Savages of Gor (11 page)

In the case of the bred female slave, of course, she has been legally and literally, in anyone's understanding, bred to the collar, and in a full commercial 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. It has been found that intelligence, of a feminine sort, as opposed to the pseudomasculine type of intelligence often found in women with large amounts of male hormones, is commonly linked, apparently genetically, with these two hitherto 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 to female slavery. The natural situation, in the mind of many Goreans, is that the master 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, can receive opportunities to win their freedom, though, to be sure, usually in situations of high risk and great danger. Such opportunities are never accorded to the female slave. She is totally helpless. If she is to receive her freedom it 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 keep this?" 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-entered it. In a moment he re-emerged, carrying the boxlike translator, which we bad brought from the tam complex. "You may need this," said Samos, handing it to one of 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 met only 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 those familiar with arms and martial values, of those who had shared the zest and terrors of conflict, to whom crass materialisms could never be more than the means to worthier victories, who had shared the loneliness of command, who had never forgotten the meanings of words such as discipline, responsibility, courage and honor, who had known perils, and long treks and privations, to whom comfort 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 and boat, 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. Her small wrists were bound tightly behind her, to an iron ring fastened in the wall.

"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 in the 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 at my feet. I felt her mouth and small, warm tongue between the straps on my sandals. "Please buy me, Master," she whispered. I will serve you helplessly and well." The difference between slave girls are interesting. The first girl was a fresh 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 even marked."

"Why not?" I asked. Usually a girl is marked within hours of her capture. It is usually felt that, after her capture, there is little point in permitting any possibility that she might be confused with a free woman.

"I want her deeply and cleanly branded," he said. "An iron master travels among several of the smaller border towns. He is good at his business and has an assortment 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 the Thentis mountains, to be served by itinerant tradesmen and artisans. There was often too little work for them to thrive in a given town but an ample employment for their services and goods in a string of such towns. Such tradesmen and artisans commonly included some five to ten towns in their territory.

"Do not fret, little beauty," said the man to the girl. "You will soon be properly 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 no fear. 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. "Whatever brand you wish for me, Master," she said.

"Excellent," said the man. He turned to me. "That is her first, full, verbal slave response. She has had, of course, other sorts of slave responses and behaviors before this, such things as squirmings, strugglings, cringings, pain and fear, and behavioral presentations and pleadings, making herself pretty and holding herself in certain ways, presenting herself as a helpless, desirable female, trying to provoke the interest of attractive men."

The girl looked at him with horror, but I saw, in her eyes, that what he had said 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 the wall. "Have no fear. I am now permitting you to express a preference. I shall then, 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 brutal brand, 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 of the women of my old world, I thought, could bring themselves, even to their lovers, to make this same, simple admission. What a world of difference it might make to their relationships, I speculated. Yet this admission, nonverbally, was surely made, and even poignantly and desperately, by many women of my old world, despite the injunctions and conditionings against honesty in such matters enjoined by an antibiological, politicized society. I hoped that upon occasion, at least, these admissions, these declarations, these cries for recognition and fulfillment, whether verbal or nonverbal, might in his kindness, be heeded by a male.

It is an interesting question, the relation between natural values and conditioned values. To be sure, the human infant, in many respects, seems to be little more than a tabula rasa, a blank tablet, on which a society, whether sensible or perverted, may inscribe its values. Yet the infant is also an animal, with its nature and genetic codings, with its heritage of eons of life and evolution, tracing itself back to the combinations of molecules and the births of stars. Thus can be erected conflicts between nature and artifice, whether the artifices be devised or blind. These conflicts, in turn, produce their grotesque syndromes of anxiety, guilt and frustration, with their attendant deleterious consequences for happiness and life. A man may be taught to prize his own castration but somewhere, sometime, in the individual or in the maddened collectivity, nature must strike back. The answer of the fool is the answer he has been taught to give, the answer he must continue to defend and beyond which he cannot see, an answer historically deriving from an ethos founded on the macabre superstitions and frustrated perversions of lunatics, an answer now co-opted to serve the interests of new, grotesque minorities who, repudiating the only rationale that gave it plausibility, pervert it to their own ends. The sludge of Puritanism, with its latent social power, bequeathed from one generation to the next, can serve unaccustomed masters. The only practical 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 healthy world in which civilization is nature's prison. Nature and civilization are not incompatible. A choice need not be made between them. For a rational animal each can be the complement and enhancement of the other. For too long has the world been under the domination of the grotesque and insidious. One fears mostly they may 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 straightened herself. "Yes," he said. "I see that you are feminine. Accordingly, you will be appropriately branded."

"Thank you, Master," she said.

"It will be the common Kajira mark," he said, "indicating that you are beautiful, but only another slave girl."

"Thank you, Master," she said. I thought the cursive Kef, sometimes referred to as the staff and fronds, beauty subject to discipline, would look well upon her thigh.

"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. This is 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 the market she is to be whipped," I smiled.

"No" chuckled the man, "but it is true that I have denied her the touch of a man for two days." The sexual relief of a slave girl, like her clothing and her food, is also something under the total command of the master.

The girl whimpered in frustration. "No, Master," she wept. "You are the sort of man to whom I would belly naturally. To see you is to want to belly myself before 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 will often try to influence a man she finds attractive to buy her. If he does not buy her, 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 whom they would find irresistible, one whom they would desire to serve, rather than by one who is gross and disgusting to them. To be sure, as slave girls, they would have to serve either perfectly. The decision as to whether the girl is to be purchased or not is, of course, in the final analysis, totally the man's In this respect the girl must wait, and is absolutely helpless. In this respect she has as little personal control over her fate as an inanimate, displayed object in an emporium on Earth.

The girl at the ring pulled against the bonds on her small wrists, leaning toward me. The girl at my feet looked up at me. I felt the chain on her neck across 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 the wrists to the ring, shrank back against it. She looked at me with horror and fear, but, also, with another expression in her eyes, as well, one of fascination and awe. I think then she realized a little better than before what it might be to be a slave. She would be subject to discipline. Our eyes met. I saw 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. I saw her tremble with fear and pleasure. I saw that she, properly trained, would make some man a superb slave.