Conspirators of Gor (47 page)

Orange won the race.

I sat down, on the tier. Many filed down the tiers, to place new bets. Hundreds clutched programs, which listed the mounts, and their riders.

The last race, just witnessed, was one of quadrupedalian tharlarion. These are bred for endurance and speed, but, even so, they are ponderous beasts, and no match for the more typical racing tharlarion, which is lighter and bipedalian. It is also carnivorous and more aggressive. In the race they commonly have their jaws bound shut. There have been several cases in which such beasts, before a race, or in the stable or exercise yards, have attacked their competitors, even their handlers. They are occasionally used for scouting or communication. Some hunt wild tarsk with lances from their saddles.

“Orange won,” said he in whose charge I was.

“Yes, Master,” I said.

There were five in our party at the stadium, the Lady Bina; Astrinax, who was our jobber; a man named Lykos, hired, I think, for his sword; he in whose keeping I was; and myself. I remembered the man, Astrinax, from Ar, as it was he who had arranged my sale to the gambling house. He had been hired in Ar by the Lady Bina to facilitate our journey, buying tharlarion and wagons, hiring teamsters, putting in supplies, arranging the stages of our journey, and such. Clearly such matters could not have been well handled by the Lady Bina, Lord Grendel, or myself.

I was pleased to have been permitted to come to the stadium. It would have been easy enough to have left me in the wagon, in the fenced-in wagon lot, shackled to the central bar.

I looked about myself. As I, the other slaves I noted in the audience were tunicked, and some more scantily than I. One, I saw, who regarded me disdainfully, and tossed her head proudly, was even camisked. How proud her master must have been of her, the arrogant brute, to so display her. And how smug, and how vain, she was, how proud of her beauty, to be so displayed, camisked.

“I am going below, to bet anew,” said he in whose care I was.

“Yes, Master,” I said.

I felt my left ankle gripped, and, a moment later, it was shackled to the iron ring anchored in the cement under my seat.

He then departed, to seek the betting tables beneath the stadium tiers. The Lady Bina, Astrinax, and Lykos accompanied him.

I sat on the tier, alone, moved my ankle a little, and pulled a little at the bracelets. Had my hands been free, I would have better adjusted the tunic at my left shoulder.

I was an unattended slave. I was apprehensive. I realized what that might mean. Such a slave might be accosted, even fondled, with impunity. Still, there were many about.

We had arrived in Venna early this morning.

Apparently the small collation I had prepared for the Metal Worker yesterday evening had proved satisfactory. In any event, after he had eaten for a bit, I kneeling back, he signed me to all fours, a simple gesture, and indicated that I might approach, beside the small fire. Then, from time to time, as he fed, he held out tidbits to me, and I fed, too, delicately, from his hand. Afterwards he permitted me to lie by his side, “bound by the master’s will,” I crossing my shackled ankles, and holding my hands behind my back, my left wrist held in my right hand.

He said, “Speak.”

“Surely Master is not interested in hearing a slave speak,” I said.

“Speak,” said he.

“Of what shall I speak?” I said.

He then told me to speak, as I would, telling him about my former world, my former life, my capture, my training, my sales, my owners, even my thoughts and feelings.

I fear much that was foolish gushed forth from me, but words had tumbled forth, seemingly endlessly, for Ahn, even amidst grateful tears.

“What have you done to me?” I said, at last, lying in the dirt beside him, by the reduced embers of the fire, looking up at him from my side, bound by his will.

“Is it not clear?” he asked.

“Master?” I said.

“I have stripped you,” he said.

“I see,” I said.

“It is time to put you on the common chain,” he said. “You are unbound.”

I struggled to my feet, and he then conducted me, his right hand on my left upper arm, to the common chain, on which several girls were already placed. He sat me by the chain, removed the shackle from my right ankle, looped it about the chain, and fastened it on me again, thus tethering me to the common chain. In this camp it was strung not between two trees, but between two heavy posts, to which it was bolted, the posts some twenty paces apart.

“So, Master,” I said, “the slave is stripped.”

“There are many ways to strip a slave,” he said.

“I understand,” I said.

“Ordering her to disrobe, or tearing away her tunic, are but two,” he said.

“I understand,” I said.

“To be sure,” he said, “that is pleasant.”

“Doubtless,” I said.

After I had confessed so much of myself to him, so revealed who was in my collar, I had almost hoped I would hear the issuance of a disrobing order, or that his hands, at my neckline, would have torn away my tunic.

But he had conducted me to the girl chain.

“It is all of the slave which is owned,” he said.

“That is understood by the slave,” I said.

“The slave’s every thought,” he said, “even her subtlest, least feeling, is owned by the master.”

“Yes, Master,” I said.

He rose to his feet. I swiftly knelt, and looked up at him. “Master,” I said.

“Keep your knees closed,” he said, annoyed, his voice brusque.

I quickly closed them. I smiled to myself, a little. I do have power, I thought.

“It seems this slave is in the care of Master,” I said.

“Yes,” he said.

“You hold the key to her shackles?”

“As of now,” he said.

“You knew the slave’s name, ‘Allison’, even from Ar,” I said.

“So?” he said.

“But the slave,” I said, “does not even know Master’s name.”

“Desmond,” he said.

“That is not a Gorean name,” I said.

“It is,” he said, surprised.

“Surely not,” I said.

“It is, in the vicinity of Harfax,” he said.

“Oh,” I said.

“My Home Stone,” said he, “is that of Harfax.”

“What was Master doing in Ar?” I asked.

“Curiosity,” said he, “is not becoming in a kajira.”

“Yes, Master,” I said.

“I have heard,” said he, “there are tharlarion races in Venna tomorrow. To be sure, it is the season. Would you care to attend?”

“Yes,” I said, “yes, Master!”

“You may, if you wish,” he said, “remain chained in the wagon, with the curtains tied shut.”

“I beg to accompany Master,” I said.

“If you do so,” he said, “you will do so as a kajira.”

“What does that mean?” I asked.

“You will see,” he said.

“Yes, Master,” I had said.

* * * *

The crowd milled about, some descending the tiers, others climbing them.

The robing of a Gorean crowd is colorful, particularly on holidays, or in attendance at public events, races, and such. Doubtless that is all very familiar to you, but perhaps, as it is so familiar to you, you do not much note it.

Some slaves, as I, were on short ring chains, but many were loose, wandering about, though back-braceleted. I supposed it would then be difficult for them to pilfer small objects, dared they to do so. On the other hand, I suspected there were subtler reasons underlying this lovely constraint. Does it not remind the girl that she is a slave, and only a slave? Certainly she is constrained as one. But men, too, the monsters, seem to enjoy having women helpless before them, fully at their mercy, and what woman, rendered so helpless, does not then the better understand that she is a woman. Too, of course, it helps to draw a sharper distinction between us and free women, as though the scantiness of our tunics, and the obviousness of our lovely, slender, locked collars, compared to the richness of their robes, and veils, and half veils, were not enough!

I saw a lovely-legged, long-haired girl in a brief blue tunic. I did not know if that were because her master favored the blue, or if he might be a scribe.

A vendor went by, just below our level, on the walkway, hawking tastas.

I wished he in whose charge I was, Desmond, in the black and gray of the Metal Workers, would return. Though I hated him, I wanted to be helpless near him. I wanted to be such that he might exploit me, as he pleased.

Far below, on the broad, level area, inside the rail, I saw two girls, in tunics of yellow and blue, the Slaver’s colors, back-braceleted as other slaves, but also, interestingly, joined together, neck to neck, by a yard of chain. I stood up, to get a better look. There seemed something different, or interesting, about them, or something familiar, something I could not place. Perhaps, I thought, I had seen one or the other, perhaps both, somewhere in Ar, perhaps at the laundry troughs, or in a market. Perhaps in some way they were a matched pair, and were to be sold as such. It did not seem likely, on the other hand, they were twins, as one was blonde and the other darkly haired, rather like myself. Perhaps, then, they were matched in some other sense, or, even, not really matched at all, save in the sense of each being undoubtedly of slave interest.

After the rescue, if that be the word, of the blind Kur, I had learned more of the past of Lord Grendel. Some I had learned from the Lady Bina, but more, interestingly, from the translator. As the newcomer to our domicile was incapable, for most purposes, of uttering intelligible Gorean, Lord Grendel taught me the use of the translator, so that I might have a means of understanding the newcomer, and communicating with him. The Lady Bina was already familiar with the device. Interestingly the Lady Bina seemed muchly to esteem the newcomer, and even to stand in some awe of him. “He is true Kur,” she had whispered to me. Certainly she showed him more respect, or deference, than she commonly accorded to her own colleague, or friend, or guard, Lord Grendel, for whom she often seemed to entertain, for all his devotion to her, and for all her dependence on him, something like a patient, tolerant, pitying contempt. She regarded him as imperfect, and malformed, as if he might be a monstrosity or cripple of some sort. Perhaps, in some sense, he was. I did not know. To be sure, she realized that he had his uses. Sometimes, before we had left the domicile, I had lingered in the vicinity of Lord Grendel and the blind Kur, whose name I had heard many times, but could not begin to say. No equivalent to it, in Gorean phonemes, had been programmed into the translator. When it was pronounced in Kur the translator, in Gorean, would be silent. I had sometimes stayed by the two beasts while they spoke in Kur, turning on the translator, but lowering the volume, putting my ear to the device. They could hear the Gorean from the translator, even from across the room, and probably more clearly than I, who was adjacent to it, but it was of no interest to them, and they paid it little, if any, attention. After a bit, it was probably not even noticed by them. The blind Kur had expressed interest, in the beginning, in the machine’s being on, but Lord Grendel had authorized the harmlessness of its use with the explanation that “they are curious little beasts.” “Yes,” had said the newcomer, “they all are.” It seemed then that he knew something, as I had earlier suspected, about human female slaves. The newcomer had never seen me, of course, but I had no doubt he could have picked me out promptly from a hundred slaves by scent. To be sure, I had no doubt he could have performed the same feat with the Lady Bina, from, say, a hundred free women. So, too, of course, and more fearfully, might have a sleen, put on our scent. Much from the Lady Bina and from the translator I did not understand, that having to do with distant worlds, exotic engineerings, unusual weaponries, strange customs and holidays, diverse races and cultures, troubled histories, and such, and with mysterious projects, factions, and wars, seemingly current, but some things were clear, or reasonably so, that they were the remnants of advanced peoples who, having destroyed their ancestral world, and having migrated to the exile of artificial spheres, uncontaminated and unpolluted, livable and unradiated, coveted new and better worlds. I did learn, in passing, something, too, of Lord Grendel. In the plans of some Kurii, it had been hoped that an alliance might be formed between themselves and the humans of Gor, that the surface of Gor might be shared, putatively in peace, for a time. Supposedly this would be acceptable to those who were the guardians of two worlds, my world, called Earth in my native language, and Gor, the Priest-Kings of Gor, a mysterious set of beings regarded with great awe, both by humans and Kurii. Supposedly the Priest-Kings, whoever or whatever they might be, concerned to protect the two worlds of Tor-tu-Gor, in particular, Gor, a generally undamaged world, and their own, would allow this alliance, provided their weapon and technology laws were respected, laws designed to keep dangerous power out of the hands of species too aggressive, or stupid, to manage it with intelligence. Lord Grendel speculated that the Kurii would begin in peace, and then, bit by bit, eliminate Gorean humans, save perhaps for those which might be kept as work beasts and food, and have the surface of the world for themselves. The next phase would be when Kurii were abundant on Gor, and suitably emplaced. Then, by means of smuggled weapons, and the aid of the technology of the metal worlds, the Priest-Kings themselves might be attacked and eliminated, following which the world would belong to Kurii, who might then, with their various, competitive factions, contest it as they might. As a phase in this program, in order to facilitate an approach to humans, a series of experiments were to be performed, producing a set of hybrids, part Kur, part human, who, hopefully, could profitably interact with Gorean humans. This program was abandoned, after one such experiment, the result of which was the supposed monstrosity, Grendel, later Lord Grendel. He had several fathers, interestingly, as the genetic materials of several male Kurii were injected into, and fused within, a single human egg, which was eventually brought to term in the human female from whom the egg had been originally extracted. She, after the offspring was shown to her, had killed herself. Lord Grendel, part Kur and part human, was apparently not found acceptable by humans, and so the program was discontinued. Interestingly, for most practical purposes, he was not found acceptable by Kurii either, and became, in effect, an outcast on the steel world of his birth. A second plan was formed, to convert, bribe, or suborn, and then support, with power and riches, a human to further their projects. There was an attempt to recruit a disaffected human, one alienated from, and inimical to, Priest-Kings, a warrior, whose name was not spoken. Apparently this warrior not only declined to accept this commission, but became involved somehow in the politics of the steel world itself, participating in a revolt which brought about, in the steel world in question, a change in governance.