Out of the corner of my eye I saw the revolver, with its silencer. Then I felt the blunt end of the silencer pressing against my left temple.
"Don't shoot me," I begged. "Please!"
"He is not worth a bullet," said the heavy man. "Put him on his knees. Use a wire garrote."
The man who had driven the cab removed the silencer from his revolver. He dropped it back in his pocket and put the revolver in his belt. I was thrown to my knees, two men holding my arms, my hands helpless behind my back in the confining steel cuffs.
The fifth man, the one who had opened the door for the others with the crate, was then behind me. I felt a thin wire suddenly looped about my throat.
"I have another pickup to make tonight," said the fellow who had driven the cab.
"We will meet you on the highway," said the heavy man. "You know where."
He who had driven the cab nodded.
"We are to be at the new point of embarkation at four A.M.," said the heavy man.
"She gets off work at two," said he who had driven the cab. "I will be waiting for her."
"It will be close," said the heavy man, "but proceed. We can strip and inject her, and crate her, in the van."
I felt the wire loop tighten about my throat.
"Please, no, please, don't!" I cried.
"It will be swift," said the heavy man.
"Please, don't kill me!" I begged.
"Do you plead for your life?" asked the heavy man.
"Yes,".I said, "yes, yes!"
"But what are we to do with you?" asked the heavy man.
"Don't kill me, please don't kill me," I begged. I squirmed on my knees, the wire on my throat.
The heavy man looked down at me, on my knees, helpless, before him.
"Please," I said. "Please!"
"Behold the typical man of Earth," said the heavy man.
"We are not all such weaklings and cowards," said one of the men.
"That is true," admitted the heavy man. Then he looked down at me. "Is there any hope," he asked, "for males, not men, such as you?"
"I do not understand," I stammered.
"How I despise your sort," he said, "fools, cowards and weaklings, guilt-ridden, confused, smug, meaningless, pretentious, soft, males who have permitted themselves to be tricked out of the prerogatives of their sex, robbed of the birthright of their own manhood, who dare not be true to the needs of their own blood, males too weak, too frightened and ashamed, to be men."
It startled me that he had said these things, for I had thought myself unusual among the men of Earth in my manhood. Indeed, I had often been castigated and belittled for having been too masculine. Now he spoke of me as though I had not even, as yet, begun to glimpse the meaning of true manhood. I was shaken. I began to tremble. What then could be biological manhood, in the fullness of its rationality and strength? I bad, already, be begun to suspect that manhood was not a mere pretention, as I had been taught, but soomething selected for, as seems reasonable, like the nature of the eagle and the lion, in the long, harsh realities of a brutal evolution, but now, for the first time, I had begun to suspect that my conception of manhood, so advanced I had thought, did little more than begin to hint at the possible glories of a suppressed, thwarted, tortured reality, a reality genetically dispositional in every cell in a man's body, a reality feared and castigated by a counterbiological culture. I came from a world in which eagles cannot fly. I put down my head. Lions do not well thrive in a country of poisons.
"Look up at me," said the heavy man.
I lifted my head.
"I find you guilty of treason," he said.
"I have committed no treason," I said.
"You are guilty of the most heinous of treasons," said the heavy man. "You have betrayed yourself, your sex, your manhood. You are a despicable traitor, not only to yourself but to true men, everywhere. You are an insult not only to your own manhood but to that of others. You are a sniveling coward and a weakling, worthy to be held only in the most profound of contempts."
"A man must be strong enough to be weak," I said. "He must be brave enough to be sweet. True men must be gentle and tender, and considerate, and solicitous, and do what women wish. That is how they prove they are true men."
"True men give orders to women, and women obey," said the heavy man.
"It is not what I have been taught," I said.
"You have been taught lies," said the heavy man. "Surely your own misery and unhappiness should tell you that."
"He has been found guilty of treason," said one of the men holding my arms. "What is the sentence?"
The heavy man looked at the others. I felt the wire on my throat. "What should the sentence be?" he asked.
"The termination of his miserable existence," said one of the men, "death."
The heavy man looked down at me. "I wonder," said he, "if there is any hope for such as you."
"Let the sentence be death," said another one of the men.
"Or something else," said the heavy man.
"I do not understand," said the fellow who had first suggested that I be slain.
"Look at him," said the heavy man. "Does he not seem a typical male of Earth?"
"Yes," said one of the men. "Yes;" said another.
"Yet, beyond that," said the heavy man. "his features appear symmetrical and his body, though soft and weak, is large."
"Yes?" said one of the men.
"Do you think a woman might find him pleasing?" asked the heavy man.
"Perhaps." smiled one of the men.
"Throw him on his belly and tie his legs," said the heavy man. I felt the wire whipped from my throat. I was thrown forward on the cement. My belt was loosened and torn from its loops. My ankles were crossed and, with the belt, lashed together, tightly. In a few seconds I felt my shirt being jerked away from my left side, and felt the cold swab of the cotton and alcohol and, a moment later, the entrance of the needle, deeply, into my flesh.
"What are you going to do with me?" I asked, terrified.
"Do not talk now," he said.
I felt the fluid, entering my body. It was apparently considerably more than he had injected into Miss Henderson. It was painful. Then he withdrew the needle from my back and swabbed the area again with alcohol and cotton.
"What are you going to do with me?" I whispered.
"You are going to be taken to the planet Gor," he said. "I think I know a little market where you might be of interest"
"Gor does not exist," I said.
He rose to his feet and discarded the cotton and the second syringe.
"Gor does not exist!" I said.
"Put him in the van," he said to the men.
"You are mad, all of you!" I cried. I was lifted by two men. "Gor does not exist!" I cried. I was being carried toward the door. "Gor does not exist!" I cried. "Gor does not exist!"
Then I lost consciousness.
3 THE LADY GINA
I screamed with pain, awakening suddenly. I tried to get to my feet. I could not do so. My wrists and ankles seemed confined. There was something heavy on my neck. I got to my hands and knees. I could not believe my senses. I was collared, and naked and shackled. Then the lash fell again, and I cried out with misery, slipping to my stomach. I lay on a flooring of large blocks of fitted stone. My wrists were chained to one iron ring, my ankles to another. I felt wet straw beneath my body. The stones were damp. There were no windows in the room. The light was dim, being furnished by a tiny lamp in a small niche. The place was dank, and smelled of wastes. I thought it might be far below the ground. I was intensely conscious of the heavy metal collar I wore. There was, attached to it, as I conjectured, hearing the tiny sound of its movement and its clink on the stone beneath my body, a smaller piece of metal, perhaps a ring of some sort.
Then the lash, as I wept from the pain, struck me again and again.
"Please, stop!" I begged. "Please, stop!"