She was pacing back and forth on the long, raised platform. Hiah-Leugh
skirted the Iron Maiden, the Pallid Pulley, the Bronze Beater, the
Copper Conker, and Giant Mas-Mixer, which was a fake. Nothing was ever
mixed in it except the noxious weed Hiah-Leugh used in his pipe. At
the sound of his approach Sally stopped her pacing and fixed him with
a baleful glance out of eyes, four and five. Eyes, two and three were
busy seeing if her coiffure was right and eyes one, six and seven were
having their lids tweezed. After all, she had twelve pairs of legs
which were also used for hands. A heck of a lot could be done with so
many appendages.
She started in even before he quite reached her side:
"Where is everybody? Do I have to sit by myself every day? _Must_ you
have your eyeballs massaged _everyday_? Where are the torturers? Where
is everybody...?"
"I think there's a picnic scheduled for today, dear," Hiah-Leugh said.
"Why wasn't I told about it?" Sally demanded.
She had very probably _been_ told about it but knowing his ninth
concubine and the limits of her memory, she had very surely forgotten.
"Hiah-Leugh!" she broke in on him before he could frame a reply. "I'm
so terribly, terribly bored! There hasn't been a good torture since,
since ... when _was_ the last time there was a torture party?"
"The time Gin-Pad was caught stealing wokkerjabbies from his youngest
child," Hiah-Leugh said. "We put him in the Pallid Pulley and
stretched four of his legs until they were longer than the rest. And
to this day Gin-Pad walks like he's looking for something between his
forelegs...."
Six of Sally's seven pairs of eyes crossed suddenly, a sign she was
in thought. Hiah-Leugh had the wishful hope that the seventh pair
would cross. When that happened Sally would be ex-concubine. She would
also be ex-living but that didn't bother him. We all have to die
sometime, he thought. But why does she have to live so long? The
thought processes of Sally Patica wound their weary way and came to
their proper end. Life was boresome. And she had to think of something
to make it less so. She did.
"Y'know, Hiah," she said as she uncrossed her eyes, "I have an
idea...."
The chief of all the Gomans rolled all eight pairs of his eyes
ceiling-ward. Not another of her ideas. Oh no! Not that! The last time
she had one of her ideas it was for a treasure hunt, a treasure hunt
for a five-headed giant, despite Hiah-Leugh's insistence there were no
such beings. But she wanted one dead or alive. She got it, dead. What
Sally didn't know was that her mate gave orders to have one killed and
have a fifth head sewn on his shoulders.
Love, however, was as strong on planet XYZ268PDQ as it was on any
other planet, and as burdensome, and though Hiah-Leugh felt his heart
sink, he also knew he would give in to her wishes.
"... What do you think of this; bring some humans up here and we'll
run a torture party for our fiends?"
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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