'It is a regular Gordian Knot,' she said.
'The Gordian Knot,' I said, 'was quite possibly just such a knot.'
'Alexander,' she remarked, smiling, 'cut it with his sword.'
'And in so doing,' I laughed, 'informed the entire world that the room, or whatever it was, had been entered.'
I then untied the knot, slipped the cords through the hole below the latch bar, swung the door shut and set the two beams in place, securing it.
I turned to Elizabeth. 'I will teach you the knot,' I said.
'Good,' said Elizabeth, undaunted by the complex prospect. Then she looked up at me. 'I should have my own knot, too,' she said.
'Surely,' I said, apprehensively, 'we can use the same knot.' It is, after all, not much fun to learn a signature knot.
'If I am going to learn your knot,' she said, 'there is no reason why you cannot learn mine.'
'Elizabeth,' I said.
'Vella,' she corrected me.
'Vella,' said I, 'in spite of all you have been through on this world you yet retain certain of the taints of the Earth woman.'
'Well,' she said, 'it seems to me only fair.' Then she smiled mischievously. 'My knot will be quite as complex as yours,' she said.
'I do not doubt it,' I said, dismally.
'It will be quite enjoyable to invent a knot,' she said, 'but it must be feminine, and it must reflect my personality.'
I groaned.
She put her arms about my neck and lifted her eyes to mine. 'Perhaps,' she said, 'after Vella has been fully trained Master will find Vella more pleasing.'
'Perhaps,' I admitted.
She kissed me lightly on the nose.
'You cannot even dance,' I informed her.
Suddenly, she stepped back, threw back her head, thrust one leg to the side, and lifted her arms. Then, eyes closed, not moving, except the heel of the right foot, which beat the rhythm, she began to hum a Tuchuk slave song; on the second measure, her hands came to her hips and she opened her eyes, looking at me; on the third measure, her body began to move and, to the melody, she began to sway toward me; when I reached for her she swept back, and danced, her hands at the side of her head, fingers snapping with the melody.
Then she stopped.
'It's all I know,' she informed me.
I cried out in rage.
She came to me and put her arms again about my neck. 'Poor Master,' said she, 'Vella cannot even dance.'
'Nonetheless,' I said, 'I see that Vella has possibilities.'
'Master is kind,' she said. She kissed me again, lightly on the nose. 'Master cannot have everything,' she said.
'That is a sentiment,' I said, 'which few Gorean masters will accept.'
She laughed. 'It could be far worse,' she said. 'At least I am a Red Silk girl.'
At this I swept her from her feet and carried her to the broad stone couch in the room, where I placed her on the piles of furs that bedecked it.
'I have heard,' she said, smiling up at me, 'that it is only a Free Companion who is accorded the dignities of the couch.'
'True,' I cried, bundling her in the furs and throwing the entire roll to the floor at the end of the couch, beneath the slave ring. With a flourish I unrolled the furs, spilling Elizabeth out, who shrieked and began to crawl away, but my hand caught at the loop on the left shoulder of her garment and she turned suddenly, trying to sit up, her feet tangled in the garment and I kicked it away and took her in my arms.
'If you like me,' she asked, 'will you buy me?'
'Perhaps,' I said, 'I do not know.'
'I think,' she said, 'that I would like you for my master.'
'Oh,' I said.
'So I will try to please you,' she said, 'that you will buy me.'
'You are not now in the purple booth,' I said.
She laughed. The allusion was to certain practices having to do with the merchandising of Red Silk Girls, in private sales for individual and important clients of the House.
At certain times of the year several such booths are set up within the courtyard of a slaver's house; in each, unclothed, chained by the left ankle to a ring, on furs, is a choice Red Silk Girl; prospective buyers, usually accompanied by a member of the Caste of Physicians, in the presence of the slaver's agent, examine various girls; when particular interest is indicated in one, the Physician and the slaver's agent withdraw; when, after this, the girl is not purchased, or at least seriously bid upon, she is beaten severely or, perhaps worse, is touched for a full Ehn by the slave goad; if, after two or three such opportunities, the girl is not sold, she is given further training; if after this she is still not sold she is usually returned to the iron pens whence, with other girls, considered to be of inferior value, she will be sold at a reduced price in one of the smaller markets, perhaps even in a minor city.
Most girls, it might be mentioned, even extremely choice specimens, are never in the booths; generally the slaver has a chance at a higher price when there are many buyers bidding against one another in the heat of an auction.
'Very well, Red Silk Girl,' said I, 'perform.'
'Yes, Master,' said she, obediently.
And, as the hour progressed, perform she did, and superbly so, and I knew that had I been a prospective buyer I would have bid high indeed for the skilled, sensuous little wench in my arms, so striving with all her quickness and beauty to please me. Sometimes I was forced to remind myself that she was Miss Elizabeth Cardwell of Earth, and not, as she lost herself uncontrollably in our pleasures, hands clutching at the slave ring, a Gorean slave girl, bred for the pleasures of a master.
Some months before, Elizabeth and I, the egg of Priest-Kings in the saddlepack of my tarn, had returned to the north from the Plains of Turia, the Land of the Wagon Peoples. In the vicinity of the Sardar Mountains I had brought the tarn down on the quiet, flat, gray-metal, disk-like surface, some forty feet in diameter, of the ship, some two miles above the surface of Gor. The ship did not move, but remained as stationary in the sun and the whipping wind as though it were fixed on some invisible post or platform. Clouds like drifting fogs, radiant with the golden sunlight, passed about it. In the distance far below, and to the right, I could see, through the cloud cover, the black, snow-capped crags of the Sardar.
On the surface of the ship, tall and thin, like the blade of a golden knife, his forelegs lifted delicately before his body, his golden antennae blown in the wind, there stood, with the incredible fixity and alertness of his kind, a Priest-King.
I leaped from the back of the tarn and stood on the ship, in the radiant cloud-filtered sunlight.
The Priest-King took a step toward me on its four supporting posterior appendages, and stopped, as though it dared not move more.
I stood still, not speaking.
We looked at one another.
I saw the gigantic head, like a globe of gold, surmounted with wind-blown antennae, glistening with delicate sensory hair. If Miss Cardwell had been frightened, alone astride the tarn, bound for her safety to the saddle, she did not cry out nor speak, but was silent.
My heart was pounding, but I would not move. My breath was deep, my heart filled with joy.
The cleaning hooks behind the third joints of the Priest-King's forelegs lifted and emerged delicately, and extended toward me.
I looked on that great golden head and its two large, circular, disk-like eyes, compound, and the light seemed to flicker among the multilensed surfaces. Across the left eye disk there was an irregular whitish seam.
At last I spoke. 'Do not stand long in the sun,' said I, 'Misk.'
Bracing himself against the wind, the antennae struggling to retain their focus on me, he took one delicate step toward me across the metal surface of the disk. Then he stood there, in his some eighteen feet of golden height, balancing on his four posterior, four-jointed supporting appendages, the two anterior, four-jointed grasping appendages, each with its four, delicate, tiny prehensile hooks, held lightly, alertly before his body in the characteristic stance of Priest-Kings. About the tube that joined his head to his thorax, on a slender chain, hung the small, round compact translator.
'Do not stand so long in the sun,' I said to him.
'Did you find the egg?' asked Misk. The great laterally opening and closing jaws, of course, had not moved. There was rather only a set of odors, secreted from his signal glands, picked up by the translator and transduced into mechanically reproduced Gorean words, each spoken separately, none with emotion.
'Yes, Misk,' I said, 'I have found the egg. It is safe. It is in the saddlepack of my tarn.'
For an instant it seemed as though the great creature could not stand, as though he might fall; then, as though by an act of will, moving inch by inch through his body, he straightened himself.
I said nothing.
Delicately, slowly, the gigantic creature approached me, seeming to move only the four supporting appendages, until it stood near me. I lifted my hands over my head, and he, delicately, in the fog splendid with the sun, the smooth texture of his golden body gleaming, gently lowered his body and head, and with the tips of his antennae, covered with their sensitive, glistening golden hair, touched the palms of my hands.
There were tears in my eyes.
The antennae trembled against my hands. The great golden blade, his body itself, for a moment trembled. Again the cleaning hooks behind the third joint of each of the forelegs emerged, delicately, incipiently extended to me. The great compound eyes, on which Priest-Kings so seldom depended, were radiant; in that moment they glowed like diamonds burning in wine.
'Thank you,' said Misk.
Elizabeth and I had remained with Misk in the Nest of Priest-Kings, that incredible complex beneath the Sardar, for some weeks.
He had been overjoyed at the receipt of the egg and it had immediately been given over to eager attendants that it might be incubated and hatched. I doubt that the Physicians and Scientists of the Nest had ever exercised more diligence and care in such matters than they lavished on that one egg, and perhaps rightfully so, for it
