28
The Box In The River
'There!' said Ayari. 'Bring the canoe to the right.'
We turned the light vessel a quarter to starboard. 'I see it,' I said.
We were four days from the fishermen's village where- we had been cordially received. In these four days we had passed two other villages, where farming was done in small clearings, but we had not stopped at either.
The river was generally two to four hundred yards wide at these points. At night we would pull the canoe ashore, camouflage it, and make our camp about a half pasang inland, to minimize any danger from possible tharlarion, which tend to remain near the water.
The box, about a foot wide and deep, and two feet long. floating, heavy, almost entirely submerged, with an ornate ring lock, rubbed against the side of the canoe. By its metal handles I drew it into the canoe. With the back of one of the heavy pangas I struck loose the ring lock. There were varieties of ring locks. This one was a combination padlock, in which numbers, inscribed on rotating metal disks, fitted together, are to be properly aligned, this permitting the free extraction of the bolt. This, as is the case with most single-alignment ring locks, was not a high-security lock. The materials in the box, I was confident, would not be of great value. The numbers on the lock were in Gorean. I thrust up the lid.
'Ah,' said Kisu.
In the box, jumbled, were rolls of wire, mirrors, pine and knives, beads, shells and bits of colored glass.
'Trade goods,' said Kisu.
'Doubtless from one of the vessels of Shaba,' said Ayari.
'Doubtless,' I agreed.
We put the goods in one of the sacks we had had and saved from the fishermen's village, and threw the broken lock and opened box again into the river.
'Let us proceed with caution,' said Kisu.
'That seems to me wise,' I said.
Bark Cloth And Beads
We sat about the small fire, some half pasang inland from the river, in the rain forest.
A great spined anteater, more than twenty feet in length, shuffled about the edges of the camp. We saw its long, thin tongue dart in and out of its mouth.
The blond-haired barbarian crept closer tome.
'It is harmless,' I said, 'unless you cross its path or disturb it.'
It lived on the white ants, or termites, of the vicinity, breaking apart their high, towering nests of toughened clay, some of them thirty-five feet in height, with its mighty claws, then darting its four-foot-long tongue, coated with adhesive saliva, among the nest's startled occupants, drawing thousands in a matter of moments into its narrow, tubelike mouth.
She drew a bit further away, trembling. She was a naked woman, and a slave, on the barbaric planet of Gor. Perhaps she did not relish being dependent on men, and their protection, for her very life, but she was, and she knew it.
We had brought certain goods with us from the canoe to our camp.
'Oh!' cried the girl, startled. A grasshopper, red, the size of a horned gim, a small, owllike bird, some four ounces in weight, common in the northern latitudes, had leaped near the fire, and disappeared into the brush.
She restrained herself from approaching me more closely. She put her head down, embarrassed.
Kisu, with a knife, was cutting a length from the rough, red-dyed cloth, plaited and pounded, derived from the inner bark of the pod tree, which we had obtained in trade some days ago at the fishermen's village. It has a cordage of bark strips resembling a closely woven burlap, but it is much softer, a result in part perhaps due to the fact that the dye in which it is prepared is mixed with palm oil. Tende was watching him closely.
I chuckled to myself.
'Do I amuse Master?' asked the blond-haired barbarian, irritably.
'I was thinking about this afternoon,' I said.
'Oh,' she said.
This afternoon, late, when we had come inland, almost in the dusk, she had become entangled in the web of a rock spider, a large one. They are called rock spiders because of their habit of holding their legs folded beneath them. This habit, and their size and coloration, usually brown and black, suggests a rock, and hence the name. It is a very nice piece of natural camouflage. A thin line runs from the web to the spider. When something strikes the web the tremor is transmitted by means of this line to the spider. Interestingly the movement of the web in the air, as it is stirred by wind, does not activate the spider; similarly if the prey which strikes the web is too small, and thus not worth showing itself for, or too large, and thus beyond its prey range, and perhaps dangerous, it does not reveal itself. On the other hand, should a bird, such as a mindar or parrot, or a small animal, such as a leaf urt or tiny tarsk, become entangled in the net the spider swiftly emerges. It is fully capable of taking such prey. When the blond-haired barbarian stumbled into the web, screaming, trying to tear it away from her face and hair, the spider did not even reveal itself. I pulled her away from the net and slapped her to silence. Curious, as she, sobbing, cleaned herself with leaves and saliva, I located the gentle, swaying strand which marked the location of the spider. It, immobile on the ground, was about a foot in diameter. It did not move until I nudged it with a stick, and it then backed rapidly away.
'You need not have struck me,' she said reproachfully.
'Be silent, Slave,' I said.
'Yes, Master,' she said. That a slave has irritated one in the least particular is, of course, more than enough reason for striking her. Indeed, one does not need a reason for striking, a slave. One may do so at one's purest caprice. The girls know this. This helps in their discipline. In this particular instance, of course, aside from my irritation at her outburst, I did not want her cries to mark our position in the forest. We did not know who, or what, besides ourselves, might trek, perhaps at our side, in that lush habitat.
'Master,' said the girl.
'Yes,' I said.
'You need not have struck me, earlier this afternoon,' she said. 'But I suppose that you are the judge of that, for you are the Master,' she added, airily.
I looked at her.
'Surely one needs a reason for striking a slave,' she said.
'No,' I said.
'I see,' she said, putting her head down. She trembled.
'Come here,' I said. 'Kneel before me, back on your heels.'
She did so, looking at me. 'Master?' she asked.
Suddenly I struck her, a fierce blow which flung her, mouth bloodied, to her side in the dirt.
I stood up. 'Do you see?' I asked.
'Yes, Master,' she whispered, looking up at me, horrified.
'Now kneel before me and kiss my feet,' I said, 'and thank me for having struck you.'
Tremblingly, she crawled to me, and knelt before me. She put her head down. I felt her lips on my feet. 'Thank you for having struck me, Master,' she whispered. She looked up at me.
