John Wright - Orphans of Chaos

I didn’t know how to respond to that, so I picked up my skirt and curtsied again. My neck chain rattled when I did that.

He growled, “You didn’t call me what I asked.”

“I am not going to call you by a cruel name, sir.”

“Heh? Even if I tell you to?”

“You said yourself I wasn’t under you.”

“Heh. Heh. Aheh. North Wind said you were a clever one. Quite a looker, too, aren’t you?”

“Only in three dimensions, sir. Otherwise, I look like a squid with wings. I have it on good authority.”

“OK, Squid Girl. How’d you like to come work for me?”

“Wha—what? I mean, I beg your pardon?”

“You heard me.”

I really enjoyed seeing the look on Boggin’s face. He really wanted to talk and he was afraid to.

I said, “Doing what?”

“Scaring people. If they don’t scare off, killing them.”

“I… I do not think I can do that.”

“Ah, come on! I’d only want you to kill bad people. War is bad for business. I’m trying to stop it. One way to stop it is to scare the other guy so he don’t start nothing.”

“I… I don’t think it would be right… ”

“Give you as much gold as you can carry, dental plan, medical benefits, weekends and evenings off. Give you a house. Palace, actually. Staff of servants if you want ’em—I got some just off the assembly line. Get you a gun. Anyone rude to you, tries to grope you or something, you shoot him dead, and I throw the corpse in the furnace. What do you say?”

“What about my friends?”

“Just you. Remember what I said about scaring folks so they don’t start a war? You can’t scare ’em too much, or they start one anyhow. It’s a balancing act.”

I said, “I don’t want to leave my friends.”

“I’ll throw in an airplane. Have Daedalus build you one to your own specs. You tootle around up in the wild blue yonder, much as you like.”

I said slowly, “Your spies do give you value for value.”

“Yeah, well, I know your bra cup size, too. Never hurts to know stuff.”

“It’s Dr. Fell, isn’t it? Telemus feeds you information.”

“North Wind is right. You are smarter than the others.”

I just snorted to smother a laugh at that. “Sorry, Stumpy, that problem you mentioned with my ears just acted up again.”

“Heh. And funny. Spies didn’t mention that. OK, Squid Girl, last offer. I talk to the little woman, and she makes sure you meet your True Love; he’s single, he’s not a priest; no problems, no complications, no ill-starred fate. True Love. Can’t do better.”

“Little woman?”

“Aphrodite. The Love Goddess. My wife.”

He actually got to me with that comment. My mouth went dry.

Victor. I wanted it to be Victor. I wanted him to marry me.

No problems, no complications.

“And you get all that other stuff I mentioned. If you don’t like it, you quit. Give me two weeks’ notice. Shake hands, no hard feelings.”

I could not say anything. My mouth was still dry. I licked my lips and it was still dry.

Victor…

“Come on. True Love. Better than anything old Stumpy will ever get.”

Finally I put my hand on the collar around my neck, and I rattled the chain. “Contracts made under duress are not binding. First I get out of here, get this thing off my neck, then we talk. And another thing. My friends. I don’t want to make a decision without talking to my friends. I want to talk to them with no one else listening.”

“Heh. Yes on one, no on two.” He turned his massive shoulders and crooked his head around to look at Boggin. “North Wind! How soon can you finish up your special arrangements and get the girl out of this damn hole?”

“By tomorrow morning, Lordship.”

“No more playing spanky-spanky with her. No more thinking with your Johnson. You treat her like a princess, like she’s fine china, or else we’ll have the Uranians up in arms and up around our ears. If I found out, they can find out.”

He swung the massive shoulders back and squinted (grinned and scowled) up at me. “We’ll talk later, Squid Girl.”

And he clomped away, dragging Boggin with him.

As Mulciber turned away, Boggin looked coldly pleased with himself, as if the interview had gone as he intended.

Twitchett apparently did not want to be left too far behind, for she unlocked the door and trotted quickly after them.

I blinked in surprise. A mistake. They had made a mistake in the security procedures.

I had to move slowly (so as not to rattle my chain too much) and I had to move quickly (because I did not have much time). Not easy to do both at once.

I took the disc player out from under the bucket, and pushed and twisted till I got it open. Instead of a tape cassette, or a record, there was a little disc of rainbow-chased crystal. It looked like a jewel rather than a piece of equipment, and I wondered if this was a man-made thing, or something the Olympians made with magic.

Then came the hard part. What I did next doesn’t sound possible, but I am rather an athletic girl, and I had just spent a week in a cell with nothing to do but do calisthenics. I had even been able to do handsprings and tumbling without strangling myself. (In fact, I had done them more to overcome my fear of strangling myself than anything else.)

So I kicked off my shoes, put the little crystal disc between my left toes, stood on the cot, and wrapped a little bit of the slack chain around my shoulder, so that there was no weight on my neck.

Then I clutched the chain tight in both hands, and swung. Up, not far enough, back down, kick the cot, up the wrong way, back down, kick the cot again, and up again…

This time I was high enough to put my pointed foot through the bars of the cell window, and turn my foot sidewise. Ow ow, clang clang. My whole weight jerked back against my ankle; I was holding myself rather high off the floor, just on the bar I had hooked my little foot around. It hurt my ankle.

There was a tiny crack in the window where the fresh (cold) air came in, and I could see the little gray branches of a leafless bush beyond. This was a basement window, at ground floor, and I knew that this side of the Chapel had bushes all along its length.

I lifted my other foot. That was harder than it sounds, since I was holding the chain with both hands (so it would stay slack against my neck) and had to keep my other foot tense and hooked around the bar.

Try putting a little crystal disc through a mail slot with your toe sometime. It is not easy.

But it is not impossible.

Then, point my toe, swing back, step onto the cot, unwind the chain, sit down…

Sister Twitchett was back at the door, which had, by the way, been left standing wide open this whole time. I rubbed my feet with my hands, as if I had just slipped off my shoes because they were pinching on something.

I smiled at her. “Forget something…?”

She scowled, went over to the bucket, and pulled the (now empty) disc player out from under it. I had, of course, splashed water all over it, and bent the little pin that held its door shut, so that she could not open it to see that it was empty.

She put it on the shelf and clicked the button. I had doused the thing in water so that she might think the thing was shorted out. But she did not even pause to notice that no music was coming out. She just locked the door and scampered away.

It was later. I did not have any clock except for the sundial of how far across the room my little square of window-light has traveled. After sunset, however, it is just a guess until it was time for Twitchett, and my evening injection.

There I was, lying on my back, idly swinging the chain from my collar like a vertical jump rope, sweeping out a football-shaped lozenge in midair.