"Let us go, Boabissia," I suggested.

"Be quiet," she said. "It will be only a little bit," said the man. "If you wait now, it will save you a trip back tomorrow."

"Leave, if you wish," said Boabissia.

"Why would they wish to leave?" asked the man, puzzled.

"I have no idea," said Boabissia.

"Nor do I," he said.

In a bit the attendant had returned with a large, somewhat dusty, oblong ledgerlike book. It was tied shut with a cord. It contained several pages. It was bound in leather. On the cover, though it was hard to see from where I stood, there seemed to be some designations, such as perhaps dates and numbers. "The older records, such as these," he said, "are kept here, together with duplicates of the more current records. The more current records, together with duplicates of the older records, are kept at the house."

I nodded. In that way two identical sets would be maintained, in different locations. This was not uncommon with Gorean bookkeeping, particularly in certain kinds of businesses.

"Is this not the house?" asked Boabissia.

"This is my personal residence," he said.

"You have another house?" she asked.

"Of course," he said.

Boabissia threw me a pleased glance.

"My place of business," he said.

"Oh," she said.

He untied the cord and blew some dust from the cover of the book. Its pages were yellowed.

"Do not dally please," said Boabissia.

He opened the book. He put to one side, taking it from a shallow pocket within the book's cover, a punched copper disk, on a string, rather the size of that which Boabissia had worn, and put it next to Boabissia's.

"Look!" said Boabissia, joyfully.

"Yes," I said.

The disk also had some device on it, as did Boabissia's, but I could not see it well from the distance.

"The disk," she said. "It has something on it."

"Yes," I said.

"Doubtless it is the same mark as is on mine," she said. "Perhaps not," I said.

The fellow began to turn the pages.

"Hurry! said Boabissia.

He had then apparently found what he was looking for. He picked up the disk which had been Boabissia's from the desk, looked at it, and then checked it against something in the book. He then perused the entry there. Then he rechecked the disk against the book. He then rose to his feet and approached Boabissia.

"Yes?" said Boabissia. "Yes?"

"You were right, my dear," he said. "There does exist a relationship between us, and, indeed, I think as you suspected, a most important relationship."

"You see!" cried Boabissia, almost leaping in place, elatedly, triumphantly to Hurtha and myself.

"But, my dear," he said, "it is not exactly the sort of relationship which you anticipated."

"What are you doing?" she asked.

Then, suddenly, as she cried out in surprise, in dismay, he tore her dress down to her waist.

"Yes," he said. "You are curvy."

She looked at him, startled, not daring, under his fierce gaze, to raise her hands, to lift her garment.

"The relationship," he told her, "is that of slave to master."

"No!" she cried.

"Strip," he said.

"Do so, immediately," I said to Boabissia, sternly.

Trembling she thrust down her dress over her hips, and stood then within it, it down about her ankles.

"Your sandals, too," I said, "quickly!"

Frightened she slipped from them, too. When a Gorean orders a woman to strip he means now, and completely, leaving not so much as a thread upon her body. She stood there, confused, trembling and terrified. Her clothing was about her feet. It was as though she stood in a tiny pond of cloth.

"What is going on?" asked Hurtha.

"Do not interfere," I said. "It is as I feared."

"Here," said the fellow. He indicated the book and the disk which had been within it, and Boabissia's disk. I went to the table. I looked at the disk which had been taken from the book. There was a number on it, but the «Tau on it was identical to what on Boabissia's disk. Keeping the place where lay the apparently pertinent entry I looked at the cover of the book. On it was a year number, one dating back twenty-two years, and two sets of numbers, separated by a span sign. I examined Boabissia's disk. The number on it fell between the two numbers on the book's cover. I then turned to the page to which the fellow had had the book opened earlier.

"See?" he asked.

"Yes," I said. There, at the head of one of the entries, identifying it, and correlated with it, was the number which had been on Boabissia's disk.

"The caravan in whose wreckage you were found," said the fellow to Boabissia, "was a slave caravan."

Boabissia looked at him, regarding him with horror. She then looked at Hurtha. "When you were found I was only a small boy," said Hurtha. "I did not know what sort of caravan it was. I do not think any of the Alars did. Apparently when found it was in much ruin."

"It was not traveling publicly as a slave caravan," said the man. "It was not, for example, flying its blue and yellow silk. In this manner it had been thought that we might keep secret its cargo, hundreds of beautiful females, a certain lure to the lust and greed of raiders. Our strategem, however, it seems, was ineffectual.

Hurtha nodded.

"Was much left when the Alars came upon it?" he asked.

"No," said Hurtha. "I do not think so."

"I am not surprised," said the fellow. "The women, of course, would have been stolen. Doubtless they entertained their captors well, before being sold in a hundred markets."

"I was only an infant," whispered Boabissia.

"That may be why you were left behind," said the man.

"I could have starved, or perished of exposure, or have been eaten by animals," she said. "Perhaps they did not find you," he said. "Perhaps, on the other hand, it was not of concern to them."

"Not of concern to them?" she asked, in horror.

"Of course not," he said. "Do not forget you were only then, as you are now, a slave."

She shuddered, her eyes wide with horror.

"Do not cover your breasts," he said. "Keep your arms at your sides." She sobbed.

"It was my caravan," said the fellow. "I lost much on it. It took me five years to recover my losses."

"Your caravan?" whispered Boabissia. "What is your business?"

"I am a merchant of sorts," he said. "I deal in slaves, wholesale and retail, mostly female slaves.

"A lovely form of merchandise," I said.

"Yes," he said.

"But I was only an infant," whispered Boabissia.

"You were sold to my house in your infancy," he said.

"It is in the entry," I informed Boabissia. "Too, your slave number is in his house was the number on your disk."

"I was sold to you in my infancy?" said Boabissia.

"For three tarsk bits," he said.

"So little?" she said.

"You were an infant," he said.

"It is very little," she whispered.

"Would you rather have been exposed in the Voltai," he asked, "a wooden skewer through your heels?"

She shook her head, frightened.

"But why would I have been sold?" she asked.

"You were a female," he said. "Why not?"

The selling of infant daughters is not that unusual in large cities. Some women do it regularly. They make a practice of it, much as they might sell their hair to hair merchants or to the weavers of catapult ropes. Some women, it is rumored, hope for daughters, that they may sell to the slave trade. These women in effect, breed for slaves. Too, there is a common Gorean belief that females are natural slaves, a belief for which there is much evidence, incidentally, and in the light of this belief some families would rather sell a daughter than raise her. Too, of course, daughters, unlike sons, are seldom economic assets to the family. Indeed they cannot even pass on the gens name. They can retain it in companionship, if they wish, if suitable contractual arrangements are secured, but they cannot pass it on. The survival of the name and the continuance of the patrilineal line are important to many Goreans.