Kurii had raided the Prison Moon, freed me, and brought me to what was then the Steel World of Agamemnon.
But this event and various ensuing events, as I understand it, have been elsewhere chronicled.
“What are you doing?” she asked.
“Ramar,” I said, “must be freed.”
“Is that wise?” she asked.
“I do not know,” I said. “But it was for this reason that I had him brought to Gor.”
I had first seen Ramar in an arena on the Steel World, a milieu in which his ferocity, might, and cunning, in virtue of dozens of bloody victories, were renowned. Bred for dark sports, trained to hunt and kill, he was a prize of his breed, a champion of his kind. Later, in the insurrection, he, and other sleen, as Agamemnon grew more desperate, uncertain, and frightened, had been freed, that they might hunt down, destroy, and devour his foes, in particular ill-armed humans who might be party to the rebellion. A Kur, unarmed, is a match for a sleen. A Kur, armed, has little to fear, unless taken unawares. In turn, the revolutionaries, primarily the rebel Kurii, primarily on behalf of their human allies, had set a number of heavy, metal traps, more than two-hundred pounds in weight, baited with haunches of tarsk, traps fastened by heavy chains to large stakes sunk deeply into the ground, and in one such trap this beautiful animal, this great, fierce, dangerous, six-legged, sinuous monster, Ramar, had been caught. In this trap, held by its steel teeth, clamped deeply into his left rear leg, to the bone, bleeding and tortured, jerking against the stake and chain, then quiescent and silent, he would have died, of prolonged pain, or thirst. He was a large, noble animal, and beautiful in the hideous way in which a sleen can be beautiful, and it did not please me that such a creature should perish so miserably. Doubtless unwisely, I managed, with great difficulty, to open the trap, and the beast, freed, withdrew, vanished, limping, into the brush. He had not attacked me. Perhaps it had not occurred to him to do so. Later, we had encountered one another now and again. I think some record of this is elsewhere available. Following the denouement of the insurrection on the Steel World in question and, seemingly, in virtue of some interaction or agreement between Priest-Kings and victorious Kurii, it was determined that I, and others, were to be returned to Gor. Might we have hoped that our labors on the Steel World had pleased, or, at least, appeased, Priest-Kings? Could such forms of life be mollified? And could they not then have been satisfied, at last, and have seen fit, in their wisdom, to free us from their interests? Certainly we had, or some of us, however unintentionally or inadvertently, served them. Surely they now had less to fear from one of the greatest and most dangerous of the Kurii, Lord Agamemnon, an ambitious, skilled, determined, brilliant, gifted, implacable foe. In any event I had not been slain, or returned to the horrors of the Prison Moon. I now found myself again on Gor. I had then little hope that Priest-Kings had finished with me, as I would have fervently desired. Had that been so should I not have been returned, liberated and thanked, perhaps even bountifully rewarded, to my holding in Port Kar? But I was here, somehow, on this remote beach, the forest behind me. In leaving the Steel World I had brought Ramar with me. He deserved, I thought, the woods or forests, the plains or mountains, the openness and freedom, of Gor, not the steel platings and inserted gardens, the contrived geography, of a Steel World. Let him live as a sleen, in a world fit for him. Indeed, let men live in worlds fit for them. Too many live in their own Steel Worlds, and know not this, know not their prisons.
“He will turn wild,” she said.
“He is wild,” I said.
“He will become dangerous,” she said.
“He is dangerous now,” I said.
I unbuckled the thick, spiked collar from the throat of the giant, lame sleen, Ramar, and pointed behind us, to the forest. The large, round eyes regarded me, as though quizzically.
“Yes,” I said, “friend. Go.”
A protestive growl emanated from the throat of the beast. It wound its body about me, moving, curling about me. I thrust the heavy body from me.
“Go,” I said, sternly. “Yes, it is my wish.”
“He does not want to go,” she said.
“Go,” said I, to the sleen.
I then, impulsively, knelt down and seized the massive body about the neck, and buried my face in the fur of his shoulder.
“You are crying,” she said.
“No,” I said.
I then stood, and wiped my eyes with the back of my forearm.
“You are crying,” she said.
I scorned to respond to so foolish an allegation.
Ramar whimpered.
“The forest is there!” I said to him, turning his head with my hand toward the forest. “That is your world!” I said, pointing. “Go! Go!”
I watched the sleen take its leave, its left, hind foot marking the sand, where he dragged it behind him.
Then he was gone.
I then turned to regard her.
“Wipe the tears from your cheek,” I told her.
She obeyed.
To be sure, emotion is acceptable for women, and certainly for such as she, the sort which, though the least, is the most female of all women.
She had been one of the two women who had been enclosed with me in the small, transparent container on the Prison Moon, two who had been deliberately, carefully selected by Priest-Kings, with all their shrewdness and science, with all their malevolent expertise, to constitute exquisite temptations for me, who were intended to be such as would prove irresistible to me, either of them a suitable engine to accomplish in time the destruction of my honor, either one of which was a banquet to lure me, tormented and starving, inevitably, sooner or later, from the rigors of my codes.
I regarded her.
She who had become the Lady Bina had been, at that time, long ago, in the container, no more than a Kur pet, a human pet of a superior life form, the Kurii, one at that time not even speeched, one at that time no more than a simple, naive, luscious, appetitious little animal. Surely the little beast was exquisitely desirable, who could deny that, but even then the other, the dark-haired captive, the English girl, Miss Virginia Cecily Jean Pym, clearly the product of a pathological culture, inhibited, unpleasant, arrogant, nasty, with such clearly ambivalent feelings toward men, even hostility toward males, was the one on whom I most wished to lay my hands, she whom I most desired to seize and subdue, whom I thought it would be most amusing to have in my arms, and force to buck and squirm, and whimper and plead, and cry out and beg, and weep in my arms her helpless, unconditioned, grateful, rapturous submission, that of the shattered, devastated, begging female to the will of the possessive, uncompromising, owning male. I do not think that she was objectively superior to the Kur pet, and might even have brought a lower price than the Kur pet in most markets, but she was somehow very special to me. Indeed, I have little doubt that she had been selected for me, with great care and skill, perhaps from amongst thousands, that she had been matched expertly to my inclinations, preferences, and needs, inclinations, preferences, and needs of which I might not even have been aware. Two other factors, too, I suspect, were involved. As she had been matched to me, I suspect that I had been matched to her, as well. The Priest-Kings, I suspect, had, so to speak, fitted us together. Had she no need of such as I, the temptation would have been primarily mine, and it would have failed of its devastating symmetricality. But I, so desiring her, how helpless I would have been, had she been, sooner or later, similarly distressed and tormented. How could we have then failed to embrace, and therewith comply with the will and intrigues of Priest-Kings?