the git keeper. “She was not in the metaparty.”
“She is high in her party!” said Brenner.
“No,” said the git keeper. “She was a low-level functionary.”
“She is, at least, in a party!” said Brenner.
“No more,” said the git keeper. “She does not now even have a name, unless someone has given her one.”
“I do not understand,” said Brenner.
“Not more than ten days after your departure from your home world she was in the hold of a slave ship, bound for Basra. Later, she was transported to, and sold on, Bokara.”
Brenner regarded the git keeper in astonishment.
“The directress’ battles with her femininity are at an end,” said the git keeper. “She will learn to obey, encouraged by instruments as inexpensive and simple as the lash and chain. She will learn her ecstasy in the arms of a master, and find her fulfillment in selfless service.”
“But, as what!” demanded Brenner.
“As a slave, of course,” said the git keeper.
“I see,” said Brenner.
“It is what she has always been,” said the git keeper. “The only difference is that that condition is now no longer deniable, not without absurdity, nor are its appropriate consequences avoidable. It is now overt, satisfying, explicit, and legal.”
“And what of the diamonds?” asked Brenner.
“They have been returned to us,” said the git keeper, “concealed in trade goods, from that enclave you refer to as “Company Station.””
“Of course,” said Brenner.
“If her master chooses to put her in diamonds,” said the git keeper, “she will wear them, of course, but I suspect that it will be a long time before she becomes such a slave. In any event, she owns nothing, not even a slave strip, if one is permitted to her. Rather it is she, who is owned.”
Brenner wept.
“What is wrong?” asked the git keeper.
“It is madness,” he said. “It is all madness!”
“No,” said the git keeper.
“What are you going to do with me?”
“You are the father,” said the git keeper.
“Kill me with your scarps and sticks,” said Brenner. “Or kill me with the rifle!”
“It is wrong to kill the father,” said the git keeper. “And the rifle, with its charges, will be destroyed. We disavow such instruments of violence. We disapprove of such things. They are not within our ways.”
“You are stinking hypocrites!” screamed Brenner. “You killed Rodriguez!”
“He is not dead,” said the git keeper. “We did need his body, to motivate you to dispose of the father.”
Brenner felt sick.
“We will give him a less dangerous body,” said the git keeper. “We have a use for such as he.”
“Release me!” said Brenner.
“Do not fear,” said the git keeper. “You will be released.”
“I demand to be freed!” said Brenner.
“You will be freed,” said another of the Pons, one with his hands on a rope.
“Yes,” said another.
“The father must be free,” said another.
“Of course,” said another.
“How could it be otherwise?” said another.
“I understand nothing of what is going on,” wept Brenner.
The git keeper motioned to the other Pons and they, putting their small individual weights collectively to the ropes, began to draw Brenner, on his side, from the temple.
Brenner noted, as he was drawn away, that the pedestal and the vat, or jar, which had been upon it, that in which he had seen the head of Rodriguez, were missing. They had been removed. So, too, had been the body of the slain Pon. Brenner refused to believe, now, that he had seen the eyes in the face open, or that the expression might have changed. Such things were not possible. He wept.
“Why do you weep?” asked the git keeper, indicating that his fellows should pause for a moment in their labors.
“Only one person, my friend, has ever cared for me,” said Brenner. “And now he is gone. And this has happened to me, and I have never been loved.”
“We love you,” said the git keeper.
“We always love the father,” said another.
They then drew Brenner from the temple.
When they were in the corridor Brenner heard again, from somewhere outside, the roaring of the beast. The sound was then, naturally, much louder.
They passed, in the corridor, the small figure of a Pon, one which was very small, even for a Pon, and frail. A hood muchly concealed its features. The git keeper and the other Pons, those at the ropes, did not pay it any attention, and it, of course, saw nothing, as it was blind.
At the threshold of the temple, before exiting, the Pons stopped. Brenner tried to pull back his head but, trapped as he was in the net, he could not