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.
“Don’t frighten them!” said Brenner, angrily. “Stand still!”
She looked up at him, angrily, but obeyed.
“It is all right,” he said to the Pons, soothingly. He supposed at least one or two of them might understand him. Hopefully the tone of his voice might reassure them, if nothing else.
“I do not want them to touch me!” she said. “They are tiny, nasty creatures.”
“They are kindly, benign, social, gregarious, inquisitive creatures,” said Brenner. “We can learn much from them. Do not frighten them.”
How angry she was!
He did not want the Pons to associate those of his species with violence toward them, or with contempt for them. They must understand that he, at least, regarded them as wonderful life forms, and equivalent to, and wonderful like, all other life forms, regardless of what they might be, whether ponderous megabregmas, wonderful in their way, as what they were, megabregmas, or the two-foot-long, suction-disked blood slugs of Chios, which were wonderful in their way, as what they were, two-foot-long, suction-disked Chian blood slugs. Such insights had figured first in the teachings of mystics, managing to overcome the difficulties inherent in communicating the contents of ineffable experiences, but had later been discovered to be self-evident, at least to minds capable of detecting the self-evidence in question. It was well, too, that these things were self-evident, as they did not seem to be evident