Tribesmen of Gor (13 page)

 
    
We were moving through hilly country, with much scrub brush. There were many large rocks strewn about. Underfoot there was much dust and gravel.

 
    
On the shaded sides of some rocks, and the shaded slopes of hills, here and there, grew stubborn, brownish patches of verr grass. Occasionally we passed a water hole, and the tents of nomads. About some of these water holes there were a dozen or so small trees, flahdah trees, like hat-topped umbrellas on crooked sticks, not more than twenty feet high; they are narrow branched, with lanceolate leaves. About the water, little more than muddy, shallow ponds, save for the flahdahs, nothing grew; only dried, cracked earth, whitish and buckled, for a radius of more than a quarter of a pasang, could be found; what vegetation there might have been had been grazed off, even to the roots; one could place one's hand in the cracks in the earth; each crack adjoins others to constitute an extensive reticulated pattern; each square in this pattern is shallowly concave. The nomads, when camping at a watering place, commonly pitch their tent near a tree; this affords them shade; also they place and hang goods in the branches of the tree, using it for storage.

 
    
From time to time the caravan stopped and, boiling water over tiny fires, we made tea.

 
    
At a watering hole, from a nomad, I purchased Alyena a brief second-hand, black-and-white-striped, rep-cloth slave djellaba. It came high on her thighs. This was that she would have something in which to sleep. She was permitted to wear it only for sleep. I slept her at my feet. I taught her to pitch a tent, and cook, and perform many useful services for a man.

 
    
At night, when the caravan made camp, I would lift Alyena from the kurdah, and, sweeping her across the saddle and lowering her, drop her to her feet in the gravel.

 
    
"Find Aya," I would tell her. "Beg her to put you to work." Aya was one of the slave women of Farouk.

 
    
Once she had dared to say to me, "But Aya makes me do all her work!"

 
    
I kicked the kaiila toward her, and she was buffeted from her feet rolling in the gravel, and then lay, hands shielding her face, on her back beneath the very paws of the beast, it hissing and stamping, scratching at the gravel about her.

     
"Hurry!" I told her.

 
    
She scrambled to her feet, and fled to Aya. "I hurry, Master!" she cried. Inadvertently, she had cried in Gorean. I was pleased.

 
Of course Aya exploited her. It was my intention that she should. But, too, Aya, with her kaiila strap, continued her lessons in Gorean. Too, she taught her skills useful to a Tahari female, the making of ropes from kaiila hair, the cutting and plaiting of reins, the weaving of cloth and mats, the decoration and beading of leather goods, the use of the mortar and pestle, the use of the grain quern, the preparation and spicing of stews, the cleaning of verr and, primarily when we camped near watering holes in the vicinity of nomads, the milking of verr and kaiila. Too, she was taught the churning of milk in skin bags.

 
    
"She is making me learn the labors of a free woman," once had complained Alyena to me.

 
    
I had gestured her to her knees. "You are a poor sort," L told her. "To a nomad I may sell you. In his tent the heavy labors of the free woman will doubtless be yours, in addition to the labors of a slave."

     
"I would have to work as a free woman," she whispered, "and yet be also a slave?"

     
"Yes," I said.

     
She shuddered. "Sell me to a rich man," she begged.

     
"I will sell you, or give you, or loan you, or rent you," I said, "to whomsoever I please."

     
"Yes, Master," she said, angrily.

 
    
At night, around the campfire, I knelt her behind me, her wrists braceleted behind her. By hand I fed her. On me she depended for her food.

 
    
I listened to the caravan bells. I pulled the burnoose down about my face, shading my eyes.

 
    
The movements of the men of the Tahari are, during the hours of heat, usually slow, almost languid or graceful. They engage in little unnecessary movement. They do not, if they can help it, overheat themselves. They sweat as little as possible, which conserves body fluid. Their garments are loose and voluminous, yet closely woven. The outer garment when in caravan, usually the burnoose, is almost invariably white. This color reflects the rays of the sun. The looseness of the garments, acting as a bellows in movement, circulates air about the body, which air, circulating, over the damp skin, cools the body by evaporation: the close weave of the garment is to keep the moisture and water, as much as possible, within the garment, preferably condensing back on the skin. There are two desiderata, which are crucial in these matters; the first is to minimize perspiration: the second is to retain as much moisture, lost through perspiration, as is possible on the body.

     
I was growing drowsy, lulled by the bells, the even gait of the kaiila.

 
    
On a rise, pushing back the burnoose, I stood in my stirrups and looked back. I saw the end of the caravan, more than a pasang away. It wound, slowly, gracefully, through the hills. At its very end came a man on a single kaiila. From time to time, he dismounted, gathering shed kaiila hair and thrusting it in bags at his saddle. The kaiila, unlike the verr and hurt, is never sheared. When it sheds its hair, however, the hair may be gathered, and, depending on the hair, various cloths can be made from it. There is a soft, fine hair, the most prized, which grows on the belly of the animal; there is an undercoating of hair, soft but coarser, which is used for most cloth; and there are the long, outer hairs. These, though still soft and pliant, are, comparatively, the most coarse. The hairs of this coat are used primarily for rope and tent cloth.

     
I scanned the horizon. I saw nothing.

 
    
Once more I lowered myself into the saddle. Again I drew the hood of the burnoose about my face. I shut my eyes against the reflection of the sun from the dust, the gravel and rocks. I removed my slippers after a time, and thrust them under the girth strap. I put my feet against the neck of the kaiila.

     
I listened to the kaiila bells.

 
    
Alyena was learning Gorean quickly. This pleased me. When I had picked her up at the pens of Tor, she had been there for fourteen days, almost three Gorean weeks. I had asked, of course, for a report on her from the slave master, who had consulted his records. She had been placed, of course, as I had requested, in a stimulation chamber; the first five nights the rope harness had been used, as I had specified; it had not been used thereafter for discipline, however, as the girl had been cooperative and diligent; furthermore, her attention and efforts were such that it had not been deemed necessary either to deny her food or put her under the whip; she had not been starved; she had not been lashed.

 
    
The first Gorean words the Earth girl had been taught, and she had learned them in the pens of Samos of Port Kar, were "La Kajira," which means, "I am a slave girl."

 
    
"The barbarian," said the slave master, "is highly intelligent, as the intelligence of females goes, but, strangely, her body is stupid; its muscles seem locked together."

     
"Have you heard of Earth?" I asked.

 
    
"Yes," he said. "I have heard of it." He looked at me. "Is there truly such a place," he asked.

     
"Yes." I told him.

     
"I had thought it might be mythical," he said.

     
"No," I told him.

     
"I have had girls in the pens." he said, "who have claimed to have been from there. Some have begged me to return them to Earth."

     
"What did you do with them?" I asked.

     
"I whipped them," he said, "and they were silent. Interestingly, I have never had a girl who claimed to be from Earth, who had been fully owned, who wished to return. Indeed, it is enough merely to threaten such 1 girl with return to Earth to make them do anything." He smiled. "They love their collars."

 
    
"Only in a collar can a woman be truly free." I said. It was a Gorean saying. History on Earth, long ago, had taken a turning away from the body, from nature, from the needs of men and women, from genetically linked psyche-biological realities; this turning away, ultimately and inevitably, had produced an unloved, exploited, polluted planet swarming with miserable populations of unhappy, petty, self-seeking, frustrated animals, the human being of Earth had no Home Stone; this turning away had never taken place on the planet Gor.

 
    
"The girl, then," said the slave master, referring to Alyena, "is an Earth girl."

     
"Yes," I said, "she is an Earth girl, brought here, like many others, by slave ship."

     
"Interesting," he said.

 
    
"Over several years," I said, "entire sets of her muscles have become habituated to moving in mechanistic, conjoint patterns, like the parts of machines, other muscles, perhaps partly atrophied, were not used at all."

 
    
"We have subjected her to an intense exercise program," said the man, "but we have had little success. She does not yet feel as a female, so she does not yet move as a female. I think she does not yet know what it is to be a female."
   
"That," I said, "she will learn from a man."

     
"Are all the women of Earth like that?" asked the man.

     
"Many," I said, "not all."

     
"It must be a dreary place," said the man.

     
"On Earth," I said, "women try to be identical with men."

     
"Why should that be?" asked the man.

     
"Perhaps because there are few men," I said.

     
"The male population is small?" he asked.

     
"There are many males," I said, "but few men."

     
"I find this hard to understand," said the slave master.

     
I smiled. "The distinction," I said, "makes little sense to a Gorean."

     
He shrugged.

 
    
"I do not blame the males," I said, "nor the females. Both are fellow victims. In virtue of historical factors, social, institutional and technological, having to do with the development of a given world, the male, from the cradle, is programmed with antimasculine values, taught to distrust his instincts, to hate and fear them, and, ideally, to revel in his de-masculinization. He lives miserably, of course, unfulfilled, frustrated, subject to hideous diseases, and has little to console himself with other than the ignorant servility with which he has worn his chains, taking smug, righteous pride in his allegiance to them."

     
"On such a world, then, women have won?" asked the man.

     
"No," I said, "the machine has won. Women, too, have lost."

     
"Surely, someday on Earth," said the man, "the males will dare to be men?"

     
"I do not think so," I said, "save for rare individuals. The process of teaching, unconscious, subtle, pervasive, is too effective. It is not unusual for a woman to fear her womanhood; what is less generally recognized is that many men fear their own manhood; they conceal their blood; they pretend it does not exist; it is even dangerous, in such a society, to suggest that men consider honesty in such matters, to suggest that they dare to be men, to suggest that they might, if they wished, tear away their own chains. The weakest, the most trapped among them, are often the first, with hysteria, knowing they themselves are not strong enough to take their rightful freedoms, and envying others they fear might have the strength, to denounce such modest suggestions."

     
"The weak," said the man, "are always those who fear the strong."

     
"They fear, not strangely, a world in which not everyone is like themselves."

     
"Let all be weak, for I am weak," smiled the man.

     
"Yes, "I said.

     
"And what of the women?" asked the man.

     
"They attempt to imitate the masculinity they do not find in men," I said.

     
"Grotesque," said the man.