by John Norman
That girl, dark-haired, too, shook her head with horror. "It cannot be," she whispered.
The dark-haired girl, who had worn the pull-over, turned angrily to the blonde, at the other end of the chain. "Do you still think," she asked, "they will not 'dare' to look at your precious body?"
The blonde shrank back, terrified in the chains.
"Do you truly think now," pressed the dark-haired girl, furiously, "that you have rights, you foolish little thing? Do you think before such men you would have rights? These are not men of Earth!"
The blond girl looked at her with horror.
"These men will have their way with women," she said. "Can you not see it in their eyes? They will have what they want from women." And she laughed bitterly, "And we are women," she said.
"This place then—" stammered the girl at the end of the chain.
"Yes," said the dark-haired girl. Then she looked at the blonde. "Do you still think," she asked, "that we are merely some sort of prisoners?"
"No, no," wept the blond girl.
"This is a slave market," said the dark-haired girl, "and we are slaves."
The blond girl moaned and threw her head back. The third and fourth girl began to sob.
"Accept it, my dear," said the dark-haired girl, "our reality is now transformed."
They looked at her.
"We are now slave girls on a strange world."
"No," whispered the girl on the end.
"I am for sale," said the dark-haired girl, "and so, too, are you, and the rest of us."
"Yes," whispered the blonde, suddenly shuddering, "I—I am for sale."
"As are the rest of us," said the dark-haired girl.
The girls then subsided, and were quiet.
After a time the dark-haired girl spoke. "I wonder," she said, "what it will be like, being a slave girl."
"I cannot even think of it," said the blond-haired girl.
"I wonder what it will be like, being owned by a man," mused the dark-haired girl.
"Perhaps a woman will buy us," said the girl on the end.
The blond girl, and the dark-haired girl, looked at her, apprehensively.
"We would have less to fear from a woman," said the girl on the end.
"Do you want to be owned by a woman?" asked the dark-haired girl.
"No," said the girl on the end.
"Nor would I," said the third girl.
"Nor would I," said the dark-haired girl.
"—Nor would I," said the blonde.
"That is interesting, is it not?" asked the dark-haired girl, thoughtfully. She looked out at the crowd. "Have you ever seen such men?" she asked. "I had never dreamed such men could exist."
"No," whispered the blond girl.
"Do you not find them disturbing?" asked the dark-haired girl.
"Wicked girl!" cried the girl on the end.
"I will tell you something," said the dark-haired girl. "They make me feel warm inside, and hot and wet."
"Wicked girl! Wicked girl!" cried the girl on the end.
"I have never felt feelings like this before," said the dark-haired girl. "I do not know what I would do if one of them touched me."
"Feminine! Feminine!" scolded the girl on the end, who had worn the beige flannel shirt.
The dark-haired girl in the brief platform tunic, who had worn the red pull-over, knelt back. "Yes," she said, "feminine."
"If they so much as touch me, I'll scream," said the blonde.
But there seemed little chance of this for there appeared to be much more choice merchandise for sale upon those long, darkly varnished, slatted platforms. I had stood back in the crowd, interested to hear them speak. But now I would move on. It was nearly time to go to the pavilion. I did see in the crowd, some platforms away, the fellow from the polar basin. He was looking at women. The rawhide rope was looped about his shoulder.
Of the four Earth beauties chained on the platform a few feet away I found the dark-haired girl, who had worn the soft, red pull-over, of greatest interest—of greatest slave interest, of course. She had a sensitive, delicate, beautiful countenance, and a slight, slender, but exquisite figure. Her throat took a collar nicely. Her wrists and ankles were small. They would look well in shackles. Her hair was now short, and that might diminish her sales appeal for a time, but it would surely grow. In a year or so, unless it was harvested, it would be of acceptable slave length, and one might expect it later to be suitably long, glossy, and attractive. Another of her attractions, as I have suggested, was her intelligence. This trait tends to be of considerable interest to most Gorean males. The life one shares with a slave is, of course, multidimensional. I thought she might have a tendency at present to be a bit short-tempered or nasty, perhaps having been raised in too luxurious or pampering a background, or from obtaining her way too frequently or too easily, perhaps from fearful domestics or indulgent parents, but I effected nothing critical. A whip can quickly take that out of a woman. In the hands of a competent master I had little doubt she would come about quickly. I recalled a slave I had once owned for a time, named Elinor. To be sure, she had been well mastered, and well understood her collar, before she came into my possession. She was now well owned, as I understood it, by a tarnsman of Treve, one named Rask.
"Look," I heard a fellow say, "it is Tabron of Ar."
I turned about. A tarnsman, in the scarlet leather of his war rights, tall, was moving through the crowd. He casually stopped before the four girls.
The blonde shrank back as his eyes examined her in the collar, chains, and platform tunic.
He looked upon the dark-haired girl. To my surprise and pleasure I saw her kneel very straight and lift her body before him. Then he looked past her to the other two girls and continued on his way. She knelt back in her chains.
"I saw you!" said the girl on the end, who had worn the beige flannel shirt.
"He was very handsome," said the dark-haired girl. "—And I am a slave."
"He didn't buy you," sneered the third girl, who had worn the plaid flannel shirt, "you rich tart!"
"He didn't buy you either," retorted the dark-haired girl, "you low-class idiot."
I smiled. They were both only slaves.
"I am more beautiful than you," said the third girl.
I was pleased to see that the third girl seemed now much more sensitive to her femaleness than earlier. Perhaps she would not take as long as I had thought to discover her womanhood. Gorean males, I conjectured, might teach it to her quickly. She would look lovely, I thought, crawling to her master, his sandals in her teeth.
"If we must discuss that sordid sort of thing," said the girl on the end, who had worn the beige flannel shirt, "I am the most beautiful of us four."
"I am," said the dark-haired girl, angrily, indignantly.
"No," said the blonde. "I am surely the most beautiful!"
"You do not even want a man to touch you," said the dark-haired girl.
"No," said the blonde. "But I am still the most beautiful."
The dark-haired girl looked out over the crowd. "They will decide who is most beautiful," she said.
"They?" asked the blonde.
"The masters," said the dark-haired girl.
"Masters?" stammered the blonde.
"Yes," said the dark-haired girl, "the masters, those men out there, those who will buy us, our masters, they will decide who is most beautiful."
The girls knelt back in their chains. They knelt back easily, on their heels.
They were beautiful in the brief platform tunics. I wondered if they had ever been as beautiful on Earth as here, on sale, in their light tunics and chains. Surely they were attractively displayed.
A beautiful woman is the most attractive form of merchandise.
"Oh!" cried the blond girl.
A stout fellow, in the garb of the tarn keepers, smelling of the tarn cots, stood looking at her. She pulled back, and shook her head, "No." Her eyes were frightened.
The stout fe
llow looked about, and caught the eye of one of the slaver's men who, seeing him, made his way through the crowds to his side.
"These are new slaves?" asked the tarn keeper.
"Fresh to the collar," said the slaver's man.
"I need a wench," said the man, "one who will cost me little, one to keep in the cots by day, to shovel the excrement of tarns, one to keep in my stall by night, as a pot-and-mat girl."
"These four wenches," said the slaver's man, expansively, indicating the small coffle, "are comely candidates for such a post." He stepped upon the platform, and crouched upon its surface. "Consider this one," he said, indicating the blonde, who was first upon the chain.
He reached to her tunic.
"Don't touch me," she cried, drawing back.
"A barbarian," said the tarn keeper.
"Yes," said the slaver's man.
"And the others?" asked the tarn keeper.
"They are all barbarian, Master," said the slaver's man.
The dark-haired girl, seeing the tarn keeper's eyes upon her, shrank back.
The tarn keeper turned and walked away. The girls looked at one another, frightened, and knelt back. They seemed relieved. This relief, however, was surely premature. Another slaver's man joined his colleague at the platform. "We will never sell these," said the first. "They are raw girls, untrained, inept, clumsy, meaningless sluts. They do not even speak Gorean."
"Tenalion has no intention of putting them on the main block in the pavilion," said the second. He had a five-bladed slave whip at his belt.
"It would be a waste of block time," said the first. "Who would want girls this worthless and ignorant?" he asked. "We shall surely have to transport them back to Ar."
"Who of Ar would want them?" asked the second man, grinning.
"We will have to take them back to Ar," said the first man.
"We could sell them for sleen feed here," said the second.
"That is true," granted the first.
"Attend to the forty through forty-five platforms," said the second man, who seemed to have greater authority than the first. "I shall stay in this vicinity for the time."
The other man nodded, and turned away.
The second slaver's man regarded the four girls, who did not meet his eyes. He wore blue and yellow, a tunic. He wore studded leather wristlets. At his belt hung the whip. The girls now seemed apprehensive. I did not blame them. One in whose charge they were now stood near them. I saw them look at his whip, but there was no real comprehension of it in their eyes. They did not yet understand the whip, or what it might do to them. I gathered they had never been whipped.
"The bids have begun in the pavilion," I heard.
"Move forward," said the slaver's man to the girls, in Gorean. They did not understand his words, but his gesture was clear. Frightened, they, on their knees, crept forward to the edge of the platform. They were now quite near the crowd. Before they had been back about a yard or so on the platform. When a girl is back somewhat it is easier to see her. On the other hand, the proximity of female flesh to the buyer can in itself, of course, be a powerful inducement to her purchase. What man, truly close to a beautiful female, can fail to feel her in his blood, and want to own her?
The slaver, I conjectured, knew his business.
The girls looked at one another, terrified. They were now close to the men.
"Please, don't!" begged the blond girl. A man in the crowd, passing her, had put his hand on her thigh.
The slaver's man looked at her, angrily. She looked at him, tears in her eyes. Did he not know what the beast, in passing, had done? He looked away.
What did it matter that someone had touched, even intimately caressed, a woman who was only a slave?
She tried to creep back, but the slaver's man, seeing this, irritably removed his whip from his belt and, with its coils, indicated the place on the platform where her knees must be. They were placed in such a way as to be a quarter of an inch over the edge of the platform. The other girls, too, made certain their knees were perfectly aligned. The robes of passing men then brushed their knees.
"I would look at this one," said a leather worker, who stopped before the blonde, first on the chain.
She shrank back.
"She is a beauty, isn't she?" smiled the slaver. "Open her tunic. See what she has to offer you," he invited.
The leather worker reached toward the girl, but she scrambled back. "Don't touch me!" she cried. The dark-haired girl cried out with pain, dragged by her collar back, too. She fell twisted, on her side, in the chain.
"I'll scream," warned the blond girl.
The leather worker was quite puzzled. "I do not think I am interested," he said. "Too, this one is a barbarian. She is not broken to the collar."
"Break her to your collar," said the slaver's man.
"I do not want to take the time to break a girl in," he said.
"Wait, kind sir," said the slaver. "Wait! See what delights would await you."
The man hesitated.
The slaver then swiftly, easily, by short stairs, descended to the walkway before the platform. In this way he abandoned the possible intimidation of the platform's height and assumed a more intimate, casual relationship to the prospective patron. Too, standing beside him, a hand on his sleeve or such, it would be easier to detain him.
Certainly it would be uncivil, at the least, having now been joined, to leave at the moment.
"Prodicus!" called the slaver's man.
In a moment the first slaver's man, who had gone to supervise the forty through forty-five platforms, those in the two hundreds, joined his colleague.
The second slaver's man, who carried the whip, which he now uncoiled, unnoticed, I am sure, by the girls, indicated the blonde with his head.
The fellow called to the platform scrambled onto it and swiftly knelt the blonde before the slaver's man with the whip and the leather worker. The fellow on the platform then jerked loose the knot at the blonde's right hip, which held the wrap-around tunic closed. "No!" she screamed. He jerked it back, away from her, exposing her. She was very beautiful. It lay behind her, over her chained wrists. He kicked her knees apart. Then he crouched behind her, holding her by the upper arms. She struggled, twisting, on her knees. She began to scream miserably, her head back. She pressed her knees closely together. The slaver's man with the whip angrily leaped to the platform. He kicked her knees open again. She was sobbing and screaming. Men about laughed. "See, Master?" asked the slaver's man with the whip, but the leather worker had gone. The slaver's man glared down, in fury, at the chained blonde. Another man in the crowd reached to take the ankle of the dark-haired girl in his hand and she, with a rattle of chain, jerked it away. She looked at him, terrified. "They are all barbarians," said a man, "all of them." Puzzled by the reactions of the blonde and the dark-haired girl other men in the crowd reached out to touch the last two girls on the chain. One held with his two hands the thighs of the third girl, who had worn the plaid flannel shirt. She screamed in the collar. Another man took the fourth girl, who had worn the beige flannel shirt, under the arms, and pulled her to him. She fought to pull her lips back, that they might not touch his. She struggled in his arms. She screamed. He thrust her back on her side on the platform, and left her. The man who had held the thighs of the third girl, too, released her. There was much laughter in the crowd. She scrambled back in her chains, sobbing. The slaver's man was furious. He looked from one girl to the other, to the stripped, chained blonde, to the cowering dark-haired girl, her neck cut by the collar, from its movement, to the third girl, sobbing and looking up at him, to the fourth girl, lying on her side, her legs drawn up, crying. He gestured to his colleague. This man went to the second girl and jerked back her tunic, and to the third and jerked back her tunic, and to the fourth and jerked back her tunic. Then they lay in their chains, exposed at his feet. Then he put them under the whip.
In moments they writhed at his feet, slave girls, screaming for mercy.
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Tenalion of Ar, the slaver, their master, stood now at the edge of the platform. He was not pleased.
"They are worthless," said the man with the whip, coiling it.
The girls lay on the platform, sobbing. Stripes were on their bodies.
"Take anything for them," said Tenalion, and turned away.
"Two," said a voice. "Two. How much?"
It was the fellow from the polar basin, who wore no jacket, but fur trousers and boots, with the bow at his back, and the rawhide rope on his shoulder. In his left hand he carried a bundle of furs, smaller now, than it had been, and a sack, which was now less bulky than it had been when I had seen it earlier near the puppet theater. I remembered he had sold carvings to a corpulent, gross fellow, one whose booth had been set up in the street of the dealers in artifacts and curios. It was not far from the puppet theater.
I moved in more closely, thinking he might have difficulty in communicating with the slaver's man.
"Those," said the coppery-skinned fellow, pointing to the blonde and the dark-haired girl, freshly whipped, crying in their chains.
"Yes?" asked the slaver's man.
"Cheap?" asked the man, a red hunter from the bleak countries north even of Ax Glacier.
"These two?" asked the slaver's man.
The hunter nodded.
The slaver's man knelt the two stripped girls before the hunter.
They looked at him with fear.
He was a man. They had felt the whip.
"Yes cheap. Very cheap," said the slaver's man. "Do you have money?"
The hunter pulled a pelt from the bundle of furs he carried. It was snowy white, and thick, the winter fur of a two-stomached snow lart. It almost seemed to glisten. The slaver's man appreciated its value. Such a pelt could sell in Ar for half a silver tarsk. He took the pelt and examined it. The snow lart hunts in the sun. The food in the second stomach can be held almost indefinitely. It is filled in the fall and must last the lart through the winter night, which lasts months, the number of months depending on the latitude of his individual territory. It is not a large animal. It is about ten inches high and weighs between eight and twelve pounds. It is mammalian, and has four legs. It eats bird's eggs and preys on the leem, a small arctic rodent, some five to ten ounces in weight, which hibernates during the winter.