by John Norman
“The empire has had its eye on you for a long time,” said the masked figure.
“Oh?” said Tuvo Ausonius, uneasily.
“Your record appeared outstanding,” said the masked figure.
“Your lordship?”
“You were summoned here to be commended, to be honored for your devotion to the empire, to be rewarded and promoted.”
“Your lordship!”
“But in examining your accounts, preparatory to clearances for the award,” continued the figure, “a number of unusual, subtle, serious discrepancies appeared.”
“Impossible!” cried Tuvo Ausonius.
“There are special formulas, not generally publicized, for detecting such discrepancies,” said the figure.
“My work is outstandingly accurate,” said Tuvo Ausonius.
“Perhaps it contained some inadvertent errors?”
“Perhaps,” said Tuvo Ausonius. “But I find that hard to believe.”
“So does the examining board,” said the figure. “The errors are of such a nature, such a frequency, such a proportion, that it is impossible that they can be the result of inadvertence. They demonstrate, incontrovertibly, to the board, evidence of extensive, profound, shameless peculation.”
“I do not understand,” said Tuvo Ausonius. He suddenly seemed very much aware of the cuffs on his wrists, how hard the cement was beneath his knees.
“Perhaps you have enemies?” suggested the figure.
“But who, for what purpose?” cried Ausonius.
“In light of your record, and your imposing lineage, I have been reluctant to process the matter,” said the masked figure.
“I am innocent!” said Tuvo Ausonius.
“I have even thought, on the basis of your record and such, before these matters came to my attention,” said the masked figure, “that there might be a place for you in the service of the palace itself, perhaps at the tenth level, as a special agent, a confidential agent, to be sure, charged with the conduct of delicate affairs.”
“I will do anything!” said Tuvo Ausonius.
“In such an event, I was considering turning over to you those records, and such, which constitute the putative evidence of those alleged, say, misdemeanors, that you might do with it what you wish.”
“Your lordship!” said Tuvo Ausonius.
“It would be tragic, indeed, if an innocent man were to be sent to a mining planet, there to serve out whatever portion he might manage of a fifty-year sentence of hard labor.”
“I am innocent!” cried Ausonius.
“I believe you,” said the masked figure.
“Thank you, your lordship!”
“But there is another more serious matter,” said the masked figure, regretfully.
“Your lordship?” asked Tuvo Ausonius, frightened.
“And that is why you are clad as you are, and on your knees, and chained,” said the masked figure.
“I do not understand,” said Tuvo Ausonius, pulling at his restraints.
“Commissioner!” called the masked figure.
The officer returned to the room.
“You, Tuvo Ausonius, of Miton,” said the masked figure, reading from the papers, “are charged with attempting the chastity of a free woman, one Sesella Gardener, of Miton, and engaging in activities with the object in view of having a free woman, this same Sesella Gardener, reduced to the condition of animal and slave.”
“No! No!” cried Tuvo Ausonius.
“Bring forth the witness,” said the masked figure.
Sesella Gardener entered, angrily, righteously, followed by two officers.
She was clad in gray, bulky, disguising same garb, boots, coveralls, and stiff, high-collared cloak, her hair, even, concealed beneath a dark, gray cap.
The top button on the coveralls, and the top closure on the stiff cloak, designed to conceal her upper body, were fastened shut.
Tuvo Ausonius, kneeling there on the cement, constrained, regarded her with misery and fear, but, too, oddly, with disappointment.
How different she was before, thought Tuvo Ausonius, that startling beauty of some two weeks ago.
It was not altogether impossible, however, even now, to recognize something of that wondrous vision of desirability, so small, so luscious, so deliciously curved, even in the gray, almost-shapeless vengeful thing which stood to the right of the masked figure’s chair. Tuvo Ausonius now had a better sense of such things.
“Is this he?” asked the masked figure.
“It is he!” cried Sesella Gardener, pointing at the kneeling Tuvo Ausonius.
“No!” said Tuvo Ausonius.
This encounter was quite ironic in its way, and certainly unexpected, for it was this very night that Tuvo Ausonius had expected her to be put up for sale, at the commissioner’s auction. Indeed, he had thought that he might even, as he had nothing better to do that evening, attend the auction. He did not intend to make a bid, of course. That would not be appropriate for a same. On the other hand, he had considered his resources carefully, if only as a matter of idle speculation. Such women, he supposed, might prove useful, for example, for domestic tasks, for housework, shopping, cooking, such things.
“Is it true that this man attempted your chastity, that of a same?” asked the masked figure.
“I expected him to!” said Sesella Gardener.
“I never laid a hand on her!” cried Tuvo Ausonius. “I mean I was not even in the city the night one of her clients, it seems, left her chained at the foot of the bed!”
“We have verified that he was in the city, and that he had rented the room,” said the commissioner.
“The morning prior to the alleged incident?”
“Yes,” said the commissioner. “We have the disembarkation reports, the passenger lists, the rental agency’s records, such things.”
“It was he who had me disrobe, and put me at the foot of the piece of furniture, and made it such that I could not depart!” said Sesella Gardener.
“It was he who chained you naked at the foot of the bed?” said the commissioner.
“Yes!” said Sesella Gardener, reddening.
“She disrobed voluntarily!” said Tuvo Ausonius. “And she put herself in the relevant impediments.”
“Is that true?” asked the masked figure.
“He commanded me to do so,” she said, angrily.
“And you obeyed?”
“Yes.”
“Although a putatively free woman?”
“Yes,” she said, uncertainly.
“Interesting,” said the masked figure.
“I had no choice,” she said. “He was going to report me to the company.”
“For what?” asked the masked figure.
“For disarray,” she said, “even for insubordination, discourtesy, lies, lies!”
“She was in disarray on the vessel, and she leaned over me, and she removed her cap, making her hair naked in front of me, in one of the ship’s galleys,” said Tuvo Ausonius.
“I was afraid,” she said. “I did not want to be reported. I did not want to lose my position!”
“You say that you expected him to attempt your chastity?” asked the masked figure.
“Yes,” she said.
“And yet you went to the room?”
“Yes,” she said.
“Did he attempt your chastity?”
“No,” she said.
“The first charge then, Commissioner, must be dismissed,” said the masked figure.
“It now is,” said the commissioner, making a notation.
“Why did you say that?” asked the masked figure.
“I expected him to!” she said.
“Perhaps you wanted him to,” said the masked figure.
“No!” she cried.
“But, Tuvo Ausonius,” said the masked figure sternly, “that leaves the most serious charge in place, that you acted in such a way as to have in view the enslavement of a free woman, this very Sesella Gardener.”
&nbs
p; “Yes!” cried Sesella Gardener.
“No!” cried Tuvo Ausonius.
“You left her chained in a room,” said the masked figure.
“No!” said Tuvo Ausonius.
“Some of the fingerprints on the manacles were his?” asked the masked figure.
“Yes,” said the commissioner.
Tuvo Ausonius’s prints had been taken shortly after he had been brought to the commissioner’s headquarters.
Apparently they had matched some of the prints, at least, on the manacles.
Tuvo Ausonius put down his head in misery.
Sesella Gardener cried out with pleasure, clapping her hands.
“Surely you must have understood that the authorities, to whom you reported the incident, would take her for a woman of pleasure, and one unlicensed, thus subject to impounding, and reduction to slavery.”
Tuvo Ausonius looked up, agonized, and then, again, lowered his head.
“I find you guilty,” said the masked figure.
“Yes!” cried Sesella Gardener, in triumph.
She looked at Tuvo Ausonius.
“That is where you belong, down there on your knees, you chained, stripped, filthy filch!” she cried.
Tuvo Ausonius looked up, angrily.
“The plaintiff may strike the defendant,” said the masked figure.
Sesella Gardener rushed to Tuvo Ausonius.
“You are nothing now, patrician filch!” she exclaimed.
She struck his face, repeatedly, with her small hand, back and forth.
“Filch, pig, dog!” she cried.
“That is enough,” said the masked figure.
Sesella Gardener, distraught, furious, oddly enough with tears in her eyes, backed away from Tuvo Ausonius.
“Punishments, in normal cases of this sort,” said the masked figure, “might be expected to be severe, considering the gravity of the offence, conspiring to reduce a rightfully free woman to the indignities and shame of bondage, so hateful to her, but this is obviously not such a case.”
Tuvo Ausonius looked up.
“Free him,” said the masked figure. “And take her into custody.” The two officers behind Tuvo Ausonius bent to free him of the bar and cuffs. Sesella Gardener cried out in protest, as she was seized by the other two officers who had accompanied her into the chamber. Tuvo Ausonius, bewildered, rose unsteadily to his feet. “Remove her clothing, completely,” said the masked figure. “And bring a bar and cuffs suitable for her, and put her in the sockets to my left.”
In a moment Sesella Gardener’s beauty was wholly bared, as much as it had been at the foot of the bed in the shabby room, as much as it had been in her small cell in the building for the past two weeks, to the pleasure of the guards, until, to her amazement, same garb was brought for her, and she was informed of the arrest of Tuvo Ausonius. It has been but a moment’s work for the indictment to be drafted. Shortly thereafter she had been brought down to the chamber, to testify. She now knelt, wide-eyed and bewildered, the prisoner of a bar and cuffs, suitable for her smaller frame, fastened in a pair of raised sockets, adjusted as to height, to the left of the masked figure.
“You say,” the masked figure asked Tuvo Ausonius, “that this female person was in disarray, and that she bared her hair to you on some ship?”
“Yes,” said Tuvo Ausonius, “and she knelt before me on the ship.”
“He suggested that I do so!” said the prisoner.
“And you knelt?”
“Yes,” she said, petulantly.
“You look well on your knees,” said the masked figure.
She pulled at the cuffs, but this moved the linking chain across her waist, tightly, and she stopped, instantly, realizing to her apprehension, and yet excitement, that this might accentuate her beauty, with what consequences she dared not speculate.
“You originally declared in the indictment,” said the masked figure to the kneeling girl, “that this esteemed citizen of the empire attempted your chastity.”
“Yes,” she said.
“You lied?”
“Yes,” she said.
“Why?”
“I was angry! I wanted to involve him in difficulties! Consider what he did to me, how he made me act!”
“For such an act you could be sent to a penal colony,” said the masked figure.
“If he had been a man he would have attempted my chastity!” she said.
“And doubtless would have removed it from you?”
“Yes,” she said, angrily.
“I am not a barbarian,” said Tuvo Ausonius.
“When a woman is clad as you reportedly were, all men are barbarians,” said the masked figure.
She looked up at him, angrily.
“You cannot thrust a torch into straw and not expect it to catch fire,” said the masked figure.
“He did nothing!” she said.
“He is a same,” said the masked figure.
“I changed my testimony!” she said. “I only said that I expected him to attempt my chastity, and that is true!”
“Such an expectation is irrelevant to the charge,” said the masked figure.
“The charge was dismissed,” said the commissioner.
“Yes,” said the masked figure.
“Why have you put me on my knees, and taken away my clothes, and chained me?” she asked.
“Is perjury not sufficient?” asked the masked figure.
She pulled at the cuffs, and then, again, stopped, instantly.
“It is a crime, is it not,” she asked, “to attempt to unlawfully reduce a rightfully free woman to bondage!”
“Yes,” said the masked figure.
“I am such a woman!” she cried.
“Scarcely,” said the masked figure.
“But you found him guilty,” she said.
“Of having in view your subjection to bondage, certainly,” said the masked figure.
“Why then am I chained as I am?”
“You are a free woman,” said the masked figure, “but not a rightfully free woman.”
“I do not understand,” she said, almost in a whisper, backing against the bar.
“I think you understand very well,” said the masked figure. “There are many counts against you, earlier and later, among them that you came as you did to his room, that you were clad, adorned and perfumed as a prostitute or less, that you obeyed, and so on.”
“I do not understand any of this,” she said.
“Your lordship,” said Tuvo Ausonius. “May I have a garment?”
“Certainly,” said the masked figure. He raised a hand in the direction of the commissioner, and the commissioner nodded to one of the two officers who had entered with Sesella Gardener. The officer immediately left the room.
“It is all madness, and all a mad combination of coincidences and circumstances,” said Sesella Gardener, wildly.
“You were scouted by sames, and by private agents, and agents of the line,” said the masked figure. “It was known that you chafed under the restraints of sameness. Your tendency to leave the top button of your uniform undone was noted, even under less exacting circumstances, your tendency to lean near to male passengers, your habit of neglecting the full complement of undergarments appropriate to a female same, thus permitting your lineaments to be conjectured, even your habit of touching your lips with the hint of cosmetics. It was not difficult to conjecture the closely guarded secrets of your innermost nature.”
“It is all coincidence!” she wept. “How unfortunate I am! The flight was not my regular flight. I was transferred to it at the last minute. Even the ships were changed, one substituted, one of many, whose climate machinery was laboring and, as yet, unrepaired. And why was I assigned to the executive compartment? I should not qualify for such an assignment for years! Why did that man have to be one of my passengers?”
“An incredible assemblage of circumstances,” admitted the masked figure.
The officer who had left the ro
om now returned with a long cloak, with which, gratefully, Tuvo Ausonius covered himself.
He then, clad in the voluminous folds, looked down at Sesella Gardener, to his right, but to the left of the chair of the masked figure.
“I could not have been expected not to have noticed, and not to have taken offence, at her slovenly disregard for the etiquette of appearance and her forward, provocative behavior,” pointed out Tuvo Ausonius.
“Certainly not,” said the masked figure.
“Perhaps another might not have reported her,” said Tuvo Ausonius.
“Perhaps not,” admitted the masked figure.
“But certainly I would,” he said.
“Most probably,” agreed the masked figure.
“What is to be done with me?” begged Sesella Gardener.
“I am considering transmitting you to a penal colony,” said the masked figure. “The charge would be unlicensed prostitution.”
She looked up at him, in misery.
“You see the justice of the charge, surely,” said the masked figure. “First, you are a free woman, and not a slave. Thus, the applicable category in your case is not that of slave, say, bondgirl or thrall, but that of prostitute. Secondly, you went to the room in order to exchange, or sell, your favors, in this case for exemption from disciplinary action.”
“I had another reason, as well,” she said, her head down.
“I am sure you did,” he said.
She looked up.
“How do you feel about your chains?” he asked.
“They hold me well,” she said.
“What do they tell you?” he asked.
“That I must do as I am told,” she said.
“You are familiar with the usual punishment for unlicensed prostitution, aren’t you?” asked the masked figure.
“Yes, your lordship.”
“What is it?”
“Reduction to slavery,” she said.
“But in your case,” he said, “I am prepared to be lenient, and have you sent to a penal colony.”
“The minimum sentence to such a place is twenty years,” she said.
“Yes,” he said.
“What does one do there?” she asked.
“The guards find applications for female prisoners,” said the masked figure.
“The charge would be unlicensed prostitution?”
“Yes,” he said.
“Such a sentence, with all due respect, your lordship,” she said, “would be mistaken.”