I opened the huge armored door to the training area and started to step inside.
I was hit with a wall of sound!
The first hall is a huge place of platforms and machines, full of shadows and dim recesses.
The hall resounded with a curling, snapping, vicious sound! I tried to back up and get out but Heller was behind me coming in and he closed the door after him.
I could be reading the brand-new Dresden Files book right now. I've got the entire Discworld series on a bookshelf literally within arm's reach. Hell, one of my favorite authors on fanfiction.net just updated his Command & Conquer 'fic. But instead, duty compels me to spend an hour or so with L. Ron Hubbard.
The snapping sound that's overwhelming poor, delicate Gris is the Countess' electro-whip, which she's using to lash the five burly Apparatus workers frantically trying to escape her wrath. Then Gris spots gleaming eyes in the shadows next to Krak's desk - it's a lepertige, nine hundred pounds of muscle under mottled black and orange fur. In other words, a tiger with possibly leopard-like spots.
There's a weird moment when Gris, who tries to bolt for the door at the sight of the not-tiger, notices fresh blood on its jaw, becomes "fascinated" by the gore, and instead moves to get a better look in case there's a body on the floor that the beast has been tearing into. Almost as if Gris has an unhealthy fascination with bloodshed that overrides his survival instincts. Now, if you were an author intending to portray Soltan Gris as a murderous villain, this would be an effective and comparatively subtle way to do so - not to have him outright admit in his narration that "I like blood and violence!", but to show him taking a deviant interest in gore and suffering, without him even thinking it something worth mentioning to his audience.
So of course this flash of competence is entirely accidental on Hubbard's part. Gris has little to no reaction, positive or negative, to his acts of violence over the rest of the book. He's predictably upset when someone's trying to kill him, but he doesn't revel in the act of bloodletting or anything. This is a moment of character stupidity, not character-building.
Anyway, Gris realizes that the not-tiger has been captured and brought in for training by the Countess, but has had its claws pulled out in preparation. Hence the Countess' whipping of the workers for bringing in a "maimed" animal. She lashes the drudges without any sign of anger or sadistic pleasure or any emotion whatsoever, as if "she might just as well have been eating dinner." Once all five are down and whimpering for mercy, she warns that she'll send a trained not-tiger to kill their boss if this happens again.
And then she walks over to the not-tiger to inspect its wounds, making it lay its paw in her hand with a simple gesture. Wordlessly she directs the beast into its cage, which the thoroughly-whipped workers hastily lock. The chapter ends with her ordering a culture from Dr. Crobe's lab to regrow the creature's claws.
So, Countess Krak: completely stoic, sends groups of brutes running from her electrified whip without getting her heart-rate up, good with animals. Compared to the likes of Lombar Hisst she's an interesting character, but now she's going to meet Jettero Heller and... hang on, where's Heller been this chapter? He followed Gris inside and then just stood in the doorway, watching. He had no reaction to the whipping or the not-tiger or anything. And next chapter he greets the Countess like he's seeing her for the first time instead of having just witnessed her feats of whipping and animal handling.
Guess he was admiring the construction of the doorway and sensing temperature variations with his hand again instead of paying attention to, you know, all the screaming and the sounds of the crackling electrified whip and the smell of cooked flesh and burned uniforms and the animal stink of the not-tiger and the coppery tang of blood. Guy really likes his rocks, after all.
Back to Chapter Two
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