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The man might have come thousands of pasangs before the kaiila had died, or fled.
          "How long had he been dead?" I asked.
          Ibn Saran smiled thinly. "A month," he said. "A year?"
          In the desert decomposition proceeds with great slowness. Bodies, well preserved, had been found which had been slain more than a century before. Skeletons, unless picked by birds or animals, are seldom found in the desert.
          "Beware the steel tower," I repeated.
          "That was scratched on the rock," said Ibn Saran.
          "Was there any indication from which direction the man had come?" I asked.
          "No," said Ibn Saran.
          "Beware the steel tower," said Samos. I shrugged.
           Samos rose to his feet and, touching twice the palm of the right hand of Ibn Saran, took his leave. I noted that Ibn Saran ate only with the right hand. This was the eating hand, and the scimitar hand. He would feed himself only with the hand which, wielding steel, could take blood.
          The dancer whirled near us then enveloped me in her veil. Within the secrecy of the veil, binding us together, she moved her body slowly before me, lips parted, moaning. I took her in my arms.   Her head was back, her eyes closed.   I pressed my lips to hers, and with my teeth cut her lip.   She, and I, together, tasted the blood and rouge of her subjugation. She drew back slightly, blood at the side of her mouth. Fist by fist, my hand on the back of her small, delicious neck, preventing her from escaping, I slowly removed her veil from her, then threw it aside. Then with my right hand, the Tuchuk quiva in it, while still holding her with my left, as she continued to move to the music, I, behind her back, cut the halter she wore from her. I then thrust her from me, before the tables, that she might better please the guests of Samos,   first slaver of Port Kar. She looked at me reproachfully, but, seeing my eyes, turned frightened to the men, hands over her head, to please them. Never in all this, of course, had she lost the music in her body. The men cried out, pleased with her beauty.
          "The message girl is ready," said the man who wore the green of the physicians. He turned to the man beside him; he dropped the shaving knife into the bowl, wiped his hands on a towel.
          The girl, bound, knelt between the guards.   There were tears in her eyes.   Her head had been shaved, completely. She had no notion what had been written there. Illiterate girls are chosen for such messages. Originally her head had been shaved, and the message tattooed into the scalp. Then, over months, her hair had been permitted to regrow. None but the girl would know she carried such a message, and she would not know what it might be. Even those for a fee delivering her to the house of Samos would have considered her only another wench, mere slave property.
          I read the message. It said only "Beware Abdul." We did not know from whence the message came, or who had sent it.
           "Take the girl to the pens," said Samos to the guards.   "With needles remove the message from her scalp,"
           The girl was jerked to her feet.
          She looked at Samos. "Then," said Samos, to the guards, "use her as a low work-slave in the pens primarily as a cleaning slave. A month before her hair is regrown, and she is fit for sale, wash her and put her in a stimulation cage and train her extensively."
          The girl looked at him, agonized.
          "Then sell her," said Samos.
    A stimulation cage is an ornately barred, low-ceilinged cage; it is rather roomy, except for the low ceiling about five feet high. The girl cannot stand erect in it without her head inclined submissively. In such a cage, and in training, when not in such a cage, the girl who is housed in the stimulation cage is not permitted to look directly into the eyes of a male, even a male slave. This is designed, psychologically, to