The guards who came for Margaret looked startled at their orders.
"Not the slave pens, Highness?" one of them asked.
"This woman will perhaps become Of the Faith," Sin snapped. "Treat her
accordingly."
Margaret looked up, but Sin offered no explanation.
The suite of rooms to which she was taken were all she could have
desired, but the windows looked out on a sheer drop and the guards
bolted the door behind her. She had just time to glance around when the
door opened again.
"Your first slave," a single guard announced. "A gift to you from
Highness Sin."
The slave was a girl in her teens, scrawny and underfed and completely
nude. Her face wore the same blank, uncomprehending look Margaret had
noticed on the naked people in the audience chamber. Across her rigidly
outstretched arms lay several rich dresses.
"One of the Rebels," the guard satisfied Margaret's curiosity. "They
make good durable slaves when their brains have been treated and they
have received the slave-mark of Sin, though of course you must think
your orders in detail. Perhaps you had better speak your orders at
first, until you grow used to giving thought-commands. In the Vat these
Rebels are excellent. So vital.
"Highness Sin also sends you some of her own clothing." He withdrew,
and this time did not lock the door.
"Put those dresses down," Margaret told her slave. The girl complied.
"Where is the bath?"
The slave girl pointed. She seemed to have no power of speech and her
face was dull and emotionless.
"Get it ready for me."
At first Margaret felt faintly uncomfortable under the girl's mindless
stare, but soon grew accustomed to it. The girl obeyed perfectly, like
a machine. Sin's gowns clung as though made for Margaret alone, and
there was a table loaded with cosmetics. When she was finished Margaret
felt more herself. Fresh clothes did wonders for her morale.
Later the guard came again, bowed respectfully, and escorted her to the
audience hall. He led her directly to Sin's throne.
"You will want a man, of course," Sin began abruptly. "Which shall
it be, Wor or your Victor from Earth? Or does some other catch your
fancy?"
Margaret noticed for the first time that Victor was in the room, well
back from Sin's dais. He looked worried and a soldier stood just behind
him. Perhaps a guard. On Earth he had been an excellent catch, but here
he had nothing except a certain sly venomousness to recommend him. And
already she had sensed complex undercurrents of intrigue and hinted
mysteries within the fortress. She must pick the one who could best
help her, no longer by Earth standards but by those of Varda.
"I choose Wor," she announced.
Victor's head jerked in an angry gesture. A gleam of anticipation
entered Wor's eyes as he stepped forward.
Sin's smile was definitely feline. "So be it. I believe you are a
suitable candidate for the Faith, and tonight Wor will initiate you
into the service of Great Sasso. Your Earth mind, my dear, has a
certain potential value."
* * * * *
A bloody moon leered through her windows. Wor came. There was a trace
of diffidence in his manner that had been lacking earlier, and she
wondered what payment Sin expected for this favorable treatment. For
there was no doubt payment would be demanded. She must be sure it was
not overpayment.
Wor guided her to an air car on the flat roof of the fortress. It was
not the huge craft in which she had been brought in, but so small they
lay side by side. The control buttons looked ridiculously small under
Wor's huge hands.
With a hiss they were in the air. She was very conscious of Wor beside
her, of his tremendous strength and blatant maleness, and she turned
to watch him as he increased their speed. He had wanted her--other men
had wanted her before and she knew the signs--but now he ignored her.
He was excited, but about something other than herself. She wondered,
deeply annoyed, what outlandish sort of religion this Sasso-worship
could be to so captivate him. She asked him, but he only grinned.
"There! Over there!" He pointed suddenly in joyful excitement. A
great dead-black globe loomed ahead. The stunted foliage of the flat,
sandy plain ceased abruptly in a circle around it, as though afraid
to approach. _Something_, some intangible feeling that radiated from
the huge ball, made Margaret shiver with a strangely apprehensive
exhilaration.
Wor brought the ship down in a sickening vertical drop, and as it
touched the sand he half-dragged her from the cushions. She had to run
to match his long-legged stride as he approached the base of the globe.
"Come on, woman. Great Sasso waits!" he barked, hustling her through
a portal where the globe touched the footprint-tracked sand. His eyes
were blazing with hungry madness.
The globe was hollow, and inside space itself was different and
_alien_. The exhilaration was overpowering now, yet terrifying, with
its undertones of ancient and unnamable evil.
"Great Sasso is near!" Wor spoke in a hoarse whisper.