"But why would you let it go?" asked the girl, in misery.
"It has served its purpose," said Boots.
"Its purpose?" asked the girl.
"yes," said Boots. "It has served to catch me a pretty, greedy little slave, on who by tomorrow morning will be in no doubt as to the nature of her many utilization."
"Surely you have not tricked me!" she cried.
"Shoulder my pack," said Boots.
"And mine," said Chino.
"And mine," said Lecchio.
The girl then, with great difficulty, struggling, bending under the weight, staggering, shouldered the three packs.
"Hurry, lazy girl!" called Boots, leaving the stage with Chino and Lecchio. "I did not know we had any sleen," Lecchio was saying to Chino. "Where could they be?"
"I wonder if I have been tricked," said the girl to the audience. There was much laughter. "In any event," she said, "I am now in the collar and that is all there is for it!"
"Hurry, hurry, lazy girl!" called Boots from off-stage.
"I must go now," said the girl. "Oh, these packs are heavy. But I must bear them as best I can. I am a slave now, and if I am not pleasing, I will be beaten!"
She then turned about and, staggering under the weight of the packs, left the stage.
In a moment Boots, smiling, reappeared on the stage, with Chino and Lecchio, and the Brigella, too, now freed of her preposterous burden. "Noble free woman, and noble gentlemen, of the audience," said Boots, "the Magic Veil of Anango, presented by the players of Boots Tarsk-Bit, actor, promoter and entrepreneur extraordinary! We thank you for you consideration!" There was much applause. Boots, and the Chino and Lecchio, smiling, bowed, again and again. The Brigella, at a sign from Boots, knelt on the stage. She would take her bows on her knees, of course, for she was a slave.
"Bina!" called Boots, gesturing to the side of the stage. The Bina, then, in her garments of a free woman, she who had played the brief role of Lady Tipa, the fellow villager of the Lady Phoebe, emerged onto the stage. "Off with those absurd impediments to our vision," said Boots, jollily, to her. She removed her veil and threw back her hood, shaking loose her dark hair. She was an exquisite little slave, but not a match for the Brigella in beauty. She would not, at least, I supposed, have brought as much as the Brigella on a slave block. I remembered her, too, from Port Kar.
"Come, come," said Boots, her master. She then pulled down her robes, about her shoulders, and then stripped herself to the waist. She had small, well-formed, exquisite breasts. On her neck was a collar of steel. "Off with them, mow, completely," said Boots, gesturing to the robes she had clutched about her hips. "Kneel." She thrust the robes down about her ankles and knelt then on the boards, beside the Brigella, before the audience. Boots gave her an almost unnoticeable kick with the side of his foot and she spread her knees before the audience. I could see that she was reluctant to do this. Perhaps she had been a slave less long than the Brigella. But now both of them knelt identically before the audience, backs straight, back on their heels, chins up, stark naked in their collars, their knees spread, slaves.
"Our little Bina!" said Boots, showing her off. "thank you, noble free woman and noble gentlemen! Remember poor Boots and his company! Be generous!" Some coins, mostly copper, rattled to the stage. I myself gave a couple of copper tarn disks. I had much more money, my own, and some more I had helped myself to at the camp of the Lady Yanina, before I had freed her prisoners and burned the camp, but I had no wish to advertise the current weight of my purse at the fair. It is one thing to do this in a city where one, and one's financial status, is reasonably well known, and quite another, as you may well imagine, to do it in a strange place before strangers.
"Thank you, noble people, splendid patrons of the arts," called Boots. "Thank you!" The Chino and Lecchio gathered up the coins, handing them to Boots, who took them and deposited them somewhere inside his robes, perhaps into the lining or a hidden pocket. The girls, here at the fair, were not passing through the crowd with copper bowls, perhaps because they had both been in the play. At any rate, even when they had done this in Port Kar, they had not, of course, been handling or touching the coins, only the bowls in which the coins were collected. The only female performers who customarily gather up the coins thrown to them for their masters are dancers, who usually perform alone, except for their musicians. They tuck the coins in a bit of their silk, if they have been permitted any. Given the nature of their silk, which is usually diaphanous, and the general scantiness of their garb, and the publicness of their picking up the coins, there is little danger that they could conceal a coin, even if they dared to do so. A slave girl, you see, is generally forbidden to so much as touch a coin without permission. This does not mean, of course, that they may not be sent to the market, and given coins for errands, and such. For an unaccounted for coin to be found in a slave girl's possession, or among her belongings, can be cause for severe punishment. She might even be fed to sleen.
"Lout!" called the free woman.
"Yes, noble lady?" said Boots, coming forward.
"Your plays are insulting to free women!" she cried. "I have never been so insulted in my life!"
"Have you seen them all?" asked Boots. "There are more than fifty."
"No," she said. "I have not seen them all!"
"We cannot perform them all without a full company, of course," said Boots. "I am short-handed at the moment. I do not even have a golden courtesan. There are frequent changes in the repertory, of course. We make up new ones, and sometimes we feel it best, temporarily or permanently, to drop out old ones, ones that do not then seem as good or which do not seem to play as well any longer. One improvises about given ideas or themes, and then, performance by performance, a play is built. To be sure, much always remains open to invention, to innovation, to constant revision, to impromptu spur-of-the-moment contributions, and so on. One must always be ready, too, to capitalize on such things as local color, current happenings, the current political situation, popular or well-known figures, the prejudices of a district, and so on. Local allusions are always popular. They can occasionally get you in trouble, of course. One must be careful about them. It would not do to be impaled. You seem highly intelligent. Perhaps you could help us."
"Do you think that all free women are no better than slaves!" she cried.
"I would suppose that women are all pretty much of a muchness," said Boots.
'Oh!" she cried in fury.
"Take yourself," he said. "How would you look stripped and in a collar, and under a whip? Do you think you would behave much differently, then, than any other slave? Indeed, have you ever stopped to think about it? Have you ever wondered, secretly perhaps, whether or not you might have what it takes to prove to be even an adequate slave?"
"I am a free woman," she said, icily.
"Forgive me, Lady," said Boots.
"I will, before nightfall, and you may depend upon it," she said, "lodge my complaint with the magistrates. By tomorrow noon, you will be closed, forbidden to perform at the fair."
"Show us mercy, Lady," said Boots, "we are a traveling company, a poor troupe in desperate straits. I have had to sell even my golden courtesan!"
"I do not care," she said, "if you must sell all your sluts!"
"The Fair of En'Kara is the greatest of all the fairs," he said. "It comes but once a year. It is important to us! We need every tarsk-bit we can make here."
"I do not choose to show you mercy," she said, coldly. "Too, I shall see to it that you are fined and publicly whipped. Indeed, if you are not gone from the fairgrounds by tomorrow evening, I shall also see to it that your troupe is disbanded, and that your goods, your wagons, your clothes, your sluts, everything, is confiscated!"