Tal Goreans,
Greetings visitors,

Welcome once again to the Booknotes column. Last month Tarl was seen making his way down to Schendi, a free port on the shores of Gor’s “Dark Continent”, in pursuit of Shaba the Geographer, supposedly an agent of Priest-Kings, but one whose loyalty is severely open to question after he made off with the incredibly valuable Shield-Ring. This ancient artifact of lost Kur technology confers invisibility upon its wearer and was meant to have been delivered to the Priest-Kings after Tarl acquired it in Tribesmen of Gor. When last seen, Tarl had just arrived in Schendi. He has with him one slave girl, Sasi, some time she-urt and thief, and has been keeping an eye on a blonde Earth girl who is his only connection to the traitorous Shaba. Let us see how the search goes.

Chapter Seven

Tarl visits the nearby slave markets and makes the acquaintance of one Uchafu, slaver of Schendi, who now has the blonde “barbarian” for sale. Window-shopping, Tarl makes polite conversation and hears more about Bila Huruma, Ubar of the interior, who has a great project in progress, a canal joining Lakes Ushindi and Ngao, and who is preying upon his neighbours for the necessary manpower. This, unfortunately, includes Schendi, which is in no position to argue the toss.

Tarl is told that the blonde has been bought by someone unknown for fifteen copper tarsks, and Uchafu turns down his counter-offer of sixteen with much lamentation (on Gor, I suppose it could be called “swamp tharlarion tears”). This only confirms to Tarl that the girl’s fate has already been determined, and he makes his excuses and leaves.

Chapter Eight

Keeping the blonde under surveillance by telescope, Tarl is able to see her bought and driven away by a hunchback, who ushers her to a paga tavern named the Golden Kailiauk. Tarl tails them inconspicuously, disguised as a Leather Worker, and takes his place in the tavern where he can see the blonde, who is made to lie on the floor under an aba that completely conceals her. He whiles the time away with a drink or two and a game of Kaissa, employing the novel gambit that gave Centius his great win over Scormus early in the previous book, but finds that his opponent’s grasp of theory is more than equal to the challenge, though Tarl ekes a win out in the end. (This is in itself remarkable. Since the fellow in question claims to have read “more than a hundred analyses” of this recent innovation in the game, it is astonishing that he doesn’t come up with a devastating refutation, which would ordinarily be the outcome when someone who plays a fashionable opening he likes the look of comes up against someone who has done a phenomenal amount of homework. Still, good for Tarl.)

Eventually it dawns upon our hero that he has been sitting there waiting for either the hunchback to come back and claim the blonde, or for someone else to collect her, for entirely too long, and arising in wrath he flings the cover off the prone girl and finds that it is not the blonde after all but another white slave; a switch has been worked on him under his very nose. While he is trying to get to the bottom of this, the onlookers scream in horror, for by certain visible signs it is apparent that Tarl has contracted the dreaded Bazi plague. As everyone flees from the tavern, Tarl inspects himself in a mirror; fortunately, no one is in a hurry to get closer to him than they can help.

Chapter Nine

Crossly, Tarl returns to his rented accommodation and collects Sasi. He knows very well that he does not have the plague and assumes that he has merely been given the symptoms by some means as yet unknown. After all, he does not feel ill and has not been at great risk from infection, and the plague itself burnt out some time ago. (Remember the principle stated in the last Booknotes: Gor knows no disease, except (1) Dar-Kosis and (2) such diseases as may be necessary as plot devices.) He does, however, need to change his lodgings before the panicky hue and cry catches up with him, and he makes haste to absent himself, accompanied by Sasi who pertly comments on the apparent change in his caste and some speculation as to what his true caste may be.

Chapter Ten

Tarl seeks information from the Ubar of the Beggars, blind Kipofu, who as well as controlling and licensing the beggars in Schendi and taking care of their welfare, is in possession of a spy network befitting his station. He soon establishes that the hunchback, presumed to be a beggar named Kunguni, is no such person; but when he volunteers a whole silver tarsk and begins to describe the man he seeks, Kipofu at first mutters some interesting obscurities: “His back is crooked and it is not. His back is hunched and it is not. His face is scarred and it is not. His leg is crippled and it is not,” and then grows alarmed at the conviction that someone is near. There is no one to be seen where he indicates, but Tarl’s neck-hairs rise, as well they might. After all, the mere question, “What is it that is sovereign against the sighted but useless against the blind?” contains the answer, does it not? Garnering one or two useful facts about the Golden Kailiauk and the white slave girl who works there - and the proprietor owns no more white slaves than there are beggars called Kunguni in Schendi - Tarl pronounces himself well satisfied and takes his leave of the beggars’ Ubar.

Chapter Eleven

Soon Tarl is trailing the white slave girl, about whom he informs the reader he was already entertaining suspicions, to the door of a little house in a back street. There he is able to spy upon the goings-on as she reveals herself to be no slave at all but yet another of the Earth-woman agents found in the employ of the Kurii and who, like all such whom we have ever encountered, is lusciously beautiful but determined to prove herself the equal of, nay, identical to, any man; and given the track record of such, we can pencil in her likely come-uppance without more ado. She participates in the interrogation of the blonde slave, in the presence of the so-called Kunguni, whom Tarl observes from his vantage-point on the roof to be, as advertised, no hunchback at all but merely the employer of a cunning disguise. We get around to learning the blonde’s name, Janice Prentiss; her mission, to convey a ring and some papers from Cos to Schendi; her ill-luck in having her ship boarded by pirates of Port Kar (whose captain, Bejar, is known to both “Kunguni” and Tarl, though they entertain divergent opinions about him); and her ignorance of what became of her cargo.

Debating this matter, “Kunguni” addresses a third party, whom Tarl cannot see, but who is evidently deeply concerned in what is going on. They decide to let Janice, the “blond” (sic: excuse me while I have a “Scribe Moment” here) barbarian, live, and he addresses a pair of burly black bodyguards in a language unknown to Tarl as to what to do with her. Tarl then slips quietly from the roof, only to find himself confronted by those same bodyguards, and he is ushered in to meet “Kunguni.” He announces that he has letters explaining his business. One is for Msaliti, which “Kunguni” admits is his real name. The other - Tarl takes a little time to describe the previously unseen man, who is tall, appears extremely intelligent and hardy, and wears a fang ring, which is a poison device probably delivering a lethal dose of kanda; he is dressed and made up in a manner that suggests he is accustomed to much coming and going in the interior of the Dark Continent - is for Shaba, the geographer of Anango. And inevitably, the stranger reveals that he is that same Shaba.

Chapter Twelve

Delicate negotations proceed between Shaba and Tarl concerning the rings (the true shield-ring and its explosive counterfeit) and papers, with neither being willing to show their full hand at this stage. Shaba deduces ably that Tarl is an agent of either Priest-Kings or Kurii, and Tarl adopts the latter guise for now, though Tarl and Shaba each state the other to be an unlikely example of their assumed status. Shaba further explains how it was that the “askaris” (his native soldiers. This “language of the interior” word is a direct steal from Earth; Webster’s Online informs me that it is “an Arabic and Swahili word meaning ‘soldier,’ frequently used to describe indigenous troops in East Africa and the Middle East serving European colonial powers but also describes policemen and security guards”) were ready for him, and they exchange compliments concerning the business in the tavern, pointing out that no direct harm was intended to Tarl, as they could perfectly well have used deadly poison on him instead of a mere drug cocktail intended to mimic plague symptoms. They arrange a further meeting at which the rings and papers will be exchanged, and then attend to the minor business of seeing to the aforementioned comeuppance of E (for Evelyn) Ellis, the now-superfluous female agent.

It is, perhaps, just as well that the faithlessness of Kurii senior management with respect to their female agents is not more widely known, or they would experience serious problems of recruitment and retention. As for Evelyn, it is a matter of only a few pages before she is thoroughly apprised of the realities of her situation. A feigned slave no more but embarking on a new and exciting life as a for-real kajira, she is treated to her first whipping and warned that her master, Pembe the tavern-keeper, has removed the hands and feet of more than one displeasing slave. She is taken away by the askaris, dismayed to learn that she cost only four copper tarsks.

Talking of slaves, Tarl now buys Janice for half a dozen silvers, which we know Tarl can well afford and will satisfy Msalit’s greed, and that worthy leaves. Tarl and Shaba elegantly fence with each other before Shaba employs the ring to make good his escape, expressing eager anticipation of their next meeting.

Chapter Thirteen

Returning to the Golden Kailiauk, Tarl persuades Pembe that he did not have the plague and is now perfectly well, and he hires himself the first use of Evelyn. She is afraid, but we know that Tarl has the message for the kajirae, even those lately Earth-born Kur agents who hate their femininity and proclaim their frigidity, and within a short space of time he has transformed her into a hot, writhing red-silk paga slut. She begs to be bought, no doubt preferring the devil she knows to an uncertain future in the paga tavern, but Tarl responds by teaching her what might be plausibly termed the “Kajira’s Creed”:

“He is Master, and I am Slave,
He is owner, and I am owned.
He commands, and I obey.
He is to be pleased, and I am to please.
Why is this?
Because he is Master, and I am Slave.”

This he tells her to repeat often, for it may help her to survive. He leaves her, picks up (literally) the blonde barbarian, and quits the tavern, not unpleased with the day’s events.

So Tarl has succeeded in locating Shaba the geographer, and may reasonably hope that the negotiations over the rings and papers will go according to plan and that he will recover the inestimably priceless treasure. On the other hand, he has already stated that he is eager for the blood of that same Shaba, traitor to Priest-Kings; and given the deviousness already shown by both Shaba and Msaliti, who are clearly no novices at this game, it is anyone’s guess how closely according to plan their affairs will run. But who needs to guess when it is only a month until the next issue of The Gorean Voice and the next instalment of this column, when we shall take a third look at Explorers of Gor? Let us make a compact to meet again then - hopefully in better faith than we suspect abides in Msaliti, Shaba and even Tarl.

I wish you well,

Socrates