Hup hobbled angrily after me, jerking on my tunic. "Pay! Pay!" he whined.

I looked down at him and I saw, in those wide, simple eyes, of uneven size, no recognition. His poor mind could not even recall the face of the man who had saved his life. Irritably I gave him a silver forty-piece, far more than enough to pay for the spilled candies, and strode away. "Thank you, Master," whined the fool, leaping about from one foot to the other. "Thank you, Master!"

My mind was reeling. What did it mean, I asked myself, that he was in Ar?

I strode away from the stadium, my mind confused, unsettled, breathing deeply, wildly.

There had been no mistaking the man in the garments of a peasant, he with the great staff.

I had seen Marlenus of Ar.

13 — MIP

"I so not see how it could have happened," Nela was saying, bending over me as I lay sleepily on my stomach on the heavy striped piece of toweling, about the size of a blanket, her strong dutiful hands rubbing oils of the bath into by body.

"The daughter of Minus Tentius Hinrabius, if none other," said she, "should be safe."

I grunted, not too concerned.

Nela, like most of the others at the baths, could talk of little but the startling disappearance, and presumed abduction, of Claudia Tentia Hinrabia, the proud, spoiled daughter of the Administrator of the City. It seemed she had vanished from the central cylinder, in those portions of it devoted to the private quarters of the Administrator and his family and closer associates, almost under the very noses of Taurentian guardsmen. Saphronicus, Captain of the Taurentians, was reportedly, and understandably, beside himself with frustration and rage. He was organizing searches of the entire city and surrounding countryside, and gathering all possible reports which might bear on the case. The Administrator himself, with his consort, and many others of the high family, had locked themselves in their quarters, secluding themselves in their outrage and sorrow. The entire city was humming with the news and a hundred rumors ran rampant through the alleys and streets and on the bridges of Glorious Ar. On the roof of the Cylinder of Initiates the High Initiate, Complicius Serenus, offered sacrifice and prayer for the speedy return of the girl and, failing that, that she might be found slain, that she might not be reduced to the shames of slavery.

"Not so hard," I murmured to Nela.

"Yes, Master," she responded.

I supposed it quite probable that Claudia Hinrabia had been abducted, though it would not be the only possible explanation for her absence. The institution of capture is universal, to the best of my knowledge, on Gor; there is no city which does not honor it, provided the females captured are those of the enemy, either their free women or their slaves; it is often a young tarnsman's first mission, the securing of a female, preferably free, from an enemy city, to enslave, that his sisters may be relieved of the burden of serving him; indeed, his sisters often encourage him to be prompt in the capture of an enemy wench that their own tasks may be made lighter; when the young tarnsman, if successful, returns home from his capture flight, a girl bound naked across the saddle, his sisters welcome her with delight, and with great enthusiasm prepare her for the Feast of Collaring.

But I suspected that the lofty Claudia Hinrabia, of the Hinrabians, would not dance in pleasure silk at a Collaring Feast. Rather she would be returned for ransom. What puzzled me about the matter was that she had been abducted. It is one thing to drop a loop about a girl on a high bridge in streaking over the walls and quite another to pick up the daughter of an Administrator in her own quarters and make off with her. I knew the Taurentians to be skilled Warriors, wary and swift, and I would have thought the women of the Hinrabians would have been the safest of the city.

"Probably tomorrow," Nela was saying, "an offer of ransom will be made."

"Probably," I grunted.

Although I was sleepy from the swim and the oiling I was more concerned with the wondering about Marlenus of Ar, whom I had seen in the arcade of the races this afternoon. Surely he knew the danger in which he stood once within the environs of Ar? He would be slain in the city if discovered. I wondered what it was that would bring him to Glorious Ar.

I did not suppose that his appearance in Ar had anything to do with the disappearance of the Hinrabian girl because she would have been abducted about the same time that I had seen him in the arcade. Further, abducting a wench from the Hinrabians, if a rather arrogant gesture, would not have brought Marlenus closer to the throne of Ar, nor would it have much hurt the city. If Marlenus had wished to strike the Hinrabians he presumably would have flown his tarn to the central cylinder itself and cut his way to the throne of the Administrator. Marlenlus, I was confident, had nothing to do with the disappearance of the Hinrabian girl. But still I wondered what had brought him to the city.

"How much ransom do you think so great a woman would bring?" asked Nela.

"I don't know," I admitted. "Maybe the Hinrabian brick works," I ventured.

Nela laughed.

I felt her hands hard about my spine, and could sense her thought. "It would be amusing," said she, rather bitterly, "if whoever captured her would collar her, and keep her as a slave."

I rolled over and looked at Nela, and smiled.

"I forget myself, Master," said she, dropping her head.

Nela was a sturdy girl, a bit short. She had wrapped about her a piece of toweling. Her eyes were blue. She was a magnificent swimmer, strong and vital. Her blond hair was cut very short to protect it from the water; even so, in swimming, such girls often wrapped a long broad strap of glazed leather about their head, in a turban of sorts. Beneath the toweling Nela wore nothing; about her neck, rather than the common slave collar, she, like the other bath girls, wore a chain and plate. On her plate was the legend: I am Nela of the Capacian Baths. Pool of Blue Flowers. I cost one tarsk.

Nela was an expensive girl, though there were pools where the girls cost as much as a silver tarn disk. The tarsk is a silver coin, worth forty copper tarn disks. All the girls in the Pool of Blue Flowers cost the same, except novices in training who would go for ten or fifteen copper tarn disks. There were dozens of pools in the vast, spreading Capacian Baths. In some of the larger pools the girls went as cheaply as one copper tarn disk. For the fee one was entitled to use the girl as he wished for as long as he wished, his use, of course, limited by the hours of the pool's closing.

The first time I had seen Nela, several days ago, she had been playing in the pool alone, rolling about. It took but one glance and I dove into the water, swam to her, seized her by the ankle and dragged her under, kissing her, rolling about beneath the surface. I liked the lips and feel of her and when we broke the surface, she and I laughing, I asked her how much she went for. "For a tarsk," she laughed, and turned about, looking at me, "but you have to catch me first."

I knew this game of bath girls, as though they, mere slaves, would dare to truly flee from one who pursued them, and I laughed, and she, too, sensing my understanding, laughed. The girl commonly pretends to swim away but is outdistanced and captured. I knew that few men could, if a bath girl did not wish it, come close to them in the water. They spend much of the day in the water and, it is said, are more at ease in that element than the Cosian song fish.

"Look," I said, pointing to the far end of the curving pool, some hundred and fifty yards away, "if I do not catch you before you reach the edge you will have your freedom for the day."