SMOKING SLIGHTLY, vegetable-oil lanterns with rope wicks stood in wall niches illuminating the interior. The high vaulted ceiling of the museum was perfect for conducting away the greasy fumes. Hurrying across the terrazzo expanse of the front hall, Leonard turned left and took the main stairs downward, the broad steps some four yards wide. There used to be a brass handrail along the center, but that had been destroyed when the rebels drove an APC down the stairs, chasing the former baron. Caught him, too.
Guards and maids greeted Leonard politely as he hurried along the corridor past the storage room and the armory, past the furnace room and finally the jail. The door was closed, tufts of cloth rimming the jamb of the thick portal, but he could still hear the muted roar of machinery inside and a man pitifully screaming.
Withdrawing a small ring of keys from his pocket, Leonard unlocked the door and entered the deafening enamel house, the air stinking of excrement and exhaust fumes.
“Mercy!” screamed the man hanging from the ceiling by chains. The chains were wrapped about the hanging man’s wrists, a trickle of blood flowing down his arms as he struggled to get free.
“Please!” the prisoner wailed, the word barely audible over the muted rumble of the machine directly beneath. A black plume of smoke streamed from its exhaust pipe, and the ceiling was blacker than hell itself from the accumulation of grime from its use.
Squads of somber men in clean uniforms stood about the abattoir watching the suspended victim struggle for life. None of the grim faces were softened by an expression of pity, or even interest.
“Mercy?” Baron Gunther Strichland asked, crossing his powerful arms across his barrel chest. The redheaded giant towered over the other men, his long fiery red hair moving as if endowed with a will of its own.
“Mercy?” he repeated as if it were a new word never tasted before. “An interesting choice of words for a traitor.”
“I am innocent!” the man howled as the chain jerked and once more he was lowered inexorably toward the maw of the churning machine. Between his bare feet, he could see the blur of the interlocking blades whirling at incredible speed. His stomach heaved at the idea of what was happening, but nothing rose into his throat. He hadn’t been fed for days in exact preparation for such an eventuality.
“I didn’t break the window!”
“No,” Gunther said, accepting a silver chalice of cool wine from a busty maid in Army fatigues. “Your son did, and valuable plants were destroyed. Should we punish him instead?”
“Yes! Yes,” the man whimpered, rivulets of sweat pouring off his naked body. His toes could feel the vibrations of the Machine in the air. It sent waves of ice through his veins, and the judgement room swirled as he started to faint.
“Not yet, thief,” a woman snarled, and threw a bucket of ice water over him.
The shock forced him fully awake, and he squealed like a piglet being dragged to the butcher’s block.
“Do you honestly think,” Gunther murmured, sipping from the chalice, “that we should kill a child instead?”
“Yes! He did it, not me! Not me!”
With a snarl, the baron dashed the chalice to the concrete floor. “Then you are worse than a thief. You’re a coward, as well! Your boy may have done the damage, but you, the adult, hid the fact! By the time we discovered the damage, the sandstorm had killed over half the crops in that greenhouse! How many others may die from lack of food because of your cowardice?”
“Excuse me, High Baron,” Leonard said from the doorway.
Furious over the interruption, Gunther turned, his red hair a crimson halo about his distorted features. But when he saw who it was, the man relaxed his posture and his filaments laid down obediently on his wide shoulders.
“Yes, Leonard, what is it?” the baron asked calmly.
The teenager bowed respectfully. “We have a problem.”
Gunther turned back to the screaming man. “Then handle it, my son. I’m busy at the moment dispensing justice.”
A diplomatic cough. “It is a serious problem, sir.”