Once my eyes weren't being blinded by the flashing whip, I could see the beast more plainly. It was sitting there, all nine hundred pounds of it, unfettered, perfectly free to demolish everyone in the place. Its black and orange mottled fur was matted. The fangs looked like daggers. There were drops of scarlet blood, freshscarlet blood around its lower jaw. Good Gods, had the Countess just fed somebody to it?
Fascinated with the blood, I eased to the side a trifle, the better to see. Did it have a corpse in front of it? No, no corpse, but there was blood.
It moved and I flinched. But it had only lowered its head. It was licking its front paws! They were bleeding! Then I knew what had happened.
Once in a long time, they capture a lepertige for exhibit. There had been a very few that had been trained to perform in cage acts, the trainer never going inside, for these lepertiges can tear someone's head off with one swipe of a paw. But as a precaution, every trained one I had ever seen in shows had had its claws pulled out. Somebody in the last few days had yanked its claws.
Yes, there was a trail of blood from the open shipping case to the platform. When it had started to move again, the gaping wounds had bled.
It lifted its head. The eyes, as big as dinner plates, are luminous. Some say they can see in pitch black night. It was, thank the Devils, paying no attention to me. It was looking at the chaos that was going on in the middle of the hall.
The worst of the whipping was that the Countess Krak was showing not one slightest, faintest trace of emotion. That was the most chilling thing about her. She was never angry, never sad, she never smiled. And for all the emotion she showed in whipping these exterior Apparatus brutes, she might just as well have been eating dinner.
There was no way to get away from her. When they sought to hide behind the electric machines or boxes she used the whip to drag them back into the open and struck them anew.
Four were down now. Prostrate. The fifth sought refuge in the animal box. The whip snaked around his legs and he was hauled into the open. The lash sizzled again and struck. I saw then that it must be set at lowest intensity – the most vicious setting that hurts the worst. The fellow screamed and tried to curl into himself on the floor.
They were all down now.
The Countess Krak stood up, straight and tall amongst them. No emotion. She was not even breathing hard.
She kicked the foreman of the transport crew in the side. He cringed, scuttling sideways on the floor.
In a totally emotionless voice she said, "When you get back to base, give this message to your boss: tell him that if he ever again sends me a maimed animal, I will train one to find him and kill him and turn it loose. Understand the message. Never maim an animal and expect I will accept it. You are still alive. Take your crew and get out of here!" The foreman booted his roustabouts to their feet and without a single glance at her they fled down the escalator, leaving only charred bits of their uniforms behind them.
The Countess Krak took a pocket call disc from her shabby coat and said something into it. Then she threw the electric whip in the general direction of the whip rack on the other side of the room.
With no change of expression whatever, she walked at a normal pace straight at that wild, freshly captured lepertige!
She pointed her finger at it. It sat and looked at her. With one snap it could have taken off her arm. But she just pointed with one hand at its face and then put out her other hand, palm up.
It lifted its maimed paw and laid all thirty or so pounds of it on her extended palm! She looked at the wounds left when the claws had been pulled out by the roots.
Her own crew was pouring out of a side door. They were the usual fortress scum, greasy, filthy, stripped to the waist, a dozen of them. They stayed wayback. They were not going to go near a lepertige, no indeed.
The Countess Krak put down the paw. Her finger was still pointing at the beast's face and she moved to one side of it. With her other hand she pointed at the box.
With a funny moan, the lepertige stood up on all fours. It was a bit taller than her shoulder. It began to limp across the room. With one finger pointing at it and the other at the case, she went along with the beast. It got into the box.
Instantly her crew was all motion. They slammed the front of the box shut. It was already on a dolly and they were ready to move it but had their eyes fixed on her for instructions.
"Put him in a warm cage," she said in an even voice. "Get one of Crobe's assistants to make a culture and, if possible, regrow those claws. And none of you tease that animal as it will now be even harder to train. Do you understand?" The mangy crew bobbed their heads emphatically. She snapped her fingers and they sped the shipping case onto the down escalator and were gone.
Chapter 4
The place stank of stale sweat, decayed blood and ozone, the hallmarks of the Apparatus. Coils of smoke from the whip and bits of burning cloth stood in the air. The patches of greenish light held ugly secrets back in the shadows.
The Countess Krak walked sedately to the desk and platform by the door.
Heller moved. His eyes were interestedly gazing at all the vast array of machines in the room, machines made to generate shock and inflict twists and tortures.
The Countess saw me. Her eyes were emotionless. As she stepped up on the nearby platform, she opened her mouth to say something. I knew in advance what it would be. We were more than an hour late for Heller's training appointment. I was about to get
But she stopped. Her eyes were on Jettero Heller.
Squinting a trifle to see better, Heller was walking down along the wall, away from us. He was peering at the first machine. It was a squat brute, coated with decay. If a person were put in it, his brains could be fried in varying and precisely calculated degrees. Heller did something to a latch on the side of it and lifted the cover of its circuit section, exposing a dusty array of boards and components. He started poking into its guts and must have disconnected something as he held up a loose wire end and began to examine it.
I chilled like ice. Fooling about with equipment here was not something one did. I looked quickly at the Countess Krak. She was just standing there, watching him. There was no expression on her face at all. There never was. This female was as beautiful as a Goddess on the altar of a church, but every bit as cold as that carved stone. More so. I held my breath. I didn't know what she would do to handle this violation of her area. I suspected the worst.
I really don't think Heller had seen her come to the platform by the door. The light was bad in the place and he seemed fascinated with the machines. Strung out along the walls, they were a brutal display. He went to the next one, a thing of twisted arms and bulky gears: it was a tendon stretcher and, while one might have said it could be used for acrobats or contortionists, it really was a product of torture chambers. He pulled his finger along the seat and gazed at the grime on his hand. He pulled out one of those star-shaped red cloths engineers are always using as cleaning rags and wiped his finger.
The next machine had small fluid tanks all around it and was a tangle of tubes and holding straps. Its purpose was to alternately freeze and roast a body, to deliver temperature shocks and rid it of excess fat, but it too belonged in torture chambers. He opened one of the tanks and looked in. He shook his head and moved on.
Countess Krak's head was turning to follow his progress and, from where I stood, I could no longer see her eyes. I had no faintest idea of what she would do. It had been violently proven three times in the past two years that she could and would kill.
Heller was looking over the next machine. It was a maze of electrodes that could be applied to different parts of a strapped-down body. There was a sort of projector screen. The hapless being strapped to it could be shocked with high voltage and shown pictures at the same time. Heller popped open the cover of the transformers and peered into the circuits. He got out a little pinpoint light and looked deeper. He didn't even bother to replace the cover and walked on.