She laughed. "I see you do not know our dear Appanius," she said. "The most he would want from a woman would be to have her do his cleaning and scrub his floors!"
"But what if that is precisely what he has in mind for you?" asked Tolnar.
She turned white.
"Doubtless she would look well, performing lowly labors in chains," said Marcus.
"Perhaps, unknown to you," said Tolnar, "Appanius is a patriot."
"Never!" she said. "Bring him here!"
"What if he would keep you in his house as a slave?" asked Marcus.
"Perhaps you think you could make your former identity known," said Tolnar. "That might be amusing."
"'Amusing'?" she asked.
"Who would believe that once you had been Talena, the Ubara of Ar?" asked Tolnar.
"More likely," said Venlisius, "you would be whipped, as a mad slave."
"While," said Tolnar, "another woman, suitably coached, and veiled, would take your place in the Central Cylinder. From the point of view of the public, things would be much the same."
"Bring Appanius here!" she cried. "I know him. I can speak with him. I can make him see, I assure you, what is to his advantage! This is all some preposterous mistake. Free me! This is all some terrible misunderstanding! Bring Appanius here! I demand it!"
"But what has Appanius to do with this?" asked Tolnar.
"I do not understand," said the woman.
Tolnar regarded her.
"He has everything to do with it," she said. "He is Milo's master!"
"No," said Tolnar.
The prisoner turned her head about, not easily, in the net. "Appanius is your master!" she said to Milo.
"No," he said.
"Yes!" she cried. "He is your master. He is also the master of that short-haired slut!"
"No!" said Lavinia.
"You did not call me 'Mistress'," said the prisoner.
"Why should I?" asked Lavinia.
"It is true that you belong to the master of Milo," said Tolnar, "but it is false that the master of Milo is Appanius."
"To whom, then, do I belong?" she asked, aghast.
"Let the papers be prepared, and the measurements, and prints, taken," said Tolnar.
"Yes, Tolnar," said Venlisius.
"Papers! Measurements! Prints!" she protested.
"I think you can understand," said Tolnar, "that in a case such as this, such documentations, guarantees and precautions are not out of order."
"No! No!" she cried.
Tolnar and Venlisius put their wands of office to the side and went to the back room, to obtain the necessary papers and materials.
"You!" cried the prisoner, looking at Marcus. "It is then you to whom I belong!"
He merely regarded her.
"Who are you?" she cried.
"It does not matter," he said.
"I will buy my freedom!" she said. "I will give you a thousand pieces of gold! Two thousand! Ten thousand! Name your price!"
"But you have nothing," he said. "No more than a kaiila, or sleen."
"Contact Seremides!" she said. "Contact Myron, polemarkos of Temos! They will arrange my ransom."
"Ransom or price?" asked Marcus.
"Price!" she said, angrily.
"But you are not, as of this moment, for sale," he said.
"Sleen!" she said.
"Perhaps later," he said.
"Sleen! Sleen!" she wept. She struggled but I, behind her, kept her well in the net.
At this point Tolnar and Venlisius reentered the room and, in a few moments, were in the process of filling out the papers. These included an extremely complete description of the woman, exact even to details such as the structure of her ear lobes. Tolnar then, with a graduated tape, reaching in and about the net, and moving the woman, as necessary, took a large number of measurements, these being recorded by Venlisius. Additional measurements were taken with other instruments, such as a calipers. With these were recorded such data as the width and length of fingers and toes, the width of her heels, the lovely tiny distance between her nostrils, and so on. The result of this examination, of course, was to produce a network of data which, to a statistical certainty, far beyond the requirements of law, would be unique to a given female. Then, one hand at a time, pulled a bit from the net, then reinserted in it, her fingerprints were taken. Following this, her toeprints were taken. Then, the woman shaken, tears on the furs, was again fully within the net, on her belly. Her fingers and toes were dark with ink, from the taking of the prints. I had taken care, behind her, holding her, and such, to see that she had not seen me.
"You will never get me out of the city!" she said, suddenly, to Marcus.
"Do you really think it would be difficult," he asked her, "gagged, hooded, perhaps in a slave sack?"
"Already the alarm may be out for me!" she said to him.
"I have not heard the alarm bars," he said.
"Do not be naive," she said. "Even now, a secret alarm, a silent alarm, may be out. Even now guardsmen may be turning Ar upside down, looking for me."
"If you have planned your putative dalliance as well as you would have led us to believe," he said, "I doubt that you have even been missed. Indeed, perhaps you will not be missed until morning!"
She moaned.
"Thus, we would have plenty of time to get you out of the city, as merely another slave. If we have a tarn waiting, you could be a hundred pasangs from here by nightfall, in any direction, and by morning, with a new tarn, five hundred pasangs from there, in any direction, and in another day, who knows?"
She lifted her head with difficulty in the net, to look at him. His face was stern. She put down her head, frightened, lying on her left cheek.
"But perhaps," said he, "we have no intention of taking you from the city."
"What?" she said, frightened, lifting her head again, with difficulty regarding him. Her eyes went to the dagger at his belt. His fingers were upon it. "No!" she said. "Surely you are not assassins!"
He merely looked at her, his hand on the hilt of the dagger.
"Surely you do not intend to kill me!" she cried.
He regarded her, not speaking.
"Do not kill me!" she wept. It was not irrational on her part, of course, to fear an assassination plot. Even if she believed herself generally popular within the city, perhaps even much loved within it, she would realize that these sentiments might not be universal. For example, the increasing resistance to Cosian rule in the city, the growing insurgency, the actions of the Delta Brigade, would surely have given her cause for apprehension, if not genuine alarm. "Surely," she said, "I have not become a slave, simply to be slain?"
He did not speak.
"Do not kill me!" she begged. It must have been painful for her to hold her head up, as she was, on her belly, in the furs, in the net, to look at Marcus.
He did not speak.
"Please do not kill me," she wept, "—Master!"
"I am not your master," he said.
She looked at him, wildly. "Who, then," she said, "is my master?"
"I am," I said.
I seized her by the upper arms, from behind, and half lifting her, pulled her up, and back, to her knees, tangled in the net. She turned wildly in the net, to see me over her right shoulder, and our eyes met, and she recognized me, and she gasped, and half cried out, and then I had to hold her on her knees, as she had fainted. I lowered her to the furs. I then threw the bracelets with the linked shackles on the furs to her left. I then removed her, carefully, from the net. Then, in a moment, she was in the bracelets, back-braceleted, with her ankles, shackled, pulled up, and back, attached by a short chain to the linkage of the bracelets.
"I shall sign the papers," I said to Tolnar.
"And I shall stamp, and certify, them," he said.
27
We Take Our Leave
"Extend your left wrist," I said to Milo.
He did so, and I unlocked the silver slave bracelet there, and handed i
t to him, with the key.
The new slave, the dark-haired, olive-skinned beauty who had but recently been the Ubara of Ar, was still unconscious. I had removed her from the couch and put her on the floor, on the heavy, flat stones, on her side, some feet to the left of the couch, as one faced it, from the foot, her wrists behind her, braceleted, chained to her ankles, her neck fastened by a short chain to a recessed slave ring. Near her, but not yet fixed upon her, were the makings of a gag.
"I do not understand," said Milo.
"It is silver," I said. "Perhaps you can sell it."
"I do not understand," he said.
"And these papers," I said, "are pertinent to you. They are all in order. I had Tolnar and Venlisius prepare them, before they left."
"Papers, Master?" he asked.
"You can read?" I asked.
"Yes, Master," he said.
"Do not call me 'Master'," I said.
"Master?" he asked.
"The papers are papers of manumission," I said. "I am no longer your master. You no longer have a master."
"Manumission?" he asked.
"You are free," I told him.
Lavinia, kneeling nearby, gasped, and looked up, wildly, at Milo.
"I have never been free," he said.
"You are now," I said. "You will have to make the best of it."
"Surely master jests," he said.
"No," I said.
"Does master not want me?" he asked.
"I do not even have a theater," I said. "What do I need with an actor?"
"You could sell me," he said.
"You are not a female," I said.
He looked down, wildly, at Lavinia.
"Now that," I said, "is a female. That is something fit for sale."
"But your loss is considerable," he said.
"One tarsk bit, to be exact," I said.
He smiled.
"For so little," I said, "one could purchase little more than the services of a new slave for an evening in a paga tavern, one still striving desperately to learn how to be pleasing."
"Women are marvelous!" he exclaimed.
"They are not without interest," I granted him.
Lavinia put down her head, as it had been she upon whom his eyes had been fixed when he had uttered his recent expression of enthusiasm. To be sure, when one sees one woman as beautiful, it is easy to see the beauty in thousands of others.
"I have always been a slave," he said, "even when I was a boy."
"I understand," I said.
"I was a pretty youth," he said.
"I understand," I said.
"And I have always been denied women, warned about them, scolded when I expressed interest in them, sometimes beaten when I looked upon them."
"I know a world where such things, in a sense, are often done," I said, "a world in which, for political purposes, and to further the interests and ambitions of certain factions, there are wholesale attempts to suppress, thwart, stunt and deny manhood. This results, of course, also in the cessation or diminishment of womanhood, but that does not concern the factions as it is only their own interests which are of importance to them."
"How could such things come about?"
"Simply," I said. "On an artificial world, conditioned to approve of negativistic ideologies, with determination and organization, and techniques of psychological manipulation, taking advantage of antibiological antecedents, they may be easily accomplished."
"Even deviancy, and madness, threatening the future of the world itself?" he asked.
"Certainly," I said.
He shuddered.
"Some people are afraid to open their eyes," I said.
"Why?" he asked.
"They have been told it is wrong to do so."
"That is insanity," he said.
"No," I said. "It is cleverness on the part of those who fear only that others will see."
He shuddered again.
"But perhaps one day they will open their eyes," I said.
He was silent.
"But put such places from your mind," I said. "Now you are free. No longer now need you deny your feelings. No longer now need you conceal, or deny, your manhood."
"I am truly free?" he said.
"Yes," I said. I handed him the papers, and he looked at them, and then put them in his tunic.
"I do not know how to act, how to be," he said.
"Your instincts will tell you, your blood," I said. "Their reality transcends your indoctrinations, presented under the colors of reason, as though reason, itself, had content."
"I am a man," he said.
"It is true," I said.
"You would touch my hand?" he asked.
"I grasp it," I said, "in friendship, and, too, in friendship, I place my other hand on your shoulder. Do so as well with me, if you wish."
We held one another's hand, our hands then clasped. My left hand was on his right shoulder, and his on mine. "You are a man," I said. "Do not fear to be one."
"I am grateful," he said, "—sir."
"It is nothing," said I, "–sir."
"I think it would be well for him to leave soon," said Marcus. "For all we know Appanius may have repented of his indiscretion and be returning with men."
Lavinia looked up, agonized, at Milo.
"I liked your 'Lurius of Jad,'" I told him.
"Thank you," said Milo.
"I did not," said Marcus.
"Marcus is prejudiced," I said.
"But he is also right," he said.
"Oh?" I said.
"They were, on the whole, inferior performances," he said.
"Oh," I said.
"You see?" said Marcus.
"I liked it," I said.
"I am not really an actor," said Milo.
"Oh?" I said.
"No," he said. "An actor should be able to act. What I do is to play myself, under different names. That is all."
"That is acting, of a sort," I said.
"I suppose you are right," he said.
"Of course, I am right," I said.
"You are a wonderful actor, Master!" exclaimed Lavinia to Milo. Then she put down her head, quickly, fearing that she might be struck.
"You called me 'Master,'" he said to her.
She lifted her head, timidly.
"It is appropriate," I said. "She is a slave. You are a free man." She had, of course, spoken without permission, but it seemed almost as though she had been unable to help herself. Considering the circumstances I decided to overlook the matter. To be sure, it would not do for her to make a habit of such errancies.
"Forgive me, Master!" she whispered to me.
"You may speak," I said.
"It is only," she said, "that I think the great and beautiful Milo is a wondrous actor. It is not that he acts a thousand roles and we cannot identify him from one role to the next. It is rather that he is himself, in a thousand roles, and it is himself, his wondrous self, that we love!"
"There," I said to Marcus. "See?"
"'Love'?" said Milo, looking at the kneeling slave.
"Of course my opinion is only that of a slave," she said, looking down.
"That is true," I admitted.
"'Love'?" asked Milo, again, looking at the slave.
"Yes, Master," she said, not raising her head.
"Get your head up, slave," I said to her.
Lavinia raised her head.
"Put your head back, as far as you can," I said.
She did so. This raised the line of her breasts, and prominently displayed the collar.
"She is pretty, isn't she?" I asked.
"She is a beautiful slave!" said Milo.
Tears of vulnerability, and emotion, filled Lavinia's eyes.
"He had best be on his way," said Marcus.
"Yes," I said.
Lavinia sobbed, but she could not, of course, break position.
"But moments ago," said Milo to me, "you owned us both!"
"True," I said.
"You should leave," said Marcus to Milo.
Again Lavinia sobbed, a sob which shook her entire body, but again she could not break position.
"I think," said Milo to me, "that I would fain remain your slave!"
"Why?" I asked.
"That I might upon occasion, when permitted," said Milo, "have the opportunity to look upon this woman."
"Do you find her of interest?" I asked.
"Of course!" he said, startled.
"Then she is yours," I said.
"Mine!" he cried.
"Of course," I said. "She is only a slave, a property, a trifle, a bauble. I give her to you. Here is the key to her collar." I pressed the key into his hand. "You may break position," I said to the slave.
She flung herself to her belly before me, covering my feet with kisses. "Thank you! Thank you, Master!" she wept.
"Your new master is there," I said, indicating Milo.
Quickly then she lay before him, kissing his feet. "I love you, Master!" she wept. "I love you!"
He reached down, awkwardly, to lift her up, but it seemed she fought him, struggling, and could not be raised higher than to her knees, and then, he desisting in amazement, she had her head down again, to his feet, in obeisance, and was kissing them. She was laughing, and crying. "I love you, Master!" she wept. "I love you! I will be hot, devoted and dutiful! I am yours! I will live to please you! I will live to love and serve you! I love you, my master!" She kissed him again, and again, about the feet, the ankles, the sides of the calves. Then she looked up at him, timidly, love bright in her eyes. "I will try to be a good slave to you, Master!" she said.
"Surely I must free you!" he cried.
"No!" she suddenly cried, in terror.
"No?" he said.
"No!" she said. "Please, no, my Master!"
"I do not understand," he stammered.
"I have waited too long for my slavery! It is what I have desired and craved all my life! Do not take it from me!"
"I do not understand," he said, haltingly.
"I am not a man!" she said. "I am a woman! I want to love and serve, wholly, helplessly, unquestioningly, irreservedly, unstintingly! I want to ask nothing and to give all! I want to be possessed by you, I want to be yours literally, to be owned by you!"
"'Owned'?" said he.
"Yes, Master!" she wept. "Owned! Owned! Totally, legally! To be your property, as much as a sandal, or sleen!"
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