For twenty days had we marched. Some thought it a hundred. Many had lost count.
More than two hundred and fifty men had been originally in the salt chain.
I did not know how many now trekked with the march. The chain was now much heavier than it had been, for it, even with several sections removed, was carried by far fewer men. To be a salt slave, it is said, one must be strong.
Only the strong, it is said, reach Klima.
In the chain, we wore slave hoods. These had been fastened on us at the foot of the wall of the kasbah of the Salt Ubar. Before mine had been locked under my chin I had seen the silver desert in its dawn. The sky in the east, for Gor, like the Earth rotates to the east, had seemed cool and gray. It was difficult to believe then, in the cool of that morning, as early as late spring that the surface temperatures of the terrain we would traverse would be within hours better than one hundred and fifty degrees Fahrenheit. Our feet, earlier, had been wrapped in leather sheathing, it reaching, in anticipation of the crusts, — later to be encountered, to the knees. The moons, at that time, had been still above the horizon. Rocks on the desert, and the sheer walls of the Salt Ubar’s kasbah, looming above us, shone with dew, common in the Tahari in the early morning, to be burned off in the first hour of the sun. Children, and nomads, sometimes rise early, to lick the dew from the rocks. From where we were chained, I had been able to see, some two pasangs to the east, Tarna’s kasbah. A useful tool had the Salt Ubar characterized her. She had not been able to hold Hassan and me. The Salt Ubar had speculated that be would enjoy better fortune in this respect. The collar was locked about my throat.
An Ahn before dawn I had been aroused. Tafa, sweet and warm, on the cool stones, on the straw, lay against me, in my arms. On her throat was a heavy cell collar, with ring; attached to the ring was some fifteen feet of chain, it attached to a plate near our beads. I was similarly secured. The plates were no more than five inches apart. When we had been placed in the cell a tiny lamp had been put on a shelf by the door. The stones were broad, heavy blocks, cool, wet in places, over which lay a scattering, of damp straw. We were perhaps a hundred feet below the kasbah. The cell had not been much cleaned. There was a smell, as of humans, and urts. Tafa screamed but she, unleashed, was thrown to the wall, and her fair throat placed in the waiting cell collar, it then snapped shut. I was then, too, secured. “Do not keep me in this place!” screamed Tafa. “Please! Please!” But they did not unlock the collar. An urt scampered across the stones, disappearing between two blocks of stone in the wall. Tafa screamed and threw herself to the feet of one of the jailers, holding his legs, kissing at him. With his left and right hand he checked the collar at her throat, holding it with his left hand and, with his right, jerking the chain twice against the ring, then threw her from him, to the straw. The other man similarly checked my collar. Then, with a knife, he cut the two ropes from my throat, and freed me of the binding fiber.
He took the shreds of rope and binding fiber with him when he left the cell. The heavy door, beams of wood, sheathed with plates of iron, together some eight inches thick, closed. The hasps were flung over the staples, two, heavy, and two locks were shut on the door. At the top of the door, some six inches by ten inches, barred, was an observation window. The guards looked in. Tafa sprang to her feet and ran to the length of her chain, her hands and fingers outstretched, clawing toward the bars. Her fingers came within ten inches of the bars. “Do not leave me here,” she cried. “Please, oh, please, oh Masters!” They turned away.
She moaned, and turned from the door, dragging at the chain with her small hands. She fell to her hands and knees and vomited twice, from fear and the stench. An urt skittered past her, having emerged from a crack in the floor between two stones and moved swiftly across the floor, along one wall, and vanished through the crack which had served as exit for its fellow a few moments earlier. Tafa began to weep and pull hysterically at the chain and collar on her throat. But it was obdurately fastened upon her. I checked my own collar and chain, and the linkage at the ring and plate. I was secured. I looked at the tiny lamp on the shelf near the door. It smoked, and burned oil, probably from tiny rock tharlarions, abundant south of Tor in the spring. I looked at Tafa.
She shook her head. “No,” she said. “You are sentenced to Klima.”
I leaned back against the wall. “You will be only a salt slave,” she said.
I watched her. With the back of her right wrist she wiped her mouth. I continued to watch her. She half knelt, half sat, her head down, the palms of her hands on the floor of the cell.
I picked up, where it lay on the stones, fastened to the plate and ring near mine, the chain which ran, looped, lying on the floor, to her collar, several feet away.
“No!” she cried angrily. I held the chain. I did not pull it to me. “Salt slave!” she cried. She jerked the chain taut with her two hands, on her knees, backing away. My hand rested on the chain, lightly. It was tight on its ring, taut. I removed my hand from the chain.
Watching me, catlike, Tafa lay on her side in the straw. I looked away. Tafa, no longer under the eye of her master, the feared Ibn Saran, had a slave girl’s pride. She was, after all, a lock-collar girl, who had been once free, who was beautiful, who had, at Two Scimitars, brought a high price, a price doubtless improved upon, if only slightly, by the agents of Ibn Saran, when they had bought her for their master. Slave girls, commonly obsequious and docile with free males, who may in an instant put them under discipline, are often insolent and arrogant with males who are slave, whom they despise. Salt slaves in the Tahari are among the lowest of the male slaves. The same girl who, joyously, would lasciviously writhe at the feet of the free male, begging him for his slightest touch, would often, confronted with male slaves, treat them with the contempt and coldness commonly accorded the men of Earth by their frustrated, haughty females; I have sometimes wondered if this is because the women of Earth, cheated of their domination by the aggressor sex, see such weaklings, perhaps uneasily or subconsciously, as slaves, men unfit to master, males determined to be only the equals of girls, stupid fools who wear their own chains, slaves who have enslaved themselves, fearing to be free. Goreans, interestingly from the point of view of an Earthling, who has been subjected to differing historical conditioning processes, do not regard biology as eviclass="underline" those who deny the truths of biology are not acclaimed on Gor, as on Earth, but are rather regarded as being curious and pathetic. Doubtless it is difficult to adjudicate matters of values. Perhaps it is intrinsically more desirable in some obscure sense to deny biology and suffer from mental and physical disease, than accept biology and be strong and joyful, I do not know. I leave the question to those wiser than myself. For what it is worth, though doubtless it is little pertinent, the men and women of Gor are, generally, whole and happy; the men and women of Earth, generally, if I do not misread the situation, are not. The cure for poison perhaps is not more poison, but something different. But this matter I leave again to those more wise than myself.
My hand again picked up Tafa’s chain, where it was fastened to the plate near mine. Instantly, her eyes, which she had closed, her arm under the left side of her head, opened. I took up a fist of the chain. “Salt slave!” she said. She rose to her knees. She jerked with her weight against the chain. This time I did not release it. Her hands slipped on the chain. She tried to jerk it again, holding it more firmly. I did not release the chain. It was as though it had been fastened anew, but a fist shorter than it bad been. “No!” she cried. I took up another fist of chain. She sprang to her feet. “No! No!” she cried. I put my two hands on the chain. I drew it another few inches toward me. She stumbled forward some inches, then stood, bracing herself, her hands on the chain. “No!” she cried. I took up another fist of the chain, her neck and head were pulled forward. She was in an awkward position. She could not brace herself. She gave some inches and again braced herself, throwing her weight back against the chain. It did not yield. She wept. “No! No!” she said. It interested me that she would attempt to pit her strength against mine. The strength of a full-grown woman is equivalent to that of a twelve-year-old boy. Goreans read in this an indication as to who is master. Foot by foot, slowly, across the floor of the cell, she slipping, screaming, struggling, I drew her toward me. I saw the small oil lamp was growing dim, the oil almost depleted, the wick smoking. Then my fist was in the girl’s collar and I threw her to her back at my side. With my left band I lifted the heavy collar chain from her body and threw it over her head and behind her. I saw her wild eyes, frightened. With some straw I wiped her mouth, cleaning it, for earlier, in her revulsion and terror, her horror at the place and manner in which she found herself incarcerated, she had from her own mouth soiled both herself and the cell. “Please,” she said. “Be silent,” I told her. The lamp sputtered out.