Image of the Beast and Blown (45 page)

up with many small plates screwed together. He wondered
how long the Tocs had been working on this. It must have
taken them years, because their time would be limited to
the early hours of morning before the sun came up.

It was possible, however, that this tunnel had been built
by the Ogs as an escape route. The Tocs, having dis-
covered it, were taking advantage of it.

He did not know how long they swam through the tun-
nel. It seemed like a long time. It led downward, or at least
he got that impression. Then they were popping up in a
chamber illuminated by a bright arc light hanging from a
chain set into the cement ceiling. A ladder gave access to a
platform at the end of which hung row on row of suits.
Shelves held many goggles and air tanks.

His second speculation was correct. This had been made
by the Ogs for escape. But then, wouldn't they have set
up guards or alarms?

Hindarf explained that they could go no farther in that
direction. The door in the end of the chamber was locked
and triggered to alarms. So, they would go through another
tunnel, which they had dug and walled themselves.

They dived again, and Forry plunged to the bottom of
the tunnel. He saw Hindarf go through a hole which was so
narrow that the air tank on his back scraped against the
plates. The tunnel curved rapidly and took them at a
course that he estimated would bring them about even with
the ending of the Og tunnel but about forty feet westward.

He came up in another chamber, much smaller than the
first. There was a raft made of wood and inflatable pon-
toons. It was near the wall, which held a ladder that ran to
the ceiling, twelve feet up.

Hindarf pulled Forry onto the raft. A man handed Hin-
darf a paper in a sealed package. He opened it and took
out the paper and spread it out. Under the lights they had
brought, with the only sound the slight splashing of the
men and heavy breathing, they studied the plates which
constituted the ceiling of this chamber. The plates were
being removed by two men standing on the ladder.

There was a great boom from above them.

The shock was sudden and savage. The platform rose
into the air above the water and the men on it went with it.
Dirt fell in on all sides, striking the men and sending up

gouts of water and chunking into the raft, which was
tilting to one side and then to the other.

But the walls did not fall in, though the plates were
bellied out or buckled and broken here and there. The
booming noise had come and gone, like an overhead ex-
plosion. All was quiet except for the loud slap-slap of the
seesawing water against the sides of the pit and the
groaning of the platform moving up and down.

Hindarf was the first to break the silence. He said, "That
was either an earthquake or the house is starting to slide.
In either case, we go ahead as planned. We'll be out of
this place and into the house in a few seconds."

The two men on the ladder had clung to it as it had
threatened to topple over. Now they went to work and re-
moved plates to make a wide opening above them.

Forry wondered why they worked so slowly. He felt like
clawing the plates out and anything else that stood between
him and the open air. But he managed to subdue the
panic. After all, as he had already told himself, he was
upholding the honor of Earth.

Hindarf climbed the ladder and began to chip away at
the dirt with a small pick. Forry moved to one side to
avoid the falling matter, which came down in big chunks.
His guide, pointing at the diagram, said, "We are directly
below the floor of the room where Childe should be
held."

"How did you get hold of the diagram?" Forry said.

"From the city archives. The Ogs thought that they had
removed all of the plans of the house, which was built
long ago. But there was one plan which had been misfiled.
We paid for a very expensive research, but it was worth
it."

"Why do you think Childe is in the room above?"

"The Ogs have held important prisoners there before,
both Toc and Earthling. We could be wrong, but even so
we'll be inside the house."

Hindarf quit scraping away the dirt and was listening
through a device, one end of which was placed against the
stone. Then he put the device in a pocket of his suit and
began to work on the stone with a drill. Forry listened
carefully but could hear no sound from it. His guide told
him that it used supersonic waves.

The removal of several blocks of stone took some time.

Hindarf and another man stood side by side on the narrow
ladder and eased the block down between them, and this
was passed slowly between men standing together on the
ladder.

Then Hindarf listened again. He looked puzzled as he
put the device away.

"There's a strange swishing and splashing noise," he
whispered.

He took the large square of metal which a man handed
him and screwed it to the underside of the floor. A wire
led from one side of the metal square to a small black
metal box held by a man on the raft.

Everybody except Hindarf got off the ladder and stood
to one side. Hindarf nodded to the man holding the box,
who pressed a button on its top.

The metal square and the section of floor within it fell
down past Hindarf.

A solid column of water roared through the opening. It
knocked Hindarf off the ladder, struck the small platform,
sprayed out over the raft, and swept those standing on the
platform into the well or onto the raft.

Forry Ackerman was one of those swept off.

41

Pao said, "Your wife died three months ago."

"You killed her!" Childe raged. "You killed her! Did
you torture her before you killed her?"

"No," Pao said. "We did not want to hurt her, because
we meant to bring her to you when you were ready for us.
But she died."

"How?"

"It was an accident. Vivienne and Plugger and your
wife were forming a triangle. Plugger was stimulating
Vivienne with his tongue in her mouth, your wife was being
stimulated with Plugger's cock in her mouth, and Vivienne
and your wife had their cunts almost touching each other,
face to face as it were. Gilles was up your wife's cunt or
alternating between her cunt and her asshole, I believe."

"I can believe that Sybil might engage in some daisy
chains," Childe said. "But I can't believe that she'd let
Vivienne even get near her. That snake-thing would
horrify her."

"When Plugger is charging you, you get excited enough
to do a lot of things you wouldn't otherwise do," Pao
said. "I have no reason to lie to you. The truth is that
Gilles was driven out of his mind—he doesn't have much,
anyway, just a piece of brain tissue in that little skull, he
doesn't even know his own name and his talking is auto-
matic and unintelligible even to him … Anyway, he
went out of his head, too stimulated by Plugger, I suppose,
and bit your wife's rectum. He tore out some blood
vessels, and she bled to death. She kept moving and
responding to Plugger's electric discharges even after she
died, which was why neither Plugger nor Vivienne knew
what was going on."

Childe felt sick. He sat down on the edge of the bed,
his head bent. Pao stood silently.

After a few minutes, Childe looked up at Pao. The
man's face was smooth and expressionless. His yellow
skin, thin-lipped down-drooping mouth, thin curved nose,
high cheekbones, slanting black eyes, and black hair with
its widow's peak made him look like a smooth-shaven Fu

Manchu. Yet the man—the Og, rather—must be very
anxious behind that glossy sinister face. He could not use
the usual methods to force cooperation from Childe.
Even the worst of tortures could not extract the power
for Grading or star voyaging from a Captain. Under pain,
the Captain was incapable of performing his duties.

Childe thought of Vivienne, Plugger, Gilles de Rais,
and the creature that had metamorphosed itself to look
like Sybil. What was its name? Brueghel?

O'Brien had left. Had he gone out to kill Breughel?

Pao swallowed and said, "What can I do to make this
up to you?"

What he meant was, "What kind of revenge do you
wish?" And he was thinking, must be thinking, that
Childe would hold him responsible for Sybil's death.

Childe said, "I only require that the snake-thing be
killed."

Pao looked relieved, but he said, "Vivienne will die,
too!"

Childe bit his lip. The revenge he was planning did
not involve killing anybody except the snake-thing, and
that thing could not be called an entity. Not a sentient
entity, anyway. He wanted the thing killed, but he
wanted Vivienne alive to appreciate what had happened
to her and the other Ogs.

"Bring Vivienne in," he said.

Pao left and a few minutes later returned with Vivi-
enne behind him. O'Brien and several others also entered.

"I need a butcher's cleaver and bandages and ointment
and morphine," Childe said.

Vivienne turned pale. She alone seemed to grasp
what he intended to do.

"Oh, yes, and bring a wooden stool and a pair of long
pliers," he said.

Trembling, Vivienne sat down in a chair.

"Stand up and take your clothes off," Childe said.

She rose and slowly removed her clothing.

"Now you can sit down there," he said.

O'Brien returned with the tools ordered.

Childe said, "I saw the film where you bit off Colben's
cock with your false iron teeth. So don't plead with me."

"I am not pleading," she said. "However, it was not
I who bit his cock off."

"I won't argue. You are capable of doing it; you
probably have done that, and far worse, to others."

He wished that she would weep and beg. But she was
very dignified and very brave. What else could you expect
from the woman who had once been Joan of Arc?

"Hold on to her," he said to the others.

Pao and O'Brien pulled her legs apart. They were
beautiful, perfect legs, with flawless white skin. The bush
on the mound of Venus was thick and auburn. She
probably had the most attractive pussy that he had ever
seen. There was no hint of the horror that lived coiled
inside it.

Childe felt like ordering one of the men to take the
next step, but if he had the guts to order this, then he felt
obliged to have the guts to do it himself.

Carefully, he inserted the pliers. Vivienne started and
began quivering, but she did not cry out.

He pushed the pliers in and felt around. His original
intention to close the jaws of the pliers around the head
now seemed foolish. He could not get them open enough,
and that thing was too active. But he could drive it out,
and he did.

Its wet, black-haired and black-bearded head shot out
past the pliers handles. Its tiny mouth was open, exposing
the sharp teeth. Its forked tongue flickered at him.

With his left hand, he caught it behind the head. He
pulled it out slowly as it writhed and then placed
the head and a part of the body on the stool.

Pao sucked in his breath. Apparently, up to that mo-
ment, he had expected Childe to yank the thing out by
its uterine roots and so disconnect the parts of Vivienne
again.

Childe said, "Hand me that cleaver."

Vivienne watched him take the chopper. She did not
blink.

"Inject the proper amount of morphine in her," Childe
said to O'Brien. "You do know how to do it, don't you?"

"I do," O'Brien said. "So, you've recognized me. Did
I ever treat you? No. Anyway, morphine will do no good.
She is resistant to it."

"I don't want to inflict physical pain on her," Childe
said. "As little as possible, anyway. What kind of anes-

thetic do you have? I do want her to see this. She is not
to be unconscious."

"Never mind that!" Vivienne said. "Get it over with!
I want to feel the parting in its fullest!"

He did not ask her what she meant by that. He
looked down at the snake-thing, which twisted and hissed.
Then he raised the cleaver and brought it down hard
across the flexible spine.

Blood spurted out across the room. The head rolled
off the stool and fell on the floor. Pao picked it up and put
it beside the still bleeding trunk. The head moved its
mouth several times, and its eyes glared up at Childe as if
wishing him evil even after its death. Then the eyes
glazed, and the lips ceased to work.

Vivienne had turned gray. Her eyelids were open,
but her eyes had rolled up to expose only the whites.

O'Brien smeared an ointment over the amputation.
The blood quit flowing entirely. Probably, that ointment
was not known to Earth doctors nor used by O'Brien
in his Beverly Hills practice.

O'Brien bandaged up the body, and Vivienne was
carried out on the chair. The snake body dangled down
and scraped against the floor until one of the men coiled
it up in her lap.

Two women came in and began to clean up the mess.
Pao said, "What shall we do with the head?"

"Put it down the garbage disposal."

Pao said, "Very well. Will you be ready for the
ceremony tonight?"

"I'll try," Childe said. "Of course, Breughel emptied
me.

"Breughel maintains that you asked him to go to bed
with you," Pao said.

"I would think that his duty would have been to find
some excuse for putting me off. He knew that I should
be full again for tonight."

"That is true, but the temptation is very great. And
you did ask for what you got. However, if you require it,
Breughel will be killed."

"Let him live," Childe said. "Now, if you don't mind,
I would like privacy. Complete privacy. Turn off every-
thing, except the intercom, of course. Don't bring me