Loorna lost her patience. She jumped at Wensley and held him high in the air by his collar.
'Talk!" she shrieked. "Where is that damned D-hopper?"
"I don't care if you torment me, foul green viragoes," Wensley choked out, drawing up his narrow chest as far as he could over his little round belly. "I will not betray my friends."
"Oh, now it sounds like he read a book," Charilor sneered.
Caitlin laughed. "What would you know about reading books, you rave queen?"
"Girls!" Nedira snapped. "He's confessing, and you won't even let him speak."
"I am not confessing," the Wuhs protested, then clamped his plump lips shut. The Pervects looked at each other in disbelief. "A Wuhs with a backbone," Vergetta hooted. "I never believed such a thing existed."
"Threaten to tear his legs off," Caitlin suggested.
"Talk, or I'll tear your legs off!" Loorna shouted.
"Now shake him until his teeth rattle."
Loorna shook her fist, and the Wuhs's limbs flailed like those of a rag doll.
"Wait a minute!" she demanded, looking at the youngest Pervect. "Who's conducting this interrogation? You or me?"
"Oh, you can, if you really want to," Caitlin yawned, leaning back in her chair. "I figured as long as you were going by the book I could just coach you. It saves time."
"Why isn't anyone taking this seriously?" Paldine asked. "Our future is at stake here."
"I am. You're pretty brave for a sheep," Loorna hissed right in Wensley's face, "keeping your mouth shut. Got some Dutch courage from somewhere? I don't smell any alcohol on you."
"I need no alcohol. I know I don't have to tell you anything!"
Loorna grinned. "Well, I don't know if you've ever taken a look downstairs in the dungeons of this sweet little palace of yours. You keep talking about how your ancestors were always so peaceful, cooperative and nice, but I'm here to tell you that there is some pretty nasty torture equipment down there that even Pervects would never have thought of using on another living being. I am just on the edge of taking you down there and using some of it on you. Or," she leaned close enough so that the Wuhs could see the gold flecks in her bright yellow eyes, "we'll make you eat some of our food. Talk!"
TWENTY-TWO
'What does this have to do with assembling the Death Star?"
-G. M. TARKIN
"Whew!" I whistled, as we emerged in the tidy gardens of Kobol. Zol stood up from the marble bench where he had been waiting for us. "Do you think that Pervect got a good look at us?"
"I think we must assume," Zol replied, "that she did see us as we were, undisguised. And if she did not, there were plenty of witnesses to our tour. I think you must assume that she will have a full description of us very soon. The Wuhses are more adept at self-preservation than they are at maintaining discreet silence."
"You mean they'll save their own skins," Tananda translated.
"More than that: the odd behavior that we all witnessed among a segment of the workers indicates to me that they are engaged upon an enterprise of which even they are unaware. You saw the look of stupefaction on the faces of those males. They all believe that they make handcrafts, but it is clear from the involuntary re-creation of the repet- itive motions they went through that it could be nothing of the sort. Since Wuhses cannot keep a secret they must not know it."
"The situation is worse than I thought—worse than Wensley thought," I stated grimly. "Not only are the Pervects in total control of the country, they're bending the minds of the inhabitants. It's inhumane."
"What do you suppose it is that they're making?" Bunny asked. "It seemed when that fellah pounded on the top that it looked like something mechanical."
"Some kind of armaments?" Tananda guessed. "But it's nothing I've seen anywhere, in or out of the Assassins Guild."
"It does rather look like a weapon of some kind," Zol suggested. "How curious. There must be a spell on some part of the process to fool the conscious mind into believing that they are still performing their usual functions."
"That would be why we never found out who was making those glasses," I mused, thoughtfully. "Nobody would remember doing it. Do they plan to take over another dimension?"
"Or to sell to one," Zol suggested. "These are enterprising women, and you will have observed that they did not need arms to take over Wuh or Scamaroni. In one they are already successful, and in the other they would have been, if not for your intervention."
"Next time I'm going to make sure they're captured and stay under lock and key," I asserted, pounding my fist into my palm. "All of them. We have to get back into the castle to figure out where they're going and head them off."
"Oh, we don't need to do that," Zol informed me. "Now that my notebook has been in contact with their computer, we can access their drive remotely." To my puzzled expression he explained, "We can see what they see in their magik mirror."
"I thought you couldn't get through their encoding," Bunny queried. "We don't need to. My countrymen back on Kobol broke their basic program code. What they are working on at any given moment is not going to be stored under lock and key. We can spy upon their plans as they make them. I merely need to be in the same dimension, preferably upon the same energy line."
"You can't do it from here?" I asked. "On Perv they could communicate with the banks on Deva through their computers."
"That was with the cooperation of the Devan computers. The Pervect Ten will surely not want us reading their plans. We need to be close for my subterfuge to work. Our only fear then will be discovery."
"I'll keep us hidden," I vowed, grimly. "I won't fail again. I owe it to Wensley's memory." A thought occurred to me just then. "You know, I hate to say this, but it's just as well that he isn't around any more. If we had plotted this out in front of him he would have blabbed to the Ten about us."
"We're having to do this because of you, honey," Vergetta confided to the snow globe on the table as Niki dragged in the first invitee.
All their threats of torture, all their shouting and shaking had done nothing to dent the resolve of the Wuhs leader, Wensley. Vergetta had to admit to herself that she was pretty impressed, with the little guy. It took a strong person to defy a Pervect, let alone the whole minyan of them. Big, brave Trolls had broken down in tears when faced with the Ten in full fury. Even a bowl of purple Pervish gumbo had not been enough to make him open his mouth. A miniature picture of defiance, he sat crosslegged and arms folded on the bottom of the paperweight.
"Let's see how long you hold out when you see us take some of your friends apart." The little face turned away from her. Vergetta grinned.
"First things first," Tenobia demanded, when the fat Wuhs with black curls had been flung into the "hot seat," a chair in the middle of the room.
They had drawn straws to see who got to be "Lady High Executioner," and she had won. In celebration she had put on a silver bustier and a tight black skirt that she usually saved for wild parties at home on Perv. The ensemble looked suitably dangerous and very impressive, the virtual caricature of a dominatrix torturer. The Wuhs's eyes nearly started out of his head at the sight of her. She smacked her palms down on the arms of the chair and leaned into his face.
"Where's the D-hopper?"
"I d-d-don't know what you mean, madam..." Gubbeen babbled. "It's not my department to keep track... we are the friends of public health ... the D-hopper is more of a safety issue...."
Charilor came back upstairs, grunting under the weight of a vast, lumpy bag. She threw it on the stone floor in front of the Wuhs. It clanked and banged like a suit of armor in a garbage disposal. Their guest nearly jumped out of his seat at the noise.
"I don't have it!" Gubbeen exclaimed, his eye on the sack, though none of them moved towards it. "I haven't had it for ages. It's been my turn ... I mean, I would have safeguarded it on your behalf, but I really don't know, dear ladies, Ardrahan had it last time I saw it... please don't hurt me!"