“Filch, pig, dog!” she cried.
“That is enough,” said the masked figure.
Sesella Gardener, distraught, furious, oddly enough with tears in her eyes, backed away from Tuvo Ausonius.
“Punishments, in normal cases of this sort,” said the masked figure, “might be expected to be severe, considering the gravity of the offence, conspiring to reduce a rightfully free woman to the indignities and shame of bondage, so hateful to her, but this is obviously not such a case.”
Tuvo Ausonius looked up.
“Free him,” said the masked figure. “And take her into custody.” The two officers behind Tuvo Ausonius bent to free him of the bar and cuffs. Sesella Gardener cried out in protest, as she was seized by the other two officers who had accompanied her into the chamber. Tuvo Ausonius, bewildered, rose unsteadily to his feet. “Remove her clothing, completely,” said the masked figure. “And bring a bar and cuffs suitable for her, and put her in the sockets to my left.”
In a moment Sesella Gardener’s beauty was wholly bared, as much as it had been at the foot of the bed in the shabby room, as much as it had been in her small cell in the building for the past two weeks, to the pleasure of the guards, until, to her amazement, same garb was brought for her, and she was informed of the arrest of Tuvo Ausonius. It has been but a moment’s work for the indictment to be drafted. Shortly thereafter she had been brought down to the chamber, to testify. She now knelt, wide-eyed and bewildered, the prisoner of a bar and cuffs, suitable for her smaller frame, fastened in a pair of raised sockets, adjusted as to height, to the left of the masked figure.
“You say,” the masked figure asked Tuvo Ausonius, “that this female person was in disarray, and that she bared her hair to you on some ship?”
“Yes,” said Tuvo Ausonius, “and she knelt before me on the ship.”
“He suggested that I do so!” said the prisoner.
“And you knelt?”
“Yes,” she said, petulantly.
“You look well on your knees,” said the masked figure.
She pulled at the cuffs, but this moved the linking chain across her waist, tightly, and she stopped, instantly, realizing to her apprehension, and yet excitement, that this might accentuate her beauty, with what consequences she dared not speculate.
“You originally declared in the indictment,” said the masked figure to the kneeling girl, “that this esteemed citizen of the empire attempted your chastity.”
“Yes,” she said.
“You lied?”
“Yes,” she said.
“Why?”
“I was angry! I wanted to involve him in difficulties! Consider what he did to me, how he made me act!”
“For such an act you could be sent to a penal colony,” said the masked figure.
“If he had been a man he would have attempted my chastity!” she said.
“And doubtless would have removed it from you?”
“Yes,” she said, angrily.
“I am not a barbarian,” said Tuvo Ausonius.
“When a woman is clad as you reportedly were, all men are barbarians,” said the masked figure.
She looked up at him, angrily.
“You cannot thrust a torch into straw and not expect it to catch fire,” said the masked figure.
“He did nothing!” she said.
“He is a same,” said the masked figure.
“I changed my testimony!” she said. “I only said that I expected him to attempt my chastity, and that is true!”
“Such an expectation is irrelevant to the charge,” said the masked figure.
“The charge was dismissed,” said the commissioner.
“Yes,” said the masked figure.
“Why have you put me on my knees, and taken away my clothes, and chained me?” she asked.
“Is perjury not sufficient?” asked the masked figure.
She pulled at the cuffs, and then, again, stopped, instantly.
“It is a crime, is it not,” she asked, “to attempt to unlawfully reduce a rightfully free woman to bondage!”
“Yes,” said the masked figure.
“I am such a woman!” she cried.
“Scarcely,” said the masked figure.
“But you found him guilty,” she said.
“Of having in view your subjection to bondage, certainly,” said the masked figure.
“Why then am I chained as I am?”
“You are a free woman,” said the masked figure, “but not a rightfully free woman.”
“I do not understand,” she said, almost in a whisper, backing against the bar.
“I think you understand very well,” said the masked figure. “There are many counts against you, earlier and later, among them that you came as you did to his room, that you were clad, adorned and perfumed as a prostitute or less, that you obeyed, and so on.”
“I do not understand any of this,” she said.
“Your lordship,” said Tuvo Ausonius. “May I have a garment?”
“Certainly,” said the masked figure. He raised a hand in the direction of the commissioner, and the commissioner nodded to one of the two officers who had entered with Sesella Gardener. The officer immediately left the room.
“It is all madness, and all a mad combination of coincidences and circumstances,” said Sesella Gardener, wildly.
“You were scouted by sames, and by private agents, and agents of the line,” said the masked figure. “It was known that you chafed under the restraints of sameness. Your tendency to leave the top button of your uniform undone was noted, even under less exacting circumstances, your tendency to lean near to male passengers, your habit of neglecting the full complement of undergarments appropriate to a female same, thus permitting your lineaments to be conjectured, even your habit of touching your lips with the hint of cosmetics. It was not difficult to conjecture the closely guarded secrets of your innermost nature.”
“It is all coincidence!” she wept. “How unfortunate I am! The flight was not my regular flight. I was transferred to it at the last minute. Even the ships were changed, one substituted, one of many, whose climate machinery was laboring and, as yet, unrepaired. And why was I assigned to the executive compartment? I should not qualify for such an assignment for years! Why did that man have to be one of my passengers?”
“An incredible assemblage of circumstances,” admitted the masked figure.
The officer who had left the room now returned with a long cloak, with which, gratefully, Tuvo Ausonius covered himself.
He then, clad in the voluminous folds, looked down at Sesella Gardener, to his right, but to the left of the chair of the masked figure.
“I could not have been expected not to have noticed, and not to have taken offence, at her slovenly disregard for the etiquette of appearance and her forward, provocative behavior,” pointed out Tuvo Ausonius.
“Certainly not,” said the masked figure.
“Perhaps another might not have reported her,” said Tuvo Ausonius.
“Perhaps not,” admitted the masked figure.
“But certainly I would,” he said.
“Most probably,” agreed the masked figure.
“What is to be done with me?” begged Sesella Gardener.
“I am considering transmitting you to a penal colony,” said the masked figure. “The charge would be unlicensed prostitution.”
She looked up at him, in misery.
“You see the justice of the charge, surely,” said the masked figure. “First, you are a free woman, and not a slave. Thus, the applicable category in your case is not that of slave, say, bondgirl or thrall, but that of prostitute. Secondly, you went to the room in order to exchange, or sell, your favors, in this case for exemption from disciplinary action.”
“I had another reason, as well,” she said, her head down.
“I am sure you did,” he said.
She looked up.