the auctioneer. He was also the slaver, Vart, once Publius Quintus of Ar, banished from that city, and nearly impaled, for falsifying slave data. He had advertised a girl as a trained pleasure slave who, as it turned out, did not even know the eleven kisses. The Vart is a small, sharp-toothed winged mammal, carnivorous, which commonly flies in flocks.
'A blond-haired, blue-eyed barbarian,' called the auctioneer, 'who speaks little or no Gorean, untrained, formerly free, a purse not yet rent, a thigh not yet kissed by the iron. What am I offered?'
'A copper tarsk,' called a man from the floor, a fellow who rented chains of work girls.
'I hear one tarsk,' called the auctioneer. 'Do I hear more?'
'Let us have the next girl!' called a man. The slaves at the windlass tensed, but the auctioneer did not tell them to move the chain, removing the blond girl and bringing forth the next item on the chain.
'Surely I hear more?' called the auctioneer. 'Do I hear two tarsks?' I suppose he may have paid two or three tarsks for her himself, to Bejar.
The girl was beautiful, but not as beautiful, it was true, as most Gorean slave girls. I did not think she would bring a high price. Unfortunately, then, almost anyone might buy her. I looked about. It seemed a common, motley crowd for the house of Vart, where men came generally to buy cheap girls, sometimes in lots, at bargain prices. His establishment was located in a warehouse near the docks. I conjectured there were some two hundred buyers and onlookers present. I wore the tunic, and leather apron and cap, of the metal worker.
'Look at her,' said the man beside me. 'How ugly she is, what a she-tarsk.'
'A true she-tarsk,' agreed another.
They had seen, I gathered, few Earth girls. They did not understand the effects of years of insidious, pervasive, anti-biological conditioning. Their own culture, perhaps because of the limitations imposed on it by Priest-Kings, who did not wish to be threatened or destroyed by an animal with which they shared a world, had taken different turnings. They would not understand a world in which dirty jokes had point, a world in which a woman's attractiveness was supposedly a function of the utilization of certain commercial products, or a world in which men and women were taught that they were the same, and in which they attempted to believe it, and would hysterically insist it was true, bravely ignoring the evidence of their reason, senses and experience. Civilization may be predicated upon the denial of human nature; it may also be predicated upon its fulfillment. The first word that an Earth baby learns is usually, 'No.' The first word that a Gorean baby learns is commonly, 'Yes.' The machine and the flower, I suspect, will never understand one another.
'Let us see another girl!' called yet another man.
'A new girl!' cried others.
Many women, of course, once under the helpless condition of slavery, increase considerably in beauty. This has to do primarily I think with psychological factors, in particular with the destruction of neurotic patterns, inculcated in the Earth female, of male-imitation, and the concurrent necessity imposed upon her by the whip, if necessary, to reveal and manifest her deeper self, that of a female. On the other hand, doubtless, the dieting, exercise, instruction in cosmetics and adornment, and the various forms of slave training, are also not without their effect.
'Do I hear two tarsks?' asked the auctioneer.
If a woman truly is, in her secret heart, a man's slave, how can any female who is not a man's slave be truly a woman? And how can any woman who is not truly a woman be happy?
Can a woman be free only when she is a slave? Is this not the paradox of the collar?
'Come Masters, Kind Sirs,' called the auctioneer. 'Can you not see the promise of this slender, blond, barbarian beauty?'
There was laughter from the floor, 'What a cheap, slovenly man of business is our friend, Vart,' said the fellow next to me. 'Look, he has not even had her branded.'
'Add that into her price,' grumbled another.
'At least you do not have to worry about that,' said a man, to me.
I wore the garb of a metal worker. Usually girls, if not marked by a slaver, are marked in the shop of a metal worker.
I smiled.
The auctioneer was now calling off her measurements, and her collar, and wrist and ankle-ring size. He had jotted these down on her back with a red-grease marking stick.
'Will not an urt hunter give me at least two tarsks for her?' called out the auctioneer good-humoredly, but with some understandable exasperation.
I wished that either Bejar or Vart had had her branded. It would be easier to keep track of her that way.
'She is not worth tying at the end of a rope and using in the water as a bait for urts,' called out a man, the fellow who had first suggested that she be removed from the sales position.
There was laughter.
'Perhaps you are right,' called out the auctioneer, agreeably.
'Would an urt want her?' asked another man.
There was more laughter.
'Perhaps an urt!' laughed a man.
'Go down to the canals,' said another man. 'See if you can get two tarsks from the urts!'
There was again general laughter. The auctioneer, too, seemed amused. He apparently recognized that it was futile, and a bit amusing, to be attempting to get an interesting price on this particular bit of slave meat.
There were tears now, and bitterness, in the girl's eyes. I knew, from her general attitudes and responses, that she understood very little of what was transpiring, and yet, clearly, she must understand that she was the butt of the laughter of the men, who held her in contempt and scorned her, who were not interested in her, who had not bid hardly upon her, who obviously wished her to be taken from their sight. She was a poor slave. She stood there, in the collar, with the position chain attached to each side of it, the chain, on each side, over an upper arm, held in the crook of her arms, her hands clasped behind her neck.
'I hate you,' she cried, suddenly, to them, in English. 'I hate you!'
They, of course, did not understand her. The hostility of her mien, however, was clear.
The auctioneer took handfuls of her long blond hair, from the right side of her head, rolled it into a ball between his palms, and thrust it in her mouth. She stood there. She knew she must not spit out the hair. She knew she was not then to speak.
'I am afraid that you are almost worthless, my dear,' said the auctioneer to her, in Gorean.
She looked down, bitterly. I knew this type of response. The woman who fears she cannot please men then sometimes tends to feel hostility toward them, perhaps turning her own rage and inward disappointment outward, laying the blame upon them, and developing the obvious defensive reactions of belittling sexuality and its significance, and attempting, interestingly, to become manlike herself, to be one with them, though in an aggressive, competitive manner, often attempting to best them, as though one of themselves. Since she was not found desirable as a woman she attempts to become a more successful man than the men who failed to note her attractiveness. This type of response, however, however natural on Earth in such a situation, would not be feasible on Gor in a slave. Gorean free women, of course may do what they wish. The slave girl, on the other hand, does not compete with the master, but serves him. The blond-haired girl might or might not hate men, but on Gor, as a slave, she would serve them, and serve them well. The woman who fears that she is unattractive to men, of course, is generally mistaken. She need only learn to please men. A woman who pleases men, and pleases them on their own terms, would, on Earth, be a startling rarity, an incredibly unusual treasure. On Gor, of course, she would be only another of hundreds of thousands of delicious slaves. On Gor a readiness to please men, and an intention to do so, and on their own terms, is expected in any girl one buys. Should a girl prove sluggish in any respect, it is simple to put her under discipline. Eventually, of course a woman learns that to please a man on his own terms is the only thing that can, ultimately, fulfill her own deepest needs, those of the owned, submitting love slave.
'I am afraid you are almost worthless, my blue-eyed, blond-haired prize,' said the auctioneer to the girl. She looked out, dully, bitterly, at the crowd, her hands clasped behind her neck, hair from the right side of her bead looping up to her mouth.
I had little fear for her, however. Her neurotic responses, functions of her Earth conditioning, would have
