The primary differences, I suspect, to which Virginia Kent was reacting, were subtle and psychological. The male of Earth is conditioned to be more timid, vacillating and repressed than the males of Gor; to be subject, to achieve social controls, to guilts and anxieties that would be as incomprehensible to the Gorean male as a guilt over having spoken to one's father-in-law's sister would be to most of the men of Earth. Moreover, the Gorean culture tends, for better or worse, to be male oriented and male dominated, and in such a culture men naturally look on women much differently than they do in a consumer-oriented, women-dominated culture, one informed by an ethos of substantially feminine values; the women then, in coming to Gor, would naturally sense that they are looked on differently, and it was not improbable to suppose that something in them, submerged and primitive, would tend to respond to this.
"In the presence of such a man," said Flaminius, indicating the guard, "how do you sense yourself?"
"Female," she said, looking down and away.
Flaminius put his hand through the bars, his fingers gently touching her chin and throat as she looked away. Her body tensed, but she did not move. Her cheek was pressed against the bars.
"You wear on your left ankle," said Flaminius, "a locked band of steel."
The girl tried to move her head but could not. A tear coursed down her right cheek, running against the bar.
"What is it?" asked Flaminius.
"It is the anklet of a slave," she said, not facing him.
He turned her head to him. Her eyes, wide with tears, faced his. She regarded him, herself held. "Pretty slave," he said.
"Yes," she said.
"Yes what?" he asked, kindly.
"Yes," she said, "-Master." Then suddenly she cried out and broke free and knelt in the back of the kennel, her face in her hands, weeping.
Flaminius laughed.
"You beast!" cried out the second girl. "You beast!"
Flaminius suddenly reached into the cage and, taking the girl by the wrists, jerked her against the bars, painfully so, holding her at arm's length cruelly against them. "Please," she wept.
"From the time you were first anesthetized and hooded," said Flaminius, "you had but one purpose in life-to give pleasure to men."
"Please," she wept, "please."
"Bracelets," said Flaminius, in Gorean, to the guard, who produced a set of bracelets.
Flaminius then locked one on the girl's right wrist and then, her arms through the bars, bent her arms back, put the other bracelet around one of the bars in the gate, above the horizontal bar at the top of the gate, and, on the outside of the gate, about her other wrist, the left, snapped shut the second bracelet, so that her hands were now braceleted outside the gate, at its top, that she might be, on the inside, held cruelly against the bars. "Please," she wept, "Please."
"It would be pleasant to tame you," said Flaminius.
"Please let me go," she wept.
"But there are other things in store for you, pretty slave."
The girl looked at him, tears in her eyes.
"You will be trained as a slave girl," said Flaminius. "You will be taught to kneel, to stand, to walk, to dance, to sing, to serve the thousand pleasures of men." He laughed. "And when your training is complete you will be placed on a block and sold."
The girl cried out in misery, pressing her head against the bars.
Flaminius then looked into Virginia's eyes. "You, too," said he, "will be trained as a slave girl."
She looked at him, red-eyed.
"Will you train?" asked Flaminius.
"We will do whatever you wish," said Virginia. "We are slaves."
"Will you train?" asked Flaminius of the girl Phyllis, braceleted against the bars.
"What if I do not?" she asked.
"Then you will die," said Flaminius.
The girl closed her eyes.
"Will you train?" asked Flaminius.
"Yes," she said, "I will train."
"Good," said Flaminius. Then he reached into the cage and took her by the hair, twisting it. "Do you beg to be trained as a slave girl?" he asked.
"Yes," she said, in pain, "yes!"
"Yes what?" inquired the Physician.
"Yes," she said, weeping, "-Master!"
Flaminius then stood up and faced us. He was instantly again the Physician, cool and professional. He regarded Ho-Tu and spoke in Gorean swiftly. "They are both interesting girls," he said. "They resemble one another in several ways and yet each is quite different. The results of the tests I have just conducted are quite affirmative, much better than merely satisfactory, decidedly promising."
"How will they train?" asked Ho-Tu.
"It is impossible to tell," said Flaminius, "but my prognosis is that each, in her own way, will do quite well in training. I do not think drugs will be necessary, and I expect that a sparing use of the whip and slave goad will be sufficient. My prognosis is on the whole extremely favorable. Excellent merchandise, some risk, but every likelihood of achieving a status of considerable value. In short I think they are both decidedly worth development, and should prove a quite profitable investment."
"They are, however, barbarians," pointed out Ho-Tu.
"That is true," said Flaminius, "and doubtless they will always be barbarians-but that quality, for some buyers, may exercise its own fascination."
"That is the hope of Cernus," said Ho-Tu.
Flaminius smiled. "Few of the hopes of Cernus are disappointed," he said.
Ho-Tu grinned. "That is true," he said.
"If there is a demand for such girls," said Flaminius, "our house will profit handsomely indeed."
Ho-Tu slapped his thigh. "Cernus will see," said he, "that there is such a demand."
Flaminius shrugged. "I do not doubt it," he said.
I regarded the girls, piteous in their cages.
Virginia, her face stained with tears, knelt at the bars, looking up at us, holding them. Phyllis, on her knees, her wrists braceleted outside the cage, held pressed against the bars, looked at us and then turned her face away.
"I promise you, Ho-Tu," Flaminius was saying, "that each of these girls, properly trained, will provide a master with the most exquisite of delights."
I was pleased that neither of the girls understood Gorean. I suspected that what Flaminius said was true. The Gorean slaver knows his business. Both girls, I expected, would be trained as exquisite female slaves.
We then, following Ho-Tu, retraced our steps on the iron walkway, descended the steps, and, taking our way between the metal branding rack and the glowing, perforated steel drum containing irons, left the room. As we left I could hear one of the girls weeping. I did not, of course, turn back to see which one it might be.
12 — THE PEASANT
The shrill pain scream of the racing tarn pierced the roar of the frenzied crowd.
"Blue! Blue!" screamed the man next to me, a blue patch sewn on his left shoulder, a pair of glazed blue clay plates clutched in his right hand.
The tarn, screaming, its wing useless, tumbled uncontrollably from the edge of the large, open, padded ring suspended over the net on the track, plunging into the net, its rider cutting the safety straps and leaping from its back in order that he not be slain beneath the bird struggling in the net.
The other bird, which had buffeted it against the edge of the ring, spun awkwardly through, turned in the air, and under the savage command of its control straps, and responding to a yellow flash of the tarn goad, regained its control and sped toward the next ring.
"Red! Red! Red!" I heard from nearby.
The next seven tarns, strung out, sped through the ring, and wheeled in flight to take the next ring. Their leader was a brown racing tarn, whose rider wore red silk, and whose small saddle and tight control straps were of red leather.