John Norman - Counter Earth12

by Beasts Of Gor(Lit)

  The girls were silent, and knelt back, small.

  The men saw nothing of interest in them. There were many beauties on display.

  "I cannot stand the way they look at us," said the blond.

  "What does it mean?" asked the third girl on the chain.

  "Masters!" called a girl, in Gorean, some yards down the platform, accosting the two men who were passing. She knelt on one knee, and flexed and extended her other leg, beauti-fully, touching the boards of the platform with her toes. She lifted her body and thrust forth her lovely breasts to them. "Masters," she whimpered, "take me home with you!"

  "Do you beg to be purchased?" asked one of the men.

  "Yes, Master!" she said.

  "Slave," said he, scornfully.

  "Yes, Master!" she said.

  "Do you find her of interest?" asked the first man, he who had questioned her, to his fellow.

  "Stand, Slave," said the second man.

  She stood before them, beautifully, almost nude in the platform tunic.

  A slaver's man, seeing their interest, came to where they stood.

  "Would you care to see the pretty little slut?" he asked.

  The four Earth girls, though they could not speak Gorean, watched, horrified, the enactment of a common Gorean episode, the attempt on the part of a slave to interest masters in her purchase.

  The blond girl gasped and shrank back when the slaver's man, joining the girl on the platform, jerked loose the cord at her right hip and, with two hands, standing behind the girl, held back the tunic, well displaying her to the gaze of the inquirers.

  They could not, of course follow the conversation, but it was clearly one of appraisal, and of commerce.

  Then the Earth girls, with the exception of the dark-haired girl, who watched, fascinated, eyes shining, turned their eyes away, shuddering. One of the men had joined the slaver's man and the girl on the platform. The girl cried out, startled, being ruthlessly appraised. Then she writhed on the platform, obedient to the touch of the masters.

  "Look!" said the dark-haired girl.

  The other three girls then looked too, in horror and fascination.

  They saw the beauty being swiftly put through slave paces.

  Then they saw her sold. There was a clear exchange of money. The girl was released from her chains and braceleted by one of the men. She was put in a collar and leash and led from the platform. Behind then was left only the discarded chains and a discarded, crumpled tunic. The girl was gone.

  "Do you still ask what manner of place this is?" asked the dark-haired girl bitterly of the girl at the chain's end.

  That girl, dark-haired, too, shook her head with horror. "It cannot be," she whispered.

  The dark-haired girl, who had worn the pull-over, turned angrily to the blond, at the other end of the chain. "Do you still think," she asked, "they will not `dare' to look at your precious body?"

  The blond shrank back, terrified in the chains.

  "Do you truly think now," pressed the dark-haired girl, furiously, "that you have rights, you foolish little thing? Do you think before such men you would have rights? These are not men of Earth!"

  The blond girl looked at her with horror.

  "These men will have their way with women," she said. "Can you not see it in their eyes? They will have what they want from women." And she laughed bitterly, "And we are women," she said.

  "This place then-" stammered the girl at the end of the chain.

  "Yes," said the dark-haired girl. Then she looked at the blond. "Do you still think," she asked, "that we are merely some sort of prisoners?"

  "No, no," wept the blond girl.

  "This is a slave market," said the dark-haired girl, "and we are slaves."

  The blond girl moaned and threw her head back. The third and fourth girl began to sob.

  "Accept it, my dear," said the dark-haired girl, "our reality is now transformed."

  They looked at her.

  "We are now slave girls on a strange world."

  "No," whispered the girl on the end.

  "I am for sale," said the dark-haired girl, "and so, too, are you, and the rest of us."

  "Yes," whispered the blond, suddenly shuddering, "I-I am for sale."

  "As are the rest of us," said the dark-haired girl.

  The girls then subsided, and were quiet.

  After a time the dark-haired girl spoke. "I wonder," she said, "what it will be like, being a slave girl."

  "I cannot even think of it," said the blond-haired girl.

  "I wonder what it will be like, being owned by a man," mused the dark-haired girl.

  "Perhaps a woman will buy us," said the girl on the end.

  The blond girl, and the dark-haired girl, looked at her, apprehensively.

  "We would have less to fear from a woman," said the girl on the end.

  "Do you want to be owned by a woman?" asked the dark-haired girl.

  "No," said the girl on the end.

  "Nor would I," said the third girl.

  "Nor would I," said the dark-haired girl.

  "-Nor would I," said the blond.

  "That is interesting, is it not?" asked the dark-haired girl, thoughtfully. She looked out at the crowd. "Have you ever seen such men?" she asked. "I had never dreamed such men could exist."

  "No," whispered the blond girl.

  "Do you not find them disturbing?" asked the dark-haired girl.

  "Wicked girl!" cried the girl on the end.

  "I will tell you something," said the dark-haired girl. "They make me feel warm inside, and hot and wet."

  "Wicked girl! Wicked girl!" cried the girl on the end.

  "I have never felt feelings like this before," said the dark-haired girl. "I do not know what I would do if one of them touched me."

  "Feminine! Feminine!" scolded the girl on the end, who had worn the beige flannel shirt.

  The dark-haired girl in the brief platform tunic, who had worn the red pull-over, knelt back. "Yes," she said, "feminine."

  "If they so much as touch me, I'll scream," said the blond.

  But there seemed little chance of this for there appeared to be much more choice merchandise for sale upon those long, darkly varnished, slatted platforms. I had stood back in the crowd, interested to hear them speak. But now I would move on. It was nearly time to go to the pavillion. I did see in the crowd, some platforms away, the fellow from the polar basin. He was looking at women. The rawhide rope was looped about his shoulder.

  "Look," I heard a fellow say, "it is Tabron of Ar."

  I turned about. A tarnsman, in the scarlet leather of his war rights, tall, was moving through the crowd. He casually stopped before the four girls.

  The blond shrank back as his eyes examined her in the collar, chains and platform tunic.

  He looked upon the dark-haired girl. To my surprise and pleasure I saw her kneel very straight and lift her body before him. Then he looked past her to the other two, girls and continued on his way. She knelt back in her chains.

  "I saw you!" said the girl on the end, who had worn the beige flannel shirt.

  "He was very handsome," said the dark-haired girl. "-And I am a slave."

  "He didn't buy you," sneered the third girl, who had worn the plaid flannel shirt, "you rich tart!"

  "He didn't buy you either," retorted the dark-haired girl, "you low-class idiot."

  I smiled. They were both only slaves.

  "I am more beautiful than you," said the third girl.

  I was pleased to see that the third girl seemed now much more sensitive to her femaleness than earlier. Perhaps she would not take as long as I had thought to discover her womanhood. Gorean males, I conjectured, might teach it to her quickly. She would look lovely, I thought, crawling to her master, his sandals in her teeth.

  "If we must discuss that sordid sort of thing," said the girl on the end, who had worn the beige flannel shirt, "I am the most beautiful of us four."

  "I am," said the dark-haired girl,
angrily, indignantly.

  "No," said the blond. "I am surely the most beautiful!"

  "You do not even want a man to touch you," said the dark-haired girl.

  "No," said the blond. "But I am still the most beautiful."

  The dark-haired girl looked out over the crowd. "They will decide who is most beautiful," she said.

  "They?" asked the blond.

  "The masters," said the dark-haired girl.

  "Masters?" stammered the blond.

  "Yes," said the dark-haired girl, "the masters, those men out there, those who will buy us, our masters, they will decide who is most beautiful."

  The girls knelt back in their chains. They knelt back easily, on their heels.

  "Oh!" cried the blond girL

  A stout fellow, in the garb of the tarn keepers, smelling of the tarn cots, stood looking at her. She pulled back, and shook her head, "No." Her eyes were frightened.

  The stout fellow looked about, and caught the eye of one of the slaver's men who, seeing him, made his way through the crowds to his side.

  "These are new slaves?" asked the tarn keeper.

  "Fresh to the collar," said the slaver's man.

  "I need a wench," said the man, "one who will cost me little, one to keep in the cots by day, to shovel the excrement of tarns, one to keep in my hut by night, as a pot-and-mat girl."

  "These four wenches," said the slaver's man, expansively, indicating the small coffle, "are comely candidates for such a post." He stepped upon the platform, and crouched upon its surface. "Consider this one," he said, indicating the blond, who was first upon the chain.

  He reached to her tunic.

  "Don't touch me," she cried, drawing back.

  "A barbarian," said the tam keeper.

  "Yes," said the slaver's man.

  "And the others?" asked the tarn keeper.

  "They are all barbarian, Master," said the slaver's man.

  The dark-haired girl, seeing the tam keeper's eyes upon her, shrank back.

  The tarn keeper turned and walked away. The girls looked at one another, frightened, and knelt back. They seemed relieved. This relief, however, was surely premature. Another slaver's man joined his colleague at the platform. "We will never sell these," said the first. "They are raw girls, untrained, inept, clumsy, meaningless sluts. They do not even speak Gorean."

  "Tenalion has no intention of putting them on the main block in the pavilion," said the second. He had a five-bladed slave whip at his belt.

  "It would be a waste of block time," said the first. "Who would want girls this worthless and ignorant?" he asked. "We shall surely have to transport them back to Ar."

  "Who of Ar would want them?" asked the second man grinning.

  "We will have to take them back to Ar," said the first man.

  "We could sell them for sleen feed here," said the second.

  "That is true," granted the first.

  "Attend to the forty through forty-five platforms," said the second man, who seemed to have greater authority than the first. "I shall stay in this vicinity for the time."

  The other man nodded, and turned away.

  The second slaver's man regarded the four girls, who did not meet his eyes. He wore blue and yellow, a tunic. He wore studded leather wristlets. At his belt hung the whip. The girls now seemed apprehensive. I did not blame them. One in whose charge they were now stood near them. I saw them look at his whip, but there was no real comprehension of it in their eyes. They did not yet understand the whip, or what it might do to them. I gathered they had never been whipped.

  "The bids have begun in the pavilion," I heard.

  "Move forward," said the slaver's man to the girls, in Gorean. They did not understand his words, but his gesture was clear. Frightened, they, on their knees, crept forward to the edge of the platform. They were now quite near the crowd. Before they had been back about a yard or so on the platform. When a girl is back somewhat it is easier to see her. On the other hand, the proximity of female flesh to the buyer can in itself, of course, be a powerful inducement to her purchase. What man, truly close to a beautiful female, can fail to feel her in his blood, and want to own her?

  The slaver, I conjectured, knew his business.

  The girls looked at one another, terrified. They were now close to the men.

  "Please, don't!" begged the blond girl. A man in the crowd, passing her, had put his hand on her thigh.

  The slaver's man looked at her, angrily. She looked at him, tears in her eyes. Did he not know what the beast, in passing, had done? He looked away.

  What did it matter that someone had touched, even intimately caressed, a woman who was only a slave?

  She tried to creep back, but the slaver's man, seeing this, irritably removed his whip from his belt and, with its coils, indicated the place on the platform where her knees must be. They were placed in such a way as to be a quarter of an inch over the edge of the platform. The other girls, too, made certain their knees were perfectly aligned. The robes of passing men then brushed their knees.

  "I would look at this one," said a leather worker, who stopped before the blond, first on the chain.

  She shrank back.

  "She is a beauty, isn't she?" smiled the slaver. "Open her tunic. See what she has to offer you," he invited.

  The leather worker reached toward the girl, but she scrambled back. "Don't touch me!" she cried. The dark-haired girl cried out with pain, dragged by her collar back, too. She fell twisted, on her side, in the chain.

  "I'll scream," warned the blond girl.

  The leather worker was quite puzzled. "I do not think I am interested," he said. "Too, this one is a barbarian. She is not broken to the collar."

  "Break her to your collar," said the slaver's man.

  "I do not want to take the time to break a girl in," he said.

  "Wait, kind sir," said the slaver. "Wait! See what delights would await you."

  The man hesitated.

  "Prodicus!" called the slaver's man.

  In a moment the first slaver's man, who had gone to supervise the forty through forty-five platforms, those in the two hundreds, joined his colleague.

  The second slaver's man, who carried the whip, which he now uncoiled, unnoticed, I am sure, by the girls, indicated the blond with his head.

  The fellow called to the platform scrambled onto it and swiftly knelt the blond before the slaver's man with the whip and the leather worker. The fellow on the platform then jerked loose the knot at the blond's right hip, which held the wrap-around tunic closed. "No!" she screamed. He jerked it back, away from her, exposing her. She was very beautiful. It lay behind her, over her chained wrists. He kicked her knees apart. Then he crouched behind her, holding her by the upper arms. She struggled, twisting, on her knees. She began to scream miserably, her head back. She pressed her knees closely together. The slaver's man with the whip angrily leaped to the platform. He kicked her knees open again. She was sobbing and screaming. Men about laughed. "See, Master?" asked the slaver's man with the whip, but the leather worker had gone. The slaver's man glared down, in fury, at the chained blond. Another man in the crowd reached to take the ankle of the dark-haired girl in his hand and she, with a rattle of chain, jerked it away. She looked at him, terrified. "They are all barbarians," said a man, "all of them." Puzzled by the reactions of the blond and the dark-haired girl other men in the crowd reached out to touch the last two girls on the chain. One held with his two hands the thighs of the third girl, who had worn the plaid flannel shirt. She screamed in the collar. Another man took the fourth girl, who had worn the beige flannel shirt, under the arms, and pulled her to him. She fought to pull her lips back, that they might not touch his. She struggled in his arms. She screamed. He thrust her back on her side on the platform, and left her. The man who had held the thighs of the third girl, too, released her. There was much laughter in the crowd. She scrambled back in her chains, sobbing. The slaver's man was furious. He looked from one girl to the other, to
the stripped, chained blond, to the cowering dark-haired girl, her neck cut by the collar, from its movement, to the third girl, sobbing and looking up at him, to the fourth girl, lying on her side, her legs drawn up, crying. He gestured to his colleague. This man went to the second girl and jerked back her tunic, and to the third and jerked back her tunic, and to the fourth and jerked back her tunic. Then they lay in their chains, exposed at his feet. Then he put them under the whip.