Conspirators of Gor (77 page)

“Precisely,” said Desmond of Harfax. “It is only necessary that the sender and the receiver of the message use a corresponding sheet of squares, of which there could be an indefinite number, but which, to date, seems to consist of one hundred sheets.”

“There must be a way,” I said, “to know what sheet to use, as there are so many.”

“As you cannot read,” said Master Desmond, “this is not obvious to you, but the small sheet which seems to be a game’s annotation and the large sheet, whose squares contain letters, or meaningless marks, are both numbered.”

“The numbers are then matched,” I said.

“Yes,” he said.

“Perhaps a message could be unraveled.”

“But not easily, or quickly,” he said. “By the time the message is understood it might be too late. More importantly, it is difficult to unravel such things unless one has a large amount of material at one’s disposal, which allows for more attention to letter frequencies, hypotheses as to possible meanings, testing these hypotheses against additional material, and such. The large number of sheets, different sheets being used for different messages, means any given message is likely to afford the interpreter little to work with.”

“I could not begin to unravel these things.”

“You cannot even read to begin with,” he said. “It would be enough to give you a nice clear message in simple Gorean.”

“It is not my fault,” I said, “that I have not been taught to read.”

“Why should an animal be taught to read?” he asked.

“You like me illiterate, do you not?” I asked.

“Yes,” he said. “If I owned you, I would keep you that way.”

“You like an illiterate girl at your feet,” I said.

“Actually,” he said, “it is a great pleasure to have a highly intelligent, well educated, literate girl at one’s feet. It pleases one to have her lips and tongue on one’s boots.”

“Perhaps then,” I said, “you should teach me to read.”

“It is also pleasant to have an illiterate barbarian at one’s feet,” he said. “Her simplicity and ignorance is charming.”

“I assure you,” I said, “I am highly intelligent, and well educated, and, in my own language, literate.”

“Good,” he said, “then, if I owned you, I would have both pleasures.”

“I hate you,” I said.

“Did you not lift your lips to me, but moments ago?” he asked.

I looked away, angrily.

“Even if I could read,” I said, “I do not think I could unravel these things.”

“Few could,” he said. “Presumably some can, given enough time, and enough material. There are much more complex and subtle ways to conceal meaning, of course, but the device I have explained to you is simple, easily understood, and likely, as far as they know, to be secure. It would not do, of course, for them to know we have copies of the sheets.”

“No, Master,” I said.

“To be sure,” he said, “this advantage is not likely to be of long duration. New sheets would presumably be prepared from time to time, to continue to pluralize possibilities, and, if it were suspected that copies of the original sheets were in the possession of an enemy, new sheets would be instantly prepared, or, more likely, an entirely different method of communication and concealment would be adopted.”

“At least now,” I said, “I have some sense of what Chloe and I were doing.”

“It is not necessary to explain these things to Chloe, or others,” he said.

“I understand,” I said.

“These concealments, of course,” he said, “are intended to be of use to the conspirators in their communications within and between cities, between cities and the Cave, and so on.”

“Why has Master explained them to Allison?” I asked.

“To give you a sense of what intrigues abound, and what projects are afoot,” he said.

“Master is not alone,” I said.

“No,” he said.

“I shall not inquire the name of his confederate, or confederates,” I said.

“I would not want your pretty body torn apart on the rack,” he said, “while you are crying out their name, or names.”

“I understand,” I said.

“Do you remember my concern with cards?” he asked.

“Yes,” I said.

“You served in a house of chance,” he said.

“Until it was burned, and I, and others, were sold in the Tarsk Market.”

“That seems a suitable place to sell one such as you,” he said.

“Doubtless,” I said.

“In the house of chance,” he said, “there were games involving cards, were there not?”

“In the back of the large room, at the far tables,” I said, “but I did not attend on those tables. Most of us attended on the gaming tables, with the wheels, and the dice, where most of the men were.”

“But you must have heard things,” he said.

“One always hears things,” I said, warily.

“I am not an investigating magistrate,” he said, “with a rack in the next room.”

“I understand,” I said.

“Presumably,” he said, “those gambling on behalf of the house would wish to have some advantage in the matter.”

“Otherwise,” I said, “they might lose money, unintentionally.”

“‘Unintentionally’?” he smiled.

“It is important,” I said, “for the patron to win occasionally, else he might abandon the game, or grow suspicious.”

“And how,” he asked, “does the house obtain its advantage? Are there apertures in the ceiling through which an accomplice, perhaps with a glass, might somehow signal the house’s player, are there loitering observers nearby, in a position to read cards, and convey signals?”

“I do not think so,” I said.

“The advantage then,” he said, “lies in the cards themselves.”

“That is my understanding,” I said. “But I did not, personally, attend on the far tables.”

“There would be calls for new decks, sealed decks,” he said.

“I think that decks were prepared, and then sealed,” I said.

“The house’s player could recognize the nature and value of an opponent’s card from the back,” he said.

“There were intricate designs on the back of the cards,” I said, “apparently identical on each card.”

“But not identical,” he said, “for those who knew what to look for.”

“I think the differences were subtle,” I said, “very subtle.”

Desmond of Harfax then reached again into the leather envelope. He produced another sheet of paper. It was as unintelligible to me as the first, which had resembled, as I had been given to understand, the record, or annotation, of a kaissa game, but it was clearly different.

“What do you make of this?” he asked.

“I cannot read,” I said.

“This appears to be a list of cards,” he said. “But I am not sure what it actually is. I suspect a concealment is involved.”

“Perhaps in the manner of the preceding concealment,” I said, “a different card standing for a different letter, more than one card for a single letter, perhaps some cards standing for nothing.”

“Possibly,” he said. “But there are no doublings, or repetitions.”

“That is important?” I asked.

“I think so,” he said. “Surely it would severely restrict the potentiality for communication.”

“Perhaps it is an inferior device,” I said.

“We are not dealing with fools,” he said.

I was silent.

“In the case of the kaissa concealment,” he said, “we were fortunate enough to obtain, and later copy, crucial sheets, materials in virtue of which the message might be concealed, and then, later, revealed. But we have nothing similar here, no such sheets, no materials in virtue of which the message might be concealed or revealed.”

“In the first case,” I said, “you may have been fortunate.”

“I have a principal,” he said, “who is highly placed, who would have access to such things, if they existed.”

“Perhaps not,” I said.

“Yes, perhaps not,” he said.

“I fear I can be of little help to Master,” I said.

“Perhaps there is something simple here,” he said, “so simple we cannot see it.”

“Perhaps a single explanatory sheet, to which we lack access?” I suggested.

“Possibly,” he suggested, “but I do not think so.”

He reached again into the leather envelope. He drew out a deck of cards. He handed me the deck. “I want you to examine these cards, and see if anything occurs to you.”

“I suppose you have arranged the deck in the order prescribed by the sheet,” I said.

“Yes,” he said.

“And that did not prove illuminating?”

“No,” he said. “But I did not expect it to. It tells no more than the sheet itself.”

“They are very plain,” I said. “If they are prepared in such a way as to admit reading their values from the back, it must be very subtly done.”

“We are not concerned here with cheating at cards, but with concealed messages,” he said. “Does anything about the deck strike you as different, or unusual?”

“No,” I said. “You are thinking of something like the kaissa concealment.”
¹

“That would be the initial conjecture,” he said, “but it seems unlikely, as each card is different.”

“Then the order of the cards must be important,” I said.

“I think so,” he said, “but what is the relevance of the order? What would it mean if, say, a Physician’s Vulo is succeeded by a Scribe’s Tarsk?”

“Perhaps that would stand for an entire message,” I said, “something like ‘Meet at dawn’, ‘Bring gold’, ‘Depart on the morrow’, such things.”

“That is far too complex in one sense,” he said, “for it would require a storeroom of messages, and too simple in another, as one might wish to express something not in the stock of messages.”

“The arrangements of the cards would be limited,” I said.

“That is not the problem,” he said. “You are dealing with sixty cards. Consider the matter. The formula is simple and involves diminishing multiplications. If there were two cards, there would be two arrangements, as in two times one; if three cards, six arrangements, as in three times two times one; if five cards, one hundred and twenty arrangements, as in five times four, times three, times two, times one. If there were ten cards, in this fashion, there would be over three million arrangements, and so on.”

“On my former world,” I said, “I left such things to others.”

“You doubtless left many things to others.”

“Yes, Master,” I said.

“You were substantially useless, were you not?” he asked.

“Perhaps,” I said.

“But one can find uses for such women,” he said, “whether of your former world or of Gor, when they are collared.”

“Yes, Master,” I said. On Gor I had found myself owned, under discipline, and put to work. On Gor women such as I were good for something, indeed many things. Masters saw to it. And one of the things a slave was to be good for, indeed usually the most important thing, was to give her master incredible pleasure. Surely she was expected to do more than cook and clean, shop, fetch sandals on all fours, bringing them to a fellow in her teeth, and such. Why then, I wondered, with all his opportunities, even in the slave wagon on a blanket, had he never put the slave, Allison, to use, full slave use, in the fullest sense that is understood on Gor. Ah yes, I thought, honor, honor! Mina, at least, I thought, had the reassurance and comfort of her shackle at a slave ring. To be sure, there was a difference. Trachinos had bought her.

Sometimes it is hard to be a slave. One is so much at the mercy of the free. May one be clothed? Will one be caressed, will one be given a sweet? Will one be allowed to crawl, begging, to the feet of the master?

“But even so,” he said, “even with so many possibilities, it is almost certain one would often wish to express something new or different.”

“Yes, Master,” I said.

“More importantly,” he said, “Kleomenes, in the camp, I am sure, conveyed something secretly to Pausanias by means of cards, furnishing him with instructions, directions, or such. Surely Kleomenes had no bundles of messages to rummage through, in the saddle bags of his tharlarion, looking for a card equivalent, nor had Pausanias a wagon load of card equivalents by means of which he might locate messages.”

“I do not think so,” I said.

“So there must be something simple here, so simple that it is hard to see, so obvious that it is not noticed.”

“Perhaps you do not have the right deck,” I said.

“Perhaps,” he said. “Yet this deck was furnished by my principal.”

“Can he not explain these things?” I asked.

“He is as baffled as we,” said Desmond of Harfax. “He has tortured himself to make sense of the possible meaning of the list, the meaning of the individual cards, their order, and such.”

“Perhaps there is no meaning,” I said.

“Are you serious?” he asked.

“Perhaps the cards are a diversion, a false trail, a distraction of sorts, something to consume time, while the actual messages are conveyed in some other way, as by the kaissa concealments.”