by John Norman
"The fellow who threatened me," I said to Tasdron, the proprietor of the tavern, "he called Kliomenes. Who is he?"
"He is Kliomenes, the pirate, lieutenant to Policrates," said Tasdron.
"And the other," I asked, "he who was standing by the table, speaking to the man who saved me?"
"His captain," said Tasdron, "Policrates himself."
I swallowed, hard.
"You are fortunate to be alive," said Tasdron. "I think perhaps you should leave Victoria."
"At what time do the sales begin in the sales barn of Lysander?" I asked.
"They have already begun," said Tasdron.
Hurriedly I ran to the table where I had left my things. I drew on my clothes and hastily slung my sword over my left shoulder. I picked up my winnings from the fighting. I saw the blond girl, she who had the pearls wrapped about her collar, looking at me. It seemed to me that I had seen her somewhere. I placed my winnings in my pouch, and tied it at my belt. I could not recall if, or where, or when, I might have seen her. She was a not unattractive slave. Then I hurried out the door. I made my way rapidly toward the sales barn of Lysander.
9
What Occurred at the Sales Barn of Lysander
"This red-haired beauty," called the auctioneer, "is a catch of Captain Thrasymedes. She can play the lute."
There was raucous laughter. "How good is she in the furs?" called a voice.
The girl went for four copper tarsks.
"Have the girls of Kliomenes been sold?" I asked a fellow.
"Yes," said a fellow. I cried out with anguish. "Most," said another.
"Most?" I pressed him.
"Yes," he said, "I think there are others, taken near Lara."
"What am I offered for this blonde?" called the auctioneer.
"Weren't they sold before?" asked the first fellow.
"Not all, I think," said the second man.
I left their sides and pushed through the crowd, making my way nearer the high, round, sawdust-strewn block.
"Watch where you are going, Fellow," snarled a man.
I stopped by the ready cage. Inside, sitting on a wooden bench, behind stout, closely-set bars, miserable, clutching sheets about themselves, some with glazed eyes, sat some ten girls. I clutched the bars, from the outside, looking within. She whom I sought was not there. One girl rose from the bench, her left ankle pulling against the chain and shackle that held her with the others, and dropped the sheet to her waist. "Buy me," she begged, putting her hand toward me. I stepped back. "This is not an exhibition cage," said an attendant, putting his hand on my arm. "You may not loiter here." "Buy me," begged the girl, reaching toward me. I gathered that she, unlike several of the others, apparently, had had masters. "Are these all the items that remain for sale?" I asked the attendant. "No," he said. "Are there girls of Kliomenes who remain to be sold?" I asked, desperately. "I do not know," he said. "I do not have the manifests."
Miserably I turned about and went back to stand with the others, in the vicinity of the block.
The blonde went for six tarsks.
"And here," said the auctioneer, "we have another blonde. This one, like many of the girls now in the ready cage, was free."
There was laughter. "Make her kiss the whip!" called a man.
"Down, Wench, and kiss the whip!" ordered the auctioneer. The girl knelt and kissed the whip. There was more laughter. He then began to put her through slave paces.
There were some two hundred men at the sale. Such sales occur frequently in the various sales barns of Victoria, sometimes running for several nights in a row. The spring and summer are the busiest seasons, for these are the seasons of heaviest river traffic and, accordingly, the seasons when pirates, after their raids, are most likely to bring in their loot. Many of the men at the sales barn were professional slavers, from other towns and cities, looking for bargains.
"Sold to Targo, of Ar!" announced the auctioneer. Manacles were then clapped on the blonde and she was dragged from the block.
I was angry, for I did not even know if Miss Henderson was to be sold, or if she had already been sold. If she had been sold she might even now, while I stood about, helplessly, be being transported from Victoria, a slave, anywhere. My fists were clenched. My palms were sweating.
The next two girls, brunettes, were sold to Lucilius, of Tyros. The next four slaves were purchased by a fellow named Publius, who was an agent for a Mintar, of Ar.
I waited, as the bidding grew more heated, and as more men entered the building. Five times the ready cage was emptied and filled, and emptied, as girls, freed of their shackles, were ordered to the block's surface for their vending.
"Do none of these women interest you?" asked a man nearby.
"Many are lovely," I said. Indeed, had I not been waiting desperately, miserably, for she whom I sought I might have been tempted to bid hotly on several of them. To own any one of them would have been a joy and a triumph. The man who has owned a woman or women knows of what I speak. Perhaps even those who have never owned a woman can sense, dimly, what it might be like. I know of no pleasure comparable to the pleasure of owning a woman, fully. It is indescribably delicious; it is glorious; it fills one with joy and power; it exalts and fulfills the blood. It teaches a male, in the thunderous currency of intellect and emotion, what is the true meaning of manhood. Compared to it the gratifications of pretense and denial, the insistence on subverting one's blood and virility in the name of a false manhood conditioned by a demented, antibiological society, are pallid indeed. Let those who can climb mountains climb them; let those who cannot climb them console themselves with denying their existence.
"The brunette four sales ago," said the man next to me, "was she not superb?"
"Yes," I said. She had indeed been stunning. In this market, to her indignation, she had gone for only fourteen copper tarsks. She had been sold to an agent of Clark, of Thentis. The next brunette, in my opinion, had been even more stunning. She had gone for a mere fifteen copper tarsks. She had been sold to a Cleanthes of Teletus.
"Sold to Vart, of Port Kar!" called the auctioneer, and a redhead was taken from the platform.
"And here," called the auctioneer, "we have one of the catches of Kliomenes, taken near Lara."
He tore the sheet away from the girl on the block, throwing it to the side.
She wore only her sales collar with her sales disk, on which was written her lot number, wired to the steel.
"A cold, prissy little Earth slut," called the auctioneer, "and yet one not without interest, as you can see." He bent her back, his hand in her hair, exposing the bow of her beauty to the men.
There was a sound of pleasure from the crowd.
"She is already branded," said the auctioneer, "but has served primarily as a display slave, and not a use slave." He then turned her, still keeping his hand in her hair, so that those on his left might better see her. "Accordingly," he said, "she is not yet fully broken to the collar." There was laughter from the crowd. He then turned her so that those on his right might better see her. "In my opinion," said he, "it is now time for this girl to learn the various uses to which a slave can be put." "Yes!" shouted more than one fellow. He then, as she gasped, bent her back a bit more, turning her again toward her left, so that she was presented exquisitely to the men. "Does she not appear ready for taming and heating?" inquired the auctioneer.
"Yes," shouted several men, "yes!" The girl trembled. She knew she might belong to any one of them.
"What am I bid?" called the auctioneer.
"Two copper tarsks," called a man.
"Four!" cried another.
"Six!"
"Seven!"
"Nine!"
"Eleven!"
"This is an exquisite little slut!" called the auctioneer. He then released her hair. "Stand straight," he ordered the girl. She did so. He walked about the platform, with the whip.
"Twelve!"
"Thirteen!"
"She was beautiful enough to
be a display slave," said the auctioneer.
"Fourteen!" was called out.
"Now you can have her for your own work and use slave!" pointed out the auctioneer.
"Fifteen!" I heard.
"Consider her, surrendered, squirming in your furs!" he said.
"Sixteen!" I heard.
"Do I hear only sixteen tarsks for this exquisite little bargain?" inquired the auctioneer, incredulously.
"Sixteen," repeated the man.
The auctioneer spun to face the girl. "Kneel, and kiss the whip," he ordered her.
Swiftly the girl, frightened, knelt before him. She took the coils of the whip in her small hands and, lowering her head, kissed them.
"On your feet," barked the auctioneer. "I will have a fit price for you."
The girl, terrified, sprang to her feet.
"Put her through her paces!" called a man. "Let us see what she can do!" called another.
The auctioneer shook out the coils of the whip. He then, rapidly, loudly, clearly, in a series of orders, sometimes cracking the whip, commanded the girl, one by one, swiftly, to assume an intricately patterned series of postures and attitudes. Seldom, I think, in so brief a compass, could a woman be displayed so fully as a female. He then cracked his whip and ordered her to stand straight upon the platform, sucking in her gut. She was breathing heavily; there were tears in her eyes; she was trembling; she was covered with sweat and sawdust. He had permitted her no respite or quarter. The buyers now well understood the nature of the goods on which they were bidding.
"Twenty-two tarsks!" called a man.
"Twenty-three!" called another.
So stunned I was that I had not even entered the bidding. I had never dreamed she could be so beautiful. What fools are the men of Earth, I thought, for the woman on the block was an Earth woman, to let their women off so lightly. What fools they are not to own their women and force them to manifest the true fullness and desirability of their beauty. The woman on the block was an Earth woman. Did she not show, in her own person, how beautiful women of Earth could be. And yet I knew that on Earth such women commonly languished, their beauty denied its meaning and fulfillment, their beauty not summoned forth, not commanded forth, for the pleasure, the sport and service of strong men.
"Twenty-five tarsks!"
"Twenty-six!"
"Twenty-seven!"
"Twenty-eight!"
"Thirty!"
"Buy her," a voice seemed to say to me. "Buy the slave! Make her yours!" "No, no!" I said, half aloud. "I cannot!" "What did you say?" asked the man next to me. "Nothing, nothing!" I said.
"Thirty-five!" I heard.
"Forty!" I heard.
"Forty-two!"
I could not even enter the bidding. I could scarcely breathe. My heart was pounding. I had never dreamed she could be so beautiful. It seemed I could not even speak. I could not take my eyes off the girl under the torches, the collar and sales disk at her throat. I was trembling.
"Forty-four!" I heard.
"Forty-six!"
I trembled. I had seen Miss Beverly Henderson kiss the whip. I had seen her put through slave paces.
Miss Beverly Henderson!
She!
A slave!
Owned!
On this world she was owned, owned as much as would be a pig on Earth!
How could such a thing be?
Quite easily, of course.
And it was the case.
Simply, clearly, and obviously the case.
Legally, and with full perfection, the case.
She was owned.
Literally owned!
Should I have been dismayed?
Rather I was inordinately excited.
I remembered her briefly, wildly, uncontrollably, from the university, from the halls, from the campus, in the severe, pseudomale garments prescribed for her sex by unfeminine women, who arrogated to themselves the setting of ugly, self-serving, hateful, desexualizing fashions, enforcing their decrees by the processes of social pressure, punishing lapses from their requirements by insult, scorn, intimidation, backstabbing, character assassination, diminishment, ostracism and marginalization. I recalled her doing her best to comply with their directives, to fulfill their implacable pathological stereotypes, in dress, in expression and carriage, in attitude and thought. And in this she was surely not other than thousands of other frightened, confused, unhappy women, ordered to deny themselves, to betray their sexuality, women fearing to question propounded absurdities, struggling to be thoughtlessly, uncritically obedient to the dictates of fanatics. But even so her femininity, for all her efforts, had been insufficiently concealed. She was not a surrogate male, a pretend man. She was, willing or no, a beautiful, feminine young woman. How unfortunate for her, I supposed, in such a place and time! And how beautiful she had been in the restaurant, in the off-the-shoulder, white, satin-sheath dress, she somehow then daring to appear so.
I now suspected that that courage had had to do with a change in her, one consequent on her disturbing interlude with a heavy, large-handed, balding, virile man encountered in a Manhattan apartment, an interlude in which she had first found herself put as a female under a man's will, an experience which had shocked her into the understanding that she was quite other than a male, something wondrously and preciously different—and wondrously and preciously beautiful, and wondrously and preciously desirable.
And how dismayed she had been to have been come upon in the restaurant by two of those she so feared, two of her fellow students, gross, mulelike females, politically sanctimonious, smug in dogmatism and power, examples of the ideologically obsessed mediocrities whose intent it was to turn a university into a personal political instrument, one promoting a specialized agenda designed to further particular interests, theirs, an agenda whose fruition would be to replace education with indoctrination, thought with rote reflexes, an indoctrination in which objectivity, logic and reason were to be sacrificed to a specialized, contrived orthodoxy, one alien to evidence, one foreign to nature, one relying on intimidation and falsehood, one predicated upon the utility of harm, pressure, control, censorship, and hatred.
But now that beautiful young woman was no longer in the cold, friendless corridors of a preempted institution, no longer in a desk chair dutifully taking notes on what she was supposed to believe and on the values, like numbing and denying poisons, which she was supposed to imbibe. No longer did she move about a campus in a prescribed garmenture, anxious lest her femininity and her true needs be suspected. And no longer, either, was she in the lovely garmenture of the restaurant, that suggesting her piteous desire to express her forbidden sex, that of her deepest self, that of the true female, the feminine woman, the excruciatingly desirable feminine woman, so preciously, wondrously and gloriously different, in so many ways, from a man.
It seems that some change had come to her life.
She had been found beautiful enough, and desirable enough, obviously, to have been taken by Gorean slavers. Yes, taken—by Gorean slavers. They, if none others, had seen the woman in her, the depth, preciousness, and meaning of her beauty. On this world it would not be denied. Indeed, it was why she had been brought here.
The heavy, large-handed, balding, virile fellow of the apartment had doubtless been a Gorean slaver, or perhaps one in league with them.
He had doubtless seen her possibilities.
Perhaps he, even, had passed on her suitability, had marked her for transit to this world.
He doubtless knew she would one day be in a place, and situation, rather as she was now.
Doubtless, gazing upon the scandalized, upset, prideful young lady before him, he had been amused by that thought.
What would she look like, stripped, in a collar, being sold?
I looked upon her, her ankles almost covered in the deep sawdust on the block.
She was terrified, frightened, and confused.
She, the vain, proper, elegant young lady, so prideful, yet so confused an
d unhappy, so desperately concerned to profess, and adhere to, prescribed views, so conditioned to uncritically accept multiple stupidities, so concerned to be found acceptable by driven, self-seeking, moronic doctrinaires, now found herself in an utterly different reality, in a strange, primitive, wild environment, alien to all she knew—now found herself exposed to the view of numerous, large, strange, powerful, excited, lustful men, men quite unlike those her old world had prepared her to expect or understand—she had not even known such men could exist—now found herself stripped on a slave block on another world, a far world, stark naked, as women are sold, a collar on her neck, with its attached sales disk, bearing her lot number, wired to her collar, in the keeping of a mighty, muscular fellow, an auctioneer, who would not hesitate at the least reluctance, let alone recalcitrance, on her part to instantly use his ready whip upon her, that dreadful instrument of corrective discipline. The university, the restaurant, the city, the world, all she had known were now far away. Others, not she, had decided it. Her life had changed. She had been brought to Gor.
I looked upon her.
She was far from Earth.
She had been enslaved.
She was now a domestic animal.
She was for sale.
She was being sold!
That which was of Earth in me told me I should properly cry out in shame and rage, and shed tears, as doubtless should a true modern male, that she, the innocent creature, should be so exhibited, so exposed, so humiliated.
But something deeper in me, something masculine in me, did not object to seeing her as she now was.
Indeed, I found considerable satisfaction in her predicament.
It all seemed suddenly very appropriate.
An irresistible, overwhelming thought came to me—a thought which I could not banish—that the beautiful Miss Henderson belonged on a slave block.
"Forty-seven!" I heard.
"Forty-eight!"
"Fifty!"
Suddenly the girl cried out, startled. Her reflex had been spasmodic, uncontrollable. Then she put her head in her hands, weeping. Her entire body, under the torches, turned a creamy crimson in color.
"Ninety tarsks!" called a man.