Page 76 of Condemned

The lovemaking proboscis, apparatus, or whatever it was, wobbled and jabbed at the floor, making a clunk as hard rubber met timber.

“Nibbles! This is not okay!”

Any second now a whole army of temple guards would rush in here to arrest her and dismember Nibbles.

Seemingly oblivious to the spoken word, and she was damn sure the mouse-bot had comprehended previously, Nibbles ran up to the top of Arbo and sat down on its torso as the newly freed creature lurched forward several steps, joints squeaking.

Then, it halted, subsiding lower with a hiss.

The mouse-bot looked quite pleased with itself.

Avalon stuck her hand in her mouth, sideways, and tried not to scream. This was not the best way to start her first day here. They might simply execute her.

* * *

When Arbo tore loosefrom the floor and walked, with the bolts falling from their holes, High Priest Nostrodamm almost fell from his chair. “That is, that is...”

“Astounding!” Lesser Priest Han said.

The Spy Room was dark and small, and most of the light came from the screen hanging above them. Lesser Priest Han stared at the footage showing on the displayer screen. The Chamber of Love was always monitored. They checked new slaves for behavior problems by observing them in the chamber.

Since Nostrodamm seemed stuck on what to say, he dared to make a suggestion. “Shall I send in the guards, High Priest, and have her imprisoned and the mouse creature destroyed?”

The squeakling had seemed harmless, just a mouse hybrid. Any foul excretions could be cleaned up since Arbo was fully enclosed and no inner workings could be accessed. Or so they’d thought.

Somehow the love machine had been released to roam. It was not merely a machine then. It and the mouse thing too, perhaps, were most likely bots, that sacred device of old from before Quarantine. The mouse had made it move more than it ever had in the fifty years since it was secretly excavated from a collapsed structure.

“That’s not just a mouse?” he said, dubious at his own statement. “And Arbo is not a simple machine?”

“No.” The high priest seemed almost insane, his eyes wide, his mouth dribbling spittle, his long finger shaking as he pointed up at the screen. “Send no guards, yet. I have to think! Look!”

“What is it, sir?” Han crept closer to the screen, squinting, as if that would tell him what was perturbing Nostrodamm.

“I am not sure. I must talk to that girl and discover from whence came this mouse. I do believe it is a bot. I have never heard of one so small.”

The shaking voice and finger, the strange reactions of the high priest, led Han to wonder if this might be his chance to dethrone his superior. He must be vigilant. Unlike some temples he could not employ the dagger to eliminate rivals, but he could use sharpened words.

Perhaps his time was nigh.