Gorean Book Quote Requests

"I am Tarl Cabot," I said.

"I am your father," he said, and shook me powerfully by the shoulders. We shook hands, on my part rather stiffly, yet this gesture of our common homeland somehow reassured me. I was surprised to find myself accepting this stranger not only as a being of my world, but as the father I couldn't remember.

"Your mother?" he asked, his eyes concerned.

"Dead, years ago," I said.

He looked at me. "She, of all of them, I loved most," he said, turning away, crossing the room. He appeared to be affected keenly, shaken. I wanted to cross no sympathy with him, yet I found that I could not help it. I was angry with myself. He had deserted my mother and me, had he not? And what was it now that he felt some regret? And how was it that he had spoken so innocently of "all of them," whoever they might be? I did not want to find out.

Yet, somehow, in spite of these things, I found that I wanted to cross the room, to put my hand on his arm, to touch him. I felt somehow a kinship with him, with this stranger and his sorrow. My eyes were moist. Something stirred in me, obscure, painful memories that had been silent, quiet for many years - the memory of a woman I had barely known, of a gentle face, of arms that had protected a child who had awakened frightened in the night. And I remembered suddenly another face, behind hers.

"Father," I said.

He straightened and turned to face me across that simple, strange room. It was impossible to tell if he had wept. He looked at me with sadness in his eyes, and his rather stern features seemed for a moment to be tender. Looking into his eyes, I realized, with an incomprehensible suddenness and a joy that still bewilders me, that someone existed who loved me.

"My son," he said.

We met in the center of the room and embraced. I wept, and he did, too, without shame. I learned later that on this alien world a strong man may feel and express emotions, and that the hypocrisy of constraint is not honored on this planet as it is on mine.

At last we moved apart.

My father regarded me evenly. "She will be the last," he said. "I had no right to let her love me."

I was silent.
Tarnsman of Gor     Book 1     Pages 24 - 25

"Your father was instructed to call you Tarl, and lest he might speak to you of the Counter-Earth or attempt to dissuade you from our purpose, he was returned to Gor before you were of an age to understand."

"I thought he deserted my mother," I said.

"She knew," said Misk, "for though she was a woman of Earth she had been to Gor."

"Never did she speak to me of these things," I said.

"Matthew Cabot on Gor," said Misk, "was a hostage for her silence."

"My mother," I said, "died when I was very young."

"Yes," said Misk, "because of a petty bacillus in your contaminated atmosphere, a victim to the inadequacies of your infantile bacteriology."

I was silent. My eyes smarted, I suppose from some heat or fume of the Mul-Torch.

"It was difficult to foresee," said Misk. "I am truly sorry."

"Yes," I said. I shook my head and wiped my eyes. I still held the memory of the lonely, beautiful woman whom I had known so briefly in my childhood, who in those short years had so loved me. Inwardly I cursed the Mul-Torch that had brought tears to the eyes of a Warrior of Ko-ro-ba.

"Why did she not remain on Gor?" I asked.

"It frightened her," said Misk, "and your father asked that she be allowed to return to Earth, for loving her he wished her to be happy and also perhaps he wanted you to know something of his old world."
Priest-Kings of Gor     Book 3     Page 127

Bila Huruma shrugged. "It does not matter," he said. I supposed it did not matter. There were doubtless many womens' courts in his house. He had, I had heard, already more than two hundred companions . . .
Explorers of Gor     Book 13     Page 232)

One may have, at a given time, an indefinite number of slaves, but only one Free Companion.
Outlaw of Gor     Book 2     Page 54

And it is not unusual for a master to free one of his slave girls in order that she may share the full privileges of Free Companionship.
Outlaw of Gor     Book 2     Page 54

"But in the end," said Vika, "fearing he would slay himself she consented to become his Free Companion." Vika regarded me closely. Her eyes met mine very directly. "I was born free," she said. "You must understand that. I am not a bred slave."
Priest-Kings of Gor     Book 3     Page 69

Sometimes a girl, winning love, is freed, perhaps to bear the children of a former master.
Beasts of Gor     Book 12     Page 235