Black Beauty Chapter Seven - Interrogation

 Black Beauty[1]
Peony D. Beckside

With appreciation and thanks to John Norman for creating the wonderful world or Gor, in which this story is set.  Also to ‘Emma of Gor’, the fanfic blogger, for the use of some of her characters and concepts.

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[1]     Not the same story as Anna Sewel’s horse story of the same name, or of any films based upon that.

Cha[ter Seven: Interrogation

 

I awaken in a cage.  A man in green robes, a physician then, holds a vial of a foul smelling substance under my nostrils.  The smell goes right up my nose into my sinuses, clearing my head, waking me from my nightmarish slumber.  With him are two heavy-set men.  Guards?  Jailers?  One of them opens the cage.  The two of them drag me out and down a corridor into a surprisingly well lit chamber.  At the side is a writing desk at which sits a scribe, his blue robes confirming his calling.
In the centre of the chamber is an object; perhaps the most frightening one anyone, certainly anyone of Earth can imagine.  To use the Earth psychological terms of the psychiatrist Jung, this is an archetype.  It is so ingrained as an object of terror, that it cannot be misidentified. The bed of the device, its securing chains, the large roller with its ratchet and ship-like operating wheel are distinctive.  This is a rack!  A torture rack!

Terror drives, my lips.
“No Master, pleeeaase!  There’s no need to torture me.  I’ll tell you everything, gladly!”
“Now you are being stupid, kajira.  You know that the testimony of slaves…”
In that split second, I recall a comment from one of the Gor books.  He doesn’t need to finish, but he’s mid sentence and will complete it. 
“...is always carried out under torture.”
I moan in horror.  I wriggle and writhe trying to escape the burly men who hold me.  It’s simply the fear of what’s to come.  Even if I could get out of their grasp, where would I run to?  It’s academic, I cannot escape the inexorable dragging of my body to the table, my laying-down, the securing of my ankles and wrists in the shackles.  One of the men who had manhandled me from my cage, goes and stands by the spoked wheel with it’s handles fastened on the outside of the rim.  My engineering background can’t help analysing even under the absolute dread and panic of my situation.  Why does the controlling wheel require what’s effectively extra leverage?  How much effort on the wheel does it take to stretch my muscles to breaking point, to dislocate my joints.  Does the effort increase the tighter my stretch?  Where on my body will be the greatest tension, the first to fail.  A large bully of a man sits himself down on a stool next to the rack.  His unsympathetic face only inches from my face.
“Kajira.  Where is Castartius?”
You mean you haven’t caught him yet?  I can’t help you. If he’s not at home I don’t know where he is.
“I’m sorry, Master.  I don’t know.  I’d tell you if I did.”
I see the movement of the man at the wheel.  The chains move.  Where is the pain?!  I understand.  These first few clicks of the ratchet will take up the slack on the chains.  The interrogator nods seemingly benignly.
“Why did you say that the gate will fail?”
“Because it will, Master.  The materials aren’t strong enough to withstand the compression and tension forces on them.”
There is another click.  Still no pain, but I have marginally less play on my limbs.
“How do you know?”
Yet another click.  I feel my bottom shift, impelled so by the tightening chains.
“In barbarian lands, I was trained in the skills of the Builders.”
“You are a slave,  Whether you are right or wrong about the gate, why did you decide to speak.”
“I didn’t decide Master.  I had no choice.  I was programmed to speak at just such a moment.”
His scepticism is clear.  He signals another tightening of my chains.  There’s no slack in them now.  The only slack is my body.  My torment begins in earnest, now!
“Programmed?”
“Yes, Master.  Subliminally taught and manipulated.”
“Right…  Tell me how and why?”
“Yes, Master definitely!  I’m afraid though that even though it’s the truth you won’t believe me.  It’s something I would not have believed until it happened.”
He’s losing patience, I can feel it.  There’s another click on the ratchet.  I feel tension on just about every part of my body.  It’s not yet pain, but it is a discomfort.
“It’s a long story, Master…”
The tension increases again.  Strangely, I feel it most in my back.  I would have expected to feel it most in my wrists, ankles, elbows, and shoulders.  The strain in the back is insistent.
“Get on with it!”
“How much do you know about Barbarian lands, Master?”
I get another tightening.  Unbidden, I groan.  The pull on my spine insinuates itself into my mind.  I have to force myself to think not of it, but of the story.  Right now the strain on my body is similarly uncomfortable to when Master had me strung up with a weight attached to my feet.
“As Gor is a giant sphere, so too is the planet Earth, as such spheres are called.  The barbarian lands are all countries, city states as you would see them, Master.”
He signals again, driving me to get on with what I’m telling him.  The strain now beginning to become actual pain.
“I had just completed my training in the skills of the Builders, and was looking for employment in a a construction company…”
“A Company?”
“In this case, a group of Builders with a scheme big enough to seek and get money from the Merchants for the project, Master.”
This is the only way I can explain the different economic situations and realities between the two cultures, that he might understand.  He grunts in humour, clearly not believing what I’m saying.  I yelp as I am stretched again.  I hear guffaws of laughter from the physician and the scribe.
“I was being watched and followed by strange men.  The men were more like the men here on Gor, than the men on Earth.  They frightened me.  One day one of them stopped me in the road.  He gave me a business card, a small piece of cardboard to introduce a person or company.  This card was for a company called Steel World Inc.  I’d never heard of the before.  The man told me they had a position, a job, for me.  This man’s unusual approach worried me.  I decided to ignore his attempt to recruit me.  For several months.  You’d call them passage-hands, I struggled to find paid work.  In the end I was desperate for money.  At the point where I was in danger of becoming homeless, I got a letter from Steel World, inviting me to an interview,  An assessment and discussion to see if they could use me, and how much they’d pay for my services.  The thing was though, that the letter was phrased more like an order than an invitation.  I was to see an Udumi Ayeola.  You would call her a free-woman, Master.”
I am hastened again, the pain increasing.  I struggle to get air into my lungs as I try to surmount the pain.
“She told me that I would be brought to this place, a place I didn’t believe existed.  That I would be a slave.  That I would become the slave of Castartius, that I would spy on him.  I told her that I wouldn’t do it, and not politely either.  Next thing I know there’s a pin in my neck.  I fell to the floor. I was aware of what was happening to me, but could not speak or move a single muscle.  I was stripped to my undergarment and put in chains; what I have now learned is called a sirik.”
I have to stop my breath coming in pants like an overheated dog.  I am ‘encouraged’ again.  I howl.
“She told me that while I was travelling I would be taught the language used here.  My mind would be implanted with the image of Castartius, that when I saw him I would adore him, I would know that he was my perfect Master, that I would do anything, whatever it took to be bought by him. Udumi Ayeola also told me that at a certain point I would without being able to stop myself, know the perfect moment to betray him.  She was right, I see now, how used I have been by her.  I did not, out of hate, spite, loyalty to anyone, betray him.  She also said that I would be conditioned to not remember any of this until the point of betrayal.  She was wrong about one thing though.  She said that when I had committed my betrayal, I would forget all about it, that no matter how much they, you, I suppose, torture me, the knowledge wouldn’t be there for you to find.  It didn’t happen like that.  The moment that I’d spoken my denunciation, my memory of everything that had happened before flooded back into my brain.  It overwhelmed me.  I was taken and here I find myself being tortured by you, Master.”
There is cynical laughter from the man in Green, the physician.
“Do you believe this sleen-shit, Fredonard?  Teach the lying slut a lesson!”
The brute at the windlass obliges.  I scream!  The longest loudest scream I think I’ve ever given.  I don’t hold back, I cannot hold back.  The scream is dragged from me by the agony in every part of my body.  The scribe adds his comment.
“It’s a fascinating fantasy, Fredonard.  Even I couldn’t make up a story like this!”
“I am in charge of this interrogation Trozer, and yes, I do believe it, at least some of it.  It’s because it’s so far-fetched, as you imply Claatzen that I do.  I know something of barbarian lands.  This isn’t the first barbarian slave I’ve interrogated.  This one’s story does in general terms fit in with what I’ve heard on previous occasions.  She’s not told us everything yet, of course.”
Even though I’m gasping and wheezing trying to adjust to the agony that infuses my body totally, I’m pleased that this warrior believes me.  My hope that my excruciation will end, now that he’s acknowledged that I’m telling the truth, evaporates like a popped soap bubble at his last comment.
“Where is Castartius, slave?”
“I don’t know, Master.  I’d tell you if I, aaargh.”
“Do you love him still?”
“I thought that I did.  I don’t know anymore.  Did I love him because I was taught to love him or because I really did?  I truly don’t know, Master.”
“Would you lie to protect him, even to dying in agony on this table?”
“No, Master.  If I knew where he is, I’d tell you.”
“Does he have any other properties, places where he could go?”
“I don’t know of any, Master.”
I scream again.
“I don’t, Master!  Please believe me!”
“Very well.  Is there anyone that he knows, any friends who might shelter him?”
Proximan!  Proximan was the only one who ever visited.  I don’t know if Master, my Master, ever visited others.  Whether I owe loyalty to Master or not, I owe none to Proximan, not enough to suffer further torture for.
“There was someone, Master who came to the house from time to time, I know little about him. Master called him Proximan.”
Memories of the odd things that the two of them had said to each other come into my mind.
“Who is this Proximan, slave?”
“I don’t know, Master.  Just a friend of my Master’s, I think.  Wait… they did discuss some kind of business.  Political talk, I think.  It didn’t make any sense to me.  I don’t know enough about the politics of this place for it to be meaningful to me.  He seemed like some kind of messenger.”
“Tell me.”
“First time Proximan visited, Master asked ‘What do you hear from home?’.  It didn’t make sense. Surely, here was home?  Proximan said ‘The Tatrix is very pleased with you.’  There was something about drawings that had been sent.  He added ‘She’s impressed at your initiative in seeking to become Ubar,  She does however warn against hubris, and would be very displeased if in becoming so, you forgot where your real loyalties lie…’.
I see a hardening of my interrogator’s mouth and cries of outrage from Trozer and Claatzen.  I am made to scream again.  I don’t know why.  It’s almost as if they are punishing me for something my Master had done!
“Anything else, slave?”
“Early on Master, my Master asked me about the design of the new Western gate, by showing me a drawing of it.  I could see the weakness of the design, and suggested how to overcome them.  Master agreed, and said ‘As for your idea.  That’s precisely what has been decided’.  I think that it was when I saw the gate in its completed form, and that it was the same design as originally shown me, without the strengthening buttresses that triggered the hidden instructions in my mind, to betray my Master. 
            On the night that the new design was shown to the important people of the city, after the unveiling Proximan asked ‘Do you think they were fooled, taken in by your deception, Castartius?’. Proximan answered ‘Yes I think so Proximan.  We’ll see as the …’  I didn’t hear any more, Master.”
I can see that my interrogator is utterly furious!  He cries out in rage.
“Torcadino!  Sleen!!!”
The windlass man moves the wheel several clicks.  I barely hear them, drowned as they are by my scream.  I feel a pop at my shoulders.  I think that my shoulders have been dislocated!  The pain is too much.  I faint.
 
I awaken in a cell.  I’m alone for now, but it’s clear that this cell is meant to hold several more people.  My ankles are chained to a heavy staple low on one of the walls.  I ache all over, but the soreness is worst in my shoulders.  I can move my fingers and arms, put it’s painful.  I have to assume that the Physician, Trozer, must have re-seated the ball in my shoulder joint.  There is a technique for this, I understand, but I’m not sure how it works.
I have no collar.  It must have been removed while I was unconscious.  To whom do I belong now.  Strangely I feel bereft without the collar, I’ve worn it for so long.
I can do little but wait.  I have no idea what’s to become of me.  After my torture, can death be any worse?  I’m quite sure I’ll never see Master again.  If he hasn’t been caught and executed, then he’ll have escaped to another city.  I’m not sure that I even want to.  My love, no, infatuation for him was manufactured.  Would I, could I love him, knowing that?  My thoughts are disturbed by a jailer bringing round bowls of slave gruel.  I eat it.  Not gladly, but with indifference.  Food is fuel.  Existence.  I can’t afford hope.
I vaguely wonder where my loyalties lie now?  It could be argued that a slave is permitted no loyalties other than to her Master, but is Castartius my Master now?  As a slave I can have no loyalty for a given city, but where is the ‘rightness’, the ‘good’.  Who, to use Earth terms, are the ‘Good guys’?  Who wears the ‘white hats’ and who are the ‘black hats’?  I know that ‘here’ is Argentum.  Presumably Torcadino, (with a Tatrix), is the enemy.  But is Torcadino my enemy?  Argentum has just tortured me!  Whilst I feel that the only loyalty I can have is for my legal Master, but he has fled, leaving me to the Argentum torturers.  Do I therefore owe him anything?  I feel so alone, unsure of myself.  Even as a slave, I had a place in society, this society?  What is my place now?  I fall into a fitful sleep.