The Sound of His Horn by Sarban

whisper when she caught me listening to the horn.
    Only the Doctor spoke lightly of the Master Forester, but I could detect a real uneasiness under his affected superiority and, also, when he mocked the rigid discipline he enforced in his own place and blamed it on the system, his insincerity was patent.
    After my first meal at his table I found myself paying less attention to his self-centred remarks and studying the staff. I had discovered that only half the girls were trained nurses, the other six were housemaids, though what work they had to do beyond waiting at his table was not easy to see, since there were about the place at least a dozen men--young men, all extraordinarily similar in build and appearance to the fellow who cleaned my room. Two of them used to bring in the dishes from the kitchen to the Doctor's dining-room and then stand by the sideboard while two maids took over and served us at table. They were always naked to the waist, so that I could observe their well-fed, sleek bodies; the livery trousers they wore of green or brown stuff were so tight as to mould their haunches and legs; they all looked as if they were running to fat, and were only kept in condition by a lot of hard work, though none of them seemed above twenty-two or so. I noticed that each wore a thin collar of bright metal round his neck.
    "They are cheaper than machines," was the Doctor's comment when I said something about them. "Besides, the Graf has a prejudice against mechanisation. He concedes a point or two on the apparatus of destruction, but he would rather give me three slaves than one vacuum-cleaner."
    "What are they, what nationality are they?" I asked. He shrugged. "Slavs, I suppose. I've never really gone into their breeding. They seem to me very much just lumps of undifferentiated Under-Race. They are breeding them extensively in the South Russian Gau nowadays. I suppose your little lapse from contemporaneity does not permit you to be acquainted with the discoveries of Wessler in mechanically induced conception and the application of the Roeder-Schwab process for the acceleration of growth? It's pleasant, isn't it, to think that the father of both those oxen there was perhaps the same piece of copper-wire--and what age would you estimate them?"
    I guessed about twenty-two.
    "Not more than fifteen, and twelve more likely. Precocious infants, aren't they? But the precocity is physical only, fortunately, I should say."
    "I don't know that I should feel very happy to have the command of twelve bulky men with the minds of children, nevertheless," I remarked.
    He sniggered. "Oh, some physical precautions are taken. In time, I've no doubt, they'll breed them without unnecessary organs, but at present the breeders trim off the ones that might cause trouble, soon after birth. You observe also that they don't talk? The Graf thinks it a convenience to have a small operation done on their vocal cords before we get them."
    I looked from the serfs to the two young girls in smart green and white uniforms who were waiting on us and asked if they too were slaves.
    "Indeed, no!" he answered, eyeing them with pride. "Pure German maidens. The Graf uses a good number of slave-girls, but I would not have the trouble of them. If you have properly educated German children discipline is automatic. If any girl breaks a rule the others at once report it.
Selbstzeuchtigung!
The culprit usually anticipates that and reports her own fault and proposes the proper punishment." He let his eyes slide across the two trim young maids and added complacently, with a suggestion of lip-smacking in his tone: "They know better than to propose too little, tool"
    The more I lived in that polished, aseptic place, in that atmosphere of rigidly disciplined slavery, the more interesting the night-hunting Count seemed to me with his hints of eccentricity. From time to time I still heard his horn in the woods and it still had that strange, disturbing and vaguely alarming effect