Conspirators of Gor

by John Norman

  “Masters!” said Tela. “But we do not know!”

  Addressed by a man, we all knelt.

  My eyes stung.

  I began to cough.

  “Who is first girl?” asked the man.

  “I am,” said Tela, “if it pleases Master.” She was trembling.

  “How many are there?” asked the man.

  “Eleven, including myself,” wept Tela.

  The soldiers, or guardsmen, despite the fire, were pulling down hangings, and prying loose panels from the wall. Two inspected our holding room, and two others rushed to the kitchen, and storage rooms. Then they, and the others, their work done, the premises rummaged through, the decor torn, scratched, and ravaged, exited behind he before whom we knelt, who barred our way.

  “We are slaves,” wept Tela. “Have mercy on us! Let us out!”

  An officer appeared behind the fellow who barred the door. “Close them inside, and block the door,” said the officer. “They are not stupid. They know what was transpiring here.”

  “No, Masters!” cried Tela, from her knees. “We know nothing!”

  “We are ignorant!” cried Faia.

  “Who knows what transpires with masters?” cried Midice.

  “We are only slaves!” cried Tirza.

  “Slaves!” wept Lucia.

  “We dared not inquire, Master,” said Daphne. “Curiosity is not becoming in a slave!”

  The heavy door was swung shut before us. We rose to our feet, coughing, and weeping, and screaming, struck at it, pulled at it, tried to open it.

  “The back is chained shut,” cried Cara.

  We sank down, behind the door, scratching at it.

  I was blinded with smoke, half strangled, with a lack of air. We could not help who had bought us.

  I slipped to my belly before the door.

  I put out my fingers, and touched the wood.

  Then suddenly the doors swung back, and I saw light, and smoke billowed into the street.

  My lungs drew in the bright, clean air of Gor.

  A hand seized me by the hair and drew me forth on all fours, and then thrust me down to the street, on my belly.

  “Fasten your hands in your hair,” said a man.

  We lay prone, in a line, side by side. Midice was to my left, and Luta, who had spoken to me so contemptuously in the holding room, was to my right. I thought to myself, “See, Luta, we are not so different.”

  I was aware of sandaled feet stepping about, amongst us.

  We did not look up.

  After a time, a voice said, “A silver tarsk, for the lot.”

  “Very well,” said the officer, “but see that they are sold in the Tarsk Market.”

  “A stipulation?” said a voice.

  “Yes,” said the officer.

  “Done,” said the voice.

  I heard a clink of coins, and, shortly thereafter, I felt a rope looped about my left ankle, snugly, and knotted, tightly, and then passed to Midice, on my left, and thence to those beyond her.

  “A silver tarsk!” I thought. “We have been given away!”

  “Keep your hands fastened in your hair,” said a fellow.

  Then another said, “Kajirae, up!”

  We rose to our feet.

  I stole a glance at he who seemed to have completed the purchase, in which I was an item. He was a small man, in a dirty white tunic, with a yellow sash.

  I kept my hands in my hair, while the tunic was cut from me. We were then, in ankle coffle, herded through the lower streets of Ar, to the Tarsk Market.

  The first step is made with the left foot.

  Chapter Seven

  The cages, of heavy, cable-like woven wire, are made for tarsks, not kajirae. One cannot stand in them. They are long, narrow, and low. Thus, more than one can be placed on a sideless, flat-bedded wagon, roped in place. Too, like the common slave cages designed for kajirae, they may be stacked.

  I hooked my fingers in the wire, and looked out, frightened, from my knees. The Tarsk Market has its name, obviously enough, I suppose, because it is a general market for tarsks. Certainly the smell of tarsk was all about. And there was little doubt, from the condition of the cage, that the previous occupants of the cage had been tarsks.

  Needless to say, it is only low slaves who are vended from such a market.

  I lay down in the cage, on my right side, in the straw, facing the back wall of the warehouse.

  How vulnerable we were, as slaves!

  But, had we been free women I did not doubt but what we would have been abandoned, left in the house, to perish in the flames.

  The marks on our thighs, our collars, had saved us. We had been saved, but only as animals.

  It is often safer to be a slave than a free person. Who, for example, would bother slaying a tarsk, or a kaiila?

  Instead, one would herd them, or rope them. One would appropriate them.

  It is for such a reason that free women, trapped in a burning city, a fallen city, being sacked, will not unoften steal collars from their girls, and fasten them on their own necks, hoping to be taken for slaves, to be spared as slaves.

  I had recognized two of the soldiers, and the officer. They had been patrons of the house.

  They had lost heavily.

  Of course we were guilty! Did we not know of the manipulation of the tables’ spins, of the dishonest stones, the fraudulent dice, the ostraka which, to the informed eye, could be read?

  Did we not invite in the patrons, at the door, with our smiles, the glances over our shoulders, our fingers lightly touching our brands beneath the cloth, not silk, but rep cloth, for ours was a shabby den for its purposes. We served as the slaves we were in the wide, low-ceilinged, ill-lit interior of the outer room. We would bring the gamesters paga and ka-la-na, and platters of meat and bread, and cakes and sweets, to keep them at the tables. We pretended zestful enthusiasm for their playing, as if it might be our own. How we rubbed against them, so inadvertently, laughed, joked, touched their arms, and hands, applauded their boldness, pretended dismay at a loss, pretended chagrin and sorrow when they made to leave the tables. Rather they should choose and again match ostraka, hazard another turn of the wheel, another placement of the stones, another roll of the dice! We must serve our paga and ka-la-na modestly, of course, for the men must be kept at the games. Indeed, we served it in the manner that Eve, Jane, and I had been instructed by Mrs. Rawlinson to serve beverages at the party, kneeling, our head down, extending the goblet, held in both hands, between our extended arms. I suspected that Mrs. Rawlinson, at the party, had been amused, seeing us so. This posture and attitude, I suspected, was not unknown to her. Perhaps she, watching, envisioned us so serving at another time, in another locale. But even so, would not anyone seeing us so have found the behavior interesting and not without meaning? Did it not seem clear, the sort of female who must serve so? But even so, our service must be modest. We must not so excite the men, that they might be distracted. We were not paga slaves who, if too frequently spurned, may expect their master’s whip after closing. But more than once I had felt Tela’s switch, and had been driven from the outer room, to the holding area, weeping and shamed, while the men laughed, to be chained, supperless, to the ring by my mat. I could not help myself. I was now other than I had been on Earth. Men had seen to that.

  How the fellow who had accompanied me in the van would have been amused, to see his prisoner, the vain, aristocratic young lady, indeed, the debutant, afflicted by need, slave need!

  As the reader, if reader there may be, may have gathered, I had been much troubled on Earth, not knowing who I might be, or what might be my nature. I had been alarmed by casual thoughts, sometimes stealing upon me when I was unprepared to resist them, certain frequently recurring daydreams, and surely the strange, wild, unaccountable realities revealed to me in the astonishments of my troubled slumber. It was at such times, that I found it difficult, despite my upbringing, my education, and background, to see myself, and feel myself, as
I had learned I should see myself, and feel myself. Who were others, to tell me who I was? How was this a freedom, to be told how to be? How strangely false and unsatisfying seemed the culture to which I was expected to conform, and that which I was expected to perpetuate! Was I truly an artifact, a meaningless, unhappy puppet of a dismal world, responsive to strings I had neither designed nor requested? Perhaps humanity, in its flight from nature, into its thousands of ideologies, superstitions, and pretenses, had unknowingly betrayed itself, building up about itself, brick by subtle brick, its invisible prison, satisfying only those who might profit by its exploitation. But perhaps, too, there are no prisons, other than those we ourselves make, or will accept. It would be interesting if the walls we most fear, within which we feel ourselves the most constrained, within which we most lament, do not exist. In any event, I knew that I carried in my body, as other human beings, a history and a heritage extending back to the first blind, reproducing forms of life, ages prior to the complex marvels of the unicellular organism. To such an organism could biology be irrelevant? Surely templates must exist in the human organism, as in other forms of life, perhaps subtler and vaster, but just as real. Could my behavior, my promptings, what would satisfy me, what I would need, be wholly independent of my form of life, be unique amongst all living forms, merely accidents and oddities imposed upon me from the outside, beginning with the first flash of light, the first breath, the sobbing birth cry of a small, bloody animal? That did not seem likely. The cultures which denied men and women to themselves, for their own purposes, in their own interests, inertial, self-perpetuating structures, productive of misery and alienation, were inventions of recent date, the mere tick of a clock, marking a moment in millenniums. If there was a human nature, had it been fabricated, truly, so recently? Might it not have been formed in other times and other places, a consequence of other conditions, as an entailment of alternative realities? Might we have been formed for one world and precipitated into another, a quite different world, an alien world, one in which our form of life finds itself homeless, finds itself in exile?

  I saw no need for civilization and nature to be incompatible, to be enemies.

  Might not a civilization be possible in which nature was recognized, refined, enhanced, and celebrated? In such a civilization surely there would be a place not simply for seasons and tides, for surf and wind, but for men and women, as well.

  I had not been long on Gor before I was brought naked and back-braceleted into a round chamber. Its diameter may have been ten feet, or so. It was a plain room. The ceiling was domed, perhaps fifteen feet above my head. The walls were bare, but penetrated by two small, barred windows, some feet over my head, through which light fell dimly. The flooring was of large flat stones, as in my cell. The guard then turned about and left me there. The door was closed behind him, and I heard the bolt put into place.

  I saw no one, but I was sure I was seen.

  I lifted my head. “I am a free woman!” I said. “Return me to Earth!”

  My declaration received no response.

  I do not know how long I remained in the room.

  The guard eventually returned, and, holding me by the left upper arm, conducted me back to my cell.

  We stood without.

  The bracelets were removed.

  “Do you speak English?” I asked.

  I was bent down, his hand in my hair, and I was thrust within the cell, and the door was closed, and locked.

  I no longer wore chains within the cell, but I was left, as before, in darkness.

  I felt about in the darkness, hoping to find food. There was a depression in the floor, which contained some water. Obviously I could not lift it, and, after trying to cup water in my hands, with little success, given the shallowness of the depression, I bent down, and lapped at it. I felt about and located the food pan, which contained some porridge-like material, and a thick crust of bread.

  How could they treat me in this fashion? Did they not know who I was? Did they think me some waitress, some clerk, or secretary?

  I would soon learn they thought me a thousand times less.

  I cried out, in anger.

  “I am a free woman! Let me go! Release me! Free me! Give me clothing! Give me decent food! Return me to Earth!”

  My voice rang against the stones, in the small space. But I received no response to my cries.

  I determined that I would show them what a woman of Earth could be, and a woman of my background, of my class, of my position, of my intelligence, and education. I would resist them.

  Though I had often sensed myself a slave, and a rightful slave, I must now permit no countenance to such thoughts, to such suspicions, to such secret fears. I am a free woman, I told myself, over and over again. I am a free woman. I am a free woman. I am not a slave. I am a free woman!

  I must be a free woman, I sobbed. I must be a free woman!

  But what, I wondered, if I were not? What if I were a slave? What if I should be, as I had often feared, a slave, a rightful slave?

  From time to time, in the darkness, I felt the white ribbon which had been twice knotted about my neck in the sorority house. Now it seemed grimy, and damp, from the cell. But it was still there.

  The rounded, steel anklet which had been snapped about my left ankle in the house was gone when I awakened on Gor. I gathered that it had served its purpose, whatever that purpose might be.

  I held to the ribbon.

  What if I should be a slave, I asked myself, a slave?

  The next day I was introduced again into the rounded chamber, similarly unclothed, my wrists, as before, braceleted behind my back.

  The guard told me to kneel in the center of the room, and put my head to the floor.

  As he left, I remained standing.

  What free woman, I asked myself, as I was, would do such a thing?

  When he returned I shrugged my shoulders, and lifted my head, proudly. I would show them what a woman of Earth could be, particularly one of my refinement, intelligence, education, and class, and a member of my sorority. And thus I was returned to my cell.

  The next morning I was routinely branded, and then returned to the cell. I could not believe the casualness with which I had been marked. I might have been any domestic animal! A moment after the iron had marked me, and I was screaming in disbelief and pain, a scarf was placed over my eyes, and I could not even see the mark, which now made me, I sensed, somehow, radically and irremediably different than I had been.

  I would learn later that I wore in my thigh, small, but clear, imprinted there, the cursive kef. I would learn, too, it is a common brand, marking common slaves.

  Following my marking, still blindfolded, my thigh burning, I was returned to my cell, but now, by means of a belly chain and bracelets, my wrists were fastened behind me, closely, at the small of my back. Thus, I could not reach the brand. Another chain, something like a yard in length, run from the belly chain, held me to the wall behind me. My feet were then joined, pulled forward, and chained to another ring. A consequence of this chaining was that I could not much move from my place. I could lift my knees, draw back a bit, and sit up. I could also lie on my left or right side.

  As I could not reach the water, or feed myself, I was tended by a young, tunicked woman. In the light, small as it was, that came through the opened door, I caught the glint of light on metal. Something was on her neck. Then I realized the woman was collared!

  “Have mercy on me,” I whispered to her. “You must understand my plight. Be kind! You are a female, as I!”

  She placed her fingers lightly across my mouth.

  Then she held a pan with water to my lips, and I drank.

  “Do you speak English?” I begged.

  I hoped, of course, that anyone sent to tend me might be familiar with my language.

  A thick wedge of dried bread was thrust to my lips, and then forced into my mouth. It gagged me as effectively as leather or cloth.

  “You were displeasing,”
she whispered to me, frightened. “You did not kneel as requested. Fortunately this fault was committed before you were marked. I advise you not to be so foolish in the future. You have been marked.”

  I tried to speak, as I was desperate to do, but could not do so, for the bread. Then she was gone, and the door locked.

  The next day I was again conducted to the round chamber, as before, stripped, back-braceleted.

  How had they known I had not knelt as requested?

  Clearly, as I had suspected, they must be able to see into the chamber.

  Before the guard left me in the room, I was again instructed to kneel in the center of the room, my head the floor.

  The heavy door closed. It was bolted.

  As far as I could tell, I was alone, and yet, as before, I sensed I might somehow be under surveillance.

  I was afraid. My knees felt weak. I was afraid I might fall. I pulled against the bracelets. I looked about, searching for tiny cracks, or openings. There might be any number of such, undetectable from where I stood. I might be seen, and as I was, stripped and braceleted, from a thousand places. I felt the stones beneath my bare feet, was conscious of a tiny movement of air on my body.

  How alive, I thought, must be the body of a slave!

  How alive to small things, a breath of air, a scent, subtle, scarcely noticed, the texture of a bit of cloth on her body, the feeling of a carpet or tiles beneath her bared feet, a rustle of chain in an outer room, are they coming for her, the weight of a manacle on her small wrist, the solid, cold feeling of bars clutched in fear.

  And what, if she were bound and blindfolded, the touch of a master?

  I wanted to throw myself to my knees and put my head down to the stones.

  I felt a desperate desire to prostrate myself before the unseen others, if they were there.

  It seemed every muscle and nerve in my body cried out to me to kneel, to place myself in a posture of submission.

  It seemed to me that I belonged in such a posture.

  “It is what you are,” something seemed to say to me. “Be what you are! Do not fight what you are! Do you not know, Miss Allison Ashton-Baker, for all your pretensions, you are a slave. You belong on your knees!”