In a few minutes I saw the silken summit of the gigantic sales pavilion, its pennons fluttering, its blue and yellow silk billowing in the wind.
I saw male slaves thrusting a cart filled with quarry stones. It left deep tracks in the rain-softened earth.
I smelled verr, closed in shallow pens, more than a pasang away. The air was clear and sparkling.
I came to the great sales pavilion, but it was now roped off and quiet. There was much activity, and bustle, however, among the platforms. Here and there slaves were being thrown food.
I mingled with the crowds among the platforms. There are hundreds of such platforms, long, raised about a foot from the ground, far more than one could easily examine in a day's browsing. They are rented to individual slavers, who, reserving them before the fairs, would rent one or more, or several, depending on their riches and the numbers of their stock. Small signs fixed on the platforms identify the flesh merchant, such as 'These are the girls of Sorb of Turia' or 'These slaves are owned by Tenalion of Ar'.
I penetrated more deeply among the platforms. A girl, kneeling and naked, heavily chained, extended her hands to me. "Buy me, Master!" she begged. Then I had passed her and she was behind me. I saw two girls standing, back to back, the left wrist of each chained to the right wrist of the other. "Handsome master, consider me!" cried a girl as I passed her. Most of the girls knelt or sat on the platforms. All were secured in some fashion.
"Scandalous," said a free woman, to another free woman, who was passing near me.
"Yes," said the other free woman.
"Candies! Candies!" called a hawker of sweets near me in the crowd. "Candies of Ar!"
"Buy this candy of Ar, Master!" laughed a chained girl to me. I roughly fondled her head, and she seized my wrist suddenly in her chained hands and desperately began to press kisses upon it. "Please," she wept. "Please!" "No," I said. I pulled my wrist away and continued on. She sobbed, and knelt back in her chains.
"I will make you a superb love slave," called another girl to me. I did not respond to her.
On a rounded wooden block a naked slave girl knelt, her wrists braceleted behind her. Her head was back. One of the physicians was cleaning her teeth.
By another platform a slaver's man was moving along the platform. He carried a large, handled copper tureen filled with a watery soup. The slaver's beauties, chained together by the neck, knelt at the edge of the platform. Each dipped her cupped hands twice into the tureen, and lifted them, drinking and feeding, to her mouth. They then licked and sucked their fingers and wiped their hands on their bodies.
Sales take place at night in the pavillion, from a sawdust-strewn block, under the light of torches, but girls may also be sold directly from the platforms. Indeed, many girls are sold from the platforms. Given the number of girls at the fair, and the fact that new ones are constantly being brought to the platforms, it is impractical to hope to market them all from the block. It is just not feasible. At the end of every fair there are always some hundreds of girls left unsold. These are usually sold in groups at wholesale prices In sales restricted to professional slavers, who will transport them to other markets, to dispose of them there.
"Do you think you could make me kneel to you?" asked a girl sitting on a platform, with chained neck and ankles, her knees drawn up, chewing on a larma fruit. She smiled at me, over the fruit, Then she turned white. "Forgive me, Master!" she cried. She had seen my eyes. She knelt before me on the boards, trembling, her head down. Would she be permitted to live? The fruit lay discarded beside her. I took the fruit and bit into it. I watched her for a time, and then I said, "Lift your head." She did so. I threw the fruit back to her, and she, fearfully, caught it. She held it In her bands, looking at me. "Finish it," I said, "and then, for an Ahn, lie on your belly." "Yes, Master," she said.
I looked up, beyond the crowds and platforms. From where I stood I could see the great palisade, and the black, snow-capped mountains of the Sardar.
I moved on, pushing past a man who was examining the legs of a slave girl, feeling them. He was considering her purchase.
"Where are the new slaves?" asked one man of another.
"They are on the western platforms," said the respondent. Those platforms are commonly used for processing and organization. Girls are not often sold from them. They wait there, usually, when they are brought in, before they are conducted to their proper platforms, those on which they will be displayed, those having been rented in advance by their masters.
Since I had time to spare I took my way to the western platforms. If something good might be found there perhaps I could find on which platform she was to be vended, and might then arrange to be at that platform when she arrived. As soon as the locks snap shut on a girl's chain at the platform she is available to be bid upon. Perhaps I would find something good.
I was soon at the western platforms.
It is easy to tell among girls which are familiar with their condition and which are not. Once a girl truly understands that she is a slave, and that there is no escape for her, once she understands it truly, emotionally, categorically, intellectually, physiologically, totally, deeply, profoundly, in every cell in her beautiful body, a fantastic transformation occurs in her. She then knows she is truly a slave. She then becomes wild, and free, and sexual, and cares not that he might be scorned by the free either for her miserable condition or helpless appetites; she knows she will be what she must; she has no choice; she is slave. Women, in their heart, long to submit; this is necessary for the slave girl; she must submit or die; submitted, she is thrilled to the core; she lives then for love and service, bound to the will of her master. The joy of the slave girl may seem incomprehensible to the free but it is a reality.
I heard the lamentations of girls in chains.
It must be clearly understood that the life of the slave girl, of course, can often be far from joyful.
After all, she is slave. Her wills mean nothing.
She can be bought and sold.
She is subject to the whip, and torture and even death should the master please.
She does not know who will buy her.
Her condition is objectively degrading.
Often she must labor with perfection to please a harsh master to whom she is nothing.
The glory of the slave girl is that she is a slave; and the misery of the slave girl is that she is a slave.
But all in all chains are right for a woman. They belong in them.
I looked at some of the new platforms. I could easily detect girls who were fresh to the collar. They were clumsy and tight, not yet liberated and free, not yet women.
Even as I walked about the new platforms wagons, drawn by draft tharlarion, waited to unload their lovely wares. The markets of the Sardar fairs are large and important ones in the Gorean economy. Most of the wagons were common slave wagons, with a parallel bar running down the center of the wagon box, about which the ankles of the girls were chained; others, however, were flat wagons fixed with an iron framework; two lines of girls kneel back to hack on such a wagon, their ankles and necks locked into the framework; on the flat wagons I saw the wrists of the beauties were braceleted behind them.
I inspected more of the new platforms.
It is painful for a girl to be locked in the framework of a flat wagon but, of course, she is well displayed enroute.
On some of the new platforms the women were still clothed or partly clothed.
I was about to leave the area of the western platforms when I saw something which interested me, a set of four girl.
I walked casually over to the vicinity of the platform, standing back somewhat.
Three were dark-haired and one was blond. The wrists of each were chained; the ankles, too, of each were chained. Their wrists were separated by some six inches of chain, their ankles by about a foot of chain.