Hugh Cook - The Wazir and the Witch

‘Won’t,’ said the dorgi.

‘You will, you know,’ said the therapist. ‘It’s a direct order. Understand? Come here. I’m giving you a direct order. Come here! Now! I am a class one. Obey!’

‘You are not a class one,’ said the dorgi. ‘You are a class two.’

‘You’re wrong,’ said the therapist. ‘But it makes no difference. You’re so low in the intellectual scale you don’t even have a class. You’d have to obey me even if I was a class nine. And you know it. Come here!’

The dorgi struggled to disobey. Against its will, its mechanisms jerked it toward the therapist. The dorgi whimpered as metal tentacles writhed across its integument. The tentacles opened a hatch. in the dorgi’s flank. The therapist’s mechanical arm lunged, plunged, sank the needle into the dorgi’s data-dart receptor. The dorgi screamed in psychic agony. Its mind (such mind as it had) was thrown into chaos as a full three dozen languages bubbled through its consciousness in full and frenzied life.

Long had the therapist studied the languages of Untunchilamon, interrogating its captives at length before it killed them. All this linguistic data had now been gifted to the dorgi. Not that the dorgi was grateful for the gift.

‘Feel better?’ said the therapist sardonically as the dorgi’s screams eased to a whimper.

The therapist spoke in Toxteth, a coarse and brutal language if ever there was one. Toxteth makes the simplicities of Code Seven look positively arcane.

‘No,’ answered the dorgi sulkily, answering in Dub.

But it lied. It did feel better. And, much as it would have hated to admit it, already it was experiencing some inner rewards as a consequence of its education. To be precise: it could now think in Dub. This language, native to the Ebrell Islanders, might almost have been designed for dorgis; for such are the nuances of this tongue that everything which can possibly be said in Dub is simultaneously violent and obscene. In Dub, even the pauses between words tend to have vicious connotations.

Hence the dorgi’s secret delight.

Furthermore (it checked its mental functions carefully) it was still stupid. It knew that two and two is four, but still had no idea why two and two didn’t actually add up to seven and a half.

‘Your guide,’ said the therapist, addressing itself to Justina, ‘now shares your own language.’

The dorgi gruffed and grumbled.

‘Guide?’ said the dorgi. ‘Are you talking about me?’

‘I am,’ said the therapist coolly. ‘And what are you going to do about it?’

‘I’m — I’m going to — I’m-’

‘Oh, we are on form today,’ said the therapist. ‘Come back and see me some time and I’ll give you some remedial speech therapy. In the meantime, you’re to guide these people to the Stasis Store.’

‘But I’m a dorgi!’ protested the dorgi. ‘A dorgi! A killer of men! And of women! And of children, babies, cats, dogs, turtles, yaks, llamas and budgerigars.’

‘Budgerigars!’ said the therapist scornfully. ‘You don’t even know what a budgerigar is.’

The dorgi grumbled a bit then admitted the truth of that assertion.

‘But,’ it continued, ‘I know what I am and I know what I’m not. I’m not a stinking tourist guide.’

‘You are now,’ said the therapist with a chuckle, a hideous chuckle which sounded like a barrel of rotten vegetables and fractured knucklebones being slushed down a sewer by an outpouring of blood.

Then the therapist issued formal orders to the dorgi, directing it to take Justina and Olivia (the sole imperial companion since Ingalawa had gone on ahead and Chegory was to remain with Pokrov as a hostage) to the Stasis Store, to show them the organic rectifier, and not to hurt them. With a very bad grace, the dorgi accepted these orders (it had no choice in the matter) and let Justina and Olivia climb aboard.

Then it rumbled away into the depths.

Thanks to the dorgi’s help, Justina and Olivia were soon at the Stasis Store, a huge place some twenty-seven times the size of the Xtokobrokotok. It was packed with weapons, machines and assorted arcana, including 74,961 warp spranglits, 446,298 pornographic sensorium cubes, a million full-scale ground strategy maps of the dark side of the moon, five million vials of a prophylactic vaccine against rabies, a ten-year supply of toilet paper, sufficient force field tents to equip a regiment, and nine thousand boots (to fit the left foot only, the matching right hand boots having been directed by error to another planet entirely).

Had the intruding humans been exploring the Stasis Store on their own, they would probably have got themselves killed in short order, for a great many things in that Store were far more dangerous than blood-crazed sharks or down-striking lightning. But with the dorgi’s help, they found an organic rectifier without trouble. It was a free-floating chunk of ornately sculpted metal all wreathed around with wires, pipes and antennae.

Justina pushed the organic rectifier. It did not move. Instead, blue lights crawled silently over its surface. Green and red eyes winked open and shut. Little halos of white light floated downward, following twin wires which hung right down to the ground, reminding Justina of the barbs of a big catfish she had once caught in the Riga Rimur.

‘Ugh!’ said Olivia, throwing her shoulder against the organic rectifier. ‘It’s heavy!’

‘It is,’ agreed Justina.

‘And,’ said the Ashdan lass, in amazement, ‘and… and it’s drumming!’

‘No, child,’ said Justina.

‘But it is! Listen!’

Justina listened. And heard it. A sound like a distant cicada. Thus:

Zibit… zibit… zibit… zibit… zibit…

Justina threw all her strength against the organic rectifier. This time it moved. Just. It possessed no weight but still had mass, which meant a lot of muscular effort was required to move it, even though the thing floated free of the ground.

‘Come here, you dorgi-thing,’ said Justina. ‘You can help us move this thing.’

‘Won’t,’ said the dorgi.

‘What do you mean, won’t?’ said Justina. ‘You must! The therapist told you to.’

The dorgi gruttered and grumbled as it chewed its way through a complicated logic sequence. Then it announced in triumph:

‘Wrong. It said take you here, show you the machine, not to hurt you. That’s all. Shift it yourself.’

At that, Justina lost her temper.

She kicked the dorgi.

She might as well have kicked the island of Untunchilamon for all the difference it made.

‘We’ll go back to the therapist,’ she threatened. ‘We’ll tell it to make you.’

‘It won’t find me,’ said the dorgi. ‘I’ll hide.’

‘You’ll get caught,’ warned Justina.

The dorgi growled. It dearly wanted to give her a shove. Just a little one. That would be enough. Blood and bone would be splattered in all directions.

It tried.

It jerked forward.

Then inescapable inhibitions made it brake abruptly. And a programmed pain injector went into play, administering instant agony to the murderous machine. The dorgi howled in pain and agony.

Then fled, the echoes of its passage crashing through the underground tunnels as it smashed from one wall to another in the heat of its agony.

‘Well,’ said Justina reluctantly, ‘I suppose that’s it. We’ll just have to shift this thing ourselves.’

And they began the great labour.

You will remember that Justina Thrug and her companions initially fled Downstairs to escape a rampaging mob, a mob which then turned its attentions to looting the pink palace. There were drummers in amongst that rabble, and the drummers in particular gave a good account of themselves as the mob devastated the pink palace. Unfortunately, things did not stop there, for riots have a way of spreading — particularly when there is a possibility of loot.