by John Norman
"It seems," said he to me, "that you will live, if only for an Ahn longer."
"It is you, perhaps," said I, "whose life she thusly prolongs."
He turned away, to look out over the railing on the platform, and out over the high wall, to the thousands of animals, like cattle, beyond.
"Can you truly do your own killing," I asked, "or do you need, as in my house, to enlist the services of a female slave to aid you?" I recalled Vella. She had given him a jacket of mine, that he might use it to give my scent to the sleen. What a traitress she was! I had known she had once served Kurii. I had not known at that time that the pretty little slave, the former secretary on Earth, still licked their claws. She would no longer receive an opportunity to betray me. Death was too good for her. When I returned to Port Kar I would plunge her into a slavery deeper than she would believe possible.
The man, angry, did not respond to me.
"You are not Bertram of Lydius," I said to him. "Who are you?"
"I do not speak to slaves," he said.
My fists clenched in the manacles.
"Did you truly enlist the services of a female slave in his house?" asked my captor.
"I do not wish to speak before him," said the man.
"Do so," she snapped.
I saw him look at her, angrily. I read the look in his eyes. I smiled to myself. I saw that it had been to him that she, when her work was done, had been promised as a slave.
"I am waiting," she said.
"Very well," said he. "It is true that I enlisted the services of a lowly bond girl in his house, to obtain material from which I might give scent to the sleen."
"She is a spy there?" she asked.
"No," he said, "I tricked her. I used her as a mere dupe in my scheme. It was not difficult. She was only a woman."
My captor's eyes flashed.
"Only a slave girl," he said.
"That's better," she said. Then she said, "Slave girls are so stupid."
"Yes," he said, "that is true."
I was amused. I wondered if she would change her opinion as to the intelligence of slave girls when she herself wore the collar. As a matter of fact intelligence is one of the major criteria used by Gorean slavers when scouting an Earth girl for capture and abduction to the chains of Gor. The other two major criteria appear to be beauty and femininity. Intelligent, beautiful, feminine women make the best slaves. Who would want a stupid slave? Too, intelligent women can feel their slavery much more keenly than their simpler sisters. This makes it much more amusing to keep them in bondage. Too, because of their intelligence they more swiftly realize the biological rightness of their predicament, though they may fight it longer. The intelligent woman is more apt to trust her own intelligence, and intuitions and feelings than the duller woman, who is more apt to be a naive function of the stereotypes and images with which she has been conditioned. The more intelligent woman is quicker to realize, though more tardy to admit, that it is right for her beauty to be enslaved. Her yielding, too, to her secret realities, when she yields honestly and fully to them, is a glorious thing. At last she whispers, on her knees, to him, "I am a slave, Master." "Go to the furs," he says, gently. "Yes, Master," she says, and obeys.
But many highly intelligent women have fought these battles out in their heart long before they see a chain or the steel of a collar.
They live waiting for a master. They wait for the man who will look into their eyes and see what they truly are, and into whose eyes they will look, and see that he knows their secret. When they are alone, he will say to her, softly, "Kneel, Slave." They kneel. They are then truly a slave, his.
"Tell him your name," she ordered the fellow on the platform.
"I do not speak to slaves," he said.
"Obey me!" she said.
He turned and went down the stairs of the platform.
"He is called Drusus," she said. "He is of the metal workers."
"He is not a metal worker," I said. "He is of the Assassins."
"No," she said.
"I have seen him use a knife," I said. "He did not obey you," I observed.
She looked at me, angrily.
"Your days in authority here," I said, "are numbered."
"I am in command here!" she said.
"For the time," I said. I looked out over the milling tabuk.
They were northern tabuk, massive, tawny and swift, many of them ten hands at the shoulder, a quite different animal from the small, yellow-pelted, antelopelike quadruped of the south. On the other hand, they, too, were distinguished by the single horn of the tabuk. On these animals, however, that object, in swirling ivory, was often, at its base, some two and one-half inches in diameter, and better than a yard in length. Such an animal, charging, given its size, weight and speed, and the swiftness of its reflexes, is extremely dangerous. Usually they are killed from a distance, often from behind shields, with arrows.
My thoughts strayed to Vella, once Elizabeth Cardwell. Apparently she had not knowingly collaborated with Drusus, he who had called himself Bertram of Lydius. He had tricked her in the matter of the sleen. She had been his dupe. It would not then be necessary to be too hard on her. It would be sufficient, when I returned to Port Kar, merely to have her whipped, to be sure, well whipped, for her stupidity.
I put her from my mind, for she was only slave.
"It must be difficult to place the logs of the wall," I said, "because of the permafrost."
"How difficult you will learn," she said. She was still angry that her authority had been flouted in my presence.
At this latitude, even in the summer, the earth only thaws to a depth of some two feet. Beneath this depth one strikes still frozen ground. It is almost like stone. Picks and drive bars ring upon it.
The construction of the wall was, in its way, a considerable engineering feat. That it had been accomplished by men, with simple tools, said much for the determination of the Kurii, and the rigors imposed upon its laborers by their guardsmen.
"You will see who is in authority here," she said, angrily. I felt the line on my neck jerk tight. I accompanied her down the stairs of the platform.
"Guards!" she called. Some four guardsmen came to her, running.
"Bring Drusus to me," she said, "if necessary in chains."
They hurried from her. In a few moments they returned, he who called himself Drusus with them.
She pointed arrogantly to the ground at her feet. "Kneel," she said to him.
Angrily he knelt.
"Tell him your name," she said to him.
The man looked up at me, in fury. "I am Drusus," he said.
"Attend now to your duties, Drusus," she said.
He got to his feet and left. I saw that she was truly in authority. If her tenure of authority were to be soon terminated there was as yet no sign of it. She looked at me, and tossed her head arrogantly. She was supreme among these men.
"It was Drusus who identified you for me," she said.
"I see," I said.
"Three prisoners have been captured," said a man, coming up to her.
"Bring them before me," she said.
The three prisoners, their hands bound behind their backs, were brought forward. One was a man, the other two were girls, slave girls. The man was on an individual neck tether, in the hand of a guard. The girls were on a common tether, the throat of each tied at a different end of a long strap; it served as their common leash, a guard grasping it in the center. The man was the red hunter I had seen at the fair. He no longer possessed his bow or other accouterments. The two girls were the slaves he had purchased at the fair, the Earth girls, one blond, the other dark-haired, who had worn the torn red pullover. He was dressed as he had been at the fair, in trousers and boots of fur, but bare-chested. The two girls now, however, wore fur wrapped on their feet, tied with hide string, and brief fur tunics. The hair of each was tied behind her head with a red string. Under the tether on the throat of each there was tied an intricately knotted set
of four leather strings. In such a way the red hunters identify their animals. The owner of the beast may be determined from the knotting of the strings.
"Kneel," said a guard.
The two slave girls immediately knelt, obedient to a master's command.
My lovely captor regarded them with contempt.
The red hunter, he of the polar basin, had not knelt. Perhaps he did not speak Gorean well enough to understand the command. There are several barbarian languages spoken on Gor, usually in more remote areas. Also, some of the dialects of Gorean itself are almost unintelligible. On the other hand, Gorean, in its varieties, serves as the lingua franca of civilized Gor. There are few Goreans who cannot speak it, though with some it is almost a second language. Gorean tends to be rendered more uniform through the minglings and transactions of the great fairs. Too, at certain of these fairs, the caste of scribes, accepted as the arbiters of such matters, stipulate that certain pronunciations and grammatical formations, and such, are to be preferred over others. The Fairs, in their diverse ways, tend to standardize the language, which might otherwise disintegrate into regional variations which, over centuries, might become mutually unintelligible linguistic modalities, in effect and practice, unfortunately, separate languages. The Fairs, and, I think, the will of Priest-Kings, prevents this.
"No," said the red hunter. He had spoken in Gorean.
He was struck to his knees by the blows of spears. He looked up, angrily. "Free our tabuk!" he said.
'Take him away and put him to work on the wall," said my lovely captor.
The man was dragged away.
"What have we here?" Sidney Anderson asked, regarding the two girls.
"Polar slaves, beasts of the red hunters," said a man.
"Look up at me," she said.
The girls looked into her eyes.
"You have the look of Earth girls," said my captor, in English.
I thought her perceptive. They could still be distinguished from Gorean collar girls. There was still something about them which, to a discerning eye, betrayed their intricate, constricted Earth origin. Later, if they had the proper master or series of masters, it would no longer be possible to do this by sight. They would be betrayed then, usually, only by their accent.
The matter of accent is interesting, and more complex than might be initially understood. When a girl is taught Gorean, particularly in a slaver's house, the Gorean she is taught will often contain certain subtleties of pronunciation of which she is likely to be unaware. Thus, after a year or two, a girl who now speaks a beautiful, fluent Gorean, one for most practical purposes indistinguishable from that of a native Gorean, is still likely, inadvertently, unbeknownst to herself, perhaps in so little as the shading of a phoneme, to reveal her Earth origin. This is independent, of course, of the sort of slave training which, in its sensuousness and femininity, becomes a part of a girl's very being, affecting her attitudes, movements, carriage, body language, and such. It is said that skilled slavers can detect a slave even when clad in the robes of concealment. They cannot help how delicious and exciting they have now become. Too, attempting to disguise these things, now so much a part of the slave, tends to make the imposture, at least to a skilled eye, obvious. To be sure, such impostures are almost always attempted not by an Earth female enslaved but by a Gorean female enslaved. The Earth girl, in her terror of the masters, at the feet of whom she knows herself truly enslaved, is likely to have a much more realistic understanding of the futility of such a ruse than her Gorean sister, who, after all, has probably once been a Gorean free woman. The Earth-girl slave knows that there is no escape for her, that she is a slave and will remain a slave. Too, the whip is cruel, the teeth of sleen are sharp, and leech plants blossom.
There are, of course, several ways of detecting an Earth girl, other than her accent.
Interrogated, she is likely to be ignorant of many details of the Gorean world which are common knowledge to Goreans. A vaccination mark might prove indicative. Too, a filling found in a tooth is usually a sign of an Earth girl. It is not an infallible sign, however, for not all Earth girls have fillings and some dental work is done upon occasion by the caste of physicians on Gorean girls.
Cavities are rare in Goreans, incidentally, because of their simple diet and the general absence of cruel emotional stress, with its physiological and chemical consequences, particularly during puberty. Gorean culture tends to view the body, its development, its appetites and needs, with congeniality. We do not grow excited about the growth of trees, and Goreans do not grow excited about the growth of people. In some respects the Goreans are, perhaps, cruel. Yet they have never seen fit, through lies, to inflict suffering on children. They seem generally to me to be fond of children. Perhaps that is why they seldom hurt them. Even slave children, incidentally, are seldom abused or treated poorly, and are given much freedom, until they reach their young adulthood. It is then, of course, that they are taught that they are slaves. Men come, and the young male is tied and taken to the market. If the young slave is a female she may or may not be sent to a market. Many young slave maidens are raised almost as daughters in a home. It is often a startling and frightening day for such a girl when, one morning, she finds herself suddenly, unexpectedly, put in a collar and whipped, and made to begin to pay the price of her now-evident, now deliciously expressed slave beauty.
I looked at the two kneeling slaves, the properties of the red hunter.
They had clearly not yet learned the joy of the slave.
Much, of course, depends on the master, and his strength.
Perhaps a word or two might be in order pertaining to female bondage. Its perils, of course, its risks, its possible miseries, are evident. They need little emphasis. On the other hand, there are subtleties and realities involved in these matters which may elude the casual observer. These subtleties and realities may escape the notice, for example, of the egotist, who is anxious to impose his own views on an occasionally recalcitrant world. The strongest chain that can bind a female slave is, of course, love, her love for her master. That is the strongest of all bonds. Too, as a simple matter of anthropological observation, freedom, however estimable it may be if abstractly considered, certainly does not guarantee happiness nor is it necessary to happiness. This is not to deny the value of freedom, which is surely precious. It is rather to call attention to other values, as well, such as love, happiness, fulfillment, joy, pleasure, and such. Freedom is neither a necessary nor a sufficient condition for happiness. Too, it is a psychological commonplace that it is frequently associated with misery, guilt, conflict, loneliness, confusion, self-torture, human torment, and such. One might also note, at the risk of being politically suspect, that the sexes may not be absolutely identical. Politics may require men and women to be identical, but biology remains skeptical. Falsification is doubtless essential to certain political agendas, and the power-seekings of certain parties, but falsification remains falsification. A useful lie promulgated with energy and persistence has much power, but so, too, do the facts of nature. Is happiness important? If not, why not? And if it is important, why not look for it where it is incontrovertibly found? An individual who finds happiness in love, submission, obedience, and service, and in a guiltless, fulfilling, joyous, liberated sexuality, and such, is not obviously inferior to one who is lonely, miserable, angry, contrary, envious, spiteful, difficult, unpleasant, and so on. Happiness is largely connected with doing, and being, as one wishes, as one is content to be, and eager to be, and to be behaving in a way which is culturally accepted and approved. One of the things which apparently annoys some free women, and which they profess to find incomprehensible, is the happiness of so many of their embonded sisters. How is it, they wonder, that beauties in tunics and collars, are obviously so much happier than they? And how is it that the beauties seem to prize the very tokens of their bondage, the bracelets, the collars, the lovely, revealing tunics, and such, considered so degrading by, and yet exercising such a fascination over,
their contemptuous free sisters? The slaves, of course, find in the collar, and tunic, and such, symbols of their new freedom, their welcomed liberation into true womanhood, and in them an indication of the transformative fulfillment at last of their deepest femininity, the outward signs, badges, so to speak, of the guiltless, inward joy which is now theirs, of the helpless submission, and the selfless surrender and love, which is their newly found happiness, and rapture, emergent inevitably, and by nature, from the categorical, uncompromised realities of their unconditional servitude. Many, it seems, would rather submit to a strong man than dominate a weakling, or endure the boredom of a politically approved relationship, contractually associating with what is, in effect, a devirilized, neutered identical.
They love their bondage, and thrive within it. Is this mysterious, truly? One doubts it.
"Are you not Earth girls?" asked blue-eyed, auburn-haired Sidney Anderson of the two kneeling girls, in their short fur tunics, the strings on their throats, and tethers, their hands tied behind their backs.
"Yes! Yes!" said the blond girl suddenly, "Yes!"
Sidney Anderson, I conjectured, was the first person on Gor whom they had met who spoke English.
"What are you?" asked Sidney Anderson.
The two girls looked wildly at one another; they pulled at their bound wrists.
It is pleasant to see a woman squirming, bound.
She is so helpless, and beautiful.
It was clear they did not know best how to respond to the question.
"We are prisoners, captives!" exclaimed the blonde.
"Once, perhaps," sneered the lovely Sidney Anderson, "but no longer. Do you think I cannot see the strings on your throats? I will ask you again what you are. Think carefully before you reply, sluts, or it will not go easily with you. —What are you?"
I wondered if it was as clear to them as it was to me that they had little hope for understanding, pity, or succor from the stern, regal figure before whom they knelt, which regarded them with such ill-concealed disdain.
"We are slaves, Mistress," said the blond girl.
