Bott stared at the closing doors a moment too long. Pellets flew again, this time angling down. Most bounced off his back but he felt the sting as a few hit his hands and face. He rolled from the ramp, aiming for the largest door he’d seen.
The door shuddered, but did not open; he supposed he was too light to trigger the mechanism. He slid his hands across the surface without finding anything useful.
Then he slid his hands over himself, checking for damage from the pellets. He found no breaks in the skin, no stickiness of surface poison. The Emperor might have something more insidious than Bott had encountered before, but perhaps the purpose of the pellets was simply to urge prisoners to make stupid moves.
Sitting up, he studied the room. Even flying the Dragonshelf, he could go through the chamber again and again and still miss important clues. Range upon range of mountainous white blocks rose before him, with doors and traps who knew where, triggered by who knew what, surrounded by who knew how many fake librarians.
Checking to make sure his satchel and collection of cards were intact, he rose to his feet. At least he was free of the distracting Klamathans. Their odors and urges would have led to increasingly greater challenges. Alone, he could cross any massive room sober. And he was unlikely to see a drink for days.
He started forward, aiming for two large spheres that looked to be about half a mile away. After twosteps, he realized what they reminded him of, and stopped.
He had to find them, of course. Nubry at least and the Klamathans if he could. What the large women kept telling him was true: His Imperial Worship intended them all to die n this playground, once sufficient entertainment and revenue had been produced. But he had no inytention of dying without a crew, without a struggle, without one last grand assault.
Without applause.
As well die here and now as go to a lot of trouble without anyone to admire the effort. His family,his crew, the librarian, the Klamathans: all had been audience and all were gone. And acclaim meant more than food to a pirate captain.
The thought of food made his stomach complain. Food did mean something, too. He took out his communications card. The green still held that rations card, but when he found her—for he was Bott Garton and he could find a pea in a bean vault—they would need to know where the next food dispenser was.
“Ship?”
“Are you still breathing, lummox?”
The voice was nectar, but there was no way he could admit this. “Sorry to disappoint you. Are you allowed to tell me where the nearest outlet for the foods computer is?”
“Yes.”
Bott considered his fingernails and brushed a scrape on the back of one hand before trying again. “Ship, tell me where the nearest outlet for the foods computer is.”
“Oh, you’re still there. The nearest outlet is in is in Maze Room 3A1-slash-783-slash-3M7.”
Bott tipped his head back. “I suppose I don’t need to ask this.”
“Ye-es?”
“Ship, where is Maze Room 3A1-slash-783-slash-3M7?”
“That I’m not allowed to tell you.”
Bott nodded, not especially surprised. At worst, he could always dine on the thumbs in his pocket.
“With all those cards, [pirate, you’d probably order up waymuns soaked in Boiar champagne.”
“What, no lumpuck truffles?”
“Unless you were interested in the food hidden in this chamber.”
Bott ran his tongue across his canine teeth. “Just for chuckles, let’s assume that would interest me.”
“You want to walk to your left until you reach that low white cylinder. You do know which is your left?”
“I am one of the greatest pirate navigators of our time.”
“That does not answer the question.”
So Bott did not answer the question, strolling toward the big low circle. He strolled a bit faster when he smelled roasted meat. A hint of pepper and garlic just about made the stroll a charge. Reaching the block, he threw his hands up and brought himself to where he could peer down inside.
A vast bowl stretched below, containing four drumsticks roughly the size of his old ship. He considered the legs gravely. The sides of the bowl were steep and slick; if he climbed over, he would slide right down next to the meat. But a bird that size had probably not been fed with an eye to maximum tenderness. He let go and dropped back down to the floor.
“Do slave ships find this sort of thing funny?”
“Frankly, I wish His Worship hadn’t let your Klamathans go through the floor. I can picture the four of you trying to climb back out and sliding back into one greasy heap. I don’t believe I was programmed to giggle, but that might force the issue.”
Bott’s tongue slid across his lips. “It was the Emperor’s plan to drop them through the floor?”
“The money was getting a little soft, so he decided to pique interest by offering odds on whether you ran into each other again.”
“What are the odds right now?”
“Just now, 53 to 1 against. Of course, what really matters is which outcome brings in more money.”
“And Nubry? The librarian? The real one, I mean?”
“He’s not offering odds on that.”
Wondering what that might mean, Bott set a shoulder against the wall of the cylinder. In a second, he was sprawled on the floor, the cylinder having slid eight feet back under his weight.
Propping himself up on his elbows, he found he was lying between two silver doors. Nudging one with his right foot opened onto a set of steps which were moving foen. An experiment with the other foot showed him another set of stairs tolling down at a right angle to the first. A grinding sound brought his head up. The bowl of meat was creeping back toward him.
For all he knew, of course, the Klamathans had dropped into a shallow passage which would bring them right back to this room. This room was too big to work with, though. He thought he’d prefer whatever these escalators would take him into.
The bowl continued to slide back; soon it would cover the doors again. He looked from one door to the other and with a shrug, reached for Nubry’s book. The first animal he found was looking down at a blue flower. That meant the door on the right.
The bowl slid across the door as he traveled down, but a dim yellow light showed him where he weas going. It was a short trip before he stepped off into a dusty concrete aisle between rows of large grey cages. All of these were empty and smelled of neglect. He wondered, moving among them, whether he should try some of the doors. A passage might wait inside any one of them. So might a trap. He kept walking.
Having seen no change in corridor or cages after two hundred steps, he paused and set one hand to the bars on his right. The yellow light went red, and he jumped back to the center of the aisle, crouching to meet whatever came at him.
What came were a dozen cries and groans, as the cage doors were replaced with projected scenes oflibrarians under torture. He counted ten on each side: how many copies could the Emperor have on hand? There had to be more than one: no one could survive the experience two ahead of him. Or that one, three down on the left.
These had to be computer-generated simulations, designed while the prisoners were unconscious. No doubt, wherever she was, Nubry was being subjected to similar scenes in which he was interrogated. But even knowing these scenes could never actually have happened, he couldn’t watch: The stretched, twisted, burning naked bodies were neary identical. They had to be based on a single original; where was that original now?
“Bott!” came a dozen screams from those still capable of speech.
“Quiet!” he ordered, walking faster. :Keep quiet!” He slapped his hand against one screen.
The librarian swung away from his hand, which had hit glass. Bott whirled, and threw a punch in the direction of her face. She blinked.
The simulations were programmed to respond, of course. The cage walls were made of wire-reinforced glass, cage glass. He had been right the first time: these were cells containing three-dimensional simulated librarians.
“You’re just pictures,” he snarled, half running down the corridor. “Not one of you is bilstim real.” On his right, a counterfeit Nubry coughed flame as her internal organs ignited.
The end of the corridor waited for him, a deep triangular niche. In one wall was a square door with a padlock. On the other waited an oval door with a combination knob. A black opening waited just beyond his toes. He turned to the librarian’s book, where the pictures were comfortingly still.
What did it mean when an animal was looking to the right? Straight ahead? He looked over the opening in the floor. No thank you. He turned to the combination lock.
“My book!” screamed Six Nubrys on his right. Bott swallowed. Could computer simulations see? He considered the hole in the floor again. If he dove in headfirst, he could slide into a pot of bubbling ooze, making hot Bott Stew. Feetfirst and he might land in a pit of soft cheese, sinking deeper and deeper with no way to climb out. He shook his head; better find some food before it took over his brain completely.
In the cage at his right, a librarian was separated from her legs. “My book!” she wailed. “Bott, read to me!” He dove into the hole. At least he’d see where he was going.
There was no room to turn in the dark tube. By pressing his arms and legs against the sides, Bott could slow his descent. He wondered if this mattered. At length, he was dropped into an orange cube lit by pale blue walls. Six dark circles in these walls indicated he could go on traveling by tube.
“Jzzn,” someone said. A large blue insect crawled from one of the tubes. Bott reached for a grenade, but shook his head. The room was too small. Maybe one of the thumbs would do: it had worked with the flies.
“Jizzn vet.” The long blue stick with many legs crawled along the wall to another opening, and was gone. Bott reached for the book again, but shook his head, and walked over to the opening farthest from the one the insect had come out of.
This was a smaller tube, barely large enough for progress. Bott could see his future, wrapped in this plastic package, slowly starving to death while the Emperor chuckled. Fine way for a pirate captain to finish.
He found his way to the end of the tube more quickly as the plastic walls began to ooze hot liquid. He fell forward, breaking his fall with his nose, which wedged between two fuzzy orange cushions.
Blogsy Babbles 