"Her?" I asked.
"Yes," he said.
I shrugged. It was not impossible that my eyes had more than once strayed to her.
I saw her petulantly, impatiently, push another girl away from her, who had, apparently in her opinion, come too close to her.
"She apparently has a nasty streak in her," said Miles of Vonda.
"She is from Earth," I said. "The whip can take that out of her."
"Could you whip her?" asked Miles of Vonda.
"Of course," I told him. What woman could respect a man who is not strong enough to put her under the whip?
We continued to look downward into the central room of the slave quarters. Many such rooms are quite lovely, resplendent with multicolored tiles and rich hangings, and beautifully appointed with baths and columns, but this was not such a room. This was more in the nature of a gloomy, forbidding, ill-lit, stoutly secure incarceration chamber for females. The walls were high and stern; the tiles were large and dark. In the center of the room there was a cistern. To one side there was a trough for wastes. Scraps of food were commonly thrown to the girls through a window in the grillwork on the side of the room to our left.
It is not common on the part of pirates to pamper their slaves. All the girls in the holding we had placed in this one room, that they might, for our convenience, be located in a single place. Among them, too, we had placed Shirley and Lola, who had been at the prows of the _Tuka_ and _Tina_ when we had entered the sea yard. Before we had put them in with the other girls we had given them brief slave tunics, that they might have some prestige among their new fellow slaves.
When the fellow had thrust Lola into the room, earlier in the afternoon, I had, from the concealment of the balcony, wishing to keep my presence in the holding unknown to the brunet, observed what had ensued. Seeing the small, exquisite brunet in the bit of red rag, Lola had shrieked with pleasure. "You sold me!" she cried, delightedly, more of her body covered by her brief slave tunic than was covered of the body of the brunet by the scrap of red cloth she had been allotted. "You sold me!" she cried. "Now, you, too, wear a collar!" The brunet, terrified, had shrunk back against the wall.
The fellow who had brought Lola to the central room of the slave quarters took her by the hair and shook her head. "She is not to be attacked, or blinded," he told her. This warning I had instructed him to issue to Lola, anticipating her hostility, which was only too understandable, against the brunet. "Yes, Master! Yes, Master!" had wept Lola.
She had then been locked inside, with Shirley, and the others. I had instructed Lola, clearly and firmly, prior to her confinement in the central room of the slave quarters that she was to mention to no one that I was present in the holding. A similar injunction was imposed upon lovely Shirley. These girls would keep this secret. They were slaves. They did not wish to be fed to sleen. Accordingly, though the brunet would know that, to her woe, she, now in her own collar, was confined with a girl to whom she had once been almost as Mistress, she would not begin to know or suspect that one named Jason, of Victoria, a free man, resided now within the same holding as she.
"How beautiful are slaves," said Miles of Vonda.
"Yes," I said.
I watched Lola moving toward the brunet. She had, I gathered, seen the brunet push the other girl away, earlier. She sat down, apparently indolently, next to the brunet, and stretched her body languorously, as a slave girl. Though Lola seemed thoughtless and unconcerned in what she did, neither I nor the brunet could be under any delusion as to what was transpiring. She then, as though wearily, and paying no attention, intruded herself even more closely to the brunet. Would the brunet push her away, as she had the other? If so, Lola would not, strictly, have attacked her. The first blow would have been struck by the brunet. Lola, it could then seem, could only be defending herself.
I smiled to myself. Lola's defense, I was certain, might leave the little brunet half torn to pieces. I saw the shoulders of the little brunet shake, and then she sobbed, and leaped to her feet, fleeing, She ran across the room. Lola, then, lay down in her place, and curled up, cat-like, to sleep.
The brunet then sought another place. "Go away!" said a girl pushing at her. Weeping, the brunet then went to another place. "Go away!" said another girl. The brunet then went and knelt, head down, her dark hair to the floor, before a girl. "Yes," said the girl, "you may rest here, there is enough room for two." It was the girl whom the brunet, earlier, had pushed away. "Thank you," said the brunet, and lay down there. That, then, would be her section of the tiles for the night. It would be there that she would, this night, sleep. I saw her briefly rise up on the palms of her hands, and, furtively, regard Lola. Then, quickly, she lay down again. She trembled. She feared Lola. This pleased me. I smiled to myself. There was another, too, whom she would soon learn to fear, and well, he who would be her master.
"I count eighty-nine," said Miles of Vonda, "including those two, both yours, whom we brought in at the prows of the _Tuka_ and _Tina_."
"That is correct," I said.
"An exquisite lot," said Miles of Vonda.
"Pirates have excellent taste in slave flesh," I said.
"Have the barred alcoves and the cell blocks, and the kennels, been emptied?" he asked.
"Yes," I said.
"They are all here?" he asked.
"Yes," I said.
"What of the pens," said he, "those deep below the fortress?"
"They, too, have been emptied," I said. "See those in the corner, those naked, and in close chains?"
"Yes," said he.
"They are the ones from the pens of which you have spoken," I said.
"Were they in close chains in the pens?" he asked. He did not inquire pertaining to clothing. It is common to keep girls naked in the pens. Not only is this excellent for discipline, but it is more sanitary.
"No," I said. "We put them in close chains only upon bringing them to this room. That they were in the lower pens suggested that they might be being disciplined, or were perhaps not well trained, or were new to their collars."
"The close chains, then," said he, "are in compensation for their being brought to an upper level."
"Yes," I said. "They must soon learn that their new masters are stricter than their old."
"Excellent," said Miles of Vonda.
Close chains, even after only two or three Ahn, build up a considerable amount of body pain. Girls confined in close chains soon beg to be released, that they may then strive to better please their masters.
"There is quite a diversity in the garbing of these slaves," remarked Miles of Vonda.
"We brought them in as they were," I said. The clothing worn by the girls ranged from the long, classic gowns worn by the girls from the walk, who had welcomed us with song, flowers and dance, on our entry into the holding, to the cruel, heavy scantiness of the close chains, and their brands and collars, of the girls brought up from the lower pens. Most of the girls, however, wore one or another of a recognizable variety of slave garments, such as tunics, camisks or the scandalous Ta-Teeras. Some, however, had been put in little more than twists of torn rags, such as those on the body of the auburn-haired beauty in which Miles of Vonda had seemed to take an interest and on the body of the small, exquisite brunet of whom I had deigned to take note. I gathered that the pirates had enjoyed setting off their beauty in this fashion. Their decision met with my full approval.
The dressing of slaves, incidentally, is an interesting and intricate pastime. The slave is almost never totally nude. Her body is marked almost always with some token of her condition, which is bond. This is usually a collar, but it may also be an anklet, sometimes belled, or a bracelet. Her brand, of course, fixed in her very flesh, deep and lovely, is always worn. There is no mistaking it. The iron has seen to that. Beyond these things, much depends on the individual girl and on her particular master of the time. Individual taste is here supreme. To be sure, there are natural congruences and proprieties which are generally observed.