At a great distance from the ravine, four eyes were able to watch the screaming woman drop, not only as a figure on a screen but as a blip on a graph. A third screen blinked on to allow them to witness the impact.
“We will not make that mistake in the future.”
His Imperial Worship leaned back, setting Imperial shoulders on the light blue cushions of his chair, and checked instruments to his left and right. “We see the problem. In removing all forms of loyalty and faith, so she could betray the pirate, we no doubt removed knowledge of proper use o the prayerstone. He was paying attention, wasn’t he?”
Nubry rose to tiptoe, chin forward so she could study the figure in the chair. Anything she might learn could be a help. But she was not near enough to see much of the instruments he looked over.
The librarian stood between halves on an immense eggshell, wrists and ankles held by icy blue manacles which were attached to nothing. Small squares of the same blue material hovered here and there around here. They seemed to work on the same principle as the traveling squares, and were used to change her position inside the machine.
For the eggshell was a large copy machine of a kind Nubry had not seen or experienced before. It had the capability to produce a functioning replica of anything held within its field. Or, depending on adjustments His Imperial Worship could make from where he sat, slightly altered copies.
Also before the Emperor were all manner of screens showing parts of the audience, the bets being made, and the progress of prisoners through the maze. Nubry could see from her position how Bott and the three women he’d met made it into the next chamber, just before a dark flood would have washed them into the chasm. She nodded.
She could also see the screens which showed what he allowed the betting multitude to know, altering the computer’s reports just enough to manipulate the betting. Somehow, this was the most shocking thing she’d seen so far. The ability to torment prisoners, the power of life and death at the press of a little tab: these were not enough. His Imperial Worship had to make a profit on it. For a mighty force of evil destruction, this seemed mighty petty. But the Emperor had turned out to be a mighty petty mighty force of evil destruction. She had never imagined a destructive power doing so much giggling.
“We’ll give them a full day before we start damaging their arms. Or, truly, before you do.”
An Imperial finger came down on a little yellow square. A manacle she had not hitherto noticed, in her hair, brought her head forward. Her wrists came up behind her back. It was apparently an Imperial duty to make her as uncomfortable as possible between copies.
He didn’t even look back to see if this hurt. “I am sure you dislike the manacles, my sweetness, but they are essential. During the tests, Poor Sherrif Tino of Shenshark twisted so much that he broke his neck. And then the copies were useless, of course. Fun for a little while, but not good for anything else.”
Nubry tried to ignore the sweat trickling down the sides of her neck and the front of her throat: there was no way to wipe it away. She willed her muscles to stop trying to find a comfortable position. There were no comfortable positions.
She supposed she ought to be planning an escape, but these manacles were entirely new to her. She knew as well that she should be collecting information. On the cuffs, of course, and on this monstrous copier, but there must also be a clue to the maze somewhere on those screens.
Her eyes, though, kept turning to the screen where Bott Garton was walking with the three multicolored women. They had come to a cave; crawling through this, they had moved into a room filled with yellow choking mist. Crawling faster, they were headed toward a red door, a blue door, and a yellow door. Bott was in the lead; she wished she could hear what was being said.
He brought her book out of his satchel again. What could he want with “Bunny Bunk and the Purple Pillow”? He couldn’t read it. She had intended to teach him to read, in return for him teaching her how to pronounce all those words she knew from books but had never heard said out loud.
“You are not attending.” Another Imperial finger hit another tab.
Nubry threw her head back against the manacle in her hair as the blue mist rose around her; she felt her right shoulder joint separate. Why was she trying not to scream? Anything this painful had to have been designed to make people scream. So the Emperor could giggle. It was so unfair, like the Imperial guards. They dressed to be as frightening as they could, armed themselves so as to be as frightening as they could, and learned to talk so they sounded as frightening as they could. Then they laughed at you for being scared.
So she ground her teeth and concentrated on that blue dot on that certain screen. The dot blurred as her eyes watered, but it was still there, the Dragonshelf’s position in the maze. The books were still all right. She pulled uselessly at the manacles, and forced her brain around that thought. The books were still all right. Bott would get the books. And then he would come for her.
“You must tell me how you like it, so I can record the data.” Hs Imperial shifted his chair just a little, and pressed another lighted square. “I’m told it combines the pangs of giving birth with the pains of being born. Inanimate objects simply fade away after fifty or so copies are made, but sentient beings promise such pretty things every time a little more life is torn from them.”
It was in Nubry’s mind to ask him why doing things like this made him giggle. But now it felt as if an overinflated remfball was being forced up her throat by a splintered remfball bat.
Then she was staring at a kneeling copy of herself panting on a light blue traveling square. “Oh!” she gasped, no less startled by this vision than she had been the first time.
Then the copy was gone, as the traveling square shifted and the third Nubry dropped into darkness.
“So she won’t meet you and be traumatized, poor puppet.” His Imperial Worship turned to consider the pinioned librarian. He was going to giggle again; Nubry just knew it.
“Perhaps I should make four copies at once. I understand the pain increases exponentially.” The Imperial thumb came down, and Nubry’s ankles rose toward her wrists.
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