"For a quarter of an Ahn?" I said.
"The keeper is a scoundrel," he said.
"I thought you said he had a congenial, noble side."
"He keeps it under control," he said.
"He may not be the scoundrel you think he is," I said.
"No, he is a scoundrel all right."
"Three tarsks seem a good deal for a quarter of an Ahn," I said. I wondered if I might not have greater success with the keeper himself. But I supposed he was not up at this hour.
"We have a debtor slut serving in the paga room," he said. "We could let you have her for an Ahn for a tarsk bit."
"Does she know she is subject to such uses?" I asked.
"No," he said.
"I will take a look at her, and let you know later."
"That would be fourteen copper tarsks," he said.
"I would count twelve," I said. "Ten for lodging, two for the bath and supplies."
"I thought you might want some blankets," he said.
"Of course," I said.
"Fourteen then," he said. I saw this inked on a tab.
From a cabinet to one side, he fetched forth the bath supplies and put them on the counter.
"I will pick up the blankets after I have eaten," I said.
"I will reserve two for you, with your ostrakon," he said.
"I would like a space near the wall, preferably in a corner," I said. "So would everyone else," he said. "Your space is S-3-o7. That is 97, in the south wing, on the third floor."
"Very well," I said.
"Try not to step on any drovers," he said. "They can be ugly fellows when stepped on in the middle of the night."
"I will do my best," I said.
"If you must step on them," he said, "it is well to do it in such a way as to incapacitate them, at least temporarily."
"I understand," I said.
"Do you wish to give your name?" he said.
"No," I said. He did not seem surprised. Many folks coming through here, I gathered, did not identify themselves, or used false names.
"We shall make the bill out to your space then," he said, "S-3-97." He put the identification on the tab.
"Excellent," I said.
"Payment is due before, or at, departure," he said. "To be sure, if the inn grows suspicious, we reserve the right to require payment, to date, upon demand."
"That is reasonable," I said.
"We think so," he said.
"Your prices," I said, "as I think you have admitted, or as much as admitted, are rather expensive."
"They certainly are," he said. "I, for one, would not want to pay them." I looked at him.
"They are not negotiable," he said.
"Are you really sure?" I asked.
"Yes," he said.
"It is hard for me to believe that the keeper is as adamant as you portray him," I said.
"He is, I assure you," said the fellow.
"Surely he cannot be the scoundrel you claim," I said.
"He is," said the fellow. "I know."
"I do not suppose he would be up at this hour," I said.
"But he is," said the fellow.
"Do you think I might speak to him?" I asked.
"You have been doing so," he said. "I am he."
"Oh," I said.
4 The Baths
I closed my eyes in one of the second tubs, the cleaning tubs. There were five first tubs, and five second tubs. These were all large, shallow, round tubs, of clay, covered with porcelain, mounted on open-bricked platforms, each platform about a yard high. In this particular bath, adequate enough, I suppose, for the area, the fires beneath the bricked platforms were stirred, tended and cleaned with long-handled fire rakes. To be sure, it was late, and I suspected that the fires had not been tended since perhaps the eighteenth Ahn. The water, however, happily, was still comfortably warm. They would probably be built up again around the fifth Ahn. I had hung my wet garments on racks about the brick platform, behind the tub. They would probably be dry by now. Each tub was some seven feet in width and some eighteen inches deep. On a hook, behind me, kept for towels, and such, I had slung my scabbard.
More than one fellow, and even a Ubar or two, as history has it, had been attacked in the bath. The baths here, of course, were very simple and primitive. For example, they were heated in the same room, and not in virtue of subterranean furnaces, heat from which would normally be conveyed upward through vents and pipes. Here, too, there were no scented pools, no massaging rooms, no steaming rooms. Too, of course, here there were no exercising yards, where one might try a fall or two in wrestling or, say, have a game of catch, either with the large or small ball. Similarly, there were no recreational gardens, no art galleries, no strolling lanes, no arcades of merchants, no physicians' courts, no music rooms, or such.
The baths, in many Gorean cities and towns, are convenient and popular gathering places. One can pick up the latest news and gossip there, for example. Many of these establishments are opulently appointed. Many are capacious and even palatial. Sometimes public funds are lavished upon them, as they are objects of civic pride. Even poor men may feel rich seeking electric sometimes dispense admittance ostraka to the poor. Some of these edifices, as in Turia or Ar, are monumental in size, almost like vaulted, pillared stadiums, with dozens of rooms and pools. One can become lost in them.
Gorean baths are almost always segregated, incidentally, if only be the time of day. This does not mean that bath girls may not be available to tend to a strong male's various wants in the men's baths, or that handsome silk slaves, if they are summoned, may not appear in attendance in the baths of free women. A latticework separated the bathing area from the outer area. It was open now. I heard a fellow stirring in his sleep a few feet away, on the floor, near the bricked platform. Some seven or eight fellows, the latticework open, were sleeping in the bath area. I supposed they preferred the warmth of the baths to their spaces in the unheated levels, or lofts, of the inn. This sort of thing is not unusual in Gorean towns, incidentally, in cold weather, that folks should sleep in the baths. They are often warmer than their houses. They leave in the morning, of course, some of them doubtless to call on their patrons, hoping for a breakfast or an invitation to dinner.
I opened one eye, hearing the outer door, that beyond the latticework, open. There are many types of baths, and ways to take them, for example, depending on the temperatures of the tubs, or pools, and the order in which one uses them. A common fashion is to use the first tub for a time, soaking, and, if one wishes, sponging, and then, emerging, to apply the oil, or oils. These are rubbed well into the skin and then removed with the strigil. There are various forms of strigil, and some of them are ornately decorated. They are usually of metal and almost always of a narrow, spatulate form. With the strigil one scrapes away the residue of oil, and, with it, dirt and sweat, cleaning the pores. One then generally takes the "second tub", which consists of clean water, sponges away any remaining grime, residues of oil and dirt, and such, and then, luxuriating, soaks again.
If one has a bath girl, of course, she does most of these things for sure. Sometimes the services of a bath girl, including massage and love, in whatever modalities the customer may elect, come in the price of the bath, and, at other times, as here, at the Crooked Tarn, I gathered, at least normally, they are extra. Needless to say, bath girls are almost always female slaves. Sometimes, in certain cities, free women, found guilty of crimes, are sentenced to the baths, to serve there as bath girls, subject, too, to the disciplines of such. After a given time there, after it is thought they have learned their lessons, and those of the baths, they are, commonly, routinely enslaved and sold out of the city. It is probably just as well. By that time they will have been, in effect, "spoiled for freedom."