But many highly intelligent women have fought these battles out in their heart long before they see a chain or the steel of a collar.
They live waiting for a master. They wait for the man who will look into their eyes and see what they truly are, and into whose eyes they will look, and see that he knows their secret. When they are alone, he will say to her, softly, "Kneel, Slave." They kneel. They are then truly a slave, his.
"Tell him your name," she ordered the fellow on the platform.
"I do not speak to slaves," he said.
"Obey me!" she said.
He turned and went down the stairs of the platform.
"He is called Drusus," she said. "He is of the metal workers."
"He is not a metal worker," I said. "He is of the Assassins.
"No," she said.
"I have seen him use a knife," I said. "He did not obey you," I observed.
She looked at me, angrily.
"Your days in authority here," I said, "are numbered."
"I am in command here!" she said.
"For the time," I said. I looked out over the milling tabuk.
They were northern tabuk, massive, tawny and swift, many of them ten hands at the shoulder, a quite different animal from the small, yellow-pelted, antelopelike quadruped of the south. On the other hand, they, too, were distinguished by the single horn of the tabuk. On these animals, however, that object, in swirling ivory, was often, at its base, some two and one-hall inches in diameter, and better than a yard in length. A charging tabuk, because of the swiftness of its reflexes, is a quite dangerous animal. Usually they are killed from a distance, often from behind shields, with arrows.
My thoughts strayed to Vella, once Elizabeth Cardwell. Apparently she had not knowingly collaborated with Drusus, he who had called himself Bertram of Lydius. He had tricked her in the matter of the sleen. She had been his dupe. It would not then be necessary to be too hard on her. It would be sufficient, when I returned to Port Kar, merely to have her whipped for her stupidity.
I put her from my mind, for she was only slave.
"It must be difficult to place the logs of the wall," I said, "because of the permafrost."
"How difficult you will learn," she said. She was still angry that her authority had been flouted in my presence.
At this latitude, even in the summer, the earth only thaws to a depth of some two feet. Beneath this depth one strikes still frozen ground. it is almost like stone. Picks and drive bars ring upon it.
The construction of the wall was, in its way, a considerable engineering feat. That it had been accomplished by men, with simple tools, said much for the determination of the Kurii, and the rigors imposed upon its laborers by their guardsmen.
"You will see who is in authority here," she said, angrily. I felt the line on my neck jerk tight. I accompanied her down the stairs of the platform.
"Guards!" she called. Some four guardsmen came to her, running.
"Bring Drums to me," she said, "if necessary in chains."
They hurried from her. In a few moments they returned, he who called himself Drusus with them.
She pointed arrogantly to the ground at her feet. "Kneel," she said to him.
Angrily he knelt.
"Tell him your name," she said to him.
The man looked up at me, in fury. "I am Drusus," he said.
"Attend now to your duties, Drusus," she said.
He got to his feet and left. I saw that she was truly in authority. If her tenure of authority were to be soon terminated there was as yet no sign of it. She looked at me, and tossed her head arrogantly. She was supreme among these men.
"It was Drusus who identified you for me," she said.
"I see," I said.
"Three prisoners have been captured," said a man, coming up to her.
"Bring them before me," she said.
The three prisoners, their hands bound behind their backs, were brought forward. One was a man, the other two were girls, slave girls. The man was on an individual neck tether, in the hand of a guard. The girls were on a common tether, the throat of each tied at a different end of a long strap; it served as their common leash, a guard grasping it in the center. The man was the red hunter I had seen at the fair. He no longer possessed his bow or other accouterments. The two girls were the slaves he had purchased at the fair, the Earth girls, one blond, the other dark-haired, who had worn the torn red pullover. He was dressed as he had been at the flit, in trousers and boots of fur, but bare-chested. The two girls now, however, wore fur wrapped on their feet, tied with hide string, and brief fur tunics. The hair of each was tied behind her head with a red string. Under the tether on the throat of each there was tied an intricately knotted set of four leather strings. In such a way the red hunters identify their animals. The owner of the beast may be determined from the knetting of the strings.
"Kneel," said a guard.
The two slave girls immediately knelt, obedient to a master's command.
My lovely captor regarded them with contempt.
The red hunter, he of the polar basin, had not knelt. Perhaps he did not speak Gorean well enough to understand the command. There are several barbarian languages spoken on Gor, usually in more remote areas. Also, some of the dialects of Gorean itself are aimost unintelligible. On the other hand, Gorean, in its varieties, serves as the lingua franca of civilized Gor. There are few Goreans who cannot speak it, though with some it is almost a second language. Gorean tends to be rendered more uniform through the minglings and transactions of the great fairs. Too, at certain of these fairs, the caste of scribes, accepted as the arbiters of such matters, stipulate that certain pronounciations and grammatical, formations, and such are to be preferred over others. The Fairs, in their diverse ways, tend to standardize the language, which might otherwise disintegrate into regional variations which, over centuries, might become mutually unintelligible linguistic modalities, in effect and practice, unfortunately, separate languages. The Fairs, and, I think, the will of Priest-Kings, prevents this.
"No," said the red hunter. He had spoken in Gorean.
He was struck to his knees by the blows of spears. He looked up, angrily. "Free our tabuk!" he said.
"Take him away and put him to work on the wall," said my lovely captor.
The man was dragged away.
"What have we here?" Sidney Anderson asked, regarding the two girls.
"Polar slaves, beasts of the red hunters," said a man.
"Look up at me," she said.
The girls looked into her eyes.
"You have the look of Earth girls," said my captor, in English.
I thought her perceptive. They could still be distinguished from Gorean collar girls. There was still something about them which, to a discerning eye, betrayed their intricate, constricted Earth origin. Later, if they had the proper master or series of masters, it would no longer be possible to do this by sight. They would be betrayed then, if their teeth were not carefully inspected, only by their accent. A filling found in a tooth is usually a sign of an Earth girl. It is not an infallible sign, however, for not all Earth girls have fillings and some dental work is done upon occasion by the caste of physicians on Gorean girls. Cavities are rare in Goreans because of their simple diet and the general absence of cruel emotional stress, with its physiological and chemical consequences, during puberty. Gorean culture tends to view the body, its development, its appetites and needs, with congeniality. We do not grow excited about the growth of trees, and Goreans do not grow excited about the growth of people. In some respects the Goreans are, perhaps, cruel. Yet they have never seen fit, through lies, to inflict suffering on children. They seem generally to me to be fond of children. Perhaps that is why they seldom hurt them. Even slave children, incidentally, are seldom abused or treated poorly, and are given much freedom, until they reach their young adulthood. It is then, of course, that they are taught that they are slaves. Men come, and the young male is tied and taken to the market. If the young slave is a female she may or may not be sent to a market. Many young slave maidens are raised almost as daughters in a home. It is often a startling and frightening day for such a girl when, one morning, she finds herself suddenly, unexpectedly, put in a collar and whipped, and made to begin to pay the price of her now-blossomed slave beauty.