Players of Gor (7 page)

Masks, incidentally, at times other than carnival, are not entirely unknown on Gor. They are often used by individuals traveling incognito or who do not, for one reason or another, wish to be recognized in a certain place or at a certain time. Their use by brigands or highwaymen, of course, is a commonplace. They are also sometimes used by gangs of high-born youths prowling the streets, usually looking to catch a slave girl for an evening's sport. Lower-caste gangs, engaged in similar pursuits, seldom affect masks. They can afford, of course, to be relatively open about their interest, and its indulgence. They are comparatively invulnerable to the nuisances of scandal.

"Paga!" cried a fellow.

We exchanged swigs from our botas. He reeled away into the crowd.

Three fellows walked by supporting swirling carnival figures. These particular constructions had huge, stuffed, bulbous, painted heads, and great flowing robes. They were some nine feet tall. They are supported on a pole and the operator, holding the pole, supporting the figure, is concealed within the robes. He looks out through a narrow, gauze-backed, rectangular opening in the robes. The figures bobbed and nodded to the crowd.

Children fled by, playing tag.

I saw a woman stripped to the waist. She had a brief cloth tied about her hips. She was collared. She looked at me, over her shoulder, and turned away.

In at least a dozen places on the great piazza there must have been groups of musicians.

I saw Tab, a caption once associated with my holding, one with whom I still had occasional dealings. He was with his slave, Midice. She clung to his left arm. It was too crowded here even to heel him properly. I called out to him. But, in the press, and noise, he did not hear. His scabbard was empty. So, too, was mine. We had checked our weapons before entering the piazza.

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"I shall have to trouble you for your sword, Sir," said one of the Arsenal Guards, on duty here tonight.

"No," had said another. "Do you not recognize him? That is Bosk, the Admiral, he of the Council of Captains."

"Forgive me, Captain," had said the man. "Enter as you are."

"No," I said. "It is perfectly all right." I surrendered my sword to him, and the knife, too, I commonly carried, a quiva, a Tuchuk saddle knife, balanced for throwing. I myself had voted in the council for the checking of weapons before entering the piazza during carnival. The least I could do, it seemed to me, was to comply with a ruling which I myself had publicly supported.

I remembered now where I had seen the man who had spoken to me near the platform of the magician. He had been waiting near one of the checking points opening onto the piazza, that point through which I had entered. It was there that I had seen him.

The checking of the weapons is accomplished as follows: One surrenders the weapons and the guard, in turn, tears a ticket in two, placing one half with the weapons and giving you the other half. This ticket is numbered on both ends. In reclaiming the weapons one matches the halves, both with respect to division and number. My half of the ticket was now in my wallet. The ticket is of rence paper, which is cheap in Port Kar, owing to its proximity to one of Gor's major habitats for the rence plant, the vast marshes of the Vosk's delta.

"Captain," said a voice.

I turned about. "Captain Henrius?" I asked. He, grinning, thrust up the mask. It was he. I thought I had recognized the voice. The young Captain Henrius was of the lineage of the Sevarii. Once he had been of my house but now held sway in his own house. With him was his lovely slave, Vina, who once had been intended to be the companion of gross Lurius of Jad, then, sharing his throne, to be proclaimed the Ubara of Cos. She was now a slave in Port Kar. I had not recognized her immediately for the gaudy paints which had been applied to her body. She knelt beside Henrius, holding to his thigh, that she not be forced away from him in the crowd.

"Someone is looking for you," said Henrius.

"Who?" I asked.

"I do not know," he said.

"He suggests that you meet him among the purple booths, in Booth Seventeen."

"Thank you," I said.

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Henrius, then, with a grin, readjusted his mask, drew Vina to her feet and, with her in tow, by an elbow, vanished in the crowd.

I looked after them. I was fond of them both.

A free woman, in swirling robes of concealment, veiled, appeared before me. "Accept my favor, please!" she laughed. She held forth the scarf, teasingly, coquettishly. "Please, handsome fellow!" she wheedled. "Please, please!" she said. "Please!"

"Very well," I smiled.

She came quite close to me.

"Herewith," she said, "I, though a free women, gladly and willingly, and of my own free will, dare to grant you my favor!"

She then thrust the light scarf though an eyelet on the collar of my robes and drew it halfway though. In this fashion it would not be likely to be dislodged.

"Thank you, kind sir, handsome sir!" she laughed. She then sped away, laughing.

She had had only two favors left at her belt, I had noted. Normally in this game the woman begins with ten. The first to dispense her ten favors and return to the starting point wins. I looked after her, grinning. It would have been churlish, I thought, to have refused the favor. Too, she had begged so prettily. This type of boldness, of course, is one that a woman would be likely to resort to only in the time of carnival. The granting of such favors probably has a complex history. Its origin may even trace back to Earth. This is suggested by the fact that, traditionally, the favor, or the symbolic token of the favor, is a handkerchief or scarf. Sometimes a lady's champion, as I understand it, might have borne such a favor, fastened perhaps to a helmet or thrust in a gauntlet.

It is not difficult, however, aside from such possible historical antecedents, and the popular, superficial interpretations of such a custom, in one time or another, to speculate on the depth meaning of such favors. One must understand, first, that they are given by free women and of their own free will. Secondly, one must think of favors in the sense that one might speak of a free woman granting, or selling, her favors to a male. To be sure, this understanding, as obvious and straightforward as it is, if brought to the clear light of consciousness, is likely to come as a revelatory and somewhat scandalous shock to the female. It is one of those cases in which a thing she has long striven to hide from herself is suddenly, perhaps to her consternation and dismay, made incontrovertibly clear to her. In support of the interpretation

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are such considerations as the fact that these favors, in these games, are bestowed by females on males, that, generally, at least, strong, handsome males seem to be the preferred recipients of such favors, that there is competition among the females in the distribution of these favors, and that she who first has her "favors" accepted therein accounts herself as somewhat superior to her less successful sisters, at least in this respect, and that the whole game, for these free women, is charged with an exciting, permissive aura of delicious naughtiness, this being indexed undoubtedly to the sexual stimulations involved, stimulations which, generally, are thought to be beneath the dignity of lofty free women.

In short, the game of favors permits free women, in a socially acceptable context, by symbolic transformation, to assuage their sexual needs to at least some extent, and, in some cases, if they wish, to make advances to interesting males. There is no full satisfaction of female sexuality, of course, outside of the context of male dominance. I wondered what the free woman whose favor I wore would look like, stripped and in a collar. How would she look, how would she act, I wondered, if slave fires had been lit in her belly. I did not think she would then be distributing silken scarves to make known her needs to men. She must then do other things, such as putting a bondage knot in her hair, offering them wine or fruit, dancing naked before them, or kneeling before them, whimpering and whining for attention, licking and kissing at their feet and legs.

I saw again the woman in the collar, she who was stripped to the waist, she who had a brief bit of cloth tied about her hips. As our eyes met she looked away, quickly.

I took a step towards her and she turned hastily away, frightened, and began to make her way through the crowd. I followed her, indirectly, circling about. As I had expected, in a few moments she stopped and turned about, to see if I was following. She stood there, uncertainly, scanning the crowd, looking back the way she had come. Had she been pursued? she did not know. Then suddenly I stepped behind her and pulled her back against me. She could not move. She was as helpless, my hands upon her beauty, as one locked in one of the body cages of Tyros.

"Sir!" she said, frightened, stiffening.

"Sir?" I asked.

"Master!" she quickly said, correcting herself.

"You are a slave, aren't you?" I asked.

"Yes, of course!" she said.

"Of course, what?" I asked.

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"Of course, Master!" she said.

"You have nice breasts," I said.

"Thank you, Master," she whispered.

I slid my hands down her body, to her waist, and hips, holding her all the while.

"You have a nice body," I said. "I think you would bring a good price on the slave block."

"Do you think so?" she asked, pleased.

"Yes," I said. "But what is this cloth at your hips?" I asked. "Its quality, incidentally, seems a bit too good to be accorded to a mere slave." My hands, reaching about her, fumbled at the strings on her left hip.

"Do not remove it," she begged, "please! "Please!"

My hands paused.

"As you are a mere slave," I said, "what possible difference could it make?"

"Please," she begged.

"Very well," I said. I removed my hands form the string, but held her in place, facing away from me, by the waist.

"May I turn around?" she asked.

"No," I said.

She shuddered with pleasure, commanded, placed under the will of another.

"There are doubtless slavers in the piazza tonight," I said. "If you do not want the collar, you should not court it."

"As I am only a mere slave," she said, "I could not possibly begin to understand the words of Master."

She cried out as I, half spinning her about, tore the cloth from her hips.

"It seems your master forgot to brand you," I said.

She snatched back the cloth and, angrily, tearing it and pulling it, refastened it about her hips.

"Take me to a pleasure rack," she said.

"You are a free woman, " I said. "Go yourself."

"Never, never!" she said. "You know I cannot do that!"

"Master," said a voice. "I am a slave. Take me to a pleasure rack!"

I looked down. Kneeling on the tiles of the piazza at my feet was a naked slave.

"I have not forgotten your kiss," she said. "Take me to a pleasure rack, I beg you!"

I remembered her. She was the naked, collared slave who, a few moments ago, had seized me and kissed me. I had returned her kiss, in the fashion of a master.

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"I have sought you in the crowds," she said.

The free woman cried out in fury.

I reached down and drew the slave to her feet and then, holding her by the arm, turned away from the free woman.

The free woman gasped, rejected, scorned, of less interest than a slave.

The slave now held my arm, I permitting it, closely, that she not be pulled away from me in the crowds.

"This is not the way to the pleasure racks," she said.

"You must be patient," I said.

"Yes, Master," she moaned, pressing more closely against me. She would be patient. She had no choice in the matter. she was a slave.

I looked back and saw the free woman, turned away, forlorn, her arms clutched about herself, half crouched over. Her body shook with sobs. She trembled with need. I saw that she had strong drives. I smiled. Such drives would bring her, sooner or later, to a man's feet, the only place they can be satisfied.

I paused to watch a portion of a farce. I would let the girl clinging to me increase in her heat.

The girl playing the part of the Golden Courtesan was not unlike Rowena, whom I remembered from three nights ago in the holding of Samos. She had something of the same beauty, the same figure, the same long, golden tresses. The role of the Golden Courtesan, incidentally, when it occurs in more sophisticated Gorean comedy is usually played, like the other roles in such comedies, and in most forms of serious drama, masked. One possible reason for this, though I think tradition probably has much more to do with it, is the such roles in more sophisticated comedy, like roles in more serious drams, are generally played by men. In the major dramatic forms Goreans generally, mistakenly, in my opinion, keep women off the stage. Some feel this practice is a result of the fact that women's voices carry less well than men's voice in the open-air theaters. Given the superb acoustics of many of these theaters, however, in which a coin dropped on the stage is clearly audible in the upper tiers, I feel the practice is more closely connected with tradition, or jealousy, than acoustics. Too, it might be noted that many dramatic masks have megaphonic devices built into them which tend to amplify the actors' voices. If women are generally precluded from participation in the major dramatic forms, they are, however, more than adequately represented in the great variety of minor forms which exist on Gor, such as low comedy, burlesque, mime, farce and story dance. To be sure, these women are usually