Death Quest

  PART FORTY-THREE

  Chapter 3

  That very night, an omen of success came my way.

  I was still, as both Miss Pinch and Candy emphatically told me, in the doghouse over this fleas business. Women get so picky about the smallest little things.

  They worked all evening getting things arranged for their “open house,” as they were suddenly calling it. And I overheard that it was to be held the very following night.

  I had been keeping out of the way, trying to work out how to get two thousand dollars. I had not been paid for yesterday and I doubted I would be paid for today or tomorrow. They had been working themselves to exhaustion and I had been relegated to the back room at night. I was getting no chance to run up a bill and earn my money.

  About eleven, all other sallies having failed, I came up with a cunning idea: I would get interested in the decor. The new furniture was all in the shape of clamshells and tall, thick posts with rounded tops. The walls were a green seascape below a yellow sky. The curtains and borders of the rooms looked like sea foam. As I often watched TV commercials, I thought it might be an ad for shaving cream.

  So, as they hurried about, I asked, “What are you trying to put up? A shaving cream ad?”

  Well, I must say, that got a response.

  “Aphrodite!” snapped Miss Pinch acidly. “The goddess of love, you lunkhead. The sea, the undulant waves repeating in sensuous curves, the phallic symbols stabbing nobly upward, the foam. Haven’t you ever heard of Greek mythology? Where in hell were you educated?”

  I was about to tell her heatedly that it had been the Royal Academy on Voltar, no matter how many courses I’d flunked, when Candy came to my rescue.

  “No, no, Pinchy,” Candy said. “You get so emotional where the story of Uranus is concerned. I’ll tell him.”

  “Well, go ahead,” said Miss Pinch, calming down, “I always love to hear it.”

  “Aphrodite,” Candy told me, “is the ancient Greek goddess of sexual love and beauty. The Greek word aphros means ‘foam.’ You see, there was an earlier god named Uranus, which means ‘heaven,’ and he had a son called Cronus. Now, apparently this son Cronus got pretty mad at his old man. He grabbed a knife and cut his father’s (bleeps) off and threw them into the sea.”

  “Isn’t that beautiful,” said Miss Pinch with a dreamy look in her eye.

  “Wait a minute,” I said, not liking that look, “what does this have to do with love?”

  Miss Pinch would have answered but Candy quickly continued, motioning to Miss Pinch to shut up. “Cronus threw his old man’s (bleeps) in the sea and they foamed, of course. So that’s what sea foam is. And Aphrodite was born out of the sea foam and everybody worships her.”

  “And you will notice,” said Miss Pinch, “that everybody remembers and knows Aphrodite and nobody either knows or cares who the hell Uranus was.”

  They got back to work. But I withdrew into a corner to think this over. I knew the Greeks, aside from producing fleas, engaged in sacrifice. Now, I could not quite remember if they were animal sacrifices or human sacrifices. Then the horrible thought struck me that here on Earth it wouldn’t matter. They believed that men were animals so they probably sacrificed both without much compunction.

  What the Hells was this “open house” they were going to hold? Some kind of a mystical sacrifice in which they cut off my testicles? It worried me, especially since there wasn’t a Voltarian cellologist handy to grow me any new ones.

  Accordingly, I didn’t push to go to bed with them in the front room and when they at last collapsed from completing the apartment at 2:00 AM, I did not even venture near the front room to go to bed. I felt much more secure on a new sofa in the back room.

  It was then I got my omen. My mood had been sort of black and this occurrence cheered me enormously. The Greeks specialized in omens, so it was very fitting.

  The viewers I used to monitor Krak, Heller and Crobe had small buzzers on them one could set. In cleaning them up I must have tripped the switch of one. I had just about closed my eyes when there was a whirr in the closet. It meant that one of the three had opened their eyes after being asleep.

  I went in the closet to shut it off. And then I didn’t.

  It was Krak’s. She was sitting on the side of the bed in the “thinking room” of the Empire State Building. She had on a nightgown. She was crying.

  Heller woke up. He sat up and pulled her over to him and put her head on his chest, stroking her hair. “There, there,” he said. “What’s the matter?”

  “It was an AWFUL nightmare. It was so real.”

  “I’m sorry. Want to tell me about it?”

  “I was in some sort of a room. I was lying on my back. I was sort of paralyzed. I couldn’t move. And then this awful-looking monster was kneeling over me.” She began to cry very hard, clutching at him. After a bit she could talk again. “Then I heard a voice from somewhere and it said that you were dead.” And she began crying again in earnest.

  Gently, Heller said, “Well, I just looked and there aren’t any monsters watching. And I’m not dead. I’m right here.”

  She threw her arms around his neck convulsively. She said, “Oh, Jettero, this planet makes me afraid. If anything happened to you, I think I would just die. I couldn’t stand it. If I can’t live with you, I don’t want to live and that’s all there is to it.”

  “There, there,” he said. “You know that I love you. We’ll succeed.”

  “Jettero,” she said, crying again, “please, let’s hurry up and finish and go home. I have an awful feeling something dreadful is going to happen to me and then to you.”

  He was trying to soothe her and get her to go back to sleep in his arms. But I had seen enough.

  Dreams are portents, that I knew.

  It was an omen.

  She had foreseen that they both would die.

  I went back to the sofa, grinning into the dark. It was a beautiful omen. All else that troubled me was pushed away.

  There was not the slightest doubt left in my mind.

  THE COUNTESS KRAK WAS GOING TO DIE!

  PART FORTY-THREE

  Chapter 4

  The only thing which kept me from completing the project was money. And little did I know that it was sliding toward my pockets in an unpredicted avalanche.

  The following evening, after the omen, the open house was held. All day I had been buffeted about by caterers and such: Because it was a working day, Candy and Miss Pinch had made me responsible, with many threats, for letting tradespeople in and out. I performed the job a bit absentmindedly, as I was mainly concentrating upon how to get the two thousand dollars, pay the Faustino bill and arrange for a hit man.

  Accordingly, I was pretty surprised to be blasted by Miss Pinch when she came home from work and found I had not finished cleaning up and had not dressed.

  “People will start arriving any minute!” she stormed, tearing out of her work clothes and getting into a cocktail dress. “Get into a tuxedo or something and then help me pick up these wrappings from the floor.”

  Anticipating spring and summer, no doubt, the old Jew garments man had provided me with a white tuxedo jacket and black pants. But I didn’t know how to tie one of those bow ties and Miss Pinch almost strangled me getting it on me. Then Candy noticed I was wearing military boots and they got them off me and jammed on patent leather pumps just as the doorbell rang with the first guests.

  I was surprised, now that I looked at the place, how big the rooms really were. Once the torture equipment was taken out and the hall was better integrated into the rooms, the front room looked quite like a salon. The back room, which had been promised me in which to work, was almost as large. It had a huge expanse of glass now, which looked out upon a garden. Everything tonight, including the newly planted garden, was ablaze with light. Ribbons scalloped down from the ceilings. Temporary tables groaned under foamy-looking cakes and bottles which were ready to gush. Some classic piece called “The Rite of Sp
ring” filled the place with music. Quite impressive. It ought to have been from the number of blank petty cash vouchers I’d been signing.

  I thought I might be seeing people like the Security Chief or some fellow males from Octopus Oil. But the doorbell rang and rang and couple after couple came in, deluding me at first into believing I would see a fellow man by the slouch hats and men’s topcoats. But nay, alas, they were all lesbian couples. Some of the “males” even wore tuxedos. They tried to greet me heartily with bass voices. They swatted me on the shoulder and called me “old man.” But I certainly was not fooled. The bass voices broke into treble unexpectedly and the swats might well have been intended to push me away from their “wives.”

  I never saw a party move quite so fast. The bottles gushed and gurgled. The cake was washed down. The music started through only the third time.

  Suddenly Miss Pinch broke away from a cluster and said to me in an undertone, “Inkswitch, I have a frightful headache. All this will be over in minutes. You are not required to tell them goodbye. Here is five bucks. Run down to the all-night drugstore and get me a bottle of aspirin. They’ll all be gone by the time you get back, so come in quietly, as I feel so bad I want to go to bed at once and the light is hurting my eyes.”

  The all-night drugstore was five blocks away. I went at a leisurely pace. After one glass of champagne I had a headache, too. The spring night felt cooling on my face. I got the aspirin and then had a Bromo-Seltzer at the counter. I wandered back home.

  Sure enough, the lights were out, the place was all quiet. I tiptoed in.

  Faint snores greeted me in the living room. I tried to light a light and give Miss Pinch her aspirin but evidently a bulb had blown. I said to Hells with the aspirin, she’s asleep anyway. I tried to go into the back room. The door was locked. Well, what the Hells, I was tired of sleeping in there on the sofa anyway.

  I shucked off my clothes. I had to fumble around because I was not oriented in the place. The new bed, I knew, was a sort of big clamshell with high phallic symbols on each side. It served as a sofa in the daytime. But it was all made up now.

  After bumping my head on a pillar, I found the bottom and crawled up the middle of the bed. I pulled back the sheet and slid under. Usually, I slept between Miss Pinch and Candy so I composed myself and got ready to dream about money.

  A hand slid over and touched my right thigh. Some fingers lightly explored my stomach.

  I was suddenly reminded that if I were ever to get that two thousand dollars, I had better become highly agreeable.

  I rolled over to my right.

  I started to do my duty.

  I suddenly halted.

  What was this?

  Something odd. How had Candy become a virgin again?

  Well, this was no time to wonder about things like that!

  The whole bed shook.

  A scream blasted my ears!

  Oh, well, Candy was always screaming.

  But her moans were certainly exaggerated, even for Candy.

  The sheet flew up into the air!

  A louder scream!

  A string of seashells on the wall chattered like castanets.

  WHOOSH!

  The body under me went limp.

  Oh, well, if Candy wanted to faint again, that was her business.

  I slid back over to the middle of the bed. For a moment, I thought the seashells were still chattering. I could see them by the streetlight shining through the window. They were just hanging there.

  Where was this chattering coming from?

  Teeth? A beam from the window lit them. Pinch’s teeth chattering?

  Oh, well, she was just funning.

  I rolled and grabbed.

  Indrawn breath like terror.

  What on Earth was Pinch up to?

  What the Devils? Since when had Pinch become a virgin again?

  Oh, well, just some more women’s tricks. They’re full of them.

  A scream!

  Then panting in rhythm.

  Moans in rhythm.

  WHOOSH!

  The sheet flew up.

  A shuddering cry!

  Total limpness. A dangling arm swung in the streetlight beam and then became still, hanging off the side of the bed.

  I wondered what the Devils Miss Pinch was doing, passing out.

  THE LIGHTS CAME ON!

  I looked up bewilderedly.

  There were microphones suspended from the ceiling. Two TV cameras stood on tripods marked Infrared.

  The back-room door burst open and a mob of people rushed in.

  Miss Pinch and Candy were in the lead!

  I stared down at the face still under me. The eyeballs were rolled back into the head, the mouth was open and slack. It was a peroxide blonde!

  Blinking, I stared at the other girl in the bed beside us. She had a mannish haircut. Bluish hair. No makeup. It was a lesbian “husband.” Her eyelids were wide open but her eyeballs were tilted clean up into her skull. She was out cold.

  Miss Pinch was holding back the crowd that was pressing slaveringly around the bed. “You see! You see!” Miss Pinch was shouting to be heard above the babble. “I told you what real sex would do. NOW do you believe me?”

  I got off the peroxide blonde. I pulled the sheet up around my throat. “What the Hells is this?” I shrieked.

  “My dear fellow,” said a lesbian husband, leaning close to me and forgetting all about a bass voice, “I saw it all on this closed-circuit TV and I must say you deserve an Oscar. Ought to be on the national networks!”

  “(Bleep) you!” shouted Miss Pinch. “That was no put-on. That was the real thing!”

  “Oh, pish, pish,” said a lesbian wife. “Anyone can simulate, Pinchy, and you know it. The only innovation here is that this Inkswitch is wearing a falsie.” And she yanked at the sheet.

  “Movie blood,” said a lesbian husband. “But a delightful fake all the same.”

  “God (bleep) it,” howled Miss Pinch, “if it’s a fake, then how do you account for that volunteer couple being OUT COLD?”

  “Do you mind if I touch your dildo, old man?” asked a lesbian husband, elbowing through and reaching out.

  I climbed halfway up a phallic-symbol pillar.

  At Pinch’s signal, she and Candy at once approached the unconscious pair and began to massage their wrists and slap their faces.

  “Get me a cold towel, somebody!” bellowed Miss Pinch. She was working on the lesbian husband with the bluish hair. By swatting him/her with the towel she finally brought him/her around.

  “Spike, god (bleep) it,” said Miss Pinch, “sit up and give your evidence.”

  The first one I had had sat up dizzily. Spike said, “Jesus!”

  “Tell them!” howled Miss Pinch.

  “Jesus,” said Spike.

  Miss Pinch abandoned Spike. She brushed back the crowd and made it over to the other side of the clamshell bed where Candy was working on the other one. Miss Pinch squashed the cold towel into the face of the peroxide blonde. “Lover-girl, god (bleep) it!” cried Miss Pinch. “Come around, you slut!”

  Lover-girl got her eyes down level. Then they crossed. She gave up trying to sit up and fell back.

  “Give your evidence!” howled Miss Pinch.

  “Oh, boy!” said Lover-girl and passed out again.

  A lesbian husband who was still wearing a top hat and leaning on a cane drawled, “Oh, I do say, Pinchy, that it was a great show. But obviously Spike and Lover-girl were just part of the act as well. We all know that natural sex is no good.”

  “God (bleep) it!” screamed Miss Pinch. “It’s Psychiatric Birth Control that’s no good! They’ve been lying to the lot of you! This is natural sex. You saw it on closed-circuit TV. You heard it on the microphones. You’ve got a couple here knocked out cold. What more do you (bleepards) want?”

  “Evidence,” said the lesbian husband in the top hat. “Anyone can fake a show, Pinchy. You’ve just taken us in.”

  All the
others in that crowd nodded!

  The brunette wife of a couple said, “Good show, Pinchy. Stirred one up. So if you don’t mind, we’ll go home and do it in the good old recommended way and keep up the great lesbian tradition.”

  “Marlene!” Miss Pinch screamed at her. “You stand right where you are. This show isn’t over yet!”