"Hey, we missed one," Hornpipe said.
"One what?"
The Titanide tossed her a comic book which had been stuffed into Conal's back pocket. She caught it, and watched the Titanide work for a moment.
There was a heavy stake embedded in the floor of the cave. The naked bodybuilder had been tied to it, sitting down, and his ankles fastened to stakes about three feet apart. It was a totally defenseless posture. Hornpipe was tying Conal's head to the post by wrapping a wide leather strap around his forehead.
The man's face was a wreck. It was crusted with dried blood. His nose was broken, and his cheekbones, but Cirocco thought his jaw was okay. His mouth was swollen and his eyes were tiny slits.
She sighed, and looked at the crumpled comic book. The cover said "The Wizard of Gaea," and showed her old ship, the Ringmaster, in its death throes. Even after this long she hated to look at it.
It was a dedicated book, in that all the characters were named and could not be changed by the purchaser. Most of Conal's books had provision to punch in one's own name for the hero.
The characters were familiar. There were Cirocco Jones, and Gene, and Bill, and Calvin, and the Polo Sisters, and Hornpipe the Younger, and Meistersinger.
And, of course, someone else.
Cirocco closed the book and swallowed to get rid of the heat at the back of her throat. Then she sprawled in the hammock and started to go through it.
"Are you really going to read that thing?" Hornpipe asked.
"You can't read it. There are no words." Cirocco had never actually seen a book like "The Wizard of Gaea," but she understood the principle. The colors glowed, or strobed, or glistened and felt wet to the touch. Buried in the ink were microscopic balloonchips. When you touched a panel the characters in it delivered their lines. Sound effects had replaced the old printed tzings, ker-pows, braka-braka's and screeches.
The dialogue was even worse than Conal's in La Gata, so she simply looked at the pictures. The story was easy enough to follow.
It was even accurate, in its broad outlines.
She saw her ship approaching Saturn. There was the discovery of Gaea, a thirteen-hundred-kilometer black wheel in orbit. Her ship was destroyed, and all the crew emerged inside after a period of weird dreams. They took a ride on a blimp, built a boat and sailed down the river Ophion, met the Titanides. Cirocco was mysteriously able to sing the Titanide language. The group got embroiled in the war with the Angels.
The characters screwed a lot more than she remembered. There were very steamy scenes between Cirocco and Gaby Plauget, and more between Ckocco and Gene Springfield. The last was an utter fabrication, and the first was out of sequence.
Everyone was armed to the teeth. They carried more weapons than a battalion of mercenaries. All the men bulged with muscles, worse than Conal Ray, and all the women had tits the size of watermelons that kept bursting free of the skimpy leather hammocks supporting them. They encountered monsters Cirocco had never heard of, and left behind nothing but bloody gobbets of flesh.
Then it got interesting.
She saw Gaby, Gene, and herself climbing one of the huge cables that led to the hub of Gaea, six hundred kilometers above. The three of them made camp, and the shenanigans started. It appeared to be a love triangle, with Cirocco involved with both her companions. She and Gaby plotted by the campfire, exchanging words of undying love, things like "Oh, God, Gaby, I love your hands on my hot, wet pussy."
The next morning-though Cirocco remembered the trip as having taken a lot longer than that-at their audience with the great Goddess Gaea, Gene was offered the position of Wizard. He lowered his head humbly to accept, and Cirocco grabbed him by the hair, pulled his head back, and slit his throat from ear to ear. Blood spilled down the page, and she kicked his head contemptuously out of the way. Gaea-who was a lot more chickenshit than Cirocco remembered her-made Cirocco Wizard, with Gaby as her wicked assistant.
There was a lot more. Cirocco sighed and closed the book.
"You know what?" she said. "He may be telling the truth."
"I thought so."
"He could be just a fool."
"Well, you know the penalty for foolishness."
"Yeah." She tossed the comic away, picked up one of the wooden pails, and threw two gallons of ice water into Conal's face.
He awoke gradually. He was being pushed and pinched, but it all seemed far away. He didn't even know who he was.
Finally he knew he was naked, bound beyond any hope of escape. His legs were spread wide and he couldn't move them. He couldn't see anything until Jones pried one of his blood-crusted eyes open. That hurt. There was a strap immobilizing his head, and that hurt, too. In fact, everything hurt.
Jones was in front of him, sitting on an overturned pail. Her eyes were as deep and black as ever as she studied him dispassionately. Finally he could stand it no longer.
"Are you going to torture me?" The words came out slurred.
"Yep."
"When?"
"When you tell me a lie."
His thoughts were moving around like glue, but something in the way she looked at him inspired him to work it out.
"How will you know if I'm lying?" he said.
"That's the tough part," she admitted.
She held up a knife, turned it in front of his face. She put the edge lightly along the top of his foot and drew it slowly toward her. There was no pain, but a line of blood appeared. She held it up again, and waited.
"Sharp," he ventured. "Very sharp."
She nodded, and put the knife down.
She took the cigar from her mouth, knocked off some ash, and blew on the tip until it glowed fiercely. She put the glowing tip about a quarter inch away from his foot.
The skin began to blister, and he felt it this time; it wasn't like the knife at all.
"Yes," he said, "yes, yes, I understand."
"Not yet, you don't." She held it right there.
He tried to move his foot within the bindings, but the Titanide's hand appeared from behind him and held it rock steady. He bit his lip, he looked away; his eyes were dragged back. He started to scream. He screamed for a long time, and the pain never got any better.
Even when she took it away-in five minutes? Ten?-the pain remained. He sobbed helplessly for a long time.
At last he could look at it again. The skin was burned black in a circle about an inch around. He looked at her, and she was watching him again, as emotional as a stone. He hated her. He had never hated anyone or anything as he hated her then.
"That was twenty seconds," she said.
He wept when he realized she was telling the truth. He tried to nod, tried to tell her he understood what it meant, that twenty seconds was not a very long time, but he could not control his voice. She waited.
"There's one more thing you should understand," she said. "The foot is fairly sensitive, but it's a long way from being the most sensitive part of your body." He held his breath as she quickly flashed the tip near his nose, just long enough for him to feel the heat. Then she drew a fingernail slowly from his chin to his crotch. He felt fault heat all the way down, and when her hand stopped, he heard and smelled hair being singed.
When she took her hand away without burning him down there, an astonishing thing happened to Conal. He stopped hating her. He was sorry to see the hate go. It had been all he had left. He was naked and he hurt everywhere and she was going to hurt him some more. Hatred would have been a nice thing to hang onto.
She put the cigar back in her mouth and clenched it in her teeth.
"Now," she said. "Just what sort of deal did you make with Gaea?"
And he began to cry again.
It went on forever. The sad thing was that the truth was not going to save him. She thought he was one thing, when he really was something else.