Targo looked at me, not quite understanding. 'But why?' he asked. I felt foolish. What could I tell this merchant, this specialist in the traffic of flesh, this businessman who stood well within the ancient traditions and practices of his trade? Could I tell him that I did not wish the girl to be hurt? He would have thought me a mad man. Yet what other reason was there?
Feeling stupid, I told him the truth. 'I do not wish the see her hurt.' Targo and the grizzled master of the irons exchanged glances.
'But she is only a slave,' said Targo.
'I know,' I said.
The grizzled man spoke up. 'He said he' d buy her.'
'Ah!' said Targo, and his tiny eyes gleamed. 'That' s different.' Then an expression of great sadness transformed his fat ball of a face. 'But it is sad she is so expensive.'
'I have no money,' I said.
Targo stared at me, uncomprehendingly. His fat small body contracted like a pudgy fist. He was angry. He turned to the grizzled man, and looked no more at me. 'Brand the girl,' he said.
The grizzled man knelt to pull one of the irons from the brazier. My sword pushed a quarter of an inch into the belly of the merchant. 'Don' t brand the girl,' said Targo.
Obediently the man thrust the iron back into the fire. He noted that my sword was at the belly of his master, but did not seem unduly disturbed. 'Shall I call the guardsmen?' he asked.
'I doubt they could arrive in time,' I said evenly.
'Don' t call the guardsmen,' said Targo, who was now sweating.
'I have no money,' I said, 'but I have this scabbard.'
Targo' s eyes darted to the scabbard and moved from one emerald to the other. His lips moved silently. Six of them he counted.
'Perhaps,' said Targo, 'we can make an arrangement.'
I resheathed the sword.
Targo spoke sharply to the grizzled man. 'Awaken the slave.'
Grumbling, the man went to fetch a leather bucket of water from the small stream near the camp. Targo and I regarded one another until the man returned, the leather bucket hung over his shoulder by its straps. He hurled the bucket of cold water, from the melted snow in the Sardar, on the chained girl, who sputtering and shivering opened her eyes. Targo, with his short, rolling steps, went to the girl and placed one thumb, wearing a large ruby ring, under her chin, pushing her head up. 'A true beauty,' said Targo. 'And perfectly trained for months in the slave pens of Ar.'
Behind Targo I could see the grizzled man shaking his head negatively. 'And,' said Targo, 'she is eager to please.'
Behind him the man winked his sightless eye and stifled a snort. 'As gentle as a dove, as docile as a kitten,' continued Targo. I slipped the blade of my sword between the girl' s cheek and the hair that was bound across her mouth. I moved it, and the hair, as lightly as though it had been air floated from the blade.
The girl fixed her eyes on Targo. 'You fat, filthy urt!' she hissed. 'Quiet, She-Tharlarion!' he said.
'I don' t think she' s worth very much,' I said.
'Oh, Master,' cried Targo, swirling his robes in disbelief that I could have uttered such a thought. 'I paid a hundred silver tarn disks for her myself!'
Behind Targo the grizzled man quickly held up his fingers, opening and closing them five times.
'I doubt,' I said to Targo, 'that she is worth more than fifty.' Targo seemed stunned. He looked at me with a new respect. Perhaps I had once been in the trade? Actually, fifty silver tarn disks was an extremely high price, and indicated the girl was probably of high caste as well as extremely beautiful. An ordinary girl, of low caste, comely but untrained, might, depending on the market, sell for as little as five or as many as thirty tarn disks.
'I will give you two of the stones from this scabbard for her,' I said. Actually I had no idea of the value of the stones, and didn' t know if the offer was a sensible one or not. In annoyance, looking over the rings of Targo and the sapphires which hung from his ears, I knew he would be a much better judge of their value than I.
'Preposterous!' said Targo, shaking his head vehemently.
I gathered that he was not bluffing, for how could he have known that I did not know the true value of the stones? How could he know that I had not purchased them and had them set in the scabbard myself?
'You drive a hard bargain,' I said. 'Four —»
'May I see the scabbard, Warrior?' he asked.
'Surely,' I said, and removed it from the belt and handed it to him. The sword itself I retained, knotting the scabbard straps and thrusting the blade into them.
Targo gazed at the stones appreciatively. 'Not bad,' said he, 'but not enough —»
I pretended to impatience. 'Then show me your other girls,' I said. I could see that this did not please Targo, for apparently he wished to rid his chain of the blond girl. Perhaps she was a troublemaker, or was dangerous to retain for some other reason.
'Show him the others,' said the grizzled man. 'This one will not even say 'Buy Me, Master'.'
Targo threw a violent look at the grizzled man, who smiling to himself knelt to supervise the irons in the brazier.
Angrily Targo led the way to the grassy clearing among the trees. He clapped his hands sharply twice, and there was a scurrying and tumbling of bodies and the sound of the long chain slipping through the ankle rings. The girls now knelt, each in the position of the Pleasure Slave, in their camisks on the grass, in a line between the two trees to which their chain was fastened. As I passed each she boldly raised her eyes to mine and said, 'Buy Me, Master'.
Many of them were beauties, and I thought that the chain, though small, was a rich one, and that almost any man might find thereon a woman to his taste. They were vital, splendid creatures, many of them undoubtedly exquisitely trained to delight the senses of a master. And many of the cities of Gor were represented on that chain, sometimes spoken of as the Slaver' s Necklace — there was a blond girl from lofty Thentis, a dark-skinned girl with black hair that fell to her ankles from the desert city of Tor, girls from the miserable streets of Port Kar in the delta of the Vosk, girls even from the high cylinders of Great Ar itself. I wondered how many of them were bred slaves, and how many had once been free. And as I paused before each beauty in that chain and met her eyes and heard her words, 'Buy Me, Master,' I asked myself why I should not buy her, why I should not free her instead of the other girl. Were these marvelous creatures, each of whom already wore the graceful brand of the slave girl, any the less worthy than she?
'No,' I said to Targo. 'I will not buy any of these.'
To my surprise a sigh of disappointment, even of keen frustration, coursed down the chain. Two of the girls, she from Tor and one of the girls from Ar wept, their heads buried in their hands. I wished I had not looked at them. Upon reflection it seemed to me clear that the chain must, in the end, be a lonely place for a girl, filled with life, knowing that he brand has destined her for love, that each of them must long for a man to care enough for them to buy them, that each must long to follow a man home to his compartments, wearing his collar and chains, where they will learn his strength and his heart and will be taught the delights of submission. Better the arms of a master than the cold steel of the ankle ring. When they had said to me, 'Buy Me, Master,' it had not been simply a ritual phrase. They had wanted to be sold to me — or I supposed, to any man who would take them from the hated chain of Targo.
Targo seemed relieved. Clutching me by the elbow, he guided me back to the tree where the blond girl knelt chained.
As I looked at her I asked myself why she, and why not another, or why any? What would it matter if her thigh, too, should wear that graceful brand? I supposed it was mostly the institution of slavery I objected to, and that that institution was not altered if I should, as an act of foolish sentiment, free one girl. She could not go with me into the Sardar, of course, and when I abandoned her, she, alone and unprotected, would soon fall prey to a beast or find herself on yet another slaver' s chain. Yes, I told myself, it was foolish.
'I have decided not to buy her,' I said.
Then, strangely, the girl' s head lifted and she looked into my eyes. She tried to smile. The words were soft, but clearly and unmistakably spoken, 'Buy me, Master'.
'Ai!' cried the grizzled man, and even Targo the Slaver looked baffled. It had been the first time the girl had uttered the ritual phrase. I looked upon her, and saw that she was indeed beautiful, but mostly I saw that her eyes pleaded with mine. As I saw that, my rational resolve to abandon her dissipated, and I yielded, as I sometimes had in the past, to an act of sentiment.
'Take the scabbard,' I said to Targo. 'I will buy her.'
'And the helmet!' said Targo.
'Agreed,' I said.
He seized the scabbard and the delight with which he clutched it told me that I had been, in his mind, sorely bested in the bargaining. Almost as an afterthought, he plucked the helmet from my grasp. Both he and I knew it was almost worthless. I smiled ruefully to myself. I was not much good in such matters, I supposed. But perhaps if I had better known the value of the stones?
The girl' s eyes looked into mine, perhaps trying to read in my eyes what would be her fate, for her fate was now in my hands, for I was her master. Strange and cruel are the ways of Gor, I thought, where six small green stones, weighing perhaps scarcely two ounces, and a damaged helmet, could purchase a human being.
Targo and the grizzled man had gone to the domed tent to fetch the keys to the girl' s chains. 'What is you name?' I asked the girl. 'A slave has no name,' she said. 'You may give me one if you wish.'
On Gor a slave, not being legally a person, does not have a name in his own right, just as, on earth, our domestic animals, not being persons before the law, do not have names. That name which he has had from birth, by which he has called himself and knows himself, that name which is so much a part of his own conception of himself, of his own true and most intimate identity, is suddenly gone.
'I gather you are not a bred slave,' I said.
She smiled and shook her head. 'No,' she said.
'I am content,' I said, 'to call you by the name you bore when you were free.'
'You are kind,' she said.
'What was your name when you were free?' I asked.
'Lara,' she said.
'Lara?' I asked.
'Yes, Warrior,' she said. 'Do you not recognise me? I was Tatrix of Tharna.'
