"It is always the same knot though," said Elizabeth.

"Yes," I said, "each man has his own knot, as distinctive as a signature, and each knot is his own secret. Only he can tie it, and, more importantly, only he knows the reverse turns by which that knot, provided it has been untouched, is untied."

"Anyone then," said Elizabeth, "could untie the knot."

"Surely," I said. "The problem is to reconstruct the knot after it has been untied."

"The owner of the compartment," said Elizabeth, "returning to the compartment and untying the knot can tell immediately whether or not it is his own knot."

"Correct," I said.

"And thus he knows," said Elizabeth, "whether or not the compartment has been entered in his absence."

"Yes," I said. "Sometimes," I added, "someone enters the compartment and has a confederate on the outside attempt to duplicate the knot, that the man inside may surprise the occupant on his return, but commonly this stratagem is unsuccessful, because of the difficulties of duplicating the knot."

Elizabeth then watched in silence while I, trying to recall the intricacies of my signature knot, worked the boskhide cords.

At last, with a sigh, I leaned back, finished.

"It is a regular Gordian Knot," she said.

"The Gordian Knot," I said, "was quite possibly just such a knot."

"Alexander," she remarked, smiling, "cut it with his sword."

"And in so doing," I laughed, "informed the entire world that the room, or whatever it was, had been entered."

I then untied the knot, slipped the cords through the hole below the latch bar, swung the door shut and set the two beams in place, securing it.

I turned to Elizabeth. "I will teach you the knot," I said.

"Good," said Elizabeth, undaunted by the complex prospect. Then she looked up at me. "I should have my own knot, too," she said.

"Surely," I said, apprehensively, "we can use the same knot." It is, after all, not much fun to learn a signature knot.

"If I am going to learn your knot," she said, "there is no reason why you cannot learn mine."

"Elizabeth," I said.

"Vella," she corrected me.

"Vella," said I, "in spite of all you have been through on this world you yet retain certain of the taints of the Earth woman."

"Well," she said, "it seems to me only fair." Then she smiled mischievously. "My knot will be quite as complex as yours," she said.

"I do not doubt it," I said, dismally.

"It will be quite enjoyable to invent a knot," she said, "but it must be feminine, and it must reflect my personality."

I groaned.

She put her arms about my neck and lifted her eyes to mine. "Perhaps," she said, "after Vella has been fully trained Master will find Vella more pleasing."

"Perhaps," I admitted.

She kissed me lightly on the nose.

"You cannot even dance," I informed her.

Suddenly, she stepped back, threw back her head, thrust one leg to the side, and lifted her arms. Then, eyes closed, not moving, except the heel of the right foot, which beat the rhythm, she began to hum a Tuchuk slave song; on the second measure, her hands came to her hips and she opened her eyes, looking at me; on the third measure, her body began to move and, to the melody, she began to sway toward me; when I reached for her she swept back, and danced, her hands at the side of her head, fingers snapping with the melody.

Then she stopped.

"It's all I know," she informed me.

I cried out in rage.

She came to me and put her arms again about my neck. "Poor Master," said she, "Vella cannot even dance."

"Nonetheless," I said, "I see that Vella has possibilities."

"Master is kind," she said. She kissed me again, lightly on the nose. "Master cannot have everything," she said.

"That is a sentiment," I said, "which few Gorean masters will accept."

She laughed. "It could be far worse," she said. "At least I am a Red Silk girl."

At this I swept her from her feet and carried her to the broad stone couch in the room, where I placed her on the piles of furs that bedecked it.

"I have heard," she said, smiling up at me, "that it is only a Free Companion who is accorded the dignities of the couch."

"True," I cried, bundling her in the furs and throwing the entire roll to the floor at the end of the couch, beneath the slave ring. With a flourish I unrolled the furs, spilling Elizabeth out, who shrieked and began to crawl away, but my hand caught at the loop on the left shoulder of her garment and she turned suddenly, trying to sit up, her feet tangled in the garment and I kicked it away and took her in my arms.

"If you like me," she asked, "will you buy me?"

"Perhaps," I said, "I do not know."

"I think," she said, "that I would like you for my master."

"Oh," I said.

"So I will try to please you," she said, "that you will buy me."

"You are not now in the purple booth," I said.

She laughed. The allusion was to certain practices having to do with the merchandising of Red Silk Girls, in private sales for individual and important clients of the House.

At certain times of the year several such booths are set up within the courtyard of a slaver's house; in each, unclothed, chained by the left ankle to a ring, on furs, is a choice Red Silk Girl; prospective buyers, usually accompanied by a member of the Caste of Physicians, in the presence of the slaver's agent, examine various girls; when particular interest is indicated in one, the Physician and the slaver's agent withdraw; when, after this, the girl is not purchased, or at least seriously bid upon, she is beaten severely or, perhaps worse, is touched for a full Ehn by the slave goad; if, after two or three such opportunities, the girl is not sold, she is given further training; if after this she is still not sold she is usually returned to the iron pens whence, with other girls, considered to be of inferior value, she will be sold at a reduced price in one of the smaller markets, perhaps even in a minor city.

Most girls, it might be mentioned, even extremely choice specimens, are never in the booths; generally the slaver has a chance at a higher price when there are many buyers bidding against one another in the heat of an auction.

"Very well, Red Silk Girl," said I, "perform."

"Yes, Master," said she, obediently.

And, as the hour progressed, perform she did, and superbly so, and I knew that had I been a prospective buyer I would have bid high indeed for the skilled, sensuous little wench in my arms, so striving with all her quickness and beauty to please me. Sometimes I was forced to remind myself that she was Miss Elizabeth Cardwell of Earth, and not, as she lost herself uncontrollably in our pleasures, hands clutching at the slave ring, a Gorean slave girl, bred for the pleasures of a master.

Some months before, Elizabeth and I, the egg of Priest-Kings in the saddlepack of my tarn, had returned to the north from the Plains of Turia, the Land of the Wagon Peoples. In the vicinity of the Sardar Mountains I had brought the tarn down on the quiet, flat, gray-metal, disk-like surface, some forty feet in diameter, of the ship, some two miles above the surface of Gor. The ship did not move, but remained as stationary in the sun and the whipping wind as though it were fixed on some invisible post or platform. Clouds like drifting fogs, radiant with the golden sunlight, passed about it. In the distance far below, and to the right, I could see, through the cloud cover, the black, snow-capped crags of the Sardar.

On the surface of the ship, tall and thin, like the blade of a golden knife, his forelegs lifted delicately before his body, his golden antennae blown in the wind, there stood, with the incredible fixity and alertness of his kind, a Priest-King.

I leaped from the back of the tarn and stood on the ship, in the radiant cloud-filtered sunlight.