Explorers of Gor (44 page)

“But a man, commonly,” she asked, “would not hurt me or abuse me without a reason, would he?”

“He may do so, if he wishes,” I said, “particularly in your training, but, of course, normally he would not do so. There would simply be no point to it. There are better things to do to a woman, once she is trained, than hurt her.”

“If I please my master, he will not hurt me, will he?” she asked.

“He will, if it pleases him,” I said.

“But if I am totally pleasing to him, fully, and as an abject slave girl,” she pressed, “he will not be likely to be pleased to hurt me, will he?”

“No,” I said, “of course not. You must understand, of course, that if you are displeasing in the least particular that will be a sufficient reason for him to put you under whatever discipline he desires.”

“I understand that, clearly,” she said. “But I will try to be pleasing to my master.”

“Totally pleasing, and fully, and as an abject slave girl?’ I asked.

“Yes,” she said, “I shall strive with all my might to be pleasing in that way to my master.”

“Masters,” I said.

She swallowed hard. “Yea, Masters,” she said. She knew she might have many masters on Gor.

I saw that the slave girl in her was near the surface.

“Are you now ready,” I asked, “to beg to earn your clothing?”

“I cannot do that,” she said, horrified. I saw that the slave girl in her was again thrust back. Again the iron door of her prison, like a heavy hatch, was flung shut over her and the bolt thrust shut The slave, lying on the narrow stairs, leading from her dungeon, wept. She pressed her small fingers against the damp wall to her left, and against the heavy iron door, bolted shut, obdurate above her, which confined her. The lovely slave lying on the narrow, damp steps, hidden beneath the iron door, shut out again from the sun, cried in the lonely, quiet darkness, her existence once again denied.

“Very well,” I said. “Remain naked.”

“Very well,” she said. “I shall.”

“You have had the opportunity to beg to earn clothing,” I told her. “You refused it. It is possible that that opportunity may not be again offered.”

She looked at me, frightened.

“Sleep now,” I said.

“Yes, Master,” she said.

I then went to sit by the small fire. I would watch for a time, and then awaken Kisu. In this fashion, he then taking the watch, I would have some sleep before dawn.

I was interested in the fauna of the river and the rain forest. I recalled, sunning themselves on exposed roots near the river, tiny fish. They were bulbous eyed and about six inches long, with tiny flipperlike lateral fins. They had both lungs and gills. Their capacity to leave the water, in certain small streams, during dry seasons, enables them to seek other streams, still flowing, or pools. This property also, of course, makes it possible for them to elude marine predators and, on the land, to return to the water in case of danger. Normally they remain quite close to the water. Sometimes they even sun themselves on the backs of resting or napping tharlarion. Should the tharlarion submerge the tiny fish often submerges with it, staying close to it, but away from its jaws. Its proximity to the tharlarion affords it, interestingly, an effective protection against most of its natural predators, in particular the black eel, which will not approach the sinuous reptiles. Similarly the tiny fish can thrive on the scraps from the ravaging jaws of the feeding tharlarion. They will even drive one another away from their local tharlarion, fighting in contests of intraspecific aggression, over the plated territory of the monster’s back. The remora fish and the shark have what seem to be, in some respects, a similar relationship. These tiny fish, incidentally, are called gints.

I poked the fire.

I wondered if I should give the blond-haired barbarian an opportunity again to beg to perform, that she might earn a bit of cloth and a handful of beads. I would make that decision later.

“Kisu,” I said. “Wake up. Take the watch.”

He stirred himself and I lay down. I thought about the river, and was soon asleep.

30

“Do not permit the canoe to be swept away!” screamed Kisu, straining to be heard over the rushing water.

We had been two weeks upon the Ua. We had come to another of its cataracts.

It is impossible to paddle against these currents as the river, descending rapidly, plunges in torrents among a jungle of rocks.

I and Kisu. and the blond-haired barbarian and Tende, waded beside the canoe, thrusting it ahead of us. On the shore, each with a rope, one extending from the bow, one from the stern, stumbled Ayari and Alice. Ayari held the bow rope and Alice the rope extending from the stern. We could port the canoe but only with great difficulty. It was an eight-man raiders’ canoe.

“Do not lose your footing, Naked Slave!” cried Tende to the blond-haired barbarian.

“Yes, Mistress,” she cried, over the water, struggling to remain upright.

We had made Tende first girl. She had been, after all, the former mistress of the two white slaves.

They would obey her with perfection. If they did not we would beat them. If Tende, for her part, did not do well as first girl Kisu and I had agreed that Alice should have the opportunity. Tende, we were sure, fearing to be at the mercy of one of her former slaves, would strive to be a good first girl.

Tende and Alice had taken to calling the blond-haired barbarian ‘Naked Slave’. She had, among us, no other name. We had not given her one. Calling the blond-haired barbarian by that descriptive and accurate appellation made clear the distinction between her and the others. She was low girl. We all used her to fetch and carry, and perform the most servile of our tasks. The blond-haired barbarian would weep at night, but we paid her no attention, unless it be to order her to silence.

“Hold the lines!” called Kisu.

Ayari and Alice kept the lines taut.

“Push!” called Kisu.

We, wading, half blinded with water, thrust the canoe forward.

31

We Stop To Trade; The Admissions Of A Slave

“Trade! Trade! Friends! Friends!” they called.

“Do not take me in there, unclothed, Master,” begged the blond-haired barbarian.

We had pulled the canoe up on the shore. I tied the blond-haired barbarian’s hands behind her and put a rope on her neck, the loose end of which I threw to Alice. It would be more seemly, we had conjectured, if she, as she was not clothed as the other girls, was led in, like a stripped, recently captured slave. It might tend to allay suspicion that. she was not in favor. If that were known the bidding might be fierce upon her, the villagers being eager to capitalize on her dissatisfaction with her and acquire her as a cheap piece of trade goods, perhaps for transmittal into the interior. As it was, if she had been newly roped, we might not be willing to sell her, not yet having had an opportunity to truly determine whether or not she might have promise.

“How is it that you are coming from the west on the river with her?” asked a man who knew snatches of Ushindi.

I did not understand his question.

The blond-haired barbarian shuddered with misery, seeing the honesty of the men’s eyes upon. her.

“Is she a taluna?” asked a man.

I did not understand his question.

The blond-haired barbarian moaned in misery as the men s hands were upon her, some of them intimately. “Look,” said a man crouching beside her, holding her leg, indicating her brand. This excited interest. They had never seen a brand on a woman before. Mice’s brand was covered by her brief skirt of red bark cloth. Unnoticed she drew the skirt down an inch or so on her thigh, to better conceal her own slave mark. The blond-haired barbarian twisted in the grasp of the men. Her small hands pulled at the tightly looped, knotted strap that bound them behind her back. It was just as well, I realized, that we had tied her as we had. If she had tried to push away the villagers, or prevent them from touching her, they might have wanted her hands cut off. She cried out with anguish. I made a sign and we advanced, Alice pulling the blond-haired barbarian forward, away from the men.

We entered the gate of the village.

“Trade,” I called. “Friends! Friends!”

Ayari was a remarkable man.

I doubt that anyone in the village knew more than a few dozen words of Ushindi, but Ayari, with his Ushindi, his gestures, his quick wit and a stick, with which he drew in the dust of the village, not only conducted his trading in a brisk and genial fashion but managed to gather valuable information as well.

“Shaba was here,” said Ayari.

“When?” I asked.

“The chief says only ‘long ago’,” said Ayari. “Some of his men were ill. He stayed here a week.”

“That explains,” I said, “how it is that some here know some words of Ushindi.”

“Of course,” said Ayari, “and doubtless Shaba and his men set themselves to learn something of the speech of this village.”

I nodded.

We had obtained in the trading, for some knives and colored glass, several sacks of meal, fruit and vegetables.

“Is there anything else?” I asked.

“Yes,” grinned Ayari. “We are supposed to turn back.”

“Why?” I asked.

“The chief says the river is dangerous beyond this point. He says there are hostile tribes, dangerous waters, great animals, monsters and talunas, white-skinned jungle girls.” He indicated the blond-haired barbarian, kneeling, her hands tied behind her back, her neck-rope in the hands of Alice, who, in lovely repose, stood beside her. “He thought she might be one,” he said. “I told him she was only an ordinary slave.”

I looked at the blond-haired barbarian. “That is true,” I said.

She put her head down.

“Shaba, did he not,” I asked, “go upriver?”

“Yes,” said Ayari.

“I, too, then,” I said, “am going upriver.”

“We all are,” said Kisu.

I looked at him.

“It is part of my plan,” he said.

“Your mysterious plan?” I asked.

“Yes,” he smiled.

“Did the chief, or the others,” I asked Ayari, “say anything about the ‘things,’ or whatever they were, which were mentioned at the fishing village, about which the fishermen were reluctant to speak.”

“I asked them,” said Ayari. “They have seen nothing out of the ordinary.”

“Then we have lost them,” said Kisu.

“Perhaps,” I said.

“Shall we be on our way?” I asked.

“Of course not,” said Ayari. “There is to be a feast tonight, and singing and dancing.”

“Of course,” I said.

That night, late, we slept in a hut in the village, within its palisade. It was the first village we had come to on the river which was surrounded by a palisade.

I pondered on this. The river, eastward from this point, was said to become more dangerous.

I heard the blond-haired barbarian stirring. She, like the others, had her small hands tied behind her. A five-foot line, lying loosely behind her, ran from her bound wrists to the slave post, to which it tethered her. Through half-closed eyes, in the half-darkness, as moonlight filtered through the thatched roof and sides of the hut, I watched her struggle to her knees. She moaned, softly. On her knees, inch by inch, she moved toward me, until her wrists were extended behind her and she could approach no more closely. “I know ,that men are my masters,” she whispered, so softly that I knew she did not speak to awaken me. Too, she spoke in English, which language, native to her, she did not believe any in the hut could understand. “I have learned that, incontrovertibly, on this natural world, though I think always, in my heart, I knew it to be true. I am yours, sweet master. Why do you not take me and use me, as the slave I am? You made me yield as a slave so absolutely in Schendi. Do you think I could have forgotten those sensations which you induced in me? Do you think a girl could ever forget those feelings, so rapturously, so helplessly overwhelming, those feelings which made me, a proud Earth woman, a helplessly submitting slave girl? I, a slave, long to lie again in the arms of my master. Why have you not again taken me in your arms? I long to serve you, Master. Am I not pleasing? What is it that you would have me do? Must I crawl to you, as the slave I am, and beg your touch? Do you not understand that I cannot admit men are my masters, for I am a woman of Earth? Do you not understand that I cannot crawl to you, as the slave I am, and beg your touch, for I am a woman of Earth?” She sobbed, softly, the tortured prisoner of her conditioning. “Why have the men of Gor not surrendered their natural dominance?” she asked. “Why have they remained strong and proud, joyful and mighty, and free, so unlike the men of my world? Have they not been taught that it is wrong for them to be true men, that it is wrong for them to fulfill themselves and be happy? Have they not been taught that frustration, and conflict and misery, is the proper condition of the human male, that he is to be approved only in so far as he subjects himself to external standards, foreign to his own nature, that he is to be praised only in so far as he denies himself to himself, that he must avoid at all costs satisfying genetic realities locked in every cell in his body? Is it truly better for a man to torture his system, inflicting guilt and fear upon it, inducing irregularities within it, and to die prematurely of a variety of loathsome diseases than to be happy? I do not know. I am only a woman. Why are the men of Gor different from those of Earth? Is it because poisoned minds were not brought to Gor? Is it that it is only a matter of chance, that on Earth and not Gor due to a chance dynamic or a particular situation, the consequences of which were not understood, civilization developed not as the expression, celebration and enhancement of nature, constituting a palace within which nature might thrive, but as its nemesis, its stunting foe? I do not know. Perhaps those they call Priest-Kings, if they exist, have been thoughtful in this respect. Or perhaps it is simply that the men of Gor, unlike the men of Earth, do not choose to unman themselves. Why should we do so, they might ask. And there is, I think, no answer to that question. The men of Gor, like beasts and loving gods, subject the women they own to their total mastery. It pleases them to do so. They are men. Should I be distressed, or displeased? Not truly, for I am a woman. I admire their honesty, that they scorn to conceal the sovereignty which is theirs by nature. They do not play games. They put me to their feet, where I belong. Should I be displeased? No, for I am a woman. Only where there are true men can there be true women. Whatever be the reasons, whether genetic or cultural, or both, the men of Gor are different from those of Earth. They have remained men, perhaps simply because it has pleased them to do so. This also pleases me because only where there are true men can there be true women.” She put down her head.