The guard fumbled in a purse at his belt and drew out a glittering coin. "There you are. A gold florin, not ten years old and barely worn. I won it dicing last night."
Erculio examined the coin. "Twenty years old, and the lilies are a bit wilted. But it's heavy enough, I suppose. Done! Now, Messer Pezzo-di-Carne—I call you that because I do not know your real name—you had better tell us what we want to know, or I will really make you suffer." He dropped the coin on top of Daoud's clothing.
Erculio brought the stick against Daoud's shin, in the spot he had struck a moment ago. The pain shot through Daoud. But Soma turned the pain to a tingling, and Daoud visualized it as a glow that spread from toe to hip. He screamed, as he knew he should, but behind the Face of Steel he felt at peace.
Erculio let out a laugh that sounded more like the clucking of a chicken. "You see, we do not need elaborate instruments. We can inflict unbearable pain with the simplest means—like this!" And he swung the stick to hit precisely the same spot on Daoud's shin he had struck twice before.
Daoud bellowed and felt the tingling and saw the glow in his leg, and the Soma, the drug created by his spirit, preserved his sanity.
How small Erculio looked, crouched down on the stone floor. So man must look to God. God was so infinitely far above man, the miracle was that God was mindful of man at all. But God was inside of man—inside of each human being—as well as above him.
It is blasphemy to liken myself to God.
He called to mind the Koran's admonition, There is none like unto Him.
His mind occupied with God, he barely noticed the activities of the spiderlike creature that crawled about on the floor below him as he hung like a trapped fly. Erculio worked on his legs for a long time, bruising the shins with his heavy stick until Daoud thought both legs must be broken. Then the torturer pressed a red-hot poker against the soles of his feet.
Erculio had the guards let Daoud down and force him to walk on his burned feet to the rack table, where they chained him facedown and stretched him till the ligaments that held his bones together were ready to snap.