by John Norman
“We must attempt to regain the ring,” said Samos, “or, at worst, prevent it from falling into the hands of the Kurii.”
“Shaba will want the notes for the fortunes,” I said. “Kurii will want the false ring. I think he, or they, or both, will be very interested in striking up an acquaintance with our lovely prisoner below.”
“My thoughts, too,” said Samos.
“It is known, or will soon be known, she was taken by Bejar,” I said. “When his other women prisoners are put upon the block, let her be put there with them, only another woman to be sold.”
“They will be sold as slaves,” said Samos.
“Of course,” I said, “let her, too, be sold as a slave.”
“I will have the iron ring removed from her throat,” said Samos, “and have her, tied in a slave sack, sent to Bejar.”
“I will attend her sale, in disguise,” I said. “I will see who buys her.”
“It could be anyone,” said Samos. “Perhaps she will be bought by an urt hunter or an oar maker. What then?”
“Then she is owned by an oar maker or an urt hunter,” I said. “And we shall consider a new plan.”
Urt hunters swim slave girls, ropes on their necks, beside their boats in the dark, cool water of the canals, as bait for urts, which, as they rise to attack the girl, are speared. Urt hunters help to keep the urt population in the canals manageable.
“Agreed,” said Samos.
He handed me the ring on the table and the letters of introduction, and notes.
“You may need these,” he said, “in case you encounter Shaba. Perhaps you could pose as a Kur agent, for he does not know you, and obtain the true ring for the Kurii notes. The Sardar could then be warned to intercept Shaba with the false ring and deal as they will with him.”
“Excellent,” I said. “These things will increase our store of possible strategies.” I placed the ring and the papers in my robes.
“I am optimistic,” said Samos.
“I, too,” I said.
“But beware of Shaba,” he said. “He is a brilliant man. He will not be easily fooled.”
Samos and I stood up.
“It is curious,” I said, “that the rings were never duplicated.”
“Doubtless there is a reason,” said Samos.
I nodded. That was doubtless true.
We went toward the door of his hall, but stopped before we reached the heavy door.
Samos wished to speak.
“Captain,” said he.
“Yes, Captain,” said I.
“Do not go into the interior, beyond Schendi,” said Samos. “That is the country of Bila Huruma.”
“I understand him to be a great ubar,” I said.
“He is also a very dangerous man,” said Samos, “and these are difficult times.”
“He is a man of vision,” I said.
“And pitiless greed,” said Samos.
“But a man of vision,” I reminded him. “Is he not intending to join the Ushindi and Ngao with a canal, cut through the marshes, which, then, might be drained?”
“Work on such a project is already proceeding,” said Samos.
“That is vision,” I said, “and ambition.”
“Of course,” said Samos. “Such a canal would be an inestimable commercial and military achievement. The Ua, holding the secret of the interior, flows into the Ngao, which, by a canal, would be joined with Ushindi. Into Ushindi flows the Cartius proper, the subequatorial Cartius. Out of Ushindi flow the Kamba and the Nyoka, and those flow to Thassa.”
“It would be an incredible achievement,” I marveled.
“Beware of Bila Huruma,” said Samos.
“I expect to have no dealings with him,” I said.
“The pole and platform below, on which is held prisoner our lovely guest,” said Samos, “was suggested to me by a peacekeeping device of Ella Huruma. In Lake Ushindi, in certain areas frequented by tharlarion, there are high poles. Criminals, political prisoners, and such are rowed to these poles and left there, clinging to them. There are no platforms on the poles.”
“I understand,” I said.
“But I think you have nothing to fear,” said Samos, “if you remain within the borders of Schendi itself.”
I nodded. Schendi was a free port, administered by black merchants, members of the caste of merchants. It was also the home port of the League of Black Slavers but their predations were commonly restricted to the high seas and coastal towns well north and south of Schendi. Like most large-scale slaving operations they had the good sense to spare their own environs.
“Good luck, Captain,” said Samos.
We clasped hands.
As we exited from his hall, Samos spoke to one of the guards outside the huge double doors. “Linda,” he said.
“Yes, Captain,” said the guard, and left, moving down the hall. The Earth slave, Linda, was not kept in the pens. She was kept in the kennels off the kitchens. In spite of this she wore only the common house collar. Too, she was allotted a full share of domestic duties. Samos did not pamper his slaves, even those who knelt often at his slave ring.
I thought of the girl below, imprisoned on the tiny platform in the tharlarion cell. She would have the ring on her neck removed and then be placed in a slave sack and taken to the house of Bejar. I supposed that Bejar, or the slaver to whom he sold her, and the others, would mark her slave.
How piteously and helplessly she had clung to the pole. She had already begun to learn that Gor was not Earth.
“I wish you well, Captain,” I said to Samos.
“I wish you well, Captain,” said he to me. Again we clasped hands and then I strode from him, down the hallway toward the double gates leading from his house. At the first of the two gates, the one which consists of bars, while awaiting its opening, I glanced back.
Samos was no longer in sight, having gone to his chambers. A guard was in the hallway, with his spear.
The gate of bars was unlocked and I slipped through. It closed and locked, and I waited for the outer gate, that of iron-sheathed wood, to be opened.
I glanced back again and I saw the slave, Linda, naked, on a leash, being led to her master. She saw me, and looked down, shyly.
I exited then through the second gate of the house of Samos.
I had heard that she did the tile dance exquisitely. I almost envied Samos. I decided I would have the dance taught to my own slaves. I would be curious to learn which of them could perform it well, and which brilliantly.
“Greetings, Captain,” said Thurnock, from the boat.
“Greetings, Thurnock,” I said. I stepped down into the boat and took the tiller. The boat was thrust off into the dark water, and, in moments, we were rowing quietly toward my house.
2. I Attend The Market Of Vart
The girl screamed, fighting the sales collar and the position chain.
She tried to pull it from her throat.
The two male slaves, to the right, turned the crank of the windlass and she was drawn, in her turn, struggling, before the men.
The men in the crowd regarded her, curiously. Had she never been sold before?
She tried to turn away, and cover herself, her feet in the damp sawdust. The inside of her left thigh was stained yellow, as she had lost water in her terror.
The auctioneer did not strike her with his whip. He merely took her arms and lifted them, so that the position chain, attached to each side of the sales collar, lay across her upper arms. Then he had her clasp her hands behind the back of her neck, so that the chain, on each side of the collar, was in the crook of her arms, and she was exposed in such a way that she could be properly exhibited.
In a higher class market girls are usually fed a cathartic a few hours before the sale, and forced to relieve themselves shortly before their sale, a kettle passed down the line. In the current market such niceties, especially in large sales, were seldom observed.
By the hair the auctioneer pulled her head u
p and back so that her features might be observed by the men.
“Another loot girl taken by our noble Captain, Bejar, in his brilliant capture of the Blossoms of Telnus,” called the auctioneer. He was also the slaver, Vart, once Publius Quintus of Ar, banished from that city, and nearly impaled, for falsifying slave data. He had advertised a girl as a trained pleasure slave who, as it turned out, did not even know the eleven kisses. The Vart is a small, sharp-toothed winged mammal, carnivorous, which commonly flies in flocks.
“A blond-haired, blue-eyed barbarian,” called the auctioneer, “who speaks little or no Gorean, untrained, formerly free, a purse not yet rent, a thigh not yet kissed by the iron. What am I offered?”
“A copper tarsk,” called a man from the floor, a fellow who rented chains of work girls.
“I hear one tarsk,” called the auctioneer. “Do I hear more?”
“Let us have the next girl!” called a man. The slaves at the windlass tensed, but the auctioneer did not tell them to move the chain, removing the blond girl and bringing forth the next item on the chain.
“Surely I hear more?” called the auctioneer. “Do I hear two tarsks?” I suppose he may have paid two or three tarsks for her himself, to Bejar.
The girl was beautiful, but not as beautiful, it was true, as most Gorean slave girls. I did not think she would bring a high price. Unfortunately, then, almost anyone might buy her. I looked about. It seemed a common, motley crowd for the house of Vart, where men came generally to buy cheap girls, sometimes in lots, at bargain prices. His establishment was located in a warehouse near the docks. I conjectured there were some two hundred buyers and onlookers present. I wore the tunic, and leather apron and cap, of the metal worker.
“Look at her,” said the man beside me. “How ugly she is, what a she-tarsk.”
“A true she-tarsk,” agreed another.
They had seen, I gathered, few Earth girls. They did not understand the effects of years of insidious, pervasive, anti-biological conditioning. Their own culture, perhaps because of the limitations imposed on it by Priest-Kings, who did not wish to be threatened or destroyed by an animal with which they shared a world, had taken different turnings. They would not understand a world in which dirty jokes had point, a world in which a woman’s attractiveness was supposedly a function of the utilization of certain commercial products, or a world in which men and women were taught that they were the same, and in which they attempted to believe it, and would hysterically insist it was true, bravely ignoring the evidence of their reason, senses and experience. Civilization may be predicated upon the denial of human nature; it may also be predicated upon its fulfillment. The first word that an Earth baby learns is usually, “No.” The first word that a Gorean baby learns is commonly, “Yes.” The machine and the flower, I suspect, will never understand one another.
“Let us see another girl!” called yet another man.
“A new girl!” cried others.
Many women, of course, once under the helpless condition of slavery, increase considerably in beauty. This has to do primarily I think with psychological factors, in particular with the destruction of neurotic patterns, inculcated in the Earth female, of male-imitation, and the concurrent necessity imposed upon her by the whip, if necessary, to reveal and manifest her deeper self, that of a female. On the other hand, doubtless, the dieting, exercise, instruction in cosmetics and adornment, and the various forms of slave training, are also not without their effect.
“Do I hear two tarsks?” asked the auctioneer.
If a woman truly is, in her secret heart, a man’s slave, how can any female who is not a man’s slave be truly a woman? And how can any woman who is not truly a woman be happy?
Can a woman be free only when she is a slave? Is this not the paradox of the collar?
“Come Masters, Kind Sirs,” called the auctioneer. “Can you not see the promise of this slender, blond, barbarian beauty?”
There was laughter from the floor,
“What a cheap, slovenly man of business is our friend, Vart,” said the fellow next to me. “Look, he has not even had her branded.”
“Add that into her price,” grumbled another.
“At least you do not have to worry about that,” said a man, to me.
I wore the garb of a metal worker. Usually girls, if not marked by a slaver, are marked in the shop of a metal worker.
I smiled.
The auctioneer was now calling off her measurements, and her collar, and wrist and ankle-ring size. He had jotted these down on her back with a red-grease marking stick.
“Will not an urt hunter give me at least two tarsks for her?” called out the auctioneer good-humoredly, but with some understandable exasperation.
I wished that either Bejar or Vart had had her branded. It would be easier to keep track of her that way.
“She is not worth tying at the end of a rope and using in the water as a bait for urts,” called out a man, the fellow who had first suggested that she be removed from the sales position.
There was laughter.
“Perhaps you are right,” called out the auctioneer, agreeably.
“Would an urt want her?” asked another man.
There was more laughter.
“Perhaps an urt!” laughed a man.
“Go down to the canals,” said another man. “See if you can get two tarsks from the urts!”
There was again general laughter. The auctioneer, too, seemed amused. He apparently recognized that it was futile, and a bit amusing, to be attempting to get an interesting price on this particular bit of slave meat.
There were tears now, and bitterness, in the girl’s eyes. I knew, from her general attitudes and responses, that she understood very little of what was transpiring, and yet, clearly, she must understand that she was the butt of the laughter of the men, who held her in contempt and scorned her, who were not interested in her, who had not bid hardly upon her, who obviously wished her to be taken from their sight. She was a poor slave. She stood there, in the collar, with the position chain attached to each side of it, the chain, on each side, over an upper arm, held in the crook of her arms, her hands clasped behind her neck.
“I hate you,” she cried, suddenly, to them, in English. “I hate you!”
They, of course, did not understand her. The hostility of her mien, however, was clear.
The auctioneer took handfuls of her long blond hair, from the right side of her head, rolled it into a ball between his palms, and thrust it in her mouth. She stood there. She knew she must not spit out the hair. She knew she was not then to speak.
“I am afraid that you are almost worthless, my dear,” said the auctioneer to her, in Gorean.
She looked down, bitterly. I knew this type of response. The woman who fears she cannot please men then sometimes tends to feel hostility toward them, perhaps turning her own rage and inward disappointment outward, laying the blame upon them, and developing the obvious defensive reactions of belittling sexuality and its significance, and attempting, interestingly, to become manlike herself, to be one with them, though in an aggressive, competitive manner, often attempting to best them, as though one of themselves. Since she was not found desirable as a woman she attempts to become a more successful man than the men who failed to note her attractiveness. This type of response, however, however natural on Earth in such a situation, would not be feasible on Gor in a slave. Gorean free women, of course may do what they wish. The slave girl, on the other hand, does not compete with the master, but serves him. The blond-haired girl might or might not hate men, but on Gor, as a slave, she would serve them, and serve them well. The woman who fears that she is unattractive to men, of course, is generally mistaken. She need only learn to please men. A woman who pleases men, and pleases them on their own terms, would, on Earth, be a startling rarity, an incredibly unusual treasure. On Gor, of course, she would be only another of hundreds of thousands of delicious slaves. On Gor a readiness to please men, and an intention t
o do so, and on their own terms, is expected in any girl one buys. Should a girl prove sluggish in any respect, it is simple to put her under discipline. Eventually, of course a woman learns that to please a man on his own terms is the only thing that can, ultimately, fulfill her own deepest needs, those of the owned, submitting love slave.
“I am afraid you are almost worthless, my blue-eyed, blond-haired prize,” said the auctioneer to the girl. She looked out, dully, bitterly, at the crowd, her hands clasped behind her neck, hair from the right side of her bead looping up to her mouth.
I had little fear for her, however. Her neurotic responses, functions of her Earth conditioning, would have little place on Gor.
They cannot be maintained on Gor.
They would be broken.
She would learn slavery well, like any woman.
The crowd watched the auctioneer, who stood close by the girl.
I was curious, however, that Kurii had brought her to Gor. She did not seem, objectively, of quite the same high quality of beauty as most of the wenches brought by Kurii to Gor, either as agents or as simple, immediate slaves.
The auctioneer made certain her hands were clasped tightly behind the back of her neck. He actually took her hands in his and thrust them closely together. She looked at him, puzzled, slightly frightened. He stepped behind her.
I smiled.
She suddenly screamed, and sobbed and gasped, her hair, wet, expelled from her mouth. She looked at the auctioneer, in terror, but dared not release her hands from the back of her neck. He, with one hand, wadded together her hair, and thrust it again in her mouth. She must not cry out, or speak. In his right hand, coiled, he held the whip which he had removed from his belt a moment before. He had administered to her the slaver’s caress with the heavy coils. She shook her head, wildly. She tried to draw back, but his left hand, behind the small of her back, held her in place.
She threw back her head, shaking it wildly, negatively. Then there was a spasm. Then she sobbed, shuddering, tensing herself. The auctioneer then, holding her, brought the coils near her again. She put her head back, her eyes closed. But he did not touch her then. She opened her eyes, looking up at the ceiling of the warehouse in which she was being sold. Still he did not touch her. She whimpered. Then I saw her legs tense and move, slight muscles in the thighs and calves. She half rose on her toes. Still he did not touch her. Then I saw her, with a sob, thrust herself toward the coils. But still he did not touch her. Then, as she looked at him, tears in her eyes, he, looking at her, deigned to lift the coils against her piteous, arched, pleading body. She then writhed at the chain, sobbing, her hands clenched behind her neck, her teeth clenched on her own hair. She tried to hold the whip between her thighs. He then withdrew the whip, and turned to the crowd, smiling. He fastened the whip at his belt.
