“Yes,” she replied resignedly.
“Oh, no! We begin right here. It will from now on be ‘Yes, master.’ Not even ‘mistress,’ not ‘madame.’ Master. Understand?”
“Yes—master.”
“And you can spend your time thinking of ways to sing my praises. How beautiful I am, how intelligent, how simply wonderful I am. You will spend your time thinking of new ways to praise, flatter, worship me as your one and only god, and you will do it with conviction, with enthusiasm; you will convince me that you believe it. And in the same breaths you will do the opposite to yourself. Remind me and yourself how low you are, how dependent, how miserable and undeserving a creature you are and how lucky you are to be my property, and you will say those things, too, with the same fervor. And any time I find either part unconvincing, I might just forget your little cube for a while. Maybe a very long while, until you are totally believable. Understand?”
One pang of true abject fear pierced the insulating haze. “Yes, my most wonderful master, from whose great kindness all blessings flow. Please forgive this most miserable of helpless wretches who is nothing without you!”
Campos smiled. “It is a start. We shall have many, many long conversations together, and all of them, even the ones that matter, will be partially tests. Practice it in your mind. You will come to believe that what you say is true so that it becomes second nature to use it. Now, come. I have a travel cage for you, and we must catch the return steamer for Buckgrud, the city where I live in Clopta. There, in my flat, I have a nice little place provided for you.”
“As you command, most powerful and magnificent master.”
The worst part of it was, the words weren’t even sticking in her throat.
Still, now would begin the trial, until one day Campos would decide for whatever reason that she’d had enough or wanted more. Then Mavra would be the only means by which Campos could have her revenge on just about everything and everybody she hated, and that was almost the entire universe now. The Cloptan had already thought ahead on this; that was why they could still speak to one another, and she was conditioning her “pet” to think like an obedient slave to ensure complete control. Otherwise, when Juan Campos had the burning desire to get her hands on the Well World controls, how could she make Mavra let her do it? The worst part was, as she was, Mavra didn’t even care.
Lilblod
“You separated me from my husband! I will kill you for that!”
“Now, calm down, I tell you,” Zitz soothed. “There was nothing I could do. They’d have killed you anyway if you made a fuss.”
“They might as well have killed us both!” Alowi cried. “My husband cannot survive without me!”
“Nothing to do with love, I’m afraid,” Tony explained. “She produces something inside her that heals his injuries. We’ve seen it in action.”
“Well, it’s done, and that’s that. I can’t even give you a clue as to where they took ’em. I don’t know nothin’ about the land part of this, and I don’t wanna know. I’ll tell you. though, that either we did what they said or they’d have took ’em anyways and blown all of us out of the water the moment we dropped the load. Blown all three of you away as it was. Think we liked it? We’re gonna lose a fortune because we gotta give back them stolen jewels! And it’d have been easier for us to just knock all three of you off and dump you in the ocean. We’re droppin’ you here instead. That over there’s Lilblod. It’s not a real nice place, but you take care and keep to the trails and keep your nose out of where it don’t belong and you’ll make it. About fifty kilometers north is Clopta, a high-tech coastal hex where you can get a ride into a Zone Gate and a quick pass back home. South maybe sixty, seventy kilometers is Agon, same deal. Don’t think you can go down there and stir up stuff and find them. They probably never made shore there. Got picked up by some other ship and are maybe anywhere or heading anywheres else by now. Go home. It’s over.”
“Come, come dear!” Anne Marie said sympathetically. “Let’s get off this terrible ship first and be on our own. Then we can decide what to do next.”
With neither the Dillians nor Alowi having a translator, it was up to Zitz to interject.
There was no purpose now to further protests, and Alowi nodded and tried to calm down. “All right,” But I will feed the name of this accursed ship and all of its crew to my people back in Erdom. Such an assault on our honor cannot go unavenged.
“This is going to be a problem, though,” Tony commented. “We really can’t speak to or understand her, nor she us.”
“Sister, if she’s nuts enough to go off tramping in that crazy forest by herself, let her,” Zitz responded. “You won’t find much with a translator in there, but it’s easy in either Clopta or Agon. Just get everybody out, huh?” He turned to Alowi.
“Okay, lady, here’s the way it is. They’re gonna head for one or another of these places where you can get home and they’ll take you. Maybe you can’t talk to each other, but you’ll make do. You ain’t cut out to be an avenger. You just ain’t built for it. Relax. Take it easy. Tell the authorities if you want to once you get there. It’s no big deal to us. But one way or another you’re gettin’ off this ship as soon as we get in a little more. Either you get off with all your gear or we shoot you and shove you off and keep it. Your choice.”
“We’ll go, curse your black heart,” Anne Marie responded acidly.
“Oh, yeah, one more thing,” the Zhonzhorpian said. “You can report this and this ship, but remember that all three of you are wanted in Gekir for jewel theft. And even though they’ll still check it out, we’ll show that this ship, under an alternative name and registry, was thousands of kilometers away at the time. You’re out of your league here. Forget it. You won’t find them—hell, the authorities couldn’t anyway, could they, or you wouldn’ta been aboard in the first place. All you’ll do by stirring up trouble is to make sure you all get sent back to Gekir, where you’ll be blinded and sent out for life to work in the salt mines until you die. Nobody wins on this one. Sometimes it happens.”
It wasn’t much of an answer, but it was a collection of hard truths that was impossible to ignore.
The Star Runner came close enough to the shore to scrape bottom, and that was as far as it dared. Anne Marie picked up the sobbing Alowi and put her on Tony’s back, where she clung as hard as she could, and Anne Marie hefted the saddlebags and packs, and they jumped the short distance from the rails down into the water and quickly struck mud. It was a little tough to get some footing, but finally both of them managed to force their way up and onto the shore, Alowi still clinging to Tony’s back, looking wet and disheveled but otherwise none the worse for the wear.