I lifted her gently to her feet and looked into her eyes.
'Please do not disturb my cosmetics,' she begged.
I smiled. 'No,' I said, 'I will not. They will find you very beautiful.' I kissed her on the side of the neck, beneath the ear, and descended to another level.
She looked after me.
On this level, sitting against a wall, her knees drawn up, I found Luma. I went to her, and stood before her.
She stood up, and touched my check with her bancl There were tears in her eyes. 'I would free you,' I said, 'but I think they might kill free women, if they found theml' I touched her collar.
'With this,' I said, 'I think you might be permitted to live.'
She wept and put her head to my shoulders. I held her in my arms.
'My brave Luma,' I said. 'My fine, brave Luma.'
I kissed her and, pressing her gently from me, descended another level. There Telima had been caring for two men who had been wounded.
I went to one wall and, on a cloak that was lying there, sat down, my head in my hands.
The girl came to be beside me, where, in the fashion of the Gorean woman, she knelt, back on her heels 'I expect,' she said, after a time, 'the fleet will return in a few hours, and we shall be saved.'
Surely she knew the fleet, as well as I, had been driven pasangs south, and would not be able to reach the harbor of Port Kar for another two or three days, at the least.
'Yes,' I said, 'in a few hours the fleet will return and we shall be saved.' She put her hand on my head, and then her face was against mine.
'Do not weep,' I told her.
I held her against me.
'I have hurt you so,' she said.
'No,' I said, 'no.'
'It is all so strange,' she said.
'What is so strange?' I asked.
'That Samos should be here,' said she.
'But why?' I asked.
She looked at me. 'Because,' said she, 'years ago, he was my master.' I was startled.
'I was taken slave at the age of seven in a raid,' she said, 'and Samos, at a market, bought me. For years he treated me with great concern and care. I was treated well, and taught things that slaves are seldom taught. I can read, you know.'
I recalled once, long ago, being puzzled that she, though a mere rence girl, had been literate.
'And I was taught many other things, too,' said she, 'when I could read, even to the second knowledge.'
That was reserved, generally, for the high castes on Gor.
'I was raised in that house,' she said, 'with love, though I was only slave, and Samos was to me almost as a father might have been. I was permitted to speak to, and learn from, scribes and singers, and merchants and travelers. I had friends among other girls in the house, who were also much free, though not as free as I. We had the freedom of the city, though guards would accompany us to protect us.'
'And then what happened?' I asked.
Her voice grew hard. 'I had been told that on my seventeenth birthday a great change would occur in my life.' She srnfled. 'I expected to be freed, and to be adopted as the daughter of Samos.'
'What happened?' I asked.
'At dawn that morning,' she said, 'the Slave Master came for me. I was taken below to the pens. There, like a new girl taken from the rence islands, I was stripped. An iron was heated. I was marked. My head was placed across an anvil and, about my throat, was hammered a simple plate collar. Then my wrists were tied widely apart to wrist rings mounted in a stone wall, and I was whipped. After this, when'l had been cut down, weeping, the Slave Master, and his men, much used me. After this I was fitted with slave chains and locked in a pen, with other girls. These other girls, some of them rence girls themselves, would often beat me, for they knew what freedom I had had in the house, and they knew, as was true, that I had regarded myself as far superior to such as they, only common girls, simple merchandise. I thought there was some great mistake. For days, though the other girls would beat me for it, I begged the Slave Master, the guards, to be taken before Samos. At last, kneeling, in a simple plate collar, beaten and shackled, stripped, I was thrown before him.'
'What did he say?' I asked.
'He said,' said she, 'take this slave away.'
I looked down, but held her.
'I was taught the duties of the slave girl in that house,' she said, 'and I learned them well. The girls among whom I had been first would no longer even condescend to speak to me. Guards who had formerly protected me would now, as they chose, take me in their arms, and I must well serve them or be beaten.' 'Did Samos himself use you?' I asked.
'No,' she said.
'The most miserable of tasks were often given to me,' continued the girl. 'Often I was not permitted clothing. Often I was beaten, and cruelly used. At night I was not even chained, but locked in a tiny slave cage, in which I could scarcely move.' She looked at me, angrily. 'In me,' said she, 'a great hatred grew, of Port Kar and of Samos and of men, and of slaves, of whom I was one. I lived only for my hate and the dream that I might one day escape, and take vengeance on men.'
'You did escape,' I said.
'Yes,' she said, 'in cleaning the quarters of the slave master I found the key to my collar.'
'You were then no longer wearing a plate collar,' I said.
'Almost from the beginning, after my seventeenth birthday,' said Telima, 'I was trained as a pleasure slave. One year after my enslavement I was certified to the house by the slave mistress as having become accomplished in such duties. At that time the plate collar was opened by one of the metal workers and replaced with a seven-pin lock collar.'
The common female slave collar on Gor has a seven-pin lock. There are, incidentally, seven letters in the most common Gorean expression for female slave, Kajira.
'It seems careless,' I said, 'that the slave master should leave, where a slave might find it, the key to her collar.'
She shrugged.
'And, too,' she said, 'nearby there was a golden armlet.' She looked at me. 'I took it,' she said. 'I thought I might need gold, if only to bargain my way past guards.' She looked down. 'But,' she said, 'I had little difficulty in leaving the house. I told them I was on an errand, and they permitted me to leave. I had, of course, run errands in the city before. Outside the house I removed the collar, that I might move more freely, being unquestioned, in the city. I found some beams and rope, and a pole, bound together a simple raft and through one of the delta canals, which were not then barred, made my escape. As a child I had been of the marshes, and so I did not fear to return to them. I was found by the men of Ho-Hak and accepted into their community. He permitted me, even, to retain the golden armlet.'
I looked at the opposite wall. 'Do you still hate Samos so?' I asked. 'I had thought I would,' she said. 'But now that he is here, and helping us, I do not hate him. It is all very strange.'
I was tired, and I felt I must sleep. I was pleased that Telima had told me these parts of her story, which I had not heard before. I sensed that there was more here than I could clearly understand at the moment, and more than she understood, as well. But I was very tired.
'You know,' I said, 'the keep will be overrun and most of us, the men, at least, will be slain?'
'The fleet will come,' she said.
'Yes,' I said. 'But if it does not.' 'It will,' she said.
'Where is the collar I took from your throat on the night of the victory feast?' I asked.
She looked at me, puzzled. 'I brought it to the keep,' she said. She smiled. 'I did not know whether you wished me slave or free.'
'The men will come with weapons,' I said. 'Where is the collar?'
She looked at me. 'Must I wear it?' she asked.
'Yes,' I said. I did not want her slain, if possible, when the men came. If they thought her a free woman, and mine, she might be swiftly killed, or tortured and impaled.
She found the collar.
'Put it on,' I told her.
'Is there so little hope?' she asked.
'Put it on,' I said to her. 'Put it on.'
'No,' she said. 'If you die, I am willing to die beside you, as your woman.' Port Kar does not recognize the Free Companionship, but there are free women in the city, who are known simply as the women of their men.
'Are you my woman?' — I asked.
'Yes,' she said.
'Then,' I said, 'obey me.'
She smiled. 'If I must be collared,' she said, 'let it be at the hand of my Ubar.'
I placed the collar on her throat, and kissed her. In her tunic I saw, concealed, a small dagger.
'Would you fight with this?' I asked, taking it from her.
'I do not wish to live without you!' she cried.
I threw the dagger to one side. She wept in my arms. 'No,' I said, 'life is what is important. It is life that is important. Life.'
Collared, she wept in my arms.
Weary, I fell asleep.
