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file:///F|/My%20Shared%20Folder/John%20Norm...%20Gor%2010%20-%20Tribesmen%20of%20Gor.html (155 of 353) [1/21/03 7:52:00 PM] 10 Tribesmen of Gor and her pride in their possession of her, would contribute substantially to not only her survival but that of her children: too, the woman would, over generations, become more beautiful and desirable, and sexually exciting, as vital males exercising their masculine prerogatives selected among the daughters of the daughters of such women; men chose for mating women who pleased them, and women who pleased them were not the ugly, the gross, the belligerent and stupid, but the intelligent, loving, desirable and beautiful; the twin dynamics of evolution, natural and sexual selection, thus formed over thousands of years the biological nature of the human female; originally there might have been only random tendencies to respond to masculine domination, but those who had them had the best chance of survival: such tendencies were then transmitted, becoming pervasive genetic characteristics of women; owned women lived; the most beautiful and best of these were selected by the strongest, most intelligent and powerful men: it is from such intricate workings of nature that has come the intelligent, beautiful, sensitive woman, the feminine woman, with full complement of normal feminine hormones, who longs in her heart to lie lovingly, obediently, excitedly in the arms of a strong man, his woman, beyond this, one might note that dominance and submission are genetically pervasive in the animal kingdom; among mammals in general, and primates universally, it is the male who dominates and the female who submits; this is not an aberration; the aberration is its conditioned frustration, possible, interestingly enough, only in an animal complicated enough to lie subject to extensive conditioning regimes, where words may be used to induce counterinstinctual responses, to the detriment and misery of the individual organism, though perhaps subservient to a given conception of economic and social relationships. We are bred hunters; we are made farmers. It is near dawn, said Hassan. Let us leave the oasis. I rode beside him. Why should you wish to speak to me? I asked him. I think, he said, we have a common interest. In what? I asked. In travel, he said. Travelers often seek out curiosities, I said, I intend a venture into the desert, he said. It will be dangerous in these times, I said. file:///F|/My%20Shared%20Folder/John%20Norm...%20Gor%2010%20-%20Tribesmen%20of%20Gor.html (156 of 353) [1/21/03 7:52:00 PM] 10 Tribesmen of Gor Are you familiar with a stone, asked he, near the route between Tor and Nine Wells, which bears an inscription? Yes, I said. And there was a man, said he, who lay near the stone, he who had scratched the inscription. Yes, I said. But when I saw the stone he was gone. I took the body, said Hassan. In a great pyre of brush I saw it burned. Its ashes I had committed to the sands. You knew him? I asked. He was my brother, said Hassan. What do you seek in the desert? I asked. A steel tower, he said. 11 Red Rock, Where Salt is Shared; Hassan and I Encounter Tarna You do not wear bells on your kaiila harness! said the man, threatening its with his lance. We come in peace, said Hassan. Have you seen, or heard aught, of a tower of steel? You are mad! cried the man. Hassan turned aside his kaiila, with its single rein, and continued our journey, his nine men, myself, and the slave girl, Alyena, following, on our kaiila. Standing afoot, in the dust, with his lance, the nomad watched us turn away. Behind him was a herd of eleven verr, browsing on brownish snatches of verr grass. He would have defended the small animals with his life. Their milk and wool was his livelihood, and that of his family. Perhaps there is no steel tower, I suggested to Hassan. Let us continue our search, he said. I had now seen the Tahari in many moods. For twenty days we had been upon the desert. Once, when a rising edge of blackness, whipping with dust, had risen in the south, we had dismounted, hobbled our kaiila and turned their backs to the wind. We had made a wall with our packs and crouched behind it, drawing our burnooses about file:///F|/My%20Shared%20Folder/John%20Norm...%20Gor%2010%20-%20Tribesmen%20of%20Gor.html (157 of 353) [1/21/03 7:52:00 PM] 10 Tribesmen of Gor us. Hassan, in his own burnoose, sheltered the girl, Alyena, commonly keeping her wrists braceleted behind her, that she not forget she was slave. For two days the sand bad hurtled about us, and we had waited, in the manner of the Tahari, patiently in the blasting half darkness of the sand. We had scarcely moved, save to pass about a verrskin of water and a leather pouch of Sa-Tarna meal. Then, as swiftly as it had come, the sand fled, and the sun, bright and immediate, raw with its ferocity and beauty, held again, untroubled, forgetful, the scepter, the constant, merciless mace, of its light and heat over the wide land. Hassan was the first to stand. He shook the sand from his burnoose. He unbraceleted Alyena. She stretched like a she-sleen. Sand was banked against the wall of packs. A terrible storm, I said. He smiled. You are not of the Tahari, he said. Be pleased that now, in the spring, the wind did not blow from the east. Then he said to Alyena, Make tea. Yes, Master, she said, happily. Two days later there had been rain. The flies had now gone. I had, at first, welcomed the clouds, and thrown back my burnoose to feel the swift, fierce rain pelt my face. The temperature fell by more than fifty degrees in a matter of Ehn. Alyena, too, was much pleased. The men of the Tahari, however, sought quickly the highest ground in the vicinity. There is little rain erosion in the Tahari, with the result that there are few natural and ready paths to convey water. When it falls, it often falls heavily, and on flat land, in the loose dust. Within minutes of the rain beginning to fall we had to dismount, to drag and pull our struggling, frightened kaiila to higher ground, They sank to their knees in the mud, snorting, eyes rolling, and we, mud to our hips, pushing and pulling, sometimes actually seizing one of their mired limbs, freeing it and moving it, brought them to the place Hassan had designated, the Joe side of a rocky formation. Hassan put Alyena, whom be had carried, beside him. This is only the fourth time, he said, I have seen rain. It is beautiful! cried Alyena. Can one drown in such mud? I asked. It is unlikely, said Hassan. It is not as deep as a man. Small animals, in effect, [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ] |