by John Norman
I cursed inwardly. It could take a great deal of time to explore the remote areas of the complex. I did not know, first, where the most remote areas accessible to the overhead track lay or where the surveillance devices, which might be available to human beings, might not scan. The destructive device I sought, I was confident, would lie in an area beyond the reach of the overhead track system and, I conjectured, in an area not public to the surveillance system. I recalled that no such device had been revealed by the monitors in the private chamber of Zarendargar, Half-Ear, war general of the Kurii.
I recalled the girl I had left on the steel plates far behind me, the chain dangling down from the overhead track system to the collar on her neck.
She was a "yellow." I needed a "red."
I looked up at the track above me, angrily. At one of its terminations, doubtless the most remote, lay the area which I sought.
The siren stopped whining, and a voice, over a speaker system, in Gorean began to speak. "Secure all slaves," it said. "All personnel report to their stations." This message was repeated five times. Some men ran past me. There was then silence in the halls.
It was an intelligent arrangement. In times of danger Gorean slaves are often chained or confined that they may in no way affect the outcome of whatever action may ensue. They will helplessly await their eventual disposition at the hands of masters. That all personnel were to report to their stations would provide the leaders in the complex with an accounting of their forces and suddenly make the surveillance system of the complex effective. A lone figure would be easily identified as the intruder.
I thrust open a door in the hallway. I saw a man within who was securing slaves. He had thrust them, ten girls, naked, in a row, kneeling, belly tight against a steel wall. On short neck chains, with collars, he fastened them in place. Their wrists, at the sides of their heads, in light manacles fastened to wall rings, were similarly secured. He looked up. "I'm hurrying!" he said, angrily. I did not speak. He snapped the right wrist of the last girl on the line in its manacle. He then slipped the key in his pouch and, looking at me angrily, hurried out of the room.
The girls, bellies and bodies tight against the wall, were frightened, but they made not the least sound.
To one side, aligned on the wall, were several track chains, with their attached locks. I found one which had a lock, heavy like the others, its key attached, which had on it, as did the chain and the lock themselves, two red bands. Its chain would fit the longest tracks in the complex.
I then went to the girls, to check the graceful, slender steel collars they wore, those lighter, characteristic slave collars about which the heavy iron wall collars had been closed.
I found two that were marked in two tiny red bands.
"Where is the key to your chains?" I asked one of them.
"Our keeper has it, Master," she said.
I had feared it would be the case. I had not attempted to kill or detain their keeper. His failure to report at his station would surely have localized my whereabouts in the complex.
I looked about, angrily.
I could not free one of the red-collar girls. Both had been well chained by a Gorean master. There was no time to test and play with the locks, and each wench was secured by three devices, each sufficient to hold her. The explosive darts at my disposal, addressed to their bonds, would surely have destroyed them.
I must then do what I could, without them.
I turned about and seized one of the chains, angrily, one of those whose attached lock bore the key with two red bands. Then, sliding the chain in its track, I left the area where the girls were secured.
If I were successful in detonating or initiating the trigger sequence on the apparatus I sought I hoped that it would destroy only those parts of the complex in which the munitions and supplies were stored.
I considered the girls left behind in the chamber.
Perhaps Imnak would succeed in finding and freeing them, somehow. Certainly I had wanted him to evacuate as many girls as possible from the complex. And yet, nude, or in their silks, would they last more than an Ahn outside in the polar night? There were probably many such girls in the complex, now helplessly chained, beautiful, secured slaves. They would be, presumably, innocent victims in the wars of beasts and men. Then I dismissed them from my mind; I was again Gorean; I had work to do; they were only slaves.
I re-entered the hall, sliding the chain with me. I had little doubt I would soon be noticed.
I wondered how long was the track in which the chain slid. Such a chain, without its secured beauty, would be sure to attract attention.
I passed various doors in the hall. There were training rooms, exercise chambers, apartments. If I chose merely to hide, it would take the men of the complex a good deal of time to find me. But I could accomplish little by such an action.
I descended some stairs to a lower level, following the path set by the sliding chain.
I heard some men about a corner, running in step. I let the chain dangle and, hastily, took refuge in a side room, a pantry. I took a roll from a basket and fed on it. The men passed. They had brushed aside the chain, paying it no attention. Perhaps a girl had been removed from it for chaining by the nearest guard when the instructions concerning slave security had been issued over the speaker system. When I was about to re-enter the hall I suddenly stepped back. A guard and a free woman, in robes of concealment, had passed. I had not understood until then that such women might be in the complex.
But why not, I asked myself.
Kurii and their human servitors commonly make use of such. It is not unusual. Why should some not be here? Such are assiduously trained and applied to diverse purposes. They make useful minions. As they are free, their privacy is sacrosanct. They may move about with impunity. They would be protected with all the safeguards with which Goreans surround and honor exalted free females, equal sharers of the rights of Home Stones. With their guards they may travel much as they wish, or as they may be directed, in the pursuit of their employer's enterprises. Certainly they may go where slaves may not, even into the precincts of temples, the chambers of councils, the offices of administrators, the guarded corridors of exchange and finance, of high commerce. Their needs are lavishly supplied, their projects are abundantly financed. Free, they attract little suspicion. They can thus prosecute the insidious designs of their cunning patrons with little risk of detection. Interestingly, and understandably, not all these women are Gorean; no; rather, many of them are from Earth, the world once my own, a world perhaps once as beautiful as Gor, now a more-neglected, grayer world, now a world too often dishonored, desecrated, and betrayed by her own children. One regrets what has been done to her. One wonders if she might once more grow young. In any event, the agents of the beasts, it seems, not unoften, nor unwisely, enlist Earth women for their projects. They are intelligent, motivated, unquestioning, and promising allies. They have no Home Stones and no Gorean allegiances, or loves. They, many, as might many of Earth, see Gor as no more than an arena, a theater, in which they may safely exploit and prosper. Gor, for them, exists not to be loved, but looted. The world from which they derive, of course, seems to the Kur eye one ripe for such recruitments; as they see it, it is a hypocritical world, one on which selflessness is praised while carefully and deliberately evaded, one in which greed is denounced while being frequently and often substantially rewarded, one in which egotism thrives most profoundly, and keenly, behind the veils of its own denial. Earth, as the Kur sees it, and I hesitate to speculate with what accuracy, is a meretricious, polluted, materialistic sphere too sophisticated, too culturally advanced, to be influenced by the obsolescent, primitive considerations of loyalty and honor, eccentric impediments to success, to be put on and taken off with variations in the political weather. These women then, natively well trained in the unspoken principles of prestige and gain, of self-seeking and egotism, are easily lured by promises of wealth and power. Arlene had been such a woman. You see, they have no
Home Stones.
How different such women are, I thought, hard, cruel, calculating, cunning, ambitious operatives, from the more typical women brought to Gor, soft, supine, vulnerable, unconscious, naked, in slave capsules, an identification anklet locked on their left ankle, women selected with different objectives in mind, women selected, unbeknownst to themselves, for the pleasure of men, selected for extraordinary beauty, high intelligence, extreme femininity, and helpless, easily arousable sexual heat, and love, women selected by slavers to sell well in the markets.
But then perhaps they are not so different, after all, I thought. One could always, if one wished, bring in males, but that seems seldom done. Perhaps the female is a better operative. Perhaps she is less critical than the male. Perhaps she is more gullible, and thus more reliable. Perhaps, on the other hand, she is more likely to be lured by the prospect of power. Has she not always been the more easily distracted by golden apples? But perhaps the reason is more simple. The female has a double application. After she has served her purpose, there is always the collar, the market. The Kurii have little compunction about betraying the betrayer, about treating she who is guilty of treason as the traitress she is. Let the platform of her success be then the slave block, and her payment be found at the end of a whip.
I looked after the man, and the woman with him.
There was an intruder in the complex.
Doubtless the woman, for her protection was being conducted to a place of greater security. Perhaps this level was being cleared for purposes of conducting a close search. I finished the roll taken from the basket and left the pantry area.
Outside I encountered two more pairs of individuals, two guards and two more of the free women. I gathered they might be being trained in the complex for their duties later.
"He's not in there," I said to the men, gesturing with my head to the pantry from which I had emerged. Then I said to them, "Hurry!"
They hurried on.
I caught sight of a flash of ankle beneath the heavy robes of concealment worn by the women. It was a trim, exciting ankle. I smiled. I supposed they had not been told that when their political and military work for their faction was completed they would be silked and collared and kept as slaves.
Why should a man not get the most from a female?
Another man hurried by, running a slave girl on her neck chain before him. She was a yellow-collar girl, as Belinda, whom I had earlier had in the halls, had been. She was still in a snatch of slave silk. "She should be secured," I said to the man, sternly.
"She will be," he said.
I heard another man coming, from behind me. I spun about, covering him with the weapon I carried.
"Do not fire," he said. "I am Gron, from Al-Ka section."
"What are you doing in this area," I said.
"I have come to fetch the Lady Rosa," he said.
"In what apartment is she," I demanded.
"Forty-two," he said, "Central Level Minus one, Mu corridor."
"Correct," I told him, lowering the weapon.
He breathed more easily.
"I will fetch her," I said. Indeed, I had need of a wench. "Return to Al-Ka section."
He hesitated momentarily.
"Hurry," I said, angrily. "A condition of possible danger exists."
He lifted his hand, acknowledging this, and turned about. He soon disappeared down the corridor.
I soon determined that I was in Mu corridor, from Gorean markings high on the wall near a point where the corridor branched in two directions. It seemed probable to me that I was on the appropriate level as I had encountered the man at some distance from the nearest stairway.
I saw no others at that time in the corridor. I slid the chain along beside me.
Soon I had come to the steel door marked forty-two. I saw that a branch of the recessed chain track, above, entered the apartment, doubtless so that the Lady Rosa could be served by appropriately secured female slaves. I opened the door and slid the chain, on its track, within the opening. Inside the apartment was luxurious, plush and silked. It was dimly lit by five candles in a tall floor stand. There was much ornate, intricate carving in the room. A woman, startled, leaped up from the large, rounded bed on which she had sat. She wore the robes of concealment. She whipped the silken sheath of a veil across her features.
"You should knock, you fool," she said. "I had scarcely time to conceal my features."
She looked at me, her eyes flashing over the veil. Her features were, even veiled, not particularly concealed. Her face was narrow but very beautiful. She had extremely dark eyes, and dark hair, even bluish black, which, under the hood of the robes, I could see was drawn back about the sides of her head. Her cheekbones were quite high. Her face was regal, aristocratic, and cold. She was angry.
"You are the Lady Rosa?" I asked.
She drew herself up coldly. "I am the Lady Graciela Consuelo Rosa Rivera-Sanchez," she said. "What is going on?" she asked.
"There is an intruder in the complex," I said.
"Has he yet been apprehended?" she asked.
"No," I said. "How long have you been in the complex?"
"Four months," she said. Then she said, "Four Gorean months, not yet completing the fourth passage hand."
"Are you familiar with the chain-and-track system, for controlling the movements of slaves?" I asked.
"Of course," she said.
"At its remotest terminations?" I asked.
"Yes," she said, "but humans are not allowed beyond those points."
I smiled.
"How could an intruder penetrate the complex?" she asked.
"By means of a ventilator shaft," I said. "You speak Gorean rather well," I said, "though with a distinct accent."
"I have been intensively trained," she said.
That accent, I thought, which was aristocratic and Castilian, would not be objected to by most Gorean masters.
"I have high linguistic aptitudes," she said, coldly.
I thought that that was fortunate for her. She would more quickly be able to understand and please a master in the subtleties of his pleasure, once she was totally owned by one. On the other hand, almost any girl, in a condition of slavery, learns quickly. She must. Slave girls are incredibly alert to the subtlest and most delicate nuances of a master's speech. The tiniest inflection can tell her whether her master is joking with her or, if she does not do something differently almost instantaneously, that she is to be mercilessly whipped. Girls in collars strive to learn well the language of their masters. Differences among them in the swiftness with which the various proficiency levels are attained are functions, generally, of native aptitude and exposure conditions. The slave girl is, doubtless, among the most highly motivated of female language students. Yet, if they begin to learn Gorean as adults, or young adults, they will almost always retain traces of their native tongue. I have encountered girls on Gor who spoke Gorean with a variety of Earth accents.
"What does the intruder want in the complex?" inquired the woman.
"At the moment he needs a woman," I said.
"I do not understand," she said.
"Remove your clothing," I said.
She looked at me, startled.
"Or I shall do it for you," I said. "I am the intruder," I explained.
She backed away. "Never," she said.
"Very well," I said. "Lie on the bed, on your stomach, with your hands and legs apart." I drew forth the knife at the belt of the garment I wore. It is not wise to try to tear away the garments of a free woman with one's bare hands. They may contain poisoned needles.
"You're joking," she said.
I gestured with the knife to the bed.
"You would not dare," she hissed.
"To the bed," I said.
"I am the Lady Graciela Consuelo Rosa Rivera-Sanchez," she said.
"If you are pretty enough," I said, "perhaps I will call you Pepita."
"You would take away my clothes, wouldn't you?" she said.<
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"I am Gorean," I told her. I took a step toward her.
"Do not touch me," she said. "I will do it."
Her small hands reluctantly went to the hooks at the throat of the garments.
"The veil, and hood, first," I said.
She brushed them back, with a movement of her hand, a toss of her head.
"You would bring a high price," I told her.
She looked at me in fury.
"Step from your slippers," I told her.
She did so. She was then barefoot.
"Continue," I told her.
Her hands again went to the hooks at the throat of the garments. Angrily, deliberately, she loosened the hooks, one by one.
She pulled the garments down a bit from her throat. Her throat was slender and lovely. It would take an engraved steel collar, bearing her master's name, beautifully.
Her hands were at the two outer robes. She looked at me.
"We do not have all day," I told her.
They fell about her ankles.
"Between the third and fourth robes," I told her, "there is a sheathed dagger, concealed in the lining. Keep your hands away from it."
"You are observant," she said.
A warrior is trained to look for such things.
The third and fourth robe slipped to the floor, about her ankles.
There remained now but the fifth robe, and the light, sleeveless, greenish-silk, sliplike undergown.
Her hands hesitated at the throat of the fifth robe.
"Off with it," I told her.
It, like the others, fell about her ankles.