Slave Girl Of Gor

25
The Message

I lifted the strung beads to the square-jawed man with short, closely cropped white hair. His face was wind-burned and, in each ear, there was a small golden ring. To one side, cross-legged, sat he who was Bosk of Port Kar. Near him, intent, watchful, was Clitus Vitellius. Beside the man before me, the man with white, short-cropped hair, who was Samos of Port Kar, chief among the captains of the Council of Captaim of Port Kar, was a slender, gray-eyed man, clad in the green of the caste of physicians. He was Iskander, said once to have been of Turia, the master of many medicines and one reputed to be knowledgeable in certain intricacies of the mind.

I knelt back on my heels. There were two other slave girls in the room, in slave silk, collared, kneeling to one side, waiting to serve the men, should they desire aught. I was naked, as I had been when I had strung beads for he called Belisarius in a house in Cos.

Samos put the beads before him on a tiny table. He looked at them, puzzled.

"Is this all?" he asked.

"Yes, Master," I said.

Iskander, of the physicians, had given me of a strange draft, which I, slave, must needs drink.

"This will relax you," he had said, "and induce an unusual state of consciousness. As I speak to you your memory will be unusually clear. You will recall tiny details with precision. Further, you will become responsive to my suggestions."

I do not know what the drug was but it seemed truly effective. Slowly, under its influence, and the soothing, but authoritative voice of Iskander, I, responsive to his suggestions, obedient to his commands, began to speak of the house of Belisarius and what had occurred there. I might, in my normal waking state, have recalled much of what had occurred there, even to the words spoken, but, in the unusual state of consciousness which Iskander, by means of his drug and his suggestions, had induced in me even the most trivial details, little things which a waking consciousness would naturally and peremptorily suppress as meaningless, unimportant, were recalled with a lucid, patient fidelity. Notes had been taken by a thin, blond slave girl in a brief, blue tunic, named Luma. Her tunic suggested that she might once have been of the scribes. Her legs were pretty. She knelt close to Bosk of Port Kar.

"What does it matter," Samos had asked Iskander, "whether a word is spoken before or after another?"

"It may matter much," said Iskander. "It is like the mechanism of the crossbow, the key to a lock. All must be in order; each element must be in place, else the quarrel will not loosen, else the lock will not open."

"This seems strange to me," said Samos.

"It is strange to you because it is unfamiliar to you," said Iskander, "but in itself it is no more strange than the mechanism of the crossbow, the mechanism of the lock. What we must do is reconstruct the mechanism, which, in this case is a verbal structure, a dialogue, which will release, or trigger, the salient behavior, the stringing of the beads."

"Could she not simply be commanded to recount the order of the beads?" inquired Bosk of Port Kar.

I could not do so.

"No," said Iskander, "she cannot do so, or can only do so imperfectly."

"Why?" asked Samos. "Is the drug not sufficient?"

"The girl has been carefully prepared," said Iskander. "She is under powerful counter-suggestion in that particular. We might, in time, break through it, but we have no assurance that we would not tap a false memory, set within her mind to deceive or mislead us. What I would suspect we would encounter would be overlays of memories, the true with the false. Our best mode of procedure appears to be to reconstruct the trigger behavior."

"You suspect then," asked Bosk, "that several arrangement orders of beads might be in her memory?"

"Yes," said Iskander, "each of which, I suspect, would be correlated with a different message.

"We would, thus," said Bosk, "not know which of the messages was the true message."

"Precisely," said Iskander. "But we do know the trigger sequence will release the crucial message."

"Otherwise," said Bosk, "the intended recipient of the message would also not know which message was the one intended for communication."

"Correct," said Iskander.

"Proceed then," said Samos, "in your attempts to reconstruct the trigger, or the key, in this matter."

Iskander had then continued his questioning of me.

I lifted the strung beads to the square-jawed man with short, closely cropped white hair, Samos, of Port Kar.

I knelt back on my heels.

Samos put the beads on the small table before him.

"Is this all?" he asked.

"Yes, Master," I said.

"It is meaningless," he said.

"It is the necklace," said Iskander. "I have done what I can. Should it bear an import, it is up to others to detect it."

"Give me the necklace," said Bosk of Port Kar.

Samos handed it to him.

The pirate regarded it. "Note," said he, "the frequency of yellow beads. Each third bead is yellow."

"Yes," said Samos.

"Why should that be?" smiled Bosk.

"I do not know," said Samos.

"From the fact that each third bead is yellow," said Bosk, "we may infer that the units of import consist of pairs of beads, separated by the yellow beads. Note that this pair consists of a red bead followed by a blue bead, and this other pair by an orange bead followed by a red bead. There are several such combinations. We might suppose that, say, a red bead followed by a blue bead correlates with one alphabetic character."

"What if the order were reversed?" asked Samos.

"Doubtless, if that combination were used, it would correlate with a different character," said Bosk.

"We do not have the key to the cipher," said Iskander.

"We can try all combinations!" cried Samos, pounding the table.

"We may suppose," said Bosk, "as a working hypothesis, that the message is in Gorean. As far as we know, Belisarius, whom we know only by name, and it may be a code name, is Gorean."

"Yes?" said Samos.

"See," said Bosk, who was examining the necklace, "the most frequent combination of colors is blue and red."

"So?" asked Samos.

"In Gorean," said Bosk, "the most frequently occurring letter is Eta. We might then begin by supposing that the combination of blue and red signifies an Eta."

"I see," said Samos.

"The next most frequently occurring letters in Gorean," said Bosk, "are Tau, AI-Ka, Omnion and Nu. Following these in frequency of occurrence are Ar, Ina, Shu and Homan, and so on."

"How is this known?" asked Samos.

"It is based upon letter counts," said Bosk, "over thousands of words in varieties of manuscripts."

"These matters have been determined by scribes?" asked Samos.

"Yes," said Bosk.

"Why should they be interested in such things?"

"Such studies were conducted originally, at least publicly, as opposed to the presumed secret studies of cryptographers, in connection with the Sardar Fairs," said Bosk, "at meetings of Scribes concerned to standardize and simplify the cursive alphabet. Also, it was thought to have consequences for improved pedagogy, in teaching children to first recognize the most commonly occurring letters."

"I was taught the alphabet beginning with Al-Ka," smiled Samos.

"As was I," said Bosk. "Perhaps we should first have been taught Eta."

"That is not the tradition!" said Samos.

"True," admitted Bosk. "And these innovative scribes have had little success with their proposed reforms. Yet, from their labors, various interesting facts have emerged. For example, we have learned not only the order of frequency of occurrence of letters but, as would be expected, rough percentages of occurrence as well. Eta, for example, occurs two hundred times more frequently in the language than Altron. Over forty percent of the language consists of the first five letters I mentioned, Eta, Tau, Al-Ka, Omnion and Nu."

"That seems impossible," said Samos.

"It is true," said Bosk. "Further, over sixty percent of the language consists of those five letters plus Ar, Ina, Shu and Homan."

"We could still try all possible combinations," said Samos.

"True," said Bosk, "and, in a short message, which this appears to be, we might produce several intelligible possibilities. Short messages, particularly those which do not reflect statistical letter frequencies, can be extremely difficult to decipher, even when the cipher used is rudimentary."

"Rudimentary?" asked Samos.

"There are many varieties of cipher," said Bosk, "both of the substitution and transposition type. I suspect we have before us, in this necklace, a simple substitution cipher."

"Why?" asked Samos.

"It was interpreted almost instantly by the man called Belisarius," said Bosk. "A more complicated cipher, indexed to key words or key numbers, would presumably have required a wheel or table for its interpretation."

"Can all codes be broken?" asked Samos.

"Do not confuse a code with a cipher," said Bosk. "In a code, a given character, or set of characters, will commonly correlate with a word, as opposed to a letter. Codes require code books. Codes, in effect, cannot be broken. If the code book can be captured, of course, the code is useless. Codes are vulnerable in one way, ciphers in another."

"Do you feel the enemy would risk a code book, or code device, on Gor?" asked Samos.

Bosk smiled. "It seems unlikely," he said.

"Are there Unbreakable ciphers?" asked Samos.

"Yes," said Bosk, "both from a practical and theoretical point of view. From the practical point of view, if a cipher is used briefly and for a given short message, it may be impossible to break. There is just not enough material to work with. From the theoretical point of view, the unique-sequence cipher cannot be broken. It utilizes key words or numbers, but each message is further altered in a prearranged, random manner. Each message is thus unique, but decipherable in its position in the sequence of messages.

Both sender and receiver know, for example, that message six will be randomized in manner six, and so on."

"This is complex," said Samos.

"It requires that both sender and receiver have the deciphering tables at hand," said Bosk. "Thus, although it is more convenient than a code book, it shares some of the vulnerability of the code book."

Samos looked down at the necklace on the table before him. "Why should this be a simple substitution cipher?" he asked.

"I think that it is," said Bosk. "from the ease with which Belisarius read the message. I find it not implausible that it should be a simple substitution cipher because of the simplicity and convenience of such a cipher."

"Is it as secure?" asked Samos.

"The security of this cipher," smiled Bosk, "lies not in itself, as a cipher, but rather, as is common, that it is not understood as a cipher. It is not, for example, a strange message written upon a scrap of paper, calling attention to itself as a secret communication, challenging the curious to its unraveling, but apparently only an innocent necklace, beaded with wood, common, vulgar and cheap, fit only for the throat of a lowly female slave."

Samos lifted the necklace. I did not know what secret it contained.

"Further," said he who was called Bosk of Port Kar, "the slave herself did not understand the nature of her role in these matters. She did not, for a long time, even understand that she bore the message. Great security was achieved, too, in the manner of releasing the behavior of stringing the beads and in the counter-suggestion that she be unable to recall the order of the beads without the appropriate trigger structure being reconstructed." Bosk smiled. "Add to this," said he, "the convenience of a simple substitution cipher, the absence of the necessity for a code book, the lack of need for cipher wheels or deciphering tables, and you have an arrangement of circumstances which maximizes not only security but, under the appropriate conditions, ease of communication."

"Worthy of the enemy," said Samos.

"I think so," said Bosk.

"Could we not seize this Belisarius?" asked Samos.

"We do not know where he is," said Bosk. He looked at Iskander, of the Physicians. "If we should be able to seize him who is spoken of as Belisarius, do you think we could derive the cipher key from him?"

"Perhaps," said Iskander, "but I suspect that a spoken word, uttered by Belisarius himself, would, by suggestion, remove the cipher key from his mind."

"Could the enemy be so subtle?" asked Samos.

Iskander, of the Physicians, pointed to me. "I think so," said he. "You see what their power is in such matters."

I looked down.

"Could we, by the use of drugs, obtain it?" asked Samos.

"Perhaps," said Iskander, "but presumably we would encounter numerous keys. Who knows?"

Samos looked at Bosk. "Can you read the cipher?" he asked.

"I do not know," said Bosk. "See the repetitions of the beads. There are several repetitions, to compose the entire necklace. The message itself is thus short."

"It may be impossible to rend?" asked Samos.

"Yes," said Bosk.

Samos looked at me. "I wonder," said he, "why, when finished with this wench, they did not cut her throat?"

I shuddered.

"They apparently feared little," said Bosk. "Their security, they deemed, was impregnable."

"May I speak, Masters?" I asked.

"Yes," said Samos.

"Belisarius," said I, "said that others would not understand the message, even if they might read it, that it would be meaningless to them."

Samos looked to Bosk. "Captain," said he, "begin work."

"I shall, Captain," smiled Bosk. He turned to the slave girl, Luma. "Copy down," said he, "on your paper the order of the beads, in widely spaced rows. Give me then your marking stick and your paper."

"Yes, Master," she said.

In moments her quick hands had accomplished this business and she surrendered to Bosk of Port Kar both the paper and the marking stick.

"We shall begin," said Bosk, "by supposing that the sequence of blue and red corresponds to Eta. The next most common sequence is orange and red. We shall, tentatively, suppose that corresponds to Tau."

I leaned back on my heels, and watched. No one spoke. Samos and Clitus Vitellius were intent. Bosk worked swiftly, but, upon occasion, he seemed angry. More than once, for certain letters, he altered his initial hypothesis of correspondence, substituting another, and sometimes yet another and another.

At last he laid down the marking stick, and, ruefully, viewed the paper before him.

"I have the message," he said, soberly.

Samos turned to the two slave girls who knelt to one side. "Begone, Slaves," he said. Swiftly, in their silk, they fled from the room, commanded by a man.

Bosk looked to Luma. "Yes, Master," she whispered. She, too, rose to her feet and, in her brief, blue tunic, hurried from the room. Under the command of masters, slave girls do not dally.

"Would you wish me to withdraw?" inquired Clitus Vitellius.

Samos looked at Bosk of Port Kar. Then Samos said, "Remain, if you would, Clitus Vitellius, Captain of Ar."

Clitus Vitellius nodded.

I knelt as before, a naked, captive slave.

Bosk looked angrily at the words on the paper before him. "It makes no sense," said he.

"What is the message?" asked Samos.

He called Bosk of Port Kar read from the paper before him: "Half-Ear Arrives," he said. Then he added, "It is meaningless."

"No," whispered Samos, his face white. "It is not meaningless."

"What is the meaning?" asked Bosk of Port Kar.

"When did you give this message, Slave Girl?" demanded Samos of me.

"In the last passage hand, Master," I said.

"I took her from two men near the country of the Salerian Confederation," said Clitus Vitellius, "in the early spring."

Since that time I had been the slave of Clitus Vitellius, of Thumus of Tabuk's Ford, of the Keep of Stones of Turmus, and of the Belled Collar. I had been owned, too, by Elicia Nevins and had labored, too, in the Chatka and Curla.

"It is too late," said Samos, miserably.

"In what way?" asked Bosk of Port Kar.

"Doubtless Half-Ear, even now, is upon the surface of Gor," said Samos, grimly.

"Who is Half-Ear?" asked Bosk of Port Kar.

"We do not know his true Kur name," said Samos. "He is only known upon Gor as Half-Ear."

"Who is he?" asked Bosk of Port Kar.

"He is a great war general of the Kurii," said Samos.

"Is his arrival on Gor significant?" asked Bosk of Port Kar.

"He has doubtless come to Gor to take charge of the operations of Kurii upon this world."

I did not understand this talk of Kur and Kurii. They were, I gathered, the enemy.

"That he should come to Gor at this time is significant?" asked Bosk.

"I fear terribly so," said Samos. He seemed shaken. This surprised me, for he seemed generally so stern and strong. It must be a dire intelligence indeed conveyed by the simple message, to disturb to such an extent so mighty a man.

"What does it mean?" pressed Bosk of Port Kar.

"It means, I fear," said Samos, "the invasion is imminent."

"Invasion?" asked Clitus Vitellius.

"There are enemies," said Samos.

"Of Ar?" asked Clitus Vitellius, angrily.

"Of Ar, and of Port Kar, and of Cos and Tarna, and of a world," said Samos.

"Half-Ear," said Bosk of Port Kar, musingly. "I should like to meet him."

"I, too!" cried Clitus Vitellius.

"I know something of him," said Samos of Port Kar. "I do not think I would care to make his acquaintance."

"We must locate him!" said Bosk of Port Kar.

"We have no clue," said Samos. "No clue." Samos looked down at the necklace, which lay again now upon the table before him. "We know only," said he, dismally, "that somewhere upon Gor Half-Ear is among us."

I could hear the oil crackling in the bowl of the tiny lamp on its stand near us.

Samos looked at me, absently. Then he said to the guards behind me, "Take her to the pens and chain her heavily."