Assassin of Gor (18 page)

"With speed like that," said Ho-Tu, smiling, "she will not be the last to arrive at the porridge trough."

I looked at Ho-Tu and smiled.

He lifted his shaved head to mine, and the black eyes met mine. He scratched his left shoulder. He stood squarely there before me, and then he grinned.

"You are a strange one for an Assassin," he said.

"Are we now to go to the iron pens?" I asked.

"It is the fifteenth bar," said Ho-Tu. "Let us go to table. After we have eaten, I will show you the pens."

Here and there, down the hall, I could see slaves hurrying in one direction or another, depending on the location of their feeding quarters. I could also see members of the staff moving about, and could hear doors being closed and locked.

"All right," I said, "let us eat."

There were various matches in the pit of sand that evening. There was a contest of sheathed hook knife, one of whips and another of spiked gauntlets. One of the slave girls spilled wine and was fastened to a slave ring, stripped and beaten. Later the Musicians played and a girl I had not seen before, whom I was told was from Cos, performed the collar dance, and creditably. Cernus, as before, was lost in his game with Caprus, this time lingering at the board even long after Paga and full-strength Ka-la-na were served.

"Why is it?" I asked Ho-Tu, whom I felt I had come to know somewhat better in the day, "that when others have Ka-la-na and meat and bread and honey you eat only this porridge?"

Ho-Tu pushed back the bowl.

"It is not important," he said.

"Very well," I said.

The horn spoon snapped in his hands, and he angrily threw the pieces into the bowl.

"I am sorry," I said.

He looked at me puzzled, his black eyes glinting. "It is not important," he repeated.

I nodded.

He rose. "I will take you to the pens now," he said.

I indicated the door to one side through which, the night before, the shackled slave had been led, through which Cernus had left as well. This night, I had been pleased to note that none of the slaves who had come out poorly in their contests had been shackled and led through the door. The slave who had won at hook knife the night before, I observed, was again eating at the foot of the table. The collar had been taken from his throat. I gathered he might now be free. There was a whipping strap looped about his belt, and in the belt, sheathed, was a hook knife, the hilt buckled down in the sheath, as was the case with that of Ho-Tu. "The thing you call the beast," I said, "lies through that door."

Ho-Tu looked at me, narrowly. "Yes," he said.

"I would like to see it," I said.

Ho-Tu paled. Then he smiled. "Pray to the Priest-Kings," he said, "that you never see it."

"You know nothing of the beast?" I asked.

"Cernus, and certain others," said he, "can look upon it---they alone." He looked at me closely. "Do not be curious, Killer," said he, "for commonly those who look upon the beast do so only in death."

"I trust," I said, "it is safely caged."

Ho-Tu smiled. "I trust so," he said.

"How often is it fed?" I asked.

It can eat many times a day," said Ho-Tu, "but it can also endure long periods without food. Normally we feed it a slave every ten days."

"A live slave?" I asked.

"It likes to make its own kills," said Ho-Tu.

"As long as it is safely caged," I remarked, "I gather there is no danger."

"Fear of the beast keeps good order in the House of Cernus," said Ho-Tu.

"I expect it does," I admitted.

"Come," said Ho-Tu. "I will show you the pens."

11 - TWO GIRLS

After having passed through several doors of iron, each with an observation panel, descending on a spiral ramp deeper and deeper beneath the ground level, I could at last, clearly, smell the stink of the pens.

In the cylinder there are several varieties of retention areas, ranging from the luxuriousness of the cell shown to me earlier by Ho-Tu, in which Cernus was accustomed to deep special captures, to the iron pens. Some of the facilities were simply lines of reasonably clean cells, some with windows, usually a lavatory drain and something in the way of a mat to sleep on. Other rows of cells were rather more orate, with heavy intricate grillwork taking the space of bars, hung with red silks, floored with furs and perhaps lit by a tharlarion oil lamp set in a barred recess in the ceiling. But the pens, of which there were several sorts, boasted no such luxuries.

The expression "The Iron Pens," incidentally, generally refers to all of the subterranean retention facilities in the house of a slaver, not simply cages, but pits, steel drums, wall chains, and such; it is the name of an area, on the whole, rather than a literal description of the nature of the only sort of security devices found there. The expression "kennels" is sometimes used similarly, but more often it refers to a kind of small, cement cell, customarily about three feet by three feet by four feet, with an iron gate, which can be raised and lowered; similar cells, but entirely of bars, are also common, and are to be found in the house of slavers; the smaller cells can function as separate units, and may be used to ship slaves, but they can also be locked together in groups to provide tiers of cells, usually bolted into a wall, conserving space.

Ho-Tu led the way, moving from catwalk to catwalk, spanning cages below. In these cages, through the bars, male slaves, crowded together, naked and wearing heavy collars, glared sullenly up at us.

"It would not be well to lose your footing," advised Ho-Tu.

I supposed it was from this sort of facility that the general expression "The Iron Pens" took its origin. On each cage we passed, as we took our way over it, I saw a thin metal plate covered with numbers. Some of these numbers referred to the occupants within the cage, but other numbers were coded to instruct the keepers in such matters as diet, special precautions, date of the lot's acquisition, and its intended disposition. Some of the numbers had been scratched out, and others had been hammered into the plates, which were changed from time to time.

The pens seemed humid and, though we were below ground, warm from the heat of the bodies. The only sanitation facility was an open metal mesh, supported by close-set horizontal bars, in the bottom of the cages, beneath which, some five feet below, was a cement floor, washed down and cleaned by slaves once daily. There was a feed trough at one side of each cage and a low watering pan on the other, both filled by means of tubes from the catwalk. The cages of female slaves were mixed in with those of the male slaves, presumably on no other basis than what cage happened to be empty at a given time. The female slaves, like the men, were unclothed, and wore collars; their collars, however, were not the typical locked collar of the female slave but, since they were only in the iron pens, a narrow band of iron, with a number, hammered about their neck.

I noted that the females tended to remain near the center of their cage. Their food and water areas were protected from the wall of bars shared with the next cage, which might contain male slaves, by a heavy iron mesh, rather like that of the flooring, riveted by hammer to the bars. Sometimes I supposed a girl might wander too close to the bars and be seized, but, because of the bars, little could be done with her. Mating among slaves is carefully supervised. One or two girls I noted lay on the flooring mesh, their hair cruelly tied to the bars. They had been careless.

I did not try to count the pens over which we passed, and we descended two more levels, which were similarly tenanted. We stopped on the fourth subterranean level, beneath which I was told there were three more levels, retention levels, on the whole similar to those we had just passed. The fourth level, though containing many retention facilities, is used for the processing, assignment, interrogation and examination of slaves; it can be reached independently by a spiral ramp and tunnel which does not pass through the area of the iron pens. The kitchen for the pens is on this level, and the infirmary, and certain facilities for smiths; Ho-Tu kept his chair of office on this level; also, discipline was administered on this level, I gathered, seeing certain racks and chains, certain stone tables with straps, certain carefully arranged instruments designed for the extraction of pain; certain irons and high-heat-level fires in perforated metal drums.

"I will show you the girls brought in from the Voltai," said Ho-Tu.

I followed him into a large room, barred by a heavy iron door.

There was a drum fire near the center of the room on the floor. There was a littered look about the room, some pieces of chains about. Two smiths were in the room. There was a guard talking with the smiths. There was also a man in the green of the Caste of Physicians, standing at one side, writing notes on a slip of record paper. He was a large man, smooth-shaven. I saw a branding rack, noted that there were irons in the drum fire. There was also an anvil in the room, resting on a large block of wood. Against the far wall there were thirty kennels, five rows of six each, tiered, with iron runways and iron stairs giving access to them. They reached to the ceiling of the room. Elsewhere in the room there were some slave cages, but they were now empty. Slave rings were mounted on one wall. Hanging from the ceiling, worked from a windlass, dangled a chain, attached to which was a pair of slave bracelets. Against one wall I noted a variety of slave whips, of different weights and leathers.

The Physician looked up from the paper. "Greetings, Ho-Tu," said he.

"Greetings, Flaminuis," said Ho-Tu. "May I introduce Kuurus, of the black caste, but of our employ?"

Coldly Flaminius nodded his head, and I did the same.

Then the Physician looked at Ho-Tu. "It is a good lot," he said.

"It should be," said Ho-Tu, "they have been selected with great care."

I then understood for the first time that it is not just any girl who is picked up by the Gorean slavers, but that the acquisition of each of these doubtless had been planned with the same diligence and care that is given to a slave raid on Gor itself. They had doubtless been watched, without their knowledge studied and investigated, their habits noted, their common movements and routines recorded, for months prior to the strike of the slaver at a predetermined place and time. I supposed the requirements of the slaves were high. Each of the girls, I suspected, would be vital and much alive. Each of them I knew was beautiful. Each of them I suspected would be intelligent, for Goreans, as the men of Earth commonly do not, celebrate quickness of mind and alertness in a girl. And now they were in the kennels.

"Let's look at them," said Ho-Tu, picking up a small metal hand torch with a wick of twisted, tarred straw from the floor and thrusting it into the drum fire.

I and the Physician, and the guardsman, followed him up the iron romp to the second level.

A blond girl, wearing the steel band locked on her left ankle, crouched at the barred gate, and extended her hands through. "Meine Herren!" she cried. The guard, with a heavy stick he carried, struck the bars viciously before her face and she cried out, jerking back and crouching at the rear of the cage.

"These next two," said Flaminius, indicating two cages separated by a cage from the last, "refuse to eat."

Ho-Tu lifted the torch to first one cage, and then the other. Both girls were Oriental---my guess would nave been Japanese.

"Feed this one," said Ho-Tu, pointing to the cage on his left.

The girl was dragged out and her hands were braceleted behind her back. One of the smiths from below was summoned with a bowl of slave porridge, which he mixed half with water, and stirred well, so that it could be drunk. There are various porridges given to slaves and they differ. The porridges in the iron pens, however, are as ugly and tasteless a gruel, and deliberately so, as might be imagined. As the girl knelt the guardsman pulled back her head and held her nose while the smith, with thumb and forefinger, forced open her jaws and, spilling it a bit on her chin and body, poured a half cup of gruel into her mouth. The girl tried to hold her breath but when it became necessary for her to breath she must needs swallow the gruel; twice more the smith did this, and then the girl, defeated, swallowed the gruel as he poured it into her mouth, half choking on it.

"Put her back in the kennel," said Ho-Tu.

"Will you not remove the bracelets from her?" I asked.

"No," said Ho-Tu, "that way she will not be able to rid herself of the gruel."

The second girl had been watching what had gone on. Ho-Tu, with his foot, kicked her gruel pan toward her, which slid under the bars of the gate. She lifted it to her lips and began to eat, trembling.

The last girl on the second row might have been Greek. She was quite beautiful. She sat with her chin on her knees, looking at us.

We began to go up to the third level. "They seem very quiet," I observed.

"We permit them," said Flaminius, deigning to offer a bit of explanation, "five Ahn of varied responses, depending on when they recover from the frobicain injection. Mostly this takes the form of hysterical weeping, threats, demands for explanation, screaming and such. They will also be allowed to express their distress for certain periods of stated times in the future."