“In light of your record, and your imposing lineage, I have been reluctant to process the matter,” said the masked figure.
“I am innocent!” said Tuvo Ausonius.
“I have even thought, on the basis of your record and such, before these matters came to my attention,” said the masked figure, “that there might be a place for you in the service of the palace itself, perhaps at the tenth level, as a special agent, a confidential agent, to be sure, charged with the conduct of delicate affairs.”
“I will do anything!” said Tuvo Ausonius.
“In such an event, I was considering turning over to you those records, and such, which constitute the putative evidence of those alleged, say, misdemeanors, that you might do with it what you wish.”
“Your lordship!” said Tuvo Ausonius.
“It would be tragic, indeed, if an innocent man were to be sent to a mining planet, there to serve out whatever portion he might manage of a fifty-year sentence of hard labor.”
“I am innocent!” cried Ausonius.
“I believe you,” said the masked figure.
“Thank you, your lordship!”
“But there is another more serious matter,” said the masked figure, regretfully.
“Your lordship?” asked Tuvo Ausonius, frightened.
“And that is why you are clad as you are, and on your knees, and chained,” said the masked figure.
“I do not understand,” said Tuvo Ausonius, pulling at his restraints.
“Commissioner!” called the masked figure.
The officer returned to the room.
“You, Tuvo Ausonius, of Miton,” said the masked figure, reading from the papers, “are charged with attempting the chastity of a free woman, one Sesella Gardener, of Miton, and engaging in activities with the object in view of having a free woman, this same Sesella Gardener, reduced to the condition of animal and slave.”
“No! No!” cried Tuvo Ausonius.
“Bring forth the witness,” said the masked figure.
Sesella Gardener entered, angrily, righteously, followed by two officers.
She was clad in gray, bulky, disguising same garb, boots, coveralls, and stiff, high-collared cloak, her hair, even, concealed beneath a dark, gray cap.
The top button on the coveralls, and the top closure on the stiff cloak, designed to conceal her upper body, were fastened shut.
Tuvo Ausonius, kneeling there on the cement, constrained, regarded her with misery and fear, but, too, oddly, with disappointment.
How different she was before, thought Tuvo Ausonius, that startling beauty of some two weeks ago.
It was not altogether impossible, however, even now, to recognize something of that wondrous vision of desirability, so small, so luscious, so deliciously curved, even in the gray, almost-shapeless vengeful thing which stood to the right of the masked figure’s chair. Tuvo Ausonius now had a better sense of such things.
“Is this he?” asked the masked figure.
“It is he!” cried Sesella Gardener, pointing at the kneeling Tuvo Ausonius.
“No!” said Tuvo Ausonius.
This encounter was quite ironic in its way, and certainly unexpected, for it was this very night that Tuvo Ausonius had expected her to be put up for sale, at the commissioner’s auction. Indeed, he had thought that he might even, as he had nothing better to do that evening, attend the auction. He did not intend to make a bid, of course. That would not be appropriate for a same. On the other hand, he had considered his resources carefully, if only as a matter of idle speculation. Such women, he supposed, might prove useful, for example, for domestic tasks, for housework, shopping, cooking, such things.
“Is it true that this man attempted your chastity, that of a same?” asked the masked figure.
“I expected him to!” said Sesella Gardener.
“I never laid a hand on her!” cried Tuvo Ausonius. “I mean I was not even in the city the night one of her clients, it seems, left her chained at the foot of the bed!”
“We have verified that he was in the city, and that he had rented the room,” said the commissioner.
“The morning prior to the alleged incident?”
“Yes,” said the commissioner. “We have the disembarkation reports, the passenger lists, the rental agency’s records, such things.”
“It was he who had me disrobe, and put me at the foot of the piece of furniture, and made it such that I could not depart!” said Sesella Gardener.
“It was he who chained you naked at the foot of the bed?” said the commissioner.
“Yes!” said Sesella Gardener, reddening.
“She disrobed voluntarily!” said Tuvo Ausonius. “And she put herself in the relevant impediments.”
“Is that true?” asked the masked figure.
“He commanded me to do so,” she said, angrily.
“And you obeyed?”
“Yes.”
“Although a putatively free woman?”
“Yes,” she said, uncertainly.
“Interesting,” said the masked figure.
“I had no choice,” she said. “He was going to report me to the company.”
“For what?” asked the masked figure.
“For disarray,” she said, “even for insubordination, discourtesy, lies, lies!”
“She was in disarray on the vessel, and she leaned over me, and she removed her cap, making her hair naked in front of me, in one of the ship’s galleys,” said Tuvo Ausonius.
“I was afraid,” she said. “I did not want to be reported. I did not want to lose my position!”
“You say that you expected him to attempt your chastity?” asked the masked figure.
“Yes,” she said.
“And yet you went to the room?”
“Yes,” she said.
“Did he attempt your chastity?”
“No,” she said.
“The first charge then, Commissioner, must be dismissed,” said the masked figure.
“It now is,” said the commissioner, making a notation.
“Why did you say that?” asked the masked figure.
“I expected him to!” she said.
“Perhaps you wanted him to,” said the masked figure.
“No!” she cried.
“But, Tuvo Ausonius,” said the masked figure sternly, “that leaves the most serious charge in place, that you acted in such a way as to have in view the enslavement of a free woman, this very Sesella Gardener.”
“Yes!” cried Sesella Gardener.
“No!” cried Tuvo Ausonius.
“You left her chained in a room,” said the masked figure.
“No!” said Tuvo Ausonius.
“Some of the fingerprints on the manacles were his?” asked the masked figure.
“Yes,” said the commissioner.
Tuvo Ausonius’s prints had been taken shortly after he had been brought to the commissioner’s headquarters.
Apparently they had matched some of the prints, at least, on the manacles.
Tuvo Ausonius put down his head in misery.
Sesella Gardener cried out with pleasure, clapping her hands.
“Surely you must have understood that the authorities, to whom you reported the incident, would take her for a woman of pleasure, and one unlicensed, thus subject to impounding, and reduction to slavery.”
Tuvo Ausonius looked up, agonized, and then, again, lowered his head.
“I find you guilty,” said the masked figure.
“Yes!” cried Sesella Gardener, in triumph.
She looked at Tuvo Ausonius.
“That is where you belong, down there on your knees, you chained, stripped, filthy filch!” she cried.
Tuvo Ausonius looked up, angrily.
“The plaintiff may strike the defendant,” said the masked figure.
Sesella Gardener rushed to Tuvo Ausonius.
“You are nothing now, patrician filch!” she exclaimed.
She struck his face, repeatedly, with her small hand, back and forth.