Hugh Cook - The Wazir and the Witch

He stubbed out a cigarette on the ‘skavamareen’ then ordered that this mysterious device be taken to the Temple of Torture, a place which offered a far greater degree of physical security than the comparatively flimsy Temple of Zoz the Ancestral. Ek intended to inspect this ‘skavamareen’ at his leisure to see if he could figure out how to make it work. For he strongly suspected that this was the organic rectifier which had been mentioned by the Injiltaprajuradariski, several tantalizing fragments of which were now in his possession.

‘As for you,’ said Nadalastabstala Banraithanchumun Ek, addressing the Empress Justina, ‘I will sacrifice you to Zoz the Ancestral. The Festival of Light approaches and we still lack a sacrifice. A volunteer is better, but you’ll do.’

‘You can’t sacrifice me!’ said Justina in outrage. ‘It wouldn’t be legal.’

‘It’ll be legal enough by the time I’ve finished with you,’ said Ek. ‘We’ll give it a trial to tidy up the legalisms.’

Ek liked trials. He liked to see people squirm. Besides, he wanted to preserve the life of the Thrug. For a few days, at least. For if he could not divine the secrets of the ‘skavamareen’ through his own efforts then he would have to torture the Thrug or her companion to remedy this deficiency in his education.

‘What about me?’ said Olivia.

‘We’ll put you on trial as well.’

‘Isn’t there… isn’t there anything else I could do?’ said Olivia.

And the young Ashdan lass tilted her head slightly to one side, softened the outlines of her body, moulded her lips into a banana-tasting pout, and breathed more heavily than before.

All this to some effect.

For Ek hesitated.

He was tempted.

But, in the end, caution bade him answer in the negative. For he possessed a healthy respect for those of Ashdan race, a respect verging on fear.

Fear?

You may think this ridiculous.

For, after all, Olivia was only a girl, regardless of the fact that she liked to think of herself as a woman. Her bones were those of a bird. Yet she was an Ashdan, and those who have remarked that the only safe Ashdan is a dead Ashdan have not committed themselves to such opinion in error.

Master Ek indulged in the first minor pleasure then said:

‘There is nothing you can do for me. Unless you care to offer yourself as a sacrifice for the Festival of Light. If such is not your choice, then you go on trial with your Empress.’

‘For what?’ said Olivia, masking her dismay with defiance.

‘There will be, I believe, a great many charges,’ said Master Ek. ‘For example, offhand I can think of some fifty-seven charges of high treason alone. And-’

Ek elaborated.

But, to his disappointment, neither Justina nor Olivia indulged in any visible squirming.

Never mind.

Their spirits would surely break at some time during the trial.

‘We will commit you to trial this very day,’ said Ek, eager to begin the process of spirit-breaking.

‘Then I demand legal representation,’ said Justina. ‘For myself and for Olivia here.’

‘You will have it,’ said Ek. ‘Dardanalti is your counsel, is he not? I will send for him.’

Dardanalti was duly sent for, and was on hand to defend the Empress when the trial began.

The trial commenced in the Star Chamber, scene of a great many legal battles. Dardanalti, fearing a swift conclusion and the consequent execution of his client, strove mightily for delay. He was a good lawyer, the most conscientious advocate on Untunchilamon; and, if desperate need arose, he was not even above stooping to unlawyerly violence. He brought all his wit, guile and cunning into play, producing precedents, petitions and complicated motions by the score. He sought to have the trial postponed until three score character witnesses could be obtained from Wen Endex. Then he tried to persuade the court that his client was a victim of insanity.

But all those manoeuvres failed.

As salahanthara exhausted itself and undokondra commenced, the last of Dardanalti’s petitions for a delay was dismissed; but, as night had set in, the proceedings were then adjourned until the start of the next daylight.

Justina slept well enough that night, for she had almost been obliterated by the labour of manoeuvring the organic rectifier through the mazeways Downstairs. Olivia, who was younger, and more resilient in body, spent much of the night in sleepless anxiety, worrying both about herself and her dearest Chegory. She even spared a thought for her aunt, the formidable Artemis Ingalawa. Master Ek had said nothing of Ingalawa, so… what had happened to her? Was she lost Downstairs? Or dead? Or a prisoner either below ground or above?

Such thoughts kept Olivia awake for long; but at last she too succumbed to oblivion. And when she woke — so stiff and sore from her underground labours that it felt as if all her joints were made out of old cracked leather — it was morning.

The morning of her trial.

Meantime, Pelagius Zozimus was still suffering through the cycle of transformations to which he had been doomed by the Powers of the ill-coordinated Nixorjapretzel Rat. While the metamorphic rate had slowed, Zozimus was still changing, at one time becoming a budgerigar and at another time becoming a kangeroo.

(This ‘kangeroo’, which may not be familiar to all my readers, is a beast which inhabits the deserts of Paren-garenga. It has no feet, yet is mobile to a considerable degree, precipitating itself across the landscape by means of the singularly athletic tail which is its sole means of locomotion. The natives of the place fear it greatly, for it has the habit of kidnapping young children, which it stores in a special pocket built into the fur of its chest. These children it kills and consumes when hunger befalls it; but it keeps the teeth, and there are documented cases of hunters recovering as many as a thousand molars from the corpses of one of these monsters. It is not known whether Zozimus kidnapped — or ate — any children while he was briefly incarnated as such a brute, but he certainly gave one or two night-walkers an extraordinary fright.)

While Olivia and Justina breakfasted on chunks of cold cassava, strips of third-grade seaweed and lozenges of dried jellyfish, the hapless Pelagius Zozimus was undergoing a particularly unpleasant transformation. As a result of this, he manifested himself as something which looked for all the world like a large animated turd.

When one knows of someone suffering grievous misfortune, one may be tempted to cheer them up by giving them examples of people who are enduring far worse. To the man who has no shoes one mentions the man who has no feet. To the man with no feet one preaches the noble example of the courageous cripple making his way through life with both legs amputated above the knee. A cripple thus disfigured who refuses to be cheerful will be But you know the rest.

(Or, if the rest is unknown, an account of it will be found in Lady Jade’s treatise On the Consolation of Cripples, Mutants and Ghosts.)

Accordingly, had one of the wise had access to the Empress Justina and Olivia Qasaba in their time of trials, he might have sought to raise their spirits by comparing their own misfortunes to those of the unfortunate Pelagius Zozimus. At least Justina and Olivia had constant possession of their own bodies from one moment to the next, whereas Zozimus might at any moment find himself converted to a shoe horn, a starfish or a cucumber.

(The implication of the above is that the wise are male in gender. Some of the unwise may object to this; but the fact is that to be truly wise one must be a philosopher, ideally a Korugatu philosopher; and, biologically, females of the human species have a capacity for alcohol which is far less than that possessed by the male, which means they find themselves handicapped if they try to live the philosophical life to the full. Hence the predominance of the male of the species in the field of wisdom.)