"What are you both saying?" asked Mina.
"We are thinking," said Tupita, "if I am not mistaken, that although this thing might eat humans, and might eat us, it may not be that we have been brought here, really, for food."
"I do not understand," said Mina.
:It may be working with men," said Tupita. "If so, they might be slavers." "But you do not know that!" said Mina.
"No," admitted Tupita. "But look about yourself. Do you not note something else of interest here? Do you not think we might not, all, be of interest to men?" I looked down, embarrassed. I, of all of the girls in the pit, was naked. Mina and Cara had the shreds of work tunics, and Tupita, too, still had much of her tunic, it ripped only a bit, perhaps when the beast had seized her. Tela had the soiled narrow rectangle of silk.
"It seems likely to me," said Tupita, "that we are being kept not for food, though such a thing, or things, might eat us, but to be turned over to our kind, to slavers."
"I remember now," I said, "in the darkness, before I was cuffed unconscious, it put me to my knees before it!"
"Excellent!" said Tupita. "Then I suggest we kneel before these beasts, and behave with them much as we might with men. They may well regard us, and correctly, as female slaves. Thus they may expect suitable subserviences." We kissed one another, then, in hope.
"What is there to do now?" asked Mina.
"You wear a collar and chains," said Tupita. "You are kajira. What do you think you will do?"
Mina looked at her.
"You will wait," said Tupita.
"How could the thing come into the work camp?" I asked.
"It dug under the fence," said Tela. "It did not strike me unconscious in the tent, perhaps for fear of the master or you hearing. I was dragged under the side of the tent and into the night. After a time it moved aside a bush, concealing a tunnel and then dragged me after it, through it. On the other side of the wire fence, ascertaining no one was about, it struck me unconscious."
"How is it that you are hear?" asked Tupita of me.
"I came with Aulus to the camp of Pietro Vacchi," I said, "where he wished to conclude negotiations pertaining to the purloined chains. I was chained at his stirrup."
"That explains why you are naked," she said.
"Yes," I said.
"You would look very beautiful chained to a stirrup," said Tupita.
"So, too, would you," I said."What beasts they are, to so display us for their pleasure," she said.
"They are the masters," I said.
"I wager you were proud at the stirrup," she said.
"Of course," I laughed.
"Slave," said Tupita.
"Of course, I am a slave," I said. "Are you not a slave, and a total slave?" "Yes," she smiled. "I, too, am a slave, and, like you, my dear Tuka, a total slave."
"You said that you served in the tent of Pietro Vacchi," I said.
"Yes," she said.
"You must have been very beautiful," I said, "to have been selected for his tent."
"If you came to the camp with Aulus, at his stirrup," she said, "I wager you, too, are not unfamiliar with the neck chain of Pietro Vacchi."
I looked down. "No," I smiled. "I am not unfamiliar with it."
"He made me scream with pleasure," said Tupita.
"I, too," I smiled.
"Seldom have I been in the arms of such a man," she said.
"Nor I," I said.
"He is a soldier, and a captain," she said. "He knows well how to teach a woman her collar."
"True," I said.
"It was on my return to the girl pen that I was captured by the beast," she said.
"Doubtless it was because of you that he permitted me a guard, to conduct me to the pen," I said. "I gathered, or had intimations, that something might have happened to a girl shortly before me, perhaps within even a few days, that she might have disappeared, or have been mysteriously stolen, perhaps even on the route from his tent to the pen."
"It was probably I," she said.
"Undoubtedly," I said.
"It is interesting that both of us served in the tent of Vacchi, and that we are both here now," she said.
"What do you mean?" I asked. "Do you think Vacchi is implicated in our abduction?"
"Certainly not," she said. "He could have put either of us in his collar, at his whim. Who is going to gainsay him with his company of mercenaries?"
"True," I said.
"But," she said, "there may be more than a coincidence here. Might it not be that the beast, not of our kind, was, in effect, utilizing the choices of Vacchi, as guaranteeing that his pickups would presumably be such that they would be attractive to human males?"
"Yes!" I said. "That is possibly it! And Tela was first on the chain, and serving in the tent of the overseer! That, too, might have convinced the beast that she was a suitable acquisition!"
"What of me, and Cara?" asked Mina.
"Were you serving near the fence?" I asked. "Was your chain there shortly before your capture?"
"Yes," said Mina.
"Perhaps you were pointed out, by men, to the beast," I said, "in effect designated as suitable quarry."
"Perhaps the aedile came on the beast unawares," said Tupita.
"Perhaps," I said. "But, too, it may have merely been hungry."
"Could it not have killed for gold?" asked Mina.
"Assuredly," I said. "But it could have killed for both, for gold, and food." "True," said Mina, shuddering.
"Tuka," said Tela.
"Yes," I said.
"How is the master?" she asked.
"The master?" I asked.
"Aulus," she said.
"He is all right, as far as I know," I said.
"Good," she said, relieved, kneeling back.
I looked at her, sharply, and she put down her head. I suspected then that her belly had found its love master. To be sure, we slaves must leap to the touch of any man. I did not see any need to tell her of the "gentlewoman," to whose female training Aulus had been asked to contribute.
"You know that most of the men with the chains were freed?" said Tupita.
"Yes," I said.
"He went toward Venna," she said.
"I know," I said.
"He made no attempt to negotiate for me, or secure me," she said.
"I am sorry," I said.
"apparently your blood is of more interest to him than my love," she said. "You think he still desires to kill me?" I asked.
"I know he does," she said.
I shuddered. I was helpless at the bottom of the shaft. Were he to come upon me here how could I escape? Perhaps he would lower the rope and bucket for the others, and not me? Perhaps he would throw great stones down upon me? Perhaps he would lower poisonous insects or snakes into the pit? Perhaps he would leave me here to starve?
Tupita then began to tear her tunic, about the hem.
"What are you doing?" I asked.
"I am going to give you some clothing," she said, "if you want it." "Your tunic barely covers you," I said.
She had then torn a narrow strip from about the hem of the garment, and where the strip parted, tied the lengths together. "This will give you a belt," she said. She then tore down a part of her bodice.
"Tupita!" I protested.
"We will both be bare-breasted slaves," she said. "Are you former Earth women, ashamed of the beauty of your breasts?"
"No," I said.
"Here," she said, handing me the narrow strips, knotted together, taken from the hem of her skirt. "Roll it. Twist it in your hands. It will be stronger. That is it. Good. Now tie it about your waist."
I fastened this fragile, narrow, improvised cordlike belt of twisted and rolled cloth about me, knotting it at the left hip. It was a slip knot, such that masters might remove it at a tug.
"Here," she said, handing me the strip of cloth she had torn from her bodice. I placed it carefully, gratefully, the loose end inside, next to my belly, over the rolled cloth. I smoothed it out.
"I see that you know how to insert a slave strip in a belly cord," she said. "Of course," I said.