Tribesmen of Gor (61 page)

On Gor it is said that only a true slave begs to be freed. That act, incontrovertibly, on Gor, more deeply than a brand and a collar, marks the individual as a true slave. Who but such a true slave would beg to be freed? Such individuals, of course, are never freed, but, commonly, their nature now being made undeniably clear, are put under heavier restraints and treated more harshly. When Talena, the daughter of Marlenus of Ar, Ubar of Ar, had, in a missive to him, begged her freedom, he had, on his sword and on the medallion of Ar, sworn against her the oath of disownment. As a consequence, she was no longer of high birth, no longer his daughter. I had had Samos free her and transmit her to Ar. There she lived, free but of no status; she was no longer recognized, in the sight of its Home Stone, as a citizen of Ar; she had not even the collar of a slave girl for her identity; she was kept sequestered by Marlenus in the central cylinder, that his shame not be publicly displayed upon the high bridges of the city.

"No!" cried the girl. "You should have freed me!"

I looked at her, in her rage. I did not suppose she had acted much differently than would have many women. The Goreans believe, of course, that in the belly of every woman there is a slave girl, waiting to be revealed by the right master.

"You should have freed me!" she cried. "You should have freed me!"

I looked at her, in her rage, her beauty, her clenched fists, the brief, revealing rag.

"You are too beautiful to be free," I told her.

She reacted as though struck.

She looked about, at the men in the room, clad in the garb of the Tahari. They looked upon her. She shuddered, knowing that among them she was too beautiful to be free.

She turned again to face me. She drew herself up. "I am pleased I identified you for Ibn Saran," she said. "I am pleased that I testified against you at Nine Wells. Punish me."

"You are not to be punished because you identified me for Ibn Saran," I said, "nor because you testified against me at Nine Wells."

She looked at me, furious.

"Were you not commanded by your Master, Ibn Saran, to so testify?" I said.

"Yes," she said.

"You were a good slave girl. You are to be commended," I said.

"Throw her a candy," I said to one of the men.

He did so.

"Eat it," I told Vella.

She did so.

"You are to be punished," I said, "and punished only, because you, a slave girl, have not been found pleasing."

She looked at me with horror.

"For so little?" she said.

I gestured to a man, an Aretai, in white burnoose, with black kafflyeh and white agal cording, who stood nearby. He tossed a Gorean slave whip to the tiles, some twenty feet from the girl.

She looked at the whip in disbelief. Earth women, no matter what they do, are never punished. She could not believe that she was to be treated as a Gorean slave girl.

"Fetch the whip," I told her.

She stood straight. "Never!" she cried. "Never! Never!"

"Bring a sand glass," I said, "of one Ehn's sand." It was brought. The Gorean day consists of twenty Ahn; the Gorean Ahn, or hour, of forty Ehn, or minutes; the Ehn consists of eighty Ihn, or seconds. An Ihn is slightly less than an Earth second.

The glass was inverted.

She looked at it. "You can never make me do this," she said, "Tarl."

She watched the sand slip through the glass. She turned to face me. "I'm pleased that I betrayed Priest-Kings. I'm pleased that I served Kurii I'm pleased that I identified you for Ibn Saran. I'm pleased that I testified against you at Nine Wells! Do you understand? Pleased!"

A quarter of the sand had slipped through the glass.

"You did not free me in Lydius. You kept me a slave!" she cried petulantly.

The sand had now slipped half through the glass. She looked about, from face to face, finding in them no sign of emotion, and then again she faced me.

"Of course I smiled at Nine Wells," she cried. "I wanted you sent to Klima! I wanted you sent there! Vengeance was sweet! Only you escaped! Of course I mocked you from the window of the kasbah of Ibn Saran! There would be no women at Klima! Of course in insolence I hurled you a bit of perfumed silk, to torment you in the march and, later, at Klima. Of course I lightly blew you a kiss of farewell, delighted in my triumph over you! Of course! Of course! Yes, yes, I mocked you when you were helpless! It gave me much pleasure to do so!"

There was only a quarter of the sand remaining. She looked at it, miserably.

She turned to me again. "I was cruel and petty, Tarl," she said. "Forgive me!"

The sand was almost slipped from the glass.

"I am a woman of Earth," she cried. "Of Earth!" Such women, of course, were never punished, no matter what they did. They were always forgiven. "Forgive me, Tarl!" she cried. "Forgive me!"

But she was a Gorean slave girl.

"Never will I fetch the whip!" she cried.

Then, crying out with misery, frightened, a moment before the sand slipped from the glass, she turned toward the whip.

"In the fashion of the Tahari," I told her.

She moaned, and fell to her hands and knees. The men, impassively, watched her go to the whip and pick it up, in her teeth.

"Put the whip down," I told her.

She put the whip down, dropping it from her teeth. She looked at me, joyfully. "Kneel," I told her. She did so, puzzled. "Strip," I told her, "without rising to your feet." She did so, angrily, slipping the tiny, torn rag over her head and putting it to one side. She shook her hair; she straightened her body. A murmur of appreciation coursed through the men in the room. Then one, in Gorean fashion, struck his left shoulder, and then the others. She knelt, straight, while men applauded the beauty of her. How proud she was! How fantastically beautiful are women! And I owned her.

 
"Tie your garment about your right ankle," I told her. She did this, sitting, and then, again, knelt.

 
"Now pick up the whip again," I said, "in your teeth." She did so.

 
She did not wear a collar. I had had that of Ibn Saran removed. I would put her in one of mine later. She was naked except that about her right ankle was tied a rag, and, strangely perhaps, about her left wrist was knotted a bit of bleached slave silk.

 
She looked at me, the whip in her teeth.

 
"Now go to your former slave alcove to be beaten," I told her.

 
She left the room, a slave girl on her way to discipline.

 
I turned to one of the men nearby. "Be as her caller and guard," I said to him.

 
He nodded, and, bending down, picked up a strap which lay nearby. "I shall come presently," I told him. He acknowledged this. He left the room, following the girl.

 
A guard is not used in such cases to prevent the escape of the girl, for, in such a situation, in a house or kasbah, there is no escape for her. He serves to protect her, interestingly, from other slave girls. The strap or coiled rope be carries is used less often to hasten, in a humiliating fashion, a girl who might otherwise dally on the way to discipline, though it may serve this purpose, than it is to drive other girls from her. Such a strap or rope, of course, can sting hotly through slave silk. She is very vulnerable, you see, the girl who is to be punished, on the way to discipline. She is naked; she is not permitted to rise; she may not even speak, for the whip must be held between her teeth; to drop it is twenty extra lashes. Resentments, jealousies, petty feuds, enemities, are common among female slaves. Particularly is there jealousy and hatred for the most beautiful slaves, or for the highest slaves. Such a girl, on her way to discipline, is a delight to those who hate and envy her, and who would be only too pleased to take this opportunity to jeer and abuse her, sometimes cruelly and physically. Although many girls in the kasbah were chained here and there for the pleasures of men' most were freed of impediments, that they might fetch and serve, and be seized when and wherever the men might want them. These, in the halls, would constitute a genuine danger to Vella, who, a high slave, had been the object of much envy. How pleased they would be to see proud Vella crawling in the halls to her discipline. The second reason a man accompanies the girl is to be the caller. He performs what is spoken of sometimes as the whip song, though it is not a song, but rather a series of calls or announcements. These summon other girls to witness one of their sisters on the way to discipline. "Here is a girl who has not been fully pleasing," cries the man. "Look upon her. She is going to discipline. She was not completely pleasing. See her! Come, witness a girl who has not been fully pleasing!" These cries bring the other girls, with their burdens, and such, to watch the progress through the halls of the girl who is to be punished. Soon a derisive, moving gauntlet is formed, through which, constantly, the miserable, whip-bearing girl crawls. She is spat upon, and struck, with hands and straps, and kicked, and much abused, but, of course, only within those limits set by the caller and guard. This sort of thing is thought desirable in the Tahari, in encouraging the whipbearing girl to be more dutiful in the future, and the girls of the gauntlet to resolve, too, to be more dutiful, that it not be they, next, at the mercy of their enemies and rivals, who carries the whip. The actual whipping in the Tahari, incidentally, is usually a matter between the girl and the master, or he and his men. Other girls are seldom permitted to watch one of their sisters being whipped. All they know, when the doors close, is that she will be whipped.

I found the girl kneeling before the small iron gate of her former slave alcove. The guard, having accompanied her to the quarters for female slaves, which were now empty, the girls being elsewhere, serving men, had left her there. We were alone in the large, beautiful, tiled, pillared room. She looked at me. I took the whip from her teeth and thrust it in my sash.

"Remove the rag from your right ankle," I told her. She did this, and put it to one side.

She had come through the corridors from the audience chamber on her hands and knees, carrying the whip, head down, in her teeth, between two lines, moving with her, of slave girls, girls running, when she had crawled by them, to be again at the head of the line, to have again their lashing stroke, their cry or jeer.

I threw her a towel that she might wipe her body and long, swirling dark hair, cleaning it. She did so, gratefully. I saw that she had been much struck and abused. The girls had had much sport with her as she had crawled, helpless, to her discipline. Vella was obviously the object of much hostility among the other slave girls. She was apparently much resented and hated. Vella was too beautiful, I supposed, to be popular with women. The very beauty, which made her prized among men, would make her an object of hostility and loathing among women. A beauty like Vella on Gor bad little choice but to relate to men, and, of course, she a slave, on their terms. Too, she had been a high slave, much above the other girls, now fallen far below them, now a fit object for their abuse and scorn, to be tempered only to the degree to which they were willing to feel the flash of the guard's strap through their silk. She looked at me, tears in her eyes.

"Tarl?" she asked.

She moved toward me, and slipped to her feet, encircling my body with her small arms. About her left wrist, knotted, was the bleached silk from Klima. She put her head against my shoulder, and then lifted it, softly kissing me. She was a very delicious and beautiful naked slave. "I love you, Tarl," she said.

"Give me your left wrist," I said.

She extended her left wrist to me. I removed from it the silk from Klima. I put it in my sash.

"I did not realize until now your plan," she said, "to pretend to make me your slave, to fool the others." She looked about. "We are alone." she smiled.

I opened the small square gate in the alcove, set in the bars, some ten inches from the floor. The opening is about eighteen inches square.

     
"What are you doing?" she asked.

I would use a standard Tahari tie.

"Tarl?" she asked.

The door is opened that the girl's beauty not he hurt against the closed bars of the tiny gate.

"Oh!" she cried. I thrust her, holding her by her arms from behind, on her knees, belly tight, against the flat iron piece over which the door swings, in closing. Her knees were thus through the bars, on the inside of the cell. With a length of binding fiber, about her knees and behind and over the bars I secured her in position. She could not fall backwards. I then took her wrists up, one at a time, she, startled, not resisting, and tied them, on the outside, each to a separate bar, on either side of the small iron gate. "Tarl!" she said. She can grasp the bar with her small hand.

I regarded her.

"Tarl," she said, "you need not carry your plan so far. We shall not be surprised. Girls will not be permitted to return here until the earliest hours of the morning. We shall not be surprised. It is not necessary to fasten me like this, so helplessly."

I said nothing. How foolish I thought her. But she was, of course, a woman of Earth.