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#Post#: 101--------------------------------------------------
Stabilization Serums
By: Oreo Date: February 7, 2014, 7:48 pm
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"You spoke of knowing the Cabots for four hundred years, I
said. Yes, said Misk, and your father who is a brave and noble
man, has served us upon occasion, though he dealt only,
unknowingly, with Implanted Ones. He first came to Gor more than
six hundred years ago. Impossible! I cried. Not with the
stabilization serums, remarked Misk."
"Priest Kings of Gor" page 126
"Strangely, though it had now been six years since I left
counter-earth, I can discover no signs of aging or physical
alteration in my appearance. I have puzzled over this, trying to
connect it with the mysterious letter, dated in the seventeenth
century, ostensibly by my father, which I received in the blue
envelope. Perhaps the serums of the Caste of Physicians so
skilled on Gor, have something to do with this, but I cannot
tell."
"Tarnsman of Gor" page 218
"The Player was a rather old man, extremely unusual on Gor,
where the stabilization serums were developed centuries ago by
the Caste of Physicians in Ko-ro-ba and Ar, and transmitted to
the Physicians of other cities at several of the Sardar Fairs.
Age, on Gor, interestingly, was regarded, and still is, by the
Castes of Physicians as a disease, not an inevitable natural
phenomenon. The fact that it seemed to be a universal disease
did not dissuade the caste from considering how it might be
combated. Accordingly the research of centuries was turned to
this end. Many other diseases, which presumably flourished
centuries ago on Gor, tended to be neglected, as less dangerous
and less universal than that of aging. A result tended to be
that those susceptible to many diseases died and those less
susceptible lived on, propagating their kind. One supposes
something similar may have happened with the plagues of the
Middle Ages on Earth. At any rate, disease is now almost unknown
among the Gorean cities, with the exception of the dreaded
Dar-Kosis disease, or the Holy Disease, research on which is
generally frowned upon by the Caste of Initiates, who insist the
disease is a visitation of the displeasure of Priest-Kings on
its recipients. The fact that the disease tends to strike those
who have maintained the observances recommended by the Caste of
Initiates, and who regularly attend their numerous ceremonies,
as well as those who do not, is seldom explained, though, when
pressed, the Initiates speak of possible secret failures to
maintain the observances or the inscrutable will of
Priest-Kings. I also think the Gorean success in combating aging
may be partly due to the severe limitations, in many matters, on
the technology of the human beings on the planet. Priest-Kings
have no wish that men become powerful enough on Gor to challenge
them for the supremacy of the planet. They believe, perhaps
correctly, that man is a shrewish animal which, if it had the
power, would be likely to fear Priest-Kings and attempt to
exterminate them. Be that as it may, the Priest-Kings have
limited man severely on this planet in many respects, notably in
weaponry, communication and transportation. On the other hand,
the brilliance which men might have turned into destructive
channels was then diverted, almost of necessity, to other
fields, most notably medicine, though considerable achievements
have been accomplished in the production of translation devices,
illumination and architecture. The Stabilization Serums, which
are regarded as the right of all human beings, be they civilized
or barbarian, friend or enemy, are administered in a series of
injections, and the effect is, incredibly, an eventual, gradual
transformation of certain genetic structures, resulting in
indefinite cell replacement without pattern deterioration. These
genetic alterations, moreover, are commonly capable of being
transmitted. For example, though I received the series of
injections when first I came to Gor many years ago I had been
told by Physicians that they might, in my case, have been
unnecessary, for I was the child of parents who, though of
Earth, had been of Gor, and had received the serums. But
different human beings respond differently to the Stabilization
Serums, and the Serums are more effective with some than with
others. With some the effect lasts indefinitely, with others it
wears off after but a few hundred years, with some the effect
does not occur at all, with others, tragically, the effect is
not to stabilize the pattern but to hasten its degeneration. The
odds, however, are in the favor of the recipient, and there are
few Goreans who, if it seems they need the Serum’s, do not avail
themselves of them. The Player, as I have mentioned, was rather
old, not extremely old but rather old."
"Assassin of Gor" page 29/31
"They are administered in four shots ...said the Physician.
...The guard took me and threw me, belly down on the platform,
fastening my wrists over my head and widely apart, in leather
wrist straps. He similarly secured my ankles. The Physician
busying himself with fluids and a syringe before a shelf in
another part of the room laden with vials. I screamed. The shot
was painful. It was entered in the small of my back, over the
left hip. They left me secured on the table for several minutes
and then the Physician returned to check the shot. There had
been apparently no unusual reaction. ...On the first day I had
been examined, given some minor medicines of little consequence,
and the first shot in the Stabilization Series. On the second,
third and fourth day I received the concluding shots of the
series. On the fifth day the Physician took more samples. The
serums are effective ...he told the guard."
"Captive of Gor" page 93
"I had spent eight days in the slave pens, waiting the night of
the sale. I had been examined medically, in detail, and had had
administered to me, while I lay bound, helplessly, a series of
painful shots, the purpose of which I did not understand. They
were called the stabilization serums. We were also kept under
harsh discipline, close confinement and given slave training". I
well recalled the lesson which was constantly enforced upon us:
"The master is all. Please him fully."
"What is the meaning of the stabilization serums?" I had asked
Sucha. She had kissed me. "They will keep you much as you are,"
she said, "young and beautiful."
I had looked at her, startled.
"The masters, and the free, of course, if there is need of it,
you must understand, are also afforded serums of stabilization,"
she said adding, smiling, "though they are administered to them
I suppose, with somewhat more respect than they are to a slave"
"If there is need of it?" I asked.
"Yes " she said.
"Do some not require the serum'?" I asked.
"Some, said Sucha, "but these individuals are rare, and are the
offspring of individuals who have had the serums."
"Why is this?" I asked.
"I do not know," said Sucha "Men differ."
The matter, I supposed, was a function of genetic subtleties,
and the nature of differing gametes. The serums of stabilization
effected, it seemed, the genetic codes, perhaps altering or
neutralizing certain messages of deterioration, providing, I
supposed, processes in which an exchange of materials could take
place while tissue and cell patterns remained relatively
constant. Ageing was a physical process and, as such, was
susceptible to alteration by physical means. All physical
processes are theoretically, reversible. Entropy itself is
presumably a moment in a cosmic rhythm. The physicians of Gor,
it seemed, had addressed themselves to the conquest conquest of
what had hitherto been a universal disease called on Gor the
drying and withering disease, called on Earth, ageing.
Generations, of intensive research and experimentation had taken
place. At last a few physicians drawing upon the accumulated
data to hundreds of investigators, had achieved the
breakthrough, devising the first primitive stabilization serums,
later to be developed and exquisitely refined. I had stood in
the rage startled, trembling. "Why are serums of such value
given to slaves?" I asked.
"Are they of such value?" she asked "Yes," she said, "I suppose
so." She took them for granted, much as the humans of Earth
might take for granted routine inoculations. She was unfamiliar
with ageing. The alternative to the serums was not truly clear
to her. "Why should slaves not be given the serums?" she asked.
"Do the masters not want their slaves healthy and better able to
serve them?"
"Slave Girl of Gor" page 282
"In the first house of my slavery, I said, I was given a series
of injections. I am curious about them. Were they innoculations
against disease? I know those you mean, he said. No, they were
the stabilization serums. We give them even to slaves. What are
they? I asked. You do not know? he asked. No, I said. They are a
discovery of the caste of physicians, he said. They work their
effects on the body. What is their purpose? I asked. Is there
anything in particular which strikes you generally,
statistically, about the population of Gor? he asked. Their
vitality, their health, their youth, I said. Those are
consequences of the stabilization serums, he said. I do not
understand, I said. You will retain your youth and beauty,
curvaceous slave, he said. That is the will of masters. I do not
understand, I said frightened. Ageing, he said, is a physical
process, like any other. It is, accordingly, accessible to
physical influences. To be sure, it is a subtle and complex
process. It took a thousand years to developed the stabilization
serums. Our physicians regarded ageing as a disease, the drying,
withering disease, and so attacked it as a disease. They did not
regard it as, say a curse, or a punishment, or something
inalterable or inexplicable, say, assume sort of destined,
implacable fatality. No. They regarded it as a physical problem,
susceptible to physical approaches. Some five hundred years ago,
they developed the first stabilization serums. How could I ever
pay for such a thing! I gasped. There is no question of payment,
he said. They are given to you as an animal, a slave. Master, I
whispered, awed. Do not fret, he said. In the case of a woman
from earth, like yourself, they are not free. Master? I asked.
He took my collar in both hands, and moved it in such a way that
I could feel how sturdily, and obdurately, it was locked on my
neck. For a woman such as you, he said, their price is the
collar."
"Dancer of Gor" page 472
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