The interns lined up in the big room belowdecks, behind the four real slavegirls they had just now met, who had been in another part of the boat during the ten-hour trip. They waited for Derek to tell them it was time to go up to the deck and cross to the dock. The girls had not been allowed on the deck as the boat approached the shore -- island men wouldn't know what to make of slavegirls behaving as idle sightseers.

None of the interns had the slightest idea what to expect, other than mental images formed in their heads that might be entirely inaccurate. Foremost in Sara's mind, and she was sure it was the same for the others, was that she was about to be paraded naked, as property, in front of a crowd of men from a culture far different from the one she was used to. And that she couldn't possibly hurry through it: taking the small shuffling steps that the hobble chain allowed, Sara was sure her exposure and self-conscious discomfort would last longer than forever.

She calmed herself by looking at Cherise, the third girl ahead of her. Cherise's bare back, like everything else about her, was perfectly shaped as if by a sculptor expert in bringing out the beauty of the female form. Sara herself, who had spent several years doing some sculpting of her own body, stood looking on in her customary awe.

Bart had already left the boat, along with the remaining members of the permanent staff -- Jeffrey, the chef; his assistant chef, Joe; Greg, the technical expert who kept the equipment running; the four male professors from the university, who would be teaching the interns in their classes; and Sid, the huge, muscular "bouncer" for the restaurant, who had previously worked at the Hanging Academy as a bodyguard. Patrons of the restaurant were occasionally, for various reasons including treating the waitresses disrespectfully, asked to leave, and Sid was clearly capable of making sure that they exited gracefully and without undue protest. Bart would open up the restaurant and make sure it was ready for occupancy, while Greg got the electrical generating devices running. Derek remained behind, waiting for Bart's signal that everything was ready.

The Foundation's four slavegirls assigned to the restaurant had joined the interns after the boat had docked, and Derek had made the introductions. Wendy and Karen were the general work-duty slaves, who would be keeping everything spotless in the building, and Mindy and Cindy, at whom all the interns had goggled at least briefly because they were not just sisters but identical twins, were the kitchen slaves, who would be helping the chefs prepare the meals. All four of the slaves had hair trimmed even shorter than the interns -- different shades of brown for Wendy and Karen, light blonde for the twins -- and waited by the door secured in the full set of slave hardware that the interns had been spared: besides the hobble chains, each had thick wristcuffs fastened together in front, and prosaic thick metal slave collars sporting the standard attachment rings, each with a padlock holding it closed. None of the interns had been exactly sure how to interact with the slavegirls. Normally they would have barely noted their presence, but it was sinking in to all the interns that, as of their landing at the Purity Town dock, they were all now slaves themselves. All the interns ended up smiling and saying "Hi" to the slavegirls, who returned the greeting cheerily.

Derek, at the door, made a sudden movement that startled Sara, held his arm outward with a thumbs-up gesture, and turned to the girls with a smile. "Okay, just follow the Foundation's girls," he gestured at the four slavegirls, "They've been here before." And the swarm of butterflies in Sara's stomach awoke and began wildly cavorting.

The most physically challenging part of the short walk to the restaurant was getting up the steps to the boat deck. It wasn't that the hobble chain was too short, but it did require careful planning of each step unneeded when the feet are unfettered. Sara kept her eyes on her feet and lifted each foot just enough to reach the next higher step. She could sense that letting the chain jerk her raised foot to a stop would put her in danger of falling, and falling on the sharply-cornered steps would be an experience she didn't want any closer acquaintance with.

Once she reached the deck, the heat and humidity struck Sara like a physical blow. The rooms belowdecks had been kept cool, and none of the girls had been acclimated to a local weather substantially different from what they were used to. It wasn't quite raining, but a light mist was floating down from leaden skies, and based purely on visual evidence Sara would have expected it to be chilly, which was absolutely not the case. Sara felt as though a huge, heated wet blanket had been tossed over her, and it was hard to breathe through it. Beads of sweat immediately popped out on all parts of her skin and began sliding downwards, announcing their presence.

Her first sight from beyond the boat brought her heart up into her throat: several dozen men, scruffy and unsmiling, had formed a semicircle around the head of the dock. Most of them sported thick beards, though a few were clean-shaven -- trade with the mainland included old-fashioned straight razors. The men didn't appear at all threatening, merely curious, but collectively they scared Sara as much as if they had been shouting angrily with raised pitchforks.

She looked ahead at Cherise's back, and felt calm wash over her. She remembered that she was here for a reason: to be with Cherise. She would face any danger, real or (in this case probably) imagined, to be with Cherise.

A wooden board about three feet wide bridged the gap between the deck of the boat and the dock, and Sara, following the others and with only Ashley trailing behind, walked across it in tiny steps as the chain between her ankles clinked. Looking out over the faces of the men, she was suddenly overwhelmed by an unwelcome fantasy: the hobble chain restraining her steps, the unfamiliar climate and the sight of clothing styles different from those seen on the mainland suggested that she was captured booty of war, arriving in an alien culture that was claiming her as a sex slave. The sense of that scenario almost cost her bladder control. She could only restore calm by looking at Cherise again. Cherise chose to be here, she reminded herself. We all chose to be here. We have a job to do, and these people will welcome us doing it.

When Derek arrived at the far end of the semicircle it parted, the onlooking men forming it moving back and to the side to create an opening wide enough -- just -- for Derek and the girls to walk through.

Sara actually almost smiled suddenly: she could see three faces, at least, in the crowd with eyes directed towards Cherise, and the expressions on those faces was different from the rest: a look of appreciation mixed with awe. Okay, Sara decided, as far as standards of feminine beauty go, they're not really different from us. They know what they're seeing when they look at Cherise.

A few steps later, Sara saw several men looking directly at her, and the expressions were again different. Through a surge in self-consciousness at the never-before-experienced uncovered display of her body that went beyond the level she'd had a hard enough time dealing with earlier, she saw that the eyes in these faces were darting back and forth between Sara and a half-dozen local slavegirls who were standing nearby, and she knew they were making comparisons. Sara did the comparing on her own. The slavegirls were immediately seen as more muscular than the average mainland girl, but not quite as much as she'd expected -- and not quite as much as Sara herself either. These men had more than a dozen mainland women to look at at this moment, and likely remembered the ones from last year as well, so they had a lot of samples from her own part of the world to compare Sara with, and they could only be wondering what sort of work Sara did to make her look the way she did -- and what sort of work she might be capable of doing for them.

The thought actually turned into a second source of calm for Sara, besides looking at Cherise's lovely back. Sara had a sudden sense that the men attached some value to her, not just as a sexual object but as something that held more importance to them: someone who could do useful work.

Her heart went out to the slavegirls of the island. Born to a lifetime of submission against any will they might have possessed, a lifetime of tedious and exhausting work, without hope of release or relief, a lifetime with no hope of escape even in their dreams, because they couldn't imagine life's rich possibilities and alternatives. A life without even the one thing to which all women were entitled: the right to end their lives at the time and in the manner they chose, and to offer their meat as a gift to the people of the world. Instead their meat was taken from them as if it had never belonged to them to begin with. Sara was conscious of being part of the process of trying to better the lives of the women of Purity Island, but none of these women she was seeing now would benefit from it. Any changes would take so many years that these women's grandchildren might be the first to see any difference.

But we're trying, Sara thought at them. We're making the effort.

As she was thinking that, she was taken aback by her first sight of a doggirl, looking directly at her with a frown.

Doggirls, though fully human, didn't know it. Surgically altered at a very young age so that they walked on arms ending in mid-forearm and legs stopping just above where the knees had been, they communicate only by barking like the older doggirls who raised them, unable to speak a language because they are not exposed to one until well beyond the age window of language acquisition, and they are conditioned to trust any upright-walking person wearing clothes and to hate any who is not -- that is, the workslaves. They are able to learn to obey more complex commands than real dogs can, and, under further conditioning, are tolerant of workslaves only when the slaves are busily performing tasks that the doggirls expect to see them doing. If any workslave slacks off from her task or tries to quit doing it altogether, the doggirl on duty will growl, bark, and under sufficient provocation attack -- an attack that the chain-hobbled workslave is unable to run from.

The doggirl Sara saw now had short brown hair, and she reminded Sara of a girl named Deedee she had known in high school. Seeing a face so similar to a familiar one made it that much more disconcerting to hear a low growl coming from behind the scowl. The growl suddenly turned into a sharp bark, and it astonished Sara how much like a real dog the bark sounded. Adrenaline shot through Sara as the doggirl started to take a step towards her, only to be restrained by a leash held by her owner. Sara had no idea why the doggirl had focused on her, though she decided it was possible that with the body she had, Sara might have reminded the doggirl of a particular slave that she worked with.

Looking up at the doggirl's owner, Sara was very surprised to see an expression that actually appeared apologetic. She wouldn't have expected him to direct that look at any woman, and she speculated that he might have been a regular customer of the restaurant last summer, and didn't want to offend anyone associated with it, even a slave. She decided to pass the observation on to Bart later, just as a small bit of anecdotal data. The experts at the Foundation could decide whether it meant anything.

Sara was approaching the opening in the crowd now, and grew tense again. Men were standing near enough on either side to reach out and touch her, and she had to hope that enough respect for the restaurant had been generated last year to keep her safe -- there is nothing so vulnerable as being naked, and added to it was her inability to run away from any attack. Her heart pounded as she passed through the small opening.

She was breathing easier moments later, now past the worst barrier between herself and the safety of the restaurant. Looking behind her, she saw that a local whom she learned later was a town official, accompanied by the slavegirls she'd seen, went down into the boat. The man and his girls knew what to do from having done the same last year, and soon the slavegirls, who had learned to use mainland hand trucks, were transporting boxes from the hold of the ship to the side door of the restaurant, which opened into the supply room.

To Sara's profound relief, she finally passed through the open front door of the restaurant, and found that Bart was standing just beyond it. She had arrived at the place that would be her home for the remaining three months of her life.

"The restaurant will open for business four nights from now. These first three days Wendy and Karen will clean the place from top to bottom, especially including the dining area, Greg will make sure the machinery is working smoothly, and Jeffrey and Joe are going to get the kitchen ready."

They were in the dining room, and the girls, who had pulled chairs around to face Bart, all nodded.

"Our first delivery of local women as our food source should be either tomorrow or the next day. We snuff one to use as the main course each day, start her roasting late in the morning, and the chefs start carving her in mid-afternoon. Other women are snuffed and frozen, to be cooked as needed for side dishes and incidentals. Greg has told me that the freezer is working, so we should be fine there.

"You'll be doing mainly two things in the next few days: getting organized in your classes, and getting in some practice as waitresses. Derek and I will take the role of customers, and we'll see how you do and give you some pointers. You're going to learn from observing each other as well as doing it yourselves." The girls all nodded again, including Sara, who hadn't yet found out exactly how she would fit into all this.

Bart gave them all a quick tour of the facilities. The cooking would mostly be done in the kitchen, aside from the roasting of the evening's meat course, which would be done in view of any townspeople or visitors wishing to watch -- islanders skinned their women and dismembered them before cooking, so cooking an entire woman on a turning spit over a fire was a novelty in itself. It wasn't done that way because the Foundation wanted islanders to start cooking their women that way, but simply because they wanted islanders to consider the restaurant an interesting place. So for that purpose, there was a roasting bay at the front of the building, facing the street, with a window looking in. All windows in the building, including that one, were designed in the island fashion. No glass was made on the island, and the Foundation's experts decided not to introduce glass windows. Islanders used windows protected by a cleverly designed wooden louver whose slats could be cranked fully open when possible, or closed against the rain, though closing only needed to be done in a storm that was driving the rain almost sideways -- an overhang of the roof several feet beyond the outside wall protected the window from rain in most cases.

The restaurant was designed so as to require relatively little in the way of electricity. Oil lanterns would be used in the dining room, with small electric bulbs elsewhere. Cooking was done almost exclusively over wood fires. The only significant user of electric power was the walk-in freezer. The sources of the electricity were all on the roof. The planners for the restaurant had decided against using any type of generator that made a significant amount of noise, which would be a major annoyance, probably to the point of creating local anger beyond the boiling point in a culture with little experience with background noise. Nearly the entire roof was given over to producing electricity quietly: a large array of solar cells, only occasionally useful in a place without much direct sunlight; several efficient but unobtrusive wind generators; and, most productive of all, several turbines powered by the weight of falling rain. There was a large storage battery to carry the restaurant through the times when all three types of devices failed temporarily to keep up with the demand.

After Bart dismissed the girls, by now exhausted by the long day, to check out their rooms and get some sleep, he took Sara aside, and smiled at her. "I suppose you're wondering."

She nodded and waited expectantly. At the moment she felt entirely capable of speaking, but rarely did so when it didn't appear necessary.

He led her back to the supply room, now mostly occupied with piles of newly-delivered boxes, and explained, "I have to apologize for this, because this really is a good service you're doing for us, but this was the best we could do for accommodations. The four slavegirls are paired up in two rooms, and we've got five rooms for five pairs of interns, and we weren't really anticipating an odd-girl-out. So this can be your room, and we've set up a cot in here." He pointed. "Your stuff is over there." She saw the handbag she had brought along as "luggage." None of the girls was allowed to bring any clothes, which would have been pointless, but they could bring toiletries and makeup supplies.

Sara rolled her eyes but gave him a small smile of acceptance. It would have been fantastic if she could have slept in Cherise's room, but she'd never thought that was likely. "So, w... w... what do I do?"

"Well, I understand you've been told you can attend any classes you want to..." He cocked a questioning eye at her. She nodded.

"Aside from that, in the dining room you'll essentially be our busboy. Busgirl. You know, collect plates and utensils after a customer leaves, wipe down the table, put out some silverware to get it ready for the next customer." He smiled. "It was kind of funny. At first they didn't really know what forks and spoons were for -- they knew all they needed to know about knives -- but the girls were good at explaining, and pretty soon every new customer picked up on it from the other diners. If somebody looked befuddled, one of the other guys would help him out. They're good people, if you don't count their attitude towards women."

She smiled, and nodded. "I k... k... can handle that."

She couldn't account for the odd smile he gave her now, as if he'd been waiting to say something. "Don't you want to know why we're giving you a job in the dining room that one of the work slaves could be doing?"

She blinked. "Well, I'm going to be l.. l... living here for three months. I k... k... k... can't just eat and sleep and not d... d... d... do anything."

He straightened up and put his hands in his pockets. "We want you to be a very visible part of the restaurant service. We want the regular customers to be very familiar with you."

She was once more suddenly conscious of her nudity. Customers who saw her even once were going to be a lot more familiar with her than anyone had ever been before. She felt the urge to cover up again and fought against it. "Why?" She never stammered when the words came out of her automatically.

"We're going to make a little bigger deal of the Sara Bollinger feast than we'd originally envisioned. We're going to construct a tent in front so we can do it outdoors. The construction will include a barbecue pit, so we'll do the cooking out there too. And the snuff -- we'll move the guillotine out there for that. Obviously we'll need to start the festival in the morning, so the snuff, roasting, and carving can all be done in time for dinner. And to start it all off, we'll introduce you at the beginning, alive and smiling. You might even..." He stopped, looking slightly embarrassed. Since the obvious continuation of the sentence, in context, was "...say a few words," she understood his discomfort perfectly. Unable to back himself out of the sentence gracefully, he skipped past it. "Anyway, they see you alive and cheerful, then watch you snuffed and barbecued, and then they eat you. The point is, this will be a big party, that was your original idea, but it will be a party centered around a woman. A party celebrating a woman. Exactly the way we do it on the mainland. The islanders eat their women, but there's no ceremony at all to it. On the island, a woman is a worker bee, or a dog, or a baby-making machine, and she's food, but at no time is she ever a person. To these men, you will be a person, because you'll be someone they recognize from the restaurant. We think this will do more to emphasize the... personhood of women, the humanity of women, than anything we've done so far. And the island men won't object, or be offended, because to them it will just be a party. From our point of view it's a party with a message, but we're slipping the message in under the table." He stopped and gave her a "What do you think?" smile.

Sara's excitement was growing all through Bart's speech. She threw her arms around him now, and gave him a squeeze. "I think any woman would d... d... die for a ch... ch... chance to die this way. Thank you!" She gave him a kiss on the cheek, her eyes bright.

He patted her back and let her go. "See you in the morning."

After he'd gone, Sara looked around the chaotic supply room -- chaotic in the context of being a living space, though she was sure the guys on the staff knew where all the boxes were and how to find what they needed -- and turned down the room's electric light at the switch. The light operated at several different wattages, and she left it as a minimal night-light. She stretched out on her cot. It was funny to just go to bed without undressing or washing up -- she'd be able to wash in the morning. Fresh water was never in short supply here. It literally fell from the sky.

Sara knew she wouldn't be falling asleep anytime soon. She was too excited about the plans Bart had just given her for her future demise.

All through the description he'd made, she'd felt her self-confidence expanding. I'm an important part of what they're trying to do here! she told herself. I was thinking of myself as just a tag-along, but they're glad I'm here, glad of what they can do because I'm here!

Along with her self-confidence, one thought had grown to fill her mind, to the exclusion of anything else: This is what I need, feeling good, feeling needed, feeling worth! It's going to help me talk to Cherise, I just know it is! I'll be able to tell her everything I need to tell her! AND she still gets to eat me, we still have that!

Sara was suddenly struck, almost as a physical blow, with an acute awareness of how near Cherise was. I'm in bed, she thought, and Cherise is in bed, but we're not fifty feet apart!

Sara sent her mind outward, erasing the distance, erasing the walls between. She saw Cherise, felt her, held her, skin to skin, arms and legs entangled, lips tingling with their nearness to lips. Her body moved her hand to her crotch, her fingers knowing what to do, while her mind explored Cherise, caressed her, enfolded her. Sara held her mouth open, trying to be as silent as she could, missing the irony of not wanting to make a sound for once. Soon waves of joy spread out from between her legs to fill her body.