Smugglers of Gor (64 page)

“Oh!” I said, thrust back, sitting, against the back wall of the kennel. My captor tossed a bundle of chain on the boards beside me. The leash collar was unbuckled from my throat and put to the side, with the coiled leash. To my dismay a heavy metal collar was placed about my throat and snapped shut. There was a ring in the back of the collar and, in a moment, by a chain and two snap locks I was fastened to a heavy ring behind me, set deeply in the logs of the kennel. Then manacles were snapped about both my right wrist and left wrist, separately, and by these, and chains and rings, my hands were chained, one on each side, to wall rings. I could not even feed myself. Then my ankles were grasped and each, in turn, was encircled with iron, independently shackled, and, by chains run to floor rings, one on the left, and one on the right, I was fastened in place.

My captor then retrieved the leash and leash collar, stood up, and looked down at me. I could not well see his expression, as he was outlined against the light from the opened door of the kennel behind him.

I shook the chains in misery, looking up at him, unbelievingly. I tried to lean forward but was held by the wall collar.

“Now, slut,” he snarled, “escape!”

“I did a foolish thing,” I said. “It was terribly foolish. I am sorry.”

“What did you think to accomplish?” he asked. “You were tunicked, half naked in a scrap of rep cloth, and collared. You were marked. Where would you go, what would you do?”

“I was upset,” I said. “I was not thinking clearly.”

“There is no escape for such as you,” he said.

“Need I be chained so heavily?” I asked.

“Be pleased,” he said, “that you are not placed in close chains.”

“Yes, Master,” I said.

“In your chains,” he said, “which please me, as in them you are eminently locatable, be instructed, barbarian slut. Learn from them. In them ponder the futility of escape.”

“Yes, Master,” I said. I had indeed been the fool. I had learned there was no escape for the Gorean slave girl.

He made as though he would turn away.

“Master!” I cried.

“Yes?” he said.

“I know I cannot escape,” I said.

“Good,” he said.

“But I do not wish to escape,” I said.

“Oh?” he said.

“No!” I said.

“Why?” he said.

“Because I want the collar!” I said. “It belongs on me! I fought this for years, but it is true. Some women desire more than anything to be a slave, and I am one! Call me shamed and degraded, if you wish, but it is true, as true as my sex and the color of my eyes. And what is wrong with being what you are, and want to be? What have females been to males, and women to men, for thousands of generations? Have we not been fought for and led away, on ropes, haremed and herded, bargained for and exchanged, bought and sold, for millennia? Have not the attractive been chosen and the masters the choosers? Have we not been bred together, male and female, man and woman, for countless millennia as master and slave? Is this not in the hereditary coils of our very being, that we should be at our masters’ feet? Surely I am a slave! I have known this from childhood. In how many dreams and irresistible thoughts did I kneel before a master! I am a slave! It is what I am in my heart, and desire to be. I ache for the ruthless domination of a master. I belong in a man’s collar, his to do with as he wishes! Despise me, hate me, denounce me, if you wish, but I want to kneel, and be collared, and be owned! I want a master!”

“Worthless slut,” he said.

“Buy me!” I begged. “Own me! Be my master!”

“I?” he asked.

“I want you as my master!” I said.

“A slave’s wants are meaningless,” he said. “She is a slave.”

“Yes, Master,” I wept. How true that was!

“She goes where she is sold. She does not choose the chains which will weight her fair limbs.”

“No, Master,” I said.

“Any man will do for you,” he said.

“I must serve any man who owns me to the best of my ability,” I said, “I go with the coins that will buy me, but I desire you as my master, and have, from the first moment I saw you, long ago, on Earth, in the great emporium.”

“You turned about, and fled,” he said.

“I was terrified,” I said. “I did not know what to do! Never before had I been so looked upon, looked upon as a slave!”

“You looked well in the warehouse,” he said, “on the floor, naked, bound hand and foot, at my feet.”

“We are slaves,” I said. “We want masters.”

“Do you think you will escape now?” he asked.

“Do you think I can escape the iron on my neck and limbs?” I asked.

“Why did you run from Shipcamp?” he said.

“Please do not make me speak,” I said.

“Do you wish to be shoulder-and-belly lashed?” he asked, loosening the leash strap.

“No, Master!” I said.

“Speak,” he said.

“Please,” I begged.

“Must a command be repeated?” he asked.

“No, Master,” I wept. “I longed for you, so longed for you, and then you observed me in the exposition cage in Brundisium and turned away, and then, to my hope and joy, I encountered you on the dock at Shipcamp, but you scorned me. Walked away! I was nothing! I was scorned! I was miserable, distraught, devastated, furious, helpless, my hopes vanished, my world collapsed! All the seething obstinacy my world had conditioned into me erupted; all the lies and falsities of my former world reasserted themselves, proclaiming nature a mistake and her repudiation a necessity and virtue, reasserted themselves hissing and shrieking, in all the pervasive, manufactured din contrived to drown out the songs of nature, the messages of the hereditary coils, the voice of reality. So I decided to show the masters! I would run, I would escape! They would never catch me! And I would hate you, hate you with all my heart, for you had scorned me! And I knew I must flee at the first opportunity, as who knew when the great ship might depart? Who could escape if chained in one of its holds, abroad on deep, fierce Thassa? So it was with great anxiety that I awaited my opportunity. Then, when it came, I seized it.”

“Why did you return to Shipcamp?” he asked.

“I was lost, confused,” I said. “Surely it was not intentional.”

“You were hurrying back to your chain,” he said.

“No!” I wept.

“It was the same with the Panther Girls who prematurely relaxed their vigilance in the forest.”

“Surely not!” I said.

“So,” he said, “you would like me as your master?”

“Yes,” I said. “Buy me! Buy me!”

“No,” he said.

“But did the trek to Shipcamp mean nothing, what you did to me, what you made me feel?”

“No,” he said.

“I see,” I said, and then, apprehensive, added, “— Master.”

“There was no other at hand,” he said. “I told you that before.”

“You well sported with a capture,” I said.

“Of course,” he said.

It was as I had feared. I meant nothing to him. But what more, I asked myself, could a slave expect of a free man?

Even in my training we had been taught that we were nothing, only slaves.

“Master!” I said.

“Do not escape, slut,” he said. Then he turned away.

“Master!” I sobbed.

He did not look back.

I saw the gate of the stockade open and close, the two beams lowered into place.

I leaned back, in misery, against the wall of the kennel.

“You are well chained,” said the gowned slave. “One might think you were important.”

“I am not important,” I said.

“That is true,” she said.

“She is a barbarian,” said one of the girls.

“That is obvious,” said the gowned slave.

Doubtless this had been clear from my accent.

“You are so clever,” said another girl, sneeringly.

“I could have had you boiled in tharlarion oil,” snapped the gowned slave.

“Be careful or they will take your gown away,” laughed another girl.

“Her vanity is exceeded only by her addled wits,” said another girl.

“She is mad,” laughed another.

“I am not!” cried the gowned slave.

“She thinks she is important,” said another.

“I am important,” said the gowned slave. “I was important.”

“Who are you?” asked another of the girls.

“No one,” said the gowned slave, angrily.

“She is mad,” said one of the girls, “with all her airs. That is why they have named her ‘Ubara’.”

“That is cruel,” I said.

“It is a joke,” said one of the girls.

“I hate barbarians!” cried the gowned slave.

“They are stupid and ignorant,” said a girl, “but why would you hate them?”

The gowned slave was silent.

“What is your name?” asked one of the girls of me.

“Laura,” I said.

“That is a pretty name,” said one of the slaves. “But as you are a barbarian, why did they not give you a barbarian name?”

“I think it is a barbarian name,” I said.

“That is a well-known town on the Laurius to the south,” said a girl.

“Perhaps it is a coincidence,” I said, though I doubted that. Certainly I had found occasional words in Gorean which were words also in my native language, or very similar to such words, perhaps influenced by them or derived from them. I supposed Gorean, like most complex languages, may have borrowed from many tongues. Certainly it seemed to me that Goreans, or most of them, were clearly human, and, doubtless, directly or indirectly, owed their origin to my native world, Earth. Perhaps, I thought, the clue to the mystery might lie in the distant, formidable Sardar Mountains, of which the legendary or fabled Priest-Kings were supposedly denizens. In any event, much in these matters was obscure to me.

“Perhaps,” said the girl.

“You are very nice looking, Laura,” said another slave. “Why are you so chained? Do they think you are going to leap over the stockade wall? What did you do?”

“I ran away,” I said.

“You see,” said a girl who had earlier spoken, “barbarians, they are stupid.”

“We are not stupid,” I said. “We may be ignorant. We might do foolish things.”

“Such as run away?” said one of the girls.

“Yes,” I said.

“Ubara!” called a male voice, from the clearing outside the kennel, within the stockade.

The gowned slave, whether or not her wits were addled, or whether or not she was mad, must have been subjected to discipline, for she sprang up, and hurried outside and knelt before the guard, putting her head down to his feet, then lifting it, to attend his words.

I was startled at seeing the gowned slave outside the kennel, in the light. Before she had been much in the darkness of the kennel, away from the door. Now I saw that she was an incredibly beautiful woman, with a face and figure that might bring as much as a piece of gold off the block. She had long, dark hair, and a smooth olive skin. She might be mad, I thought, but she was such as one might expect to find chained beside a Ubar’s throne. She might be an admiral’s woman, or the slave of a
polemarkos
. If all were such as she, I thought, then the stockade might well be what it was rumored to be, a holding area for unusually beautiful slaves, prize slaves. Her appearance and mien suggested that in the days of her freedom, for I supposed she had once been free, she might have been of high caste. A slave, of course, has no caste. She is property, an animal, a beast.

“No!” she cried. “I will not!”

“You will not?” inquired the guard.

“Of course, I will obey, Master!” she cried. “But do not make me do this! Do not so humiliate and insult me, I beg of you! I am a high slave! I was of high caste! I might bring gold! I would be worthy of sandals!”

“Fetch a bowl,” he said. “Go to the feed trough, fill it, and feed the barbarian slave.”

“Please, no!” she begged.

“Now,” said the guard.

“Yes, Master,” she said.

Several of the slaves in the kennel, and some of those outside, laughed delightedly, apparently gratified by the discomfiture of the lovely, olive-skinned slave.

In a few Ehn, obviously fuming with displeasure, but holding a small bowl, which she had dipped briefly and angrily into the feed trough, the gowned slave, apparently named ‘Ubara’ as an insult or joke, entered the kennel. Several of her kennel sisters laughed.

“She-sleen!” said the gowned slave.

“Feed the barbarian, low slave!” laughed a girl.

“The mad one, in her lovely gown, worthy of a high merchant’s companion, is least amongst us!” said another.

“She waits upon a barbarian,” said another. “Let her pride absorb that!”

“Forgive me, Mistress,” I said to her. “It is not my doing.”

Even in the light I could see that the gowned slave had dark eyes, matching the sable crown of glorious hair which swirled about her shoulders and down her back. When she had exited the kennel I had seen that the hair, despite its length, had been cut in the “slave flame.” That is unusual. The “slave flame” is usually used with medium-length hair, just behind the shoulders. Her eyes, she was now close to me, were deep, and beautiful, but, I saw, too, they were now dark with anger. I did not doubt but what it might take gold to bring such a prize from the block.

“There,” said the gowned slave, placing the bowl on the planks before me.

“Mistress,” I said, “I cannot reach it.”

“Unfortunate,” she said.

As I was chained, I could not even bring my hands together, nor could I lift them to my mouth.

“You should not have run away,” she said.

“I am hungry, Mistress,” I said.

“Then eat,” she said.

“Please, Mistress!” I said.

“The ship will leave soon,” she said. “I have heard the ready banner is flying. Perhaps they will feed you on the ship.”

“Feed her, low slave!” said one of the girls.

“We will call the guard!” said another.

“Do not call the guard,” said the gowned slave, obviously frightened. “I am teasing. It is only a merry jest.”

“Feed her,” said another.

“I shall, you she-tarsks,” said the gowned slave.

I did not think the gowned slave had addled wits, or was mad. In any event, I saw no indication of this. If anything, I saw high intelligence and cleverness. She did carry herself aristocratically. Her origins, I gathered, were mysterious. I did not doubt she might have been of high caste. That she should feed me was intended, I gathered, to insult her, to humiliate her, and help her better understand that she, identically with the others, was a slave. Surely that was not so hard to understand. Did she not know there was a collar on her neck? And I did not doubt but what beneath that gown there was a searing furrowed into her left thigh, just beneath the hip. Perhaps she did have airs, or pretensions. Perhaps she did suggest terrors she was in no position to inflict. Perhaps she did pretend she had once, if not now, been important. Perhaps she did despise the other slaves as inferiors. Perhaps she did not even recognize herself as a slave, or think of herself as a slave. Perhaps she thought of herself as wholly other than the others, as though she might be free, and they mere slaves. Did she think to put herself on the free side of the immeasurable chasm that separated persons and citizens from properties and beasts? Such things, doubtless, would make her resented amongst her chain sisters, but, too, they would not seem to me indications of madness, and certainly not, if there were any ground for possible airs or pretensions.