The Totems of Abydos (34 page)

“Tell her to get her ass back to her room,” called Rodriguez.

She trembled there, standing in the rain, a few feet away, barefoot on the planks of the road. She was then looking past Brenner, presumably toward Rodriguez. She feared him, of course. He was the sort of man, and she must have known others, particularly in a place such as Company Station, who would not hesitate to enforce his will on a woman, even with blows. Then she looked to Brenner. He did not order her away. In this, small, and vulnerable, trembling, her face stained with tears or rain, clutching the cloak about her, she seemed to take courage.

They looked at one another.

Brenner supposed she wished her pastry.

Some Pons were about. Brenner heard a squeak of the wooden runners of the sled on the planks. It had apparently moved a few inches. “That’s it,” said Rodriguez.

Suddenly, clutching the cloak about her, she hurried to Brenner.

“Why have you come?” he asked.

“You unchained me this morning,” she smiled, half laughing through what seemed, unaccountably, tears. “Nor did you return me to my room.”

“Oh,” said Brenner.

“The rooms have no handles on the inside,” she said. “They cannot be opened from within.”

“And that is why you have come?” he said.

“Of course,” she laughed.

Brenner gathered that the rooms, doubtless stoutly walled and doored, must be, in effect, cells. He supposed that the maids at the hostel might have similar rooms. Perhaps this was appropriate enough for women under contract. There would doubtless be a device which, if engaged, doubtless a lock device, would prevent the closing of the door, for the convenience of coming and going during the day. Thus, there would be times at which the door could not be closed, or at least fully, and, when it was closed, could not be opened from the inside. In this fashion the woman would be, in effect, denied privacy, in the sense that she could not close her door, or granted it at the option of the contract holder, at the price of her own incarceration, an incarceration which, of course, with its attendant privacy, was again at the option of the contract holder, or his agents. Brenner did not think that in the case of the zard’s establishment there would be surveillance devices in the room. To be sure, there might be an observation portal in the door, or such. Whereas this might seem to show the free female too little respect, it is well to understand the extraordinary dignity that this affords to her, in contrast, say, with the slave, who, for example, might be kept in a barred kennel.

“Where is the blonde?” asked Brenner.

“Your friend left her chained to the bed, spread-eagled,” she said, “too, chained by the neck, as you had me.”

Her eyes clouded.

“What is wrong?” asked Brenner.

“Apparently with the permission of our contract holder, he administered a releaser to her.”

Brenner looked puzzled.

“It is quite possible she is pregnant,” she said.

“I see,” said Brenner. “Does she want money? Does she want credits?”

“Things have been arranged between your friend and the zard,” she said.

“The appropriate credits have been punched?” asked Brenner.

“Apparently,” she said.

“She will bear the child?” asked Brenner.

“That or die,” she said. “The zard reveres life.”

“As she is free,” said Brenner, “the child, if any, would be free.”

“If she proves pregnant and comes to term, her embondment, if any, is not to take place until after the delivery.”

“And provisions have been made for the child?”

“It seems so,” said the woman.

This account interested Brenner. To be sure, he did not doubt but what Rodriguez, here and there, might have sired one offspring or another, on one world or another, perhaps even in similar circumstances.

“Why have you come here?” asked Brenner. “Is it because you want credits?”

“No!” she said.

“I have told you I cannot afford your contract,” he said.

“I do not want you to buy my contract!” she said, angrily.

“Why have you come?” he asked.

She put down her head. “What you did to me last night,” she said. “What you made me feel!”

“Naturally,” said Benner, irritably. “I apologize to you for how I treated you. Surely it was inappropriate, as we are sames.”

“We are not sames!” she said. “You are a man! I am a woman!”

“I apologize,” he said.

“Do not apologize!” she exclaimed.

“I am sorry if I demeaned you,” he said.

“It is now that you are demeaning me!” she said.

Several of the Pons now crowded about them. Brenner, not politely, brushed some of them back. Their eyes seemed inquisitive through the holes in the hoods. She did not seem surprised at the proximity of the Pons. She had, apparently, seen their likes in Company Station before. For most practical purposes, she ignored them. It was easy to overlook them, given their tiny size, their nondescript garb. They, on the other hand, seemed to find her an item provoking intense curiosity. They would look from Brenner to the woman, and then back again. Brenner scarcely registered this, but, as he did, he supposed that they were not that familiar with human females. At Company Station most of their contacts would be with males, of one species or another.

Brenner was curious to know what she might be wearing under the cloak. Too, he was somewhat irritated by her demeanor. For one of these reasons, or both, or perhaps, too, because he was not really the same this morning as he had been the preceding morning, he took in hand the edges of her cloak, where they were about her throat, and, moving his hands apart, drew them to the side. She put down her head and turned it to the left. She was not now in the dramatic, sensuous, so revealing, so provocative pleasure silks of the preceding evening, but in a brown work dress, simple, plain, coarsely woven, which came to a bit above her knees. In it, she would doubtless address herself to numerous domestic labors, cooking, cleaning, laundering, and such, shared with her fellow contractees in the zard’s establishment. Brenner had no doubt that women under contract, on the whole, particularly in an establishment such as the zard’s, would be well worked. Then in the late afternoon and early evening they could transform themselves into compliant, perfumed objects of desire. Even in the brown garb Brenner found her attractive, the contrast of it against her flesh at the neckline, and the way in which the turns of her delicious body were hinted at, and not at all obscurely, within that coarse cloth’s confines.

“Please, not before them,” she said.

Brenner smiled to himself. What interest could the Pons have in such a thing? To them would she not be merely a piece of meat, and merely meat, meaningless meat, and not meat in the sense in which slavers, or brutal, lusting men, might laughingly, in rude humor, use such an expression of, say, women chained naked in markets or lying helpless, stripped and collared, at their feet. To be sure, they might appreciate that Brenner might see her with desire, that he, as she was a female of his species, might find her of interest. The Pons, to be sure, were looking upon her. On the other hand, they seemed to look upon many things with curiosity, with inquisitiveness and wonder. They seemed a simple folk. It amused Brenner that she would feel shy before them. On the other hand, he supposed she, and other women, might feel that way, just as they might feel that way before children. They might be embarrassed to be revealed before them. It might not seem fitting to them. After all, it is not to children, nor to Pons, that such as they belong.

Brenner did not close her cloak.

“I thought last night that you were bold,” she smiled. “I see now that I was not mistaken.”

Brenner drew shut her cloak, and she held it together, about her throat.

They looked into one another’s eyes.

The Pons, Rodriguez, the opened gates, the operator, the light, green on the summit of the tower, might not have existed.

“I’m sorry,” said Brenner.

“Do not be sorry,” she said.

“About last night,” he said.

“Never be sorry!” she said.

“I’m sorry,” he said.

“Because you did what you wanted?” she asked.

Brenner was silent.

“Why should you not do what you want?” she asked. “Why should you always do what others want?”

“I’m sorry,” he said.

“Because you did not do what some anonymous, impersonal other wanted? Because, perhaps for the first time, you behaved in accordance with your real self, not some false self, one imposed upon you from the outside, one taught to you as your own?”

Brenner was silent.

“Can you not see that one generation perpetuates its tortures upon the next, and that that is part of the torture, that the next, too, must be tortured?”

“It is hard to know how to live,” said Brenner.

“I do not think it is so hard,” she said. “Cannot you listen to your heart, to your blood?”

“There is reason,” said Brenner.

“Reason is empty in itself,” she said. “It is an instrument, a tool. It can be put to many uses.”

Brenner was angry.

“It can be used as readily to thwart life as fulfill it, as readily in the defense of pathology as in the pursuit of health. Do not confuse its employment in the service of negativity with its own nature. Reason is a compass. At your disposal it places paths to an infinity of possible destinations. It itself does not tell you on which path to embark. It in itself cannot decide your direction. That you must decide yourself.”

“Some things are more reasonable than others,” said Brenner.

“Surely,” she said, “with respect to given ends. If you wish to frustrate, starve, and deny yourself, then it is reasonable to behave in one fashion. If you wish to fulfill yourself it is reasonable to behave in another fashion.”

Brenner did not respond to her.

Surely he had thought such thoughts often enough to himself. Indeed, he was weary of advocating and defending positions which had come to seem absurd to him. Why should he listen to such things from her, he asked himself. Why should he not simply put her to his feet?

“But it is surely easy enough to tell that what you have been taught is wrong!” she said.

Brenner was silent.

“If torture cannot make that clear,” she said, “what could?”

“I must be going,” said Brenner, angrily.

“I do not even know your name,” she cried.

“It is not important,” said Brenner. “We shall never see one another again.”

“Do you want to know my name?” she asked.

“Doubtless there is something the zard calls you,” he said.

“Yes,” she said, “but it is in his own language, and I do not know its meaning, nor can I even pronounce it.”

“You respond quickly enough to it, I would suppose,” said Brenner.

“Yes!” she said. “I do!”

So, too, thought Brenner, slaves learn quickly enough to respond, and immediately, to the names which, for their master’s convenience, or pleasure, are put upon them.

“Do you not want to know my name?” she asked.

As she was free, she would have a legal name, a name in her own right, of course, not a name dependent on the decisions of a master.

“No,” said Brenner.

Tears sprang anew to her eyes.

“It is better that way,” said Brenner. In this fashion he might forget her the more easily. Too, not knowing her name would make it more difficult, or even impossible, to find her, or trace her, should he weaken. He must never see her again. He must never want to see her again. He told himself he must be like iron. He must regard her as only the meaningless occasion of an evening’s trivial pleasure. That was best. After all, was she not nothing, or next to nothing? Was she not only a female under contract? And had he not, even, had her on a chain?

“I do not know your name!” she said.

“I did not tell it to you,” he said.

“Who are you?” she asked. “What is your name?”

“It is unimportant,” he said.

“I see,” she sobbed.

“Come along,” said Rodriguez.

“You did such things to me,” she said. “You made me feel such things!”

Brenner was silent.

“And now you will not so much as tell me your name?” “No,” he said.

“We are ready,” said Rodriguez.

“What are you wearing under the brown dress?” asked Brenner.

“Nothing,” she said, bitterly.

“I did not think so,” he said.

“The zard does not permit us such frills,” she said.

Brenner smiled.

“I see that pleases you.”

“Of course,” he said.

“Return for me!” she cried.

“No,” said Brenner.

“Tell me who you are!”

“No,” he said.

“Oh!” she said, suddenly, pulling back from a Pon, who had been down on all fours, with one or two others, looking at her ankle, that with the cloth wrapped about the chain and disk. It had put its small hands on the cloth, as though to peep under it. “Get away!” she wept. She kicked, freeing her ankle from the small, inquisitive grasp. It scrambled back, quickly, like a small animal, and looked up at her. It was blinking, this clearly discernible through the apertures in the hood. Brenner hoped it was not disturbed. The others about, too, had drawn back, timidly. “Go away!” she said.