Players of Gor

by Norman, John;

  The girl kneeling beside me held my leg and pressed her cheek against my thigh. She kissed me. She looked up at me. “Please take me to a pleasure rack, Master,” she said.

  “Be patient,” I told her.

  “Yes, Master,” she moaned.

  The next performance, following on the heels of the first, was a love-potion farce, a form of farce with many variations. In this one the principal characters were the Golden Courtesan, Chino, the Merchant and the Pedant. The Merchant was played by the harassed, paunchy-looking fellow I had seen earlier. The Pedant, this time, was depicted not as a member of the Scribes but as a member of the Physicians. In brief, the Merchant, intending to visit the Golden Courtesan, sends Chino for a love potion. Chino, of course, obtains not a love potion but, by deft substitution, a powerful laxative from the Physician. The Merchant takes the potion and visits the Golden Courtesan, with Chino in attendance. Predictably, the Merchant must continually interrupt his initial advances which, of course, are bumbling and clumsy, and not much to the liking of the courtesan, to rush hastily to the side of the stage where, conveniently, may be found a great pot. Chino, meanwhile, exaggeratedly, in these interstices, is assuring the courtesan of the merchant’s prowess as a lover. He is so successful that the courtesan soon begins to pant and call the merchant, who, eagerly, rushes back, only in a moment, unfortunately, to be forced to beat a new retreat to the pot. Chino then again begins to reassure the confused, uncertain courtesan. Soon he is demonstrating, even, with caresses and kisses, all in the name of the merchant, just how skillful the merchant would be. The courtesan becomes more and more helpless and excited. Meanwhile the Physician comes by to check up on the efficacy of his potion. His conversation with the merchant provides ample opportunity for double-entendres and talking at cross-purposes. The physician, in departing, puzzled that the potion has not yet taken effect, assures the merchant, sitting on the great pot, that he should allow it a little more time, that doubtless he will soon feel its effects. The merchant, however, convinced that this is not his day, now hobbles home, clutching the great pot. Chino grins and shrugs. He then leaps upon the Golden Courtesan. The time, after all, has been paid for.

  In a moment the actors had returned to the stage, bowing. With them, too, were some of the actors from the earlier farces, usually presented in rounds of four or five. Some tarsk bits rattled to the boards. These were gathered in by the Chino and Lecchio. The Bina and Brigella, too, were now passing through the crowd with copper bowls. They were both very lovely, in particular, the Brigella. Such girls, like the other actresses with a small troupe, usually serve also as tent girls. It helps the troupe to meet expenses. I placed a tarsk bit in the bowl of the Brigella. “Thank you, Master,” she said.

  The paunchy fellow, his belly swinging, now out of character as the merchant, was informing the audience that a new round of farces, all different, would be performed within the Ahn. I saw his eyes momentarily cloud and, glancing back, I think I detected a possible cause for his distress. In the crowd was an officer of the Master of Revels, with two members of the Council Guard.

  I drew the girl beside me to her feet. “Oh, yes,” she breathed, “now, now, please,” holding me, pressing her naked, collared beauty piteously against me, “take me to a pleasure rack. Now, please. I am so ready. I am so hot!”

  “Not yet,” I told her.

  I then bought her a pastry from a vendor. “Eat it,” I told her, “slowly, very slowly. Make it last a long time.”

  “Yes, Master,” she said.

  When a woman is ordered to eat a pastry in this fashion, she knows that she is barely to touch it, and then only once in a while, with her small teeth. Rather, primarily, almost entirely, she is to address herself to it with her tongue. This puts her under a good discipline, is a good exercise for the tongue and tends to increase sexual heat. In the case of the free woman the tongue is usually something which serves rather conventional purposes, for example, it helps her to talk. In the case of the slave girl, however, it serves other purposes, as well. It also serves, for example, as a love tool. She is taught what to do with it.

  I moved along the front of the stage, through the crowd, the slave, the pastry clutched in her hands, at my elbow.

  I paused only a yard or two from the end of the stage, before a Kaissa booth.

  I saw a large figure walking by. It might have stalked off one of the long, narrow, roofed stages of Ar, such as serve commonly for serious drama, spectacle and high comedy. It wore the cothornoi, a form of high platformlike boots, a long robe padded in such a way as to suggest an incredible breadth of shoulder, a large, painted linen mask, with exaggerated features, which covered the entire head, and the onkos, a towering, imposing headdress. Such costumes are often used by major characters in serious dramas. This exaggeration in size and feature, I take it, is intended to be commensurate with their importance. They are, at any rate, made to seem larger than life. I did not know if the fellow were an actor or simply someone adopting such a costume, all in the fun of carnival. As he walked away I noted that the mask had a different expression on the back. That device, not really very common in such masks, makes possible a change of expression without having recourse to a new mask.

  A fellow, a pulley-maker I recognized from the arsenal, and the arsenal Kaissa champion, rose to his feet, from where he had been sitting cross-legged before the Kaissa board in the Kaissa booth. “A marvelous game,” he said, rubbing his head, bewildered. “I was humiliated. I was devastated. I do not even know how he did it. In fourteen moves he did it! In fourteen moves he captured three pieces and it would have been capture of Home Stone on the next! Perhaps there were illegal moves. Perhaps I did not see everything he did!”

  “Try another game,” encouraged the paunchy fellow, he who had been associated with the stage and who, it seemed, had an interest also in the Kaissa booth. “Perhaps your luck will change!”

  But the pulley-maker, almost reeling, made his way away, through the crowds.

  “Why did you do that?” asked the paunchy fellow of the man sitting behind the board.

  “He thought he knew how to play Kaissa,” said the man behind the board.

  “How much have you taken in tonight?” asked the paunchy fellow, angrily, pointing to the copper, lidded pot, with the coin slot cut in its top, chained shut, near the low Kaissa table.

  The fellow behind the table began to move the pieces about on the board.

  The paunchy fellow seized up the pot. He shook it, assessing its contents. “Four, five tarsk bits?” he asked. Judging from the timing and the sounds of the coins bounding about inside the pot there was not much there.

  “Three,” said the fellow behind the board.

  “You could have carried him for at least twenty moves,” said the paunchy fellow. He replaced the copper coin pot, chained shut, beside the Kaissa table.

  “I did not care to do so,” said the fellow behind the board.

  Interestingly the man behind the board wore black robes and a hoodlike mask, also black, which covered his entire head. He did not wear the red-and-yellow-checked robes of the caste of players. He was not, thus, I assumed, of that caste. Had he been of the players he would doubtless have worn their robes. They are quite proud of their caste. His skills, however, I conjectured, must be considerable. Apparently the arsenal champion, one of the best twenty or thirty players in Port Kar, had been no match for him. Perhaps he had engaged in illegal moves. That seemed more likely than the fact that he, a fellow like him, associated with actors and carnival folk, and such, could best the arsenal champion. It was carnival time, of course. Perhaps the champion had been drunk.

  “If the game is not interesting for them, if they do not think they are really playing, seriously, they will not want a second or a third game,” said the paunchy fellow. “We want them to come back! We want the board busy! That is how we are making the money!”

  The price for a game is usually something between a tarsk bit and a copper tarsk.
If the challenger wins or draws, the game is free. Sometimes a copper tarsk, or even a silver tarsk, is nailed to one of the poles of the booth. It goes to the challenger if he wins and the game is free, if he draws. This is because a skillful player, primarily by judicious exchanges and careful position play, can often bring about a draw. Less risk is involved in playing for a draw than a win, of course. Conservative players, ahead in tournament play, often adopt this stratagem, using it, often to the fury of the crowds and their opponents, to protect and nurse an established lead. A full point is scored for a win; in a draw each player obtains a half point.

  “You must manage to lose once in a while,” said the paunchy fellow. “That will bring them back! That way, in the long run, we will make much more money!”

  “I play to win,” said the fellow, looking at the board.

  “I do not know why I put up with you!” said the paunchy fellow. “You are only a roustabout and vagabond!”

  I noted the configuration of pieces on the board. The hooded fellow had not begun from the opening position, arriving at that configuration after a series of moves. He had simply set the pieces up originally in that position. Something about the position seemed familiar. I suddenly realized, with a start, that I had seen it before. It was the position which would be arrived at on the seventeenth move of the Ubara’s Gambit Declined, yellow’s Home Stone having been placed at Ubara’s Builder One, providing red had, on the eleventh move, departed from the main line, transposing into the Turian line. Normally, at this point, one continues with the advancement of the Ubara’s Initiate’s Spearman, supporting the attack being generated on the adjacent file, that of the Ubara’s Builder. He, however, advanced the Ubar’s Initiate’s Spearman in a two-square-option move, bringing it to Ubar’s Initiate Five. I wondered if he knew anything about Kaissa. Then, suddenly, the move seemed interesting to me. It would, in effect, launch a second attack, and one which might force yellow to bring pieces to the Ubar’s side of the board, thereby weakening the position of the Ubara’s Builder’s file, making it more vulnerable, then, of course, to the major attack. It was an interesting idea. I wondered if it had ever been seriously played.

  “You must learn to lose!” said the paunchy fellow.

  “I have lost,” said the hooded fellow. “I know what it is like.”

  “You, Sir,” said the paunchy fellow turning to me, “do you play Kaissa?”

  “A little,” I said.

  “Hazard a game,” he invited. “Only a tarsk bit!” He then glanced meaningfully at the hooded fellow, and then turned and again regarded me. “I can almost guarantee that you will win,” he said.

  “Why is your player hooded?” I asked. It did not seem the kind of disguising that might be appropriate for carnival.

  “It is something from infancy, or almost from infancy,” said the paunchy fellow, shuddering, “from flames, a great fire. It left him as he is, beneath the mask. He is a disfigured monster. Free women would swoon at the sight. The stomachs of strong men would be turned. They would cry out with horror and strike at him. Such grotesquerie, such hideousness, is not to be tolerated in public view.”

  “I see,” I said.

  “Only a tarsk bit,” the paunchy fellow reminded me.

  “Do not fear that you will not win,” said the hooded fellow, in fury, placing the pieces in position for the opening of play. He then, imperiously, removed his Ubar, Ubara, and his Builders and Physicians, from the board, six major pieces. He looked angrily at me, and then, too, he threw his Tarnsmen into the leather bag, with drawstrings, at the side of the table. He spun the board about so that I might have yellow, and the first move. Thus I would have the initiative. Thus I could, in effect, for most purposes, choose my preferred opening. “Make your first move,” he said. “I shall then tip my Ubar and the game will be yours.”

  “Can you not be somewhat more subtle?” inquired the paunchy fellow of the hooded man.

  “I would not consider playing under such conditions,” I said.

  “Why not?” asked the paunchy fellow, pained. “You could then say truthfully that you had won. Others need not know the sort of game it was.”

  “It is an insult to Kaissa,” I said.

  “He is right,” said the hooded fellow.

  The slave girl whimpered, looking up at me. The pastry, which she had been diminishing, bit by minuscule bit, flake by tiny, damp flake, with her tongue, was clutched in both her hands. As she ate thus, the placement of her arms constituted a provocative modesty, one terminable, of course, at my will. Similarly, her small, delicate wrists were close together, so close that they might have been linked by slave bracelets.

  “Please, Master,” she whimpered.

  “Hazard a game,” suggested the paunchy fellow.

  I looked down into the eyes of the slave girl. She looked up at me, and slowly and sensuously, with exquisite care, licked at the sugary, white glazing on the pastry. She might be helpless with need, but I saw she had had training.

  “I have another game in mind,” I said.

  She looked up at me, flakes of the pastry and glazing about her mouth, and kissed me. “I want to love you,” she said. I tasted the sugar on her lips.

  “I can understand such games,” said the paunchy fellow. “It is pleasant to have a naked slave in one’s arms.”

  “Yes,” I agreed.

  “Put them all in collars,” he said. “Teach them what they are for, and about. No woman is worth anything until she is put in a collar. None of them have any worth until they are made worthless.”

  “What do you think?” I asked the slave.

  “It is true, Master,” she said.

  “Now that fellow,” said the paunchy fellow, gesturing to the hooded fellow, “is different from us. He lives only for Kaissa. He does not so much as touch a woman. To be sure, it is probably just as well. They would doubtless faint with terror at the very sight of him.”

  “Do you wish to play, or not?” asked the hooded fellow, looking up at me.

  “Under the conditions you propose,” I said, “I would not accept a win from you, if you were Centius of Cos.” Centius of Cos was perhaps the finest player on Gor. He had been the champion at the En’Kara tournaments three out of the last five years. In one of those years, 10,127 C.A., he had chosen not to compete, giving the time to study. In that year the champion had been Terence of Turia. In 10,128 C.A. Centius had returned but was defeated by Ajax of Ti, of the Salerian Confederation, who had overcome Terence in the semifinals. In 10,129 C.A., last En’Kara, Centius had decisively bested Ajax and recovered the championship.

  At the mention of the name Centius of Cos, the hooded player had stiffened angrily. “I assure you I am not Centius of Cos,” he said. He then, angrily, thrust the pieces into the leather bag, tied it to his belt, put the board under his arm, and, limping, withdrew.

  “It is still early!” called the paunchy fellow after the hooded man. “Where are you going?”

  But the hooded fellow had disappeared between the booths, going somewhere to the rear.

  “I am sorry,” I said. “I did not mean to upset him.”

  “Do not worry about it,” said the paunchy fellow. “It is always happening. He is a touchy fellow, impetuous, arrogant and reckless. Doubtless the ground should be grateful that he deigns to tread upon it. His Kaissa, on the other hand, seems strong. It is probably too good, really, for what we need.”

  “Perhaps he should apply for membership in the caste of players,” I suggested.

  “He does not seem interested in that,” he said.

  “Oh,” I said.

  “Besides, he is a grotesque monster,” he said. “Even the slaves fear him.”

  “I understand,” I said.

  “Too, if he were really any good, honestly speaking, between you and me, he would not be with us.”

  “I see,” I smiled. To be sure, there was more money to be made in the Kaissa clubs and on the high bridges. It was interesting to me that the
fellow had limped. I had once known a Kaissa player who had done that. To be sure, it was long ago.

  “Have you, yourself, ever played him?” I asked.

  “No,” said the fellow. “I do not play Kaissa.”

  “I see,” I said.

  “You are Boots Tarsk-Bit?” asked a voice.

  The voice came from behind us. The paunchy fellow with me turned white.

  I turned about.

  “Greetings, Captain,” said the man.

  “Greetings,” said I to him. It was the officer of the Master of Revels. Behind him were the two members of the Council Guard.

  “Hold,” said the officer to the paunchy fellow, who, it seemed, had backed away, turned, and was about to disappear between the stage and the Kaissa booth.

  “Did you call?” asked the paunchy fellow, pleasantly, turning. A meaningful gesture from the officer, pointing to a spot in front of him, brought the paunchy fellow alertly back into our presence. “Yes?” he inquired, pleasantly.

  “I believe you are Boots Tarsk-Bit,” said the officer, “of the company of Boots Tarsk-Bit.”

  “He must be somewhere about,” said the paunchy fellow. “If you like, I shall attempt to search him out for you.”