"If you so much as look at a man," she said, "I will whip the flesh from your bones!"
"Yes, Mistress!" I wept.
"Slave girl!" cried the Lady Elicia.
I crouched by the wall, having been whipped. "Yes, Lady Elicia, my mistress," I said.
"Attend me now," she said. "I would bathe."
She entered the water gracefully, her hair bound in a towel, luxuriating in the multicolored foams of beauty. She lifted her limbs, washing herself indolently, beautifully.
I knelt beside the sunken bath, to wait upon her, her slave, should she desire aught.
"What are you thinking, Judy?" she asked.
"If I told Mistress," I said, "she would whip me."
"No," said the Lady Elicia. "What are you thinking?"
"I was thinking," I said, "that a man would love to have his collar on you."
She laughed merrily. "Perhaps," she said. "I am very beautiful."
"Yes, Mistress," I said, "you are one of the most beautiful women I have ever seen."
"Do you think I would bring a high price?" she asked.
"Yes, Mistress," I said. She laughed.
"Free me, Mistress," I begged, "free me!"
"Do you truly think," she asked, "that you were brought to Gor to be freed and returned to Earth?"
"I do not know why I was brought to Gor," I said.
"I do," she said.
"Merely to be your slave?" I asked.
"It could have been that," she said. "We have our pick."
"But there is more?" I asked.
"Of course," she said. "We needed a girl, one to bear a message. She would be placed in a given location, secured. When it seemed safe, she would be picked up, and transmitted to the proper contact. There she would deliver the message." She looked at me. "Unfortunately," she said, "Tellius and Barus lost you."
"They were going to kill me!" I cried.
"They sought the message in clear form," she said. "They did not, at that time, understand how you carried the message. I do. It is fortunate for us, as well as you, that you were not slain, they thinking you had disposed of the message, cheating us of its contents."
"They wanted slave beads," I said. "I had none."
"Yes," she said.
"I carry no message," I said.
"You do," she said. "But you do not know you carry it."
I did not believe this. But it is not wise to argue with the mistress.
"Could not a man have carried the message?" I asked.
"Slave girls," she said; "attract little attention, save by their flesh and person. They may be bought and sold, and may easily change hands. They are often transported great distances, even hooded. If they are ignorant, they are ideal couriers. They themselves do not even know they carry the message. They cannot even suspect themselves. Why should others, then, seeing only another branded, chained girl, suspect them?"
"You are very clever, Mistress," I said.
"Further," she said, "even should the message fall into the wrong hands, it is concealed, and would not be understood as a message, and even if it were understood as a message, its secret would be kept for it is well enciphered."
"Your security is brilliant, Mistress," I whispered.
She lifted one of her arms, bathing it, letting the water fall from it.
"You are involved in a struggle," I said.
"Yes," she said. "I am an agent of a military and political power, a greater power than you understand exists, one of interplanetary scope. It is called the Kurii. Worlds are locked in war, a fierce, silent war, unknown to you, unknown to millions. At stake are Gor, and Earth."
"In such a war," I said, "communication is important."
"And difficult," she said. "The enemy are not fools."
"Could not radio be used?" I asked. I assumed such devices must be available.
"Signals can be jammed and scrambled," she said. "And it is dangerous to bring such material to the surface of Gor. The enemy swiftly locates and destroys it," She lifted one slim, lovely ankle, observing it, and then dipped it again into the foams of her bath. I thought she would take, like myself, a number-two ankle ring. "As you note," she said, "there is nothing here at Six Towers which suggests that I am not an ordinary woman of Ar."
"What is the message I carry?" I asked.
"I do not know," she said.
"Any girl," I said, "might have carried this message."
"Any piece of suitable slave flesh," said the Lady Elicia.
"Then why was I chosen?" I asked.
She laughed. "At the college," she said, "you competed with me, you challenged me, you dared to set yourself up as a rival to me. It was then that I determined, you lovely, meaningless little fool, that I would have you as my serving slave."
"What is to be done with me?" I asked.
"In the morning," she said, "you will be appropriately identified and transmitted as a naked slave by tarn to the port of Schendi, whence, by slave ship, you will be transported to the island of Cos."
"Identified?" I asked. "Slave ship?"
"A small chemical brand," she said, "which you will wear in your flesh, something by which our agents in Cos will recognize you."
"Chemical brand?" I said.
"It will remain invisible until the proper reagent is applied," she said.
"Can it be removed?" I asked.
"Yes," she said, "but you cannot remove it. It requires the proper combination of chemicals."
"Will it be removed?" I asked.
"Of course," she said, "after it has done its work, identifying you for our agents. It would be foolish to leave it fixed in your body, would it not, to arouse the puzzlement of the curious, perhaps even to identify you as our message girl to the agents of the enemy?"
"Yes, Mistress," I said.
She blew foam from her hand, watching the bubbles drift in the air. "The slave ship," she said, "will not be pleasant."
"What will be done to me in Cos?" I asked.
"You will be placed in the Chatka and Curla, a paga tavern," she said. "And from there our agents will make their contact."
"Will I understand the message?" I asked.
"No," she said. "You will not understand it. You will only deliver it."
"And," I asked, "when the message is delivered?"
"Then," she said, "you will be returned to me."
"And then?" I asked.
"Then," she said, leaning back in the sunken bath, luxuriating in the warm, foamy water, "you will begin your life as my serving slave, Judy."
"Yes, Lady Elicia, my mistress," I said.
16
A Sail
I screamed wildly in the darkness, jerking back my ankle from the edge of the sturdy mesh about me. My ankles would pull back toward me only some six inches as they were chained. I lay on my back. I clasped my shaven head in my hands. My hands, too, were chained, the two chains running to a heavy ring over and above my head, in the slatted wood of the tier on which I lay. I could lower the heel of my hands only to the side of my neck; but it was enough to cover my ears, when it became necessary to do so. I screamed and thrashed; I could tell my ankle was bleeding, from the feeling of the wound and the wetness about my shin and on the wood. I tried with my right foot to press against the wound, to stanch the flow of blood. I saw the blazing, coppery eyes of the long-haired ship urt on the other side of the mesh. I had let the shin of my left foot rest against the mesh.
"Let me out!" I screamed. "Let me out!"
Sometimes an urt manages to force its way through the mesh, or between one of the vertical cage lids, one at each end of the cage, and the cage. The girl then, chained as she is, is at its mercy.
"Be silent," said a girl's voice, from the next cage. I could not see her, or the others.
"Please, Masters!" I wept. "Let me out! Let me out, Masters!"