Guardsman of Gor (8 page)

"Perhaps," she said.

"Prisoners, then, from the Flower of Siba," I said, "are still on board."

"Perhaps," she said. I gathered from the nature of her response that this was, indeed, true. More importantly, I gathered from her response what I had been truly after, that the Tamira had made her rendezvous with the Voskjard's fleet in the western Vosk, and not at his holding. Had the rendezvous been made at the holding the prisoners, presumably, would no longer be on board.

"The captain of the Tamira," I said, "is an important man, and much trusted by Ragnar Voskjard."

"Yes," she said, proudly.

"The rendezvous of the Tamira with the fleet of the Voskjard," I said, "took place then not at his holding, but in the river." I recalled that in open battle the Tamira had been supported, and, indeed, convoyed, by two heavy galleys. This had further confirmed my suspicion that she carried a cargo more precious than many understood.

"Perhaps," said the girl.

"Has Reginald boarded the flagship of Ragnar Voskjard since the return from the holding of Policrates?" I asked.

"No," she said, "though signals were exchanged. Why?"

"Then what I seek," I said, "must still be on board."

"I do not understand," she said.

"Doubtless it is in this very cabin," I said.

"I do not understand," she said, uneasily.

"When Reginald returned from the holding of Policrates, doubtless you met him, either on deck, or in the cabin, as a naked, kneeling slave, licking and kissing at his sea boots, begging to serve him."

"Yes," she said, shrinking back.

"He would have been carrying an object, so precious that it would have been in his hands alone."

"No," she said.

"Then it would have been papers, in his tunic," I said. "You, in his cabin, undressing him, bathing him, serving him, would have seen what he did with the."

"No!" she said.

"Do not look to the place where he concealed them," I said.

I saw her glance wildly to my right, to the side of the cabin.

I smiled.

Then, knowing she had betrayed herself, she slipped, frightened, half crouching, from the berth.

"Were you not to remain in the berth until Reginald came for you?" I asked.

She looked at me, frightened.

"Do you not fear you will be slain?" I asked.

She glanced beyond me, across the cabin. I stepped back, that she might have free passage.

"But I do not object," I told her. "I did not order you to remain in the berth. I own you now."

I saw her tense her lovely body. I stepped further back. Then, suddenly, she darted past me, falling to her knees at the side of a great sea chest. She flung up its lid and, frantically, with two hands, rummaged in the chest.

I slipped my knife in my belt. I removed an object from the cabin wall.

Then she had leaped to her feet, wildly, clutching, holding over head, what appeared to he two, flat, rectangular sheets of lead, bound together. She ran to the windows of the cabin, those between and above the rudders, through which I, breaking the frames and glass inward; had entered. She drew back her arms, holding the bound lead sheets over her head, to hurl them into the Vosk.

The whip cracked forth, lashing, snapping, whipping about her startled wrists, binding them together, causing her, crying out with pain, to drop the leaden sheets. By her wrists, temporarily caught in the coils of the whip, I jerked her back and to the side, and she fell, stumbling, among the glass and wood, to my right. With my foot I spurned her to the side of the berth, on the cabin floor. The coil of the whip was then freed.

She whimpered.

I had gathered from the fact that the chest had not been locked, that it had been open to her, and that she had acted with such alacrity, that a charge had been placed upon her in the matter with which I was concerned. That charge, of course, could only have been to see to the immediate destruction of the documents in the event of an emergency. On shipboard, of course, it would be possible to immediately dispose of the documents only by casting them overboard. The lead weighting, of course, would carry them to the mud at the bottom of the Vosk. In a short time, then, the inks would run, and the papers held between the sheets, would disintegrate. My surmises in these matters had been correct. The girl had proved useful.

Whimpering, she was now on her hands and knees at the side of the berth. She extended her hand toward the leaden sheets. The whip clacked savagely and, quickly, she drew back her hand.

"I do not wish to become impatient with you," I told her.

"You do not own me," she said.

I smiled. I lifted the whip before her. "You are mistaken," I told her.

She eyed the leaden sheets. "Who are you?" she asked.

"Jason," I said, "of Victoria, your master."

"I am the woman of Reginald, captain of the Tamira," she said.

"No longer," I said.

She looked at me, angrily. "I am a captain's woman," she said.

"You are a mere slave," I said, "who must crawl to any man."

"No!" she said.

"Are you haughty?" I asked.

"If you like," she said.

I turned from her, to search for oiled cloth and wax, something, anything, with which to make a sealed packet.

I heard wood and glass suddenly move, as she scrambled across the cabin floor, on her hands and knees, toward the leaden sheets.

With a cry of rage I spun about and smote down with the whip. The stroke caught her across the back and buttocks and struck her to her stomach on the floor, amidst the wood and glass. Her extended hand was a foot from the leaden sheets. It had not occurred to me that she would attempt to reach the leaden sheets. Apparently she did not yet know who owned her.

I looked down upon her.

She lay there on her stomach, in the wood and glass, absolutely quietly. She did not move a muscle. She had felt the whip.

"I am not pleased," I told her.

"No," she cried. "No!"

I then, displeased, her Gorean master, savagely lashed the slave. She tried to crawl from the whip, but could not do so. Then she tried to crawl no more, but knelt, her head down, her head in her hands, weeping, at the side of the berth, a whipped slave.

"Forgive a slave for having been displeasing, my Masterl" she begged.

She looked up, and I held the whip before her. Eagerly, crying, she took it in her hands and kissed it, fervently.

"Fetch oiled cloth, a lantern, sealing wax, a candle, such things," I said.

She hurried to obey, and I replaced the whip on the wall. In Gorean domiciles, wherein serve female slaves, it is common to find a whip prominently displayed. The girls see it. They know its meaning. Too, displayed so, it is readily available for us.

I went to the leaden sheets and, with my knife, cut away the binding holding the sheets together. I took the envelope from within, and opened it. I examined the papers which I had extracted from the envelope. I smiled. They contained what I had expected.

The girl, from a shelf to one side, fetched a large candle,

some five inches in diameter. This candle was set in a shallow, silver bowl. She had lifted the bowl upward, off the shelf. In its bottom, protruding, was a spike. This spike had been sitting in an aperture cut in the shelf, that the bowl might sit evenly on the wood. There was a similar aperture, about a half of an inch in width, in the table. She set the spike into this hole and, again, the silver bowl rested evenly on wood. This prevents the movement of the candle in rough weather. The table, too, was bolted to the floor. For similar reasons ships' lanterns, in cabins or below decks, are usually hung from hooks overhead. Thus, in rough weather they may swing, but they are not likely to fall, scattering flaming oil about, with attendant dangers of fire. Most ships' furniture, of course, berths and such, are fixed in place. This prevents the shifting of position which, otherwise, of course, particularly in rough seas, would be inevitable. She lit the candle. On the table, too, in a moment, she placed waxed paper, and an envelope of oil cloth. Such things are not uncommon on ships, to protect papers which might be carried in the spray or weather, for example, on a longboat between ships, or between ships and the shore. Sealing wax, too, in a rectangular bar, she placed on the table. She then knelt beside the table. She kept her head down, deferentially, not daring to meet my eyes.

"Head to the floor," I told her.

She obeyed, swiftly.

I replaced the papers in their envelope, from with I had withdrawn them to examine them. I then wrapped the envelope in several thicknesses of waxed paper. Then, with the sealing wax, melted by the candle, drop by drop, then smoothing the drops into rivulets of liquid wax, I seamed shut the waxed paper.

The girl trembled, to one side, kneeling, her blond hair for. ward, on the dark, polished floor of the cabin. The collar was clearly visible on her neck, and the small, heavy lock, by means of which it was secured upon her.

"What is your name?" I asked her, while working.

"Luta," she said.

"Oh?" I asked.

"Whatever Master wishes," she said, quickly. "Please do not whip me further, Master," she begged.

"Your name now," I said, seaming shut the last opening on the waxed paper, "is Shirley."

"'Shirley'!" she sobbed. "That is an Earth-girl name."

"Yes," I said.

Her shoulders shook with the indignity of what had been done to her.

"I was a captain's woman," she said.

"Do you not rejoice in your new name?" I asked.

"Yes, Master," she said, quickly, "I rejoice in my new name."

"Good," I said.

She began to sob.

I inserted the envelope, now enclosed in several thicknesses of sealed waxed paper, in the larger envelope of oil cloth.

"Master," she said.

"Yes," I said.

"Please do not whip me," she said.

"We shall see if you are sufficiently pleasing," I said.

"With such a name," she said, "will I be expected to be so abject, so low, as those hot, surrendered sluts of Earth, so obedient, so owned, so helpless, in the arms of their Gorean masters?"

"What is your name?" I asked.

"-'Shirley'," she said.

"What?" I asked.

"'Shirley"' she said. "'Shirley'!"

"Is the answer to your question not now obvious?" I asked.

"Yes, Master," she sobbed.
                 
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Earth girls have a reputation on Gor of being among the lowest and hottest of slaves. There are doubtless various reasons for this. Perhaps one is that Earth girls are alien to Gor and have no Home Stones. They are thus subject to unmitigated predation and total domination. They are slave animals, completely. Gorean men, accordingly, treat them as such. In turn, of course, their womanhood is reborn and blossoms, as it can only in a situation in which the order of nature both obtains and flourishes.

A second reason, however, I suspect, why Earth girls make such astoundingly desirable slaves, is their background. In their native environments they encounter few but psychologically and sexually crippled men, men whose merest intuitions of their blood rights are likely to be productive of conditioned, internally administered shocks and anxieties, or externally administered sanctions of censorship, suppression, ridicule and denunciation, imposed by those who are perhaps only a bit more rigid and fearful than themselves. In such a world, largely the ideological product of superstition and hysteria, it is difficult for manhood to exist, even dormantly. Accordingly, when an Earth female finds herself translated to Gor, she finds herself, for the first time, in the presence of large numbers of men to whom nature and power are not. anathema. Moreover, she is likely to find herself belonging to them. Beyond this, of course, the culture itself, for all its possible defects and faults, is one which has been constructed to be congenial to the natural biological order, and neither antithetical to, nor contradictory of it. The culture has not suppressed the biotruths of human nature but found a place for them.

The culture is a setting which transforms and enhances the simplicities and rudenesses of nature, ennobling her and exalting her, lending her glory and articulation, refining her, fulfilling her, rather than a sewer and a trap, in which she is kept half-starved and chained.

An example of this sort of thing is the institution of female slavery. It is clearly founded on, and expressive of, the order of nature, but what a wonder has civilization wrought here, elevating and transforming what is in effect a genetically coded biological datum, male dominance and female submission, into a complex, historically developed institution, with its hundreds of aspects and facets, legal, social and aesthetic. What a contrast is the beautiful, vended girl, branded and collared, desiring a master and trained to please one, kneeling before her purchaser and kissing his whip, with the brutish female, cowering under her master's club at the back of his cave. And yet, of course, both women are owned, and completely. But the former, the slave girl, is owned with all the power and authority of law. If anything, she is owned even more completely than her primitive forebear. Civilization, as well as nature, collaborates in her bondage, sanctifying and confirming it.

It is no wonder that the institution of slavery provides the human female, in all her sensitivities and vulnerabilities, in all her psychophysical complexity, with the deepest fulfillments and most exquisite emotions she can know.

Briefly put, the second reason that Earth girls make such astoundingly desirable slaves is that they have been, in their Earth years, subjected, in effect, to sexual and emotional starvation. They have labored in a fruitless desert, often not even understanding the causes of their unhappiness, of their misery and frustration. Confused, they have lashed out at themselves and others, ultimately profitlessly and meaninglessly. Translated to Gor, encountering true men in large numbers, in overwhelming numbers, so different from the crippled males of Earth, finding themselves in an exotic environment, and participating in a culture markedly different from their own, and in many respects both fearful and beautiful, and founded on the order of nature, they find themselves, in effect, restored to love. The Gorean girl knows such joys can exist, though she may or may not have experienced them. The Earth girl, commonly, did not know that such joys, truly, could exist. Only in her troubled sleep, perhaps, did the Earth girl dream of the slaver's noose or the harsh, flat stones of the dungeon on which she might be forced to kneel.

There was a sudden, loud pounding on the cabin door.

The startled girl lifted her head, suddenly, fearfully, looking at me.