Norman, John - Gor 20 - Players of Gor.txt

by Players of Gor [lit]

  unnoticeable kick with the side of his foot and she spread her knees before the

  audience. I could see that she was reluctant to do this. Perhaps she had been a

  slave less long than the Brigella. But now both of them knelt identically

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  before the audience, backs straight, back on their heels, chins up, stark naked

  in their collars, their knees spread, slaves.

  “Our little Bina!” said Boots, showing her off. “thank you, noble free woman and

  noble gentlemen! Remember poor Boots and his company! Be generous!” Some coins,

  mostly copper, rattled to the stage. I myself gave a couple of copper tarn

  disks. I had much more money, my own, and some more I had helped myself to at

  the camp of the Lady Yanina, before I had freed her prisoners and burned the

  camp, but I had no wish to advertise the current weight of my purse at the fair.

  It is one thing to do this in a city where one, and one’s financial status, is

  reasonably well known, and quite another, as you may well imagine, to do it in a

  strange place before strangers.

  “Thank you, noble people, splendid patrons of the arts,” called Boots. “Thank

  you!” The Chino and Lecchio gathered up the coins, handing them to Boots, who

  took them and deposited them somewhere inside his robes, perhaps into the lining

  or a hidden pocket. The girls, here at the fair, were not passing through the

  crowd with copper bowls, perhaps because they had both been in the play. At any

  rate, even when they had done this in Port Kar, they had not, of course, been

  handling or touching the coins, only the bowls in which the coins were

  collected. The only female performers who customarily gather up the coins thrown

  to them for their masters are dancers, who usually perform alone, except for

  their musicians. They tuck the coins in a bit of their silk, if they have been

  permitted any. Given the nature of their silk, which is usually diaphanous, and

  the general scantiness of their garb, and the publicness of their picking up the

  coins, there is little danger that they could conceal a coin, even if they dared

  to do so. A slave girl, you see, is generally forbidden to so much as touch a

  coin without permission. This does not mean, of course, that they may not be

  sent to the market, and given coins for errands, and such. For an unaccounted

  for coin to be found in a slave girl’s possession, or among her belongings, can

  be cause for severe punishment. She might even be fed to sleen.

  “Lout!” called the free woman.

  “Yes, noble lady?” said Boots, coming forward.

  “Your plays are insulting to free women!” she cried. “I have never been so

  insulted in my life!”

  “Have you seen them all?” asked Boots. “There are more than fifty.”

  “No,” she said. “I have not seen them all!”

  “We cannot perform them all without a full company, of

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  course,” said Boots. “I am short-handed at the moment. I do not even have a

  golden courtesan. There are frequent changes in the repertory, of course. We

  make up new ones, and sometimes we feel it best, temporarily or permanently, to

  drop out old ones, ones that do not then seem as good or which do not seem to

  play as well any longer. One improvises about given ideas or themes, and then,

  performance by performance, a play is built. To be sure, much always remains

  open to invention, to innovation, to constant revision, to impromptu

  spur-of-the-moment contributions, and so on. One must always be ready, too, to

  capitalize on such things as local color, current happenings, the current

  political situation, popular or well-known figures, the prejudices of a

  district, and so on. Local allusions are always popular. They can occasionally

  get you in trouble, of course. One must be careful about them. It would not do

  to be impaled. You seem highly intelligent. Perhaps you could help us.”

  “Do you think that all free women are no better than slaves!” she cried.

  “I would suppose that women are all pretty much of a muchness,” said Boots.

  ‘Oh!” she cried in fury.

  “Take yourself,” he said. “How would you look stripped and in a collar, and

  under a whip? Do you think you would behave much differently, then, than any

  other slave? Indeed, have you ever stopped to think about it? Have you ever

  wondered, secretly perhaps, whether or not you might have what it takes to prove

  to be even an adequate slave?”

  “I am a free woman,” she said, icily.

  “Forgive me, Lady,” said Boots.

  “I will, before nightfall, and you may depend upon it,” she said, “lodge my

  complaint with the magistrates. By tomorrow noon, you will be closed, forbidden

  to perform at the fair.”

  “Show us mercy, Lady,” said Boots, “we are a traveling company, a poor troupe in

  desperate straits. I have had to sell even my golden courtesan!”

  “I do not care,” she said, “if you must sell all your sluts!”

  “The Fair of En’Kara is the greatest of all the fairs,” he said. “It comes but

  once a year. It is important to us! We need every tarsk-bit we can make here.”

  “I do not choose to show you mercy,” she said, coldly. “Too, I shall see to it

  that you are fined and publicly whipped. Indeed, if you are not gone from the

  fairgrounds by tomorrow evening, I shall also see to it that your troupe is

  disbanded, and

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  that your goods, your wagons, your clothes, your sluts, everything, is

  confiscated!”

  “You wish to see me ruined?” he said.

  “Yes!” she said.

  “Thank you, gracious lady,” he said.

  She spun about, and with a movement of her robes, lifting them a bit from the

  dust, took her leave. She had on golden sandals. Boots Tarsk-Bit and myself, as

  she left, considered her ankles. I did not find em bad, and I suppose Boots

  Tarsk-Bit did not either. They would have looked well in shackles.

  “It seems I am ruined,” said Boots Tarsk-Bit to me.

  “Perhaps not,” I said.

  “How shall I make even enough money to clear my way form the fair?” he asked.

  “Sell me, Master,” said the Brigella, kneeling on the stage, radiant, flushed

  and excited. There were several fellows, some five or six of them, standing

  before the stage, some of them leaning forward with their elbows upon it. Any

  one of them, I supposed, as I had conjectured earlier, would be capable of

  handling her superbly. Gorean men do not compromise with their slaves; the girls

  obey, and perfectly. She knew she was valuable; how straight she knelt; how

  proud she was, naked and in her collar.

  “What am I offered?” asked Boots, resignedly.

  “Two silver tarsks,” said a man.

  “Two?” asked Boots, surprised, pleased. The girl cried out with pleasure. That

  is a high price for a female on Gor, where they are plentiful and cheap.

  In a few moments the Brigella, her sm
all wrists braceleted behind her, had taken

  her way from the area, eagerly heeling, almost running to keep up with him, her

  new owner, a stalwart, broad-shouldered, blond-haired fellow. The first thing he

  had done after making her helpless in his bracelets had been to pull the small,

  circular adhesive patch from her left thigh. she wore the common Kajira brand,

  the tiny staff and fronds. She had gone for five silver tarsks.

  “A splendid price on her,” I congratulated Boots.

  He stood there, dangling her collar in his right hand. “I am ruined,” he said,

  glumly. “whatever shall I do without a Brigella?”

  “I do not know about your Brigella,” I said, “but I think I might be able to

  help you with another of your problems.”

  “Do I not know you from somewhere?” asked Boots.

  “We met some days ago, briefly, in Port Kar,” I said.

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  “Yes!” he said. “The carnival! Of course! You are a captain, or officer, are you

  not?”

  “Sometimes, perhaps,” I said.

  “What do you want of me?” asked Boots, warily.

  “Do not fear,” I smiled. “I am not in hire to pursue you, nor am I interested in

  collecting bills.”

  “I fear,” said Boots, “that I may be indebted to you in the matter of five

  silver tarsks in Port Kar. I have them here.” He held out his hand with the five

  silver tarsks, accrued by moments earlier form the sale of the Brigella.

  “It was six, not five,” I said.

  “Oh,” said Boots.

  “If I had anything to do with them,” I said, “to which I do not admit, of

  course, let us consider them merely as copper-bowl coins, coins such as might be

  gathered in the pursuit of your normal activities.”

  “But six silver tarsks,” he said.

  “You may consider them, if it makes it easier for you,” I said, “as a gratuitous

  contribution to the arts.”

  “I accept them, then, in the name of the arts,” said Boots.

  “Good,” I said.

  “You have no idea how that arrangement assuages the agonies of conscience with

  which I might otherwise have been afflicted.” said Boots.

  “I am sure of it,” I said.

  “Thank you,” said Boots.

  “It is nothing,” I said. “Happy carnival.”

  “To be sure,” he said. “Incidentally, did you enjoy the show?”

  “Yes,” I said.

  “I wonder if you forgot to express your appreciation,” asked Boots, rather

  apologetically.

  “No,” I said.

  “It was an excellent performance,” he said.

  “Here is another copper tarsk,” I said. “That makes three.”

  “Thank you,” he said.

  “You are quite welcome,” I said. I watched the tarsk disappear somewhere in his

  robes.

  “Now,” he said, “as I recall you were mentioning that you might be able to help

  me with some problem.”

  “Yes,” I said. “As I mentioned, I do not think I can help you with your Brigella

  problem, at least certainly now , but I think I do know where you might be able

  to get your hands on a splendid candidate for a ‘golden courtesan.’”

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  “A slave?” asked Boots.

  “Of course,” I said.

  “Can she act?” asked Boots.

  “I do not know,” I admitted.

  “My girls must double as tent girls,” he said.

  “About her potentiality as a tent girl,” I said, “I have no doubt.”

  “My girls, you understand,” said Boots, “are not ordinary girls. They must be

  extraordinarily talented.”

  “She is blond, and voluptuous,” I said.

  “That will do,” said Boots.

  “You could always teach her to act,” I said.

  “That is true,” said Boots. “And fortunately I am a master teacher. And if she

  should prove sluggish in her lessons, I will unhesitantly encourage her with the

  whip.”

  “Exactly,” I said.

  “Where is she?” he asked.

  “One advantage to getting her,” I said, “is that I think that she, being a

  relatively new slave, may be fairly cheap. I doubt that she would cost you, at

  the most, even given her beauty, more than two silver tarsks. You would then

  have three silver tarsks left over.”

  “Where my I find this slut?” he asked.

  “She is for sale, I believe, at this very fair,” I smiled.

  “This is the Fair of En’Kara,” he said. “There are thousands of girls for sale

  here, in the care of hundreds of owners.”

  “I know the very platform on which stripped, and in her collar and chain, she

  awaits her first buyer,” I said.

  “Perhaps you would be so good as to impart this information,” said Boots.

  “It would probably be difficult for you, by tomorrow evening, by which time, I

  gather, you may be taking y our leave from the fair, to locate her.”

  “Particularly,” said Boots, “if we are attempting to get in an extra performance

  or two.

  “Precisely,” I said.

  “What do you want?” asked Boots.

  “You have a fairly regular itinerary in your travels, do you not?” I asked.

  “Sometimes,” said Boots, warily. “Sometimes not. Why?”

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  “Surely you have some notion of your plans for the next few months,” I said.

  “In what way?” asked Boots.

  “You have some notion of the villages, the towns, the cities you plan to visit,”

  I said.

  “Perhaps,” said Boots.

  “I am interested particularly in one given city,” I said, “a port on the coast

  of Thassa, one south of the Vosk’s delta.”

  “Yes?” he said.

  “Brundisium,” I said.

  “She is a staunch ally of Ar,” he said. “We will be visiting her late in the

  summer.”

  “Good,” I said.

  “Why?” he asked.

  “I am interested in joining your company,” I said.

  “What could you do?” he asked.

  “Odd jobs, heavy work,” I said.

  “Security at Brundisium is very tight,” he said. “They have become, in the last

  two years, for some reason, very suspicious of strangers. It is difficult to get

  access into the city, other than her closed-off wharves and trading places.”

  “A troupe such as yours might do so, however,” I speculated.

  “We have performed in the main square,” he admitted, “once even in the courtyard

  of the palace itself.”

  “Let me join your company,” I said.

  “You are merely interested in obtaining admittance to Brundisium,” he said.

 
“Perhaps,” I said.

  “Where might I get my chain on this female,” he asked, “she whom you think might

  be found acceptable as a ‘golden courtesan’?”

  “Among the hundred new slaves of Samos of Port Kar,” I said, “chained on the

  Shu-27 platforms in the southwestern sections of the Pavilion of Beauty.”

  “Has she a name?” asked Boots.

  “Probably not now,” I said. “But she had been given a name, or at least a house

  name, in the house of Samos, in Port Kar.”

  “What was it?” asked Boots.

  “Rowena,” I said.

  “Thank you,” said Boots. “You have been very helpful.”

  “Now, what about my proposal,” I said.

  “What proposal?” he asked.

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  “About my joining your company,” I said.

  “That?” he said.

  “Yes,” I said.

  “Out of the question,” he said.

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  7 The Tent; I Slip from the Tent

  “Oh!” she wept, clutching me, squirming, helplessly pressing her imbonded flesh

  against mine. “Yes! No, don’t let me go!” she cried. “Don’t spurn me, I beg you.

  Hold me! Hold me! Please!” Her creamy flesh was hot. She was covered with sweat.

  Even her long blond hair, cut somewhat shorter now, half covering her face, was

  wet. Her body, broken out and mottled, was like a map, one recollective of my

  attentions. It was covered with an intense, irregular geography of scarlet

  patches, the capillaries near the surface of the skin swelled with blood, the

  red color suffusing upward as though from a light within her, as though fires

  raged within her, just beneath her exposed, yielding, eager softness, witnessing

  her excitement and arousal. She clutched me, helplessly. “What you can do to

  me!” she cried. “what men can do to me! I love it! Please, Master, do not stop!”

  She threw back her head, her lips parted, her eyes closed. “Ohh!” she gasped.

  “Yes! Ohhh! Yes! Yes! Oh! Oh! Yes, Master! Yes Master! Continue, I beg you, with

  all my heart! I plead with you not to stop! Oh, Master! Yes, Master! Yes,

  Master!” I heard the sound of the chain on her ankle. “Oh, Master! Yes, Master!”