Tal, Goreans,

Greetings, visitors,

Welcome once again to the Booknotes column and to Book Five, "Assassin of Gor". When last seen Tarl had just arrived at the house of Cernus the Slaver in Ar, and he had been assigned his quarters there in his guise as Kuurus the Assassin, along with the "untrained slave girl" who was to keep his compartments, Elizabeth Cardwell. As Kuurus, he is ostensibly seeking the murderer of Tarl Cabot; as Tarl Cabot, he is indeed seeking that same murderer; but he also has an agenda of his own that we are soon to learn about...

Chapter Five

With the door safely shut behind them, Tarl and Elizabeth enjoy some private laughs. In these pre-Raiders days, Tarl is still firmly an Earthman on Gor rather than a Gorean, although he is much better acquainted with Gorean customs than is Elizabeth. Their relationship however and their "in-on-the-joke" angle is charming.

Cernus has provided "Kuurus" with quarters suitable to his station, but with no lock on the door. This sends Norman off on one of his digressions, in this case on the subject of locks in theory and practice and the Gorean legal aspects thereof, but he does bring up one thread which will later prove to be a minor plot element: Gorean signature knots. Tarl explains to Elizabeth that it is common practice for a man to tie down a latch with a complex knot, not because it is hard to untie but because it is hard to re-tie. Since this does not prevent forcible entry but does make it apparent that entry has been effected, the obvious implication is that burglary on Gor is less of a problem than assassination.

That diversion seen to, our happy pair are soon bumpin’ uglies again on the furs at the foot of Tarl’s couch, and the veil is tactfully drawn over this while we get filled in on some plot background.

Let it be freely admitted that Norman’s continuity and time-sense is occasionally confusing; but on this occasion the dramatic start to the story fully justified it. Now that the mask is off and we know that Tarl is alive and well, the time is ripe to tell what happened after the end of "Nomads", when Tarl left the Plains of Turia with the last Egg of the Priest-Kings safely in his tarn-pack. Norman now paints a vivid picture of Tarl meeting his friend Misk atop a flying saucer miles above Gor’s surface and announcing success.

Misk is unsurprised to learn that there was attempted interference with Tarl’s mission. There are "Others", he reveals, fully capable of space-flight and both willing and able to wage hi-tech war for possession of Earth and Gor. Until recently the Priest-Kings have been well able to keep these Others at a safe distance, although they are too unaggressive to wipe the Others out. With the losses suffered in the Nest War back in book 3, though, the Priest-Kings are dangerously weak and desperately struggling to rebuild their power before the Others find out their vulnerability and act upon it.

Deeply suspicious lest the Priest-Kings’ weakness be only a subterfuge, the Others are cautiously attempting to subvert the men of Gor a city at a time, and mighty Ar is the richest jewel in the crown. Their agent there is a Slaver named Cernus, and Tarl nobly volunteers to take up the cudgels on the PKs’ behalf, overriding Misk’s protest that Tarl has already done enough. Elizabeth, hearing all this, chimes in for a piece of the action, and after a short row, Misk devises a plan. There is already an agent in Cernus’s house, the scribe Caprus, but he could certainly use some help, and with that in mind, Elizabeth will be given slave papers and a collar (she is already branded) and sold into the House of Cernus, while Tarl will follow in his own time and seek employment as a mercenary.

This decided upon, Tarl and Elizabeth take a short holiday in Ko-ro-ba, where Elizabeth causes quite a stir. Disdaining Robes of Concealment and being much more outspoken than the average Gorean free woman, she finds that the respectable citizens of Ko-ro-ba don’t quite know how to take her. One might believe that she earns respect because she is spunky, feisty and high-spirited; alternatively, one might think that she is lucky to be the girlfriend of the Administrator’s son in about the most liberal city on Gor.

After Elizabeth is delivered to the slavers, a minor modification to Tarl’s plan is brought about as the result of the death of a large red-headed young man, stabbed in the back with a knife at midnight, evidently in mistake for him. The destination isn’t changed, but now Tarl goes disguised as an Assassin.

This flashback concluded, we return to Tarl and Elizabeth doing a spot of post-coital knot-tying. After some bantering back and forth over signature knots, Tarl gives Elizabeth a practical demonstration of the Warrior’s Capture Knot, and before he unties her, Ho-Tu the Master Keeper arrives to summon Tarl to dinner. He’s impressed by Elizabeth’s obedience to the Assassin’s command given only an hour or two’s mastering (we know how she gets to be so well-trained, though), and Tarl favours her with a wink behind Ho-Tu’s back as he leaves her hog-tied and fuming.

Chapter Six

It’s dinner time in the House of Cernus, and the entertainments include a hook-knife contest between two male slaves using sheathed blades. The loser is gashed with an unsheathed blade and taken away, while Cernus gets on with thrashing Caprus at Kaissa. Dinner is served by white silk girls in training (here’s how another IRC tradition got started, evidently). Tarl’s dinner is interrupted by hideous screams; on Ho-Tu’s say-so, this is the man who lost at hook knife being fed to "the beast", though he doesn’t know what kind of beast.

Chapter Seven

After dinner, Cernus, Ho-Tu, and some of his trusted henchmen, along with Tarl, meet a flying ship (*black*, in contrast to the PKs’ silver ones) high in the Voltai mountains. Cernus promises "Kuurus" the throne of any city on Gor, save Ar itself, as a future reward for his service. Goods are unloaded from the black ship, including a sniper rifle, gold, and a number of Earth women.

This is where those who take their science fiction seriously blink and stutter, in that, whatever the value of the goods from Earth, the cost of the delta vee spent in bringing them to Gor must surely outweigh it. That, dear reader, is the difference between hard SF and science fantasy. Try to live with it.

Chapter Eight

And after dinner and being out all night being made party to Cernus’s dearest secrets, Tarl returns to his compartments to find Elizabeth still right where he left her, thanks to his Capture Knot. She is not in the best of humour, but she takes it with a good grace and, after stirring up Tarl slightly, dashes off to breakfast in the slave-pens. When she gets back, she and Tarl continue with the fellow-conspirators theme as he goes in search of a much tastier bite to eat on his own account. There, for the first time, Tarl encounters "black wine" – honest-to-goodness coffee. (As I’m not vain enough to think I can improve on Marcus of Ar’s excellent essay "Caffeine Addicts of Gor", I shall just direct the reader in the direction of the Silk & Steel website.)

Thus fortified, Tarl and Elizabeth return to his compartments and they’re at it like knives again, setting the stage for one of Tarl’s great quotes: "There is nothing like coffee and a good wench after breakfast."

Chapter Nine

It’s not all coffee-drinking and horizontal jogging, though. Tarl and Elizabeth are supposed to be helping Caprus find out all that’s going on in Cernus’s House, and by way of getting the lie of the land Tarl gets Ho-Tu to give him a guided tour. This is actually Elizabeth’s idea, just to demonstrate that she does have some contribution to make other than seeing that Tarl gets laid (like he needed help there).

The House of Cernus is a massive undertaking, with four to six thousand slaves on the premises plus all the necessary support facilities and ancillary staff. There are private auction rooms where recently-captured High Caste women can be sold off secretly, which moves Tarl to pity; there are breeding facilities for exotic slaves, including girls whose saliva is poisonous and who can be used as assassination weapons. Most disturbing of all, Cernus also breeds slave girls who are kept in complete ignorance of the existence of men, and whose eventual fate is to receive a rude awakening in a cage full of male slaves as an entertainment for the watchers.

Hmm...

There’s a discussion topic there somewhere, but I’ve got a set of book notes to finish.

Chapter Ten.

The tour continues, and we take in the compartment where Cernus personally entertains certain choice females. If they yield to him well then they are sold, and if not, Cernus strangles them with the chain that bears the medallion of his House. This guy doesn’t care to lose, we see. The tour concluded, Ho-Tu and Tarl go in search of lunch, which for Ho-Tu is porridge - strange fare for a free man, and Tarl is curious enough to ask about it. Ho-Tu appears upset by the question, but also puzzled when Tarl apologizes for asking, and the conversation veers to the mysterious beast, which we learn is exclusively anthropophagous, being fed a live slave every ten days.

Chapter Eleven.

Back to the iron pens where many, many slaves are kept in barred cages on concrete floors amid flickering torchlight fit for a sadomasochist to have a holiday in his heart over. Included in this mass of imbonded humanity are a small number of recent arrivals from various parts of Earth. One of Cernus’s senior staff is Flaminius the Physician, whom we now meet. He discusses the latest crop of Earth girls with Tarl, explaining that despite the massive shock of finding themselves in a slave dungeon on a strange world, few girls actually go mad, largely on account of being selected for their intelligence and adaptability. Tarl informs us that "Goreans, as the men of Earth commonly do not, celebrate quickness of mind and alertness in a girl". (Personally I find this slightly slanderous, but maybe I am not a "common" man of Earth, by Tarl’s definition.)

Not only does Flaminius know very well that Earth exists - as a Physician, of course, he is a member of one of the High Castes who have the Second Knowledge - he speaks an Earth language, to wit, English; and it is in English that he speaks to two girls whom we will subsequently see regularly. These are the beautiful and fiery Phyllis Robertson and the much plainer and more timid Virginia Kent. The girls have heard of Gor thanks to the writings of Tarl Cabot: Norman here opens the self-referentialism can of worms and with it a number of extremely interesting questions, since Flaminius himself knows of the Tarl Cabot stories and we have to assume that agents of the Others could get their hands on them easily!

Putting this thorny question firmly to one side, we go back to Flaminius acquainting the two Earth girls with the realities of their situation, including making Phyllis, who is stubborn, use third-person speech to emphasise her slave status. He’s guilty of telling them some whoppers about how Gorean men are able to steal them from Earth (only with the aid of a large deus ex machina in the shape of the Others, Flaminius!) and will conquer Earth when it suits them and that therefore it is right and proper that Earth women should be the slaves of the superior men.

As Flaminius and Ho-Tu discuss the slave potential of the new arrivals, we take a natural break here, and we will next see Tarl taking the sights in Ar, in one particular location that is going to be very significant before we are done. Once again... stay tuned.