“She is a barbarian,” he said.
That, I supposed, explained her lack of agitation. She did not realize the import of being beyond the farther islands.
The girls of Gorean origin were being kept chained below decks, some hooded, and sedated. One could not blame a girl for being uneasy if she were being drawn, say, wrists bound behind her, naked, on a tether, into a larl’s den.
“Is she any good?” I asked.
She thrust her cheek against her master’s thigh. Clearly she was ready. It is pleasant, I thought, what men can do with slaves.
“A touch,” said Cabot, “and she juices and steams.”
“She is hot-thighed, then?” I asked.
“Yes,” said Cabot, “helplessly so.”
“Then she is broken in, nicely?”
“Yes,” said Cabot.
I thought of Alcinoe.
“I have heard,” I said, “that barbarians are good.”
“Any woman is good,” said Cabot, “once she is broken to the collar.”
Again I thought of Alcinoe. How pleasant it might be, she now a slave, to break her to the collar, to have crawling to my feet, begging a caress.
“Barbarians sell well,” I said. I wondered what Alcinoe might bring.
“Few are left long on the chain,” he granted me.
“It is said they lick the whip quickly,” I said.
“It has to do with their background,” he said. “Where they are from they are commonly denied their needs, to be owned and mastered. On Gor they find themselves at last in their place, at the feet of men. Many are astonished at the fulfillments attendant on the summoning forth, the commanding forth, of their deepest and most precious selves. They find happiness, and fulfillments, which they scarcely knew might exist, but had only dimly sensed, in their most secret dreams. On Gor, they find themselves choiceless, given no choice but to be what they truly are, and want to be, not pretend males, not sexless cogs in a societal mechanism, not pretenders and haters, but what they truly are, actually are, and want to be, most profoundly, women. Where they come from they are taught to repudiate nature, to replace her with conventions and principles alien to their deepest needs and feelings. They are taught to revere frigidity, like a free woman, to praise inertness as dignity, to fear the raptures of uncompromised submission. Denied themselves, denied masters, they writhe in frustration, and, hating themselves, and their imprisonment, they think they hate men. Taught to deny their sex, starved for sex, they find themselves then on Gor, in collars, at the feet of men who will have whatever they want from them, and what they want, too, in their hearts, to be had from them. Their exile from their own bodies and needs is at last over. It is as though, at last, starving and thirsting, they were permitted food, though from the hand of a man, and granted water, though from a pan at his feet. Often the happiest moment in the life of one of them, to that point, is when the auctioneer closes his hand, and they realize that, exposed and desired, exhibited and bid upon, they have been sold. No longer are they alone; at last they are possessed; at last they are owned. At last they have a reality and an identity. At last they belong. Indeed, they are now, literally, a belonging, a property of their master. And do they even know, out there in the darkness of the crowd, who has bought them?”
“What is this strange place from which these creatures derive,” I asked, “to what country might such pathetic, deprived creatures be indigenous?”
“It is called Earth,” he said.
“Why did you join me at the rail?” I asked.
“I thought,” said he, “you might be considering Thassa, that you might be thinking of reaching Chios.”
“The waters are cold,” I said. “I might die before I could reach her.”
“Perhaps,” he said. “But if you are a strong swimmer, I think you might have reached shore.”
“I think so, too,” I said.
“You were considering the matter,” he said.
“Yes,” I said.
“But you did not leave us,” he observed.
“No,” I said. “I thought I would stay.”
“Yesterday,” he said, “a galley was commandeered, seized and launched, and seventy men, pursued, beached on Thera, fleeing inland. Two other galleys followed, she was recovered, and brought back. Some others went over the rail, seeking Daphna.”
“Many desertions,” I said.
“Yes,” he said.
“It seems not everyone wishes to go beyond the farther islands,” I said.
“It seems not,” he said.
We stood there at the rail for a time, in the falling snow. Then we could no longer see the islands.
Before us was darkness and snow, and the surging of Thassa.
“You, however,” said he, “have remained with us.”
“Yes,” I said.
“Why?” he asked.
“I thought I might like to see what lies at the end of the world,” I said.
Chapter Seven
My ankles were in freezing water. My back and arms ached. Twelve of us, in this shift, manned the pumps.
Nine storms we had endured since I had been taken aboard.
Thassa grew more cruel each day. Few dared to go on deck. Some had been washed away. Men clung to ropes, crossing the deck, leaning into the wind. The tarns had not been flown in six days. Some had died. When the tarn cannot fly, it dies.
The unusual men, the Pani, spoke little, lest it be amongst themselves. But amongst ourselves, the others, there were murmurs of discontent, these subsiding in the presence of officers.
Occasionally, one heard the howling of a sleen, restless in its cage.
Too, off certain corridors, from behind heavy wooden doors, each with its tiny, sliding, rectangular viewing panel, one could hear the lamentations, the weepings, of female slaves. It had been clear to me, almost from the beginning, that there were female slaves on board. One, the slave girl, Alcinoe, once the high lady, Flavia of Ar, confidante even of the former Ubara, Talena, had been sent to me in my cell, barefoot and tunicked, to humbly serve me, to bring me, in her abject servitude, a free man, now unspeakably above her, she now less than the dust beneath his feet, a bowl of broth. Others, in groups, in good weather, had been exercised on the open deck, performing their movements in unison, to the cries of their keeper, sometimes, shuddering, to the snapping of his whip. From their reactions I gathered some had felt it. Certain slaves interestingly, were brought into public view only when hooded. I thought them to be perhaps high slaves, perhaps of such beauty that, should it be bared, men might be driven wild with the need to seize and possess them. Might they not have divided the crew into warring factions? Some slaves were private slaves, owned by one fellow or another. I envied them having such a soft, delicious object chained to their bunk, to be enjoyed as, and when, one pleased. One such was the lovely Cecily, girl of the commander, Cabot; another was called Jane, the slave of his friend, Pertinax. I did not understand the name ‘Jane’, a lovely but unusual name, which I took to be a barbarian name. Her accent was of Ar, and I did not inquire further. This Pertinax would often scrutinize the slaves being exercised, as though he might have an eye for one. But it seems he did not discern her. Perhaps she was one of the hooded slaves, or amongst those not brought to the open deck. The slaves, I gathered, had been, on the whole, purchased here and there by the Pani, over several
