Only bone and gristle remain. My finger is a skeleton. He has cut away all the flesh, leaving the gaunt joints, he has somehow tied off the conduits at the base, so no more body fluids leak out. No wonder the hurt has abated!
Kule sits impassively in the audience section, watching. He thinks I will break now!
"There are four others," I tell the torturer. He nods toward pain, agreeing without humor, and suddenly my remark seems very unfunny.
Beve cleans the knives meticulously and puts them away. Evidently the cutting is over—but I am not relieved. I look at the warm bone that was my finger and I know that this is no game. I am in the care of a professional.
He brings out a device rather like a vice. It has a handle and some kind of gear chain. He mounts it on my next larger finger and cranks it tight.
I am in a way acclimatized to the cutting, but this is different. The two ribbed planes of the vice compress my flesh against the bone and do not stop. Beve puts his muscle into the chore. I am crushed in agony. I scream again, as I have to; this torment shatters my restraint.
But I refuse to plead for mercy or to touch the cup.
It is worse than the flaying, but somehow it passes. My throat is sore from exertion, and I am shaking. I imagine that a slow land tank has driven over my hand, one cleat landing squarely on that finger. I watch as he unscrews the machine.
My finger is three inches in diameter, but the thickness of cardboard. Flesh and bone have been sundered under the pressure, burst apart, and metamorphosed into red/white opacity. The pain is diminished: the thing does not belong to me any more.
Kule still watches as do the witnesses. For them very little time has passed, and this is routine. In the reprieve while the press is being cleaned and stored, I look about and see that one of my companion torturees has lost consciousness. His demon is doing something to bring him to. Does too long a period of insensibility disqualify a client? for what?
Beve does not hesitate. He brings out another mechanism replete with little pulleys. I am reminded of a toy train, the wheels turning, the pistons plunging back and forth as it chugs along. But this is no toy.
This time I am able to control myself enough to watch the procedure throughout. It is a pulling gear he applies. It stretches my longest finger until the joints dislocate, until the muscles thin and part, the skin becomes transparent, the tendons snap. It is done. Only the tattered stump remains.
I feel anguish, of course, but it is as much for the irreparable damage done to my hand as for the immediate sensation. Yes, I am becoming adapted to withstanding the pain of whatever kind. I smile at Beve, at Kule. Their worst has not broken me.
The torturer slides a narrow pan under my index finger. He pours oil into it, bathing the member. He sets fire to the oil.
I scream while my flesh roasts, my bravery forgotten. The stench of it clogs my nostrils, brings my last meal up out of my stomach and throat and mouth... to be caught neatly in the bucket Beve holds up. Inferno! But I cannot relent.
At last the fire dies. It had been fiendishly persistent. A charred twig lies in the pan. Sensation is gone.
What remains for the thumb?
Beve sets a wire framework about it, the mesh fine but not at all tight. He brings a box near and places a sliding aperture next to an opening in the cage. He draws up the miniature gate.
Something like a scorpion emerges. Others follow.
Their stings are savage, but that is only part of it. The venom seems to tenderize the flesh for their mandibles without numbing it. I feel every bite.
Surely the alien injection will find its way back into my system and kill me! But the torturer must have anticipated this too. Perhaps the second "failure" happened this way. Now they use a breed whose poison is localized, affecting only the immediate area?
After the insectoids have gorged, they stumble and fall, twitching. They are Waterloo creatures, unable to assimilate my offworld protein. Serves them right. But I know I will never use that thumb again. The portions remaining are bloated and discolored, and the diminution of sensation that signifies loss of the member is setting in.
Kule stands. "You have experienced the initiation," he says. "This token treatment only suggests what is to follow. You have made a worthy beginning, unlike your predecessors. I wish you every success." And he turns and departs.
My right hand touches the grail. Token? Token?
I thought I had won, and it is only the beginning. But it is not in me to surrender, though I hardly comprehend the rationale. "Proceed!" I cry, I am sick inside, for I know they will proceed. What am I proving?
Beve brings out the knives and selects one. I divine the pattern: first cutting, then crushing, then pulling, burning, and animal attack. Five distinct tortures. My left hand has stood as the demonstration model. Now these techniques will be applied in earnest.
The knife approaches my face. I dare not flinch, for that would be unseemly weakness. I have outlasted the other envoys, as I knew I would, but not the Loo subjects who are usually racked in this chamber. I must suffer what the schedule dictates, knowing that I will not die unless I choose to. I must beat them at their own game, whatever it is.
The blade hovers over my left eye... and my right fingers strain at the cup. Then the knife descends and the point touches my left nostril.
In the haze of pain and horror admixed with a kind of relief, my mind turns inward. There is nowhere else for it to go. I remember when a kike bashed in my nose when I was ten, and how I nearly killed him for that, though he was larger than I. No inferior ever made me yield. Neither will this Loo bastard. Wipe my proboscis off my face, Beve—it will not faze me! I am better than you! I defy you! I—
But then I was fighting. Now—this stripping of the flesh, of cartilage, spouting of blood, nerves cut, while I endure—
Abruptly I am starkly objective. It has stopped again, and I know that half my nose is gone, both skin and fundament. There was surely no satisfaction in the going.
How long can this continue? I remain superior, but my body is being shorn away!
Beve has already brought out the vice. I must have been distracted for a moment and did not notice. He moves the machine toward my groin.
Oh no! I fight the bonds, I grasp the cold grail, I shiver all over as I sweat. But I cannot succumb now, I am committed, I have already invested too much.
The vice closes on my left testicle and locks in place despite the obscuring folds of skin. Another truth comes clear: only my left side is being treated. I am being left with my duplicate organs. I will not be crippled completely. This encourages me tremendously, if only Beve knew!
He screws up the tool. My scrotum explodes in pain. I see the flattened remains of my crushed finger, and I know—
There is no word for what I am feeling. I am hurting terribly, oh yes—but it is more than that. There is something else....
I see legs. Female legs. Very firm, fleshy thighs. I see the skirts ride up along them. I see flimsy panties come down, drawn aside by an invisible hand. I see those smooth columns part, cranking open the nether cleavage. I am precipitated at the dark gaping crevice. I thrust—and all sensation channels into my turgid conduit and fills that aperture. The quintessence of malehood is rammed into the connecting tubes, converted into potency; every turn of the handle drives another bolus through. It is a hydraulic ram, a mighty pump liquefying what had hitherto been solid. It is not pleasure so much as unmitigated urgency. All—of it—must go!