trusted. They tended, on the whole, to be an aggressive, commercially active species. Whereas one could commonly count on them being civil and polite in the pursuit of business, and sometimes even ingratiating and obsequious with prospective clients or customers, they had a general reputation, it must be admitted, outside of interspecific transactions to their advantage, of being severe to inferior life forms.
“Easy,” said Rodriguez to Brenner.
Brenner turned a bit away from the girl, to his right. He did not wish her to see the effect on his body of her proximity.
“If you do not want her there,” said Rodriguez, “cuff her away. She will crawl back, but probably keeping out of your reach.”
“This is a human female,” whispered Brenner to Rodriguez.
“Do not demean her,” said Rodriguez.
“How could she be more demeaned than she is?” asked Brenner.
“Drink your drink,” said Rodriguez.
Brenner, unsteadily, almost tipping the glass, reached for the drink.
He glanced at the bartender, who then looked away, continuing to dry the glasses.
The young woman did not release his leg, and she kept her cheek pressed against his thigh. She seemed frightened.
Brenner also glanced to his right, and back, well beyond Rodriguez at the bar, to a counterlike desk near the rear of the room, behind which sat the proprietor of the establishment, like the bartender, a zard. This desk, near the rear of the room, not far from a beaded curtain to its right, as Brenner looked at it, was set well back from the main floor with the small tables, and, at one side, booths. Near some of these booths, and tables, rings were set in the floor. Rodriguez and Brenner, perhaps because of the hour and weather, were at this time the only customers in the establishment. The proprietor looked at Brenner, and then returned his attention to the papers before him. On the top of the desk, at hand, so to speak, lay a stout, two-foot-long leather quirt. The young woman who knelt beside him was the second woman who had been summoned forth, through the curtain, the first a blonde, to hasten to the bar, by two blows of that quirt on the top of the desk, loud, sharp, and resounding blows, almost like the reports of primitive firearms.
Then Brenner had his hand on the glass, and, slowly, deliberately, in misery, as steadily as he could, took a tiny sip. It was a cheap cooler, flavored with imported citarine extract. The bartender, if Brenner had not been mistaken, had served it with a certain contempt. Rodriguez was nursing a glass of Heimat, for which he had a taste.
“I cannot have this person in this position,” said Brenner.
“She is a female,” said Rodriguez. “If you would look at her, you might notice that.”
“I cannot have this young woman in this position,” said Brenner.
“Call her a “girl,”” said Rodriguez.
Brenner looked at him, angrily.
“She is a girl,” said Rodriguez.
“Rodriguez,” protested Brenner, half under his breath.
“She is pretty enough, and menial enough, to be a girl,” said Rodriguez. “And considering her status, there is no doubt about it. She is a girl.”
Brenner looked away, angrily. Too, he was worried. He recalled the first woman, the blonde. She had hurried forth from behind the curtain, in response to the signal, but then, for the merest instant, had stopped. She had regarded them. She had seemed startled, and then flushed, as though with sudden hope. Her hand had gone, seemingly inadvertently, to the narrow, silken sash of her garment, tight about her waist, but then she had jerked it away, frightened. She had looked to the proprietor, and the bartender. Neither, it seemed, was paying her attention. Of course, she had responded to the signal. Neither, too, then, would have observed her tiny, arrested, furtive movement, that of her hand near her sash. She then gathered herself together, and smoothed down the sides of her brief garment. On her left ankle was a small chain. Attached to it was a tiny disk. She had then approached them in a manner which might have made Brenner cry out in protest and desire, on all fours, had he had not detected something of falsity in it. Before Brenner and Rodriguez, Brenner surmised, she was, in effect, acting. This was to be a secret between the three of them, to be kept from the zards. Surely Rodriguez, too, with his perceptiveness, had noticed these things. “Sirs?” she had then asked, kneeling before Rodriguez, whom she naturally took to be first amongst them. He looked