Whipping Star Part 11

"Have you seen her do anything?"

"I've seen her come and go."

"Do you suffer pain, f.a.n.n.y Mae?" McKie asked.

"No referents for this concept," the Caleban said.

"Are these floggings going to bring about your ultimate discontinuity?" McKie asked.

"Explain bring about," the Caleban said.

"Is there any connection between the floggings and your ultimate discontinuity?"

"Total universe connectives include all events," the Caleban said.

"I pay well for my game," Abnethe said. "Stop interfering, McKie."

"How're you paying?"

"None of your business!"

"I make it my business," McKie said. "f.a.n.n.y Mae?"

"Don't answer him!" Abnethe snapped.

"I can still summon police and the officers of a Discretionary Court," McKie said.

"By all means," Abnethe gloated. "You are, of course, ready to answer a suit charging interference with an open agreement between consenting members of different species?"

"I can still get an injunction," McKie said. "What's your present address?"

"I decline to answer on advice of counsel."

McKie glared at her. She had him. He could not charge her with flight to prevent prosecution unless he had proved a crime. To prove a crime he must get a court to act and serve her with the proper papers in the presence of bonded witnesses, bring her into a court, and allow her to face her accusers. And her attorneys would tie him in knots every step of the way.

"Offer judgment," the Caleban said. "Nothing in Abnethe contract prohibits revelation of payment. Employer provides educators."

"Educators?" McKie asked.

"Very well," Abnethe conceded. "I provide f.a.n.n.y Mae with the finest instructors and teaching aids our civilization can supply. She's been soaking up our culture. Anything she requested, she's got. And it wasn't cheap."

"And she still doesn't understand pain?" McKie demanded.

"Hope to acquire proper referents," the Caleban said.

"Will you have time to acquire those referents?" McKie asked.

"Time difficult concept," the Caleban said. "Statement of instructor, to wit: 'Relevancy of time to learning varies with species.' Time possesses length, unknown quality termed duration, subjective and objective dimension. Confusing. "

"Let's make this official," McKie said. "Abnethe, are you aware that you're killing this Caleban?"

"Discontinuity and death are not the same," Abnethe objected. "Are they, f.a.n.n.y Mae?"

"Wide disparity of equivalents exists between separate waves of being," the Caleban said.

"I ask you formally, Mliss Abnethe," McKie said, "if this Caleban calling herself f.a.n.n.y Mae has told you the consequences of an event she describes as ultimate discontinuity."

"You just heard her say there are no equivalents!"

"You've not answered my question."

"You're quibbling!"

"f.a.n.n.y Mae," McKie said, "have you described for Mliss Abnethe the consequences of . . ."

"Bound by contract connectives," the Caleban said.

"You see!" Abnethe pounced. "She's bound by our open agreement, and you're interfering." Abnethe gestured to someone not visible in the jumpdoor's vortal tube.

The opening suddenly doubled its diameter. Abnethe stepped aside, leaving half her head and one eye visible to McKie. A crowd of watching sentients could now be discerned in the background. Into Abnethe's place darted the turtle form of a giant Palenki. Its hundreds of tiny feet flickered beneath its bulk. The single arm growing from the top of its ring-eyed head trailed a long whip in a double-thumbed hand. The arm thrust through the tube, jerked the whip against jumpdoor resistance, lashed the whip forward. The whip cracked above the spoon bowl.

A crystalline spray of green showered the unseeable region of the Caleban. It glittered for a moment like a fluorescent explosion of fireworks, dissolved.

An ecstatic moan came through the vortal tube.

McKie fought an intense outpouring sensation of distress, leaped forward. Instantly, the S'eye jumpdoor closed, dumping a severed Palenki arm and whip onto the floor of the room. The arm writhed and turned, slower . . . slower. It fell still.

"f.a.n.n.y Mae?" McKie said.

"Yes?"

Did that whip hit you?"

"Explain whip hit."

"Encounter your substance!"

"Approximately."

McKie moved close to the spoon bowl. He still sensed distress but knew it could be a side effect of angeret and the incident he had just witnessed.

"Describe the flogging sensation," he said.

"You possess no proper referents."

"Try me."

"I inhaled substance of whip, exhaled my own substance."