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Aarhus without an instant's pause. From Aarhus he moved on to Lady Bell,
splitting himself into a dozen small fog patches and seeping into her body
through a variety of orifices.
I do not know how he could tell which openings led into lungs, which into
stomachs, and so on. However, the cloud man had the lady awake in under a
minute... after which she howled most piteously. I opened my mouth to ask why
she made such an appalling racket; but I closed it again when her head sank
into her body as if being sucked down the neckhole. The skull fit exactly into
her tiny torso.
This was something one did not see every day.
The now-headless Bell shifted her position on the floor to lie flat on her
spine. Immediately her legs lifted up from the hips, slanting back and arching
above her body until her toes touched the carpet near her shoulders her legs
completely covering her torso like two logs laid lengthwise down her chest.
Reaching up, she wrapped her arms tight around her thighs, then bent her knees
so that her calves were on top of her arms, on top of her upper legs, on top
of her headless body. She held that tucked-up position for a brief moment;
then the whole stack of Bell crushed in on itself with a sound like knuckles
cracking. In a moment, she had reduced herself to a tight little basket of a
person, a bundled-up woman who lay on the ground in a heap that reminded me of
a discarded turtle shell.
This was the Cashling defense configuration I had seen in pictures. It may
have been quite excellent for protecting vital organs under a thick
arrangement of bones... but I did not think it clever to reduce oneself to a
form that practicallydemanded other persons use you as a kickball.
Our Turn Next
All this time, the Shaddill ship had been snatching crusade vessels out of
the sky. It did this with an extendible tube-stick, a big hose that reached
toward one little craft after another and slowly sucked them in. None of the
ships tried to flee or dodge the hose the Cashlings on board must have been
unconscious, everyone brought low by the blue-white flash.
Though I despised the Shaddill, I had to admit they built excellent weapons.
Each time a ship was captured, the mouth of the hose-stick squeezed shut for
a few minutes. I suppose it took that long to swallow what had been eaten, to
clear the stick's mouth so it could gobble up more. In my imagination, I
pictured a huge stomach inside the stick-ship, where little crusade craft
bobbed listlessly amidst foul digestive juices.Well, I thought,I shall give
those great poop-heads a tummy-ache to remember.
No sooner had those words passed through my mind than the great sucking hose
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turned its mouth toward us.
"Uh-oh," I said. "Uh-oh."
Blacking Out Destiny
"We must now be very brave," I announced to my comrades.
Festina lifted her head, saw the oncoming hose-stick, and staggered to her
feet. She required a moment to steady herself once she became wholly upright;
then she tottered her way to Lady Bell, who was still closed up tight in her
basket configuration. "Hey," my friend said, nudging the Cashling woman with
her toe. "Open up."
"Go away," muttered a mouth in the lady's back.
"No," Festina said. "Not till you talk to your ship-soul."
I told Festina, "It would be unwise forUnfettered Destiny to take evasive
maneuvers. We would only give away that we were conscious."
"I know; but we still have things to do." Festina gave Bell another nudge
with her toe... though perhaps it was less a nudge and more of a kick.
"Leave me alone!" the lady hissed... which is to say, a small number of her
mouths spoke the words while the rest did the hissing.
Festina took no notice. "I won't leave you alone till you do what I want.
It's in your best interests too. If they take you prisoner, you'll never be
seen again. Do you want to go down in history as the prophet who lost an
entire crusade?"
Lady Bell made a barking wheeze. I suspect this was a rude word in the
Cashling tongue. However, as Festina prepared to deliver a kick that showed
every promise of being full strength, Bell said, "All right, all right." An
eye opened in the middle of her back. "What do you want?"
"Tell the ship-soul to opaque the hull. As thick as possible so we can't see
out."
"Why?" Lady Bell asked sullenly.
"In case the Shaddill flash us again."
"They've already flashed us once. What's the point of a second shot?"
"Insurance," Festina said. "If I were the Shaddill, I'd keep shooting the
whole damned crusade every five minutes, just to avoid surprises. They haven't
done that, so maybe the weapon draws too much power to let them bang away
indiscriminately. Even so, they might have a smaller version of the weapon
inside, and they'll zap us just before they board our ship."
"You think blacking out the hull will protect us?" The lady's voice sounded
most sneerful. "I bet that beam isn't real light at all it'll affect us even
if we can't see it."
"You're probably right," Festina said. "But I'd feel stupid if we could save
ourselves with simple measures and never bothered to try. Do it."
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Lady Bell muttered something in Cashlingese. I thought it might be an
insolent retort, but it must have been a command to the ship; a moment later,
the glass roof went completely black. "There," Bell said. "Happy?"
"Ecstatic," Festina replied.
I myself was not so cheered by the change without the see-through ceiling,
the recording studio felt confined and glowery. It did not help that the floor
was black... and the muted silence of the room added to the air of oppression
that encompassed me.
"Let us go a different place," I said to Festina. "It is not pleasant here."
"I don't like it much myself," she replied, "but the place is soundproof.
That might be important."
"You think the Shaddill are listening for us?" I asked. "How can that be? We
are surrounded by the silence of space."
"Yes... but if we weren't soundproofed, any noise we made would be conducted
throughout the ship, eventually making tiny vibrations in the hull. If the
Shaddill bounce a laser off the ship's outer skin, they'll be able to detect
those vibrations. They'll know we're in here talking."
Lady Bell made a disgusted whoosh. "Are you always this paranoid?"
Festina glared at her. "Usually I'mmore paranoid, but right now I'm still
hungover."
The ship gave a sudden lurch. "What was that?" Lajoolie cried out.
"I think we've just been swallowed," Festina answered.
"Do not worry," I said, patting her shoulder. "This happens to me all the
time."
My Plan
"All right," Festina said, "we need a plan."
"To do what?" Lady Bell asked.
"To escape. Or at least, to survive."
I said, "The villains will come through the receiving bay, will they not? So
we should lie in wait behind the boxes cluttered in that area. When the
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