had not reprimanded me.
'Yes, Master,' I heard.
I sobbed in anger at the wall.
When I turned about Taphris, again, had been set about her homely duties, naked, on her hands and knees, carrying the sticks in her mouth, of feeding the fires in the flame ditch. I glared at her. How right she seemed for seizing and raping. She did not dare to meet my eyes.
'Here, Jason,' said Bares. 'Come here! Listen!'
I went to where he now knelt in the sand. The sand there began to sink down slightly. I saw it stir. Then, suddenly, the horny snout of a tharlarion thrust up from the hot sand. Its eyes blinked. Its tongue darted in and out of its mouth, licking sand from about its jaws. Its head was some eight inches in width.
'Snout strap,' said Bares.
I picked up one of the long, leather, coiled snout straps lying at hand.
The head of the tiny hatchling, some eight inches wide, some foot or so in length, was now fully emerged from the sand. I saw one clublike foot, clawed, strike up out of the sand. It hissed.
I looped the snout strap about its jaws and tied them shut. It squirmed and half pulled itself from the leathery casing which had contained it, drawing it up, half out of the sand.
'Girth cloth, Taphris!' called Bares.
Together Bares and I drew the hatchling out of the sand. With my foot I thrust back the clinging shell.
'Watch out for the tail!' said Bares to Taphris. She stepped back.
Bares and I threw the hatchling on its back and, rolling it, then, wrapped its torso in the folds of the girth cloth. This tends to protect it against the tunnel air when it is carried to the nursery. I bent down and, with the help of Bares, got the hatchling to my shoulders. The head, with its strapped-shut jaws, rotated on the neck, some two feet in length. It struck against my thigh. The young beast weighed, I conjecture, some one hundred and forty to one hundred and fifty pounds. Bares slid back the bolt and lifted up the large trap door at one side of the shed and I, carefully, in the light of the fires of the incubation shed, descended the dirt ramp. At the bottom the tunnel, in its center, is floored by a set of single boards, laid end to end. This permits it to be traversed in the darkness. One need only keep one or both feet on the board. With the help of the boards, and a bit of practice, usually following a torch the first time, it is not difficult to find one's way about the tunnels in the darkness. Strings, depending from the ceiling, through which one brushes, indicate side tunnels. Inclines indicate exits. The strings contain knots on the side on which the side tunnel occurs. If one encounters, as in side tunnels, approaching the main tunnel, a fully knotted, dependent wall of strings, then one knows that a left-and-right branching is imminent. This occured in the tunneling under the domain of the Lady Florence only where the main tunnel was approached.
'Jason,' called Kenneth, from the shed above me.
'Yes, Master,' I said, turning, on the ramp, the hatchling quiet, puzzled, on my shoulders.
'When you have delivered the hatchling to the nursery, return to the incubation shed. Doubtless other eggs will hatch this night.'
'Yes, Master,' I said.
'Tomorrow you may rest,' he said.
I was puzzled. 'Yes, Master,' I said.
'Jason,' said he.
'Yes, Master,' I said.
'Tomorrow night you are to report to the house.'
I did not understand this.
'You were right earlier,' he said, 'when you suggested that the Mistress seemed in a good mood. She is.'
'Yes, Master,' I said.
'Her guests are arriving this evening, most, it seems, under the cover of darkness,' he said.
'Yes, Master,' I said.
'She is looking forward to tomorrow evening,' he said. 'She has planned, it is rumored, an exotic entertainment for them.'
'I am to report to the house tomorrow evening?' I asked.
'Yes,' he said.
'Am I to be implicated in this entertainment?' I asked.
'It is not impossible,' he said.
'Do you know its nature?' I asked.
'No,' he said, 'but I can well conjecture what it may be.'
I stood in the tunnel, puzzled.
'The hatchling must not chill,' he said. 'Get it to the nursery.'
'Yes, Master,' I said, and turned away.
'Wait, Master!' I heard Taphris cry.
I turned about, again, and saw her, drawing her tiny slave rag over her head, carefully descending the ramp, her small feet leaving prints in the incline's dust.
I turned away again and strode down the tunnel.
I heard the trap door close above and behind us. The tunnel was immediately plunged into total darkness.
I began to traverse the tunnel, toward the nursery, keeping my right foot on the center board.
'Wait, Slave!' she cried, peremptorily.
But I did not wait. I knew the tunnel well.
'Wait, Slave! Wait, Slave!' she cried angrily. Then I heard her stumbling in the darkness, half running to follow me.
'I am furious that Bares made me kneel to you!' she cried. 'I am in the Mistress' favor! I am in the Mistress' favor! I am a house slave, a house slave! I am not a stable slut! I am a house slave!' continued down the tunnel.
'I am a house slave!' she cried.
Taphris was a bother, a nuisance. I was tired of being followed about by her. Kenneth and Barus, too, were weary of her constant spyings and reportings to the Mistress. They would not have been displeased to rid the stables of her.
'Wait, Slave!' she cried.
I considered putting the hatchling down and turning on Taphris, raping her in the darkness of the tunnel to within an inch of her life. But I did not do so. It was not that I feared the Mistress. It was rather that I did not want the hatchling to become chilled. I had stood the vigil of its hatching. I felt responsibility for it. Too, I respected it. It was a free animal. It was not a slave.
22 THE HOUSE GUESTS OF THE LADY FLORENCE; THE VENGEANCE OF THE LADY FLORENCE; I AM GIVEN A SLAVE TO SPORT KITH
'I do not know how I can ever thank you, Lady Florence,' breathed the Lady Melpomene.
'It is nothing,' said the Lady Florence, 'for we are sharers of a Home Stone and are, too, fast friends.'
'How I regret our former differences,' said the Lady Melpomene, clasping in her two hands those of the Lady Florence.
The Lady Florence nodded, her features visible behind the light house veil, suitable for an informal dinner with friends. The Lady Melpomene, too, wore such a veil. Both were richly robed.
I stood with Kenneth behind a curtain. Through the curtain we could hear and see what took place within the lofty hall in the house of the Lady Florence, she of Vonda. The hall was lovely, too, as well as lofty, with its
