He lay in the white sand, on his side, his senses reeling. For a moment he had blacked out. His body felt numb, shocked, paralyzed. He had seen them approaching, the two guards, and the petty, officious officer of the court. He had remembered her from the hearing. He had watched them approaching across the sand, between the kneeling, waiting men. She wore now not the somber blue of the court, but a belted clingabout of white corton, a garb suitable for a holiday, for the games. He was surprised that she was dressed so, for, on this world, as he had noted, men and women, save in the lower classes, in the squalid, impoverished areas, dressed much alike, that seemingly to show their sameness, and their superiority to sex. That garment, lengthy and opaque as it was, would doubtless precipitate some scandal in the stands. He did not doubt but what many women there, hidden in their mannish garb, would find it daring, and offensive. How resentful they might be, how envious, how jealous! Who did she think she was! Was she not familiar with the proprieties? Surely she must know such attire would attract attention in the stands. Indeed, was she not publicly coming across the sand, even now. Who then could not but notice her? He could hear the ripples of outrage in the stands. But what had she to fear? She could claim that she was acting to rectify an oversight, that she had come forth onto the sand in the line of her duties. Too, what need she care for the opinions of others? She could be indifferent to them, for she was of the honestori. Too, he sensed she might relish being the object of such attention, even of scandal. What had she to fear? She was of high family. Indeed, her mother, who was the judge who had sentenced him, was in the mayor’s box. She was high judge in the city. He saw the mother turn to the mayor, and speak with her. The guards coming across the sand with the officer of the court, the daughter, were in uniform. One of the guards held some loops of rope. They both carried stun sticks. He was now familiar with such things. It was by means of them that he had been taken into custody. Such weapons, and others, others still more dangerous, were scarce on this world. They were almost entirely in the hands of authorities, but, of course, not altogether. The population then was largely at the mercy of two groups, not always unallied, authorities and criminals. This was common on many worlds within the empire. Indeed, the manufacture of weaponry, at least legal weaponry, was on many worlds a monopoly of the state. Weapon makers, on many worlds, those who had possessed such skills, had been among the first bound. He had watched the three of them approaching. The sand was deep. It came well over the ankles of their boots. She, too, wore boots. This suggested to him that she had planned to cross the sand, before dressing for the day. Her presence here then was not an unplanned one, resulting merely from detecting some unexpected oversight. She had wanted to appear on the sand, before the assembled crowds, doubtless. He could see the prints behind them, where they had disturbed the sand, raked after the prisoners had been knelt. The attendants might not be pleased with that. They took their work seriously. The sand would be disturbed soon enough, though, given the beginning of the first amusements. Then the guards, and the officer of the court, the daughter of the judge, had stopped before him. He had looked up at them, from his knees. She pointed at him, grandly, rather for the crowd, he supposed. “He cannot be trusted,” she said. “Rope him, rope him well.” He did not doubt but what the men would obey her. Indeed, what power had she, if the men did not obey her? They would obey her, of course. They had been trained to adhere to the rules, not question how the rules had come about, or the utility of the rules, their ultimate consequences. Her face wore a haughty expression. She was fairly complexioned. Her body seemed cold, and tight. Her dark hair was tied back, behind her head, severely. Yet for all the neurotic coldness, and tightness, about her, he did not think she was utterly unattractive. He had even looked upon her, and watched her, and considered her, when he was sitting in the prisoner’s dock, guarded by men with stun sticks, in her court garb. He now again considered her, in the white clingabout. To be sure, it muchly covered her. He wondered what she looked like, naked. One of the guards laughed. “Be silent!” she chided the guard. Doubtless the pupils of his eyes had dilated, as he had looked upon her. They had performed such a test on him before the hearing, when he was being held. A female prisoner had been brought in. His reactions had been noted. They had also been referred to, explicitly, in the hearing. “Rope him!” she said. The guards looked at one another. Then one lifted his stun stuck and pulled the trigger once, and then, as he had not fallen, twice more.
As he lay in the sand, his body ringing with shock, muchly paralyzed, he felt the ropes being put about him, tying his arms to his sides, his hands behind him.
“Make them tight!” she said.
The ropes were drawn tight. They were knotted.
He was then put again to his knees.
She slapped him twice, angrily. She could not hurt him. She did not have the strength. But the blows stung, and they were humiliating. He did not care to be struck, particularly by a woman. One could kill a man. It did not seem right to kill a woman. If he struck her he might have broken her neck. She glared down at him. There was laughter in the stands. She was furious. She stepped back from him. In the stands there must have been many who realized that she, an officer of the court, the daughter of the high judge herself, had been viewed with dilated pupils. But what did she expect, going down on the sand, clad as she was, standing before one who had chosen death to “true manhood,” as it was defined on this world, to the improvement, the smoothing? He had struck a woman only once before, Tessa, who had first slapped him. He had slapped her back. Must she not expect that? But it seems she had not. She had looked up at him with awe, from where she had been flung by the force of the blow, on the floor of the varda coop, to his left. She had then crawled to his feet, begging his forgiveness. He had used her on the floor of the varda coop. After that she would meet him when and where he told her.
With what fury the daughter of the judge regarded him!
He looked away from her. His body was still numb.
The stands were almost full now.
The ropes about his upper body were tight. He could tell that. Still, oddly, it was hard to feel them, at least as one would normally have expected to feel them. It was almost as though they had been put on someone else. He wondered if Brother Benjamin were right, if he were not his body, as he seemed to be, but something else, hidden inside it. If that were so, it might explain why the ropes felt strange, because he was far within his body, far from the ropes. The body, in spite of appearances, its seeming to contain organs, and such, was really a shell, something within which he lived. Indeed, Brother Benjamin had told him that he was really invisible, the real him, that is, the one that lived inside the body, or somewhere. The real person was called the koos, an old word which had originally meant “breath.” It was Floon, a rational salamander, or salamander-type creature, of the predominantly reptilian world of Zirus, who had first taught, to the surprise of many, as the idea was then new, that the koos was eternal, neither coming into nor going out of existence, but staying right there, wherever it was. A consequence of this idea was that rational creatures could not die, an idea with considerable appeal to rational creatures. The fact that Floon died, and rather miserably, in an electric chair, did little to diminish the persuasiveness of his doctrine. It was discovered that he had not really died but had later appeared simultaneously on several different worlds, reiterating his teachings. His teachings, a generation or two after his apparent death, had been gathered together by followers. The teachings seemed in places to be inconsistent with one another, but inconsistencies may always be reconciled, by drawing suitable distinctions. Too, certain of the teachings, for one reason or another, were rejected as inauthentic. This was done by individuals who had never known Floon, and several generations after his apparent death. Dogs and horses, Brother Benjamin had taught, did not have a koos. He had found this hard to believe, as it seemed they felt pain, and pleasure, and such. Their insides, their organs, and such, were relevant to their life. It was only that this was not the case with the rational creatures, or at least certain of the rational creatures. Rational aquatic mammals
