I moaned.
I felt the whip of the Lady Tima pushing up my chin. She was dressed in brief black leather. She wore leather wristlets, studded. There were keys, and a knife, at her belt.
'Welcome to the market of Tima,' she said.
I looked at her with misery.
She gave a sign and an attendant, at one side, struck a gong with a hammer. It was the same sound I had heard earlier, in the corridors. I now realized its significance.
'Let the sale begin,' said the Lady Tima.
The girl whom I had known as 'Darlene' strode forward She indicated me with the whip. 'This is a man of Earth,' she said. 'I will now take the first bid on him.'
'Four copper tarsks!' I heard a woman call.
I was to be sold.
12 THE MARKET OF TIMA
'I have a bid of four tarsks!' called the girl in the white gown, it concealing the shameful Ta-Teera she had worn while pretending to be an Earth-girl slave.
'Five!' I heard.
'Five!' said the girl.
'Let us see him!' called a woman, shrilly.
'He stands before you clad in the barbarous garments of his own world,' called the Lady Tima, stepping forward with her whip, indicating me. 'Note them!'
I struggled, but futilely. I was well held by the two brutes who pinioned my arms.
'See how ugly are such garments,' said the Lady Tima, 'how constricting!'
There was laughter. Indeed, among most Gorean garments, with their simplicity, their flowing lines, the freedom allowed for movement, my own garments seemed rigid, confining, frightened, unimaginative and boorish. Were those of Earth really so ashamed and fearful of their bodies as such garments suggested, I wondered.
'Are they not offensive to your eyes?' inquired the Lady Tima.
'Remove them!' cried more than one lady, laughing, from the tiers.
'Some of the women of Earth even aspire to wear such garments!' laughed the Lady Tima. 'It is their way of trying to be men, according to the quaint modalities of his strange world.'
'Our men teach them that they are women,' laughed a woman.
'It is true, and the little sluts learn swiftly,' laughed the Lady Tima.
There was much laughter.
I struggled, but could not free myself. How cruel was their joke, to present me clad before buyers in garb which, though appropriate perhaps to my world, could appear only homely and foolish in comparison to the garments of Gor. I was chagrined to be presented before Gorean women in what now seemed to me to be gross and stupid garments. How little charm or grace, or liberty, there seemed to me then in such cloths. That certain women, too, would hasten to don them seemed to me then a pitiful irony bespeaking the confusions of my native world. The question was less as to why women would wish to wear them than as to why anyone would wish to wear them. I wondered if the aesthetic judgment of the women who hastened to don such garments was as stereotyped and thoughtless as that of the men who wore them as a matter of course. I hoped not. But perhaps women who were determined to be male impersonators had really little choice in the matter. Did they not imitate men in their eccentricities and stupidities as well as in other features their portrayal or characterization would surely seem the less convincing and plausible. Such garments, I suspected, were a softened heritage, rather than a break from such a heritage, from the repressions of an earlier era in Earth history, repressions now denied but repressions undeniably lingering. How scandalized and shamed would be an Earthling to adopt convenient and handsome raiment. How ridiculed would such a fellow be. How little we have learned from the informal garb of Greeks and Romans. Is it truly easier, I wonder, to adopt columns and arches, philosophy and poetry, mathematics and medicine, and law, than a rational mode of dress. But the Greeks and Romans were proud peoples, so untutored as to be unapologetic concerning their humanity. It is little wonder they are so alien to the men of Earth. It is a long time since I have thrown salt into the wind: it is a long time since I have poured wine into the sea; it is a long time since I have gone to Delphi.
'A silver tarsk!' cried a woman. 'Let us see him!'
'A silver tarsk!' called the girl in the white gown, who had pretended to be an Earth-girl slave She was quite pleased. She thrust my chin up with her whip. 'An excellent bid for one of the opening bids!' she congratulated the woman who had called out.
'But a moment!' laughed the Ladv Tima. She signaled to an attendant, a burlv fellow who brought forth and set at one side of the platform a large, shallow bronze dish, containing cubes of wood. He set a torch into this wood, which had apparently been soaked with oil. The wooden cubes sprang immediately, briefly raging, into flame. I did not understand the meaning of the dish, or its flaming contents.
'We are ready now, are we not,' asked the Lady Tima, 'to remove his clothing?'
There were affirmative shouts from the tiers.
The Lady Tima nodded to the two men who held me. They shifted their grip to my wrists.
The Lady Tima then signaled again to the burly fellow who, with a knife, from the back, cutting at the back of the coat, and at the sleeves, cut and tore away the coat. He threw it into the dish of burning, oil-soaked wood. He then removed, similarly, my jacket, which, too, he threw into the dish of burning wood. I looked at the coat and jacket, burning. They had been things I had had from Earth. The men who held me returned their grip to my arms.
'Morel Let us see more of him!' cried a woman.
'But first,' called the Lady Tima, 'permit me to congratulate you, my lovely, and generous and noble clients, for cooperating so splendidly in the joke we played upon this poor slave. You were silent. He thought himself attempting to escape to freedom, abetted by a woman of his own world, which role was played by the lovely Lady Tendite' She indicated the girl in the white gown, who had pretended to be an Earth-girl slave. She whom I had thought bore the exciting slave name of Darlene, whom I now understood to be Tendite, a lady of Gor, nodded and smiled, lifting her whip to the crowd. Many in the tiers struck their left shoulders with the palms of their right hand, in Gorean applause. 'Instead,' she laughed, 'he finds himself only a slave being marketed,' There was much laughter. 'You were superb,' she told them. 'The House of Tima is grateful,' she said. Several of the women continued to applaud her. She was clever. The crowd, enlisted in the sale, was in a splendid mood.
Suddenly I was furious.
I began to struggle wildly. To my astonishment, in spite of the two men who held me, and their large size, I almost freed myself. I think the men, too, who held me, were astonished. They were almost thrown from my body. Then, again, they held me firmly fixed between them. I looked out with rage at the crowd. I was confident that had there been only one man he could not have, in spite of his size, held me. I had not realized I was so strong.
I think the women in the tiers, and the Ladies Tima and Tendite, too, had not realized this.
They exchanged-glances.
'Is he tame?' asked one of the women in the second tier.
I could see, to my surprise, that several of the women were alarmed. In the back of the tiers I saw two guards, with spears, go to the top of one of the aisles, whence they might descend quickly into the tiers if it should be necessary.
I was pleased though, breathing heavily, I gave no sign of this. I had become, in my time on Gor, given the exercise and diet, more formidable than I could have dreamed, from my sedentary, refined existence on my native world.
'Many of you own tharlarion,' said the Lady Tendite, calling merrily to the crowd. 'They are much stronger
