She said, “Kickaha, hold his head! I’m going to ut the bell on it!”
Grumgrass tried to struggle but was too weak to do anything except writhe a little. Finally, he said, “What are you going to do?”
“Your mind contents will automatically be transferred to the bell,” she said. “As you well know. This body will die, but we’ll find you a healthy body. And we’ll put your mind in it. And when we do, we’ll torture you until you tell us what we wish to know.”
Graumgrass said, “No! No!” and he tried again to get away. Kickaha held him easily while Anana placed the bell on his head. After a while, Graum-grass’s eyes glazed, and death shook a castenet in his throat. Kickaha looked at the bottom of the bell as Anana held it up for his inspection. The two tiny needles were withdrawn into the case.
“I think his mind was taken in before the body died,” he said. “But, Anana, I won’t let you stripa man’s brain just to put this thing in his body so we can get some information. No matter how important that information is.”
“I know it,” she said. “And I wouldn’t do it, either. I’ve regained some of my lost humanity because of you. Furthermore, there aren’t any living bodies available to use.”
She paused. He said, “Don’t look at me. I haven’t the guts.”
“I don’t blame you,” she said. “And I wouldn’t want you to do it, anyway. I will do it.”
“But. . . !” He stopped. It had to be done, and he supposed that if she had not volunteered, he would have done so, though very reluctantly. He felt a little shame that he was allowing her to be the
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subject, but not enough to make him insist that he do this. He had more than one share of courage; he would be the first to say so. But this act required more than he had at this moment or was likely to have, as long as someone else would act. The utter helplessness it would produce made a coward of him. He could not stand that feeling.
He said, “There are drugs here which can get the truth, or what the subject thinks is the truth, anyway. It won’t be hard to get the facts out of you—out of the Beller, I mean, but do you really think this is necessary?”
He knew that it was. He just could not accept the idea of her submitting to the bell either.
“You know what a horror I have of the bell,” she said. “But I’ll put my mind into one and let one of those things into my body if it’ll track down the last Beller, the last one, for once and all.”
He wanted to protest that nothing was worth this, but he kept his mouth shut. It had to be done. And though he called himself a coward because he could not do it, and his flesh rippled with dread for her, he would allow her to use the bell.
Anana clung to him and kissed him fiercely before she submitted. She said, “I love you. I don’t want to do this! It seems as if I’m putting myself in a grave, just when I could look forward to loving you.”
“We could just make a search of the palace instead,” he said. “We’d be bound to flush out the Beller.”
“If he got away, we’d know who to look for,” she said. “No. Go ahead! Do it! Quickly! I feel as if I’m dying now!”
She was lying on a divan. She closed her eyes while he fitted the bell over her head. He held her
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then while it did its work. Her breathing, which had been quick and shallow with anxiety, slowed and deepened after a while. Her eyes fluttered open. They looked as if the light in them had become transfixed in time, frozen in some weird polarity.
After waiting some extra minutes to make sure the bell was finished, he gently lifted it off her head. He placed it in a casket on the floor, after which he tied her hands and feet together and then strapped her down tightly. He set the bell containing the mind of Graumgrass on her head. When twenty minutes had passed, he was sure that the transference was complete. Her face worked; the eyes had become as wild as a trapped hawk’s. The voice was the lovely voice of Anana but the inflections were different.