Tribesmen of Gor (55 page)

I chuckled. She tossed her bead, angrily.

When I came to one of the narrow windows, not wide enough to admit the body of a man, facing the desert on the north, I lifted and lowered the lamp, and then did this once again. I blew out the lamp. I put it down. We stood in darkness, save for the moonlight at the window.

We heard the sentry's bar, on the wall, striking the twentieth hour.

"They will want me, Tarl, in the north tower," said Vella. "It is the Twentieth Hour."

"I think not," I said. I looked out over the desert. We heard the sentry's bar.

"When I do not appear, they will come for me. They may find you. Escape while you can."

I saw men, riders, pouring out of the desert.

"They await me in the north tower," she said.

"I think, in the north tower," I said, "They have other things now on their mind than a slave girl."

"I do not understand," she said.

I had paid a visit to the north tower, which commanded the north gate.

"The kasbah," I said, "will fall."

"The kasbah will never fall," said the girl. "There are water and supplies here for months. One man on the walls is worth ten in the desert. No force sufficient to invest the kasbah can be long maintained in its vicinity."

At the north gate, in the gate room, at the foot of the tower, ten guards struggled, come recently again to consciousness, finding themselves bound and gagged. Above the gate, in the tower itself, lay another ten.

We heard the last stroke of the bar. It was the Twentieth Hour.

"Flee!" whispered Vella. "Flee!"

The north gate, deplorably, perhaps, from the point of view of those within the kasbah, and surely from the point of view of the guards, had been left ajar.

"Flee!" said Vella.

"Look," I told her. I put my hand over her mouth, and held her to the window. I beard her gasp, and struggle. She squirmed. A girl within the kasbah, she was terrified at what she saw. Like any beautiful female, slave or free, she knew what it might portend for her. She tried to cry out. She could not do so. "Cry out, Slave Girl," I whispered. "Give the alarm." Her voice, beneath my large, heavy hand, was muffled. She moaned in misery. She was helpless. Her eyes were wild over my hand.

Riders streamed toward the kasbah. I saw the white burnoose of Hassan, swelling behind him, in their lead.

In a moment someone on the walls had seen the riders. There were shouts. The alarm bar, struck by its great hammer, began to ring madly. Men began to appear in the yard below. Men swarmed to the walls. But to their horror riders were already within the yard, fighting with defenders. Men leaped from their kaiila, climbing, scimitars flashing, up the narrow stairs, toward the walls. The enemy was within. The enemy was behind them. Riders streamed in through the gate, and, too, men afoot, running over the sand. The north gate had fallen. The north tower was theirs. More men entered, flooding within the walls of the kasbah. Defenders rushed forth. Everywhere there was swordplay, the ringing of steel, on bucklers. I saw torches. There was much shouting. I heard the crying out of men. I stepped back. I removed my hand from the mouth of the-slave girl. Vella looked at me, her eyes wide with horror.

"Cry out now, Slave Girl," I said. "Give the alarm."

"Why did you not let me cry out?" She asked. "They will kill us all!"

She had the instinctive fear of the girl of riders of the desert.

I turned her about, and thrust her before me, down the hall. "I am one of them," I told her. She moaned.

I could hear shouting in the kasbah. By the arm I thrust her again into the room where I had first found her, where there were the broad, scarlet tiles the vanity, the mirror, now a single tharlarion-oil lamp at the side of the mirror.

"You have returned for me," she said, pressing her body to mine, lifting her head. "I wanted you to come back for me. I dreamed that you would!"

I thrust her back. I could hear shouting outside. "I have come back for you," I told her.

"You love me!" she cried.

She cried out with misery when she saw my eyes.

"Then why?" she begged, piteously.

"I want you," I told her.

"You love me," she whispered.

"No," I said.

"I do not understand," she whispered.

"Foolish female of Earth," I laughed, "do you still understand so little of your incredible desirability? Do you not yet know that it drives men mad with desire to look upon you? Have you no sense, foolish woman, of the madness of passion the very sight of you inspires in men?"

She turned away. "I know that I am attractive," she said. Her voice was uncertain, frightened.

"You are an ignorant female," I said. "You do not know what the very sight of you does to men."

She spun to face me, her eyes flashing. "What does it do?" she demanded.

"To see you is to want you," I told her, "and to want you is to want to own you.

"Own!" she cried, in horror.

"Yes," I said. "Every man wants to own his woman, completely. He wants to have her in his absolute power. He wants to have absolute control over her, in every respect, however, minute. Dominance is genetically dispositional in his nature. Males are divided into those who satisfy their nature and those who do not. Males who satisfy their nature are vital and joyful, and, statistically, live long; those who deny their nature are miserable and, statistically, shorter lived, their tortured body chemistry falling prey frequently to hideous diseases."

"Men want women to be free!" said Vella.

"Men, sometimes," I said, "will accord small freedoms to women, thinking that these will make them more pleasing. Surely you are familiar with the master who, at certain moments, permits his girl to speak her mind. And at these moments she does so, well and boldly. But she knows that these permissions may, at his whim, be withdrawn. This torments her with joy, and she revels in his strength. He gives her what she most deeply desires, in the female genetic depth of her, the delicious feeling of her own domination, the subjection of her beauty and weakness to the will of a strong male."

"Men on Earth," she cried, "will be dethroned by law!"

"Earth has a complex and intricate political history," I said. "Policies and institutions, over hundreds of years, may have consequences unforeseen by their authors, consequences which would have horrified them. On Earth, men have succeeded in building a complicated trap from which they may perhaps be unable to escape. Perhaps they can shatter its bars. Perhaps, in the cage they themselves have built, they will merely languish and die."

Vella said nothing.

"Do you feel," I asked, "that the women of Earth are happier than those of Gor."

"No," she said. "No, no.

"Kneel," I said.

She knelt.

"On Gor," I asked, "who have been the happiest women you have known."

"Many of the happiest women I have known on Gor," she whispered, "have been mere slave girls."

"Man has a genetic disposition to dominance," I said. "This is doubted by no one qualified to form an opinion on the matter. It may, in certain circumstances, be politically expedient to deny this truth, but that is a separate question and involves separate issues."

"I do not doubt men have a disposition to dominate," said Vella. "But they must control this disposition."

"Tell a man not to breathe," I told her. "Tell his heart not to beat." I looked at her. "Tell a man not to be himself."

   
Vella looked at me, stricken.

"I know little of rights," I said, "for I am more accustomed to attending to realities, but permit me to ask you this question? Does a man have the right to be a man?"

"Of course," said Vella.

"What if," I asked, "in being a man, it was necessary to exercise the disposition for dominance?"

"Then," said Vella," no man has the right to be a man."

"What if," I asked, "in order to fulfill oneself as a woman, it was necessary, at least at crucial times, to be subject to the total domination of a male?"

"Then," said Vella, "no woman would have the right to be a woman."

"Under these circumstances outlined then," I said, "neither a man nor a woman would have the right to be themselves."

"Yes," said Vella.

"The circumstances I have outlined," I told her, "are reality. It is undeniable men have a genetic disposition to domination. Does it seem likely to you that this disposition could have been selected for in isolation?"

She looked at me, kneeling, not answering.

"Does it not seem likely that men and women, together, in a complementary fashion, forming a race, a kind of animal, Were conjointly shaped by the long, harsh application of evolutionary forces? Does it seem likely to you that biology would have shaped the man and neglected the woman?"

"No," said Vella. "It does not." She put her head down.

"Nature, in teaching man to dominate, has not faded to provide his victim."

Vella looked up, angrily.

"Luscious and beautiful women," I said. "And what must be the genetic dispositions of these women, beneath the overlays, the encrustations, the conditionings of impersonal, mechanistic, industrial societies, to which sex is an embarrassment and human beings a puzzle?"

"I do not know," she said.

"There is in them, perhaps," I suggested, "a disposition to respond to dominance, to yearn for it, to seek it out, to, by their behavior, beg for it, They try to control, but in their hearts, they yearn to be controlled, totally, for they are females."

"What you say goes against much of what I have been taught," said Vella.

"Do females," I asked, "wish to relate to strong or weak males?"

"Strong males," she said.

"Why would this be?" I asked.

She looked down, not answering. "What if, Tarl," she asked, "I should have these feelings, these terrible, unworthy feelings? What if I should, in my heart, desire domination by Men?"

"A healthy society," I said, "would make provision for the satisfaction of these feelings."

She looked up at me.

"Gorean society " I said, "makes provision for them. Surely you have heard of the relation of master and slave?"

"I have heard of it," she snapped.

"The most complete and perfect institution for the total domination of a woman is that of female slavery," I said. "How could a woman be more perfectly and completed dominated, more helpless, more dependent on a male, more vulnerable, more subject to a man's will, more at a man's mercy than to be literally his, an owned slave?" I looked at her. "Pretty Vella," I said, "to look at you is to want you, to want you is to want to own you, completely, every bit of you, to have you completely at one's mercy--completely."

 
"It is such lust," she wept. "It is such a complete and uncompromising desire. What could compare with it? I had not known such passion, such desire, could exist. It overwhelms me. I can scarcely breathe. And I am to be its helpless victim."

 
I heard men shouting, in the balls, not far from the door.

 
"No!" she wept, rising to her feet, trying to turn and run. I was on her in an instant and, taking her in my arms, put her on the floor, sitting. I took her wrists and, with the length of the tether, bent her forward and tied her wrists to her ankles. The end of the tether I knotted in and about the leather on her wrists, so that she would be unable to reach it, even with the fingers of one of her hands. I looked upon her. She sat, bound, the rag I had given her high about her thighs. She was incredibly desirable. She saw herself in the mirror. She could not rise, tied as she was, so she could not reach the other tharlation-oil lamp, high, hanging from a chain, at the side of the mirror.

"Free me!" she wept. "Free me!"

I checked the knots. They were satisfactory. She would be held perfectly.

There was the sound of scimitars clashing down the hall. "Am I not to be freed?" she asked.

On her left thigh, rather high, small and deep, was the sign of the four bosk horns. I fingered it. She recoiled. "Kamchak branded me," she said.

"What does it mean that you have bound me?" she asked.

I decided that I would have her rebranded.

She looked at me. I took a long set of strands of her dark hair, some inch and a half in thickness. I loosely knotted them at the right side of her cheek.

"The bondage knot," she whispered.

"This will mark you as having been taken," I said.

"Taken?" she asked. I stood up. She struggled. I strode from her, going toward the door.

"Tarl!" she cried.

I turned to face her.

"I love you!" she cried.

"You are a consummate actress," I told her.

"No!" she cried. "It is true!"

"It is of no interest to me whether it is true or not," I told her.

She looked at me, tears in her eyes, sitting, bound, the loosely looped bondage knot at the side of her face, at the right cheek.