my overtures, so to speak, had been rejected, or worse, ignored. Could they not see the value of what I was offering? On Gor, of course, to my chagrin, I realized that the profit on my beauty, if any, would accrue not to me, but to another. It is that way when one is oneself merchandise. Still, it is commonly to one’s advantage, as noted, to present oneself well on the block, hoping thereby to obtain a richer master, a better house, lighter duties, and such. Yet, at times, how meaningless are these prudential, mercenary considerations! Does the slave not hope that she will be purchased by a strong, handsome, powerful, virile master, rich or not, who will know well what to do with her, before whom she will know herself well in her collar? Are we not all looking for the master who will weaken our knees and heat our thighs, the master before whom we know we can be only slave, and desire to be no more? And what, too, of the love slave and the love master? In such cases, who can understand the mysterious chemistries involved? Let us suppose that a fellow is examining women on a slave shelf. They are kneeling, cringing, shackled, head down. Who can explain how it is that he, pulling up the head of one after another, by the hair, that her features may be examined, suddenly pauses, startled. What is different about this particular cringing, shackled slave? How is she different from another? She looks up, her eyes widened. He sees before him, his hand in her hair, his love slave, and she, looking up, tears in her eyes, for the first time, sees her love master. How is she more than merely another helpless, cringing, shackled slave, and how is he more than merely another male, another possible buyer, in his robes, so free, and strong, looking down on her? But he has found his love slave, and she, to her joy, has been found by her love master. Who can explain such things? Perhaps he has been keeping a collar for just such a one? Certainly a girl can attempt to interest a buyer; consider the differential zeal of the “Buy me, Masters,” as one fellow or another peruses a sales line; but, in the end, despite our efforts and hopes, we are not the buyers, but the bought. It is they who will choose, not we.
“Ah!” cried one of the slaves.
The bar had begun its sounding.
Some more men began to move toward us, gathering about the circular cement platform.
“It is the Tenth Ahn!” said the darker blonde.
There were few shadows in the street now. Tor-tu-Gor was at its zenith.
The former Lady Persinna burst into tears, and put her head in her hands. I wondered that one such as she, one apparently once of some prominence, was with us. I clutched the sheet more closely about me. I wished it was longer. My legs were not well concealed. Was it to demean her that she was put with us? Or did some estimate her beauty as equivalent to ours, worthy only of such a vending? I wondered if some might be interested in her, tracking her, informing themselves as to her market, and time of sale. I supposed that some men, for reasons other than her beauty and her promise as a slave, might be interested in obtaining her, perhaps an enemy, perhaps one reduced or ruined by her in her time of power, perhaps one she had once slighted, and did not even recall. Perhaps some lowly clerk once in her employ, mistreated, despised, scorned, and overworked, had saved some money and thought it might be pleasant to have her, once so socially and economically superior to him, chained at the foot of his couch.
I heard the second and third soundings of the bar.
Outside, approaching, I saw the slaver’s man, he stripped to the waist.
The bar was struck again.
That sound would carry for better than two or three pasangs, and I could hear, in the distance, other bars, taking up the ringing.
“I do not even know where I am,” I said to the girl from Tabor.
“The Metellan district,” she said.
“I do not even know the city,” I said, in misery. Curiosity, I recalled, was not becoming in a kajira.
“Ar, of course,” said she from Tabor.
I had thought that. But why had I not been told that in the house? Was that not a simple enough thing to tell a girl?
Ar, I knew from my reading, was the largest city in the northern hemisphere of Gor. It was the center of many trade routes. I was to be sold in Ar! Given the size of the city, and its many markets, I supposed it constituted a major market. Certainly it would be a convenient, easy place in which to sell a slave.
“What is the Metellan district?” I asked.
“Look about you,” she said. “I am from Tabor.”
I groaned.
The bar rang again.
“It is a shabby district,” she said, “but there are many worse, worse, and more dangerous. It is not much patrolled. Many free women arrange their trysts and assignations to take place in this district. It is a popular venue for such ventures. Few questions are asked. Little, if any, attention is paid to strangers.”
She was surely much better informed than I.
Perhaps her former masters had been less strict with her.
The bar sounded twice more.
Several men, now some twenty or so, perhaps more, had gathered about the circular platform.
“We will soon be on the block,” said the girl from Tabor.
“That circle of cement,” I said, “that is the block?”
“Of course,” she said. “This is not a high market.”
“Are we worth so little?” I asked.
“Ask the masters,” she said.
The bar rang again.
The former Lady Persinna was weeping.
I saw a small, wiry fellow, with a straggly beard, in soiled blue and yellow robes, approaching. He wiped his mouth with a dirty sleeve. In his right hand he held an implement I recognized well. It was a switch.
“It is he who will auction us,” said the girl from Tabor.
That seemed likely to me.
Certainly he wore the colors of the Slavers.
The small fellow, at the foot of the platform, conferred briefly with the slaver’s man.
I did not know if the small fellow owned the market, or owned us, or both. For all I knew I was still owned by the house, and I was merely being vended through this outlet, and the small fellow might be merely a professional auctioneer, hired for each sale. I supposed, beside his fee, he might receive some sort of commission on the sales. That meant he would be likely to do his best to get a good price. It also suggested to me that he might, then, be quick with his switch.
“I will not go on that block,” said the Lady Persinna, resolutely, sobbing.
“You will,” the girl from Tabor assured her.
“No!” she said.
“Have you ever felt the slave whip?” asked the girl from Tabor.
The former Lady Persinna paled.
“If summoned, you will hasten to the block,” said the girl from Tabor. “And you will smile, pose, and perform.”
“As a slave?” she moaned.
“As any slave,” said the girl from Tabor.
“No, no,” whispered the former Lady Persinna.
I wondered what she would bring, standing on that scarlet rug, on the platform, being displayed.
I recalled that on Earth it had been speculated that I would sell for between forty and sixty. I had supposed, at the time, that meant between forty and sixty thousand dollars. Here I conjectured that I might sell for between forty and sixty pieces of gold, or, given this market, and that I was not much trained, and was a new slave, perhaps only between forty and sixty silver tarsks.
The bar rang again, I think the ninth ring.
Would she bring more than I? I did not think so. She was a mere barbarian, a scion of a primitive culture, and I was a civilized woman of Earth, of the upper classes, young, beautiful, educated, intelligent, sensitive, well-bred, refined, now somehow inexplicably entrapped in a barbarian world, a world where I was denied the protection of the law, a world where my Earth rights were not only ignored, but did not exist. On this world I was a property. Thus, here, the law, in all its power and rigor, in all its weight and majesty, would be used not for me but against
