"I have been telling you the truth," Daoud moaned. "Will you not believe me?"
"Bugiardo! Liar!" Erculio struck him hard on the shin with the stick. Pain blazed through his leg. Daoud could have remained silent, but he shrieked loudly, knowing that fear, as much as pain, would make the man he was pretending to be cry out.
Turning to the others, Erculio said, "What will you wager against these handsome clothes of his that I get this pezzo di carne to speak the words our honorable podesta wants to hear? A bet makes this game more interesting. What say you, any takers?"
"The man is quivering like a frumenty now," said one guard. "He would have been talking long ago if he had anything to say."
"You think so?" Erculio snapped his fingers. "Good. Bet with me, then."
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.