“Take the girl to the pens,” said Samos to the guards. “With needles remove the message from her scalp,”

The girl was jerked to her feet.

She looked at Samos. “Then,” said Samos, to the guards, “use her as a low work-slave in the pens primarily as a cleaning slave. A month before her hair is regrown, and she is fit for sale, wash her and put her in a stimulation cage and train her extensively.”

The girl looked at him, agonized.

“Then sell her,” said Samos.

A stimulation cage is an ornately barred, low-ceilinged cage; it is rather roomy, except for the low ceiling about five feet high. The girl cannot stand erect in it without her head inclined submissively. In such a cage, and in training, when not in such a cage, the girl who is housed in the stimulation cage is not permitted to look directly into the eyes of a male, even a male slave. This is designed, psychologically, to make the girl extremely conscious of males. When she is sold then only, if the master wishes, he may say to her, “You may look into the eyes of your master.” When she, frightened, tenderly, timidly lifts her eyes to him, if he should deign to smile upon her, the girl then, in gratitude and joy, at last permitted to relate to another human being, often falls to her knees before him, an adoring slave. When next she looks up, his eyes will be stern, and she will look down, quickly, frightened. “I will try to serve you well, Master,” she whispers. The accouterments of the stimulation-cell are also calculated with respect to their effect on the slave.

There are brushes, perfumes, cosmetics, slave jewelries, heavy necklaces, armlets, braclets and bangles; there is no clothing; there are also cushions, bowls of copper and lamp of brass. Importantly, there are also surfaces of various textures, a deep-piled rug, satins, silks, coarsely woven kaiila-hair cloths, brocades, rep-cloth, a tiled corner, a sleen pelt, cloths woven of strung beads, cloaks of leather, mats of reeds, etc. The point of this is that the senses and body of the slave, stripped save for brand and collar, and whatever perfumes, cosmetics or jewelries she may wear under the instruction of her trainer, are being taught to be alive, to sense and feel with great sensitivity; the senses and skins of many human beings, in effect, are dead, instead of being alert and alive to hundreds of subtle differences in, say, atmospheres, temperatures, humidities, surfaces, etc. A girl with living senses and a living body, of course is far more passionate than one whose senses and body sleep. The skin itself, in a trained girl, becomes an extensive, glorious, marvelously subtle sensory organ. Every bit of the slave, if she is well trained, is alive. This is done, of course, to make her more helpless under the touch of a master. When she does yield to the master, her guts half torn out with the love of him, then, of course, she is a more satisfactory slave. These indignities of course, are not inflicted on free women. They are permitted to go through life with their eyes half closed; so to speak. In this way they can maintain their self-respect. Sometimes inert, esteemed Gorean free women cry out in rage, not understanding why their companions have forsaken them for the evening, to go to the paga tavern; there, of course, for the price of a cup of paga, he can get his hands on a silken, belled girl, a slave; the free woman must denounce her companion, crying out, for his lusts; too busy for this, however, are the sweet, dark-eyed, sensuous sluts of the paga tavern; they do not have time to denounce the lusts of their master’s customers; they am too busy serving and satisfying them. The trainer directs the girl in the cage, or in the exercises, tending, observing, and prescribing, honing her with expertness into a delicious, responsive slave animal, the Gorean girl, collared, in bondage, trained to drive a man mad with desire, and then serve that desire, vulnerably, frequently and absolutely. The girl was thrust through the door, between the guards. I wondered what the trainer would prescribe for her. Girls differ, trainers differ. I glanced at the blondish girl, kneeling to one side, the former Miss Priscilla Blake-Alien. I, if her trainer, would probably put her frequently, at least at first, and later for discipline, in a rope slave harness. After a night in such harness, her wrists braceleted behind her that she might not remove it, I expected Miss Blake-Allen would be suitably docile, and eager to attend to her lessons.

When the girl had been forced through the door leading to the pens, I turned to Samos.

“Who is Abdul?” I asked.

Samos, puzzled, looked at me.

“Who is Abdul?” I repeated.

“I do not know,” said Samos. He turned and went to his place behind the low table.

Those at the table paid us little attention. All eyes were on the dark-haired dancer, the skirt of diaphanous scarlet dancing silk low upon her hips. Her hands moved as though she might be, starved with desire, picking flowers from a wall in a garden. One saw almost the vines from which she plucked them, and how she held them to her lips, and, at times, seemed to press herself against the wall which confined her. Then she turned and, as though alone, danced her need before the men.

“There is much here that appears to make little sense,” said Samos. “Yet, there must be a meaning, a pattern” With an eating prong, of Turian design, Samos tapped the table before him. He looked at me. “Little has of late occurred in the Wars of Priest-Kings and Others.”

“Beware of a silent enemy,” I said.

Samos smiled. “True,” he said. Then he pointed the eating prong at the leather-harnessed American girl, on the tiles to our right, naked, two guards with spears at her side. The heavy butts of their spears rested, one to each side of her. Her fists were clenched in the leather, buckled cuffs of her harness, held to her thighs by the thigh straps. “We learn from this slave,” he said, indicating the former Miss Blake-Alien, “that, until further orders, slave runs from Earth to Gor have been cancelled.”

“Yes, “I said.

“Why?’ he asked.

“Have the runs actually been stopped?” I asked.

“Information from the Sardar,” said Samos, “suggests that they have. There has not been a detection, let alone a pursuit, in three weeks.”

The Gorean week consists of five days. Each month consists of five such weeks.

Following each month, of which there are twelve, separating them, is a five-day Passage Hand. The twelfth Passage Hand is followed by the Waiting Hand, a five-day period prior to the vernal equinox, which marks the Gorean New Year. It was currently in the late winter of Year 3 of the Sovereignty of the Council of Captains in Port Kar, the year 10,122 C.A., Contasta Ar, from the Founding of Ar I had, two months ago, returned from Torvaldsland, where I had attended to certain matters of the sword.

“Further,” said I, “into your keeping has come a captive beast, clearly a Kur.”

“It seems irrational,” said Samos. “Only a beast.”

“I think it is rational,” I said. “Its intelligence, I suspect, is the equal of ours, if not greater.”

Samos regarded me.

“It may not, of course, be able to articulate Gorean. Few of the Kurii can. It is extremely difficult for them to do so.”

“You understand the direction in which it was traveling?” asked Samos.

“Yes,” said I.

“Strange,” said Samos.

The beast had been taken southeast of Ar, while moving southeast. Such a Path would take it below the eastern foothills of the Voltai and to the south. It was incredible. “Who would enter such a place?” asked Samos.

“Caravans, crossing it,” I said. “Nomads, grazing their verr on the stubble of verr grass.”

“Who else?” asked Samos.

“The mad?” I smiled.

“Or the purposeful,” said Samos, someone who had business there, who knew what he was intending?”