Hazards by Mike Resnick Page B

right hand and her right wrist with my left hand. She wrapped her legs around my waist and started squeezing the air out of me, and while she was doing that she wrapped her other legs around my ankles so’s I couldn’t move, which surprised me because up until that very moment I’d thunk she only had two legs.
    Then she wrapped some more legs around my thighs, and then I heard her legs starting to hiss, and I realized that Bubbles had decided his mistress was in trouble and had come on over to protect her.
    “Foul!” I yelled.
    “What are you talking about?” she grated. “I haven’t done anything to you yet.”
    “You get that snake off’n me or I’m gonna bring my godly wrath down on both your heads!” I said.
    She twisted around to see what I was talking about.
    “Bubbles!” she cried. “Go back to your dog house!”
    Bubbles looked plaintively at her.
    “Now!”
    Bubbles gave my legs one final squeeze for good measure and crawled off.
    Valeria watched him slither off, and since her attention was took elsewhere, I gave her a delicate little pinch in a delicate little place to see if I could encourage her to get off me, and all I can tell you is that if basketball players could jump like that they’d have to give serious consideration to raising the hoop to maybe twelve or fifteen feet high.
    As for me, I figgered if I got up she’d just knock me down again, and if I actually put any hold on her, she’d either slap my face (depending on where the hold was) or Bubbles would come hissing and sliding to her rescue again, so I reasoned that the best thing was to stay right on the ground where I was.
    “Get up, Lucifer!” she snarled. “I’m going to tear you to pieces!”
    “I can’t,” I said. “Your snake done busted up my legs.”
    “I didn’t hear anything break,” she said.
    “Muscles don’t make as loud a snapping sound as bones do,” I said. “But if you want this to be a fair fight in front of your people, we’re gonna have to postpone it until I got my legs back under me.”
    “All right,” she said reluctantly. “But if you’re lying…”
    “Gods ain’t capable of lying,” I said, crossing my heart.
    “I’d have sworn there were a lot of things gods weren’t capable of before I got in the ring with you,” she said bitterly.
    “I suppose that means you don’t want to kiss and make up?”
    She just glared at me and then ordered a couple of the bigger guys who had wanted to rassle me to carry me over to the altar, where I’d have room to lie down and stretch my feet out. One of them pulled his knife out and turned to her.
    “As long as he’s here anyway, Priestess,” he said, “it seems a shame to waste the opportunity.”
    “No, I must keep my word,” said Valeria. “We will continue our battle when his legs have healed.”
    “You know,” I said, “as long as we’re postponing it, we could pass the word to neighboring continents and sell tickets.”
    “What’s a ticket?” asked Valeria.
    “What’s a neighboring continent?” asked the guy with the knife.
    Well, I could see that they were just a bunch of ignorant peasants, half of ’em beautiful and half of ’em ugly, and all of them badly in need of a god what could teach ’em the ways of civilized societies. But before I could tell them why they were in serious need of me, Valeria ordered them all out, except for two nubile lesser priestesses what wasn’t wearing no more clothes than she herself was.
    “On the off chance that you really are a god, you will stay here in the temple until you can walk again,” said Valeria. “I am leaving these two handmaidens to bring you food and tend to your wounds.”
    “You ain’t staying your own self?” I asked.
    I thunk she was gonna slap me again, but instead she just glared at me for a moment, then turned to the two girls.
    “You know your duties,” she said. “But be very careful whenever you get within arm’s reach of him.”
    “But isn’t he a