Shem the Penman
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- Apr 3, 2001
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(Originally published, with illustration, in Tales from the Asylum #8, April 2000.)
AFTER LUNCH, THE CAPTAIN WANTS TO GO WATER-SKIING
another one of those stories
ARE YOU UNDER 18? THEN PUT THIS STORY DOWN AND GO FIND A REAL GIRL OR BOY TO PLAY WITH.
The Transverse Phoenix hung on the edge of cislunar space, the moon like an immense snowbank just before it. The lights on its hull were dim, its power reduced to a minimum; the immense walls of screens that lined the control center were black, and most of the crew were dozing in their quarters. All but a few, who still worked in the midst of the great silver wheel.
Paul Galileo Schmidt was Second Observer and proud of it. This was the first time he had worked this shift, and even if he was just a glorified assistant to the First Observer, Pizer Feng Gustafson, there was honor and prestige in being an Observer of the Chamber. And it promised to be a lot more entertaining than repairing power conduits or replacing broken lights. He had no idea what to expect, though. What went on in the Chamber was the subject of hot debate, wild speculation, and sinister rumor on the crew decks. But what truly happened...that nobody truly knew, except the Observers. And those who went into the Chamber themselves, of course. Paul kept stealing glances through the broad window that separated the Observers? booth from the Chamber, looking at the machinery that filled it and trying to guess its purpose. Pizer, seated at his banks of instrumentation, watched him with a tolerant eye.
?Here they come now.? And entering the Chamber were two hooded figures, one robed in red, the other in white. Nothing of their identities could be seen. They moved in silence to the center of the Chamber while Paul watched in fascination.
The white-robed one paused, and then drew back her robe and let it slide down her body, puddling around her feet. She wore only a skintight halter top of silver-gray and an equally tight thong of the same material, cut high in front and back. Paul gasped despite himself. The stories he had heard had prepared him to see an ugly, raddled wreck, but this woman was beautiful. She was tall and well-proportioned, muscular without being bulky, and somehow managed to be stately despite being nearly bare. Her black hair was cut short, and her pale skin was flushed with a faint rosy tinge from the injection of sensitizer Paul knew she had gotten before coming to the Chamber.
?Who is she?? he asked.
Pizer looked sideways at him. ?Son, if you start asking that for every one of them, you?ll never get anywhere in this job.? But with his left hand he manipulated a row of buttons, and one of the smaller screens lit up. Paul read it hungrily: Earth native, age 27, convicted of data theft and copyright violation...His eye skimmed over her vital statistics, but didn?t find what he sought among them.
?What?s her name??
?Don?t ask that,? Pizer said. ?No one in there ever has a name.? He looked back at his machines with an air of finality.
With a slight shiver, Paul turned back to the window. The woman now stood on the low pedestal in the center of the room. She stared straight ahead with an expression of utter disdain, but he could see the tension in the muscles of her stomach and the way she rubbed her palms on her bare flanks with a sudden movement. The man in the red robe moved around her, fastening a bulky cuff around one ankle. Thick leads ran from the cuff into the base of the pedestal. His hands were the only part of him visible, strong and long-fingered.
?She?s lucky, though,? Pizer said from behind him. Paul turned to see the older man pointing at an entry in the woman?s statistics. ?Her sentence is almost over. This is the last time she?ll have to be in a Chamber. And it?s going to be a short one.?
The woman now had cuffs on each wrist and ankle. Stepping back, the man made a signal with his hands, and Paul tapped out the sequence that negated the Phoenix?s artificial gravity on the pedestal. The woman?s bare feet left the deckplates. The leads on her wrist cuffs drew down into the floor, pulling her backward, at the same time the leads on her ankle cuffs loosened slightly. She ended up floating horizontally about three feet off the floor, face up. Paul saw one leg tense, but the cuff did not move. The man picked up the helmet from the rack and put it over her head, its flared bottom adhering to the skin of her shoulders and back. Though it looked like a simple transparent bowl, Paul knew that from the inside it was a perfect mirror, studded with pickups and other devices. The woman could now see nothing but her own face.
?Observers, are you ready?? the man said in a deep, formal voice.
?We are ready,? Paul and Pizer said, each checking their consoles.
?Victim, are you prepared??
The woman took a long breath. ?Get it over with.?
?There is no reason to be impatient,? the man said, walking around her hovering body. ?We are not on a schedule, and there is plenty of time... ? One hand flashed out, a finger swiftly tracing down the sole of her bare foot. The woman?s leg jumped, and she made a squeaking noise. Paul caught his breath.
?It?s always worse than you think it is,? the man continued, his finger returning to the sole, tracing a slow loop around its edge. ?It?s always a surprise to discover again just how ticklish you are.? The woman was visibly trembling, making small strangled sounds in her throat, and through the helmet Paul could see her lips pressed into a thin line. The finger reached the edge of her toes, paused the briefest instant, and then swept across them. The toes wiggled helplessly as if trying to shake off a fly, and the woman let out a sharp, sweet giggle. ?But you?re remembering now, are you?? The man began to trace back and forth across the woman?s toes with the forefingers of both hands. When she squeezed them together and curled them up, he tickled along their tops and scratched the balls, and when she stretched and wiggled her toes to try and evade the fingers, he swiftly tickled the undersides. So deftly did he change targets that she never had a second?s relief. Her feet fluttered helplessly in the cuffs as the giggles, coming slowly at first, began to multiply rapidly.
She shook her head back and forth in the helmet, lips drawn back in an involuntary grin. ?Stop it -- heeheeheeheehee! -- don?t do thatheeheeheehee!?
?You want an end to being teased?? the man asked.
?Uhh...? she began. The man slowly trailed the fingers of each hand down the length of her soles, then up again, then down, and her body twisted helplessly. The quavering screech of laughter forced out of her echoed around the Chamber and through the Observers? booth. ?YES! YES! HAHAHAHAAHAYESSSS!? she was yelling before the fingers had reached the bottom of her arches for the third time.
The man raised his hands. ?No more teasing, then.? The woman?s taut body slowly unknotted as her breathing slowed -- and then his hands seized her feet, holding them firmly as his fingernails scraped all along her arches, working back and forth rapidly. The woman gave a huge bounce upward as another scream ripped out of her. ?AAANOOOHAHAHAHAHAHAHAAhahahaha -- stop -- ? With a single fluid step, the man moved beside her, relentless fingers digging into her ribs. ?AAAAAAAAIIIIHAHAHAHAHAAAaaaaaa!? As she bucked and thrashed, the cuffs drew tighter to compensate, damping down her struggling into futile quivers. The hands flashed back and forth between her ribs and the soft, trembling mound of her stomach, probing briefly into her armpits, producing fresh howls of laughter. ?HAAAHAHAAHAAHAAAA! OH NOOOO please please -- HAHAHAAAHAHAHAHA! STOOOOAHHHPPPP!?
?You know how to make it stop.? The man tickled the sides of her neck with the tips of his fingers, producing another flurry of squeals and giggles, then suddenly attacked her armpits again as she wailed with laughter. ?But you?ll have to take a lot more tickling all over your tender little body before that...more tickling and more tickling and MORE tickling...?
?He?s good,? Pizer commented. Paul tore himself away from the scene in the Chamber to study the readouts. ?Keeping a fairly steady build on.?
?Why is he in there at all?? Paul asked. ?He?s only got two hands. Why not use a bunch of small robots instead? Or a nerve-stimulator field? It seems inefficient to just tickle one or two spots at once when you could affect the whole body...?
Without taking his eyes off the readouts, Pizer spoke: ?That?s been tried. A machine or a field can provoke a ticklish response -- but not enough of one. There?s simply no substitute for the presence of another human...or the feel of direct contact. We aim for quality as well as quantity. And there?s no substitute for knowledge. That man was assigned to her at the start of her sentence, and has been accompanying her ever since. By this point, he knows exactly how best to tickle her for the strongest reactions. Watch.?
As if on cue, uncontrolled laughter spewed over the speakers again: ?AAAH!AAH!AAAHAHAHA nonononoaaaAAaaaHAAAHAHAAAAHA!? Paul looked back at the window just in time to see the victim?s head snap up as she struggled. She was staring straight into the booth as if she could see through the helmet and the opaqued window to Paul himself, her wild eyes pinning him. Her mouth was moving, and he seemed to hear her in his brain a moment before the desperate voice came over the pickup: ?I know you?re there -- make him stop -- I can?t take it -- heeheeheeheeeeee!? She giggled shrilly as slow-crawling fingers picked their way along her sides, finding vulnerable softness at every step, then shrieked as they leaped ahead to tickle her ribs.
?Don?t talk to the Observers,? her torturer advised. ?They can?t help you. There?s nothing in your world right now but me...the one who knows where all your most ticklish spots are...? Expertly he manipulated her ribs, starting where sides met back, fingers burrowing for the hard planes below the smooth curves of her skin as he worked his way up to just under her trembling breasts. ?This is what you asked for, isn?t it? And it?s just a start...? He wriggled his fingertips in the soft places beside each breast, midway between ribs and armpits, and her body wriggled as well as she laughed hysterically.
Pizer studied his readouts. ?Pick it up a bit,? he said into the speaker.
?Right.? The torturer?s hands slipped down the woman?s body. Her skin was hot, and sweat was beginning to slicken it. She relaxed as she felt the tickling stop, then tensed again as the hands traveled further downward. They swept over her stomach without even slowing, and Paul could see the woman?s eyes shifting back and forth rapidly as she tried to guess from the feel of the hands where the next tickle would come. The man swirled his fingertips on her hips, and then swiftly reached between her legs and swept a feathery touch down her taut buttocks. The thong she wore was no protection at all. The woman?s hips bucked hard, and the compensators in the cuffs whined, pulling her back down onto the tickling fingers. She groaned, giggled, gasped, but he kept after her, tweaking the small sensitive fold at the very end of her bottom?s curve.
?NO!? she yelled. ?You said last time you wouldn?t do thaaaaAAAAAaaat!?
?And you believed me? You don?t know by now that I?ll do anything and everything I want to you? Even this -- and this -- and this -- ? Each ?this? brought a louder and more hysterical yelp from the victim. With the last ?this,? he began to tickle the creases where her thighs joined her torso with a thumb and forefinger apiece, twitching them like pincers. Paul would never have imagined that such a tiny movement would get such a strong reaction, but the woman went berserk. The howls that burst over the pickup sounded like nothing human, and the compensators on the cuffs that held her legs quickly ratcheted up to maximum, holding her legs straight and motionless as iron bars as he teased her mercilessly. A flutter of his fingers on her nearly bare behind, and then he went back to the steady torment of her inmost thighs.
?Pleasestopnopleasepleaseplease...? she babbled mindlessly amid the shrieks, her face pink from laughing, the flush spreading rapidly down over her chest and the tops of her breasts.
The torturer laughed at her. ?Did I ever stop doing this to you before? There?s only one way out of this for you, and you?ll just have to take it until then.? He dug his fingers into her thighs, racking her with fresh agonized laughter, slowly shifting back to the slow precise caresses that drove her mad.
?Feeling properly tenderized? Then it?s time to tickle your feet again,? he said at last. The woman let out a moan, but said nothing -- whether she was despairing beyond begging, had the sense to know it would do her no good, or was simply too dazed from the tickling to put words together, Paul did not know. As the torturer slowly made his way around the pedestal to her feet, she hung there limply as if she were unconscious, her breath coming slowly.
She moaned again when he touched his fingers lightly to the ball of one foot, just under the toe. Then he ran them downward, and she wailed: ?EEEEaaaaahahahaaahahaaahaa ahahahaaaaha!? Paul, who had been expecting giggles again, was startled, but the torturer seemed to expect it. With his other hand, he began to lightly scratch the top of her toes, adding to her misery. Her other foot twisted in the cuff almost as if it, too, were being tickled. The woman?s eyes were shut tight, and silver tear tracks cut through the sweat spangling her face.
?You want it to stop, don?t you?? the man asked, his fingers in constant motion on her helpless foot: underside of toes and arch, top of foot and ball, ankle and between toes ...
?There?s only one way to stop.? Ten fingers tickled her toes, and she shrieked like a lost soul. ?And I?m going to tickle you all over until then...? Fingernails scraped the ball and the heel just hard enough to tickle unbearably.
?STOP IT STOP IT STOP IT!? she screamed. ?I CAAAAAAAHAHHAAAHAHAAHA -- NOOOOOO!?
?And I?m going to tickle you HERE too --? Still moving his fingers on the arch of one foot, he reached across to tickle the other at the same time. As soon as his fingers touched the foot, the woman let out a demented howl, and screens lit up all around the booth.
?We are done!? Pizer shouted, throwing switches all along the base of his console. Brilliant light filled the Chamber, nearly blotting out the struggling figure of the woman and her tormentor in the center, and the roar of machinery leaping to life nearly drowned out the sound of her mad laughter.
Lights flared, then dimmed, all through the corridors of the Transverse Phoenix, and tightly sealed hatches rattled in their dogs in strange winds as the overspill from the process swept through the wheel. The Chamber did its work, gathering the frantic energy of a brain and body overstimulated by tickling, the psychic force of the desperate need to get away, amplifying them, channeling them into the Jump engines. The Phoenix shivered, flickered, and vanished, reappearing light-years away. Paul looked to the exterior viewscreen and saw a star of a peculiar greenish color. The lights came up in the Chamber, and the man stepped back from his victim, who hung limp in the cuffs, her pale body gleaming with sweat. ?I did it...I did it...let me loose...? she said in a shaking voice.
?Go ahead,? Pizer said into his speaker, and then began shutting down his boards as the torturer started the process of unlocking the cuffs.
Paul let out a breath he didn?t know he was holding. ?That was -- ?
?A routine Jump,? Pizer said. ?You should see the Chamber on a ship-of-the-line. It takes a dozen or more victims linked together to move -- ? He stopped as a new voice sounded through the booth.
?This is the captain. We have been radioed a Top Priority message to be borne immediately to Alnitak Major. This supersedes all previous orders. All crew to remain at their stations for the next three Jumps. Observers, begin warming up the Chamber again.?
The woman?s face through the helmet was blank with disbelief. Then the click and feel of the cuffs being sealed again woke her, and she let out a shriek of utter despair that made the hair rise on Paul?s neck. He turned away and met Pizer?s gaze. ?Happens sometimes,? the older man said. ?Too bad for her....Dispense with the formalities. Ready when you are,? he addressed the torturer. ?Let?s not waste any time..? And a second later, the walls of the Chamber once again resounded with screams.
** With deep, and probably inadequate, apologies to Norman Spinrad. **
AFTER LUNCH, THE CAPTAIN WANTS TO GO WATER-SKIING
another one of those stories
ARE YOU UNDER 18? THEN PUT THIS STORY DOWN AND GO FIND A REAL GIRL OR BOY TO PLAY WITH.
The Transverse Phoenix hung on the edge of cislunar space, the moon like an immense snowbank just before it. The lights on its hull were dim, its power reduced to a minimum; the immense walls of screens that lined the control center were black, and most of the crew were dozing in their quarters. All but a few, who still worked in the midst of the great silver wheel.
Paul Galileo Schmidt was Second Observer and proud of it. This was the first time he had worked this shift, and even if he was just a glorified assistant to the First Observer, Pizer Feng Gustafson, there was honor and prestige in being an Observer of the Chamber. And it promised to be a lot more entertaining than repairing power conduits or replacing broken lights. He had no idea what to expect, though. What went on in the Chamber was the subject of hot debate, wild speculation, and sinister rumor on the crew decks. But what truly happened...that nobody truly knew, except the Observers. And those who went into the Chamber themselves, of course. Paul kept stealing glances through the broad window that separated the Observers? booth from the Chamber, looking at the machinery that filled it and trying to guess its purpose. Pizer, seated at his banks of instrumentation, watched him with a tolerant eye.
?Here they come now.? And entering the Chamber were two hooded figures, one robed in red, the other in white. Nothing of their identities could be seen. They moved in silence to the center of the Chamber while Paul watched in fascination.
The white-robed one paused, and then drew back her robe and let it slide down her body, puddling around her feet. She wore only a skintight halter top of silver-gray and an equally tight thong of the same material, cut high in front and back. Paul gasped despite himself. The stories he had heard had prepared him to see an ugly, raddled wreck, but this woman was beautiful. She was tall and well-proportioned, muscular without being bulky, and somehow managed to be stately despite being nearly bare. Her black hair was cut short, and her pale skin was flushed with a faint rosy tinge from the injection of sensitizer Paul knew she had gotten before coming to the Chamber.
?Who is she?? he asked.
Pizer looked sideways at him. ?Son, if you start asking that for every one of them, you?ll never get anywhere in this job.? But with his left hand he manipulated a row of buttons, and one of the smaller screens lit up. Paul read it hungrily: Earth native, age 27, convicted of data theft and copyright violation...His eye skimmed over her vital statistics, but didn?t find what he sought among them.
?What?s her name??
?Don?t ask that,? Pizer said. ?No one in there ever has a name.? He looked back at his machines with an air of finality.
With a slight shiver, Paul turned back to the window. The woman now stood on the low pedestal in the center of the room. She stared straight ahead with an expression of utter disdain, but he could see the tension in the muscles of her stomach and the way she rubbed her palms on her bare flanks with a sudden movement. The man in the red robe moved around her, fastening a bulky cuff around one ankle. Thick leads ran from the cuff into the base of the pedestal. His hands were the only part of him visible, strong and long-fingered.
?She?s lucky, though,? Pizer said from behind him. Paul turned to see the older man pointing at an entry in the woman?s statistics. ?Her sentence is almost over. This is the last time she?ll have to be in a Chamber. And it?s going to be a short one.?
The woman now had cuffs on each wrist and ankle. Stepping back, the man made a signal with his hands, and Paul tapped out the sequence that negated the Phoenix?s artificial gravity on the pedestal. The woman?s bare feet left the deckplates. The leads on her wrist cuffs drew down into the floor, pulling her backward, at the same time the leads on her ankle cuffs loosened slightly. She ended up floating horizontally about three feet off the floor, face up. Paul saw one leg tense, but the cuff did not move. The man picked up the helmet from the rack and put it over her head, its flared bottom adhering to the skin of her shoulders and back. Though it looked like a simple transparent bowl, Paul knew that from the inside it was a perfect mirror, studded with pickups and other devices. The woman could now see nothing but her own face.
?Observers, are you ready?? the man said in a deep, formal voice.
?We are ready,? Paul and Pizer said, each checking their consoles.
?Victim, are you prepared??
The woman took a long breath. ?Get it over with.?
?There is no reason to be impatient,? the man said, walking around her hovering body. ?We are not on a schedule, and there is plenty of time... ? One hand flashed out, a finger swiftly tracing down the sole of her bare foot. The woman?s leg jumped, and she made a squeaking noise. Paul caught his breath.
?It?s always worse than you think it is,? the man continued, his finger returning to the sole, tracing a slow loop around its edge. ?It?s always a surprise to discover again just how ticklish you are.? The woman was visibly trembling, making small strangled sounds in her throat, and through the helmet Paul could see her lips pressed into a thin line. The finger reached the edge of her toes, paused the briefest instant, and then swept across them. The toes wiggled helplessly as if trying to shake off a fly, and the woman let out a sharp, sweet giggle. ?But you?re remembering now, are you?? The man began to trace back and forth across the woman?s toes with the forefingers of both hands. When she squeezed them together and curled them up, he tickled along their tops and scratched the balls, and when she stretched and wiggled her toes to try and evade the fingers, he swiftly tickled the undersides. So deftly did he change targets that she never had a second?s relief. Her feet fluttered helplessly in the cuffs as the giggles, coming slowly at first, began to multiply rapidly.
She shook her head back and forth in the helmet, lips drawn back in an involuntary grin. ?Stop it -- heeheeheeheehee! -- don?t do thatheeheeheehee!?
?You want an end to being teased?? the man asked.
?Uhh...? she began. The man slowly trailed the fingers of each hand down the length of her soles, then up again, then down, and her body twisted helplessly. The quavering screech of laughter forced out of her echoed around the Chamber and through the Observers? booth. ?YES! YES! HAHAHAHAAHAYESSSS!? she was yelling before the fingers had reached the bottom of her arches for the third time.
The man raised his hands. ?No more teasing, then.? The woman?s taut body slowly unknotted as her breathing slowed -- and then his hands seized her feet, holding them firmly as his fingernails scraped all along her arches, working back and forth rapidly. The woman gave a huge bounce upward as another scream ripped out of her. ?AAANOOOHAHAHAHAHAHAHAAhahahaha -- stop -- ? With a single fluid step, the man moved beside her, relentless fingers digging into her ribs. ?AAAAAAAAIIIIHAHAHAHAHAAAaaaaaa!? As she bucked and thrashed, the cuffs drew tighter to compensate, damping down her struggling into futile quivers. The hands flashed back and forth between her ribs and the soft, trembling mound of her stomach, probing briefly into her armpits, producing fresh howls of laughter. ?HAAAHAHAAHAAHAAAA! OH NOOOO please please -- HAHAHAAAHAHAHAHA! STOOOOAHHHPPPP!?
?You know how to make it stop.? The man tickled the sides of her neck with the tips of his fingers, producing another flurry of squeals and giggles, then suddenly attacked her armpits again as she wailed with laughter. ?But you?ll have to take a lot more tickling all over your tender little body before that...more tickling and more tickling and MORE tickling...?
?He?s good,? Pizer commented. Paul tore himself away from the scene in the Chamber to study the readouts. ?Keeping a fairly steady build on.?
?Why is he in there at all?? Paul asked. ?He?s only got two hands. Why not use a bunch of small robots instead? Or a nerve-stimulator field? It seems inefficient to just tickle one or two spots at once when you could affect the whole body...?
Without taking his eyes off the readouts, Pizer spoke: ?That?s been tried. A machine or a field can provoke a ticklish response -- but not enough of one. There?s simply no substitute for the presence of another human...or the feel of direct contact. We aim for quality as well as quantity. And there?s no substitute for knowledge. That man was assigned to her at the start of her sentence, and has been accompanying her ever since. By this point, he knows exactly how best to tickle her for the strongest reactions. Watch.?
As if on cue, uncontrolled laughter spewed over the speakers again: ?AAAH!AAH!AAAHAHAHA nonononoaaaAAaaaHAAAHAHAAAAHA!? Paul looked back at the window just in time to see the victim?s head snap up as she struggled. She was staring straight into the booth as if she could see through the helmet and the opaqued window to Paul himself, her wild eyes pinning him. Her mouth was moving, and he seemed to hear her in his brain a moment before the desperate voice came over the pickup: ?I know you?re there -- make him stop -- I can?t take it -- heeheeheeheeeeee!? She giggled shrilly as slow-crawling fingers picked their way along her sides, finding vulnerable softness at every step, then shrieked as they leaped ahead to tickle her ribs.
?Don?t talk to the Observers,? her torturer advised. ?They can?t help you. There?s nothing in your world right now but me...the one who knows where all your most ticklish spots are...? Expertly he manipulated her ribs, starting where sides met back, fingers burrowing for the hard planes below the smooth curves of her skin as he worked his way up to just under her trembling breasts. ?This is what you asked for, isn?t it? And it?s just a start...? He wriggled his fingertips in the soft places beside each breast, midway between ribs and armpits, and her body wriggled as well as she laughed hysterically.
Pizer studied his readouts. ?Pick it up a bit,? he said into the speaker.
?Right.? The torturer?s hands slipped down the woman?s body. Her skin was hot, and sweat was beginning to slicken it. She relaxed as she felt the tickling stop, then tensed again as the hands traveled further downward. They swept over her stomach without even slowing, and Paul could see the woman?s eyes shifting back and forth rapidly as she tried to guess from the feel of the hands where the next tickle would come. The man swirled his fingertips on her hips, and then swiftly reached between her legs and swept a feathery touch down her taut buttocks. The thong she wore was no protection at all. The woman?s hips bucked hard, and the compensators in the cuffs whined, pulling her back down onto the tickling fingers. She groaned, giggled, gasped, but he kept after her, tweaking the small sensitive fold at the very end of her bottom?s curve.
?NO!? she yelled. ?You said last time you wouldn?t do thaaaaAAAAAaaat!?
?And you believed me? You don?t know by now that I?ll do anything and everything I want to you? Even this -- and this -- and this -- ? Each ?this? brought a louder and more hysterical yelp from the victim. With the last ?this,? he began to tickle the creases where her thighs joined her torso with a thumb and forefinger apiece, twitching them like pincers. Paul would never have imagined that such a tiny movement would get such a strong reaction, but the woman went berserk. The howls that burst over the pickup sounded like nothing human, and the compensators on the cuffs that held her legs quickly ratcheted up to maximum, holding her legs straight and motionless as iron bars as he teased her mercilessly. A flutter of his fingers on her nearly bare behind, and then he went back to the steady torment of her inmost thighs.
?Pleasestopnopleasepleaseplease...? she babbled mindlessly amid the shrieks, her face pink from laughing, the flush spreading rapidly down over her chest and the tops of her breasts.
The torturer laughed at her. ?Did I ever stop doing this to you before? There?s only one way out of this for you, and you?ll just have to take it until then.? He dug his fingers into her thighs, racking her with fresh agonized laughter, slowly shifting back to the slow precise caresses that drove her mad.
?Feeling properly tenderized? Then it?s time to tickle your feet again,? he said at last. The woman let out a moan, but said nothing -- whether she was despairing beyond begging, had the sense to know it would do her no good, or was simply too dazed from the tickling to put words together, Paul did not know. As the torturer slowly made his way around the pedestal to her feet, she hung there limply as if she were unconscious, her breath coming slowly.
She moaned again when he touched his fingers lightly to the ball of one foot, just under the toe. Then he ran them downward, and she wailed: ?EEEEaaaaahahahaaahahaaahaa ahahahaaaaha!? Paul, who had been expecting giggles again, was startled, but the torturer seemed to expect it. With his other hand, he began to lightly scratch the top of her toes, adding to her misery. Her other foot twisted in the cuff almost as if it, too, were being tickled. The woman?s eyes were shut tight, and silver tear tracks cut through the sweat spangling her face.
?You want it to stop, don?t you?? the man asked, his fingers in constant motion on her helpless foot: underside of toes and arch, top of foot and ball, ankle and between toes ...
?There?s only one way to stop.? Ten fingers tickled her toes, and she shrieked like a lost soul. ?And I?m going to tickle you all over until then...? Fingernails scraped the ball and the heel just hard enough to tickle unbearably.
?STOP IT STOP IT STOP IT!? she screamed. ?I CAAAAAAAHAHHAAAHAHAAHA -- NOOOOOO!?
?And I?m going to tickle you HERE too --? Still moving his fingers on the arch of one foot, he reached across to tickle the other at the same time. As soon as his fingers touched the foot, the woman let out a demented howl, and screens lit up all around the booth.
?We are done!? Pizer shouted, throwing switches all along the base of his console. Brilliant light filled the Chamber, nearly blotting out the struggling figure of the woman and her tormentor in the center, and the roar of machinery leaping to life nearly drowned out the sound of her mad laughter.
Lights flared, then dimmed, all through the corridors of the Transverse Phoenix, and tightly sealed hatches rattled in their dogs in strange winds as the overspill from the process swept through the wheel. The Chamber did its work, gathering the frantic energy of a brain and body overstimulated by tickling, the psychic force of the desperate need to get away, amplifying them, channeling them into the Jump engines. The Phoenix shivered, flickered, and vanished, reappearing light-years away. Paul looked to the exterior viewscreen and saw a star of a peculiar greenish color. The lights came up in the Chamber, and the man stepped back from his victim, who hung limp in the cuffs, her pale body gleaming with sweat. ?I did it...I did it...let me loose...? she said in a shaking voice.
?Go ahead,? Pizer said into his speaker, and then began shutting down his boards as the torturer started the process of unlocking the cuffs.
Paul let out a breath he didn?t know he was holding. ?That was -- ?
?A routine Jump,? Pizer said. ?You should see the Chamber on a ship-of-the-line. It takes a dozen or more victims linked together to move -- ? He stopped as a new voice sounded through the booth.
?This is the captain. We have been radioed a Top Priority message to be borne immediately to Alnitak Major. This supersedes all previous orders. All crew to remain at their stations for the next three Jumps. Observers, begin warming up the Chamber again.?
The woman?s face through the helmet was blank with disbelief. Then the click and feel of the cuffs being sealed again woke her, and she let out a shriek of utter despair that made the hair rise on Paul?s neck. He turned away and met Pizer?s gaze. ?Happens sometimes,? the older man said. ?Too bad for her....Dispense with the formalities. Ready when you are,? he addressed the torturer. ?Let?s not waste any time..? And a second later, the walls of the Chamber once again resounded with screams.
** With deep, and probably inadequate, apologies to Norman Spinrad. **
