Conspirators of Gor (18 page)

I was not especially tall. I was of medium height. Nora was taller than I. So, too, was Jane. I had been a bit taller than Eve. I was pleased to hear that my legs might be acceptable to a man. Some doubtless bought with such things in mind.

“I do not want to be sold with a barbarian,” said the light blonde. “It is humiliating.”

“I would rather be sold with a barbarian than with you, traitress!” snarled the darker blonde.

“I was high in the Merchants!” said the light blonde.

“And you are now yourself merchandise,” laughed one of the brunettes.

Tears brightened the eyes of the light blonde.

“You are fortunate to be such,” said another of the brunettes. “You misread your politics. You thought Ar irrecoverably fallen. You betrayed your Home Stone, as much as Talena of Ar or Flavia of Ar. You cast your lot with the occupation, abetting their crimes, conniving with the enemy, flattering officers, feasting and jesting, profiteering, exploiting a starving citizenry, battening on the misery of a confused, leaderless, beaten, subdued populace.”

“One must do what one can! One must look out for one’s self!” wept the light blonde.

“You did not know Marlenus would return,” said one of the brunettes, unpleasantly.

“None did,” said another.

“I am not a slave,” wept the light blonde. “I am the Lady Persinna, high in the Merchants, the Lady Persinna of Four Towers!”

One of the brunettes laughed. “Listen to the branded piece of collar meat,” she said.

“No!” said the former Lady Persinna.

“You are now only goods, goods, slut,” said one of the brunettes.

“No! No!” said the former Lady Persinna.

“And you are fortunate to be goods,” said the darker blonde. “You were on the proscription lists. You should have been impaled!”

“Perhaps you were saved because you had pretty flanks,” said one of the brunettes.

“Perhaps,” said another, “because someone wanted you at his slave ring.”

She who had been the former Lady Persinna paled. Perhaps she knew of someone of which such a suggestion might be true.

I understood little of this at the time, but it became clearer later. Before I had been brought to Gor it seems a revolution had taken place in the city, Ar, in which upheaval an occupying force deriving from, or given fee by, the island ubarates of Cos and Tyros, and perhaps other states, had been ejected. It seems that a former Ubar, one named Marlenus, had returned from banishment or exile, or some prolonged absence, had rallied the city, and, in several days of fierce and bloody fighting, had cast out the invaders. Even while war was waged in the streets proscription lists had been posted and many traitors, profiteers, and such, hundreds, were seized by maddened citizens and publicly impaled. Later, the invaders flighted and the blood lust of an outraged citizenry largely spent, numbers of surviving profiteers and collaborators, as apprehended, were placed in several underground dungeons scattered throughout the city. Many were later executed by impalement, but others were embonded, men usually destined to the quarries or galleys, and women remanded to slave houses.

“It must be near the Tenth Ahn,” said a brunette.

I supposed that so. There were few shadows in the street. So what did it matter, if it were near the Tenth Ahn, noon?

Was that, in some way, important?

One girl, one of the brunettes, went to stand near the bars, sideways, fingering her hair. I saw her smile at a fellow, who seemed scarcely to notice, and did not stop from his way. She tossed her head, annoyed. Her sheet was at her ankles. Another girl stood at the bars, her hands over her head, holding to the bars, her sheet about her shoulders. Her hands might have been fastened there. She had her right cheek pressed against a bar. Another girl, one of the brunettes, now sat a bit back from the bars, her head up and back, leaning back on her hands, her knees slightly bent, her legs extended. Then she would sit differently, her knees drawn up, her hands clasped about them, looking out, between the bars. Her sheet was beside her. The dark blonde now reclined back, a few feet from the bars, on one elbow, on her sheet, her legs partly extended, one more than the other, looking out. She did this in such a way that the view of her between the bars would not be much obstructed by the positions of the other girls. It seemed she would not be much interested in what might lie outside the bars. What was that to her? Her attention seemed casual, at best. I suddenly recalled that I had been taught that pose. It is languid, but seductive. It lifts the hip nicely, in such a way that the hip-waist curve is nicely emphasized, this drawing attention to the promising delights of her love cradle.

I, and two others, were now at the back of the cell, by the rear cement wall. I and the brunette who had spoken for me were standing. To my right, kneeling, was the light blonde, a lovely female, the former Lady Persinna, of the Merchants. I supposed someone would be glad to get his hands on her. She seemed to be trying to make herself small. She was frightened. I, too, was frightened. The brunette with us, too, seemed frightened.

I gathered that this might have something to do with the approach of the Tenth Ahn.

“Look at them,” whispered the former Lady Persinna, regarding the others, the other three brunettes, and the dark blonde, all nearer the wall of bars. “See them! See them, the disgusting sluts!”

“They are slaves,” said the brunette with us.

“Disgusting sluts!” said the former Lady Persinna.

“You, too, are a slave,” said the brunette.

“No,” said the blonde. “I am free, a free woman! I am the Lady Persinna, of the Merchants, of Four Towers.”

“If you wish to obtain a good master,” said the brunette, “perhaps you, too, should strive to present yourself well, subtly, of course.”

“No, no!” said the blonde.

“You are not so presenting yourself,” I observed.

“No,” said the brunette. “I am afraid.”

“I, too, am afraid,” I said.

“I do not want to be sold,” she said.

“Nor I,” I said.

Yet what else might we expect, as we were slaves?

My feelings concerning my bondage, at that time, as you may have surmised, were highly ambivalent. I was frightened to be a slave. Did it not hold its terrors, to be a property, to be owned! Yet I knew myself a woman who should be a property, who should be owned! I knew that I was a slave, and should be a slave. My entire Earth conditioning had informed me that I should lament my bondage, that I should regard it as a condition of unmitigated misery and woe. But I knew in my heart this was far from so. I could not, and would not, speak for all women, but I could speak for myself. And why should I allow others to speak for me, to tell me how I should feel, to decide how I should be? I was a female. I wanted to belong to a man, a master, wholly and unconditionally, to be his in the fullest sense that a female can belong to a man, as his rightless slave. Nothing short of this could fulfill the secret needs of my heart. But now, to my terror, on this world, it was done. I was a slave! I would be subject to a collar, and bonds, the rightless chattel of a master! The sense of this was devastating and overwhelming. And I would have nothing to say as to my disposition. This frightened me, alarmed me, terribly, but, too, as I waited with the others, in the cell, filled with a slave’s anxiety and apprehension, knowing she may soon be sold, I felt an unspeakable thrill. And then, again, I was terrified! Here, on this world, I was only a slave!

“They cannot sell me, they cannot sell me,” said the former Lady Persinna.

“You are mistaken,” said the brunette.

“Your accent is not like that of the others,” I said to the brunette.

“I am of the islands, from Tabor,” she said.

“A tabor is a drum,” I said.

“It is from the shape of the island,” she said. “I and others were taken at sea, by corsairs of Port Kar, not more than five pasangs from shore.”

“They were bold,” I said.

“They were of Port Kar,” she said.

I knew little of Gor. I had heard of Port Kar. It was well to the north and west, where the waterways of the Vosk’s delta drained into the Tamber Gulf, the city’s sea walls fronting the gulf on the south, Thassa, the sea, on the west. Was it not from the sea gates of Port Kar that the galleys of the dreaded Bosk, Bosk of Port Kar, clove the dark waters of restless Thassa?

“At least,” she said, “I was not sold in Port Kar.”

It is said the chains of a slave girl are heaviest in Port Kar.

“You must have been sold, several times,” I said.

“From one slaver to another,” she said, “not like this.”

“It is my understanding that none here are virgins,” I said.

“Perhaps the Lady Persinna,” she said.

“No,” said the light blonde, bitterly. “I was first opened in a dungeon, where I lay chained in the darkness.”

“No time was wasted with me, or the others,” said the brunette. “We were first used on the deck of the corsair itself.”

I shuddered.

“What of you?” she asked.

“In a slave house,” I said, “recently, in a room set aside for the red-silking of virgin slaves.”

“How was it?” she asked.

I was silent.

“I see,” she said.

“Beasts gather,” said the light blonde.

I looked out. Some men had approached the circular cement platform to the left of the cell, four or five.

I saw there were tears in the eyes of the brunette. “Who will own me?” she asked.

The brunette who had been seated, her chin on her clasped, raised knees, now rose to her feet and stretched, lifting her hands over her head, and arching her back.

“The slut!” whispered the former Lady Persinna.

Two or three more men had now joined the few near the platform.

“It is near the Tenth Ahn, I am sure,” said the brunette with us.

The girl who was to the left, at the bars, put her hair back, about her shoulders, and then pressed a bit, softly, against the bars.

That, I supposed, the softness against the iron, the helplessness of the softness, confined, and such, would excite a fellow. She was a confined female, who would be for sale. In my training I had been chained from time to time, in one way or another, utterly helplessly, perfectly, by guards. It was clear my helplessness stimulated them. And I am sure that they, Goreans, realized that my vulnerability, my utter helplessness, stimulated me, as well. There are, after all, masters, and there are slaves.

There were now four slaves, the three brunettes and the dark blonde, at the bars. Three were standing, and one kneeling, one of the brunettes, who was clutching the bars.

There were now some ten or eleven men outside the bars. They were close. I was reminded of visitors at a zoo, peering through the bars. The analogy was imperfect, of course, as we were for sale. A better analogy would doubtless be a sales kennel.

One of the fellows reached through the bar and seized a brunette’s ankle. “Oh!” she protested, trying to draw back, but she could not free herself of the grip. He then released her, grinning.

“Buy me first, Master,” she said.

There was laughter.

They are flirting, I thought, all of them. And is not flirting, I thought, even on my former world, an act of display, hinting, alluding, presenting oneself as something vivacious, attractive, sparkling, as something of interest, something worth investigating, and acquiring, an object of desire? I had muchly enjoyed such games, the suggesting, the teasing, the luring, the playing with the feelings of men, the sensing of the power of my beauty and its effect on them, how it could arouse, disturb, excite, and torment them, and then, when weary of the sport, the pleasure one could take in the chilling, the turning away, the feigned surprise and indignation. How I had despised the boys. How pleasant it was to make them suffer. But now I was a slave, and would probably belong to a man, one who might exact from me, at a mere snapping of fingers, everything that a frightened, docile slave might give. I did remember occasions when it was I who had been rebuffed. How that had stung! Did they think I was unworthy of them, because they were richer, of a better-known, more-distinguished family, or such? How I hated them! I did not think, really, on the other hand, that they were that immune to my charm, my beauty, and such. Now, I supposed, if they might recall me, and find me of some interest, they might buy me, and hide me from their wives.

“See them!” said the former Lady Persinna of the girls at the front of the cell, those near the bars. “Disgusting! Disgusting!”

It is a received wisdom that the higher the price for which one goes the more likely it is to obtain a richer, better-fixed master, and to find oneself in a larger, better-appointed, wealthier household where the labors are likely to be lighter and less frequent. Accordingly, it is recommended, as a prudential matter, to display oneself in one’s sale as attractively as possible. There is much to be said for this, particularly when one might be sold at night, under torchlight, and one cannot well make out the buyers, save for some on the first tiers. One often hears only the calls from the darkness. Who is bidding? One might discover one’s master only when one is unhooded, in a strange domicile.