The Totems of Abydos

by John Norman

  “Why are you looking back?” asked Rodriguez.

  “No reason,” said Brenner.

  “Look forward,” said Rodriguez. “Not back.”

  Brenner did not respond to him.

  “Did you sleep well?” inquired Rodriguez.

  Brenner did not respond.

  “How was the brunette?” he asked.

  Brenner did not respond.

  “She looked well on a chain,” said Rodriguez.

  “So, too, did the blonde,” said Brenner, irritably.

  “They all do,” granted Rodriguez. He then turned about and waved to the Pons, to enter through the gate.

  “What are you doing?” asked Brenner.

  “We have drawn the sled far enough,” said Rodriguez. “They can pull it from here.” Then he turned again to the Pons. “Here!” he called. “Sled! Sled! Pull! Pull! Hurry! Hurry!”

  Brenner looked back again. He caught his breath. He thought, between the buildings, he caught sight of a small figure hurrying toward them, wrapped in a cloak.

  “Here!” called Rodriguez to the Pons. They then, first two or three at a time, and then the others, together, like domesticated animals, came through the gates. Some of them looked upward, at the operator, who doubtless to them was a figure of considerable authority. He waved them through.

  Brenner could now see clearly, through the lightly falling rain, that a small figure, indeed, was approaching them, hurrying through the mud, bundled in a cloak. Her feet and calves were bare.

  Rodriguez was pointing to the ropes and communicating with the tiny figures now about them, trying to convey his desires to them.

  One or two of them were poking at the cases and bundles on the sled.

  “No!” said Rodriguez, pointing rather to the ropes.

  Brenner felt in his jacket pocket for the small package he had placed there.

  The small figure had now changed its direction a little, as had Rodriguez and Brenner earlier, the mud being deep in its path, apparently to reach the more secure footing of the plank road. Then it was on the surface of the road. The mud had come up several inches on her calves. She had had to hold the cloak a bit high, to a point just below her knees, that its hem not drag in the mud. Brenner had not objected to this glimpse of her well-turned calves. She now stood on the plank road, some yards from him. She continued to hold the cloak high. She could not lower it, of course, even on this surface, lest it be soiled from the mud on her legs. Again, of course, Brenner had no objection to this.

  She stood there.

  Brenner did not, of course, rush to her. He stood there, regarding her. He had grasped last night that it was, for most practical purposes, she who must come to him, that it is the female who must approach, and present herself to, the male. To be sure, she was still a free woman, at least in point of law. The woman under contract, for example, is not free to utter formulas of self-embondment. Being under contract, she is not at liberty to unilaterally alter her status. Such would be in clear violation of the rights of the contract holder. As a technical point, which might be of interest, if the contract is not paid off within a certain period, varying from contract to contract, the woman ceases to be under contract and becomes property, to be disposed of then as the contract holder may desire.

  Brenner took a step or two toward the figure. She was, after all, a free woman.

  She stood there, regarding him.

  But he did not move more closely to her. Even though she might be free, she was, after all, a female.

  It seemed she would move more closely toward him, but then she hesitated.

  Brenner noted that there was a cloth wrapped about her left ankle, apparently to shield the lock, chain, and disk, to protect them from the mud. Yesterday, he recalled, in the street, when they had collided with one another, she had not been wearing the chain and disk.

  Behind him Brenner could hear Rodriguez ordering Pons about.

  Brenner wondered why the woman had come to the vicinity of the gate. He wondered if she might come with them for a bit, outside the gate.

  There were streaks on her face. Brenner did not know if these were tears, or from the rain.

  Brenner became aware of some Pons gathered about him, though he now stood back on the road, away from Rodriguez, away from the sled. He pushed them a bit away. Two or three of them looked up at him, their eyes peering inquisitively, too, it seemed, anxiously, through the holes in the hoods. The Pons were short, their heads on the whole coming only a bit above his belt. One of them pulled on his jacket, looking up at him. It seemed they were eager for him to come along, that he accompany them. Brenner pushed the Pon away.

  “Good,” Rodriguez was saying, behind him. Brenner gathered that he was making progress with the Pons, that he was succeeding in communicating with them. He was enlisting them, or, perhaps better, impressing them, in the matter of drawing the sled. He was determined they prove useful. To be sure, what he wanted would not require great intelligence to fathom. On the other hand, Brenner did not know what the intelligence of the Pons might be. He doubted that it was particularly high, except, of course, that, whatever it was, it would count, in its type, as being the equivalent of any intelligence existing in any galaxy, or yet to be detected in any galaxy, this having to do with the equivalence of all life forms. Brenner hoped that they would have at least the intelligence of bright children.

  Another Pon tugged on his jacket.

  “Go away!” said Brenner. Then he said, “I’m sorry.” It was bad enough that Rodriguez might contaminate the data. He did not want to risk the same thing.

  Yes, the woman’s face was wet. Surely it must be from the rain.

  Why had she come, Brenner wondered. She has come for her pastry, he thought. That is why she has come. She had come for her pastry. He felt the package in his pocket.

  “We are ready,” called Rodriguez.

  He thought the woman sobbed, and put out her hand.

  Brenner felt he should apologize to her for last night. How shamefully he had treated her! He had not treated her, at least not always, as he should have, as a same. Indeed, unaccountably, astoundingly, shamefully, he had betrayed his own conditioning program, that which had been imposed upon him from childhood. Needless to say Brenner, predictably, had experienced a good deal of misery and guilt this morning, at least after leaving the establishment of the zard. After all, you could not really expect his conditioning program to sit idly by and languish in its own neglect, and, indeed, it had not long delayed in exacting its revenge. On the other hand, Brenner had not suffered as much as certain individuals might have hoped, which such individuals might have regarded as an additional defect on his part.

  “Tell her to get her ass back to her room,” called Rodriguez.

  She trembled there, standing in the rain, a few feet away, barefoot on the planks of the road. She was then looking past Brenner, presumably toward Rodriguez. She feared him, of course. He was the sort of man, and she must have known others, particularly in a place such as Company Station, who would not hesitate to enforce his will on a woman, even with blows. Then she looked to Brenner. He did not order her away. In this, small, and vulnerable, trembling, her face stained with tears or rain, clutching the cloak about her, she seemed to take courage.

  They looked at one another.

  Brenner supposed she wished her pastry.

  Some Pons were about. Brenner heard a squeak of the wooden runners of the sled on the planks. It had apparently moved a few inches. “That’s it,” said Rodriguez.

  Suddenly, clutching the cloak about her, she hurried to Brenner.

  “Why have you come?” he asked.

  “You unchained me this morning,” she smiled, half laughing through what seemed, unaccountably, tears. “Nor did you return me to my room.”

  “Oh,” said Brenner.

  “The rooms have no handles on the inside,” she said. “They cannot be opened from within.”

  “And that is why you have come?” he
said.

  “Of course,” she laughed.

  Brenner gathered that the rooms, doubtless stoutly walled and doored, must be, in effect, cells. He supposed that the maids at the hostel might have similar rooms. Perhaps this was appropriate enough for women under contract. There would doubtless be a device which, if engaged, doubtless a lock device, would prevent the closing of the door, for the convenience of coming and going during the day. Thus, there would be times at which the door could not be closed, or at least fully, and, when it was closed, could not be opened from the inside. In this fashion the woman would be, in effect, denied privacy, in the sense that she could not close her door, or granted it at the option of the contract holder, at the price of her own incarceration, an incarceration which, of course, with its attendant privacy, was again at the option of the contract holder, or his agents. Brenner did not think that in the case of the zard’s establishment there would be surveillance devices in the room. To be sure, there might be an observation portal in the door, or such. Whereas this might seem to show the free female too little respect, it is well to understand the extraordinary dignity that this affords to her, in contrast, say, with the slave, who, for example, might be kept in a barred kennel.

  “Where is the blonde?” asked Brenner.

  “Your friend left her chained to the bed, spread-eagled,” she said, “too, chained by the neck, as you had me.”

  Her eyes clouded.

  “What is wrong?” asked Brenner.

  “Apparently with the permission of our contract holder, he administered a releaser to her.”

  Brenner looked puzzled.

  “It is quite possible she is pregnant,” she said.

  “I see,” said Brenner. “Does she want money? Does she want credits?”

  “Things have been arranged between your friend and the zard,” she said.

  “The appropriate credits have been punched?” asked Brenner.

  “Apparently,” she said.

  “She will bear the child?” asked Brenner.

  “That or die,” she said. “The zard reveres life.”

  “As she is free,” said Brenner, “the child, if any, would be free.”

  “If she proves pregnant and comes to term, her embondment, if any, is not to take place until after the delivery.”

  “And provisions have been made for the child?”

  “It seems so,” said the woman.

  This account interested Brenner. To be sure, he did not doubt but what Rodriguez, here and there, might have sired one offspring or another, on one world or another, perhaps even in similar circumstances.

  “Why have you come here?” asked Brenner. “Is it because you want credits?”

  “No!” she said.

  “I have told you I cannot afford your contract,” he said.

  “I do not want you to buy my contract!” she said, angrily.

  “Why have you come?” he asked.

  She put down her head. “What you did to me last night,” she said. “What you made me feel!”

  “Naturally,” said Benner, irritably. “I apologize to you for how I treated you. Surely it was inappropriate, as we are sames.”

  “We are not sames!” she said. “You are a man! I am a woman!”

  “I apologize,” he said.

  “Do not apologize!” she exclaimed.

  “I am sorry if I demeaned you,” he said.

  “It is now that you are demeaning me!” she said.

  Several of the Pons now crowded about them. Brenner, not politely, brushed some of them back. Their eyes seemed inquisitive through the holes in the hoods. She did not seem surprised at the proximity of the Pons. She had, apparently, seen their likes in Company Station before. For most practical purposes, she ignored them. It was easy to overlook them, given their tiny size, their nondescript garb. They, on the other hand, seemed to find her an item provoking intense curiosity. They would look from Brenner to the woman, and then back again. Brenner scarcely registered this, but, as he did, he supposed that they were not that familiar with human females. At Company Station most of their contacts would be with males, of one species or another.

  Brenner was curious to know what she might be wearing under the cloak. Too, he was somewhat irritated by her demeanor. For one of these reasons, or both, or perhaps, too, because he was not really the same this morning as he had been the preceding morning, he took in hand the edges of her cloak, where they were about her throat, and, moving his hands apart, drew them to the side. She put down her head and turned it to the left. She was not now in the dramatic, sensuous, so revealing, so provocative pleasure silks of the preceding evening, but in a brown work dress, simple, plain, coarsely woven, which came to a bit above her knees. In it, she would doubtless address herself to numerous domestic labors, cooking, cleaning, laundering, and such, shared with her fellow contractees in the zard’s establishment. Brenner had no doubt that women under contract, on the whole, particularly in an establishment such as the zard’s, would be well worked. Then in the late afternoon and early evening they could transform themselves into compliant, perfumed objects of desire. Even in the brown garb Brenner found her attractive, the contrast of it against her flesh at the neckline, and the way in which the turns of her delicious body were hinted at, and not at all obscurely, within that coarse cloth’s confines.

  “Please, not before them,” she said.

  Brenner smiled to himself. What interest could the Pons have in such a thing? To them would she not be merely a piece of meat, and merely meat, meaningless meat, and not meat in the sense in which slavers, or brutal, lusting men, might laughingly, in rude humor, use such an expression of, say, women chained naked in markets or lying helpless, stripped and collared, at their feet. To be sure, they might appreciate that Brenner might see her with desire, that he, as she was a female of his species, might find her of interest. The Pons, to be sure, were looking upon her. On the other hand, they seemed to look upon many things with curiosity, with inquisitiveness and wonder. They seemed a simple folk. It amused Brenner that she would feel shy before them. On the other hand, he supposed she, and other women, might feel that way, just as they might feel that way before children. They might be embarrassed to be revealed before them. It might not seem fitting to them. After all, it is not to children, nor to Pons, that such as they belong.

  Brenner did not close her cloak.

  “I thought last night that you were bold,” she smiled. “I see now that I was not mistaken.”

  Brenner drew shut her cloak, and she held it together, about her throat.

  They looked into one another’s eyes.

  The Pons, Rodriguez, the opened gates, the operator, the light, green on the summit of the tower, might not have existed.

  “I’m sorry,” said Brenner.

  “Do not be sorry,” she said.

  “About last night,” he said.

  “Never be sorry!” she said.

  “I’m sorry,” he said.

  “Because you did what you wanted?” she asked.

  Brenner was silent.

  “Why should you not do what you want?” she asked. “Why should you always do what others want?”

  “I’m sorry,” he said.

  “Because you did not do what some anonymous, impersonal other wanted? Because, perhaps for the first time, you behaved in accordance with your real self, not some false self, one imposed upon you from the outside, one taught to you as your own?”

  Brenner was silent.

  “Can you not see that one generation perpetuates its tortures upon the next, and that that is part of the torture, that the next, too, must be tortured?”

  “It is hard to know how to live,” said Brenner.

  “I do not think it is so hard,” she said. “Cannot you listen to your heart, to your blood?”

  “There is reason,” said Brenner.

  “Reason is empty in itself,” she said. “It is an instrument, a tool. It can be put to many uses.”

  B
renner was angry.

  “It can be used as readily to thwart life as fulfill it, as readily in the defense of pathology as in the pursuit of health. Do not confuse its employment in the service of negativity with its own nature. Reason is a compass. At your disposal it places paths to an infinity of possible destinations. It itself does not tell you on which path to embark. It in itself cannot decide your direction. That you must decide yourself.”

  “Some things are more reasonable than others,” said Brenner.

  “Surely,” she said, “with respect to given ends. If you wish to frustrate, starve, and deny yourself, then it is reasonable to behave in one fashion. If you wish to fulfill yourself it is reasonable to behave in another fashion.”

  Brenner did not respond to her.

  Surely he had thought such thoughts often enough to himself. Indeed, he was weary of advocating and defending positions which had come to seem absurd to him. Why should he listen to such things from her, he asked himself. Why should he not simply put her to his feet?

  “But it is surely easy enough to tell that what you have been taught is wrong!” she said.

  Brenner was silent.

  “If torture cannot make that clear,” she said, “what could?”

  “I must be going,” said Brenner, angrily.

  “I do not even know your name,” she cried.

  “It is not important,” said Brenner. “We shall never see one another again.”

  “Do you want to know my name?” she asked.

  “Doubtless there is something the zard calls you,” he said.

  “Yes,” she said, “but it is in his own language, and I do not know its meaning, nor can I even pronounce it.”

  “You respond quickly enough to it, I would suppose,” said Brenner.

  “Yes!” she said. “I do!”

  So, too, thought Brenner, slaves learn quickly enough to respond, and immediately, to the names which, for their master’s convenience, or pleasure, are put upon them.

  “Do you not want to know my name?” she asked.

  As she was free, she would have a legal name, a name in her own right, of course, not a name dependent on the decisions of a master.