Then she cried out as the lash fell upon her.
“Please, no, Mistress!” she wept.
“Instant obedience is required of slaves,” she was informed.
“Yes Mistress!” she wept, and she and her companion hastily rose to their feet, and each, again, seized up two corners of the sheet and, with difficulty swung it up, free of the floor.
“Turn about, move, slaves!” said the angry supervisor.
Then the two shackled women bore again, between them, their heavy burden.
The one supervisor cast aside the bit of roast fowl, having had what she wanted of it.
She wiped her hand on her thigh.
The officer of the court heard the lash fall twice more.
“Hurry, slaves!” she heard.
“Yes, Mistress,” she heard. “Yes, Mistress!”
When the women had disappeared down the corridor the officer of the court crept forth from her hiding place and seized up the bit of roast fowl, eagerly biting away what particles of it clung still to the light, hollow bone. Then she licked and sucked the bone, and her fingers, for the least bit of grease. But such minums of provender could do little more than mock the rage of her hunger. Bitterly she knelt on the floor, before the window, recalling food she had refused, dishes she had rejected, returning them to kitchens with her sharp words for cooks. Now she would have eagerly addressed herself to such largesse, such gifts, even head down, feeding from a plate set on the floor, beside a master’s chair. And her throat was parched. Never had she been so hungry and so thirsty.
Were there passengers and crew members still free on the ship? She did not know.
Could the ship be regained?
It did not seem likely. She recalled the openness, the indifference, the assurance with which the two women, supervising the bearers of loot, those bearers, too, doubtless loot as much as any they bore, had walked the corridor.
She recalled the two women with the whips. They had been among the best-postured, best-figured and most sensuous women she had ever seen. She had no doubt but that they were dieted, exercised and trained. Such, you see, is permissible with animals, and slaves. What was she to do? She was afraid to surrender.
She did not even know if she would be permitted to do so. She might not even receive an opportunity to do so. She might be fired upon, a moving object, instantly, at first sight, cut in two in some corridor by a blast of fire.
Perhaps she might surrender to ship slaves.
But she was afraid of them, and their strictness, and the contempt in which she knew they would hold her.
She thought of herself naked, in shackles.
And she knew they would not hesitate to use their whips.
But would men not protect her, if she made it clear to them that she would strive to please them, and desperately and eagerly, in any way they might desire, literally in any way they might desire?
Might they not find her body of interest, and the beauties of her face, so sensitive and expressive, and her softness, and her dispositions, to love and serve?
But how could she even think such thoughts, she, an officer of a court?
Surely they were the thoughts of a slave!
Was she naught, in her heart, but a slave?
But she had gathered that not all prisoners were assured of being kept.
She had gathered that from a remark of one of the strangers, one of the boarders, almost outside her very door.
Would they regard her as suitable to be kept, to serve them, or to be exhibited on a slave block?
She did not know.
She was afraid.
But she must have food. She must have drink.
She was frightened.
Perhaps she could continue to hide.
Then she cried out with misery, for, from where she knelt, she could see out the port, and now, outside, against the glassine substance of the port itself, adrift in space, on its back, she saw the body of the captain.
Then she fled from that place, one so open, to an emergency stairwell, one reached through a heavy steel door, in which there was a small panel with wire-reinforced glass, one from which she could reach the balcony of the theater, and thence, the upper level of the main lounge.
She stayed for a time in a narrow corridor, reached from the stairwell. She crouched there, frightened, as might have an animal in its burrow. Then she heard a sound to her right, and hurried away from it, arriving in a moment at an entrance to the balcony of the theater.
She was afraid to open the door, but heard steps behind her. She opened the door a tiny crack and crawled through, onto the carpeting of the balcony of the theater and then hid between tiers of seats. The steps passed by, outside the door. She found a piece of candy, on the carpeting beneath a seat. She seized it up and pressed it into her mouth, devouring it. She looked about for more, but found none. She heard voices below. She crawled to the front of the balcony, to look down, toward the stage. On the stage and in the area immediately below it and before it there was set up a sort of headquarters or communication center. There were several tables there and men monitored various devices. Behind one of the tables at the center of the stage, considering a chart, surrounded by men, was Ortog, prince of the Drisriaks, king of the Ortungs. How different he seemed now, no longer a haggard, demeaned, starved prisoner, but now, armed and mighty, a vital, commanding, merciless, fearful, terrible giant of a man. Seeing such a man she trembled, and muchly then did know herself a woman. Other men came and went, delivering reports, receiving orders, utilizing the lower entrances. Suspended by the wrists, at the left of the stage, and several feet above it, there hung, lifeless, two men. They had no feet. Their feet had been cut off and then they had apparently been drawn aloft, where they had bled to death. Their bodies suggested that they had undergone interrogation before being disposed of. These were the first and second officer of the ship. On the floor of the stage, to the right, chained closely, hand and foot, and by the neck, there knelt three naked, blond women. When a man glanced at them they shrank down, cowering. The officer of the court saw that they had been taught fear. “We shall have engineering shortly,” a man was informing Ortog. “Then it will be but a matter of hours.” Ortog nodded.
The officer of the court heard this with horror. She was neither a scientist nor a technician but she knew enough, surely, to surmise that somewhere within the intricate labyrinth of engineering sections would be found the control devices for the central life-support systems of the ship.
Another man brought news of major loot, imperial bullion, five imperial ingots, any one of which might purchase a ship, such serving usefully as bribes, among other things, to barbarian kings, to encourage them to keep the peace with the empire, to attack enemies of the empire, to intervene in sensitive areas on the empire’s behalf, and so on; another brought news of coined metals, gold and silver, tons thereof, taken in taxes, from four provincial worlds; and another of a bottle of wine, one of seven known to exist, from the vinyards of Kalan, on Cita, a world destroyed in the civil wars a thousand years earlier.
“It will be our victory wine!” said Ortog, of the last item in this accounting of significant loot.
There was enthusiastic assent to this.
In many sections there were self-contained support units, but these were designed to function only on a temporary, emergency basis.
It was with misery that the officer of the court crept back, again, between the seats, and began to make her way between them toward a door which led to the passageway giving access to the upper level of the main lounge.
She felt faint with hunger. She could hardly move, for her thirst.
She thought of the chained women on the stage. They were doubtless educated, civilized women, even citizens of the empire, but she did not think that that would make much difference to the barbarians, except, perhaps, to cause them to be regarded with a certain contempt, as weaklings and decadents, fit at best for the collar, in which at last they might be put to some use, in which at last they might find some justification for their existence. That they had once been citizens of the empire, prior to their embondment, might, of course, the officer of the court supposed, lend a certain flavor or pleasure to their use. But they had doubtless been chosen for their beauty. Certainly they were beautiful. Barbarians, she had heard, long ago, to her horror, enjoy exhibiting women at their courts. But how dare the barbarians exhibit these, female citizens of the empire, as though they might be no more than chained slave girls? “But is that not all they now are,” she asked herself, trembling, “chained slave girls?” “Yes,” she thought to herself, “that is now all they are, chained slave girls.” She recalled how they had cowered at the glance of a man. That frightened her. She wondered if they had been fed.