Jokan was stretched up to her complete height against the far wall. Her face was expressionless, and her eyes oozed liquid oxygen. Her hands were strained into fists at her sides. "Atavistic," Draken had said of this female scientist of Mohln. An understatement promising no hope for consideration.
I dodged beneath the robot's reaching appendages. There were three arms with a number of variously utilized digits at the end of each. And all of them were wicked. Many of them designed for purposes I couldn't grasp. Anyway I looked at it, the robot represented a perfect mauling and crushing instrument.
I can describe it now with a light touch. Then I was trembling with cold fear, and sweat poured off my face as I eluded the robot by dodging about the only fixture in the middle of the room, the table. I noticed a minor motion of Jokan; then I watched, with a hideously empty stomach, the table fold itself into the floor.
I leaped to one side and grabbed Jokan, twisted her around in front of me, and said with as little chattering as possible into her perfect pink little ear, "Call them off or—"
I tightened my arm about her throat and began bending her head back. She writhed around and kicked me, and her finger nails started their old habit pattern again. But she wasn't used to this sort of thing, and didn't employ any real effeminate technique at all.
I continued bending her head back. I could feel her choking and gasping. She knew then that I would kill her. I hadn't asked to come to Mohln, wherever and whenever it was. It was all something I had nothing to do with, that now threatened my life. All directly the responsibility of Jokan. To me, she was a real Circe, deserving no sympathy, only hate, and deserving death. But I could never have actually tried, or threatened to kill her, under less pressing conditions than those. It was simply a case of breaking her neck to save mine, which I consider justified.
The metallic digits squeezed shut on each elbow, from behind. I twisted my head upward at the second robot, sweating pain in my eyes. Unfeeling paralysis then, as the digits tore through muscle tendon, nerve fibers and even cracked bone. I was mouthing sounds, probably screaming, hearing my own cries from a great distance, blinded by pain, a mist blurring my eyes.
I was lifted straight up, then swung down beneath one implacable arm. I dangled there, my crushed elbows swinging and dripping beneath my face. I saw those perfect little feet come up and stand in front of my tortured eyes. And they were perfect little feet, encased in red sandals to match the blood from my wounds. Even facing torture, and possible death, I thought of them as perfect little feet. I didn't attempt to twist my face upward.
