by John Norman
I backed away a few feet from her.
She faced me. “The gown much reveals me,” she said, “Tarl.”
“Cross and extend your wrists,” I told her. She did so. With a strip of leather binding fiber, I fastened them together. The strip was long and enough was left to lead her, serving as tether.
“We do not have a great deal of time,” I told her. “There will soon be fighting in the kasbah.”
“I love you,” she said.
I looked at her with fury.
She was startled at my anger. “I am sorry I have so offended you,” she whispered. “I have suffered much for it. You cannot know how I have suffered, weeping in the nights. I am so sorry, Tarl!”
I did not speak.
“I was cruel, and terrible,” she said, “and petty.” She looked down, miserably.
“I can never forgive myself,” she whispered. She looked up. “Can you forgive me, Tarl, ever?” she asked.
I looked about. I could use one of the tharlarion-oil lamps by the large mirror.
“I testified against you at Nine Wells,” she said. “I lied. I spoke falsehood.”
“You did as you were told, Slave Girl,” I told her.
“Oh, Tarl!” she wept. She looked at me, fearlessly. “For Lydius,” she said, “I wanted to send you to Klima!”
“Your wishes are not of interest to me,” I told her.
She looked at me with horror. She wept then, and put down her head. “I identified you for Ibn Saran,” she said.
I shrugged.
“Are you not angry!” she cried.
“A slave girl,” I said to her, “owes her master absolute obedience.”
She looked aside, angrily. “I dare not even speak to you what else I did,” she said.
“You betrayed Priest-Kings,” I told her, “fully, and to the best of your ability.”
She turned white. “Will it make a difference?” she said.
“I do not know,” I told her. “It could mean the loss of Earth and Gor, the ultimate victory of the Kurii.”
She shuddered. “I was weak,” she said. “There was a dungeon. I was stripped, chained. It was dark. There were urts. I was terrified. I could not help myself.
They told me I would be freed.”
By the leather strap I yanked her wrists, indicating to her that they were well tied. “You will not be freed,” I told her.
“Oh, Tarl,” she wept. Then she asked, “Will what I did make a difference?”
“I do not know,” I told her. “Perhaps those on the steel worlds will not believe your protestations. They may believe you only spoke sincerely what you believed to be true, not what, necessarily, was true.”
She shuddered miserably.
“There are many who know of your treachery,” I said. “Doubtless some will he captured, or fall into the bands of agents of Priest-Kings. Soon your life will be worth little among the agents of Priest-Kings.” I thought of Samos. He was not a patient man.
She lifted her eyes to me. “I could be tortured and impaled,” she said.
“You are a slave girl,” I told her. “No such honorable death would be yours. You would be given one of the deaths of a slave girl, who has not been pleasing. In Port Kar, doubtless, you would be given the Garbage Death-bound naked and hurled to the urts in the canals.”
She sank to her knees in horror. I looked at her. In time she again lifted her head.
“Can you forgive me,’’ she asked, “for what I have done?”
“What seems to concern you,” I said, “does not to me seem to require forgiveness. You are a slave girl. You were simply obedient to your master. No man objects to a girl obeying her master.”
“Then,” she said, softly, “you will not even have the kindness to be cruel to me?”
“I am not lenient,” said I, “Girl, with certain other gratifications you permitted yourself, which were not commanded of you.”
She looked at me. “What?” she asked.
“At Nine Wells,” I said, “following your testimony, falsely accusing me, when removed from the rack, you looked upon me, and smiled.”
“So tiny a thing?” she said. “I’m sorry, Tarl.”
“And when I was chained, and bound for Klima’ “ I said, “again you smiled upon me. You cast me a token, a bit of silk. You blew me a kiss.”
“I hated you!” she cried, from her knees.
I smiled.
“I acted like a slave girl,” she said, her head down.
“Do you know why you acted like a slave girl?” I asked.
“No,” she said.
I looked upon her, in the brief garment, bound kneeling before me, looking up at me. “Because you are a slave girl,” I told her.
“Tarl!” she cried.
There was a sudden pounding on the door. I slipped instantly behind the girl, my hand over her mouth, my dagger across her throat. She could feel its edge.
“You will not cry out or give the alarm,” I told her.
She nodded, miserably. I removed my hand from her mouth.
“Vella! Vella!” called a voice. There was more pounding.
“Do you not trust me, Tarl?” she asked, softly. “
“You are a slave girl,” I whispered. “Answer. The knife was still at her throat.
“Yes, Master!” called the girl.
“You know that at the twentieth hour you are to give pleasure to the guards in the north tower!” called the man.
“I am applying my cosmetics,” she called, “I shall hurry!”
“If you are late by so much as five, Ehn, “ be called, “you will be caressed by the five fingers of leather.” This was an allusion to the Gorean five-strap slave whip, commonly used on girls because of the softness and width of its lashes. It punishes severely but, because of its construction, does not permanently mark the girl.
“I hurry, Master! I hurry!” cried Vella.
The man left.
“You are in great danger,” said Vella. “You must flee.” I sheathed the dagger I had held her in obedience with.
“Those in the kasbah are in greater danger than I,” I smiled.
“How did you get in?” she said. “Is there a secret entrance?”
I shrugged. “I entered unobserved,” I said. “I looked at her. “Curiosity is not becoming in a Kajira,” I said.
She stiffened.
I had waited near one of the gates of the kasbah, in the shelter of the ring’s invisibility. When a reconnoitering party left the kasbah I had simply slipped unseen within. I had stopped in the kitchens of the kasbah to find a suitable garment for Vella. Then I had examined various areas, until I found her, in a room in which girls, who are to be summoned to the pleasure of men, may prepare themselves.
I looked to the lamps at the side of the mirror. One of them would do well.
Soon, Vella closely before me, her wrists bound, the tether looped about her forearm, I entered one of the long, tiled halls, carrying one of the lamps.
We passed only one or two men. I wore garments of the men of the Salt Ubar, taken from a prisoner. There were new mercenaries in the kasbah. No notice was taken of me, though much notice was taken of the luscious slave who, so briefly and shamefully clad, preceded me, I saw Vella, the vain wench, lift her body, instinctually, beautifully, brazenly, as the eyes of each man fell upon her.
She, a slave girl, found much pleasure in being well displayed before masters.
I chuckled. She tossed her bead, angrily.
When I came to one of the narrow windows, not wide enough to admit the body of a man, facing the desert on the north, I lifted and lowered the lamp, and then did this once again. I blew out the lamp. I put it down. We stood in darkness, save for the moonlight at the window.
We heard the sentry’s bar, on the wall, striking the twentieth hour.
“They will want me, Tarl, in the north tower,” said Vella. “It is the Twentieth Hour.”
“I think not,” I said. I looked out
over the desert. We heard the sentry’s bar.
“When I do not appear, they will come for me. They may find you. Escape while you can.”
I saw men, riders, pouring out of the desert.
“They await me in the north tower,” she said.
“I think, in the north tower,” I said, “They have other things now on their mind than a slave girl.”
“I do not understand,” she said.
I had paid a visit to the north tower, which commanded the north gate.
“The kasbah,” I said, “will fall.”
“The kasbah will never fall,” said the girl. “There are water and supplies here for months. One man on the walls is worth ten in the desert. No force sufficient to invest the kasbah can be long maintained in its vicinity.”
At the north gate, in the gate room, at the foot of the tower, ten guards struggled, come recently again to consciousness, finding themselves bound and gagged. Above the gate, in the tower itself, lay another ten.
We heard the last stroke of the bar. It was the Twentieth Hour.
“Flee!” whispered Vella. “Flee!”
The north gate, deplorably, perhaps, from the point of view of those within the kasbah, and surely from the point of view of the guards, had been left ajar.
“Flee!” said Vella.
“Look,” I told her. I put my hand over her mouth, and held her to the window. I beard her gasp, and struggle. She squirmed. A girl within the kasbah, she was terrified at what she saw. Like any beautiful female, slave or free, she knew what it might portend for her. She tried to cry out. She could not do so. “Cry out, Slave Girl,” I whispered. “Give the alarm.” Her voice, beneath my large, heavy hand, was muffled. She moaned in misery. She was helpless. Her eyes were wild over my hand.
Riders streamed toward the kasbah. I saw the white burnoose of Hassan, swelling behind him, in their lead.
In a moment someone on the walls had seen the riders. There were shouts. The alarm bar, struck by its great hammer, began to ring madly. Men began to appear in the yard below. Men swarmed to the walls. But to their horror riders were already within the yard, fighting with defenders. Men leaped from their kaiila, climbing, scimitars flashing, up the narrow stairs, toward the walls. The enemy was within. The enemy was behind them. Riders streamed in through the gate, and, too, men afoot, running over the sand. The north gate had fallen. The north tower was theirs. More men entered, flooding within the walls of the kasbah.
Defenders rushed forth. Everywhere there was swordplay, the ringing of steel, on bucklers. I saw torches. There was much shouting. I heard the crying out of men.
I stepped back. I removed my hand from the mouth of the-slave girl. Vella looked at me, her eyes wide with horror.
“Cry out now, Slave Girl,” I said. “Give the alarm.”
“Why did you not let me cry out?” She asked. “They will kill us all!”
She had the instinctive fear of the girl of riders of the desert.
I turned her about, and thrust her before me, down the hall. “I am one of them,”
I told her. She moaned.
I could hear shouting in the kasbah. By the arm I thrust her again into the room where I had first found her, where there were the broad, scarlet tiles the vanity, the mirror, now a single tharlarion-oil lamp at the side of the mirror.
“You have returned for me,” she said, pressing her body to mine, lifting her head. “I wanted you to come back for me. I dreamed that you would!”
I thrust her back. I could hear shouting outside. “I have come back for you,” I told her.
“You love me!” she cried.
She cried out with misery when she saw my eyes.
“Then why?” she begged, piteously.
“I want you,” I told her.
“You love me,” she whispered.
“No,” I said.
“I do not understand,” she whispered.
“Foolish female of Earth,” I laughed, “do you still understand so little of your incredible desirability? Do you not yet know that it drives men mad with desire to look upon you? Have you no sense, foolish woman, of the madness of passion the very sight of you inspires in men?”
She turned away. “I know that I am attractive,” she said. Her voice was uncertain, frightened.
“You are an ignorant female,” I said. “You do not know what the very sight of you does to men.”
She spun to face me, her eyes flashing. “What does it do?” she demanded.
“To see you is to want you,” I told her, “and to want you is to want to own you.
“Own!” she cried, in horror.
“Yes,” I said. “Every man wants to own his woman, completely. He wants to have her in his absolute power. He wants to have absolute control over her, in every respect, however, minute. Dominance is genetically dispositional in his nature.
Males are divided into those who satisfy their nature and those who do not.
Males who satisfy their nature are vital and joyful, and, statistically, live long; those who deny their nature are miserable and, statistically, shorter lived, their tortured body chemistry falling prey frequently to hideous diseases.”
“Men want women to be free!” said Vella.
“Men, sometimes,” I said, “will accord small freedoms to women, thinking that these will make them more pleasing. Surely you are familiar with the master who, at certain moments, permits his girl to speak her mind. And at these moments she does so, well and boldly. But she knows that these permissions may, at his whim, be withdrawn. This torments her with joy, and she revels in his strength. He gives her what she most deeply desires, in the female genetic depth of her, the delicious feeling of her own domination, the subjection of her beauty and weakness to the will of a strong male.”
“Men on Earth,” she cried, “will be dethroned by law!”
“Earth has a complex and intricate political history,” I said. “Policies and institutions, over hundreds of years, may have consequences unforeseen by their authors, consequences which would have horrified them. On Earth, men have succeeded in building a complicated trap from which they may perhaps be unable to escape. Perhaps they can shatter its bars. Perhaps, in the cage they themselves have built, they will merely languish and die.”
Vella said nothing.
“Do you feel,” I asked, “that the women of Earth are happier than those of Gor.”
“No,” she said. “No, no.
“Kneel,” I said.
She knelt.
“On Gor,” I asked, “who have been the happiest women you have known.”
“Many of the happiest women I have known on Gor,” she whispered, “have been mere slave girls.”
“Man has a genetic disposition to dominance,” I said. “This is doubted by no one qualified to form an opinion on the matter. It may, in certain circumstances, be politically expedient to deny this truth, but that is a separate question and involves separate issues.”
“I do not doubt men have a disposition to dominate,” said Vella. “But they must control this disposition.”
“Tell a man not to breathe,” I told her. “Tell his heart not to beat.” I looked at her. “Tell a man not to be himself.”
Vella looked at me, stricken.
“I know little of rights,” I said, “for I am more accustomed to attending to realities, but permit me to ask you this question? Does a man have the right to be a man?”
“Of course,” said Vella.
“What if,” I asked, “in being a man, it was necessary to exercise the disposition for dominance?”
“Then,” said Vella,” no man has the right to be a man.”
“What if,” I asked, “in order to fulfill oneself as a woman, it was necessary, at least at crucial times, to be subject to the total domination of a male?”
“Then,” said Vella, “no woman would have the right to be a woman.”
“Under these circumstances outlined then,” I said, “neither a man nor a woma
n would have the right to be themselves.”
“Yes,” said Vella.
“The circumstances I have outlined,” I told her, “are reality. It is undeniable men have a genetic disposition to domination. Does it seem likely to you that this disposition could have been selected for in isolation?”
She looked at me, kneeling, not answering.
“Does it not seem likely that men and women, together, in a complementary fashion, forming a race, a kind of animal, Were conjointly shaped by the long, harsh application of evolutionary forces? Does it seem likely to you that biology would have shaped the man and neglected the woman?”
“No,” said Vella. “It does not.” She put her head down.
“Nature, in teaching man to dominate, has not faded to provide his victim.”
Vella looked up, angrily.
“Luscious and beautiful women,” I said. “And what must be the genetic dispositions of these women, beneath the overlays, the encrustations, the conditionings of impersonal, mechanistic, industrial societies, to which sex is an embarrassment and human beings a puzzle?”
“I do not know,” she said.
“There is in them, perhaps,” I suggested, “a disposition to respond to dominance, to yearn for it, to seek it out, to, by their behavior, beg for it, They try to control, but in their hearts, they yearn to be controlled, totally, for they are females.”
“What you say goes against much of what I have been taught,” said Vella.
“Do females,” I asked, “wish to relate to strong or weak males?”
“Strong males,” she said.
“Why would this be?” I asked.
She looked down, not answering. “What if, Tarl,” she asked, “I should have these feelings, these terrible, unworthy feelings? What if I should, in my heart, desire domination by Men?”
“A healthy society,” I said, “would make provision for the satisfaction of these feelings.”