Norman, John - Gor 10 - Tribesmen of Gor.txt

by Tribesmen of Gor [lit]

  transportation to Gor, slavery. She knows nothing. She scarcely understands,

  now, the meaning of her collar.

  Samos laughed unpleasantly, the laugh of a slaver.

  “Yet one thing you had from her seems of interest,” said Samos, preceding me

  down a deep corridor. In the corridor we passed female slave. She dropped to her

  knees and put her head down, her hair upon the tiles, as we passed.

  “It seems a random thing, meaningless” I said.

  “In itself, meaningless,” he said. “But, with other things, it induces in me a

  certain apprehension.”

  “The remark she overheard, in English, concerning the return of the slave

  ships?” I asked.

  “Yes,” said Samos. When I had probed the girl in the pens, mercilessly, forcing

  her to recall all details, even apparently meaningless scraps of detail, or

  information, she had recalled one thing, which had seemed puzzling, disturbing.

  I had not much understood it, but Samos had evinced concern. He knew more than I

  of the affairs of Others, the Kurii, and Priest-Kings. The girl had heard the

  remark drowsily, half stupified, shortly after her arrival on Gor. She,

  stripped, half drugged, the identification anklet of the Kurii locked on her

  left ankle, had lain on her stomach, with other girls, in the fresh grass of

  Gor. They had been removed from the slave capsules in which they had been

  transported. She had risen, to her elbows, her head down. She had then been

  conscious, vaguely, of being turned about and lifted, and carried, to a

  different place in the line, one determined by her height. Usually the tallest

  girls lead the slave chain, the height decreasing gradually toward the end of

  the chain, where the shortest girl is placed. This was a “common chain,”

  sometimes called a “march chain” or “trekking chain”; it was not a “display

  chain: in the “display chain,” or “selling chain,” the arrangement of the girls

  may be determined by a variety of considerations, aesthetic and psychological;

  for example, blondes may be alternated with brunets, voluptuous girls with slim,

  vital girls, aristocratic girls with sweet, peasant wenches, and so on;

  sometimes a girl is placed between two who are less beautiful, to enhance her

  beauty; sometimes the most beautiful is saved for the last on the chain;

  sometimes the chain is used as a ranking device, the most beautiful being-placed

  at its head, the other girls then competing with one another constantly to move

  to a new wrist-ring, snap-lock or collar, one higher on the chain. She had been

  thrown to her stomach in the grass, and her left wrist drawn to her side and

  down. She had heard the rustle of a looped chain, and the periodic click of the

  wrist-rings. She felt a length of chain dropped across the back of her thighs.

  Then, about her left wrist, too, closed the wrist-ring, and she, too, was a girl

  in a coffle. A man had stood by, making entries in a book. When her

  identification anklet had been removed, after she was in the wrist-ring, the man

  removing it had said something to the man with the book, and an entry had been

  made. When the girls were coffled, the man with the book had signed a paper,

  giving it to the captain of the slave ship. She knew it must be a receipt for

  merchandise received. The cargo manifests, apparently, had been correct. She had

  pulled weakly at the wrist-ring ,but it of course, held her. It had been then

  that the man with the book had asked the captain if he would return soon. The

  man with the book spoke in an accent, Gorean. The captain, she gathered, did not

  speak Gorean. The captain had said, as she remembered it, that he did not know

  when they would return, that he had received orders that there were to be no

  more voyages until further orders were received. She was conscious of the

  departure of the ship, and the grass beneath her body, and the chain lying

  across her legs, and the steel of the wrist-ring. She felt the chain move as the

  girl to her right stirred. Her left wrist was moved slightly behind her. They

  lay in the shade of trees, concealed from the air. They were not permitted to

  rise. When one girl had cried out, she had been beaten with a switch. Miss

  Priscilla Blake-Allen had not dared to cry out. After dark, they were herded to

  a wagon.

  “Why,” asked Samos, “should the slave ships cease their runs?”

  “An invasion?” I asked.

  “Unlikely,” said Samos, “If an invasion were to be launched soon, surely the

  slave runs would continue. Their cessation would surely alert the defense and

  surveillance facilities of Priest-Kings. One would not, surely, produce a state

  of apprehension and heightened awareness in the enemy prior to an attack.”

  “It does not seem so,” I admitted, “unless the Kurii, perhaps, feel that just

  such a move might put the Priest-Kings off guard, that it would be too obvious

  to be taken as a prelude to full war.” “But this possibility, doubtless,” smiled

  Samos “too, is one which will not fail to be considered by the rulers of the

  Sardar.”

  I shrugged. It had been long since I had been in the Sardar.

  “It may mean an invasion is being readied,” said Samos. “But I think the Kurii,

  who are rational creatures, will not risk full war until reasonably assured as

  to its outcome. I suspect their reconnaissance is as yet incomplete. The

  organization of native Kurii, which would have constituted a splendid

  intelligence probe, and was doubtless intended primarily as such, yielded them

  little information.”

  I smiled. The invasion of native Kurii from the north, survivors and descendants

  of ship Kurii, for generations, had been stopped in Torvaldsland.

  “I think,” said Samos “it is something other than an invasion.” He looked at me

  grimly. “It is, I suspect, something which would render an invasion

  unnecessary.”

  “I do not understand,” I said.

  “I have much fear,” said Samos. I regarded him. I had seldom seen him so. I

  looked at the heavy squarish face, burned by the wind and salt of Thassa, the

  clear eyes, the white, short-cropped hair, the small golden rings in his ears.

  His face seemed drained of color. I knew he could stand against a hundred

  swords, unflinching.

  “What is it” I asked, “which would render an invasion unnecessary?”

  “I have much fear,” said Samos.

  “You said you had other information,” I said.

  “Two things,” said Samos. “Follow me.” I continued to follow him through various

  corridors, and down stairways in his home. Soon the walls became damp, and I

  gathered we were beneath the levels of the canals. We passed barred doors,

  heavily guarded. Passwords, appropriate to different levels and portions of the

  house, were given and acknowledged. These are changed daily. For a portion of

  our way, we passed through certain sections of the pens. Some of the ornately

  barred, crimson-draped cells, with brass bowls, and rugs, and cushions and

  lamps, were quite comfortable; some of the cells held more than one occupant;

  some Of the girls were permitted cosmetics and slave silk; generally, however,

  girls in the pen are raw, totally, save for their collars and b
rands, as are

  male slaves; the costumer, the perfumer, the hairdresser then does with them

  what he is instructed; most retention facilities in the pens, however, are not

  so comfortable; most are simply heavy cages; some are small cement kennels,

  tiered, with iron gates that slide upward; once we walked over iron gratings,

  beneath which were cages; we passed through two processing rooms; off one

  corridor was a medical facility, with mats and chains; we passed exercise rooms,

  training rooms; we passed the branding chamber; I saw heated irons within; we

  passed, too, the dreaded room of slave discipline; there were, in this room,

  suspended rings, whips, a large, heavy stone table.

  As we passed the cages, male slaves glared at us sullenly; slave girls usually

  shrank back. One girl thrust her hands through the bars. “I am really to be sold

  to a man!” she wept. “Sell me! Sell me!” A guard struck his leather switch

  against the bars before her face, and she fled back within the enclosure.

  “She is not yet hot enough for the block” I said.

  “No,” said Samos.

  Had she knelt at the bars, knees thrust through, her body, her face,

  tear-stained, pressed against them, arms extended, letting her arms be switched

  for the mere chance of possibly touching the guard’s body, then, perhaps, she

  would have been hot enough. Girls are often sent trembling, burning with

  passion, to the block. Many times I have seen them, on their feet, shudder and

  tremble at the auctioneer’s slightest touch. Sometimes, unseen by the buyers,

  they are aroused at the foot of the block, but not satisfied. They are then sent

  naked to the block to be sold, in this state of cruel frustration. Their

  attempts to interest the buyers in their flesh are sometimes fantastic. Some of

  them almost scream in misery, aching for the physical and psychological

  completion of what has been done to their bodies. I have seen girls whom the

  auctioneer had to beat from him with his whip, merely in order to display them

  adequately. These girls, of course, are slaves who have been previously owned.

  Women who have not been previously owned, like free women, for the most part,

  even if naked and collared, do not yet understand their sexuality. That can only

  be taught to them by a man, they helpless in his power. An unowned girl, a free

  woman, thus, can never experience her full sexuality. A corollary to this, of

  course, is that a man who has never had an owned woman in his arms does not

  understand the full power of his manhood. Sexual heat, it might be mentioned, is

  looked upon in free women with mixed feelings; it is commanded, however, in a

  slave girl. Passion, it is thought, deprives the free woman to some extent of

  her freedom and important self-control; it is frowned upon because it makes her

  behave, to some extent, like a degraded female slave; free women, thus, to

  protect their honor and dignity, their freedom and personhood, their

  individuality, must fight passion; the slave girl, of course, is not entitled to

  this privilege; it is denied to her, both by her society and her master; while

  the free woman must remain cool and in control of herself, even in the arms of

  her companion, to avoid being truly “had,” the slave girl is permitted do such

  luxury; her control is in the hands of her master, and she must, upon the mere

  word of her master, surrender herself, writhing, to the humiliating heats of a

  degraded slave girl’s ecstasy. Only when a woman is owned can she be fully

  enjoyed.

  A silken urt, with wet fur, brushed against my leg.

  “Here,” said Samos, at the end of the corridor, one of the lowest in the pens.

  He uttered the password through the beamed, metal sheathed door. It swung open.

  Beyond it was another corridor, but one much shorter. It was damp. Samos took a

  torch from the guard, and went to one of the doors. He looked through the tiny

  slit in the door, holding the torch up. Then he slid back the bolt and, bending

  over, entered the room. There was a foul stench of excrement from within.

  “What do you think?” asked Samos.

  He held the torch up.

  The chained shape did not move. Samos took a stick from beside the door, with

  which the jailer thrust the pan of water or food toward the shape.

  The shape was apparently either asleep, or dead. I did not bear breathing.

  An urt scurried suddenly, unexpectedly, toward a crack in the wall. It

  disappeared within.

  Samos touched the shape with the stick. Suddenly it turned and bit the stick

  through, eyes blazing. It hurled itself, some eight hundred pounds of weight, to

  the length of the six chains that fastened it, each chain to a separate ring, to

  the wall. The chains jerked at the rings, again and again. It bit at us. Claws

  emerged and retracted, and emerged again, from the tentaclelike six-digited

  appendages of the thing. I looked into the flat, leathery snout, the

  black-pupiled, yellowish-corneaed eyes, the ears flat back against its head, the

  wide, fang-rimmed orifice of a mouth, large enough to bite the head from a man.

  I heard the rings groan in the stone. But they held. I removed my hand from the

  sword hilt.

  The beast sat back against the wall, watching us. It now blinked, against the

  light of the torch.

  “This is the first one, living, that I have seen,” said Samos.

  Once before, in the ruins of a hall in Torvaldsland, surmounting a stake, he had

  seen the head of such a beast.

  “It is a Kur, surely,” he said.

  “Yes,” I said, “it is an adult Kur.”

  “It is a large one, is it not?” asked Samos.

  “Yes,” I said, “but I have seen many larger.”

  “As nearly as we can determine,” said Samos, “it is only a beast, and not

  rational.”

  I smiled.

  It was chained in six places, at the wrists and ankles, and about the waist, and

  again about the throat. Any of the chains might have held a bosk or a larl. It

  snarled, opening its fanged mouth.

  “Where did you take it?” I asked.

  “I bought it from hunters,” said Samos. “It was taken southeast of Ar,

  proceeding in a southeasternly direction.”

  “That seems unlikely,” I said. Few Goreans would venture in that direction.

  “It is true,” said Samos. “I know the chief of the hunting pride. His

  declaration was dear. Six men died in its capture.” The beast sat, somnolent,

  regarding us.

  “But why would it, a Kur, venture to such a place?” I asked.

  “Perhaps it is insane?” suggested Samos.

  “What purpose would such a journey serve for a Kur?” I asked.

  Samos shrugged. “We have been unable to communicate with it” he said to me.

  “Perhaps not all Kurii are rational,” He said. “Perhaps this one, as perhaps

  some of the others, is simply a dangerous beast, nothing more.”

  I looked into the beast’s eyes. Its lips, slightly, drew back. I smiled.

  “We have beaten it” said Samos. “We have whipped it, and prodded it. We have

  denied it food.”

  “Torture?” I asked.

  “It did not respond to torture,” said Samos, “I think it is irrational.”

  “What was your purpose?” I as
ked it. “What was your mission?”

  The beast said nothing.

  I rose to my feet. “Let us return to the hall,” I said.

  “Very well,” said Samos. We left the chamber.

  The belled left ankle of the dancer moved in a small circle on the mosaiced

  floor, to the ringing of the bells, and the counterpoint of the finger cymbals.

  Men lifted their cups to Samos as we reentered the hall. We acknowledged their

  greetings.

  Two warriors, guards, held, between them, a dark-skinned slave girl. She had

  long, black hair. Her arms were bound tightly to her sides, her wrists crossed

  and bound behind her. They thrust her forward. “A message girl,” said one of

  them.

  Samos looked at me, quickly. Then to one of those at the table, one who wore the

  garments of the physicians, he said, “Obtain the message.”

  “Kneel,” said Samos. The girl, between the guards, knelt.

  Samos loomed over her. “Whose are you?” he asked.

  “Yours, Master,” she said. It is common for the girl to be given to the

  recipient of the message.

  “Whose were you?” asked Samos.

  “I was purchased anonymously from the public pens of Tor,” she said. Certain

  cities, like Tor, dealt in slaves, commonly buying unsold girls from caravans,

  and selling them at a profit to other caravan masters. The city’s warriors, too,

  paid a bounty on women captured from enemy cities, customarily a silver tarsk

  for a comely female in good health. “You do not know who purchased you, or why?”

  asked Samos. “No, Master,” she said.

  She would not know the message she bore.

  “What is pour name?” asked Samos.

  “Veema,” she said, “if it pleases Master.”

  “What was your number in the pens of Tor?” asked Samos.

  “87432,” she said, “Master.

  The member of the caste of physicians, a laver held for him in the hands of

  another man, put his hands on the girl’s head. She closed her eyes.

  “Then,” said I to Samos, “You do not know from whom this message comes.”

  “No,” said he.

  The physician lifted the girl’s long dark hair, touching the shaving knife to

  the back of her neck. Her head was inclined forward.

  Samos turned away from the girl. He indicated to me a man who sat at a far end