“He’s ripping her overalls off now. It’s a real pity you can’t see this.”
The screen had been out of Nubry’s line of vision since the golden woman started dancing. His Imperial Worship had thoughtfully provided commentary on how her dancing became a general hugging, kissing, squeezing lovefest among the four prisoners, preoccupying them too much to see their danger until they stepped into trap doors which dropped them inside warm, soothing tubes where they were bounced and jiggled into painful levels of sexual tension.
However, by twisting her neck and tipping her head way back, Nubry could just see the monitor which printed out their dialogue.
“OOH, MY DARLING CAPTAIN1 DO TRY TO BE GENTLE!”
“I SJALL LOVE EVERY PARTICLE OF YOUR LUSH GREEN BODY!”
She could not hold the position long, and had to tuck her ears back between her knees, a position the manacles had forced her to assume some ten minutes or eighty years ago. All she could see in this position was herself, where the blades had cut away her uniform. The view would not have inspired her even had her eyes been the only organs offended by the process. The worst, though, was that the machinery had also let her hair loose, and she could not move a hand up to brush the strands away from her face.
“Quite the grip he’s got on her breasts. I had some thoughts about pumping in an aphrodisiac vapor, but I see now that would have been redundant.”
Nubry pressed her lips together. It hurt. The last moisture to touch them had been sweat, and she doubted she could manage even that now. He’d made fourteen copies in a row; the memory of that pain was bad enough, but she also knew how much her strength had been depleted. Soon she’d be too weak to do anything about escape even if she got the chance.
“Nothing new about what they’re up to mow. I’ll just let them go at it and stop neglecting my guest.”
Sje tried to turn her head again, but at the same moment, her wrists were drawn between her thighs to roll her into another midair somersault. Her heels came down to the floor, pressed against each other. The cuffs on her knees pulled as far apart as her hip joints would allow. The thigh bones were trying to pull away from the hips entirely.
Ignoring that and the pain in her neck, she tossed her head to flip her hair back. Her eyes went up to the big monitor, n found it blank. She looked down to the conversation screen again.
“OH, CAPTAIN!”
“WE CAN DO THIS EVERY AFTERNOON AND EVENING ONCE WE’VE CONVERTED THE DRAGONSHELF TO OUR USES.”
“ARE YOU GOING TO SELL THE BOOKS, OR JUST DUMP THEM?”
Her eyes grew round. Then she lost sight of the screen as her head pulled down behind her and her heels, still together, were tanked up to meet it. A deep breath rattled in her throat as the thigh bones popped from their sockets.
The words on the monitor hurt worse. Bott wouldn’t do that, would he? He would ot! But would he? Dumping the books had to be a Klamathan suggestion. He was a pirate, of course, and not a librarian. He might not know the value of books as books, not merchandise. And perhaps he thought one of the copies was the real thing, and, since that person had died, he no longer had to think about the Dragonshelf’s captain.
“And I thought of sending some of my pets in, but those four would wear out my poor little pihhes.” She could hear, but not see, the Imperial chair move around her. “Do you like piggies, my dear?”
“What….” She licked her lips, but her tongue was nearly as dry as they were. “What will you do…with my ship…if we don’t get out?”
The chair moved again; a painful jerk brought her eyes where she could see it. “Concerned about your books? You needn’t be.” A fat thumb came down to the pads on his console. “I’ll keep them—and your ship—forever as a trophy.”
Her wrists shot straight up, and her ankles rubbed her ears. “You…will?”
“In my office.” The mobile throne moved closer; one Imperial hand raised a long glass from a holster on the side. “I have a very efficient compactor: your ship will crush down to a cube about the size of this chair. I don’t know whether I will put your bodies inside before the crushing, or sprinkle your bones around the cube in a tasteful arrangement.”
He slurped at the long light blue glass. Ice clinked when he moved his hand.
Nubry couldn’t keep from pressing her lips together, bits of the surface flaking off as she did so. “The…books?” she said, when she could.
“Will be preserved forever.” He slurped again. “You’ll never need worry again about someone tearing a page because they will have been mashed into immovable objects about the width of one of tour fingernails. Perhaps I should take a fingernail or two now, so my technicians will have something for comparison.”
It would have been a relief to cry, so, of course, she couldn’t. “There are…valuable things…in the collection. Are there? Yes, there are.” She swallowed. That felt as if the sides of her throat were scraping together as her lips had. “Where else will you find forty years of Eetervi tram schedules?”
His free hand made some adjustments. Her heels rested on her shoulders. Her wrists were brought down around her knees and up again to her forehead. “Anyone can find them right in my office. You couldn’t ask for more efficient filing.”
“But they won’t be…no one can….” She tried to lift her head enough to relieve her shoulder joints. It didn’t seem to help. “Books are imp…aw!”
She was rotated ninety degrees. The Emperor rolled a dark blue ball with blunt spikes protruding from it across his knees. A nudge from one knee sent it to the floor.
“See if you can fail to land with anything delicate against that.” A thumb jabbed out again to his control pad.
The power was cut off to all her manacles at once. Nubry could do nothing to stop, or even adjust, her fall. The ball caught her at the base of her stomach.
Something beeped on the wall of monitors. Nubry opened one eye to find His Imperial Worship riding the chair back to his usual viewing spot. She reached out experimentally with one hand.
This did not feel good, nor was she terribly encouraged. The manacles were still attached to her and, deprived of their lifting power, were heavy. Those of her joints still working together felt fragile. She moved forward, and nearly screamed as one of her hips popped back into conjunction with that thigh. But she didn’t want to upset His Imperial Worship by letting hi know about her troubles, and kept dry lips jammed together.
She did not so much crawl as slither, pulling herself along the deceptively cool-colored floor. Bypassing the trap door which dropped her copies into the maze, she aimed herself at a door in the wall. If only it was motion-sensitive: she certainly lacked the strength to pull herself up to work the controls.
“Leaving? Without your party favors?”
One of her mistakes, she reflected, was in thinking that once she’d dropped free of the immense half-egg duplicating machine, the manacles would have no power to move her. She rose spread-eagled into the air. He let her come down and straddle the sharp edge of the eggshell for a moment before letting her drop inside again, ankles together, her hands on her hips.
She met the Imperial eyes. “If it’s a party…when do you serve refreshments?”
Her right leg was jerked up into a perfect right angle to her body. “One thing at a time, my sweet guest. Party favors first.”
His chair moved. She tried to watch it, but jerked as she felt the power in the manacle on her rised keg die. The manacle was probably big enough to break her left ankle if she just let it fall.
“Sooner or later, tender librarian, you will have to let that leg fall.”
She looked to him, and then to the floor. Somehow, the controls of the copier had been shifted to exactly where her right heel would land.
“I will need more copies,” His Imperial Worship explained. “Your pirate is so amazingly randy it may take twenty or so to make any impression.”
Nubry looked past him. The big screen was still dark, but she could again see the conversation screen.
‘OH, PLEASE.”
‘NO, WE MUST CLIMB OUT OF THIS MAZE AND BURN THAT DAMNED LIBRARY. WE NEEED SPEED AND THOUGHT.”
So did the captain of the Dragonshelf. The Emperor was correct; she could not hold that manacle up for long. Best to let it drop where and how you wanted.
She pulled her knee up to her belly and then slammed it down, letting the cuff add to the impact of her heel. Her teeth felt like cracking at the pain of impact, and her eyes clamped shut so sharply she felt her lashes must cut into her cheeks.
“Oh my,” said His Imperial Worship.
She opened her eyes. His Imperial Worship had leaned back in the chair, his hands folded over his stomach. “Dear, dear.” He didn’t look at the controls. “I fear you have jammed the mechanism, my dear. How many copies do you think it will feel compelled to make?”
She looked down. All the pads seemed to have been jammed down into the surface of the console. Lights were flashing, and she could feel the power surging. She pulled back her foot to kick the controls, but at the same moment, that foot was drawn up swiftly until the heel nudged the small of her back. Her leg muscles started to twitch; the rest followed. Ripples ran in waves along her stomach. Her cheeks billowed.
“You wouldn’t get this experience from a book.” His Imperial Worship took another slurp of his drink.
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