by
Robin Gordon
Auksford 2013
© Copyright Robin Gordon, 2013
Auksford index. -- Index to Robin Gordon's works. -- Roquana: index.
Book III: New Jackrusselham
***
Chapter 10: In the Crypt
Roquana Smuff (Unknown)
Gulls then called in a Government Guard wearing a shabby coat over his uniform and ordered him to take Roquana to the Crypt. He dragged her out of the room, along a passage, down a flight of stairs and into the cathedral crypt, where a crowd had already assembled, and where Tommuz was already strapped to a bed, on full display on the well-lit platform. The Guard pushed through the spectators till we found ourselves right at the front, watching as an immensely fat eunuch tortured Tommuz, who writhed in mingled pain and pleasure and begged for more. There seemed to be no way of averting his fate or that which awaited Roquana.
“Do something, Voice,” Roquana sobbed.
I racked my brains, then decided.
“I’ll try,” I whispered. “If it works be ready to shout Let him go. I can’t guarantee anything.”
Indeed I could not, for, though what I was about to try was theoretically possible, no-one had ever done it before, and expert opinion thought that it would destroy the mind of any Inquisitor who made the attempt. Even if I succeeded and held on to consciousness for long enough, I might be too late or unable to have any influence.
What I had in mind was to transfer directly from Roquana’s mind to Tommuz’s and encourage him to resist. I had never targeted Tommuz in the way I targeted all my subjects. I had never confronted him in person, gripped his hand and stared into his eyes. In person I had only met him briefly, and even then my attention was focussed on Roquana or on the President, but I hoped that, having been with Roquana for so long, I might be able to use her attraction to Tommuz to make the transfer.
“Goodbye,” I whispered, and left her.
“Tommuz! Tommuz!” I repeated, but it was no good. I found myself, head spinning, totally dizzy, back in my office, then suddenly the office disappeared again, I whirled through blackness, and arrived I knew not where, unable to see properly, unable to hear properly, still spinning and falling through infinite chasms of nothingness, until I gradually began to feel waves of pleasure, greater pleasure than I had ever felt before, even in the arms of my poor wife, whom I knew I might never see again – and a voice was whispering, whispering of the delights of pain. I was in the mind of Tommuz, but unable to do anything, unable to say anything, unable even to focus.
A fat face gradually formed before my blurred vision as a violent electric shock coursed through the body I now shared with Tommuz, a body that twitched and shuddered orgasmically, and then the view gradually cleared and I recognised the leering features of Mrs Bonpoint.
Mrs Bonpoint (Unknown)
“You loved that one, dinchu, darling,” she sneered, but now I’ve got summing really special for you. See this knife? “Like to feel it?” – Here she ran the tip of the blade along Tommuz’s leg and he sighed contentedly.
“Again?” said Mrs Bonpoint.
“Yes,” sighed Tommuz.
“Manners!” Mrs Bonpoint chided.
“Yes, please, Mrs Bonpoint,” Tommuz gasped.
“Well I ain’t gonna do it again,” said she.
“Please,” Tommuz almost wailed.
“No, dearie, I got summing much better ’an that,” leered Mrs Boinpoint. “We’re coming the real climax now, darling. This is where you feel the greatest pleasure you’ve ever felt in your life – if you want it. I’m only allowed to do this if you say you want it. Shall I tell you what I’m gonna do, darling? I’m gonna take your balls in my hand, like this. Then I’m gonna take this knife, and I’m gonna cut them right off. You’ll love it, darling, yes you will. It’ll be the most intense pleasure if your whole life. Now, sweetheart, would you like dear, kind Mrs Bonpoint to give you that pleasure? Would you like me to castrate you?”
“I felt a wave of pleasurable anticipation welling up in Tommuz. There was no doubt that at that moment there was nothing he wanted more than to feel the knife cutting into his flesh.
“No!” I screamed. “Remember Roquana! You love Roquana. Don’t lose Roquana! Roquana! Roquana! No! No!”
“Come on, darling,” Mrs Bonpoint urged. Shall I do it?”
“Roquana! No!” I shouted.
“I … I …” Tommuz stuttered, then, “ … uh … no … no …”
Mrs Bonpoint hissed in fury, and Roquana took her cue.
“Let him go!” she shouted.
No-one took up the cry.
“What’s got into you, darling?” hissed Mrs Bonpoint, then, recovering her insinuatingly leering tone, she continued.
“You can feel me holding your balls, can’t you sweetie? You can feel me squeezing them and twisting them, can’t you sweetie, and you love it, don’t you sweetie, an you know I can double, triple, quadruple that lovely pleasure, don’t you sweetie? You know I can multiply it by so much that you’d give your whole life for it, don’t you sweetie. Well, you don’t have to give your life, my darling. Kind Mrs Bonpoint will give you that immense, never to be forgotten pleasure right here. All you have to do is say yes, that’s all you have to do. Now, sweetie, you can feel the sharp knife against you, can’t you, and you want, yes you want, you want more than anything, yes you do, you want that knife to cut into your flesh. Shall I do it, poppet? Shall kind Mrs Bonpoint castrate you.”
I had been trying to speak in his mind, but Mrs Bonpoint’s words drowned everything else from Tommuz’s consciousness. Now she paused, and again I yelled: “Remember Roquana! You love Roquana! You want to marry Roquana! Say No! Say No or you’ll lose Roquana. Roquana! Roquana! No! No!”
“Hurry up, my lovely,” said Mrs Bonpoint. “Shall I cut ’em off?”
“No,” Tommuz gasped. “Roquana. No.”
“Let him go!” shouted Roquana, and other voices took up the cry: “Let him go! Let him go!”
“Let me go,” Tommuz gasped.
“You ain’t going nowhere, my little beauty,” rasped Mrs Bonpoint. “I get to ask him three times,” she yelled at the restive crowd, then turning back to Tommuz she began again describing the orgasmic delight he would feel as his testicles were severed. Again I felt a tide of anticipatory pleasure mounting in his brain, stronger than ever. If he said yes this time nothing could save him – or Roquana.
Again I yelled in his mind, reminding him of his love for Roquana. “They’ll make her a blind whore if you don’t say No,” I shouted.
“Decision time, sweetie,” leered Mrs Bonpoint. “Kind old Sowfie Bonpoint is here with the blade of delight. You want me to do it, don’t you darling? Shall I castrate you?”
There was a pause, then …
“NO!” shouted Tommuz. “I love Roquana! Let me go!”
“Let him go!” shouted Roquana.
“Let him go! Let him go!” thundered the crowd.
Mrs Bonpoint backed away in shock, then suddenly she lunged forward.
“I’m having his balls!” she shrieked, but the crowd surged forward onto the platform, and Mrs Bonpoint screamed, fled, and disappeared through a small door.
Willing hands unstrapped Tommuz from his bed of torture. He was dizzy with pain, pleasure, relief and roquanine, but I kept a lookout for Roquana and saw her captor dragging her away.
“Roquana!” I yelled at Tommuz. “There she is. Help her.”
“Roquana!” he called. “There she is! Help her!”
Men from the crowd propelled Roquana and the man holding her back to Tommuz, who embraced her.
A man noticed that she was handcuffed to the Guard.
“What’s this?” he shouted, holding up their two arms.
“Who’s this?” he yelled, pulling the hooded coat off the Guard.
“A Government Guard!” he bellowed.
His hand dived into the guard’s pocket, a key was found and Roquana released.
“I din’t mean no harm,” quavered the Guard. “Just following orders, that’s all.”
That excuse did him no good at all. The angry crowd quickly stripped him and gave his uniform to Tommuz, whom, together with Roquana, they carried shoulder high from the crypt, while the bruised and battered Guard dragged himself back towards the stairs.
Outside in Cathedral Square the exuberance of the crowd was boundless: they had rescued a victim from the hated Guild of Eunuchs, and they had rescued his girlfriend from the almost equally detested Government Guards. They surged round to the steps leading up to the main door of the Pantheon, calling in the traders, shoppers and idlers of the square as they went, till a huge, expectant crowd was massed around the steps, from which Roquana’s rescuer, the man who had first spotted the handcuffs, began to address them.
What he said I cannot tell, for at that moment the emergency alarm called me away. I left Tommuz and found myself back in my office in the Palace of the Inquisition.
There I found a confrontation in progress. Government Guards had broken in and had only been prevented from turning off my life support system by the timely intervention of my colleague, Ulixondir Drow, who, luckily had been in his office next door and not yet in communion with his next subject.
I awoke just as the Grand Inquisitor of Sunday arrived to demand what was the cause of the commotion.
Gulls stepped forward.
“Grand Inquisitor,” he honked, “I have brought a detachment of Government Guards to arrest Dr Tadler, who is accused that, deliberately and with malice aforethought, he spied on prominent members of the Establishment who were not assigned to him by the Inquisition computer, both for his own voyeuristic pleasure and with a view to discovering secrets that he could make public in order to foment distrust, disquiet and riotous behaviour on the part of the populace at large, in short: to undermine the peaceful government of Sunday, probably to seize power for himself and his associates, contrary to all laws of morality and of the Commonwealth.”
Ulixonder stepped forward.
Dr Ulixonder Drow, Inquisitor
(DeForest Kelley, actor)
“Grand Inquisitor,” he said, “by the laws of the Commonwealth an Inquisitor cannot be tried by any local court but only by an Inquisitorial Investigation under the presidency of the Commonwealth Inquisitor. I do not know who this man is, but he cannot be allowed to seize the person of an Inquisitor.”
“Monsignor Gulls,” said the Grand Inquisitor, “is the Procurator of the Holy Synod …”
“ … and, as such,” said Gulls softly and silkily, “I am in full charge of the administrative functions of the government of this planet during the indisposition of the President, who, I am sure you will be both astonished and alarmed to hear, has suffered a severe shock brought on by the actions of Sulamun Tadler. Guards, take him away!”
“Monsignor,” said the Grand Inquisitor, “though I have every respect for your authority, I am afraid Dr Drow is right. The Inquisition, like Holy Mother Church herself, is not subject to the laws and regulations of individual worlds in as much as concerns their work as Inquisitors. Naturally, if you are accusing Dr Tadler of theft or murder, I would have neither the power nor the inclination to prevent your putting him on trial like any other citizen, but what you have accused him of is misusing the powers of the Inquisition, and the decision on whether he has or has not misused those powers, is, and must remain, entirely within the hands of the Inquisition. The only court competent to deal with such an accusation is a Commission of Enquiry chaired by the Commonwealth Inquisitor himself or his Deputy.”
Monsignor Wullsin,
Grand Inquisitor of Sunday
(James Bolam, actor)
“What Dr Tadler is accused of,” said Gulls, “is fomenting discord and insurrection. Even as we speak there is some sort of anti-government riot taking place in Cathedral Square, on the steps of the Pantheon itself. Dr Tadler is accused of treason, and according to the constitution of Sunday, all traitors from those classes belonging to the Establishment should be tried, not by any special and biased tribunal, but by the Holy Synod itself. As a member of the Holy Synod, you, Grand Inquisitor, will be able to make your case there, but it would be inadvisable to associate yourself too closely with the subversive activities of a man whose guilt will be comprehensively demonstrated at his trial. Guards! Take him away!”
Monsignor Gulls (Unknown)
I was then led out of the Palace of the Inquisition, loaded into the sort of van usually called a “black Moria wagon” – for the common people regard the Government prisons as hell-holes like the underground chasms of Moria, the demon- haunted former palace of the Dwarves in the surviving fragments of the ancient Gospel according to St Joyur Tullkine, though they are in the main humane and not uncomfortable places, certainly no worse than the Commonwealth Inquisitorial Boarding School I attended in my youth.
I was then driven to the Government Guardhouse, where I was locked in a cell and had no further communication with the outside world until the day of my trial.
Please remember that this story is copyright.
See Copyright and Concessions for permitted uses.
***
Roquana:
Index.
Chapter 9: Old Bonita Bananas
Chapter 11: The Trial
***
Auksford index. -- Index to Robin Gordon's works.
Send an e-mail to Robin Gordon.