Right away the others saw she was going to pull a last minute sales rejection and say she did not want the item after all. They grabbed her. They pulled off her oxfords. They turned her upside down and shucked her out of her pants. Her shirt went flying through the air, followed by her very masculine BVDs. Her breast compressor hit the wastebasket. “After tonight,” Adora told her, “you won’t want that again, ever.”
Adora got behind me and gave a mighty shove. “Have at her, dear husband.”
The clamshell top of the bed vibrated and Candy hastily grabbed it as it shook, preventing it from falling down.
Mike’s face, close under me, showed wonder as she said, “Oh, it isn’t a falsie after all! Oh, you’re wonderful!”
Here was appreciation! She was . . .
FLASH!
For an instant I thought we had been hit with spaceship landing-preparation blueflash and got all ready to go unconscious. I didn’t. I stared around.
Teenie! That gods (bleeped) kid had a flash camera! She had just taken a picture.
To Hells with her. With determination I got back at it.
Adora was smiling indulgently as Mike crooned, “Oh, you honey baby!”
Mildred was bobbing her head in expectant rhythm as Mike cried, voice throbbing with passion, “I have never, never, never felt anything so wonderful. A real MAN!”
I grinned with the compliment and concentrated as she moaned.
FLASH!
There it was again! Gods (bleep) it, it took my mind off it utterly!
I gritted my teeth. I got going again.
Teenie was struggling with her camera.
I kept one eye on her. I must beat her to the draw!
The whole bed quaked and the clamshell top tried to come down but Candy grabbed and held it.
I rested for a moment, panting, and then gave Teenie a sneer. I’d beaten her!
Adora was in there with her usual pitch as soon as Mike had come around. And Mike said, yes, oh, yes indeed! Emphatically! That was the end of biting and scratching. And using Polish sausages for dildos.
Now it was Mildred’s turn. But frankly, I felt sort of under a strain. Nerves.
Candy was very nice. She took me into the shower and turned it on and it did help a little. A few minutes later I came back. Mildred was lying on the bed, sheet held up under her chin, looking at me speculatively.
Teenie was having trouble with her camera. Adora was fixing it for her. My restored ardor deflated.
“No more of that!” I said angrily. “Send her home and right now, at once!”
“But her education,” said Adora.
“I don’t give a (bleep) if she’s a dropout,” I said. “Get her out of here!”
“Oh, pish, pish and tush, tush,” said Adora. “You have no feeling for the young.”
But I was having trouble. Adora got a joint. She shoved it into my mouth and lit it. I took a puff. She hit me in the stomach and I exhaled violently. She jammed the joint into my mouth and when I pulled my breath back in a whole city of smog came with it. I coughed but the stuff was in my lungs. The walls began to recede and draw near.
Adora sat me down and got me to smoking quietly.
Mike stumbled over and sat down beside me. Her eyes were filled with wonder as she petted my shoulder. It did marvelous things for my morale and I began to take confidence.
Adora gave me a persuasive pull toward the bed.
Mildred watched me approach, expectantly.
Candy made sure the bed-top shell was hooked more solidly to the wall, but it had already begun to move. She looked down at the bed appreciatively.
Mike smiled as she watched in dreamy knowingness as the moans started up.
FLASH!
I came straight off the bed!
It took me a moment to see again that it was not a spaceship landing.
Teenie’s oversize lips were smiling sweetly. “That was a good one,” she said. “She looked just like she was dying!”
“Kill this kid,” I said bitterly to Adora.
“Oh, why should you be upset with a little thing like that? After all, it was only the artistry in the girl. Education and art go hand in hand. She saw something she wanted and she took it.”
“I’m going to kill her,” I said.
Adora got me back on the sofa. She lit another joint. Candy found some champagne. I drank it between puffs and started to calm down.
Mildred was threshing around, moaning on the bed.
“Not one more picture!” I said.
“I won’t do it again,” said Teenie.
Soothingly, Adora led me back toward the bed.
Candy was steadying the top of the clamshell as it began to move once more.
Mike, still in dreamy appreciation, began to bob her head in rhythm as she watched.
I was gritting my teeth with effort.
Candy hastily grabbed the top of the bed as a seeming earthquake threatened to collapse it.
I sat up triumphantly with a sneer at Teenie. In spite of her I had made it!
When Mildred came around, Adora was in there with her sales pitch. There was no sales resistance. “Men, men, men,” whispered Mildred. “Give me men every time!” It was a pretty good testimonial. She was lying there dreamy-eyed and purring like a cat.
Candy gave me another glass of champagne and I raised it as a toast to myself. I was swallowing the bubbly brew and had half a glass to go when I heard a voice.
“Now Teenie wants some more pictures.”
When I was through coughing and wheezing and trying to get the champagne out of my lungs, I hoarsed, “Where did you put the dueling pistols? I am going to kill that kid!”
Adora said, “Look at that poor child! You have frightened her half to death!” And then she put her face close to my ear and said in a deadly voice, “You’re going to do what you’re told, bigamist.”
I said weakly, “But there’s nothing else to take pictures of! The two girls are satisfied.”
“I need demonstration shots,” said Teenie. “How can I do my homework without accurate and detailed examples? If I have nothing to study, I won’t make it at all!”
“You hear?” said Adora to me. “Just tell us what you want, Teenie.”
“Well, ice skaters have to have pictures of themselves to perfect their technique. You said so yourself, Pinchy. I don’t have those pictures yet.”
“Of course,” said Adora indulgently.
“Could you operate the camera?” said Teenie, parking her bubble gum on the head of an Aphrodite statuette.
“Of course,” said Adora. And she accepted it. “Now what do you want exactly?”
Instantly, Teenie’s dress flew through the air.
I was still sitting on the sofa.
She came over and stood in front of me. She looked down critically at me and shook her head. “This will never do,” she said.
Teenie turned to Adora.
“What we need is some music,” said Teenie. “I have just bought the latest Neo Punk Rock record by the Naughty Boys. It’s right here in my purse. Do you mind if I play it?”
She would have put the forty-five straight onto the stereo, but I took it from her hand. Anything to do with Teenie was pretty deadly stuff. One had to be cautious. The label said:
NEO PUNK ROCK
MORAL
For Grade-school Kiddies
International Psychological
Association Approved
Educational Ditty
The Naughty Boys:
Biffer, Poker, Slider and Wowie.
Oh, well, Hells, it was just some childish gibberish and if the psychologists approved it, it must be quite all right. “Go ahead,” I said.
She expertly set the stereo on 45 rpm and fixed it so the record would repeat over and over. She turned the volume high and around it went. The needle came down.
Six crashing tom-tom beats followed by three thundering tympani strokes. POW, POW, POW, POW, POW, POW! BOOM, BOOM,
BOOM! And then it repeated. And then it kept right on repeating! Forceful, compelling, savage, primitive!
All the people in the room began to jerk in rhythm to those drums. Teenie was wide-eyed, beating time with her hips and heels.
Then the whine and moan of electronic instruments.
Then a chorale like a tribal chant:
Freddie was a jumper!
Jump, jump, jump!
Freddie was a jumper!
Pump, pump, pump!
Freddie jumped his teacher!
Pump, pump, pump!
Freddie jumped his sister!
Pump, pump, pump!
Freddie jumped his brother!
Pump, pump, pump!
Freddie jumped his papa!
Pump, pump, pump!
Freddie jumped his mama!
Pump, pump, pump!
Freddie jumped a ROBOT!
Oh, my God!
Poor, poor Freddie,
Hasn’t got a rod!
And then in a perfectly normal voice at the end it said: So that’s the moral, little kiddies. Don’t never (bleep) robots!
The women in the room had almost had (bleeps) from the rhythm. I thought I had read the label wrong. I leaped up and snatched it from the turntable before it could repeat. Yes, it was approved by the International Psychological Association and its title was “Moral.”
Teenie snatched it out of my hands. She put it back on the turntable. It started up again, POW, POW, POW, POW, POW, POW! BOOM, BOOM, BOOM!
She got into the rhythm of it. “Ain’t it dreamy?” she said with a beatific smile that made her oversize mouth look like a hungry cavern. She looked to see if Adora was ready. Then she turned to me, “Come on, cowboy, let’s get into the first pose!”
She reached out and yanked me to my feet so fast my robe flew out behind me.
She bent back and looked at me with an astonished expression on her face. She snapped her fingernails.
FLASH!
Adora had the picture.
Teenie made a grab for me.
I hastily tried to bat her hands away and disengage.
FLASH!
It was strange: stamped on my retina was a look of awe upon her face.
But right now, there was anything but awe in Teenie. She was stamping her heels to the music. I was reassured because I thought it was distracting her.
But no!
She suddenly grabbed the lapels of my robe, making it fly wide.
I tried to seize her wrists to get her off me. But she had the flat of her hands against my chest and was pushing ME away.
FLASH!
A look of horror was stamped on my retina. But it wasn’t there now.
The music was going and pounding. Her body writhed against mine, bruising me. The marijuana and music were spinning in my head.
Teenie suddenly dropped to her knees.
I hastily grabbed at her shoulders to make her stand up.
FLASH!
She then stood up, but was I surprised!
She slapped me.
Right in the face!
A deadly insult! An invitation to a duel!
Oh, that was too much to take from this teenage kid!
I wanted to kill her!
She tried to escape me but the back of her knees hit the bed.
FLASH!
The look of fear that was momentarily branded on my retina was not put on—of that I was very sure.
Killing her would be a pleasure!
She whirled around and tried to escape by climbing on the bed.
I seized her ponytail.
She backed up! Against me!
FLASH!
I made my hand flat to give her behind a powerful swat. “I’ll teach you to insult me!” I snarled.
But Teenie was laughing!
Teenie turned over on her back and began to hold her sides with mirth.
Adora was laughing.
Candy was laughing.
Mike and Mildred were laughing.
I could not for the life of me figure out what they were laughing at.
I stamped off to my room and slammed the door.
I went to bed and glowered into the dark.
Blasted teenage monstrosity!
To HELLS with her education!
I could still hear them guffawing in the other room.
Oh, I said, as I gnawed my pillow, when Lombar was finally through with this planet and needed it no more, what a pleasure it would be to blow it up. Especially with Teenie in the middle of the cataclysm. It couldn’t be too soon!
PART FIFTY
Chapter 2
Exhausted by my evening’s work and rage, assisted by the marijuana and champagne, I fell into a restless nap, only to be awakened by a nightmare in which, no matter how hard I tried, I couldn’t get the fuse lit that would explode Earth.
Trying to look at my watch told me two things: I had a terrible pain in my skull and it was 8:00 PM.
There were no sounds coming from the front room. They had obviously gone out to dinner and a show as they often did.
I took a cold shower, trying to get rid of the headache. It didn’t work. But it suddenly brought me alert enough to realize I was neglecting the real reason I had to endure all this travail: Heller!
Cursing the man for now even siccing teenagers on me, I toweled off quickly and uncovered the viewers. Krak’s was still blank, Crobe’s was no interest. But Heller’s was another thing. It was dim but unmistakable: he was still at sea.
I blew out a sigh of relief. I was in time to watch him being blown to bits as he tried to land at Atlantic City. And what a joy THAT would be after all the trouble he had caused me!
The night was a flat calm. There was a glow against the sky that must be Atlantic City. The patrol craft was dead in the water. He was preparing to go in!
Oh, I knew I could count on the harbor master: they don’t like blown-up ships clogging their channels. Heller, I said, you are going to catch it good this time and I hope to the Gods that Lombar has removed your Grand Council contact, for tonight, now, you could get your head blown off. And a pleasure it will be to see it done!
He verified that the running lights of the patrol craft were burning bright. Then he went to a chart table and laid out a chart that showed the East Coast of the US and the Atlantic past Bermuda. He looked into a Coast Pilot and found the Devil’s Triangle. It said it was an area south of Bermuda where ships had been known to disappear from causes never established. He then spotted this area with a pencil point on the chart and drew a line to it and read the course from where he was, off Atlantic City, to the Devil’s Triangle. He couldn’t get it very exact, apparently, for he drew in a bunch of question marks on the chart.
He then went to the pilothouse controls and put the engines back in gear, slow ahead. With the wheel, he brought the craft to the course he had just found and then locked the autopilot in.
Heller turned to the log and, imitating the calligraphy, wrote, “2012 hrs. Sea Monster has told us where to solve mystery in the Devil’s Triangle. Following him at his standard cruising speed, Course 152 degree T. Will report revelations after he has had coffee.”
He then went into the salon, checked each of the crew lying there and arranged the unconscious bodies so they were comfortable.
Heller said to them in general, “When you boys wake up and find yourselves where you will be, I hope, amongst you, you can also find a great way to explain your whereabouts to your Coast Guard superiors. I’ve left you one and, who knows, after the spot they put you in, they might even buy it. I’m leaving now. Don’t bother to pipe the side.” He turned out the light and closed the door.
He went to the rail, climbed over it and dropped into the Sea Skiff which was towing alongside. He started its engines, checked the water pumps for cooling and then, with the slash of a knife, cut the taut towline and was almost at once bobbing back in the patrol craft’s wake.
He looked toward the lights of Atlantic City, a ha
zy dome of dim whitish blue in the blackness. He said, “Now we’ll try to land once more on this hostile coast and see what the natives have cooked up this time. No cannibals, I hope.”