Free Renegades of Gor by John Norman Page B

of a bath girl, including massage and love, in whatever
    modalities the customer may elect, come in the price of the bath, and, at other
    times, as here, at the Crooked Tarn, I gathered, at least normally, they are
    extra. Needless to say, bath girls are almost always female slaves. Sometimes,
    in certain cities, free women, found guilty of crimes, are sentenced to the
    baths, to serve there as bath girls, subject, too, to the disciplines of such.
    After a given time there, after it is thought they have learned their lessons,
    and those of the baths, they are, commonly, routinely enslaved and sold out of
    the city. It is probably just as well. By that time they will have been, in
    effect, “spoiled for freedom.”
    “Ai!” cried a fellow, stepped on by the newcomer.
    Another rose up, in the half darkness, and was kicked aside.
    I opened my other eye, to consider matters.
    It was a swaggering fellow. He was naked, his clothes doubtless being hung on
    one of the pegs beyond the latticework, in the outer area. Normally,
    particularly when the baths are in full use, and the air is steamy in their
    vicinity, that would be done. Mine, which had been wet, I had put behind the
    bricked platform to dry. He held a sack in one hand, containing, I supposed, his
    bath supplies, and, in the other, held by their straps, a scabbard and blade,
    and what appeared to be a flat, rectangular pouch. He had chosen, too, I saw,
    not to come unarmed to the baths. It is thought to be very bad form,
    incidentally, to carry weapons in the baths, and, in large public baths, they
    must often be checked upon entry. On the other hand, I certainly did not blame
    him for carrying a blade into the baths, particularly in a place such as this. I
    had done so, myself. I did not know, but I suspected that on the peg outside, by
    its straps, there might hang a (pg.60) helmet. I recalled the tarn in the inn’s
    tarncot. Though no insignia or harness had been about, it had seemed clearly a
    war tarn, a warrior’s mount. That he had brought the rectangular pouch into the
    baths with him, as well as the blade, suggested to me that it might be
    important, too important to be left back at his space, or on the peg outside the
    latticework. He hung his blade, and the pouch, on one of the tub hooks.
    “What are you doing?” asked a fellow. He was the only other in the room who was
    actually utilizing a tub. He had arrived later even than I, and was still
    soaking in one of the first tubs, indeed, that which was most convenient to the
    entrance through the latticework. I myself, in my choice of a first tub had,
    and, indeed, of the second, as well, in which I now reclined, taken those
    farthest from the entrance. In that way I would have the longest reaction
    interval possible between someone’s entry and their possible arrival in my
    vicinity.
    “I take the first of the first tubs,” said the fellow.
    “I do not share tubs,” said the fellow soaking in the tub, not too pleasantly.
    Most Goreans, in the baths, at least in their own towns or cities, do share
    tubs, of course. That is one reason the tubs are so large. To be sure, even in
    one’s own area, one usually shares a tub only with friends or acquaintances.
    If the baths are crowded, of course, it would be only polite to share with one’s
    fellow citizens. The same customs, of course, generalized even further, normally
    govern the use of pools, which, on Gor, are normally located at the baths, and,
    indeed, are usually considered a part of them.
    “Nor do I,” said the newcomer, climbing to the platform.
    “Aiii!” cried the fellow in the tub, seized, and, in a moment, flung over its
    edge to the slotted wooden bath floor. He struggled to his feet, to see, in the
    half darkness, lit by a single lamp, and the reddish embers within the bricked
    platforms, the unsheathed sword now in the newcomer’s hand.
    “Stir up the fire,” said the newcomer.
    Hastily the ejected fellow seized a fire rake and poked