by John Norman
There are very few girls who, after a day or two in the canals, and then beingreturned to their masters, do not strive to be completely pleasing.
"You need not warn Zarendargar," said Samos. "He knows he will be sought. Thatwe have, in effect, on the authority of one of the very beasts to whom we spokethis morning."
"He may not know that the Death Squad has landed on Gor," I said. "He may notknow that they are aware of his general location. He may not know with whom itis that he will be dealing."
"These things are his concern," said Samos, not yours."
"Perhaps," I said.
"Once," said Samos, "he sent you forth upon the ice, to be slain by anotherKur."
"He did his duty, as he saw it," I said.
"And now you would render him succor?" asked Samos.
"Yes," I said.
"He might slay you, instantly, if he saw you," said Samos.
"It is true he is an enemy," I said. "That is a risk I must take."
"He may not even recognize you," said Samos.
"Perhaps," I said. This was, I supposed, a danger. Just as human beings oftenfound it difficult to distinguish among various Kurii, so, too, many Kurii,apparently, often found it difficult to distinguish among various human beings.
On the other hand, I was confident that Zarendargar would know me. I had nodoubt but what I would recognize him. One does not forget a Kur such asHalf-Ear, or Zarendargar, one who stood above the rings, a war general among theKurii.
"I forbid you to go," said Samos.
"You cannot do that," I said.
"In the name of Priest-Kings," he said, "I forbid you to go.
"My wars are my own," I said. "I choose them as I please."
I looked beyond Samos to the boat and urt hunter in the canal. The girl climbed,shivering, into the bow of the boat, the wet rope on her neck. In the bow of theboat, crouching there, nude and shivering, she coiled, in careful circles, inthe shallow, wooden rope bucket beside her, the central length of the rope, thatbetween her neck and the bow ring. Only then did she reach for the thick woolenblanket, from the wool of the hurt, and clutch it, shuddering, about her. Herhair, wet, was very dark against the white blanket. She was comely. I wonderedif she were being rented out for discipline, or if she belonged to the urthunter. It was not easy to tell.
Most Gorean slave girls are comely, or beautiful. This is easy to understand. Itis almost always the better looking women who are taken for slaves, and, ofcourse, in breeding slaves, it is commonly only the most beautiful of femaleslaves who are used, these usually being crossed, hooded, with handsome malesilk slaves, also hooded. The female offspring of these matings, needless tosay, are often exquisite. The male offspring, incidentally, and interestingly,to my mind, are often handsome, strong and quite masculine. This is perhapsbecause many male silk slaves are chosen to be male silk slaves not because theyare weak or like women, but because they are not; it is only that they are men,and often true men, who must serve women, totally, in the same fashion that aslave female is expected to serve a free master. To be sure, it is also true,and should be admitted in all honesty, that many male silk slaves are ratherfeminine; some women prefer this type, perhaps because they fear true men; fromsuch a silk slave they need not fear that they may suddenly be turned upon, andtied, and taught to be women. Most women, however, after a time, find this typeof silk slave a banality and a bore; charm and wit can be entertaining, but, intime, if not conjoined with intellect and true masculine power, they are likelyto wear thin.
The feminine type of male silk slave, incidentally, for better or for worse, isseldom selected for breeding purposes. Gorean slave breeders, perhaps benightedin this respect, prefer what they take to be health to what they think of assickness, and what they take to be strength to what they deem weakness. Somefemale slaves, incidentally, have a pedigreed lineage going back through severalgenerations of slave matings, and their masters hold the papers to prove this.
It is a felony in Gorean law to forge or falsify such papers. Many Goreansbelieve that all women are born for the collar, and that a woman cannot be trulyfulfilled as a woman until a strong man puts it on her, until she finds herselfreduced to her basic femaleness at his feet.
In the case of the bred female slave, of course, she has been legally andliterally, in anyone's understanding, bred to the collar, and in a fullcommercial and economic sense, as a business speculation on the part of masters.
The features most often selected for by the breeders are beauty and passion. Ithas been found that intelligence, of a feminine sort, as opposed to thepseudomasculine type of intelligence often found in women with large amounts ofmale hormones, is commonly linked, apparently genetically, with these twohitherto mentioned properties. There are few male slaves with long pedigrees.
Goreans, though recognizing the legal and economic legitimacy of male slavery,do not regard it as possessing the same biological sanction as attaches tofemale slavery. The natural situation, in the mind of many Goreans, is that themaster set/slave relation is one, which ideally exists between man and woman,with the woman in the property position. Male slaves, from time to time, canreceive opportunities to win their freedom, though, to be sure, usually insituations of high risk and great danger. Such opportunities are never accordedto the female slave. She is totally helpless. If she is to receive her freedomit will be fully and totally, and only, by the decision of her master.
"You are, then, seriously, considering going to the Barrens?" asked Samos.
"Yes," I said.
"You are a foolish and stubborn fellow," said Samos.
"Perhaps," I said. I lifted the roll of kailiauk hide I carried. "May I keepthis?" I asked.
"Of course," said Samos.
I handed it to one of my men. I thought it might prove useful in the Barrens.
"You are fully determined?" asked Samos.
"Yes," I said.
"Wait," he said. He went back to the door of the enclosed cabin and re-enteredit. In a moment he re-emerged, carrying the boxlike translator, which we badbrought from the tam complex. "You may need this," said Samos, handing it to oneof my men.
"Thank you, Samos," I said.
"I wish you well," he said.
"I wish you well," I said. I turned away.
"Wait!" he said.
I turned back to face him.
"Be careful," he said.
"I will," I said.
"Tarl," he said, suddenly.
I turned back to face him, again.
"How is it that you could even think of doing this?" he asked.
"Zarendargar may need my assistance," I said. "I may be able to aid him."
"But why, why?" he asked.
How could I explain to Samos the dark affinity I shared with one whom I had metonly in the north, and long ago, with one who, clearly, was naught but a beast?
I recalled the long evening I had once spent with Zarendargar, and our lengthy,animated conversations, the talk of warriors, the talk of soldiers, of thosefamiliar with arms and martial values, of those who had shared the zest andterrors of conflict, to whom crass materialisms could never be more than themeans to worthier victories, who had shared the loneliness of command, who hadnever forgotten the meanings of words such as discipline, responsibility,courage and honor, who had known perils, and long treks and privations, to whomcomfort and the hearth beckoned less than camps and distant horizons.
"Why, why?" he asked.
I looked beyond Samos, to the canal beyond. The urt hunter, with his girl andboat, rowing slowly, was taking his leave. He would try his luck elsewhere.
"Why?" asked Samos.
I shrugged. "Once," I said, "we shared paga."
3 I Receive Information; I Will Travel Northward
"Perhaps this one?" asked the merchant.
"I am trying to locate the whereabouts of a trader, one called Grunt," I said.
The blond-haired girl, nude, kneeling, shrank back against the cement wall. Hersmall wrists were bo
und tightly behind her, to an iron ring fastened in thewall.
"She is not without her attractions," said the merchant.
"Do you know where this fellow, Grunt, may be found?" I asked.
Another girl, also blond, a long chain on her neck, also fastened to a ring inthe wall, had crept to my feet. She then lowered herself to her belly before me.
She held my right ankle in her small hands and began to lick and kiss softly atmy feet. I felt her mouth and small, warm tongue between the straps on mysandals. "Please buy me, Master," she whispered. I will serve you helplessly andwell." The difference between slave girls are interesting. The first girl was afresh capture, clearly. She had not yet even been branded. The other girl,clearly, had already known the touch of a master.
"I think he has ventured north, along the perimeter," said the merchant.
"Buy me, I beg you, Master!" whispered, the girl at my feet.
I looked to the girl kneeling at the wall. Swiftly she put down her head,reddening.
"That one," said the man, indicating the girl at the wall, "was, formerly free.
She was taken only five days ago. Not yet, as you note, is her thigh evenmarked."
"Why not?" I asked. Usually a girl is marked within hours of her capture. It isusually felt that, after her capture, there is little point in permitting anypossibility that she might be confused with a free woman.
"I want her deeply and cleanly branded," he said. "An iron master travels amongseveral of the smaller border towns. He is good at his business and has anassortment of irons, ranging from lovely and delicate to rude and brutal."
I nodded. It was not unusual for the border towns, along the eastern edge of theThentis mountains, to be served by itinerant tradesmen and artisans. There wasoften too little work for them to thrive in a given town but an ample employmentfor their services and goods in a string of such towns. Such tradesmen andartisans commonly included some five to ten towns in their territory.
"Do not fret, little beauty," said the man to the girl. "You will soon beproperly marked."
The girl lifted her head, and looked at me.
"You see," said the man, "she is already curious as to the touch of a man."
I see," I said.
"What sort of brand would you like, little beauty?" asked the man. "Have nofear. Whatever brand you wear, I guarantee, will be unmistakable and clear."
She looked up at him. With the back of his hand he lashed her head to the side.
She then looked up at him, again, frightened. Blood was at her lip. "Whateverbrand you wish for me, Master," she said.
"Excellent," said the man. He turned to me. "That is her first, full, verbalslave response. She has had, of course, other sorts of slave responses andbehaviors before this, such things as squirmings, strugglings, cringings, painand fear, and behavioral presentations and pleadings, making herself pretty andholding herself in certain ways, presenting herself as a helpless, desirablefemale, trying to provoke the interest of attractive men."
The girl looked at him with horror, but I saw, in her eyes, that what he hadsaid was true. Even unbranded, she was already becoming a slave.
"Please, Master. Please, Master," begged the girl at my feet.
"What sort of brand would you like, my dear?" asked the man of the girl at thewall. "Have no fear. I am now permitting you to express a preference. I shallthen, as it pleases me, accept your preference, or reject it."
Her lip, now swollen, trembled.
"Would you like a lovely and feminine brand," he asked, "or a rude and brutalbrand, one fit for a pot girl or a tendress of kaiila?"
"I am a woman, Master," she said. "I am feminine."
I was pleased to hear this simple confession from the girl, this straightforward, uncompromising admission of the reality of her sex. How few ofthe women of my old world, I thought, could bring themselves, even to theirlovers, to make this same, simple admission. What a world of difference it mightmake to their relationships, I speculated. Yet this admission, nonverbally, wassurely made, and even poignantly and desperately, by many women of my old world,despite the injunctions and conditionings against honesty in such mattersenjoined by an antibiological, politicized society. I hoped that upon occasion,at least, these admissions, these declarations, these cries for recognition andfulfillment, whether verbal or nonverbal, might in his kindness, be heeded by amale.
It is an interesting question, the relation between natural values andconditioned values. To be sure, the human infant, in many respects, seems to belittle more than a tabula rasa, a blank tablet, on which a society, whethersensible or perverted, may inscribe its values. Yet the infant is also ananimal, with its nature and genetic codings, with its heritage of eons of lifeand evolution, tracing itself back to the combinations of molecules and thebirths of stars. Thus can be erected conflicts between nature and artifice,whether the artifices be devised or blind. These conflicts, in turn, producetheir grotesque syndromes of anxiety, guilt and frustration, with theirattendant deleterious consequences for happiness and life. A man may be taughtto prize his own castration but somewhere, sometime, in the individual or in themaddened collectivity, nature must strike back. The answer of the fool is theanswer he has been taught to give, the answer he must continue to defend andbeyond which he cannot see, an answer historically deriving from an ethosfounded on the macabre superstitions and frustrated perversions of lunatics, ananswer now co-opted to serve the interests of new, grotesque minorities who,repudiating the only rationale that gave it plausibility, pervert it to theirown ends. The sludge of Puritanism, with its latent social power, bequeathedfrom one generation to the next, can serve unaccustomed masters. The onlypractical answer to these dilemmas is not continued suppression and censorship,but a society, a world, in which nature is freed to thrive. It is not a healthyworld in which civilization is nature's prison. Nature and civilization are notincompatible. A choice need not be made between them. For a rational animal eachcan be the complement and enhancement of the other. For too long has the worldbeen under the domination of the grotesque and insidious. One fears mostly theymay begin to believe their own lies. They think they herd sheep. It is possible,unbeknownst to themselves, they walk with wolves and lions.
The merchant regarded the girl at the wall. Under his gaze she straightenedherself. "Yes," he said. "I see that you are feminine. Accordingly, you will beappropriately branded."
"Thank you, Master," she said.
"It will be the common Kajira mark," he said, "indicating that you arebeautiful, but only another slave girl."
"Thank you, Master," she said. I thought the cursive Kef, sometimes referred toas the staff and fronds, beauty subject to discipline, would look well upon herthigh.
"I am already branded, Master," said the girl at my feet. She looked up at me.
It was true. She wore the Kef high on her left thigh, just under the hip. Thisis the most common brand site for a Gorean slave girl.
"She bellies to you," said the man. "She likes you."
"Perhaps you have warned her that if she does not belly to the first man in themarket she is to be whipped," I smiled.
"No" chuckled the man, "but it is true that I have denied her the touch of a manfor two days." The sexual relief of a slave girl, like her clothing and herfood, is also something under the total command of the master.
The girl whimpered in frustration. "No, Master," she wept. "You are the sort ofman to whom I would belly naturally. To see you is to want to belly myselfbefore you."
"Master," said the girl at the wall, addressing me, "if I were not bound, I,too, would belly myself before you."
"Excellent!" said the merchant. "This is the first time she has spoken so.
Apparently you are the sort of man she regards as a desirable master."
I said nothing. A girl in a market knows she is to be sold. Accordingly she willoften try to influence a man she finds attractive to buy her. If he does not buyher, she knows she may be bought by one who is worse. Most girls, of
course,prefer to be bought by a man who is exciting and attractive to them, one whomthey would find irresistible, one whom they would desire to serve, rather thanby one who is gross and disgusting to them. To be sure, as slave girls, theywould have to serve either perfectly. The decision as to whether the girl is tobe purchased or not is, of course, in the final analysis, totally the man's Inthis respect the girl must wait, and is absolutely helpless. In this respect shehas as little personal control over her fate as an inanimate, displayed objectin an emporium on Earth.
The girl at the ring pulled against the bonds on her small wrists, leaningtoward me. The girl at my feet looked up at me. I felt the chain on her neckacross my right foot.
"Have they names?" I asked the merchant.
"No," said the merchant, "I have not yet named them."
"The trader. Grunt" I said, "you speculate has ventured northward?"
"Yes," said the man.
I kicked back the girl at my feet. Whimpering, she crawled back to the wall,where she lay curled at its foot, watching me. The other girl, fastened by thewrists to the ring, shrank back against it. She looked at me with horror andfear, but, also, with another expression in her eyes, as well, one offascination and awe. I think then she realized a little better than before whatit might be to be a slave. She would be subject to discipline. Our eyes met. Isaw in her eyes that she now realized that she, like any other slave girl, was,and would be, under total masculine domination. She shuddered, and looked down.