of one of the low tables. He did not drink wine or paga. The man, rare in Port
Kar, won the kaffiyeh and agal. The kaffiyeh is a squarish scarf, folded over
into a triangle, and placed over the head, two points at the side of the
shoulders, one in back to protect the back of the neck. It is bound to the head
by several loops of cord, the agal. The cording indicates tribe and district.
We went to the man. “This is Ibn Saran, salt merchant of the river port of
Kasra,” said Samos.
The red salt of Kasra, so called from its port of embarcation, was famed on Gor.
It was brought from secret pits and mines, actually, deep in the interior, bound
in heavy cylinders on the backs of pack kaiila. Each cylinder, roped to others,
weighed in the neighborhood of ten stone, or some forty pounds, a Gorean
“Weight.” A strong kaiila could carry sixteen such cylinders, but the normal
load was ten. Even numbers are carried, of course, that the load is balanced. A
poorly loaded kaiila can carry far less weight than one on whom the burden is
intelligently distributed.
“Ibn Saran, in the past months, has heard an unusual thing,” said Samos. “I
leaned of this from a captain, one known to him, with whom he spoke recently
upon the salt wharf.” Samos was first in the Council of Captains of Port Kar,
which body was sovereign in the city. There was little of interest, which did
not, sooner or later, come to his attention.
“The noble Samos has been most kind” said Ibn Saran. His hospitality has been
most generous.”
I extended my hand to Ibn Saran and he, bowing twice, brushed twice the palm of
his hand against mine.
“I am pleased to make the acquaintance of he who is friend to Samos of Port
Kar,” said Ibn Saran. “May your water bags be never empty. May you have always
water.”
“May your water bags be never empty,” I said. “May you have always water.”
“If it pleases you, noble Ibn Saran,” said Samos, “would you speak before my
friend what heard you in Kasra.”
“It is a story told by a boy, a tender of kaiila. His caravan was small. It was
struck by storm, and a kaiila, maddened by wind and sand, broke its hobble,
plunging away into the darkness. Foolishly the boy followed it. It bore water.
In the morning the storm had passed. The boy dug a shelter trench. In the camp
was organized the wheel.”
A shelter trench is a narrow trench some four or five feet deep and about
eighteen inches wide. The sand, struck by the sun, can reach temperatures on its
surface of more than 175 degrees Fahrenheit. Set on rocks, boards of metal some
two feet in length, and six inches wide, exposed to the sun, are sometimes used
by the nomad women in frying foods. Only a foot or two below the surface, these
temperatures are reduced by more than fifty degrees. The trench provides, most
importantly, shade from the sun. The air temperature is seldom more than 140
degrees in the shade, even in the dune country. The trench, of course, is always
dug with its long axis perpendicular to the path of the sun, that it provide the
maximum shade for the longest period of time
One does not, alone, without water, move on the sands during the day.
Interestingly, because of the lack of surface water, the nights, the sun gone,
are cool, even chilly at times. One would, thus, if not in caravan, move at
night. The conservation of body water is the crucial parameter in survival. One
moves little. One sweats as little as possible.
The “wheel” is a search pattern. Herdsmen, guards, kaiila tenders, leave the
camp along a “spoke” of a wheel, spacing themselves at intervals. The number of
men in the caravan determines the length of the “spoke.” No one in the caravan
departs from it by more than the length of the wheel’s spoke, pertinent to the
individual caravan. The boy, for example, presumably, if he had his wits about
him, would not follow the kaiila long enough on foot to place himself outside
the “rim” of the “wheel.” As the “wheel” of men turns about its axis, the camp,
at intervals the men draw arrows in the dirt or sand, or, if rocks are
available, make arrows, pointing to the camp. When the search is discontinued,
after success or failure, these markers are destroyed, lest they be taken by
travelers for water arrows, markers indicating the direction of water holes,
underground cisterns or eases. The caravan kaiila, incidentally, both those
which are pack animals and those used as mounts for guards and warriors, are
muchly belled. This helps to keep the animals together, makes it easier to move
in darkness, and in a country where, often, one cannot see more than a hundred
yards to the next dune or plateau, is an important factor in survival. If it
were not for the caravan bells, the slow moving, otherwise generally silent
caravans might, unknowingly, pass within yards of men in desperate need of
succor. The kaiila of raiders, incidentally, are never belled.
“By noon,” said Ibn Saran, “the boy was found. Hearing the bells of a guard’s
mount, he emerged from the shelter trench, and, attracting the man’s attention,
was rescued. He was, of course, muchly beaten, for having left the caravan. The
kaiila, of its own accord, returned later, for fodder.”
“What,” I asked, “was the story of the boy?”
“What, in pursuing the kaiila, he found,” said Ibn Saran. “On a rock there was
scratched this message: Beware the steel tower.”
Samos looked at me. I made little sense of this.
“Near the rock, dead” said Ibn Saran, “blistered, blackened by the sun, dried,
weighing no more than a child or woman, was a man. He had torn off his clothing
and drunk sand.”
It would not have been a pleasant death. Doubtless he had died, mad, thinking he
had found water.
“It, judging from discarded accouterments,” said Ibn Saran, “was a raider.”
“Was there no kaiila?” I asked.
“No,” said Ibn Saran.
“From how far had the man come?” I asked. How long had he been on the desert?”
“I do not know,” said Ibn Saran. “How well did he know the desert? How much
water had he?”
The man might have come thousands of pasangs before the kaiila had died, or
fled.
“How long had he been dead?” I asked.
Ibn Saran smiled thinly. “A month,” he said. “A year?”
In the desert decomposition proceeds with great slowness. Bodies, well
preserved, had been found which had been slain more than a century before.
Skeletons, unless picked by birds or animals, are seldom found in the desert.
“Beware the steel tower,” I repeated.
“That was scratched on the rock,” said Ibn Saran.
“Was there any indication from which direction the man had come?” I asked.
“No,” said Ibn Saran.
“Beware the steel tower,” said Samos. I shrugged.
Samos rose to his feet and, touching twice the palm of the right hand of Ibn
Saran, took his leave. I noted that Ibn Saran ate only with the right hand. This
was the eating hand, and the scimitar hand. He would feed himself only with the
hand which, wielding steel, could take
blood.
The dancer whirled near us then enveloped me in her veil. Within the secrecy of
the veil, binding us together, she moved her body slowly before me, lips parted,
moaning. I took her in my arms. Her head was back, her eyes closed. I pressed my
lips to hers, and with my teeth cut her lip. She, and I, together, tasted the
blood and rouge of her subjugation. She drew back slightly, blood at the side of
her mouth. Fist by fist, my hand on the back of her small, delicious neck,
preventing her from escaping, I slowly removed her veil from her, then threw it
aside. Then with my right hand, the Tuchuk quiva in it, while still holding her
with my left, as she continued to move to the music, I, behind her back, cut the
halter she wore from her. I then thrust her from me, before the tables, that she
might better please the guests of Samos, first slaver of Port Kar. She looked at
me reproachfully, but, seeing my eyes, turned frightened to the men, hands over
her head, to please them. Never in all this, of course, had she lost the music
in her body. The men cried out, pleased with her beauty.
“The message girl is ready,” said the man who wore the green of the physicians.
He turned to the man beside him; he dropped the shaving knife into the bowl,
wiped his hands on a towel.
The girl, bound, knelt between the guards. There were tears in her eyes. Her
head had been shaved, completely. She had no notion what had been written there.
Illiterate girls are chosen for such messages. Originally her head had been
shaved, and the message tattooed into the scalp. Then, over months, her hair had
been permitted to regrow. None but the girl would know she carried such a
message, and she would not know what it might be. Even those for a fee
delivering her to the house of Samos would have considered her only another
wench, mere slave property.
I read the message. It said only “Beware Abdul.” We did not know from whence the
message came, or who had sent it.
“Take the girl to the pens,” said Samos to the guards. “With needles remove the
message from her scalp,”
The girl was jerked to her feet.
She looked at Samos. “Then,” said Samos, to the guards, “use her as a low
work-slave in the pens primarily as a cleaning slave. A month before her hair is
regrown, and she is fit for sale, wash her and put her in a stimulation cage and
train her extensively.”
The girl looked at him, agonized.
“Then sell her,” said Samos.
A stimulation cage is an ornately barred, low-ceilinged cage; it is rather
roomy, except for the low ceiling about five feet high. The girl cannot stand
erect in it without her head inclined submissively. In such a cage, and in
training, when not in such a cage, the girl who is housed in the stimulation
cage is not permitted to look directly into the eyes of a male, even a male
slave. This is designed, psychologically, to make the girl extremely conscious
of males. When she is sold then only, if the master wishes, he may say to her,
“You may look into the eyes of your master.” When she, frightened, tenderly,
timidly lifts her eyes to him, if he should deign to smile upon her, the girl
then, in gratitude and joy, at last permitted to relate to another human being,
often falls to her knees before him, an adoring slave. When next she looks up,
his eyes will be stern, and she will look down, quickly, frightened. “I will try
to serve you well, Master,” she whispers. The accouterments of the
stimulation-cell are also calculated with respect to their effect on the slave.
There are brushes, perfumes, cosmetics, slave jewelries, heavy necklaces,
armlets, braclets and bangles; there is no clothing; there are also cushions,
bowls of copper and lamp of brass. Importantly, there are also surfaces of
various textures, a deep-piled rug, satins, silks, coarsely woven kaiila-hair
cloths, brocades, rep-cloth, a tiled corner, a sleen pelt, cloths woven of
strung beads, cloaks of leather, mats of reeds, etc. The point of this is that
the senses and body of the slave, stripped save for brand and collar, and
whatever perfumes, cosmetics or jewelries she may wear under the instruction of
her trainer, are being taught to be alive, to sense and feel with great
sensitivity; the senses and skins of many human beings, in effect, are dead,
instead of being alert and alive to hundreds of subtle differences in, say,
atmospheres, temperatures, humidities, surfaces, etc. A girl with living senses
and a living body, of course is far more passionate than one whose senses and
body sleep. The skin itself, in a trained girl, becomes an extensive, glorious,
marvelously subtle sensory organ. Every bit of the slave, if she is well
trained, is alive. This is done, of course, to make her more helpless under the
touch of a master. When she does yield to the master, her guts half torn out
with the love of him, then, of course, she is a more satisfactory slave. These
indignities of course, are not inflicted on free women. They are permitted to go
through life with their eyes half closed; so to speak. In this way they can
maintain their self-respect. Sometimes inert, esteemed Gorean free women cry out
in rage, not understanding why their companions have forsaken them for the
evening, to go to the paga tavern; there, of course, for the price of a cup of
paga, he can get his hands on a silken, belled girl, a slave; the free woman
must denounce her companion, crying out, for his lusts; too busy for this,
however, are the sweet, dark-eyed, sensuous sluts of the paga tavern; they do
not have time to denounce the lusts of their master’s customers; they am too
busy serving and satisfying them. The trainer directs the girl in the cage, or
in the exercises, tending, observing, and prescribing, honing her with
expertness into a delicious, responsive slave animal, the Gorean girl, collared,
in bondage, trained to drive a man mad with desire, and then serve that desire,
vulnerably, frequently and absolutely. The girl was thrust through the door,
between the guards. I wondered what the trainer would prescribe for her. Girls
differ, trainers differ. I glanced at the blondish girl, kneeling to one side,
the former Miss Priscilla Blake-Alien. I, if her trainer, would probably put her
frequently, at least at first, and later for discipline, in a rope slave
harness. After a night in such harness, her wrists braceleted behind her that
she might not remove it, I expected Miss Blake-Allen would be suitably docile,
and eager to attend to her lessons.
When the girl had been forced through the door leading to the pens, I turned to
Samos.
“Who is Abdul?” I asked.
Samos, puzzled, looked at me.
“Who is Abdul?” I repeated.
“I do not know,” said Samos. He turned and went to his place behind the low
table.
Those at the table paid us little attention. All eyes were on the dark-haired
dancer, the skirt of diaphanous scarlet dancing silk low upon her hips. Her
hands moved as though she might be, starved with desire, picking flowers from a
wall in a garden. One saw almost the vines from which she plucked them, and h
ow
she held them to her lips, and, at times, seemed to press herself against the
wall which confined her. Then she turned and, as though alone, danced her need
before the men.
“There is much here that appears to make little sense,” said Samos. “Yet, there
must be a meaning, a pattern” With an eating prong, of Turian design, Samos
tapped the table before him. He looked at me. “Little has of late occurred in
the Wars of Priest-Kings and Others.”
“Beware of a silent enemy,” I said.
Samos smiled. “True,” he said. Then he pointed the eating prong at the
leather-harnessed American girl, on the tiles to our right, naked, two guards
with spears at her side. The heavy butts of their spears rested, one to each
side of her. Her fists were clenched in the leather, buckled cuffs of her
harness, held to her thighs by the thigh straps. “We learn from this slave,” he
said, indicating the former Miss Blake-Alien, “that, until further orders, slave
runs from Earth to Gor have been cancelled.”
“Yes, “I said.
“Why?’ he asked.
“Have the runs actually been stopped?” I asked.
“Information from the Sardar,” said Samos, “suggests that they have. There has
not been a detection, let alone a pursuit, in three weeks.”
The Gorean week consists of five days. Each month consists of five such weeks.
Following each month, of which there are twelve, separating them, is a five-day
Passage Hand. The twelfth Passage Hand is followed by the Waiting Hand, a
five-day period prior to the vernal equinox, which marks the Gorean New Year. It
was currently in the late winter of Year 3 of the Sovereignty of the Council of
Captains in Port Kar, the year 10,122 C.A., Contasta Ar, from the Founding of Ar
I had, two months ago, returned from Torvaldsland, where I had attended to
certain matters of the sword.
“Further,” said I, “into your keeping has come a captive beast, clearly a Kur.”
“It seems irrational,” said Samos. “Only a beast.”
“I think it is rational,” I said. “Its intelligence, I suspect, is the equal of
ours, if not greater.”
Samos regarded me.
“It may not, of course, be able to articulate Gorean. Few of the Kurii can. It
is extremely difficult for them to do so.”
“You understand the direction in which it was traveling?” asked Samos.
Norman, John - Gor 10 - Tribesmen of Gor.txt Page 3
