The fellow on the platform, at that time, began again to address the crowd.

"Barbarians! Barbarians for sale!" he called. "Enter now. The sales begin in afew Ehn. Buy at the house of Ram Seibar! Barbarians for sale, cheap and pretty!"

"Solicit elsewhere," I told her.

"Please, Master," she said.

"If you do not wish to use her," said a fellow standing nearby, "do you mind mytaking her?"

"Of course not," I said.

"Lead me to the tavern of Randolph," said the man to the girl.

"Master!" said the girl to me.

"Do you dawdle to obey, Slave?" inquired the man.

"No, Master," she cried, turning white, "no!"

"Precede me," he said.

"Yes, Master," she said.

"As a slave girl," he said.

"Yes, Master!" she said. With a sob she began to precede him, and as a slavegirl.

"Barbarians for sale! Barbarians for sale, cheap and pretty!" called the fellowon the platform.

I then went through the gate and entered the compound of Ram Seibar.

I turned my attention from the apparently lovely young woman, though she wasfully clothed, who was strung up by the wrists near the central block. Herankles had also been crossed and bound, a slaver's trick to accentuate the sweetcurvatures of her hips and legs. A thong also ran from over the bonds on herankles to an iron ring a few inches below her feet. This tends to prevent unduemovement on the rope.

A distinction must be drawn between the side blocks and the central, or main,block, in a vending area. I shall describe the situation, specifically, as itexists in the sales barn of Ram Seibar. It is not untypical of the arrangementsin many such places, particularly in outlying areas. To be sure, there is, itseems, from market to market, and from city to city, an almost infinite varietyof ways in which women may be, and are, displayed and sold. This is notsurprising since the institution of female slavery, on Gor, is both extremelysuccessful and quite ancient.

In the central hall of the sales barn of Ram Seibar, which is open to thepublic, there are twenty-one blocks. Twenty of these are subsidiary blocks, orside blocks. These occur, aligned, ten to a side, along the walls, to the leftand right, as one enters. They are spaced rather evenly, in order not to suggestdistinctions among them. Too, they are placed a few feet out from the walls. Atone's convenience, then, one may walk entirely about them. They are about a yardhigh and five feet in diameter. In the center of each there is an iron ring. Thecentral block, which must be ascended by stairs, lies at the far end of the hallas one enters, opposite the door. It is about seven or eight feet in height andsome twenty feet in diameter. Girls are seldom auctioned from the side blocks.

Occasionally fixed prices are set on them. If this is the case the price isusually written on their body, either with a grease pencil or a lipstick.

Usually, however, of course, they find themselves being bargained for. The girlusually hopes that her master will pay enough for her to convince him that sheis of at least minimal value, and will not pay so much that he will be angrywith the merchant, for in such a case he is almost certain to take hisdissatisfaction out on her lovely hide. "Side-block girl," in the argot of theslave girl, like "pot girl' and "kettle-and-mat girl," is a term ofdisparagement. It must be admitted there is more prestige in being auctionedfrom a major, or central, block than there is in being casually purchased from aside block. One might as well be sold off a slaver's public shelf, in a city, orout of a cage, or kneeling in the mud outside a village, from a "slaver'snecklace." To be sure, a girl who is once sold off a side block may, in time,her femininity blossoming under the discipline of the whip and the harshtutelage of masters, become a treasure, a slave so beautiful and desirable thatmen will pay fortunes to have her at their feet. I wandered over to the leftwall to look at some of the side blocks.

"I shall take this one," I beard a fellow say, and so simply was the girl sold.

She was one of the few girls on whom Ram Seibar had set a fixed price. It waswritten on her back in lipstick, forty copper tarsks. She was one of the few whohad been freshly branded. Her wrists were crossed and bound before her, in cruelloops of rawhide, and, by a tight loop encircling her body, cutting into herflesh, held tightly before her. Ibis was to prevent her from tearing at thebrand. Hers were stained with tears. She, like the other girls on the sideblocks, was fastened on her block. Uniformly they wore collars and chains, thechains some five feet in length and attached to the block rings. She saw moneychange hands. She knew she had been sold. She looked at her master, andshuddered. She saw that he was handsome.

When one girl was sold from a block a new one was put in her place.

"How can you sell an unbranded woman?" asked a fellow of a slaver's man,indicating a freckled, fairly complexioned, red-haired barbarian kneelingfrightened on a nearby block, the palms of her hands down on the wood. The blackiron of her collar, and the chain, contrasted nicely with the lightness andtexture of her skin.

"Is she worth fifty tarsks to you?" asked the slavers "Yes," said the fellow, slowly.

Immediately the slaver's man removed a long piece of rawhide, about four feet inlength, from his belt. He took the girl's hands behind her, and, crossing themwith one end of the rawhide, fastened them tightly, together. He then looped therawhide about her belly, jerked it tight, and tied it to her bound wrists. Thegirl looked behind herself, frightened, her hands fastened closely at the smallof her back. With a key he opened the girl's collar and placed it, with itschain, on the block. He then seized the girl by the arms and slid her from theblock, into the waiting arms of an attendant. "Fifty tarsks for this freckled,little she-tarsk," he said. "This will be the buyer," he said, indicating thefellow who had expressed an interest in the girl. The attendant nodded and,throwing the girl over his shoulder, left.

"Pick her up in ten Elm, at the front entrance," said the slaver's man to theprospective buyer. "She will be branded."

The man nodded, and turned away.

I smiled to myself at the artifice involved in this transaction. The sale,technically, would not take place until after the young woman was branded. Iwatched her being carried out through a side entrance. I wondered if she knewshe were being carried to the iron. This lot of barbarians, which I guessed asbeing in the neighborhood of seventy or eighty girls, had been, as nearly as Icould determine, delivered only last night or this morning. Even now themajority of them had not been marked. This was a function, of course, of thebrief amount of time they had been in the possession of Ram Seibar. It takestime to bring an iron to branding heat and the iron, of course, its head sinkingand searing, burning, into the girl's flesh, marking her, loses heat rapidly. Agiven iron, accordingly, must be reheated before being reapplied. This situationis further complicated by the fact that the iron, normally, is cleaned followingeach application, a procedure which further reduces its heat. The cleaning isimportant for the precision and clarity of the next marking. Thus, in effect,each girl is marked with a new, fresh iron.

The most common brand site in a Gorean slave girl is the outer side of the leftthigh, closely beneath the hip. In this brand site the identificatory mark isthus placed high enough to be covered by the brief cloth of a common slave tunicand is available for convenient and immediate inspection if the tunic is lifted.

The time it takes to brand several women can be reduced by the common expedientof heating several irons, but most iron masters will not work with more than twoor three irons at a given time. Similarly, in a given house, normally only onefellow, at a time, attends to the branding. The rapidity with which the girlswere being placed on sale, incidentally, is not unusual at the perimeter. Thisis, I think, in part a response to buyer pressure and, in part, the result of anunwillingness on the part of most perimeter slavers to devote time, or muchtime, to such niceties as diet, exercise and training. They reason, I suppose,that the master can manage, feed and train the girl, once he owns her, accordingto his own pleasures.