at him, questioningly, and the dark hair, so soft and glossy, framing the exquisite features, and the whiteness of her throat and shoulders, and arms, the sweetness of her breasts within the silk, the bared midriff, the rounded latitudes of her belly, the silk low on it, the hips flaring before being captured by the silk, her left thigh bared, the right under the spread silk, and, behind her, her calves, the ankles, the chain and disk on the left, her small, white feet.

  “Do you wish to see what they made me do, how they made me stand and pose?” she asked.

  “No!” he said. Then he said, “How?”

  “Like this!” she said, delightedly, leaping to her feet. “The bed shall be the surface of the block!” she said. “It is soft, and will not give me the best of footing, but it will provide the required elevation. You will get the general idea of matters.”

  “I am sure of it,” said Brenner. How could he have asked ‘How?’ he asked himself. But how could he not have asked ‘How?’ he asked himself. “Retain your silk!”

  “Do you think such things are permitted to us on the block?”

  “Retain it,” said Brenner.

  “I shall do so,” she laughed. She seized up the sheet from the floor, and hurried to the other side of the bed.

  “There are many ways in which these things may be done,” she said. “In our case, we were chained together by the neck in the waiting area, and our hands were braceleted behind our backs. We came to the block one by one, after being freed, one at a time, from the chain and bracelets. Covered with a sheet we are conducted to the surface of the block.” She flung the sheet over her head and body and crept carefully to the surface of the bed, on which she stood, upright. “Various details, then, pertinent to ourselves, and our contracts, are brought to the attention of the crowd. After this the sheet is lowered to reveal our head and face, the nature of our hair and such. At this point bidding begins. Then, little by little, cunningly, as the bids continue, the sheet is rearranged. I assure you we do our best to keep it about us. First our ankles and calves are revealed, and then our shoulders. Then the sheet is raised so that our legs are well revealed. Following this it is lowered to our hips. Then it is removed from us altogether, and cast aside, to be used by the next girl.” She then illustrated this matter, taking her time in doing so, for example, folding, and rearranging the sheet, first freeing her head and hair of it, then lifting it to reveal her calves and ankles, and so on. She even held herself motionless at times, as doubtless she had been commanded to do, that bidders might not be rushed in their assessments. Too, she behaved as though she had been turned about, doubtless that the diverse perspectives of her might adequately displayed. To be sure, she was, beneath the sheet, silked, not nude as doubtless would have been the case upon the block. On the other hand, Brenner, as she had anticipated, had little difficulty in grasping the general idea of matters. “It is at this point,” she continued, having cast the sheet aside, “that one of the auctioneer’s helpers produces a whip. The mere sound of this, when it is snapped, encourages in us a desperate desire to do whatever is required of us. We have been coached, and have been well rehearsed, of course. We know the various movements, the postures, the attitudes, and such, required of us, and the commands appropriate to their elicitation.”

  “Aii,” said Brenner, softly.

  “Yes,” she said, “such things, such movements!”

  “Stop!” cried Brenner. “No! No! Do not stop!”

  “Like this,” she said, “and this!”

  “It is like a sale of slaves!” said Brenner.

  “I am sure the sales of slaves are quite different,” she said, “but I think it is true that these movements and attitudes, even though we are free women, have been carefully designed, with the object in view that a potential bidder will have an excellent idea as to the value of the contract on which he might bid.”

  “I do not doubt it,” said Brenner.

  How marvelous were her calves and ankles. How they flashed, and turned, and moved! How marvelous were the archings and extensions of her body, how beautiful were those numerous excitements, the softnesses of her and the movements of her, the flexing of a knee, the motion of a wrist, the pointing of a foot, rounding a calf, the turning of a hip, the drawing in of her belly, the very breathing of her, its effects so subtly, yet so beautifully, so unmistakably evident in her figure; how marvelous even the upsweeping of her hair, so small a thing, and that display of curves in the bent-back bow of her body, that attendant, lovely lifting of the line of her breasts! “And then,” she said, “we were surprised! We were merely told to “be desirable.” This had not been rehearsed! The whip snapped!”

  “What did you do?” asked Brenner.

  “We must improvise,” she said. “We had not expe
cted this. We were confused. The whip snapped again!”

  “What did you do?”

  “We must draw upon our most secret and deepest thoughts,” she said, “upon the deepest secrets of our most secret belly!”

  “What did you do?” asked Brenner.

  “Such things!” she said.

  Brenner looked upon her, stunned. Never had he dreamed a woman could be such. Categorically it denied all he had been taught. This was no “same,” no banal, meaningless “identical”! This was something different, something utterly different, from a man. Something marvelous and wonderful in its own right, in its own nature, something not the same as a man, but complementary to a man, something special, something unique, something more precious and desirable to a man than anything else, something priceless, a treasure, a living jewel, the sort of thing to acquire which expeditions might be launched and wars fought, the sort of thing for which a man might kill, to possess which he might willingly die.

  “Kneel!” cried Brenner, leaping to his feet.

  Startled, she knelt where she was, on the surface of the bed, on the edge nearest to him. He seized her by the upper arms, and drew her toward him. He saw that she was frightened. Perhaps she had not understood her own marvelousness, and what she might mean to a man! Then, with a cry of rage, he flung her back, to her side, on the bed. He then turned away, facing the wall. His fists were clenched. He would not now look at her. “Remove your silk,” he said. “And begin again.”

  In a little while he heard her behind him, from across the room, from the other side of the bed. “I am ready,” she said.

  Brenner turned about.

  She stood on the other side of the bed, the sheet clutched about her. To the left, on the foot of the bed, discarded, lying in a small, crumpled pile, partly folded over one another, were the silks she had worn, those silks with which, though they had covered much of her, she had been less clothed than adorned. Such, Brenner gathered, was the function of such silks, certainly insofar as they approximated those of slaves.

  She regarded him. She trembled a little. Her eyes were wide.

  Brenner clenched his fists. He must surely stop this. He must not permit her to express herself as a woman. How demeaning that would be to her, to fulfill herself, to be herself! How wrong to do what honestly, and in reality, shows oneself! Must one not forever keep the self hidden, and if not deny, at least keep, the secret of one’s own being? Must lies forever form the foundation of civilization, he wondered. Can people really be that stupid, he wondered, to believe all they are told? Do the captains, and the kings, and such, believe the people believe them? Can they believe themselves? Is hypocrisy really the price of order? It does not seem so in nature. Is self-deception so necessary, really? Is truth so dreadful, so terrible, he wondered, as to generate its own denial? Would it really, in its light and heat, so obviously pierce and melt, and thus destroy, the carefully wrought crystalline structures of a world, those conventionalized architectures of absurdity, those defenses theoretically constructed to protect us from ourselves? Even if so, perhaps it were not irrational to transcend such accidents of time, to strip away the artificial accretions of ages, to let them subside and drain away into the swamps from whence they derived their pestilential origin. Perhaps it is time for a newer, and more joyful, science, a less eccentric, apter wisdom. Perhaps it is time to recognize that reality is not held in orbit by the conventions, the declarations, the decisions, the pronouncements, or even the needs, of men, but rather that men, and their needs, are held in place, in the very cosmos, even in their most strained and grievous ellipticities, by the nature of reality.

  “Sir?” she asked.

  She regarded him, questioningly.

  He must not permit her to do this!

  A wave of resolve, of merciless volcanism, welled up in him momentarily. This thing came from his deepest brain, from the foundations of his existence, antedating conditioning, antedating politics, antedating the capture of fire, the bending of heated wood, the shaping of stone, the insight that a sound might mean, that one could make words.

  He pulled the straight-backed chair before him, turning it about, so that its back was between him and the woman, like a fence, like a rail, a wall, and then he sat upon it. He was sweating. He grasped the sides of the back. He closed his eyes. He then opened them. “Begin,” he said, quietly.

  She ascended to the surface of the bed, standing upon it.

  “Do not cover your head with the sheet,” he said.

  “Yes, sir,” she said.

  He supposed that sometime he, or others, might wish to hood her and use her, enforcing a decisive anonymity upon her, keeping her a prisoner in the hood, in this fashion perhaps reducing her, in their minds and in her own, to certain basic feminine essentials, but at the moment he did not wish her features to be concealed. He did not wish to lose sight of her lovely face for even a moment. Was it not, in its way, properly understood, an essential of her, as well, as was the whole totality of her? How could she be ever, in a sense, less than her wholeness? To be sure, the part is sometimes easier to relish, to appreciate and understand, when it is conceived in isolation from the whole. Too, occasional localizations, selective isolations, and such, may lead to a more enhanced understanding of, and a more appreciative comprehension of, the whole. A woman, hooded, of course, finding herself in this situation of anonymity and helplessness, is likely to waste little time in becoming sensitized to what is going on in, and with, her body. She becomes, in virtue of this device, and various devices, psychological and physical, such as respect and obedience, garments and bonds, and such, sensitized to her sensations, her feelings, and emotions, and, through these, of course, she comes to a much deeper understanding of her own sexuality, and, ipso facto, of her own life and meaning. These things tend, on the whole, to be consequences of certain biological complementarities.

  “You must understand,” she whispered, “that various details, pertinent to ourselves and our contracts, have now been brought to the attention of the buyers.”

  “Continue,” said Brenner.

  She lifted the sheet a little, that her ankles might be glimpsed, and, shortly thereafter, her calves.

  At one point Brenner half rose from the chair. “Stop!” he cried. And then he cried, “No! Do not stop!”

  In a few moments she knelt upon the bed, half crouched down, the sheet discarded, her hair about her, wildly, her hands now, as though with a sudden, belated recollection of terror or reserve, incongruous with the recent demands of her display, crossed over her breasts.

  Brenner rose from the chair, hurling it to the side, only seizing control of himself at the edge of the bed. She looked up at him.

  Their eyes met, those of male and female.

  He was angered that she knelt so, so crouched down, so covering herself.

  He seized the silks from the bed and held them, clutched, in his hand, and then hurled them from the surface of the bed, to the side, to the floor. She looked after them, she naked, they no longer within her reach. He took her by the shoulders and thrust her to her back on the bed. She lay there, looking up at him. Then, perhaps fearing what she saw in his eyes, frightened at what effects she might have had upon him, she whimpered, and turned away, drawing up her knees, keeping her breasts covered with her crossed arms.

  He went about the bed and, as she suddenly gasped, startled at the audacity of his action, pulled a collar and chain from the peg on which it hung. He snapped the collar shut about her throat and then fastened its chain to the bar at the head of the bed. The chain was some eighteen Commonworld inches in length. He then turned her from her side to her back. Still she kept her breasts covered, she lying there now on her back, on the bed, fastened to the bar at its head.

  “Would you have bid for me?” she asked.

  “Yes,” he said.

  “You have chained me,” she said.

  “You are in effect a slave,” he said. “It is fitting that you be chained as one.” />
  “I am a free woman,” she said.

  He laughed. Did she not know herself? Could she not understand herself? Had she been unaware of how she had appeared, of how she had had herself seen, of how she had acted, of the obvious revelations, the obvious meanings, of her behavior? In the face of such things how suddenly pointless, how suddenly empty, irrelevant, and absurd became the accident, or mere technicality, of her official legal status.

  “Would you have bid high for me?” she asked.

  He went again to the wall at the side and took a pair of bracelets from their peg. He pulled her right wrist away from he body and she instantly covered her breasts with her left arm. He snapped the bracelet on her right wrist. He then turned her to her stomach and drew her right wrist behind her. He then drew he left wrist, too, behind her, and, with the second bracelet, fastened her wrists together. Three links joined the bracelets. He then turned her to her back, again, and looked down upon her. She pulled against the bracelets a little, and then lay there quietly, looking up at him.

  “Yes,” he said.

  Then, suddenly, he turned away from her. It was in agony that he forced himself to do so.

  Surely he must immediately free her I

  What mattered her needs, or wants? What mattered his?

  Needs and wants were to be defined by others, not those with them, not those suffering from them, not those exalted by them, and defined in such ways as to obtain political goals frustrative of nature and biology. That much was clear from the politics of a thousand years. Certainly reason, as properly conditioned, the term shifting its meaning with the requirements of various establishments and ideologies, should take precedence over instinct, over blood, over need. What did fulfillment, satisfaction, the summons to heroism, the call to greatness have to compare with conventionalized proprieties, invented, and inculcated by the weak, the sickly, the hating, the envying, the frustrated, the resentful, the petty, and pallid, that they might remake the world in their own image? Surely the lie must be substituted for the truth, the illusion for the reality, thought Brenner, else it will not be a good world for the small, the petty, the weak, the hating, the frustrated, the resentful. Was that not clear? And surely that is the way we should pretend the world is, in order that such entities will be pleased, that they will not be alarmed, and that we shall not be denounced. How shrill are those shrieks, how frenzied and hysterical, like the squeaks of bats, fluttering about, blinking, disturbed in their caves, daring to go out only at night. Yet, thought Brenner, for those who do not fear the sun, and its light, there is much to be said for clear skies and bright mornings.