The Princess Bride (26 page)

So when the Count appeared with the Machine, Westley was not particularly perturbed. As a matter of fact, he had no idea what the Count was bringing with him into the giant cage. As a matter of absolute fact, the Count was bringing nothing; it was the albino who was doing the actual work, making trip after trip with thing after thing.

That was what it really looked like to Westley: things. Little soft rimmed cups of various sizes and a wheel, most likely, and another object that could turn out to be either a lever or a stick; it was hard to tell.

“A good good evening to you,” the Count began.

He had never, to Westley’s memory, shown such excitement. Westley made a very weak nod in return. Actually, he felt about as well as ever, but it didn’t do to let that kind of news get around.

“Feeling a bit under the weather?” the Count asked.

Westley made another feeble nod.

The albino scurried in and out, bringing more things: wirelike extensions, stringy and endless.

“That will be all,” the Count said finally.

Nod.

Gone.

“This is the Machine,” the Count said when they were alone. “I’ve spent eleven years constructing it. As you can tell, I’m rather excited and proud.”

Westley managed an affirmative blink.

“I’ll be putting it together for a while.” And with that, he got busy.

Westley watched the construction with a good deal of interest and, logically enough, curiosity.

“You heard that scream a bit earlier on this evening?”

Another affirmative blink.

“That was a wild dog. This machine caused the sound.” It was a very complex job the Count was doing, but the six fingers on his right hand never for a moment seemed in doubt as to just what to do. “I’m very interested in pain,” the Count said, “as I’m sure you’ve gathered these past months. In an intellectual way, actually. I’ve written, of course, for the more learned journals on the subject. Articles mostly. At the present I’m engaged in writing a book. My book.
The
book, I hope. The definitive work on pain, at least as we know it now.”

Westley found the whole thing fascinating. He made a little groan.

“I think pain is the most underrated emotion available to us,” the Count said. “The Serpent, to my interpretation, was pain. Pain has been with us always, and it always irritates me when people say ‘as important as life and death’ because the proper phrase, to my mind, should be, ‘as important as pain and death.’“ The Count fell silent for a time then, as he began and completed a series of complex adjustments. “One of my theories,” he said somewhat later, “is that pain involves anticipation. Nothing original, I admit, but I’m going to demonstrate to you what I mean: I will not, underline
not
, use the Machine on you this evening. I could. It’s ready and tested. But instead I will simply erect it and leave it beside you, for you to stare at the next twenty-four hours, wondering just what it is and how it works and can it really be as dreadful as all that.” He tightened some things here, loosened some more over there, tugged and patted and shaped.

The Machine looked so silly Westley was tempted to giggle. Instead, he groaned again.

“I’ll leave you to your imagination, then,” the Count said, and he looked at Westley. “But I want you to know one thing before tomorrow night happens to you, and I mean it: you are the strongest, the most brilliant and brave, the most altogether worthy creature it has ever been my privilege to meet, and I feel almost sad that, for the purposes of my book and future pain scholars, I must destroy you.”

“Thank . . . you . . .” Westley breathed softly.

The Count went to the cage door and said over his shoulder, “And you can stop all your performing about how weak and beaten you are; you haven’t fooled me for a month. You’re practically as strong now as on the day you entered the Fire Swamp. I know your secret, if that’s any consolation to you.”

“. . . secret?” Hushed, strained.

“You’ve been taking your brain away,”
the Count cried. “You haven’t felt the least discomfort in all these months. You raise your eyes and drop your eyelids and then you’re off, probably with —I don’t know—her, most likely. Good night now. Try and sleep.  I doubt you’ll be able to. Anticipation, remember?” With a wave, he mounted the underground stairs.

Westley could feel the sudden pressure of his heart.

Soon the albino came, knelt by Westley’s ear. Whispered: “I’ve been watching you all these days. You deserve better than what’s coming. I’m needed. No one else feeds the beasts as I do. I’m safe. They won’t hurt me. I’ll kill you if you’d like. That would foil them. I’ve got some good poison. I beg you. I’ve seen the Machine. I was there when the wild dog screamed. Please let me kill you. You’ll thank me, I swear.”

“I must live.”

Whispered: “But—”

Interruption: “They will not reach me. I am all right. I am fine. I am alive, and I will stay that way.” He said the words loud, and he said them with passion. But for the first time in a long time, there was terror. . . .

“Well, could you sleep?” the Count asked the next night upon his arrival in the cage.

“Quite honestly, no,” Westley replied in his normal voice.

“I’m glad you’re being honest with me; I’ll be honest with you; no more charades between us,” the Count said, putting down a number of notebooks and quill pens and ink bottles. “I must carefully track your reactions,” he explained.

“In the name of science?”

The Count nodded. “If my experiments are valid, my name will last beyond my body. It’s immortality I’m after, to be quite honest.” He adjusted a few knobs on the Machine. “I suppose you’re naturally curious as to how this works.”

“I have spent the night pondering and I know no more than when I started. It appears to be a great conglomeration of soft rimmed cups of infinitely varied sizes, together with a wheel and a dial and a lever, and what it does is beyond me.”

“Also glue,” added the Count, pointing to a small tub of thick stuff. “To keep the cups attached.” And with that, he set to work, taking cup after cup, touching the soft rims with glue, and setting them against Westley’s skin. “Eventually I’ll have to put one on your tongue too,” the Count said, “but I’ll save that for last in case you have any questions.”

“This certainly isn’t the easiest thing to get set up, is it?”

“I’ll be able to fix that in later models,” the Count said; “at least those are my present plans,” and he kept right on putting cup after cup on Westley’s skin until every inch of exposed surface was covered. “So much for the outside,” the Count said then. “This next is a bit more delicate; try not to move.”

“I’m chained hand, head and foot,” Westley said. “How much movement do you think I’m capable of?”

“Are you really as brave as you sound, or are you a little frightened? The truth, please. This is for posterity, remember.”

“I’m a little frightened,” Westley replied.

The Count jotted that down, along with the time. Then he got down to the fine work, and soon there were tiny tiny soft rimmed cups on the insides of Westley’s nostrils, against his eardrums, under his eyelids, above and below his tongue, and before the Count arose, Westley was covered inside and out with the things. “Now all I do,” the Count said very loudly, hoping Westley could hear, “is get the wheel going to its fastest spin so that I have more than enough power to operate. And the dial can be set from one to twenty and, this being the first time, I will set it at the lowest setting, which is one. And then all I need do is push the lever forward, and we should, if I haven’t gummed it up, be in full operation.”

But Westley, as the lever moved, took his brain away, and when the Machine began, Westley was stroking her autumn-colored hair and touching her skin of wintry cream and—and—and then his world exploded—because the cups, the cups were everywhere, and before, they had punished his body but left his brain, only not the Machine; the Machine reached everywhere—his eyes were not his to control and his ears could not hear her gentle loving whisper and his brain slid away, slid far from love into the deep fault of despair, hit hard, fell again, down through the house of agony into the county of pain. Inside and out, Westley’s world was ripping apart and he could do nothing but crack along with it.

The Count turned off the Machine then, and as he picked up his notebooks he said, “As you no doubt know, the concept of the suction pump is centuries old—well, basically, that’s all this is, except instead of water, I’m sucking life; I’ve just sucked away one year of your life. Later I’ll set the dial higher, certainly to two or three, perhaps even to five. Theoretically, five should be five times more severe than what you’ve just endured, so please be specific in your answers. Tell me now, honestly: how do you feel?”

In humiliation, and suffering, and frustration, and anger, and anguish so great it was dizzying, Westley cried like a baby.

“Interesting,” said the Count, and carefully noted it down.

It took Yellin a week to get his enforcers together in sufficient number, together with an adequate brute squad. And so, five days before the wedding, he stood at the head of his company awaiting the speech of the Prince. This was in the castle courtyard, and when the Prince appeared, the Count was, as usual, with him, although, not as usual, the Count seemed preoccupied. Which, of course, he was, though Yellin had no way of knowing that. The Count had sucked ten years from Westley this past week, and, with the life of sixty-five that was average for a Florinese male, the victim had approximately thirty years remaining, assuming he was about twenty-five when they started experimenting. But how best to go about dividing that? The Count was simply in a quandary. So many possibilities, but which would prove, scientifically, most interesting? The Count sighed; life was never easy.

“You are here,” the Prince began, “because there may be another plot against my beloved. I charge each and every one of you with being her personal protector. I want the Thieves Quarter empty and all the inhabitants jailed twenty-four hours before my wedding. Only then will I rest easy. Gentlemen, I beg you: think of this mission as being an affair of the heart, and I know you will not fail.” With that he pivoted and, followed by the Count, hurried from the courtyard, leaving Yellin in command.

The conquest of the Thieves Quarter began immediately. Yellin worked long and hard at it each day, but the Thieves Quarter was a mile square, so there was much to do. Most of the criminals had been through unjust and illegal round-ups before, so they offered little resistance. They knew the jails were not celled enough for all of them, so if it meant a few days’ incarceration, what did it matter?

There was, however, a second group of criminals, those who realized that capture meant, for various past performances, death, and these, without exception, resisted. In general, Yellin, through adroit handling of the Brute Squad, was able to bring these bad fellows, eventually, under control.

Still, thirty-six hours before the sunset wedding, there were half a dozen holdouts left in the Thieves Quarter. Yellin arose at dawn and, tired and confused—not one of the captured criminals seemed to come from Guilder—he gathered the best of the Brute Squad and led them into the Thieves Quarter for what simply had to be the final foray.

Yellin went immediately to Falkbridge’s Alehouse, first sending all save two Brutes off on various tasks, keeping a noisy one and a quiet one for his own needs. He knocked on Falkbridge’s door and waited. Falkbridge was by far the most powerful man in the Thieves Quarter. He seemed almost to own half of it and there wasn’t a crime of any dimension he wasn’t behind. He always avoided arrest, and everyone except Yellin thought Falkbridge must be bribing somebody. Yellin
knew
he was bribing somebody, since every month, rain or shine, Falkbridge came to Yellin’s house and gave him a satchel full of money.

“Who?” Falkbridge called from inside the alehouse.

“The Chief of All Enforcement in Florin City, accompanied by Brutes,” Yellin replied. Completeness was one of his virtues.

“Oh.” Falkbridge opened the door. For a power, he was very unimposing, short and chubby. “Come in.”

Yellin entered, leaving the two Brutes in the doorway. “Get ready and be quick,” Yellin said.

“Hey, Yellin, it’s me,” Falkbridge said softly.

“I know, I know,” Yellin said softly right back. “But please, do me a favor, get ready.”

“Pretend I did. I’ll stay in the alehouse, I promise. I got enough food; no one will ever know.”

“The Prince is without mercy,” Yellin said. “If I let you stay and I’m found out, that’s it for me.”

“I been paying you twenty years to stay out of jail. You’re a rich man just so I don’t have to go to jail. Where’s the logic of me paying you and no advantages?”

“I’ll make it up to you. I’ll get you the best cell in Florin City. Don’t you trust me?”

“How can I trust a man I pay twenty years to stay out of jail when all of a sudden, the minute a little extra pressure’s on, he says ‘go to jail’? I’m not going.”

“You!” Yellin signaled to the noisy one.

The Brute started running forward.

“Put this man in the wagon immediately,” Yellin said.

Falkbridge was starting to explain when the noisy one clubbed him across the neck.

“Not so hard!” Yellin cried.

The noisy one picked up Falkbridge, tried dusting his clothes.

“Is he alive?” Yellin asked.

“See, I didn’t know you wanted him breathing in the wagon; I thought you only wanted him in the wagon breathing or not, so—”

“Enough,” Yellin interrupted and, upset, he hurried out of the alehouse while the noisy one brought Falkbridge. “Is that everyone then?” Yellin asked as various Brutes were visible leaving the Thieves Quarter pulling various wagons.

“I think there’s still the fencer with the brandy,” the noisy one began. “See, they tried getting him out yesterday but—”

“I can’t be bothered with a drunk; I’m an important man, get him out of here and do it now, both of you; take the wagon with you, and be quick! This quarter must be locked and deserted by sundown or the Prince will be mad at me, and I don’t like it much when the Prince is mad at me.”