Slowly, trembling, moving as though in a dream, the girl approached the portal, and this time the sensors could not glow.
She looked at me.
'Please,' I said.
She looked again at the sensors, which stared out of the wall like black, gutted metal eyes.They were burned and still, shattered, and even the wall in their vicinity showed the seared, scarlet stain of their abrupt termination.
'They can hurt you no longer,' I said.
Vika took another step and then it seemed her legs would fail her and she might swoon.She put out her hand to me.Her eyes were wide with fear.
'The women of Treve,' I said, 'are brave, as well as beautiful and proud.'
She stepped through the portal and fell fainting in my arms.
I lifted her and carried her to the stone couch.
I regarded the ruined sensors in the portal and the wreckage of the surveillance device which had been concealed in the energy bulb.
Perhaps now I would not have so long to wait for the Priest-Kings of Gor.
Vika had said that when they wished me, they would come for me.
I chuckled.
Perhaps now they would be encouraged to hasten their appointment.
I gently placed Vika on the great stone couch.
Chapter Nine: THE PRIEST-KING
I would allow Vika to share the great stone couch, its sleeping pelts, and silken sheets.
This was unusual, however, for normally the Gorean slave girl sleeps at the foot of her master's couch, often on a straw mat with only a thin, cottonlike blanket, woven from the soft fibres of the Rep Plant, to protect her from the cold.
If she has not pleased her master of late, she may be, of course, as a disciplinary measure, simply chained nude to the slave ring at in the bottom of the couch, sans both blanket and mat.The stones of the floor are hard and the Gorean nights are cold and it is a rare girl who, when unchained in the morning, does not seek more dutifully to serve her master.
This harsh treatment, incidentally, when she is thought to deserve it, may even be inflicted on a Free Companion, in spite of the fact that she is free and usually much loved. According to the Gorean way of looking at things a taste of the slave ring is thought to be occasionally beneficial to all women, even the exalted Free Companions.
Thus when she has been irritable or otherwise troublesome even a Free Companion may find herself at the foot of the couch looking forward to a pleasant night on the stones, stripped, with neither mat nor blanket, chained to a slave ring precisely as though she were a lowly slave girl.
It is the Gorean way of reminding her, should she need to be reminded, that she, too, is a woman, and thus to be dominated, to be subject to men.Should she be tempted to forget this basic fact of Gorean life the slave ring set in the bottom of each Gorean couch is there to refresh her memory.Gor is a man's world.
And yet on this world I have seen great numbers of women who were both beautiful and splendid.
The Gorean woman, for reasons that are not altogether clear to me, considering the culture, rejoices in being a woman. She is often an exciting, magnificent, glorious creature, outspoken, talkative, vital, active, spirited.On the whole I find her more joyful than many of her earth-inhabiting sisters who, theoretically at least, enjoy a more lofty status, although it is surely true that on my old world I have met several women with something of the Gorean zest for acknowledging the radiant truth of their sex, the gifts of joy, grace and beauty, tenderness, and fathoms of love that we poor men, I suspect, may sometimes and tragically fail to understand, to comprehend.
Yet with all due respect and regard for the most astounding and marvellous sex, I suspect that, perhaps partly because of my Gorean training, it is true that a touch of the slave ring is occasionally beneficial.
Of custom, a slave girl may not even ascend the couch to serve her master's pleasure.The point of this restriction, I suppose, is to draw a clearer distinction between her status and that of a Free Companion.At any rate the dignities of the couch are, by custom, reserved for the Free Companion.
When a master wishes to make use of a slave girl he tells her to light the lamp of love which she obediently does, placing it in the window of his chamber that they may not be disturbed.Then with his own hand he throws upon the stone floor of his chamber luxurious love furs, perhaps from the larl itself, and commands her to them.
I had placed Vika gently on the great stone couch.
I kissed her gently on the forehead.
Her eyes opened.
'Did I leave the chamber?' she asked.
'Yes,' I said.
She regarded me for a long time.'How can I conquer you?' she asked.'I love you, Tarl Cabot.'
'You are only grateful,' I said.
'No,' she said, 'I love you.'
'You must not,' I said.
'I do,' she said.
I wondered how I should speak to her, for I must disabuse her of the illusion that there could be love between us.In the house of Priest-Kings there could be no love, nor could she know her own mind in these matters, and there was always Talena, whose image would never be eradicated from my heart.
'But you are a woman of Treve,' I said, smiling.
'You thought I was a Passion Slave,' she chided.
I shrugged.
She looked away from me, toward the wall.'You were right in a way, Tarl Cabot.'
'How is that?' I asked.
She looked at me directly.'My mother,' she said bitterly, '- was a Passion Slave - bred in the pens of Ar.'
'She must have been very beautiful,' I said.
Vika looked at me strangely.'Yes,' she said, 'I suppose she was.'
'Do you not remember her?' I asked.
'No,' she said, 'for she died when I was very young.'
'I'm sorry,' I said.
'It doesn't matter,' said Vika, 'for she was only an animal bred in the pens of Ar.'
'Do you despise her so?' I asked.
'She was a bred slave,' said Vika.
I said nothing.
'But my father,' said Vika, 'whose slave she was, and who was of the Caste of Physicians of Treve, loved her very much and asked her to be his Free Companion.'Vika laughed softly. 'For three years she refused him,' she said.
'Why?' I asked.
'Because she loved him,' said Vika, 'and did not wish him to take for his Free Companion only a lowly Passion Slave.'
'She was a very deep and noble woman,' I said.
Vika made a gesture of disgust.'She was a fool,' she said. 'How often would a bred slave have a chance of freedom?'
'Seldom indeed,' I admitted.
'But in the end,' said Vika, 'fearing he would slay himself she consented to become his Free Companion.'Vikar regarded me closely.Her eyes met mine very directly.'I was born free,' she said.'You must understand that.I am not a bred slave.'
'I understand,' I said.'Perhaps,' I suggested, 'your mother was not only beautiful, but proud and brave and fine.'
'How could that be?' laughed Vika scornfully.'I have told you she was only a bred slave, an animal from the pens of Ar.'
'But you never knew her,' I said.
'I know what she was,' said Vika.
'What of your father?' I asked.
'In a way,' she said, 'he is dead too.'
'What do you mean, in a way?' I asked.
'Nothing,' she said.
I looked about the room, at the chests against the wall dim in the reduced light of the energy bulbs, at the walls, at the shattered device in the ceiling, at the broken sensors, at the great, empty portal that led into the passageway beyond.
'He must have loved you very much, after your mother died,' I said.
'Yes,' said Vika, 'I suppose so - but he was a fool.'
'Why do you say that?' I asked.