Chapter Seven
The cages, of heavy, cable-like woven wire, are made for tarsks, not kajirae. One cannot stand in them. They are long, narrow, and low. Thus, more than one can be placed on a sideless, flat-bedded wagon, roped in place. Too, like the common slave cages designed for kajirae, they may be stacked.
I hooked my fingers in the wire, and looked out, frightened, from my knees. The Tarsk Market has its name, obviously enough, I suppose, because it is a general market for tarsks. Certainly the smell of tarsk was all about. And there was little doubt, from the condition of the cage, that the previous occupants of the cage had been tarsks.
Needless to say, it is only low slaves who are vended from such a market.
I lay down in the cage, on my right side, in the straw, facing the back wall of the warehouse.
How vulnerable we were, as slaves!
But, had we been free women I did not doubt but what we would have been abandoned, left in the house, to perish in the flames.
The marks on our thighs, our collars, had saved us. We had been saved, but only as animals.
It is often safer to be a slave than a free person. Who, for example, would bother slaying a tarsk, or a kaiila?
Instead, one would herd them, or rope them. One would appropriate them.
It is for such a reason that free women, trapped in a burning city, a fallen city, being sacked, will not unoften steal collars from their girls, and fasten them on their own necks, hoping to be taken for slaves, to be spared as slaves.
I had recognized two of the soldiers, and the officer. They had been patrons of the house.
They had lost heavily.
Of course we were guilty! Did we not know of the manipulation of the tables’ spins, of the dishonest stones, the fraudulent dice, the ostraka which, to the informed eye, could be read?
Did we not invite in the patrons, at the door, with our smiles, the glances over our shoulders, our fingers lightly touching our brands beneath the cloth, not silk, but rep cloth, for ours was a shabby den for its purposes. We served as the slaves we were in the wide, low-ceilinged, ill-lit interior of the outer room. We would bring the gamesters paga and ka-la-na, and platters of meat and bread, and cakes and sweets, to keep them at the tables. We pretended zestful enthusiasm for their playing, as if it might be our own. How we rubbed against them, so inadvertently, laughed, joked, touched their arms, and hands, applauded their boldness, pretended dismay at a loss, pretended chagrin and sorrow when they made to leave the tables. Rather they should choose and again match ostraka, hazard another turn of the wheel, another placement of the stones, another roll of the dice! We must serve our paga and ka-la-na modestly, of course, for the men must be kept at the games. Indeed, we served it in the manner that Eve, Jane, and I had been instructed by Mrs. Rawlinson to serve beverages at the party, kneeling, our head down, extending the goblet, held in both hands, between our extended arms. I suspected that Mrs. Rawlinson, at the party, had been amused, seeing us so. This posture and attitude, I suspected, was not unknown to her. Perhaps she, watching, envisioned us so serving at another time, in another locale. But even so, would not anyone seeing us so have found the behavior interesting and not without meaning? Did it not seem clear, the sort of female who must serve so? But even so, our service must be modest. We must not so excite the men, that they might be distracted. We were not paga slaves who, if too frequently spurned, may expect their master’s whip after closing. But more than once I had felt Tela’s switch, and had been driven from the outer room, to the holding area, weeping and shamed, while the men laughed, to be chained, supperless, to the ring by my mat. I could not help myself. I was now other than I had been on Earth. Men had seen to that.
How the fellow who had accompanied me in the van would have been amused, to see his prisoner, the vain, aristocratic young lady, indeed, the debutant, afflicted by need, slave need!
As the reader, if reader there may be, may have gathered, I had been much troubled on Earth, not knowing who I might be, or what might be my nature. I had been alarmed by casual thoughts, sometimes stealing upon me when I was unprepared to resist them, certain frequently recurring daydreams, and surely the strange, wild, unaccountable realities revealed to me in the astonishments of my troubled slumber. It was at such times, that I found it difficult, despite my upbringing, my education, and background, to see myself, and feel myself, as I had learned I should see myself, and feel myself. Who were others, to tell me who I was? How was this a freedom, to be told how to be? How strangely false and unsatisfying seemed the culture to which I was expected to conform, and that which I was expected to perpetuate! Was I truly an artifact, a meaningless, unhappy puppet of a dismal world, responsive to strings I had neither designed nor requested? Perhaps humanity, in its flight from nature, into its thousands of ideologies, superstitions, and pretenses, had unknowingly betrayed itself, building up about itself, brick by subtle brick, its invisible prison, satisfying only those who might profit by its exploitation. But perhaps, too, there are no prisons, other than those we ourselves make, or will accept. It would be interesting if the walls we most fear, within which we feel ourselves the most constrained, within which we most lament, do not exist. In any event, I knew that I carried in my body, as other human beings, a history and a heritage extending back to the first blind, reproducing forms of life, ages prior to the complex marvels of the unicellular organism. To such an organism could biology be irrelevant? Surely templates must exist in the human organism, as in other forms of life, perhaps subtler and vaster, but just as real. Could my behavior, my promptings, what would satisfy me, what I would need, be wholly independent of my form of life, be unique amongst all living forms, merely accidents and oddities imposed upon me from the outside, beginning with the first flash of light, the first breath, the sobbing birth cry of a small, bloody animal? That did not seem likely. The cultures which denied men and women to themselves, for their own purposes, in their own interests, inertial, self-perpetuating structures, productive of misery and alienation, were inventions of recent date, the mere tick of a clock, marking a moment in millenniums. If there was a human nature, had it been fabricated, truly, so recently? Might it not have been formed in other times and other places, a consequence of other conditions, as an entailment of alternative realities? Might we have been formed for one world and precipitated into another, a quite different world, an alien world, one in which our form of life finds itself homeless, finds itself in exile?
I saw no need for civilization and nature to be incompatible, to be enemies.
Might not a civilization be possible in which nature was recognized, refined, enhanced, and celebrated? In such a civilization surely there would be a place not simply for seasons and tides, for surf and wind, but for men and women, as well.
I had not been long on Gor before I was brought naked and back-braceleted into a round chamber. Its diameter may have been ten feet, or so. It was a plain room. The ceiling was domed, perhaps fifteen feet above my head. The walls were bare, but penetrated by two small, barred windows, some feet over my head, through which light fell dimly. The flooring was of large flat stones, as in my cell. The guard then turned about and left me there. The door was closed behind him, and I heard the bolt put into place.
I saw no one, but I was sure I was seen.
I lifted my head. “I am a free woman!” I said. “Return me to Earth!”
My declaration received no response.
I do not know how long I remained in the room.
The guard eventually returned, and, holding me by the left upper arm, conducted me back to my cell.
We stood without.
The bracelets were removed.
“Do you speak English?” I asked.
I was bent down, his hand in my hair, and I was thrust within the cell, and the door was closed, and locked.
I no longer wore chains within the cell, but I was left, as before, in darkness.
I felt about in the darkness, hoping to find food. There was a depression in the floor, which contained some water. Obviously I could not lift it, and, after trying to cup water in my hands, with little success, given the shallowness of the depression, I bent down, and lapped at it. I felt about and located the food pan, which contained some porridge-like material, and a thick crust of bread.
How could they treat me in this fashion? Did they not know who I was? Did they think me some waitress,
