'It would not be well to lose your footing,' advised Ho-Tu.
I supposed it was from this sort of facility that the general expression 'The Iron Pens' took its origin. On each cage we passed, as we took our way over it, I saw a thin metal plate covered with numbers. Some of these numbers referred to the occupants within the cage, but other numbers were coded to instruct the keepers in such matters as diet, special precautions, date of the lot's acquisition, and its intended disposition. Some of the numbers had been scratched out, and others had been hammered into the plates, which were changed from time to time.
The pens seemed humid and, though we were below ground, warm from the heat of the bodies. The only sanitation facility was an open metal mesh, supported by close-set horizontal bars, in the bottom of the cages, beneath which, some five feet below, was a cement floor, washed down and cleaned by slaves once daily. There was a feed trough at one side of each cage and a low watering pan on the other, both filled by means of tubes from the catwalk. The cages of female slaves were mixed in with those of the male slaves, presumably on no other basis than what cage happened to be empty at a given time. The female slaves, like the men, were unclothed, and wore collars; their collars, however, were not the typical locked collar of the female slave but, since they were only in the iron pens, a narrow band of iron, with a number, hammered about their neck.
I noted that the females tended to remain near the center of their cage. Their food and water areas were protected from the wall of bars shared with the next cage, which might contain male slaves, by a heavy iron mesh, rather like that of the flooring, riveted by hammer to the bars. Sometimes I supposed a girl might wander too close to the bars and be seized, but, because of the bars, little could be done with her. Mating among slaves is carefully supervised. One or two girls I noted lay on the flooring mesh, their hair cruelly tied to the bars. They had been careless.
I did not try to count the pens over which we passed, and we descended two more levels, which were similarly tenanted. We stopped on the fourth subterranean level, beneath which I was told there were three more levels, retention levels, on the whole similar to those we had just passed. The fourth level, though containing many retention facilities, is used for the processing, assignment, interrogation and examination of slaves; it can be reached independently by a spiral ramp and tunnel which does not pass through the area of the iron pens. The kitchen for the pens is on this level, and the infirmary, and certain facilities for smiths; Ho-Tu kept his chair of office on this level; also, discipline was administered on this level, I gathered, seeing certain racks and chains, certain stone tables with straps, certain carefully arranged instruments designed for the extraction of pain; certain irons and high-heat-level fires in perforated metal drums.
'I will show you the girls brought in from the Voltai,' said Ho-Tu.
I followed him into a large room, barred by a heavy iron door.
There was a drum fire near the center of the room on the floor. There was a littered look about the room, some pieces of chains about. Two smiths were in the room. There was a guard talking with the smiths. There was also a man in the green of the Caste of Physicians, standing at one side, writing notes on a slip of record paper. He was a large man, smooth-shaven. I saw a branding rack, noted that there were irons in the drum fire. There was also an anvil in the room, resting on a large block of wood. Against the far wall there were thirty kennels, five rows of six each, tiered, with iron runways and iron stairs giving access to them. They reached to the ceiling of the room. Elsewhere in the room there were some slave cages, but they were now empty. Slave rings were mounted on one wall. Hanging from the ceiling, worked from a windlass, dangled a chain, attached to which was a pair of slave bracelets. Against one wall I noted a variety of slave whips, of different weights and leathers.
The Physician looked up from the paper. 'Greetings, Ho-Tu,' said he.
'Greetings, Flaminuis,' said Ho-Tu. 'May I introduce Kuurus, of the black caste, but of our employ?'
Coldly Flaminius nodded his head, and I did the same.
Then the Physician looked at Ho-Tu. 'It is a good lot,' he said.
'It should be,' said Ho-Tu, 'they have been selected with great care.'
I then understood for the first time that it is not just any girl who is picked up by the Gorean slavers, but that the acquisition of each of these doubtless had been planned with the same diligence and care that is given to a slave raid on Gor itself. They had doubtless been watched, without their knowledge studied and investigated, their habits noted, their common movements and routines recorded, for months prior to the strike of the slaver at a predetermined place and time. I supposed the requirements of the slaves were high. Each of the girls, I suspected, would be vital and much alive. Each of them I knew was beautiful. Each of them I suspected would be intelligent, for Goreans, as the men of Earth commonly do not, celebrate quickness of mind and alertness in a girl. And now they were in the kennels.
'Let's look at them,' said Ho-Tu, picking up a small metal hand torch with a wick of twisted, tarred straw from the floor and thrusting it into the drum fire.
I and the Physician, and the guardsman, followed him up the iron romp to the second level.
A blond girl, wearing the steel band locked on her left ankle, crouched at the barred gate, and extended her hands through. 'Meine Herren!' she cried. The guard, with a heavy stick he carried, struck the bars viciously before her face and she cried out, jerking back and crouching at the rear of the cage.
'These next two,' said Flaminius, indicating two cages separated by a cage from the last, 'refuse to eat.'
Ho-Tu lifted the torch to first one cage, and then the other. Both girls were Oriental-my guess would nave been Japanese.
'Feed this one,' said Ho-Tu, pointing to the cage on his left.
The girl was dragged out and her hands were braceleted behind her back. One of the smiths from below was summoned with a bowl of slave porridge, which he mixed half with water, and stirred well, so that it could be drunk. There are various porridges given to slaves and they differ. The porridges in the iron pens, however, are as ugly and tasteless a gruel, and deliberately so, as might be imagined. As the girl knelt the guardsman pulled back her head and held her nose while the smith, with thumb and forefinger, forced open her jaws and, spilling it a bit on her chin and body, poured a half cup of gruel into her mouth. The girl tried to hold her breath but when it became necessary for her to breath she must needs swallow the gruel; twice more the smith did this, and then the girl, defeated, swallowed the gruel as he poured it into her mouth, half choking on it.
'Put her back in the kennel,' said Ho-Tu.
'Will you not remove the bracelets from her?' I asked.
'No,' said Ho-Tu, 'that way she will not be able to rid herself of the gruel.'
The second girl had been watching what had gone on. Ho-Tu, with his foot, kicked her gruel pan toward her, which slid under the bars of the gate. She lifted it to her lips and began to eat, trembling.
The last girl on the second row might have been Greek. She was quite beautiful. She sat with her chin on her knees, looking at us.
We began to go up to the third level. 'They seem very quiet,' I observed.
'We permit them,' said Flaminius, deigning to offer a bit of explanation, 'five Ahn of varied responses, depending on when they recover from the frobicain injection. Mostly this takes the form of hysterical weeping, threats, demands for explanation, screaming and such. They will also be allowed to express their distress for certain periods of stated times in the future.'
'It is important for them,' added Ho-Tu, 'from time to time to be able to cry and scream.'
'But this is now a silent period, it seems,' I said.
'Yes,' said Ho-Tu, 'until tomorrow morning at the fifth bar.'
'But what if they are not silent?' I asked.
'They would be lashed,' said Ho-Tu.
'It has only been necessary to lift the whip,' said the guard. 'They do not speak the language, but they are not fools. They understand.'
'Each girl in her processing,' said Ho-Tu, 'after her fingerprinting, is given five strokes of the lash, that she may feel it and know what it means. After that, to ensure prompt obedience, it is commonly enough to merely move one's hand toward the leather.'
'I imagine,' I said, 'they can understand very little of what has happened to them.'
'Of course not,' said Flaminius. 'Right now several of them doubtless believe they have gone insane.'
'Do you lose many girls to madness?' I asked.
'Surprisingly,' said Flaminius, 'no.'
'Why is that?' I asked.
'It probably has much to do with the selection of the girls, who tend to be strong, intelligent and imaginative. The imagination is important, that they can comprehend the enormity of what has occurred to them.'
'How could you convince them they are not insane?' I asked.
Flaminius laughed. 'We explain what has happened to them. They are intelligent, they have imagination, they will have understood the possibility before, though not considering it seriously, and will, in time, accept the reality.'
'How can you explain to them?' I asked. 'They do not speak Gorean?'
'There is no girl here,' said Flaminius, 'for whom there is not at least one member of our staff who can speak their language.'
I looked at him, bewildered.
'Surely,' said Flaminius, 'you do not think we lack men who are familiar with the world from which these slaves have been brought. We have men of their world in the House and men of our world on their planet.'
I said nothing.
'I myself,' said Flaminius, 'have visited their world and speak one of its languages.'
I looked at him.
'It is called English,' he said.
'Oh,' I said.
We had now paused before the two last cages on the right side of the third tier. There was a black girl in each of them, both beautiful. One was sullen and quiet, sitting hunched over in the back of the kennel; the other was curled on the floor, crying softly. We continued on down the walkway until we came to the third cell from the left side of the tier.
'Why is this girl's hands braceleted through the bars?' asked Ho-Tu.
'The guard,' said Flaminius, 'liked her. He wanted to look on her face.'
Ho-Tu, holding the torch close, lifted the girl's head. She stared at him, her eyes glazed. She was quite beautiful. Italian, I supposed.
He dropped her head. 'Yes,' said Ho-Tu. 'She is superb.'
We then climbed up the stairs to the fourth level.
