Prize of Gor (7 page)

“No,” said the older woman.

“Thirdly,” said the young man, “consider the following. Incidentally, these are only some simple general things, out of thousands, which I might tell you about this supposed world. I have selected only three, thinking that these might be most helpful to you at this moment.”

The older woman nodded.

“Thirdly,” said the young man,” I would like to call your attention to certain medical, or biological, advances, or, at any rate, capabilities, which exist on this supposed world.”

“I thought your supposed world was primitive,” said the older woman.

“In certain respects, so, in others, not,” said the young man. “The particular advance, or capability, I have in mind may be of some interest to you. Let me begin, first of all, by reminding you that certain areas of technology, of investigation, and such, were denied to humans on our supposed world. The energies then which might have been plied into certain channels, those of weapons, electronic communication, mass transportation, large-scale industrial machinery, and such, were diverted into other channels, for example, into the medical, or biological, sciences. In short, the supposed world, whose existence I should like you to entertain for the moment as a possibility, is, in some respects, far advanced over that with which you are most familiar. For example, on the supposed world aging was understood over a thousand years ago not as an inevitability but, in effect, as a disease and, accordingly, it was investigated as such. Clearly it is a physical process and, like other physical processes, it would be subject to various conditions, conditions susceptible to manipulation, or alteration, in various ways.”

“I do not understand what you are saying,” whispered the older woman, frightened.

“I did not mean to upset you,” said the man. “Forgive me. Let us briefly change the subject. Doubtless you have seen old examples of the film-makers’ art, silent films, for example. Or perhaps even talkies, but dating back perhaps fifty or sixty years?”

“Of course,” she said.

“In the silent films might be seen many women of incredible loveliness and femininity, films made in a time in which these precious, marvelous attributes were celebrated, rather than castigated and belittled by an envious potato-bodied self-proclaimed elite of the plain and politically motivated. Too, even in old talkies, how beautiful, how feminine, were so many of the actresses! How poignant then to realize that these luscious, marvelous creatures would, by now, have so sadly changed, would by now have been mercilessly humiliated, ravaged, eroded into almost unrecognizable caricatures of their once fair, wondrous selves. It is sad. Too, there were women in those days, true women, and two sexes, real sexes, not one blurred, androgynous pseudo-sex, and they were harmoniously interrelated, fitted closely and beautifully to one another as male and female, each inordinately unique and precious, not set at odds by the disappointed, the greedy and rancorous. In those days the pathological virago would not have been a role model but a poor joke, as she is in actuality today, though a joke it is unwise to recognize. Then the forty-nine natural women would not have been belittled, twisted, and commanded to behave like the unnatural “fiftieth woman,” the authentic, disturbed malcontent, consumed with envy, intent on working her vengeance and will on an entire community. If one is to be sacrificed, why not the fiftieth, she alone, why the forty-nine?”

“Let each be as she wishes,” said the older woman.

“But it does not work in that fashion, does it?” he asked.

“No,” she whispered. Then she said, angrily, “We know our values! Let the forty-nine be sacrificed!”

“Perhaps men will not permit it,” he said.

She drew back in the chair, behind the small table, frightened, and put her legs more closely together, and gathered the white gown more closely about her slender body. It had never occurred to her before, perhaps oddly, that men might not permit the transmogrification of her gender. That had never occurred to her, that men might take a hand in such things. Men had always been so stupid, so simple, so weak, so easily confused, so easily influenced, so easily controlled and manipulated. Those, of course, were the men of Earth.

“I have upon occasion,” he said, “seen photographs of older women, sometimes very old women, taken when they were much younger, in the bloom of their youth and beauty. One realizes then, suddenly, that once they were young, and so beautiful. How hard it seems to believe that sometimes, knowing them as they are now. But if one had known them then! Ah, if one had known them then! Then would one not have found them terribly attractive? Would one not have wanted then to know them, to approach them, to touch them?”

“Everyone grows old,” said the older woman.

“I promised you that I would introduce you to the individual whom you remembered from long ago,” he said.

“Is he in the house?” she asked, suddenly.

“Yes,” said the young man.

“Please be merciful!” she begged. “If I am to see him, give me clothing to wear! Do not let me appear before him like this!”

“Was he a lover?” asked the young man.

“No!” she cried. “Of course not!”

“I shall introduce you to him now,” he said.

“Please, no,” she begged. “Not while I am like this!”

“But you have already appeared before him, so clad,” he said.

She looked at him wildly, in confusion.

“I am he,” he smiled.

“No,” she said. “You are too young, too young!”

“I am he,” he repeated.

She shook her head, disbelievingly.

“It will all become clearer later,” he said. “Let us now simply inform you, and you may believe this or not, it makes no difference at this point, that our “supposed world,” as we spoke of it, does exist, in actuality. It lies within our very solar system. I have been there. I have seen that world. I have adopted it, and its hardy, uncompromising, fulfilling ways, as my own. I will not recognize the pathologies of this world any longer. I repudiate them. The world is called, after one of its cultural artifacts, “Home Stone.” In the language most commonly spoken on that world the word is “Gor.” Perhaps you have heard of Gor?”

“You are mad!” she wept.

“Have you heard of it?” he asked.

“Of course,” she said. “But it does not exist!”

“Later you will be in a better position to make a judgment on that,” he said.

The older woman looked to the kneeling blonde, if only to corroborate her own consternation, her own disbelief, but Tutina stared ahead, not meeting her eyes.

“Tutina,” said the young man, “is from Earth, like you, but she was taken, let us say, as a guest, to Gor. I bought her there.”

“Bought her?” asked the older woman.

“I, on the other hand,” said the young man, “was, in a way, recruited.”

“You are not the young man I knew,” said the older woman.

“I am,” he said. “Let us return briefly to those medical advances I mentioned earlier, those developed on Gor, or, as it is sometimes spoken of, the
Antichthon
, the Counter-Earth. Among these advances, or capabilities, if you prefer, are the Stabilization Serums. These ensure pattern stability, the stability of organic patterns, without degradation, despite the constant transformation of cells in the body. As you probably know, every seven years or so, every cell in your body, with the exception of the neural cells, is replaced. The continuity of neural cells guarantees the viability of memory, extending back, beyond various seven-year periods. The Stabilization Serums, in effect, arrest aging, and, thus, preserve youth. Further, the Stabilization Serums also freshen and rejuvenate neural tissue. In this way, one avoids the embarrassment of a declining brain incongruously ensconced in a youthful body. That feature represents an improvement over the original serums and dates from something like five hundred years ago.”

“You said you
bought
Tutina?” she asked.

“Yes,” he said. “Can you think of any simple way in which I might convince you that I am who I claim to be? I probably remember some of our exchanges in class, some of my fellow students, some of the reading assignments, such things. Would anything like that help?”

“You might have researched such things,” she said.

“True,” he admitted. “What if I described your clothing, or manner, or such?”

“Such things were muchly the same,” she said. “I know!”

“What?” he asked.

“Once, and only once,” she said, “I wore jewelry to class. You could not know what it was. You would have no way of knowing what it was. Your data, your records, the roster, the familiarities of my garb and demeanor, could not give you that information.”

“You wore two narrow bracelets, golden bracelets, on your left wrist,” he said.

The older woman was aghast, stunned. The bracelets were precisely as he had stated. She had never forgotten that class. She had only dared once to wear them, to that class and none other. And she remembered how she had sometimes moved her wrist, as though in the most natural and apt of gestures, in such a way that they would make that tiny, provocative sound.

“They contrasted nicely with your prim couture,” he said. “They reminded me of slave bangles. They made small sounds, sometimes, as you moved your wrist. I suppose you know you did that on purpose, to present yourself before me, as a female slave.”

“No!” she cried.

“I recall thinking that it would be pleasant to have you remove those severe garments, slowly and gracefully, and then kneel naked before me, except for the two bracelets on your left wrist.”

The older woman cried out in misery, and hid her face in her hands.

“There has been a new development in the Stabilization Serums, or, better, I suppose, serums rather analogous to the Stabilization Serums, a development which has occurred in my own lifetime, indeed, within the last few years,” he said. “In this development, though there are dangers associated with it, and it is not always effective, it is often possible to reverse the typical aging process, to an earlier point, and then stabilize it at that point.”

“You are mad,” she said.

“I had never forgotten you,” he said, “and so, naturally, when I learned of this possibility, I thought of you, and, indeed, several others, in this regard.

“You may now ask about your clothing,” he said.

“Where is it?” she said.

“It was destroyed,” he said. “You will not be needing it anymore. You are going to be taken to Gor.”

“You are mad,” she whispered.

“Not at all,” he said.

“You never forgot me?” she said.

“Do not mistake our intentions here,” he said. “This is a business venture. We are interested in profit. There is a rich harvest to be had now, with this new development, only recently available to us for commercial exploitation. There is now, suddenly, an entirely new, rich, untapped area which is ripe for our endeavors, an area which we may now use to supplement our routine work.”

“You remembered me,” she whispered. “You were
interested
in me.”

“A nice word,” he said.

“You found me of
interest
 —?”

“Certainly.”

She was in sudden consternation.

Interested
?

Surely she had misspoke herself. Surely she had gone too far!

Was she feminine?

She must not be feminine!

Surely it would be wrong for her to be such, to be so female, so simply, so radically, so vulnerably female!

Was such not a mere social artifact?

But what if it were not a mere social artifact?

What if it were something very different, what if it were something very real, something natural, precious, important, and beautiful, something utterly independent of her wishes and indoctrinations, something which, whether she or others approved or not, or wanted it to be or not, she was?

And could it be wrong to be what one was?

And what might be the consequences of becoming what one was, truly?

Could it be so terrible?

Or might it not be the most welcome and glorious of liberations?

She looked at the wall, to her left, at a picture, a landscape. It seemed a strange landscape, in its way, with gentle yellow trees nestled in a valley, and, in the distance, a range of scarlet mountains. One could almost smell the breeze, the freshness of the air.

A strange picture!

Surely there was no such place.

But what if there were?

What would it be to be in such a place?

Would not things be different?

Perhaps very different?

She looked away from the picture.

“But how could that be?” she asked, lightly. “In what possible way?”

“You are not stupid,” he said. “Do not pretend to be stupid. In precisely the sense you had in mind when you used the word ‘interesting’.”

“—
As a female
?” she said.

“Of course,” he said.

“How horrid!” she said.

“You are actually quite pleased,” he said.

“I decry the very thought,” she said. “I reject it as insulting and repulsive!”

“No, you do not,” he said. “You are very pleased. And I assure you that you will come to hope, and soon, with all your heart, and every fiber of your little body, that men will find you interesting
as a female
 — for your very life may depend on this.”

“I do not understand,” she said.

“In a few days, perhaps weeks,” he said, “you will understand.”

“I think you are mad,” she said.

“Perhaps,” he smiled.

She drew the pristine, starched white of the hospital or examination gown more closely about her.

“How lovely you were,” he said, “and how lovely you will be again, when you are what you should have been, from the very beginning.”

“I do not understand,” she said.

He laughed, and she felt frightened.

She trembled in the small, starched gown. It was too short! On her left ankle was a puzzling, inexplicable ring of metal; it was a stout, sturdy little ring, and it closely encircled her ankle; it was closed and locked in place; she could not remove it; it was fastened on her, snugly, effectively, inescapably; it was warmed now from her body.