Priest-Kings of Gor Page 4

  She knelt beside the platform.

  Beside her, on the floor, rested a laver of polished bronze, filled with water, a towel and a straight-bladed Gorean shaving knife.

  I rubbed my chin.

  She had shaved me as I slept.

  I shivered, thinking of the blade and my throat. "Your touch is light," I said.

  She bowed her head.

  She wore a long, simple sleeveless white robe, which fell gracefully about her in dignified classic folds. About her throat she had gracefully wrapped a scarf of white silk.

  "I am Vika," she responded, "your slave."

  I sat upright, cross-legged in the Gorean fashion, on the stone platform. I shook my head to clear it of sleep.

  The girl rose and carried the bronze laver to a drain in one corner of the room and emptied it.

  She walked well.

  She then moved her hand past a glass disk in the wall and water emerged from a concealed aperture and curved into the shallow bowl. She rinsed the bowl and refilled it, and then took another towel of soft linen from a carved chest against the wall. She then again approached the stone platform and knelt before me, lifting the bowl. I took it and first drank from it and then set it on the stone platform before me, and washed. I wiped my face with the towel. She then gathered up the shaving knife, the towels I had used, and the bowl and went again to one side of the room.

  She was very graceful, very lovely.

  She rinsed the bowl again and set it against the wall to drain dry. She then rinsed and dried the shaving knife and put it in one of the chests. Then with a motion of her hand, which did not touch the wall, she opened a small, circular panel into which she dropped the two towels which I had used. When they had disappeared the circular panel closed.

  She then returned into the vicinity of the stone platform, and knelt again before me, though some feet away.

  We studied one another.

  Neither spoke.

  Her back was very straight and, kneeling, she rested back on her heels. In her eyes there seemed to burn an irritable fury of helpless rage. I smiled at her, but she did not smile back but looked away, angrily.

  When she looked again my eyes fixed on hers and we looked into one another's eyes for a long time until her lip trembled and her eyes fell before mine.

  When she raised her head again I curtly gestured her nearer.

  A look of angry defiance flashed in her eyes, but she rose to her feet and slowly approached me, and knelt beside the stone platform. I, still remaining cross-legged on the platform, reached forward and took her head in my hands, drawing it to mine. She knelt now but no longer on her heels and her face was brought forward and lifted to mine. The sensuous lips parted slightly and I became acutely conscious of her breathing, which seemed to deepen and quicken. I removed my hands from her head but she left it where I had placed it. I slowly unwrapped the white, silken scarf from her throat.

  Her eyes seemed to cloud with angry tears.

  As I had expected about her white throat there was fastened, graceful and gleaming, the slender, close-fitting collar of a Gorean slave girl.

  It was a collar like most others, of steel, secured with a small, heavy lock which closed behind the girl's neck.

  "You see," said the girl, "I did not lie to you."

  "Your demeanor," I said, "does not suggest that of a slave girl."

  She rose to her feet and backed away, her hands at the shoulders of her robe. "Nonetheless," she said, "I am a slave girl." She turned away. "Do you wish to see my brand?" she asked, contemptuously.

  "No," I said.

  So she was a slave girl.

  But on her collar there was not written the name of her owner and his city, as I would have expected. Instead I had read there only the Gorean numeral which would correspond to 708.

  "You may do with me what you please," said the girl, turning to face me. "As long as you are in this room I belong to you."

  "I don't understand," I said.

  "I am a Chamber Slave," she said.

  "I don't understand," I said.

  "It means," she said, irritably, "that I am confined to this room, and that I am the slave of whoever enters the room."

  "But surely you can leave," I protested.

  I gestured to the massive portal which, empty of a door or gate, led only too clearly into the corridor beyond.

  "No," she said bitterly, "I cannot leave."

  I arose and walked through the portal and found myself in a long stone passageway beyond it which stretched as far as I could see in either direction. It was lit with energy bulbs. In this passageway, placed regularly but staggered from one another, about fifty yards apart, were numerous portals like the one I had just passed through. From within any given room, one could not look into any other. None of these portals were hung with doors or gates, nor as far as I could see had they ever been hinged.

  Standing in the passageway outside the room I extended my hand to the girl. "Come," I said, "there is no danger."

  She ran to the far wall and crouched against it. "No," she cried.

  I laughed and leaped into the room.

  She crawled and stumbled away, for some reason terrified, until she found herself in the stone corner of the chamber.

  She shrieked and clawed at the stone.

  I gathered her in my arms and she fought like a she-larl, screaming. I wanted to convince her that there was no danger, that her fears were groundless. Her fingernails clawed across my face.

  I was angered and I swept her from her feet so that she was helpless in my arms.

  I began to carry her toward the portal.

  "Please," she whispered, her voice hoarse with terror. 'Please, Master, no, no, Master!"

  She sounded so piteous that I abandoned my plan and released her, though I was irritated by her fear.

  She collapsed at my feet, shaking and whimpering, and put her head to my knee.

  "Please, no, Master," she begged.

  "Very well," I said.

  "Look!" she said, pointing to the great threshold.

  I looked but I saw nothing other than the stone sides of the portal and on each side three rounded red domes, of perhaps four inches width apiece.

  "They are harmless," I said, for I had passed them with safety. To demonstrate this I again left the chamber.

  Outside the chamber, carved over the portal, I saw something I had not noted before. In Gorean notation, the numeral 708 was carved above the door. I now understood the meaning of the numeral on the girl's collar. I reentered the chamber. "You see," I said, "they are harmless."

  "For you," she said, "not for me."

  "Why not?" I asked.

  She turned away.

  "Tell me," I said.

  She shook her head.

  "Tell me," I repeated, more sternly.

  She looked at me. "Am I commanded?" she asked.

  I did not wish to command her. "No," I said.

  "Then," said she, "I shall not tell you."

  "Very well," I said, "then you are commanded."

  She looked at me through her tears and fear, with sudden defiance.

  "Speak, Slave," I said.

  She bit her lip with anger.

  "Obey," I said.

  "Perhaps," she said.

  Angrily I strode to her and seized her by the arms. She looked up into my eyes and shivered. She saw that she must speak. She lowered her head in submission. "I obey," she said. "—Master."

  I released her.

  Again she turned away, going to the far wall.

  "Long ago," she said, "when I first came to the Sardar and found the Hall of Priest-Kings, I was a young and foolish girl. I thought that the Priest-Kings possessed great wealth and that I, with my beauty—" she turned and looked at me and threw back her head—"for I am beautiful, am I not?"

  I looked at her. And though her face was stained with the tears of her recent terror and her hair and robes were disarranged, she was beautiful, perhaps the more so beca
use of her distress, which had at least shattered the icy aloofness with which she had originally regarded me. I knew that she now feared me, but for what reason I was uncertain. It had something to do with the door, with her fear that I might force her from the room.

  "Yes," I said to her, "you are beautiful."

  She laughed bitterly.

  "Yes," she continued, "I, armed with my beauty, would come to the Sardar and wrest the riches and power of the Priest-Kings from them, for men had always sought to serve me, to give me what I wanted, and were the Priest-Kings not men?"

  People had strange reasons for entering the Sardar, but the reason of the girl who called herself Vika seemed to me one of the most incredible. It was a plot which could have occurred only to a wild, spoiled, ambitious, arrogant girl, and perhaps as she had said, to one who was also young and foolish.

  "I would be the Ubara of all Gor," she laughed, "with Priest-Kings at my beck and call, at my command all their riches and their untold powers!"

  I said nothing.

  "But when I came to the Sardar—" She shuddered. Her lips moved, but she seemed unable to speak.

  I went to her and placed my arms about her shoulders, and she did not resist.

  "There," she said, pointing to the small rounded domes set in the sides of the portal.

  "I don't understand," I said.

  She moved from my arms and approached the portal. When she was within perhaps a yard of the exit the small red domes began to glow.

  "Here in the Sardar," she said, turning to face me, trembling, "they took me into the tunnels and locked over my head a hideous metal globe with lights and wires and when they freed me they showed me a metal plate and told me that the patterns of my brain, of my oldest and most primitive memories, were recorded on that plate..."

  I listened intently, knowing that the girl could, even if of High Caste, understand little of what had happened to her. Those of the High Castes of Gor are permitted by the Priest-Kings only the Second Knowledge, and those of the lower castes are permitted only the more rudimentary First Knowledge. I had speculated that there would be a Third Knowledge, that reserved for Priest-Kings, and the girl's account seemed to justify this conjecture. I myself would not understand the intricate processes involved in the machine of which she spoke but the purpose of the machine and the theoretical principles that facilitated its purpose were reasonably clear. The machine she spoke of would be a brain-scanner of some sort which would record three-dimensionally the microstates of her brain, in particular those of the deeper, less alterable layers. If well done, the resulting plate would be more individual than her fingerprints; it would be as unique and personal as her own history; indeed, in a sense, it would be a physical model of that same history, an isomorphic analog of her past as she had experienced it.

  "That plate," she said, "is kept in the tunnels of the Priest-Kings, but these—" and she shivered and indicated the rounded domes, which were undoubtedly sensors of some type, "are its eyes."

  "There is a connection of some sort, though perhaps only a beam of some type, between the plate and these cells," I said, going to them and examining them.

  "You speak strangely," she said.

  "What would happen if you were to pass between them?" I asked.

  "They showed me," she said, her eyes filled with horror, "by sending a girl between them who had not done her duty as they thought she should."

  Suddenly I started. "They?" I asked.

  "The Priest-Kings," she replied simply.

  "But there is only one Priest-King," I said, "who calls himself Parp."

  She smiled but did not respond to me. She shook her head sadly. "Ah, yes, Parp," she said.

  I supposed at another time there might have been more Priest-Kings. Perhaps Parp was the last of the Priest-Kings? Surely it seemed likely that such massive structures as the Hall of Priest-Kings must have been the product of more than one being.

  "What happened to the girl?" I asked.

  Vika flinched. "It was like knives and fire," she said.

  I now understood why she so feared to leave the room.

  "Have you tried shielding yourself?" I asked, looking at the bronze laver which was drying against the wall.

  "Yes," she said, "but the eye knows." She smiled ruefully. "It can see through metal."

  I looked puzzled.

  She went to the side of the room and picked up the bronze laver. Holding it before her as though to shield her face she approached the portal. Once more the rounded domes began to glow.

  "You see," she said, "it knows. It can see through metal."

  "I see," I said.

  I silently congratulated the Priest-Kings on the efficacy of their devices. Apparently the rays which must emanate from the sensors, rays not within that portion of the spectrum visible to the human eye, must possess the power to penetrate at least common molecular structures, something like an X ray pierces flesh.

  Vika glared at me sullenly. "I have been a prisoner in this room for nine years," she said.

  "I am sorry," I said.

  "I came to the Sardar," she laughed, "to conquer the Priest-Kings and rob them of their riches and power!"

  She ran to the far wall, suddenly breaking into tears. Facing it she pounded on it weeping.

  She spun to face me.

  "And instead," she cried, "I have only these walls of stone and the steel collar of a slave girl!"

  She helplessly, enraged, tried to tear the slender, graceful, obdurate band from her white throat. Her fingers tore at it in frenzy, in fury, and she wept with frustration, and at last she desisted. Of course she still wore the badge of her servitude. The steel of a Gorean slave collar is not made to be removed at a girl's pleasure.

  She was quiet now.

  She looked at me, curiously. "At one time," she said, "men sought to please me but now it is I who must please them."

  I said nothing.

  Her eyes regarded me, rather boldly I thought, as though inviting me to exercise my authority over her, to address to her any command I might see fit, a command which she of course would have no choice but to obey.

  There was a long silence I did not feel I should break. Vika's life, in its way, had been hard, and I wished her no harm.

  Her lips curled slightly in scorn.

  I was well aware of the taunt of her flesh, the obvious challenge of her eyes and carriage.

  She seemed to say to me, you cannot master me.

  I wondered how many men had failed.

  With a shrug she went to the side of the sleeping platform and picked up the white, silken scarf I had removed from her throat. She wrapped it again about her throat, concealing the collar.

  "Do not wear the scarf," I said gently.

  Her eyes sparkled with anger.

  "You wish to see the collar," she hissed.

  "You may wear the scarf if you wish," I said.

  Her eyes clouded with bewilderment.

  "But I do not think you should," I said.

  "Why?" she asked.

  "Because I think that you are more beautiful without it," I said, "but more importantly to hide a collar is not to remove it."

  Rebellious fire flared in her eyes, and then she smiled. "No," she said, "I suppose not." She turned away bitterly. "When I am alone," she said, "I pretend that I am free, that I am a great lady, the Ubara of a great city, even of Ar—but when a man enters my chamber, then again I am only a slave." She slowly pulled the scarf from her throat and dropped it to the floor, and turned to face me. She lifted her head arrogantly and I saw that the collar was very beautiful on her throat.

  "With me," I said gently, "you are free."

  She looked at me scornfully. "There have been a hundred men in this chamber before you," she said, "and they have taught me—and taught me well—that I wear a collar."

  "Nonetheless," I said, "with me you are free."

  "And there will be a hundred after you," she said.

  I supposed she spoke the t
ruth. I smiled. "In the meantime," I said, "I grant you freedom."

  She laughed. "To hide a collar," she said, in a mocking tone, "is not to remove it."

  I laughed. She had had the best of the exchange. "Very well," I conceded, "you are a slave girl."

  When I said this, though I spoke in jest, she stiffened as though I might have lashed her mouth with the back of my hand.

  Her old insolence had returned. "Then use me," she said bitterly. "Teach me the meaning of the collar."

  I marveled. Vika, in spite of her nine years of captivity, her confinement in this chamber, was still a headstrong, spoiled, arrogant girl, and one fully aware of her yet unconquered flesh, and the sinuous power which her beauty might exercise over men, its capacity to torture them and drive them wild, to bend them in the search for its smallest favors compliantly to her will. There stood before me insolently the beautiful, predatory girl who had come so long ago to the Sardar to exploit Priest-Kings.

  "Later," I said.

  She choked with fury.

  I bore her no ill will but I found her as irritating as she was beautiful. I could understand that she, a proud, intelligent girl, could not but resent the indignities of her position, being forced to serve with the full offices of the slave girl whomsoever the Priest-Kings might see fit to send to her chamber, but yet I found in these grievances, great though they might be, no excuse for the deep hostility towards myself which seemed to suffuse her graceful being. After all, I, too, was a prisoner of Priest-Kings and I had not chosen to come to her chamber.

  "How did I come to this chamber?" I asked.

  "They brought you," she said.

  "Priest-Kings?" I asked.

  "Yes," she said.

  "Parp?" I asked.

  For answer she only laughed.

  "How long did I sleep?" I asked.

  "Long," she said.

  "How long?" I asked.

  "Fifteen Ahn," she said.

  I whistled to myself. The Gorean day is divided into twenty Ahn. I had nearly slept around the clock.

  "Well, Vika," I said, "I think I am now ready to make use of you."

  "Very well, Master," said the girl, and the expression by which she had addressed me seemed dipped in irony. Her hand loosened the clasp by which her garment was secured over her left shoulder.

  "Can you cook?" I asked.