Magicians of Gor

28 The Room

I lay on a blanket, in the small room, in the insula of Torbon, on Demetrios Street, in the Metellan district.

Outside, the city was generally quiet.

I looked up at the darkness of the ceiling.

It must have been in the neighborhood of the twelfth Ahn. By now, Milo and Lavinia must have left the city. Too, Boots Tarsk-Bit, with his troupe, would be on his way north, perhaps on the Viktel Aria. Somewhere, hidden among their belongings, would be an obscure item, a seeming oddity, a stone. To look at it one might not know it from many other stones. And yet it was different from all other stones; it was special. I wondered about the Home Stones of Gor. Many seem small and quite plain. Yet for these stones, and on account of these stones, these seemingly inauspicious, simple objects, cities have been built, and burned, armies have clashed, strong men have wept, empires have risen and fallen. The simplicity of many of these stones has puzzled me. I have wondered sometimes how it is that they have become invested with such import. They may, of course, somewhat simply, be thought of as symbolizing various things, and perhaps different things to different people. They can stand, for example, for a city, and, indeed, are sometimes identified with the city. They, have some affinity, too, surely, with territoriality and community. Even a remote hut, far from the paved avenues of a town or city, may have a Home Stone, and therein, in the place of his Home Stone, is the meanest beggar or the poorest peasant a Ubar. The Home Stone says this place is mine, this is my home. I am here. But I think, often, that it is a mistake to try to translate the Home Stone into meanings. It is not a word, or a sentence. It does not really translate. It is, more like a tree, or the world. It exists, which goes beyond, which surpasses, meaning. In this primitive sense the Home Stone is simply that, and irreducibly, the Home Stone. It is too important, too precious, to mean. And in not meaning, it becomes, of course, the most meaningful of all. It becomes, in a sense, the foundation of meaning, and, for Goreans, it is anterior to meaning, and precedes meaning. Do not ask a Gorean what the Home Stone means because he will not understand your question. It will puzzle him. It is the Home Stone.

Sometimes I think that many Home Stones are so simple because they are too important, too precious, to be insulted with decoration or embellishment. And then, too, sometimes I think that they are kept, on the whole, so simple, because this is a way of saying that everything is important, and precious, and beautiful, the small stones by the river, the leaves of tress, the tracks of small animals, a blade of grass, a drop of water, a grain of sand, the world. The word «Gor», in Gorean, incidentally, means "Home Stone'. Their name for our common sun, Sol, is «Tor-tu-Gor» which means "Light upon the Home Stone', A wagon trundled by. I heard the snort of a tharlarion. There were not so many wagons now. There was less need. Ar was by now muchly looted, stripped of her gold and silver, her precious items, even of many of her women and slaves. The wagon, at any rate, would be some sort of official carrier, or licensed, or authorized, as such. It was after curfew.

I thought of a slave. Tonight would not be a comfortable night for her, or, I supposed, the better part of tomorrow. I had already arranged that a sealed message, conveyed by courier, would reach the Central Cylinder tomorrow, after the tenth Ahn. I wondered if she had been yet missed. Quite possibly. If not now, surely by morning, when her women would arrive for her robing, her bathing, the breaking of her fast, her morning audiences. How frantic would then be the Central Cylinder. Well could I imagine Seremides storming about, striking subordinates, denouncing his staff, threatening his officers, and all Ar, overturning furniture, tearing down hangings, picking up the pen, putting it down again, spilling ink, shouting orders, rescinding them, issuing them again, demanding that word not be sent to the camp of Myron, not yet, not yet. How eagerly they would seize on any clue. How swiftly, how desperately, would the simple message be received, specifying her location. They would rush there and find she whom they took to be their Ubara chained in place, as though she might now be no more than someone's mere slave girl. How they would rejoice upon her recovery, and would hasten to cover her, and send for one of the metal workers, to relieve her of her effective, shameful bonds. They would then convey her back to the Central Cylinder, secretly, that none in Ar might know what had occurred. She would then, within an Ahn or two, be restored to the role of the Ubara, and perhaps even be seated again upon the throne. I wondered if she would be uneasy, or perhaps even terrified, realizing the folly in which she was now enmeshed, daring to ascend the dais, not to lie on its steps as a half naked slave, collared, at a Ubar's feet, an item of display, but to sit upon the throne itself. Surely she must be aware of the presumption of this act, of the insolence, and fearful peril, of it. One could scarcely dare conjecture the punishments which might be attendant upon it, she only a slave. Well must she be concerned to keep her bondage secret. Yet she must know that some in Ar would know that secret, that some would even have access to the papers involved in its proof.

I heard someone outside down in the street, doubtless a guardsman, cry, "Halt! Halt!" There was then the sound of running feet. Guardsmen in the Metallan district, as now in Ar, generally, went in pairs. Some fellows, I gathered, had been spotted, violating the curfew.

No, the slave would not spend a comfortable night, lying on the flat flooring stones, naked, her wrists chained closely to her ankles, kept in place by a neck chain, fastened to a floor ring. It would be something of a change for her, from the comforts, and cushions, of the Ubara's couch. But I thought this might be good for her. Long ago, when she had been the slave of Rask of Treve, she had been, I gathered, treated as something rather special, kept less as a slave than as a free woman kept, for his amusement, in the shame of slave garb. There, I gathered, she had been kept more as a prize, or trophy, than a slave. She there, though certainly technically in bondage, had, it seems, been pampered. That did not displease me. Let this night, however, teach her what can be the lot of a more common girl, such as she was.

I looked up at the ceiling.

I did not think she would forget this first night in my keeping.

I smiled to myself.

Let her sit again upon the throne of Ar. Beneath the robes of the Ubara, in all their beauty, complexity and ornateness, she would be no more than my naked slave.

I heard a sound outside, on the stairs.

I thought that perhaps she might, in time, tend to forget that she was now a slave and come again, on the whole, to think of herself as Ubara of Ar. On the other hand, surely, from time to time, perhaps in an uneasy or frightening moment, she would recollect that she was my slave. Sometimes at night, I did not doubt, she would start at some small noise, and lie there in the darkness, wondering if she were alone. Or perhaps I had come for my slave, with gag and bonds, to claim her.

I considered Ar, and its condition. I thought of the delta of the Vosk, and the disaster which had occurred there, and of the veterans returned from the delta. How angry I was, even though I was not of Ar, that they had, for all their loyalty and sacrifice, for all their service, courage and devotion, received little but scorn and neglect from their compatriots, a scorn and neglect engineered by factions hoping to profit from the perversities of such politics, using them to further their own ends, among these ends being to put Ar and those of Ar into a condition of even greater weakness and confusion, to undermine their will and sap their pride, to put Ar and those of Ar even more at the mercy of their enemies. And interestingly, it seemed that many of Ar, particularly the young, the less experienced, the more gullible, the more innocent, and, too, perhaps, the most fearful of hardship, responsibility and danger, and their attendant risks, those accustomed to such things, those who had always received and never given, those who had never sacrificed anything, were among those most ready to lap up the sops of Cos, clinging to excuses for their cowardice, indeed, commending their lack of courage as a new virtue, a new, and improved, convenient courage. Yet how unfair was this to the perceptive young, piercing the propaganda, scorning the public boards, recognizing without being told what was being done to them and their city, smarting with shame, burning with indignation, recollective of Ar's glory, the young in whom flowed the blood of their fathers, and the hope of the city's future. Perhaps there was not, after all, young and old, but rather those who were ready to work and serve, and those who were not, those who preferred to profit from the work and service of others, risking nothing, contributing nothing. But even so, how odd, I thought, that those who did not wade in the delta, facing the arrows of rencers, the spears of Cos, the teeth of tharlarion, should profess their superiority over those who did, indeed, by their work and service sheltering and protecting those who, obedient to the subtleties of Cos, heaped ridicule and abuse upon them. Why did such men return to such as Ar, one so unworthy of them? Because it was there that was their Home Stone. But the veterans now, within Ar, were a force. Indeed, Cos must now try anew to demean them, to undermine their influence, to once more turn people against them. Perhaps it could be done. Perhaps it was only necessary to cloak the ends of Cos in moral rhetorics. That had worked in the past. Perhaps it would work in the future. Those who control the public boards, it is said, control the city. But I was not sure of this. Goreans are not stupid. It is difficult to fool them more than once.

They tend to remember. To be sure, Cos could certainly count on those who regarded their best interests as being served by Cosian rule, and many of these were highly placed in the city, even in the Central Cylinder. Too, the conditionings of Cos, verbal, visual and otherwise, surely would not be entirely ineffective. Such programs produce their puppets, legions of creatures convinced of values they have never reflected on, or examined in detail. There would always be the dupes, of one sort or another, and the opportunists, and the cowards, with their rationalizations. But, too, I speculated, there would be those of Ar to whom the Home Stone was a Home Stone, and not a mere rock, not a piece of meaningless earth. And so I thought of Ar under the yoke of Cos, and of hope, and pride, and of the Delta Brigade. I thought, too, of the mercenary might that held Ar oppressed. I though of Seremides, whom I had known as long ago as the time of Cernus. I had spoken boldly to the slave in the room, but who knew what the future held. I wondered, too, of Marlenus of Ar, doubtless slain in the Voltai range, in his punitive raid against Treve, doubtless his bones lay now in some remote canyon in the Voltai, picked by jards. Else what force, what might of man or nature, could have kept him from the walls of Ar?

There was now a small sound, outside the room. I had heard the creak of boards on the landing.

I lay very quietly.

The weight was now outside the door.

I rolled to the side and reached for the knife beside the blankets. I located it. I removed the knife from the sheath, putting it beside the sheath. I wrapped the blanket about my left forearm. I picked up the knife. I rose quietly to my feet. I did not think I would care to be the first person through the door. There was no light beneath the door, so whoever was outside was not carrying a lamp. I did not stand directly behind the door. The metal bolt of a crossbow, fired at close range, some inches from the other side of the door, that light a door, a sort not uncommon in the poorly built insulae of the Metallan district, could splinter through and bury itself in the opposite wall.

I heard the handle of the door, a lever handle, fixed crosswise in the door, move.

It moved only a little, of course, as the bolt was thrown, the lock peg in place. Two crossbars, too, had been set across the door, in their brackets, one about the height of a man's chest, the other about the height of his thighs. The door was thus both locked and barred. It would have to be burst in, breaking loose the brackets from the wall on my side. Normally this sort of thing is done with two or three men, one or two trying to burst in the door, in one attack upon it, and the other following immediately, armed, to strike. Yet I was sure there was only one man on the other side of the door.

I then heard a tapping, softly, on the other side of the door.

I did not respond.

I waited.

Then, after a pause, there came four taps together. This was repeated, at intervals.

I was startled.

I discarded the blanket. I put the knife in my belt. I pulled loose the lock peg. I lifted the two bars from the door. I stepped back. The door opened. "It is safe to come in, I trust," said a voice.

"Yes," I said. I myself might have been similarly reluctant to enter a dark room in an insula, late at night.

"I was careless," he said. "I was seen by guardsmen."

"Come inside," I said.

"I managed to elude them," he said. "I took to the roofs. They are searching to the west."

"What are you doing here? I asked.

"I was not sure you would still be here," he said.

"I did not think it would be wise to suddenly change my residence," I said.

"I trust you can afford the rent on your single salary?" said the voice. I fumbled with a lamp, lighting it.

There had been, after the first knocking, alerting the occupants of the room, taps in groups of four. The fourth letter in the Gorean alphabet is the delka. "Why have you come back?" I asked.

"I never went," he said.

"Where is Phoebe?" I asked.

"Back-braceleted, hooded, and chained by the neck to the back of one of the wagons of your friend, Tarsk-Bit," he said.

"She thinks you are with them, too, then?" I said.

"She will discover differently in the morning," he said.

"She will wish to come after you," I said.

"She is a female," he said. "Chains will keep her where I wish."

"She will be distraught," I said.

"The lash can silence her," he said.

"You are crying," I said. The lamp was now lit.

"It is the smoke from the lamp," he said.

"Of course," I said.

"She will be kept under exact discipline and in perfect custody," he said. "I have given orders to that effect. Moreover, if she is troublesome in any way, she is to be sold enroute for a pittance, the only condition being that her new master is neither of Ar, nor has dealings with that city. Her only hope then to see me again, if she should wish to do so, is to accompany Boots Tarsk-Bit and his party in perfect docility to Port Cos."

"I am sorry for her," I said.

"Do not be," he said. "She is only a slave."

"What will you do for a slave?" I asked.

He was a Gorean male.

"Doubtless there are other sluts in Ar," he said.

"Doubtless," I said.

"Is there anything to eat?" he asked.

"Some bread," I said, indicating a wrapper to one side.

He attacked the bread.

"It seems the lamp is still smoking," I said.

"I hadn't noticed," he said.

"You came to Ar to recover the Home Stone of Ar's Station," I said. "You have done so. Your work here is finished. You should go back to Port Cos."

"I do not think my presence with the troupe of Tarsk-Bit would make much difference," he said.

"Nonetheless," I said, "your work here is finished."

"You have acquired the female for whom you came to Ar," he said. "She is now your slave. Indeed, you could go fetch her now, from where she lies, chained and helpless. You could get her out of the city. You could carry her off. But you did not choose to do so. Rather you are letting her go."

"I look upon it differently," I said. "I look more upon it as giving her, for a time, the run of her tether."

"You finished your work in Ar," he said. "Why have you not left, taking your slave with you, if you wished?"

"She is not important," I said. "She is a mere slave girl."

"But you came to Ar for her," he said. "And you let her maneuver herself perfectly, and helplessly, into your hands. It was a coup. She is yours."

"I think that I shall stay in Ar, for a time," I said.

"Why?" he asked. "You are not of Ar."

"Why have you come back?" I asked. "Are you so fond of Ar?"

"I hate Ar," he said.

"Why, then, have you returned?" I asked.

"Because you are still here," he said.

"I, too, am hungry," I said.

He tore off a piece of bread. "Here," he said.

"I am grateful, Marcus, my friend," I said.

"It is nothing," he said.

We then, in the light of the small lamp, ate together.