Savages of Gor

3 I Receive Information; I Will Travel Northward

"Perhaps this one?" asked the merchant.

"I am trying to locate the whereabouts of a trader, one called Grunt," I said.

The blond-haired girl, nude, kneeling, shrank back against the cement wall. Hersmall wrists were bound tightly behind her, to an iron ring fastened in thewall.

"She is not without her attractions," said the merchant.

"Do you know where this fellow, Grunt, may be found?" I asked.

Another girl, also blond, a long chain on her neck, also fastened to a ring inthe wall, had crept to my feet. She then lowered herself to her belly before me.

She held my right ankle in her small hands and began to lick and kiss softly atmy feet. I felt her mouth and small, warm tongue between the straps on mysandals. "Please buy me, Master," she whispered. I will serve you helplessly andwell." The difference between slave girls are interesting. The first girl was afresh capture, clearly. She had not yet even been branded. The other girl,clearly, had already known the touch of a master.

"I think he has ventured north, along the perimeter," said the merchant.

"Buy me, I beg you, Master!" whispered, the girl at my feet.

I looked to the girl kneeling at the wall. Swiftly she put down her head,reddening.

"That one," said the man, indicating the girl at the wall, "was, formerly free.

She was taken only five days ago. Not yet, as you note, is her thigh evenmarked."

"Why not?" I asked. Usually a girl is marked within hours of her capture. It isusually felt that, after her capture, there is little point in permitting anypossibility that she might be confused with a free woman.

"I want her deeply and cleanly branded," he said. "An iron master travels amongseveral of the smaller border towns. He is good at his business and has anassortment of irons, ranging from lovely and delicate to rude and brutal."

I nodded. It was not unusual for the border towns, along the eastern edge of theThentis mountains, to be served by itinerant tradesmen and artisans. There wasoften too little work for them to thrive in a given town but an ample employmentfor their services and goods in a string of such towns. Such tradesmen andartisans commonly included some five to ten towns in their territory.

"Do not fret, little beauty," said the man to the girl. "You will soon beproperly marked."

The girl lifted her head, and looked at me.

"You see," said the man, "she is already curious as to the touch of a man."

I see," I said.

"What sort of brand would you like, little beauty?" asked the man. "Have nofear. Whatever brand you wear, I guarantee, will be unmistakable and clear."

She looked up at him. With the back of his hand he lashed her head to the side.

She then looked up at him, again, frightened. Blood was at her lip. "Whateverbrand you wish for me, Master," she said.

"Excellent," said the man. He turned to me. "That is her first, full, verbalslave response. She has had, of course, other sorts of slave responses andbehaviors before this, such things as squirmings, strugglings, cringings, painand fear, and behavioral presentations and pleadings, making herself pretty andholding herself in certain ways, presenting herself as a helpless, desirablefemale, trying to provoke the interest of attractive men."

The girl looked at him with horror, but I saw, in her eyes, that what he hadsaid was true. Even unbranded, she was already becoming a slave.

"Please, Master. Please, Master," begged the girl at my feet.

"What sort of brand would you like, my dear?" asked the man of the girl at thewall. "Have no fear. I am now permitting you to express a preference. I shallthen, as it pleases me, accept your preference, or reject it."

Her lip, now swollen, trembled.

"Would you like a lovely and feminine brand," he asked, "or a rude and brutalbrand, one fit for a pot girl or a tendress of kaiila?"

"I am a woman, Master," she said. "I am feminine."

I was pleased to hear this simple confession from the girl, this straightforward, uncompromising admission of the reality of her sex. How few ofthe women of my old world, I thought, could bring themselves, even to theirlovers, to make this same, simple admission. What a world of difference it mightmake to their relationships, I speculated. Yet this admission, nonverbally, wassurely made, and even poignantly and desperately, by many women of my old world,despite the injunctions and conditionings against honesty in such mattersenjoined by an antibiological, politicized society. I hoped that upon occasion,at least, these admissions, these declarations, these cries for recognition andfulfillment, whether verbal or nonverbal, might in his kindness, be heeded by amale.

It is an interesting question, the relation between natural values andconditioned values. To be sure, the human infant, in many respects, seems to belittle more than a tabula rasa, a blank tablet, on which a society, whethersensible or perverted, may inscribe its values. Yet the infant is also ananimal, with its nature and genetic codings, with its heritage of eons of lifeand evolution, tracing itself back to the combinations of molecules and thebirths of stars. Thus can be erected conflicts between nature and artifice,whether the artifices be devised or blind. These conflicts, in turn, producetheir grotesque syndromes of anxiety, guilt and frustration, with theirattendant deleterious consequences for happiness and life. A man may be taughtto prize his own castration but somewhere, sometime, in the individual or in themaddened collectivity, nature must strike back. The answer of the fool is theanswer he has been taught to give, the answer he must continue to defend andbeyond which he cannot see, an answer historically deriving from an ethosfounded on the macabre superstitions and frustrated perversions of lunatics, ananswer now co-opted to serve the interests of new, grotesque minorities who,repudiating the only rationale that gave it plausibility, pervert it to theirown ends. The sludge of Puritanism, with its latent social power, bequeathedfrom one generation to the next, can serve unaccustomed masters. The onlypractical answer to these dilemmas is not continued suppression and censorship,but a society, a world, in which nature is freed to thrive. It is not a healthyworld in which civilization is nature's prison. Nature and civilization are notincompatible. A choice need not be made between them. For a rational animal eachcan be the complement and enhancement of the other. For too long has the worldbeen under the domination of the grotesque and insidious. One fears mostly theymay begin to believe their own lies. They think they herd sheep. It is possible,unbeknownst to themselves, they walk with wolves and lions.

The merchant regarded the girl at the wall. Under his gaze she straightenedherself. "Yes," he said. "I see that you are feminine. Accordingly, you will beappropriately branded."

"Thank you, Master," she said.

"It will be the common Kajira mark," he said, "indicating that you arebeautiful, but only another slave girl."

"Thank you, Master," she said. I thought the cursive Kef, sometimes referred toas the staff and fronds, beauty subject to discipline, would look well upon herthigh.

"I am already branded, Master," said the girl at my feet. She looked up at me.

It was true. She wore the Kef high on her left thigh, just under the hip. Thisis the most common brand site for a Gorean slave girl.

"She bellies to you," said the man. "She likes you."

"Perhaps you have warned her that if she does not belly to the first man in themarket she is to be whipped," I smiled.

"No" chuckled the man, "but it is true that I have denied her the touch of a manfor two days." The sexual relief of a slave girl, like her clothing and herfood, is also something under the total command of the master.

The girl whimpered in frustration. "No, Master," she wept. "You are the sort ofman to whom I would belly naturally. To see you is to want to belly myselfbefore you."

"Master," said the girl at the wall, addressing me, "if I were not bound, I,too, would belly myself before you."

"Excellent!" said the merchant. "This is the first time she has spoken so.

Apparently you are the sort of man she regards as a desirable master."

I said nothing. A girl in a market knows she is to be sold. Accordingly she willoften try to influence a man she finds attractive to buy her. If he does not buyher, she knows she may be bought by one who is worse. Most girls, of course,prefer to be bought by a man who is exciting and attractive to them, one whomthey would find irresistible, one whom they would desire to serve, rather thanby one who is gross and disgusting to them. To be sure, as slave girls, theywould have to serve either perfectly. The decision as to whether the girl is tobe purchased or not is, of course, in the final analysis, totally the man's Inthis respect the girl must wait, and is absolutely helpless. In this respect shehas as little personal control over her fate as an inanimate, displayed objectin an emporium on Earth.

The girl at the ring pulled against the bonds on her small wrists, leaningtoward me. The girl at my feet looked up at me. I felt the chain on her neckacross my right foot.

"Have they names?" I asked the merchant.

"No," said the merchant, "I have not yet named them."

"The trader. Grunt" I said, "you speculate has ventured northward?"

"Yes," said the man.

I kicked back the girl at my feet. Whimpering, she crawled back to the wall,where she lay curled at its foot, watching me. The other girl, fastened by thewrists to the ring, shrank back against it. She looked at me with horror andfear, but, also, with another expression in her eyes, as well, one offascination and awe. I think then she realized a little better than before whatit might be to be a slave. She would be subject to discipline. Our eyes met. Isaw in her eyes that she now realized that she, like any other slave girl, was,and would be, under total masculine domination. She shuddered, and looked down.

I saw her tremble with fear and pleasure. I saw that she, properly trained,would make some man a superb slave.

"The next town northward is Fort Haskins," I said. This lay at the foot of theBoswell Pass. Originally it had been a trading post, maintained by the HaskinsCompany, a company of Merchants, primarily at Thentis. A military outpost,flying the banners of Thentis, garrisoned by mercenaries, was later establishedat the same point. The military and strategic importance of controlling theeastern termination of the Boswell Pass was clear. It was at this time that theplace came to be known as Fort Haskins. A fort remains at this point but thename, generally, is now given to the town which grew up in the vicinity of thefort, primarily to the west and south. The fort itself, incidentally, was twiceburned, once by soldiers from Port Olni, before that town joined the SalerianConfederation, and once by marauding Dust Legs, a tribe of red savages, from theinterior of the Barrens. The military significance of the fort has declined withthe growth of population in the area and the development of tarn cavalries inThentis. The fort now serves primarily as a trading post, maintained by thecaste of Merchants, from Thentis, an interesting recollection of the origins ofthe area.

"It will be my conjecture," said the man, "that he whom you seek, the trader,Grunt, is bound not for Fort Haskins, but for Kailiauk."

"Ali," I said. I should have guessed that. Kailiauk is the easternmost town atthe foot of the Thentis mountains. It lies almost at the edge of the Ihanke, orBoundary. From its outskirts one can see the markers, the feathers on their tallwands, which mark the beginning of the country of the red savages.

"I trust that you do not desire to kill him," said the man.

"No," I smiled.

"You do not wear the garb of the dark caste, nor do you have the black daggerpainted upon your brow."

"I am not an Assassin," I said.

"Grunt is a peculiar fellow, and secretive, but, I think, inoffensive."

I do not wish him harm," I said. "And I thank you for your help."

"Are you on foot?" asked the man.

"Yes," I said. I had sold my tarn two days ago and begun to make my waynorthward on foot. The Kurii from whom we had obtained the story hide must, inturn, have obtained it from an operative somewhere in this area. I thought toattract less attention on foot than as a tarnsman.

"If you wish to contact Grunt, I advise you to do so promptly. It is EnKara, andhe will soon be entering the Barrens.

I attempted to press a tarsk bit into his hand, but he pushed it back.

"I have done nothing," he smiled.

"My thanks," I said. I turned to go.

"Fellow," said he.

"Yes?" I said, turning again to face him.

"A slave wagon is leaving on the north road at noon," be said. "it could takeyou as far as Fort Haskins."

"My thanks," I said.

"It is nothing," he said.

I glanced again at the two blond slave girls. I glanced first at the onekneeling by the wall, her wrists bound to the ring behind her. In her bonds, shehad learned she was a woman. It is difficult for a woman, stripped and bound,and owned by a man, not to be aware of her femininity. These symbols of, andexpressions of, nature, are not hard to read. She understands them, and fullyand well. I glanced then to the other girl, she lying by the wall, looking atme, the chain on her neck. Her psychophysiological distress, that of a slavegirl, was clearly almost intolerable. Perhaps her master would give her to oneof his attendants for the night. The desperation of her needs might then, for atime, be assuaged, until, in a few Ahn, irresistibly and compellingly, theywould again arise within her. I glanced then again to the first girl. I smiled.

She, too, once properly branded and collared, would come to know such needs.

She, too, internally and subjectively, would come to know what it was, fully, tobe a female slave.

"I wish you well," I said to the man.

"I wish you well," he said.

I then turned, and left.