"He has told me about you," said the girl. "I will cook for you, too. I cook for him. Unless," she added with a trace of embarrassment, "there is another you would rather have cook for you." "There is no one I would rather have cook for me," Tarzan told her; "but who are you and who is _he_?" "I am Talaskar," she replied; "but I know him only by his number. He says that while he remains a slave he has no name, but will go always by his number, which is Eight Hundred Cubed, Plus Nineteen. I see that you are Eight Hundred Cubed, Plus Twenty-one." She was looking at the hieroglyphics that had been fastened upon his shoulder. "Have you a name?" "They call me Zuanthrol." "Ah," she said, "you are a large man, but I should scarcely call you a giant. He, too, is from Trohanadalmakus and he is about your height. I never heard that there were any giants in Minuni except the people they call Zertalacolols." "I thought you were a Zertalacolol," said a man's voice at Tarzan's ear. The ape-man turned to see one of the slaves with whom he had been working eyeing him quizzically, and smiled. "I am a Zertalacolol to my masters," he replied. The other raised his brows. "I see," he said. "Perhaps you are wise. I shall not be the one to betray you," and passed on about his business. "What did he mean?" asked the girl. "I have never spoken, until now, since they took me prisoner," he explained, "and they think I am speechless, though I am sure that I do not look like a Zertalacolol, yet some of them insist that I am one." "I have never seen one," said the girl. "You are fortunate," Tarzan told her. "They are neither pleasant to see nor to meet." "But I should like to see them," she insisted. "I should like to see anything that was different from these slaves whom I see all day and every day." "Do not lose hope," he encouraged her, "for who knows but that it may be very soon that you will return to the surface." "'Return'," she repeated. "I have never been there." "Never been to the surface! You mean since you were captured." "I was born in this chamber," she told him, "and never have I been out of it." "You are a slave of the second generation and are still confined to the quarries--I do not understand it. In all Minunian cities, I have been told, slaves of the second generation are given the white tunic and comparative freedom above ground." "It was not for me. My mother would not permit it. She would rather I had died than mated with a Veltopismakusian or another slave, as I must do if I go into the city above." "But how do you avoid it? Your masters certainly do not leave such things to the discretion of their slaves."