by John Norman
“She is a beauty, is she not?” asked the man.
“Yes,” I said. “Is it your intention to offer her bright feasting clothes?”
“I am not insane,” he said. “Kadluk will never unload her.”
I thought his assessment of the situation was perhaps true.
“Have you a friend who might know your name?” I asked.
He called to a fellow who was nearby. “Someone would like to know the name of someone,” he said.
“He is Akko,” said the man. He then left.
“I can speak my own name,” I said to him. “I am from the south. Our names do not go away when we speak them.”
“How do you know?” asked Akko.
“I will show you,” I said. “My name is Tarl. Now listen.” I waited a moment. “Tarl,” I said. “See?”
“Interesting,” granted Akko.
“My name did not go away,” I said.
“Perhaps it came back quickly,” he suggested.
“Perhaps,” I said.
“In the north,” he said, “we do not think one should take unnecessary risks.”
“That is doubtless wise,” I granted.
“Good hunting,” he said.
“Good hunting,” I said. He left. Akko, or Shirt Tail, was a good fellow.
I smelled roast tabuk.
The great hunt had been successful. I did not know if it were morning, or afternoon, or night. In these days the sun, low on the horizon, circles, it seems endlessly, in the sky.
Six days ago Imnak and I, and our girls, had descended from the height of the pass of Tancred. The great hunt had been already in progress. Hundreds of the women and children of the red hunters, fanned out for pasangs, shouting, beating on pans had turned the herd toward the great alley of stone cairns. These cairns, of piled stone, each some four or five feet high, each topped with black dirt, form a long funnel. more than two pasangs in depth. The herd, which in the grazing on the tundra, has scattered is reformed to some extent by the drivers. It, or thousands of its animals, fleeing the drivers, pour toward the large, open end of the funnel. The stone cairns, which are perhaps supposed to resemble men, serve, perhaps psychologically, to fence in and guide the herd. The animals seem generally unwilling to break the imaginary boundary which might be projected between cairns. For example, the human seeing three dots spaced one way “sees” a line; seeing three dots spaced another way, he “sees” a triangle, and so on. One may fear to transgress a boundary which, in fact, exists only in one’s mind. It is not an unusual human being who finds himself a prisoner in a cell which, if he but knew it, lacks walls. Whatever the explanation the tabuk, generally, will postpone breaking the “wall” as long as possible. They flee along the alley of cairns. At the end of the cairns, of course, they turn about, milling, and many are slain, until some, wiser or more panic-stricken than others, break loose and, nostrils wide, snorting, trot to freedom and the moss of the open tundra.
I watched two men wrestling.
I had not yet spoken to Imnak about the carving of bluish stone among my belongings, the carving of a Kur, with an ear half torn away.
I could see the blue line of the Hrimgar Mountains in the distance to the south. To the north the tundra stretched forth to the horizoll.
Many people do not understand the nature of the polar north. For one thing, it is very dry. Less snow falls there generally than falls in most lower latitudes. Snow that does fall, of course, is less likely to melt. Most of the land is tundra, a cool, generally level or slightly wavy, treeless plain. In the summer this tundra, covered with mosses, shrubs and lichens, because of the melted surface ice and the permafrost beneath, preventing complete drainage, is soft and spongy. In the winter, of course, and in the early spring and late fall, desolate, bleak and frozen, wind-swept, it presents the aspect of a barren, alien landscape. At such times the red hunters will dwell by the sea, in the spring and fall by its shores, and, in the winter, going out on the ice itself.
I stepped aside to let a young girl pass, who carried two baskets of eggs, those of the migratory arctic gant. They nest in the mountaim of the Hrimgar and in steep, rocky outcroppings, called bird cliffs, found here and there jutting out of the tundra. The bird cliffs doubtless bear some geological relation to the Hrimgar chains. When such eggs are frozen they are eaten like apples.
I saw a woman putting out a pan for a domestic snow sleen to lick clean.
In another place several women sat on a fur blanket playing a cat’s cradle game. They were quite skilled. This game is generally popular in the Gorean north. It is played not only by the red hunters, but in Hunjer and Skjern, and in Torvaldsland, and as far south as the villages in the valley of the Laurius.
The tundra at this time of year belies its reputation for bleakness. In many places it bursts into bloom with small flowers. Almost all of the plants of this nature are perennials, as the growing season is too short to permit most annuals to complete their growing cycle. In the winter buds of many of these plants lie dormant in a fluffy sheath which protects them from cold. Some two hundred and forty different types of plants grow in the Gorean arctic within five hundred pasangs of the pole. None of these, interestingly, is poisonous, and none possesses thorns. During the summer plants and flowers will grow almost anywhere in the arctic except on or near the glacial ice.
At certain times in the summer even insects will appear, black, long-winged flies, in great swarms, coating the sides of tents and the faces of men.
Two children raced past me, playing tag.
I looked to the north. It was there that Zarendargar waited.
“Greetings, Master,” said Thimble.
“Greetings,” I said to her. She was dressed, save for her bondage strings, in much the same way as most of the women of the red hunters, bare-breasted, with high boots and panties. Thistle, however, behind her, was naked, in a northern yoke and on a leather leash. The northern yoke is either of wood or bone, and is drilled in three places. The one Thistle wore was of wood. It was not heavy. It passed behind her neck at which point one of the drilled holes occurred. The other two holes occurred at the terminations of the yoke. A leather strap is knotted about the girl’s wrist, passed through the drilled hole at one end of the yoke, usually that on her left, taken up through the hole behind the neck, looped twice about her neck, threaded back down through the center hole, taken up through the other hole at the end, usually the one at her right, and tied about her right wrist. She is thus fastened in the yoke. From each end of the yoke hung a large sack.
“We are going to pick moss and grass,” she said. Moss is used as wicks for the lamps. Grass, dried, is used for insulation between the inner soles of the boots and the bottom of the fur stockings in the winter.
“That is good,” I said. “Why is Thistle yoked?”
“It pleased me, Master,” said Thimble, first girl. There was little love lost between the girls.
“Was she insubordinate?” I asked.
“She said a sharp word to me,” said Thimble.
“Did you switch her, too?” I asked.
“Of course, Master,” said Thimble.
“Excellent,” I said. Discipline must be kept in the tent.
I looked at Thistle. She met my eyes, briefly, and then looked down. She was quite attractive. I had not as yet had either Thimble or Thistle.
“Is Imnak finished yet with the new slave girl?” I asked, referring to Arlene.
“I think so, Master,” said Thimble, smiling. “At least he has tied her to a pole behind the tent.”
“Why is that?” I asked.
“I do not think she is much good, Master,” said Thimble, one slave girl appraising another.
“Do not let me detain you from your labors,” I said.
Thistle, suddenly, knelt down before me, yoked, and put her lips to my boot. Her head was jerked up by the leash in the hand of Thimble. Her eyes were moist “Master!” she begged.
“Come, Slave!” snapped Thimble
, and pulled her to her feet and dragged her away, behind her. Thistle looked over her shoulder, at me. I gave no sign of response. She stumbled away, on Thimble’s leash. I smiled to myself. Thistle, as I had expected, was the first of the girls to begin to understand and feel her slavery.
“Help us, Tarl,” said Akko, whom I had met earlier in the day.
“He is a big fellow,” said a man.
“Yes,” said another.
I followed Akko and his friends to a place where two teams of men waited, a heavy, braided rope of twisted sleen-hide stretched between them.
They put me at the end of the rope. Soon, to the enthusiastic shouts of observers, we began the contest. Four times the rope grew taut, and four times our team won. I was much congratulated, and slapped on the back.
I was, accordingly, in a good mood when I returned to Imnak’s tent.
“Greetings, my friend,” I said. I had noted that Arlene, her wrists crossed and over her head, bound, was fastened to the horizontal pole of a meat rack, supported by its two tripods of inclined poles.
“Have you had a good day?” inquired Imnak, politely.
“Yes,” I said.
“That is good,” he said.
I waited a while. Then I said, “Have you had a good day?”
“Perhaps someone has not had a good day,” said Imnak.
“I am sorry to hear that,” I said.
“Perhaps someone who won a wager,” he said, “is not well repaid for his having won.”
“Oh?” I said.
“Sometimes,” he said, “it is hardly worth winning.” He shrugged.
“I will return in a moment,” I said.
I went back of the tent to Arlene.
“I want to talk to you,” she said. “I will have no more of this treatment on your part. You cannot simply give me to anyone you please.”
“I did not hear you say, ‘Master’,” I said.
“Master,” she said.
“You are never again,” she said, “to give me to another man.” Her eyes flashed.
“I gather linnak was not pleased,” I said.
“Imnak!” she cried.
“Yes, Imnak,” I said. I reached up and cut her loose. I, with my left hand, then took her by the hair.
“Please, stop!” she said.
I turned her face to look at me. With my right hand I jerked the leather at her throat. “What is this?” I asked.
“A collar,” she said.
“You are a slave,” I said.
“Yes,” she whispered, “Master,” frightened.
I threw her to my feet and she looked up at me. “You will now crawl to Imnak,” I said, “and beg to try and please him again. If he is not pleased, do you understand, I will feed you to the sleen.”
“No, no!” she whispered.
“It is up to you, Slave Girl,” I said. “For what do you think you are kept and fed?”
“No,” she whispered.
I looked down at her.
“You would not,” she whispered.
“I should have left you at the remain of the wall,” I said.
“No,” she whispered. Then she looked up at me, and reached out her hand. “Sometimes I feel so slave,” she said. She touched my thigh with her finger tips. “Sometimes I feel I want your touch, and as a slave girl.” I could scarcely hear her. “Your touch,” she said, “not his.”
“What you want is unimportant,” I said. “If Imnak is not pleased,” I said, “you will be fed to the sleen.”
She looked up at me, in horror. “Would you do that?” she asked.
“Yes,” I said.
“I do not even know how to please a man!” she wept.
“You are an intelligent woman,” I said. “I suggest, if you wish to live, that you apply your intelligence to the task.”
Her tears, her head down, shaking, fell into the turf.
“Do you obey your master?” I asked.
“Yes,” she whispered. “I obey my master.”
“On your belly,” I told her.
On her belly she crawled to Imnak. No longer was she a commander among the agents of Kuril. She was now a naked slave girl obeying her master.
“Have you had a good day?” I later asked Imnak.
“Yes,” he said, “I have had a good day.”
“How is the auburn-haired slave beast?” I asked him.
“Splendid,” he said. “But Thimble and Thistle are better.”
I did not doubt but that this was true. But then they had been slaves longer, too.
“Make us tea, Arlene,” I said.
“Yes, Master,” she said. She was very pretty. I wondered what she would look like in a snatch of a slave silk, and a true collar.
Imnak, and Thimble and Thistle were asleep. Outside the low sun, as it did in the summer, circled the sky, not setting.
“Master,” whispered Arlene.
“Yes,” I said.
“May I share your sleeping bag?” she asked.
“Do you beg it?” I asked.
“Yes, Master,” she said.
I permitted her to creep into the bag, beside me. I put my arm about her small body. Her head was on my chest.
“Today, you much increased your slavery over me, did you not?” she asked.
“Perhaps,” I said.
“You forced me to crawl to a man and serve him,” she said. “How strong you are,” she said, wonderingly. She kissed me. “I did not know what it was like to be a slave,” she said.
“You still do not know,” I told her.
“But you are teaching me, aren’t you?” she asked.
“Perhaps,” I said.
“It is a strange feeling,” she said, “being a slave.”
“Does it frighten you?” I asked.
“Yes,” she said, “it frightens me, terribly.” I felt her hair on my chest. “One is so helpless,” she said.
“You are not yet a true slave,” I told her.
“Sometimes I sense,” she said, “what it might be, to be a true slave.”
“Oh?” I asked.
“Yes,” she said.
“And it frightens you?” I asked.
“Yes,” she said, “but, too, and this is frightening, too, I—” She was silent.
“Go on,” I told her.
“Must I speak?” she asked.
“Yes,” I told her.
“Too,” she wept, “I—I find myself desiring it, intensely.” I felt her tears. “How terrible I am!” ~he said.
“Such feelings are normal in feminine women,” I told her. “Sometimes it takes courage to yield to them.”~
“I must try to fight these feelings,” she said.
“As you wish,” I said, “but in the end you will yield to them, either because you wish to do so or because I force you to do so.”
“Oh?” she asked.
“Yes,” I said, “in the end you will become a true slave.”
She was silent.
“You were brought to Gor to be a slave,” I said. “When your tasks were finished at the wall, you would have been put in silk, collared and placed at a man’s feet.”
“Do you truly think so, Master?” she asked.
“Of course,” I said. “Consider your beauty, and the nature of the men of Gor.”
She shuddered. “I fear slavery, and myself,” she said.
“You are a true slave,” I told her, “No,” she said.
“Only you do not yet know it,” I said.
“No,” she said.
“Fight your feelings,” I said. “I will,” she said.
“In the end it will do you no good,” I said.
She was silent.
“You have been counter-instinctually conditioned,” I said. “You have been programmed with value sets developed for competitive, territorial males. There are complex historical and economic reasons for this. Your society is not interested in the psycho-biological needs of human females. The machine is designed with i
ts own best interests in mind, not those of its human components.”
“I do not want to be a component in a machine,” she said.
“Then,” said I, “listen in the quiet for the beating of your own heart.”
“It is hard to hear in the noise of the machine,” she whispered.
“But it beats,” I said. “Listen.”
She kissed me, softly.
“You have been taught to function,” I said, “not to be alive.”
“How wrong it is to be alive!” she wept.
“Perhaps not,” I suggested.
“I dare not be true to myself,” she said.
“Why not?” I asked.
“Because I think,” she whispered, “deep within me, there lies a slave.”
“One day you will be awakened,” I said, “and will discover that it is you yourself who are that slave.”
“Oh, no,” she said.
“Surely you have been curious about her,” I said, “about that girl, your deep and true self.”’
“No, no!” she said. Then for a long time she was quiet. Then she said, “Yes, I have wondered about her.”
I put my hand gently on her head.
“Even as a girl,” she said, “lying alone in bed, I wondered what it might be like to lie soft and small, perfumed, helpless, in the arms of a strong man, knowing that he would treat me as he wished, doing with me whatever he wanted.”
“It is uncompromising manhood which thrills you,” I said. “It is found but rarely on your native world.”