forearm, I entered one of the long, tiled halls, carrying one of the lamps.
We passed only one or two men. I wore garments of the men of the Salt Ubar,
taken from a prisoner. There were new mercenaries in the kasbah. No notice was
taken of me, though much notice was taken of the luscious slave who, so briefly
and shamefully clad, preceded me, I saw Vella, the vain wench, lift her body,
instinctually, beautifully, brazenly, as the eyes of each man fell upon her.
She, a slave girl, found much pleasure in being well displayed before masters.
I chuckled. She tossed her bead, angrily.
When I came to one of the narrow windows, not wide enough to admit the body of a
man, facing the desert on the north, I lifted and lowered the lamp, and then did
this once again. I blew out the lamp. I put it down. We stood in darkness, save
for the moonlight at the window.
We heard the sentry’s bar, on the wall, striking the twentieth hour.
“They will want me, Tarl, in the north tower,” said Vella. “It is the Twentieth
Hour.”
“I think not,” I said. I looked out over the desert. We heard the sentry’s bar.
“When I do not appear, they will come for me. They may find you. Escape while
you can.”
I saw men, riders, pouring out of the desert.
“They await me in the north tower,” she said.
“I think, in the north tower,” I said, “They have other things now on their mind
than a slave girl.”
“I do not understand,” she said.
I had paid a visit to the north tower, which commanded the north gate.
“The kasbah,” I said, “will fall.”
“The kasbah will never fall,” said the girl. “There are water and supplies here
for months. One man on the walls is worth ten in the desert. No force sufficient
to invest the kasbah can be long maintained in its vicinity.”
At the north gate, in the gate room, at the foot of the tower, ten guards
struggled, come recently again to consciousness, finding themselves bound and
gagged. Above the gate, in the tower itself, lay another ten.
We heard the last stroke of the bar. It was the Twentieth Hour.
“Flee!” whispered Vella. “Flee!”
The north gate, deplorably, perhaps, from the point of view of those within the
kasbah, and surely from the point of view of the guards, had been left ajar.
“Flee!” said Vella.
“Look,” I told her. I put my hand over her mouth, and held her to the window. I
beard her gasp, and struggle. She squirmed. A girl within the kasbah, she was
terrified at what she saw. Like any beautiful female, slave or free, she knew
what it might portend for her. She tried to cry out. She could not do so. “Cry
out, Slave Girl,” I whispered. “Give the alarm.” Her voice, beneath my large,
heavy hand, was muffled. She moaned in misery. She was helpless. Her eyes were
wild over my hand.
Riders streamed toward the kasbah. I saw the white burnoose of Hassan, swelling
behind him, in their lead.
In a moment someone on the walls had seen the riders. There were shouts. The
alarm bar, struck by its great hammer, began to ring madly. Men began to appear
in the yard below. Men swarmed to the walls. But to their horror riders were
already within the yard, fighting with defenders. Men leaped from their kaiila,
climbing, scimitars flashing, up the narrow stairs, toward the walls. The enemy
was within. The enemy was behind them. Riders streamed in through the gate, and,
too, men afoot, running over the sand. The north gate had fallen. The north
tower was theirs. More men entered, flooding within the walls of the kasbah.
Defenders rushed forth. Everywhere there was swordplay, the ringing of steel, on
bucklers. I saw torches. There was much shouting. I heard the crying out of men.
I stepped back. I removed my hand from the mouth of the-slave girl. Vella looked
at me, her eyes wide with horror.
“Cry out now, Slave Girl,” I said. “Give the alarm.”
“Why did you not let me cry out?” She asked. “They will kill us all!”
She had the instinctive fear of the girl of riders of the desert.
I turned her about, and thrust her before me, down the hall. “I am one of them,”
I told her. She moaned.
I could hear shouting in the kasbah. By the arm I thrust her again into the room
where I had first found her, where there were the broad, scarlet tiles the
vanity, the mirror, now a single tharlarion-oil lamp at the side of the mirror.
“You have returned for me,” she said, pressing her body to mine, lifting her
head. “I wanted you to come back for me. I dreamed that you would!”
I thrust her back. I could hear shouting outside. “I have come back for you,” I
told her.
“You love me!” she cried.
She cried out with misery when she saw my eyes.
“Then why?” she begged, piteously.
“I want you,” I told her.
“You love me,” she whispered.
“No,” I said.
“I do not understand,” she whispered.
“Foolish female of Earth,” I laughed, “do you still understand so little of your
incredible desirability? Do you not yet know that it drives men mad with desire
to look upon you? Have you no sense, foolish woman, of the madness of passion
the very sight of you inspires in men?”
She turned away. “I know that I am attractive,” she said. Her voice was
uncertain, frightened.
“You are an ignorant female,” I said. “You do not know what the very sight of
you does to men.”
She spun to face me, her eyes flashing. “What does it do?” she demanded.
“To see you is to want you,” I told her, “and to want you is to want to own you.
“Own!” she cried, in horror.
“Yes,” I said. “Every man wants to own his woman, completely. He wants to have
her in his absolute power. He wants to have absolute control over her, in every
respect, however, minute. Dominance is genetically dispositional in his nature.
Males are divided into those who satisfy their nature and those who do not.
Males who satisfy their nature are vital and joyful, and, statistically, live
long; those who deny their nature are miserable and, statistically, shorter
lived, their tortured body chemistry falling prey frequently to hideous
diseases.”
“Men want women to be free!” said Vella.
“Men, sometimes,” I said, “will accord small freedoms to women, thinking that
these will make them more pleasing. Surely you are familiar with the master who,
at certain moments, permits his girl to speak her mind. And at these moments she
does so, well and boldly. But she knows that these permissions may, at his whim,
be withdrawn. This torments her with joy, and she revels in his strength. He
gives her what she most deeply desires, in the female genetic depth of her, the
delicious feeling of her own domination, the subjection of her beauty and
weakness to the will of a strong male.”
“Men on Earth,” she cried, “will be dethroned by law!”
“Earth has a complex and intricate political history,” I said. “Policies and
institutions, over hundreds of years, may have consequences unforeseen by their
aut
hors, consequences which would have horrified them. On Earth, men have
succeeded in building a complicated trap from which they may perhaps be unable
to escape. Perhaps they can shatter its bars. Perhaps, in the cage they
themselves have built, they will merely languish and die.”
Vella said nothing.
“Do you feel,” I asked, “that the women of Earth are happier than those of Gor.”
“No,” she said. “No, no.
“Kneel,” I said.
She knelt.
“On Gor,” I asked, “who have been the happiest women you have known.”
“Many of the happiest women I have known on Gor,” she whispered, “have been mere
slave girls.”
“Man has a genetic disposition to dominance,” I said. “This is doubted by no one
qualified to form an opinion on the matter. It may, in certain circumstances, be
politically expedient to deny this truth, but that is a separate question and
involves separate issues.”
“I do not doubt men have a disposition to dominate,” said Vella. “But they must
control this disposition.”
“Tell a man not to breathe,” I told her. “Tell his heart not to beat.” I looked
at her. “Tell a man not to be himself.”
Vella looked at me, stricken.
“I know little of rights,” I said, “for I am more accustomed to attending to
realities, but permit me to ask you this question? Does a man have the right to
be a man?”
“Of course,” said Vella.
“What if,” I asked, “in being a man, it was necessary to exercise the
disposition for dominance?”
“Then,” said Vella,” no man has the right to be a man.”
“What if,” I asked, “in order to fulfill oneself as a woman, it was necessary,
at least at crucial times, to be subject to the total domination of a male?”
“Then,” said Vella, “no woman would have the right to be a woman.”
“Under these circumstances outlined then,” I said, “neither a man nor a woman
would have the right to be themselves.”
“Yes,” said Vella.
“The circumstances I have outlined,” I told her, “are reality. It is undeniable
men have a genetic disposition to domination. Does it seem likely to you that
this disposition could have been selected for in isolation?”
She looked at me, kneeling, not answering.
“Does it not seem likely that men and women, together, in a complementary
fashion, forming a race, a kind of animal, Were conjointly shaped by the long,
harsh application of evolutionary forces? Does it seem likely to you that
biology would have shaped the man and neglected the woman?”
“No,” said Vella. “It does not.” She put her head down.
“Nature, in teaching man to dominate, has not faded to provide his victim.”
Vella looked up, angrily.
“Luscious and beautiful women,” I said. “And what must be the genetic
dispositions of these women, beneath the overlays, the encrustations, the
conditionings of impersonal, mechanistic, industrial societies, to which sex is
an embarrassment and human beings a puzzle?”
“I do not know,” she said.
“There is in them, perhaps,” I suggested, “a disposition to respond to
dominance, to yearn for it, to seek it out, to, by their behavior, beg for it,
They try to control, but in their hearts, they yearn to be controlled, totally,
for they are females.”
“What you say goes against much of what I have been taught,” said Vella.
“Do females,” I asked, “wish to relate to strong or weak males?”
“Strong males,” she said.
“Why would this be?” I asked.
She looked down, not answering. “What if, Tarl,” she asked, “I should have these
feelings, these terrible, unworthy feelings? What if I should, in my heart,
desire domination by Men?”
“A healthy society,” I said, “would make provision for the satisfaction of these
feelings.”
She looked up at me.
“Gorean society “ I said, “makes provision for them. Surely you have heard of
the relation of master and slave?”
“I have heard of it,” she snapped.
“The most complete and perfect institution for the total domination of a woman
is that of female slavery,” I said. “How could a woman be more perfectly and
completed dominated, more helpless, more dependent on a male, more vulnerable,
more subject to a man’s will, more at a man’s mercy than to be literally his, an
owned slave?” I looked at her. “Pretty Vella,” I said, “to look at you is to
want you, to want you is to want to own you, completely, every bit of you, to
have you completely at one’s mercy--completely.”
“It is such lust,” she wept. “It is such a complete and uncompromising desire.
What could compare with it? I had not known such passion, such desire, could
exist. It overwhelms me. I can scarcely breathe. And I am to be its helpless
victim.”
I heard men shouting, in the balls, not far from the door.
“No!” she wept, rising to her feet, trying to turn and run. I was on her in an
instant and, taking her in my arms, put her on the floor, sitting. I took her
wrists and, with the length of the tether, bent her forward and tied her wrists
to her ankles. The end of the tether I knotted in and about the leather on her
wrists, so that she would be unable to reach it, even with the fingers of one of
her hands. I looked upon her. She sat, bound, the rag I had given her high about
her thighs. She was incredibly desirable. She saw herself in the mirror. She
could not rise, tied as she was, so she could not reach the other tharlation-oil
lamp, high, hanging from a chain, at the side of the mirror.
“Free me!” she wept. “Free me!”
I checked the knots. They were satisfactory. She would be held perfectly.
There was the sound of scimitars clashing down the hall. “Am I not to be freed?”
she asked.
On her left thigh, rather high, small and deep, was the sign of the four bosk
horns. I fingered it. She recoiled. “Kamchak branded me,” she said.
“What does it mean that you have bound me?” she asked.
I decided that I would have her rebranded.
She looked at me. I took a long set of strands of her dark hair, some inch and a
half in thickness. I loosely knotted them at the right side of her cheek.
“The bondage knot,” she whispered.
“This will mark you as having been taken,” I said.
“Taken?” she asked. I stood up. She struggled. I strode from her, going toward
the door.
“Tarl!” she cried.
I turned to face her.
“I love you!” she cried.
“You are a consummate actress,” I told her.
“No!” she cried. “It is true!”
“It is of no interest to me whether it is true or not,” I told her.
She looked at me, tears in her eyes, sitting, bound, the loosely looped bondage
knot at the side of her face, at the right cheek.
“Does it not matter to you?” she cried.
“No,” I said.
“Do you not love me!” she wept.
“No,” I said.
“But you have come here,” she said. “She struggled. “
You have risked much.” She
wept. “What is it then you want of me?” she asked.
I laughed. “I want to own you,” I said.
“You are a man of Earth!” she protested.
“No,” I told her. “I am of Gor.”
She shuddered in her bonds. “You are,” she whispered. “I see it in your eyes. I
am at the mercy of a man of Gor.” Her beauty, helpless in its leather bonds,
shuddered with the comprehension of what this might mean.
I turned away.
“Tarl!” she cried.
I turned again, angry.
“Am I to be kept as a slave?” she asked.
“Yes,” I told her.
“Under full discipline?” she said, disbelievingly.
“Yes,” I said.
“To the whip?” she asked.
“Yes,” I said.
“Could you, Tarl,” she asked, “whip me? Could you be capable of that, if I
displeased you? Could you, once of Earth, be so strong?”
“You have already much displeased me,” I told her. I recalled Nine Wells, when
she had smiled. I remembered the window in the wall of the kasbah, the kiss she
had flung me, the token of silk.
“Am I to be whipped now?” she asked. It would have been easy, parting the back
of the rag she wore, she tied as she was, to whip her then. She knew that.
“No,” I said.
I went to her and took the bit of faded silk, which I had carried to Klima and
back. She looked at it, in misery. I tied it about her left wrist, above the
binding fiber. She wore it as I had worn it.
“When will you whip me?” she asked.
“When it is to my convenience,” I said.
The door burst open and two men, back to me, backing through the door,
embattled, fighting, others outside the door, entered the room. Scimitars
clashed. One of them turned wildly. I unsheathed my scimitar. He knew me then
for an enemy. We engaged. He fell back from my blade. The other fellow was cut
down by the door. I threw aside the robes of the man of the Salt Ubar. Those
outside the, door lifted their scimitars to me.
“I shall join you presently,” I told them.
With my boots I rolled the two fallen men from the room closed the large double
door and again turned to face Vella. We were then again alone in the room, in
the light of the single tharlarion-oil lamp.
I turned again to face her. She sat on the floor, bent forward, her wrists tied
to her ankles; the rag she wore was well up her thighs; the pleasures of her
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