Mad-dog billionaire, Cantwell Undershaft, was devising the most diabolic scheme in 2,000 years. Revival of the bloody and orgiastic Games of Ancient Rome in all their lewd and gory splendor...telecasting from outer space color broadcasts of the grisly spectacles-naked men and girls hacking each other to death, mauled by enraged wild beasts, torn to shreds by half-starved barracudas... His goal, ending forever mankind's lust for war by fulfilling its craving for bloody, sexually sadistic kicks. Was his scheme an insane justification for his own depravity, or were the hundreds of men and girls he slaughtered a realistic safety-valve for the world's repressed desires? That was the problem dread SADISTO agent, Trevor Anderson-0008, had to resolve in a nonstop orgy of sex and mayhem on remote Eros Island.
CHAPTER ONE
I LEFT THE CABIN RIGHT AFTER finishing the pot of coffee that serves me for breakfast and strolled down to the tiny beach next to the log cabin.
The first thing I saw was a naked girl floating in the lake.
She was floating belly down, and I first thought that she was dead. Then she raised her head, shook water out of her eyes, saw me, grinned and began swimming toward shore.
When she reached shallow water, she put her feet down and waded the rest of the way out. The mere sight of her magnificent nude body was almost enough to throw me into convulsions.
An Amazon, a blonde Amazon. She must have stood at least six feet in her bare feet, with broad shoulders and titanic pagan breasts that jutted proudly out from her chest like half-launched torpedoes. Milky white torpedoes.
Her whole body was milky white, in fact. Milk white hips as broad as a lecher's dream; milk white thighs as sleek and full as Grecian columns; a milk white belly such as lovers' dream of pillowing their heads on.
A blonde, too. Even without the wealth of flaxen hair that tumbled in wet waves past her wide shoulders down almost to her waist, even without that waterfall of spun gold and platinum, I'd have known she was a natural blonde.
She was the natural blonde type.
She waded out of the water, shook herself in a marvelous wriggling motion that set her giant, jaunty breasts to quivering and her full buttocks and thighs to shivering, then sauntered toward me.
Her nipples, I noticed with fascination, were fire-engine red-flaming pillars rising from the shocking pink halos of her aureoles. Fully erect nipples. Erect because of the cold lake water, or because....
"Hi," she said, stopping a few feet in front of me. She flicked a few drops of water off her breast, heedless of the happy jouncing this imparted. "My name's Kami." She spelt it for me. "You're Rex Kingston, I presume?"
I nodded, momentarily at a loss for words. Actually, I'm Trevor Anderson, SADISTO's most vicious licensed-to-kill operator, agent 0008-on vacation.
True, this was Rex Kingston's cabin and lake and woods, and in a way I was Rex Kingston. That was the cover that SADISTO had chosen for me to hide under on my holiday. I smirked and looked over at the blonde.
She pouted her full, lush lips. "Well-you don't seem very glad to see me."
I noticed then that her eyes had dropped from my face-that her eyes were fixed below my waist but above my knees.
I glanced down. Curses! Until that moment I'd completely forgotten that I, too, was naked-around the cabin I usually don't bother with clothes.
"Excuse me," I said, "I'll go put on a towel or something."
She reached out a hand, clutched me. "Don't bother," she murmured, her big, sky-blue eyes fixed on mine. "Why be formal? My, how warm your hand is," she added.
"That isn't my hand you're holding,'" I told her-unnecessarily, I suppose.
"No? Well, you're still warm And friendly?" She squeezed me in an affectionate fashion. Squeezed me in a way-and in a place-no virile man could object to.
I almost grabbed her then and there-until the sheer incredibility of her being there, in front of me, struck home. You see, this hideaway cabin is on a lake, a tiny lake, way up in Maine. Got a map of Maine? Good. Look up in the Northern part, way up toward the Quebec border, where there are no roads shown on the map for the simple reason that there are no roads.
Just miles and miles of forest as wild as it was when the Pilgrims landed, miles and miles of forest broken here and there by tiny lakes. Wild country, primitive country. That was where the lake was. Rex Kingston bought the lake a few years ago, bought it cheap for a simple reason: nobody else wanted it. It was too far out, geographically speaking. But it was just right as a hideout for a SADISTO agent on shore leave.
Five days ago I had a float plane fly me and a mess of supplies to this tiny lake. I had arranged with Rex Kingston to use his retreat for two weeks during the summer. He was traveling throughout Baja California researching modern Indian weapons.
When my vacation was finished, the float plane would return to pick me up.
Aside from that, I didn't expect any visitors during the time I intended to spend at the lake. Not many people have float planes, and those that do, have a thousand bigger lakes to land on. Oh, you can reach the cabin by land if you have a trained guide and want to spend ten days hacking your way through the forest.
But so far nobody has.
So you can see why I was suddenly struck by the fact that this gigantic blonde chick had materialized out of nowhere.
"How did you get here?" I asked, while the blonde continued to fondle me in the most suggestive and lascivious manner imaginable.
She giggled, a throaty, sexy giggle. "I dropped in. See?"
She let go my...my...she let go and pointed at her lovely loins. I stared. Faint, very faint lines of pink were visible across the upper parts of her mighty thighs.
"A parachute harness?" I gasped. "You parachuted into my lake?"
She nodded, smiling.
"Stark naked?"
"Of course not, silly." She stretched a long white hand toward a tree limb, draped over which were some rugged but feminine-looking clothes-slacks and lumberjack shirt, plus white panties and a white bra as big as a brace of spinnakers. "I hung my clothes out to dry a few minutes ago, while you were clattering around making coffee."
Well, that explained how she'd gotten there. I knew I'd have heard a float plane or amphibian touch down on the lake...
"'But why are you here?" I demanded-as her shameless hand snaked out and grabbed me again. "Who are you?"
Her brazen fingers began to fondle me with renewed vigor-while she thrust her full, hard-tipped breasts against my naked chest, as her soft breath fanned my cheek.
"Does it matter so much right now?" she whispered. "Let's just say that-that I work for the government."
I went cold. "The Internal Revenue Service?" I cried. "You lousy tax hounds after me again?"
She shut off my flow of words with her ripe lips. Her lips were warm, soft, sweet tasting; and her tongue stabbed fervently into my mouth at the same instant as her hands slid around my waist and her thighs surged forward to thrust and squirm against my (by now) excited flesh.
I couldn't help myself-I returned her kiss. Returned it with interest and slid my arms around her nude and splendid body, traced the long curve of her spine, cupped and squeezed the huge, silken-smooth half moons of her buttocks.
She was no tax agent, that was for sure. I didn't figure her for a forest ranger, either.... Well, whatever she was, she was all woman. And all mine.
I broke the sweet suction of our kiss, drew back my head. Her big blue eyes were half closed, her ripe lips parted. "Don't waste time talking," she begged me. "Talk later!"
I didn't argue with her. I couldn't, because a moment after she'd spoken, her head had moved forward again, and once more her lips were locked to mine, once more her tongue was a thrusting, writhing serpent of superheated lust lashing my mouth to frenzied flame.
I dug my fingers deep into the hot resiliency of her rump, kneading and working the sumptuous flesh even as I pulled her hard against the throbbing urgency of my body, the rising expectation of my desire, the pulsing core of my being.
For long moments we stood locked in an inter-locked embrace, her tongue darting deep into my mouth, my tongue sliding sensuously between her lush lips; her loins grinding and bumping suggestively against my upper thighs and lower belly; my ardor pulsing against her soft flesh.
Then, by mutual unspoken consent, we sank slowly to the soft grass, sank to our knees and then slid on our sides.. Side by side on the grass we lay, chest to breasts, stomach to belly, thigh to thigh, legs intermixed, mouths locked.
Then I rolled her over on her back, moved to crouch over her. She smiled up at me with her eyes, and breasts-a vision of dazzling feminine flesh-spread out like an erotic feast for my eager eyes.
"Kiss me," she murmured, touching her great globular breasts with the tips of her fingers, "kiss me nicely."
I bent my head and kissed her. Kissed the soaring ski slopes of her upper breasts, the rich rotund ripeness of their undersurfaces, the salty sweet scarlet candles of her big, burgeoning nipples.
I locked my lips over the tip of her near breast, inhaled and suctioned the hard-tipped succulence of her passion-pointed breast deep into my mouth, letting my tongue swirl and curl around the imprisoned and exciting flesh.
She made a soft, throaty noise of sheer animal pleasure and gripped the back of my head, forcing my face down even further into the soft hot pillow of her bosom.
I teased and provoked her nipple some more, bit teasingly into the tender, taut, tempting fullness of her breast-her right breast-while my searching hand found and captured the tip of her left breast, prisoning the hot pulsing nipple between my fingers, twisting and tweaking it, rolling it between thumb and finger as if it were the end of a cigar-the combination lock of a safe.
Sensually inflamed by this dual attack on her boobs-her right breast tip in my mouth, her left being fooled with expertly by my fingers-Kami began to gasp and whimper with sexual delight. I bit her again, pinched her harder; and she squealed with pleasure-pain.
What a fun feast of flesh this chick was. What a bountiful treasure chest of tactile treats!
I raised my head, pounced with open mouth on her left breast, nibbled it, vacuumed it deep into my mouth, lightly chewed and teased it with teeth and tongue-while my hands kneaded and squeezed and roughly fingered the multi-textured temptation of her right bliss balloon.
She squirmed with pagan pleasure beneath me, squirmed and writhed and rolled in animal delight.
I knelt beside her lovely body and nuzzled the huge upflung cones of rounded rapture flesh that were her breasts-her milky orbs of passion-swollen ecstasy epidermis, her desire domes tipped with bright red towers of turgid, tongue-tempting nipples.
I slid my cheek along the snow white plain of her belly, I let my lips and tongue etch the swelling, sweeping curves of her hips, her thighs. Then I worked my way back-played on the way back, I should say, since it sure as heck wasn't any work-back to the brashly, blatantly, brazenly rounded ramparts of her big, billowing breasts.
I cupped my bands over them, polished them, patted them.
"Shake 'em," Kami ordered. "Shake 'em good!"
So I shook them. I shook them as if they were mounds of vanilla pudding, as if they were punching balls. I poked them and prodded them and slapped them. I cuffed them and jabbed them and buffeted them. I grabbed her big red nipples between finger and thumb and shook her breasts. I closed my fingers and corrugated my flattened hands back and forth across her jutting nipples.
I grabbed the soft, succulent flesh and sank my fingers deep into it. I worked and worried the mountainous magnificence of her mammaries, then lowered my head and kissed them again-and again and again....
My lips moved in an idle but happy path over her body-kissing the smooth perfection of her shoulders, the pulsing hollow of her throat the creamy valley between her soaring breasts.
I kissed the lobes of her ears, kissed her cheeks, her eyes; I kissed the softness of her upper arms, the sleekness of her rib cage, the inswept curves of her waist, the torrid convexity of her belly.
I moved lower to kiss her further, and she murmured happily and wriggled on the grass and swung her long, luscious legs wide, wide apart-the easier for me to kiss the tempting white flesh of her inner thighs.
I kissed them, working my way up the flesh of her left thigh, then down the flesh of her right, kissing her the while, kissing her ardently, probingly, searchingly; kissing her as she wanted to be kissed, kissing her where he wanted to be kissed.
For a long while I kissed her tropic zone-her upper thighs and lower belly, her hips and haunches. I cradled my cheek against the soft rise and fall of her belly, nestled my cheeks between the smooth flesh fire of her upper thighs-kissing her, tonguing her, caressing her with my hands and fingertips.
When I tired of kissing her, I tickled and teased her with the tip of one finger, slyly poking and probing her hot and yielding flesh until she squealed for me to stop what I was doing-and start doing something else.
But I wasn't ready to start doing what she wanted me to do, so I slid my hands under her buttocks and flipped her over on her belly-and began kissing her again.
I kissed my way up her legs, starting with the soles of her feet and her toes, kissed my way up her calves and then, more slowly, up the backs of her thighs to the saucy curves of her youthful buttocks.
And what buttocks she had! How ripe was her rump, how pleasingly the flesh of her backside dimpled under the slightest pressure of my pressing fingers.
I squeezed and stroked the satiny hot flesh, rubbed it and polished it, letting my fingers and palms stray where they wished, where I wished-where she wished.
I kneaded her inner-tube-taut rump until the hot flesh seemed to writhe and squirm as if it had a life of its own. I patted her, shook her buttocks with cupped hands-an action that caused not only her nates but her full thighs to ripple and quiver excitingly, inflamingly....
Then-then I rolled her on her back again, rolled her over on the clover and crouched over her while she reached up for me with hungry hands and her lush yet lissome thighs swung wide, wide apart.
I crouched over her on all fours, conscious of the sun beating on my back, conscious of the light of lust gleaming in her huge blue eyes, conscious of the mount-, ing excitement, sexual excitement that throbbed through me.
(And small wonder-I'd been more than four days without a woman; this isolated lake isn't without drawbacks.)
"Now?" I asked her.
"You know it," she gasped. "Give it to me, Rex. Holster up, huh? All the way!"
How could I refuse?
I didn't. I simply shoved myself forward and down. It was like a tunnel of lust-a tropic storm raging. I plunged to the hot secret world of her flesh. She squealed with delight, and her mighty hips surged up off the grass with the frenzy of a harpooned dolphin.
Up, up her hips reared, shaking me, rocking me, lifting me while her stomach muscles flickered like carnal lightning.
This chick was no amateur, that was for sure. This chick knew the score, had helped write the score.
After her first fury of the flesh had subsided, her hips began to move in a lazy rocking motion-churning me, twisting me, drawing me ever further to the throbbing, pulsing lust-dream her body had become.
Her fingernails raked and clawed my flesh, she beat her fists against my back while her hungry mouth sought and found my lips, her ardent tongue slid like a wild spirit into my mouth.
She began to moan and whimper as my hips began to piston back and forth, slamming my urgency hard against her roiling need.
She broke her kiss long enough to gasp "Faster!"-then clamped her hot mouth to mine again.
I moved faster. And faster. Back and forth I moved, then, to vary the pleasure, from side to side, around and around. She almost went berserk with delight. And still I kept moving, kept the best part moving, kept churning the pagan cauldron of her body, kept sliding this way and that in search of new flesh thrills for her-for me-for both of us.
And Kami matched me move for move. Most chicks-or at least many chicks-aren't too expert in the sex department. Either they just he there making pleased sounds while you do all the work, or else they respond, but with more enthusiasm than skill: they bounce and wriggle all over the place, never quite in tempo.
Not this chick. This chick had technique. Making physical love to her was like dancing with a skilled partner: every move I made, she anticipated and responded to.
She rolled her hips and twisted her hips and thrust her hips-up and back-in perfect counterpoint to my actions. Exactly as a good female partner on the dance floor can make you look and feel even better than you are, so this chick managed to enhance my every virile move, make my every action seem that much more skillful and pleasurable.
Not that I need a good bed partner to make me look or act good. I'm no boaster, but I've had my share of time in the hay, and plenty of extra time that rightfully belonged to a lot of other guys. (Can I help it if married or engaged girls forget their vows when I'm around?)
No, with all due modesty, I fancy myself as being pretty experienced on or under the sheets, as any trained SADISTO agent is expected to be.
But just as some girls have the knack of making you feel twice a man when you're with them on a date, so Kami made me feel twice a man in the sexual sense.
Ardent-but not offensively aggressive. Yielding-but not passive. Suggestive but not demanding; eager but not pushy; wanton but not crude-that was Kami in the hay. (Or on the grass, rather.) A real sex dream, an erotic joy jill, a passion playmate par excellence.
Beneath me on the grass Kami wriggled and writhed, squirmed and rippled in a manner unimaginable.
I began to piston her faster and faster. I let my elbows support the weight of my chest, cupped my hands over the ripe, richly rounded cones of her breasts, crushed and squeezed them with my searching, probing fingers as I continued to plunge up and down, back and forth and around and around....
Scorching waves of super-heated sexual delight pulsed through me as the sliding, inciting, exciting, arousing, enticing friction of my flesh against her flesh pyramided in intensity.
Kami began to make gasping, guttural sounds of ecstasy as her fists and legs flailed against me, as she sank her teeth into my bare shoulder with primitive savagery.
And still I moved faster, and faster. Deprived of sex for so long, super-sexed as I was, keyed up as I felt myself, I marveled that I kept the game going for so long. By all rights I should have detonated long ago. I didn't understand how I could balance for so long on the very brink of total bliss and not plunge headlong in.
Practice, maybe. Or superior skill, or will power.
Whatever the reason, I continued to surge over the voluptuous vortex of her thighs. Back and forth, back and forth I thrust myself, with my sexual tension mounting geometrically-with all of my sexual nerve fibers screaming for relief, for the crucial critical point of no return.
Her teeth weren't just chewing my shoulder gently now-she was biting with the grip of an erotic barracuda. Her fingernails weren't scraping my back now-they were gouging bloody furrows. Her muscles weren't simply flickering around me-they were squeezing me like crazy.
She was ready, all the way ready.
So was I-only I kept going.
It was a challenge, a challenge to my powers of endurance. Not only a challenge but a wonderful game-a game I couldn't lose. All I had to do was hold out, keep from detonating.
Sooner or later I was going to detonate, I knew this and looked forward to it eagerly. Meanwhile, the longer I kept the game going-the longer I was being teased and titillated by the glorious sexual excitement that already had been pumped like golden glowing nectar into my veins-the better.
Most likely you've been in the same position. Most likely you, too, have hovered on the very brink of sexual detonation and enjoyed every agonizing second you could keep yourself from detonating.
And that's how it was that bright summer morning in Maine. Overhead the blazing sun and beneath me the fiery-bodied Kami, her writhing and twisting voluptuousness an urgent provocation to a sexual explosion-an explosion I managed to delay for moment after moment of excruciatingly wonderful pleasure-pain.
And all this while our bodies were touching, pressed together; my chest against her gigantic rounded breasts, my stomach scorched against her sinuously sliding belly, our legs intermingled, our arms locked around each other.
She was Eve to my Adam in that sunlit, lust-bedazzled morning when we rolled and writhed on the soft grass, conscious of nothing save the burning contact of our bodies, the red-hot intermeshing of our lusts.
And still I thrust, and thrust and withdrew and thrust again, faster and faster.
I felt her nails rake my back again and again, felt her teeth chew first my right, then my left shoulder in a paroxysm of ecstasy, felt the squeezing surge of her muscles pulse around me demandingly, coaxingly.
And still I kept going, still I kept my hips lunging and plunging in machine-gun tempo.
It was too much, it was the ultimate, it was the end, the flash-point of all flesh-but I kept going. On, and on, and on....
The outer world had long since ceased to have meaning to me. I was lost in an inner world of my own, a world of kaleidoscopic sounds and colors, a whirling, spinning, tumbling incomparably perfect world of seething, sensuous, sexual delights.
I'd read once, long ago, about a form of madness that overtakes a few people, people already far along the road to insanity, a madness that strikes them at the ultimate, crucial point of physical and mental sexual bliss-and the form the madness takes is that they never can leave the state of sexual ecstasy they find themselves in and so (I had read) certain nerve cells simply burn out or refuse to transmit messages and, as a result, these people live out the rest of their lives in a sort of sexual coma-forever experiencing the culmination of sexual feeling.
They live in a never-ending ecstasy, in other words.
I've since learned that what I read was so much hokum-that this kind of madness never has happened.
Nevertheless, nevertheless-during long moments of unendurable sexual excitement such as I felt that morning, I could well believe in such a madness; could in fact almost feel it coming on me.
To live always in such a transport of delight, to feel for the rest of one's life the golden climactic splendor of sexual ultimacy-such a madness seemed, at times, the best of all possible fates.
And even as that thought struck me, Kami wriggled and squirmed and squeezed once again, and I was triggered, detonated, sent soaring a million miles past the limits of self-control.
It was as if part of me had exploded, had erupted into molten flesh fire, as if a terrifying tidal wave of lust had roared through me-again and again and again.
It was like the end of the world, and the start of a new and titanic life. It was a billion volts of electricity coursing through me, it was as if my body had melted into pulsing, jetting bursts of rapture.
It was the most, the greatest, the ultimate ecstasy flesh can know on this earth.
It was a giant drum beating within me, it was a flourish of trumpets, a chorus of Heavenly voices surging on a current of Hell-fire.
And it was just fine.
And it got better.
And better yet.
And then more so.
It was a thunderclap of eternity, the raging liquid melding of male and female into one, it was ultimate truth and all sanity and insanity reconciled, it was life-death and death-life, yin and yang, darkness and light, a welding of one moment with eternity.
And my body rocked and recoiled and jerked and twisted spasmodically. I felt myself twist and shudder, distantly, as if I were a puppet being made to dance by distant strings.
And it was over.
Over in flowing waves of rippling rapture fire, over in a slow receding tide of fiery pleasure, a gentle dampening of intolerable flames, a relaxed easing of intolerable sexual rapture.
And my pistoning body ceased its beat, my heart began to slow its frantic pounding, my body began to feel its flesh again, and my flesh felt her flesh pressed hotly against mine.
Slowly, very slowly sanity and reason returned.
And then I was no longer a pagan god ravishing a now immortal mortal maiden-I was Trevor Anderson alias Rex Kingston lying on top of a blonde Amazon beside a tiny lake in Maine.
And, for the time being, that was enough.
CHAPTER TWO
"JUST WHO," I SAID LONG minutes later as we lay side by side on the soft sun-warmed grass, "the heck are you-anyway?"
Kami stretched slowly and luxuriantly, stretched like some great furless erotic albino cat and said, "I'm Kami. Don't you like me?"
I raised my head, with an effort, and scanned her big and richly curved nakedness.
"I like you just fine," I grunted. "Especially naked and sexually hot. But when you aren't naked and sexually hot-who are you?"
Kami sighed, combed her slender fingers through her long, flaxen-blonde hair, lifting the silken strands high over her head.
"Most men would say that-well, never mind." She stretched her long arms back and arched her lovely nude body. "Business," she said scornfully. "Why do men always want to talk business?"
I didn't answer her.
After a moment she sighed, stretched her magnificent nude body on the grass, rose to her feet. Her back and rump were decoratively marked with grass stains.
"This sun feels good," she said, "but I burn easy. Shall we go inside?"
"Sure," I said. "You want your clothes?"
"No. They must still be wet."
She followed me into the cabin. The cabin is a big, roomy, rough-hewn affair, It was built a dozen years ago by an eccentric sportsman with a yen for privacy, hunting, drinking and flying. A year after building the cabin he'd mixed alcohol and aviation gas once too often and had fatally dunked his Seabee amphibian into the wrong lake, upside down. The cabin, complete with lake, had been on the market for almost a decade before Kingston had bought the cabin, lake and a thousand acres of heavily wooded country.
Kami began a slow tour of the cabin. "My, what a lot of stuff you have on the walls," she commented. "Which was true enough. In addition to Kingston's files and reference library, the cabin contains most of the junk he'd picked up in years of traveling and collecting. A pretty lethal collection, too.
One wall was devoted entirely to guns-all kinds of guns. Every kind of handgun from dueling pistols to silencer-fitted automatics; home-made zip-guns and custom-made Swiss free pistols; antique Derringers to tranquilizer dart firing pistols of the kind used to transform raging lions into purring tabby cats. All told there were perhaps three hundred assorted revolvers, automatics and palm guns.
Further along the same wall were rifle racks, loaded with flint-lock muskets, blunderbusses, sporting rifles, semi- and full automatic military rifles and submachine guns. Kami stroked a century-old Sharpes .50 caliber buffalo rifle, fingered an ugly-looking riot gun.
"So many guns," she murmured, almost tripping over a .303 tripod-mounted Browning machine gun that had seen service with the British army in Burma and steadying herself by grasping a heavy caliber air cooled Hotchkiss machine gun.
She moved to the next wall, hung with ancient Florentine crossbows, a modem crossbow made from a rifle stock and a filed down automobile leaf spring (and capable of putting a steel tipped arrow through six inches of wood with plenty of killing power left over), native hand bows from New Guinea, Brazil, the Congo, Malaya and a dozen other regions.
"And knives," she added, inspecting the glittering collection of lethal steel and bronze cutting and stabbing weapons. "What's this?" she asked, touching an ugly-looking thrusting knife with a spade hand grip.
"An East Indian belly-ripping knife," I told her. "You can still buy them in any bazaar in Karachi. You stick it into somebody's tummy. When you pull it out, the hand grip actuates a lever and the blades spring apart like a pair of shears-so it outs a man's intestines all to shreds on the way out. Very effective, if you like that sort of thing."
Kami nodded absently. "I'd love, to try one," she murmured absently in the same tone a housewife might express the urge to try a new cake recipe.
This Kami chick, I decided, was no stranger to lethal weapons. I began to form a shrewd idea as to just what kind of "work" she did for the government. The thing that worried me was which government. The SADISTO agents are trained to be overly suspicious-even while on vacation. You never know when some enemy of the Free World might worm his or her way into your confidence and then-ZAM! Wipe you out.
I decided to play my cover to the hilt. Why not? The name, Rex Kingston, had already proved profitable-sexually, that is.
Meanwhile she continued her tour of Kingston's collection, or that small part of it he had displayed on the cabin walls. She admired the hand carved blow guns, the poisoned arrow display, the spear and assagai collection. She oohed and ahed, over the sword canes and stilettos, the Roman gladiators' tridents and fishhook studded throwing nets, the knife-pointed brass knuckles and the two-handed Viking swords that, if swung by a husky expert, can cleave a man in armor from scalp to thigh, leaving him in two neatly divided sections.
She inspected all these, and more, and then flung herself into an easy chair, curling up her great legs beneath her so that her nearest thigh gleamed whiter and erotically in my direction.
"Buy a girl a drink?"
"Sure," I said. "If you don't mind no ice. Refrigeration's a luxury I do without up here. Bourbon okay?"
She said it was, and I mixed two tall bourbons and water. She gulped, grimaced, gulped again. "Without ice, how do you keep food up here?" she inquired.
"Dried foods. Canned foods. Fish from the lake.. Rabbit and deer meat."
"Isn't it out of season for deer?"
"When you own your own forest preserve-and there's no game warden around-you open and close your own seasons," I told her.
She nodded thoughtfully. "With all this lethal hardware, I don't imagine you find it hard to kill a little deer."
"That's right," I said. "If a machine gun burst doesn't kill it, I finish it off with a handful of grenades, or use one of the trench mortars."
"Good," she said. "My boss doesn't like men with exaggerated ideas of sportsmanship."
"And your boss is?"
She sipped her bourbon and water. "An unusual man," she said. "They say," she said, smiling at me with huge blue eyes, "that you're one of the top weapons experts in the world."
I shrugged modestly. "People have said that. And I don't discourage them, for obvious reasons."
"Which are?"
I grinned at her. "If you-and your boss-know enough about me to make it worth your while to parachute in to see me, you know how I make my living.
"Tell me anyway," she said, holding out her empty glass. I got up and refilled both our glasses. "Okay," I said. "My life's no secret. I'm a free-lance writer and photographer. An article writer. I started writing ten years ago, when I was in my teens. Know anything about the article writing market?"
She shook her head, oblivious of the way her head shaking caused her tremendous breasts to quiver like coiled springs.
"Well, it's a crowded field. And if you try and write about a lot of things-cover a lot of subjects-you have two strikes against you. First, you have to do too much research for each article, because the field is new to you; and second, you don't build up a name, a reputation."
"Which you now have," she said, idly rubbing her left breast.
"Right. I very early realized that the best bet in article writing is to specialize. Do a lot of reading and research in one field. That way a week's research reading will give you material for maybe five or six articles. Also, like I said, you acquire a reputation, and pretty soon editors seek you out, instead of vice versa.
"An editor wants an article on boats, he calls Hank Bowen. Cars, he calls Tom McCaill. Guns, Pete What's-his-name. Buried treasure, Ken Krippen. Babies, Dr. Spock. Archery, Howard Hill. And so on. Getting known as an expert pays off in the article field-pays off in more assignments and higher rates."
"So you specialized in weapons."
"Right." I looked the field over, studied the outdoor magazines and the men's magazines, and I realized that, while there were gun experts and archery experts, there weren't any weapons experts-using weapons in the broadcast dictionary sense-instruments of any kind used in combat or warfare to attack an enemy. Or kill game.
Kami nodded, her big eyes wide and interested. "And weapons are such fun, too," she added.
"Yeah." I reached over to a nearby table, picked up a loose-leaf notebook. "Here's a list of recent sales. Snake and Spider Venom as Murder Weapons, a six-part monthly series for Torrid Detective Magazine. Build and Use Your Own Blowgun, illustrated article for Popular Mechanical Gadgets. Charge of the Bangalore Torpedo Boys, for Blood-bath Action Tales for Men."
"What's a Bangalore Torpedo?" asked Kami.
"A gadget British sepoys invented over a century ago in India. They took a long length of bamboo, hollowed it out, stuffed it with dynamite sticks. Yon shove it under barbed wire defenses, fire it-and blooey, no more barbed wire."
Kami nodded, obviously filing away this information for possible future use. "And what else have you written recently?"
I consulted Kingston's notebook. "Big Game Hunting With a Modern Crossbow, an illustrated article sold to Argonaut Magazine, Burn 'Em Alive-Fire Weapons from Greek Fire to Napalm, a script sold to Virile True Tales-a nice yarn, that, though the editor cut a suggested recipe for home-made napalm."
"How do you make it?" asked Kami eagerly.
"Simple. Just mix soap flakes with gasoline. It's ninety per cent as effective as the commercial product. Then last month I sold The Girl Killers to Man's Strife-a detailed account of the girl gladiators of Ancient Rome with descriptions of the weapons they used to hack and stab each other to pieces for kicks-the spectators' kicks, that is. Then I wrote and sold an article on the original Thugs of India-the band of professional murderers who strangled their victims with silk or wire cords, another on the old Chinese arrow-tipped rockets, a piece on dirty epee and saber fighting, an article on the use of chain-shot and red-hot cannon balls in naval warfare, and quite a few others."
"I can see," said Kami, finishing the last of her second drink, "that you've made your knowledge of weapons pay off big. It's a nice life you've built for yourself. Traveling around the world on assignments for eight or nine months of the year-then holing up here in darkest Maine for three or four months to write undisturbed."
She rose sinuously to her feet, her gleaming white body a rippling provocation. "But isn't it awfully hard-being undisturbed for three months or more? Being undisturbed by females, that is?"
"It's hard," I said, my eyes roaming over her bare breasts and belly, her long, exquisitely shapely thighs. "But essential. I disturb easy, sexually speaking. If I had temptation like you around I'd yield to it-hour after hour, day after day. And not get much else done."
Kami sauntered slowly toward me, her wide hips swinging erotically. "But as long as I'm here," she murmured, "why don't you yield one more time? Close your eyes, lover."
She bent over me, her great breasts swaying forward like creamy basketballs. I closed my eyes in expectation. What was she going to do? Press her ripe breasts against my face? Or against another part of my body? Perhaps-whump! Something agonizingly painful hit me in the side of the neck. Her thumb, no doubt. I managed to half open my eyes, semiparalized as I was from the judo blow she'd given me.
I was unable to move. All I could do was stare at her with glazed eyes as she drew back her hand to jab me again and murmured, "Don't fret Trevor. This won't hurt you-much!"
Trevor! My cover was uncovered. My holiday...
Then she jabbed the same nerve center again and everything went black.
When I came to, Lord knows how many hours later, I was stretched on a couch in a huge, windowless room. I sat up. The taste in my mouth and a soreness in my arm told me I'd been given a hypo to keep me out.
I looked around. The first thing I saw was Kami, still-or more likely again-naked. She sat sprawled in an easy chair, her long legs dangling nudely, her titanic breasts jutting out like the prows of a pair of white-painted Viking ships.
She smiled at me lewdly.
I glared at her, looked around some more. I was in an office, an enormous and luxurious office. A huge map of the world covered one wall. Another wall contained an enormous television screen. Other television monitors were lined up beneath it. In one corner a computer hummed electronic songs to itself.
Katamandu! SADISTO headquarters. I was back at work again.
I looked around. Kami and I weren't alone in the huge underground office: the head of SADISTO, the General, sat behind a gigantic desk. A mild-mannered man with silver hair, he puffed on his corn-cob pipe and smiled at me.
"Welcome back to the conscious world, 0008," he said amiably.
I sat up. Kami-or somebody-had slipped a pair of undershorts on me. Aside from that I was still naked as I'd been-how long ago?-when Kami (curse her) had dropped into the lake-and my life.
I opened my mouth to start cursing, but the General held up his hand. The General was a man accustomed to being obeyed, and I knew he would take instant savage retaliation if he wasn't obeyed.
"Don't," he urged me, "waste breath asking why you were brought here. I intend to answer just that question. But first let me formally introduce Kami Johansen-better known as 00085. Kami is our newest triple-zero agent. I had to use her to kidnap you because I knew that you wouldn't recognize her as a fellow agent-another deadly SADISTO operator, licensed to kill.
I stared at Kami's nude charms with new respect. "You've killed people for the sake of the Free World?" I asked.
She nodded proudly. "Thirty-eight and a half, so far."
The General scowled at her. "I told you before, 00085, women in that condition do not count as one and a half."
"I'm not counting her," pouted Kami. "00053 and I shot a target through his head at the same instant. So we each claimed a half kill."
"Oh," said the General. "That's different."
As you know, SADISTO (The Security and Administration Division of the Institute for Special Tactical Operations), keeps its agents in top killing form by pratice. However, during normal operations we capture enough enemy prisoners to satisfy our needs. Only rarely do we have to capture and use human targets who aren't legally guilty of some monstrous crime. And then we only select victims who morally deserve to die-like known murderers who escape justice through a legal technicality and/or cops and sheriff's deputies who get trigger-happy.
"To continue," said the General, "Kami had two good reasons for parachuting into Rex Kingston's lake. First she needed the practice. Second, it was essential that she got to see you naked before we went to the trouble and expense of kidnapping you and having you flown back to our headquarters in the rolling hills of Maryland not far from Washington, D.C."
"Why," I said, "did she need to see me naked?"
"For my personal pleasure," purred Kami. "And to see if you had an appendix scar. Fortunately, you don't."
I stared at her. Was she mad? Was the General mad? Was I mad? Were-
"We're not all mad," chuckled the General. "Only careful, and sneaky-I mean-clever. As you well know, 0008, we do the jobs too tough for the FBI, or too brutal and cruel for CIA. Where human decency ends-SADISTO begins." He frowned. "However, we only kill and torture for the sake of the Free World. Ahem, well, 0008, we are faced, we think, with one of the worst potential menaces to the Free World in recent years. We have reason to believe that a madman is scheming to end war and the fear of war."
I thought this over. "Ending war isn't so bad," I said. "But ending the fear of war! Why great heavens, man, think of the terrible slump the war-I mean defense-industries would take! Think of the effect on the aerospace and electronics industries! Without the fear of war, dozens of billion-dollar industries wouldn't get any tax money."
"Right," said the General. "You can see what a terrible menace this madman could be-if his scheme, whatever it is, should prove workable. And not only the Free World would suffer. The Communist countries would be thrown into turmoil. They need the fear of world war, too-to keep their citizens in line. To keep their people from demanding free elections and the like.
"Yes, for once the Free World and the Reds have an equal danger-the possible end of the fear of world war. Why," he added in a whisper, his face ashen, "without the fear of war, agencies like SADISTO would lose their multi-billion-dollar secret appropriations." He brought his fist down on his desk with a crash; "Yes! This madman must be stopped-at any cost."
"Who is this madman with a scheme to end war?" I asked.
"We think," said the General, "his name is Cantwell Undershaft, the man called GAMEFINGER. The same Cantwell Undershaft who made almost a billion dollars out of munitions and war material during World War II... and Korea. Now the rascal is trying to bite the hands that fed him."
"Diabolical," I agreed. "What evidence do we have?"
"Scanty evidence, I fear," sighed the General. He picked up a tattered piece of paper. "This tattered piece of paper was taken from a bottle found floating in the Indian ocean. Attached to the bottle by a string was a can of film-perhaps the most sexy and sadistic film I've ever had the good-I mean bad fortune to view."
"Can I see the film?" I asked eagerly.
"In a few moments," said the General, "But first let me read you this message. It's from 00094, a trusted SADISTO agent who left here last month on a roving trouble-hunting assignment. The message is short. It reads: A madman named Cantwell Undershaft plans to end war on earth...his horrible scheme must be stopped...I escaped his clutches but fear I am dying from effects of death ray...this is some of his film...must close now as am dying...regards, 00094."
"Hmmm," I said dubiously. "Do you think possibly 00094 wasn't in full possession of all his marbles when he conked out?"
"You haven't," said the General significantly, "seen the incredibly sexy and sadistic film his message was attached to. But I see your point. This mention of his dying from the effects of a death ray. Our computer-" he waved his hand at his computer "-our computer, the best educated computer in the Free World, assures us a practical death ray isn't on the immediate scientific horizon. Lasers, sonic beams and the like are only effective at very short range. 00094 couldn't have been dying from the effects of a death ray."
"Yes," I said, "he could."
They stared at me. I smiled back, smug in my superior knowledge. "Our computer keeps its knowledge stored by category. And no doubt you punched the weapons category before asking about death rays. Ask again-under the category fish."
"Huh?" said the General and Kami in unison.
"A ray," I told them, "can be a beam of electromagnetic energy, or a fish related to the shark family. As in manta rays, sting rays, leopard rays and the like. Many rays inject poison through a sharp spine in their tails. And the most deadly-capable of causing death within thirty seconds-is a round-bodied ray found in tropical seas, but particularly the Indian Ocean, known as the death ray."
I waited, smugly, while the General punched buttons frantically on the panel of the computer. A few moments later the computer's typewriter began to chatter.
The General read feverishly, then looked up at me with startled admiration. "Great heavens, you're right-there is a fish called the death ray. 00094 must have stepped on its tail while he was launching his last message. Poor clumsy devil. By George, 0008, you certainly know all the ways to kill a man, don't you?"
I shrugged modestly. "Weapons, natural or man-made, are my specialty. Besides, I read about the death ray in one of Kingston's articles. Now, about that sexy film?"
"Yes, yes," said the General. He flicked a switch. The lights went out. And a second later Kami, naked and squirming, slithered onto my lap.
"I love to neck while watching movies," she whispered in my ear, pulling my right hand down until it was cupping her nearest breast.
"Shhh!" I said, squeezing her luscious breast, and letting my left hand slide up and down the sleek perfection of her thigh. And then a little further up, to find and fondle the torrid tension zone.
A click and a whir-no doubt the movie screen unrolling in front of one wall. Then a projector gleamed alight, and a wide-screen full-color movie was projected before my amazed eyes.
And what a movie!
Obviously this was raw (very raw) footage. No titles, no attempt at editing. Just film. But (as I said) what film!
I forgot the squirming hunk of flaxen topped flesh on my lap, forgot her searching lips and seeking hands, and gaped at the screen.
The screen on which, in perfect focus and living color, a seminude girl was dancing to the rhythmic beat of tom-toms. A golden, Oriental girl-Chinese or Thai-lese or the like-a full breasted, long legged, narrow-waisted, wide hipped maiden in the full bloom of her teens.
Her body, gleaming like molten gold, writhed and undulated with the boneless ease of an eel, the erotic promise of a sexy dream.
She was dancing by the flickering, sensuous glow of a fire, against a backdrop of tropical palms on a sandy beach. Her dance was wild and erotic, graceful yet suggestive-part hula, part Indian temple dance, part bump and grind.
But utterly suggestive-totally sexy-completely pagan and depraved.
Her eyes were half shut, her expression an impassive but sexy smile.
The film had been taken with a zoomar lens, and every now and then the camera would pull in for a close-up. When the close-up was of the dancing girl's face, the impassive smile and the glittering yet strangely remote and lusterless eyes made me suspect that she'd been drugged-or brainwashed, or both.
Certainly the erotic contortions she put her body through would have been beyond the physical ability of most girls, unless they'd been hypnotized or dragged.
The tom-toms were louder and faster now, beating out a rhythm of primitive, universal savagery and lust. The Oriental girl flung herself back and forth, twisted and writhed, sank to her knees and rose again. She flexed her knees and arched her body backward, bending out of balance like a limbo dancer-only more so.
And all the while her hips were flicking from side to side, twitching, rolling, surging, urging.
When she rose to her full height and shook herself in tempo with the now frenzied beat of the drums, her breasts, ripe cones of golden flesh, spun and quivered and jerked from side to side in a manner too erotic to describe.
While she danced, danced with her lovely legs wide apart, it was as if some phantom, invisible lover were taking her again and again, as she wanted to be taken, as she loved being taken!
Every physical nuance of the act of love was being enacted before my eyes-every writhing, rolling, buck-
ing motion the female body is capable of. And all in a dance.
Kami (who had, of course, seen the film before) was fingering me shamelessly, blowing in my ear, kissing me on the neck and cheek and mouth-but I kept pushing her away; I had eyes only for the erotic spectacle on the screen.
This was a dance of sex such as few men had ever witnessed-this was primitive, pagan passion in the raw-concentrated, distilled, refined down to the ultimate in sensual movement and suggestion.
Even without Kami's stroking fingers, I would have been rigid with excitement, would have been sitting erect and eager-just from watching this Chinese chick dance.
The drums were maddeningly fast now, beating against my ears in a crescendo of percussive frenzy; and the golden bodied girl jerked and twitched and rolled her hips in perfect time, in wanton, demonic delight.
The drunken smile of bliss on her face, the look of dazed rapture in her eyes told all too well that she herself was as much the victim of the erotic tempo of the drums as any male who might watch her dance.
And then, just as the frenzied tension reached its height, the drums stopped-and the ripe bodied, golden fleshed girl sank to the sand, sprawled on the sand.
Toward her, out of the flickering firelight, a tall and primitive-looking native strode. He was nude and very obviously excited.
He flung himself upon the supine and waiting girl as the drums began to beat again. And before my amazed eyes the age-old marvel of sex, the way of a man with a maid was reenacted.
The camera moved in close, very close. Not a detail of their heroic coupling was missed, not a movement of their writhing, churning bodies escaped the lascivious eye of the camera.
Drugged as they both no doubt were, their endurance was fabulous-their horizontal dance of love went on and on while the camera circled them, now moving back for a full shot, now moving in to capture the most intimate details of their pagan union on the sand.
And then, finally, dramatically, graphically, their dance of love came to an end. The golden fleshed girl shuddered with drugged delight, then stretched herself languorously on the sand, her hands and arms reaching in back of her.
The virile native male rose to his hands and knees, still crouched above her. He crouched there a moment, as if waiting. And then with a dual flash of light, two long and narrow-bladed knives thudded into the sand on either side of the nude girl's rib cage.
The pagan male reached out, grasped each knife by the handle, held them both high.
The girl stretched before him smiled expectantly.
I tensed. I could guess what was coming next.
It came. The twin knives flashed down-buried to the hilt in the Oriental girl's full breasts.
She shuddered all over, then her eyes closed and she lay still in death.
The pagan native rose slowly to his feet, still holding the blood-stained knives, held them far from his chest; and then plunged them both into his chest.
A strange smile illumined his face, then his eyes rolled upward and he toppled slowly forward to sprawl in death across the body of the girl he had just killed.
"Ulp," I said, involuntarily.
"Quite," agreed the General's voice in the darkness. "And this is just the beginning. Wait until you see the next scene. Excuse me while I change reels."
"Just a lot of silly film," murmured Kami in my ear. "Of a lot of silly people killing each other. Kiss me, stupid."
I kissed her, but my heart wasn't in it.
What did it all mean? That is, what was the geopolitical significance of this sexy bloodbath?
I waited anxiously for the General to change the reel. And all too soon he did just that. And the next scene flashed before my eyes.
CHAPTER THREE
THE NEXT SCENE HAD been taken in daylight, in full sunlight. It was of an arena, sort of. Or maybe a circus ring. At any rate it was a huge oval of sawdust ringed by a high rock wall. No seats for cheering spectators. Nothing but the bare arena-watched only by the camera's gloating eye.
And into the camera's eye marched two seminaked girls. One a tall, vigorous-looking blonde, the other a husky but shapely redhead. Both girls were in their late teens, I guessed. Both were incredibly lovely and full-bodied.
And both were wearing a ridiculous semblance of armor: a plumed steel helmet, a wide belt of steel mesh, chain mail ankle boots-and nothing else.-
Each carried a steel shield in her left hand, a glittering short sword in the right.
In the center of the arena they halted, saluted each other in formal (if militarily sloppy) fashion-and then began to fight.
I squirmed in my seat they were so bad. Neither girl, obviously, knew the first thing about sword fighting. They simply swung at each other as hard as they could. And, since both girls were so crude about telegraphing their sword strokes, neither girl had much trouble in raising her shield in time to ward off the blow.
Sword clanged on shield time after time. As a weapons lover I cringed at the unnecessary dulling of cutting edges that resulted.
As an objective observer, however, I couldn't help noticing that both girls swung and hacked with a vengeance. Ordinarily if you take two inexperienced girls-or men-and set them to hacking at each other with swords, you'll find that their sword play lacks verve. Both are too scared of being hurt to get too close.
Not these chicks. They swung for keeps and neither girl shrank back.
Didn't they realize the fearful damage each could do to the other? Obviously not. Obviously, then, both had been drugged (or brainwashed, or both) to the point where they literally didn't fear death or mutilation.
As soon as I realized this, I leaned forward with renewed interest (heedless of Kami, who was still squirming nakedly on my lap). Soon, very soon, one of these chicks was going to land a cutting, perhaps killing blow on the other.
With two trained sword fighters the battle might have gone on a long time, because each would have had the skill to avoid the other's strokes. Similarly, with two frightened amateurs, the battle would have gone on and on because each would have been too scared to get close.
But with two savage, unafraid amateurs hacking at each other... The end came in less than a minute. The redhead swung with all her might at the blonde, the sword edge bounced off the blonde's raised shield-and the blonde swung back, her sword blade slicing in under the redhead's raised shield. At first I thought she'd missed, but an instant later a thin crimson line appeared across both the redhead's ample breasts, and a moment after that blood was streaming down her body.
Both girls continued to fight, the redhead seemingly oblivious of the deep slash across her chest. Then a gong sounded, and both girls lowered shield and sword, stepped back.
The camera panned slowly across the arena, zoomed in on the figure of a fat, bloated-looking man dressed in what appeared to be a Roman toga. He had a laurel wreath on his bald and shiny head and a Lone Ranger type black mask across his face. He was sitting-or rather sprawled-in a marble throne-like chair.
"That," murmured the General, "is Cantwell Undershaft-we think."
Cantwell-if he it was-raised his pudgy hands and clapped a few times. Then he fished in a pocket of his toga, produced a glittering gold coin, flipped it, studied it, giggled lasciviously, put the coin back in his toga pocket and held out his fat hand-thumb down.
The camera panned back across the arena to where the blonde and redhead stood with weapons lowered, facing Cantwell on his marble throne. Both bowed in his direction, the blonde smiling, the redhead expressionless.
As I watched, horrified, the redhead dropped her sword and shield on the ground, waited passively as the blonde sauntered over to her, grinning sadistically, the sword in her right hand glittering in the sunlight.
I waited for her to plunge it into the redhead's heart, but evidently the blonde had only been taught to hack with her short sword, not thrust. She proceeded to hack away at the naked and defenseless redhead.
It was messy, to say the least. The blonde walked slowly around her voluptuous redhead, hacking and slashing. What made the spectacle worse, in a way, was the fact that the redhead gave no indication of feeling pain. She just stood there, expressionless, while the blonde literally chopped pieces off her.
For perhaps a full minute she stood up under the rain of slashing blows. Then she slowly toppled backward, no doubt unconscious from loss of blood. And within a few moments more, she'd be dead from the same cause-that was for sure.
The blonde grinned happily, put one foot on the gory torso of her victim, raised her crimson sword high in triumph.
"Gulp," I said, trying without success to push the squirming and naked Kami off my lap.
The screen went black, but only for an instant. Another scene flashed on the screen. Of two husky men on horseback this time. Both wore knight's helmets with the visors down, metallic cloth jock straps, and nothing else. Each held a round shield and a long lance. They were going to joust. They backed their horses away from each other as the camera pulled back, then charged pell mell as the camera zoomed in on them.
Each had aimed his lance at his opponent's stomach, accurately, and since the shields they were holding were far too light to deflect a steel tipped lance-they skewered each other.
The result would have been comical, if it hadn't been so grisly. Since the closing speed of their horses had been a good forty miles an hour, each man was jerked out of the saddle as the horses flashed past each other in opposite directions.
The luckless "knights", skewered together by their long lances, were left hanging in midair, until their twitching bodies crashed to the ground.
I swallowed hard, pushed Kami's groping hand away from that part of me she seemed most intent on groping.
Again the screen went black, and again a new scene flashed on. And underwater scene this time, apparently taken through a glass port looking into a huge concrete tank.
Swimming slowly around the tank were a dozen huge and hungry-looking barracuda. Then there was a splash, and a voluptuous Hawaiian or Polynesian girl plunged into the pool, sank slowly toward the bottom. She was swimming like crazy to get back to the surface but, thanks to a brace of heavy lead sinkers tied to her ankles, she wasn't getting anywhere-except closer to the bottom.
The barracuda circled her, as barracuda will, and then attacked.
One of the often verified but not widely publicized facts about barracuda is that, when they go for a human being, they invariably bite first into the rounded, fleshy parts of the body. In the case of a woman, they strike at the breasts and buttocks.
These barracuda ran true to form.
It was messy. Very messy.
"Note," murmured the General objectively, "what fantastic stamina that luckless girl has. Even with so much of her more shapely contours chewed off, she still keeps trying to swim to the surface. I would guess she was given a terrific stimulant just before being tossed into the pool. And doubtless made to breathe pure oxygen to saturate her bloodstream-otherwise she'd have drowned by now."
Finally, as the barracudas took bigger and bigger bites out of her, the Polynesian girl's struggles lessened and then ceased, the screen went black-and Kami slipped off my lap.
I deduced that the film was over. I was right. And by the time the General snapped the room lights back on, Kami was sitting innocently in her own chair.
"That's all that was on the film," said the General. "What do you think?"
"I think," I said, "I'm going to be sick."
"That way!" barked the General, pointing to a door that led to his private bathroom.
I made it just in time.
When I emerged a few moments later, the General was still at his desk but Kami had vanished. Sprawled in the chair she'd occupied (when she hadn't been squirming all over my lap) was 00077, a breathtakingly lovely Japanese girl whose long black hair flowed over her kimono in an ebony waterfall.
"Where's Kami?" I asked.
"I just sent her," snapped the General, "on a long and probably hazardous assignment. I have good night vision, and it didn't escape my notice that she was squirming nakedly all over your lap while I was briefing you. Promiscuity among SADISTO agents is not only tolerated but actively encouraged-but not during briefing sessions. In Soviet Siberia, where she will shortly be parachuted, Kami will no doubt be cooled off."
"I'm Saka," said the Japanese girl, "SADISTO's black belt judo instructor." She fluttered her long black eyelashes. "Better known to you as 00077."
"You're a black belt judo expert?" I inquired.
"See for yourself," purred the sultry Japanese girl. She rose to her feet with a ripple of kimono-concealed flesh, shrugged off her kimono. Sure enough, beneath her kimono she was wearing a judo black belt-and nothing else.
Her golden-yellow body was a symphony of erotic, youthful curves-full, impudent golden breasts, a tiny golden waist, wide golden hips, luscious golden thighs...
"Since you allowed Kami to judo-chop you into unconsciousness," said the General, "I decided you could use some intensive judo instruction."
"We'll wrestle later," purred the Japanese girl suggestively, snuggling nakedly down in her easy chair.
"Meanwhile," said the General, "I'd appreciate your comments on the film you've just seen."
"Ghastly," I said. "This Cantwell Undershaft must be some kind of nut. Why would he want to film human beings slaughtering each other?"
"We don't know," said the General. "I assume it's a hobby of his-a hobby that may prove his Achilles' heel. But ignoring moral issues-which count for nothing here at SADISTO-what was your opinion of the footage you've just seen?"
"Well," I said, "speaking as SADISTO's weapons expert-and ignoring moral issues-I'd say Cantwell Undershaft badly needs a technical adviser. Weapons-wise. That scene where the Polynesian girl was eaten alive by barracudas was okay. You couldn't improve on the barracudas' technique. They do what comes naturally. And that scene where the Oriental girl did a dance and then got knifed by her boy friend-who then knifed himself-was okay. But those weapons fights-deplorable."
"How so?" asked the General eagerly.
"Well, those two knights who stuck lances through each other didn't know the first thing about jousting. And those girl sword fighters-totally deplorable."
The General nodded. "In just what way?"
"Well, in the first place, while they didn't lack the will to fight, they didn't know how to fight. Not with short swords. Their match was crude. Also, if this Cantwell Undershaft is trying to revive Roman gladiatorial games, he should have hired an expert. For instance-contrary to popular belief-the signal for mercy was thumbs down. Thumbs up meant the winner should finish off the loser."
"Just so," agreed the General. "Go on."
"Well, standard Roman gladiatorial procedure was that the winner of the fight-the man or girl who first drew blood-should, when given the thumbs up signal, thrust his or her weapon back into the original wound. Since that blonde cut the redhead's breasts, she should have plunged her sword deep into the cuts she'd made. And then finished off her victim, if finishing off was needed."
"Correct, completely correct," agreed the General. He smiled at me. "I can see I made a wise choice in picking you."
"I love your choice," murmured the voluptuous-and now naked-Japanese girl named Saka, wriggling her hips deeper into her easy chair.
"By now," continued the General, "you've no doubt guessed why I interrupted your vacation and had you brought here?"
I thought. "No," I said.
The General sighed. "I'd have been happier if you'd had the wits to figure things out for yourself, 0008. However..." He smiled at me. "Let's recapitulate. We know-thanks to SADISTO agent 00094's last report-that Cantwell Undershaft, the mad billionaire, is plotting to end the fear of war on Earth. We don't, however, know where Cantwell is plotting his nefarious scheme."
"True," I agreed, "very true."
"But we do know," continued the General, "thanks to the film 00094 attached to his last report, that Cantwell has a hobby: pitting human beings against each other to the death. Also, as you yourself noticed, Cantwell is no weapons expert. Like Rex Kingston."
"Do you mean Rex Kingston himself or me, alias Rex Kingston?" I said.
"You," said the General. "My educated guess is that Cantwell Undershaft will soon go looking for a weapons expert easy to kidnap. And who easier to kidnap than Rex Kingston? His practice of holing up in a remote lake in Maine is widely known. Who is easier to kidnap quietly-than Kingston? Even when you, 0008, are pretending to be Kingston."
I opened my mouth to tell him I wasn't a guy who got kidnapped easily-then I remembered how efficiently Kami had glommed me-and closed my mouth.
"In fact," the General went on, "heh, heh, that's precisely why I sent Kami up there to Maine-to prove to myself that even a trained SADISTO agent could be kidnapped from a remote Maine cabin, and to prove to you that what I have planned for Cantwell is feasible.
"Anyway, since you're on vacation now, technically you're not really a SADISTO agent; rather, you've been kidnapped and you're in my clutches-I mean-you can probably figured out what I'm after."
Blast him, I could care less what he was after-next. Up until now it looked like he'd been after me, and he'd got me.
"Yes," continued the General, "my educated guess-backed by our computer-is that Cantwell Undershaft will soon try to kidnap Rex Kingston. And force him to act as technical adviser to his sadistic hobby, human slaughter."
I thought. And saw the logic of his conclusion. But what connection could a mad billionaire's sadistic hobby have with a plot to end the fear of war?
(Little did I realize, then, that Cantwell's horrible hobby and his plot were one and the same sadistic thing.)
"Our plan," the General went on, "is simple. You, 0008, will continue your vacation under the cover of the famous weapons expert, Rex Kingston. Just as before, you will relax in his remote Maine cabin, hunt in his primeval forest, swim nude in his private lake and read up on his articles-may as well make your time off count for something.
"Sooner or later-before your vacation is up, we hope-Cantwell Undershaft will kidnap you, thinking you are really Rex Kingston. Clever isn't it? Heh, heh.
"Then SADISTO will follow you to Cantwell's lair, destroy him and end the menace he represents.
"In the meantime, you just relax, have your vacation and leave the driving-I mean-the killing to us!"
"Good show," I exclaimed. Then I began to think. And I didn't like what I thought. "That puts me in horrible danger," I protested. "And besides, how will you be able to follow me? To Cantwell's lair?"
The General chuckled. "We have our methods."
(Little did I think, then, to connect his seemingly innocent earlier remark concerning my lack of appendix scar with his scheme to follow me.)
"Yes, but-" I began.
The General raised his hand. "No further questions now, please. I have an important appointment."
"What if I refuse to go along with this caper?" I said. "After all, I'm on vacation."
"Then we liquidate you." The General smiled. "You know the penalty for refusing an assignment."
I took a deep breath. "O.K." I said, "you win."
"Splendid. Saka, take 0008 in hand. And refresh his knowledge of judo."
"With pleasure," said Saka, rising sensuously and nakedly to her feet. "Give me your hand, Rex, uh, 0008."
"That isn't my hand you have hold of," I protested. But I didn't protest very strongly. Saka's supple, squeezing fingers felt wonderfully good, even though they weren't grasping my hand.
I let her lead me from the General's office, down a long underground corridor, into a private elevator that shot us upward to floor four. The elevator door opened and she tugged me out I followed hard on her heels.
Before us in a huge room lay acres of cloth-covered foam rubber. Practice mats.
"This is where you're going to teach me advanced judo?" I queried.
"In a little while," purred Saka, deftly ripping my undershorts from my loins.
"But first, why don't we get more-intimately-acquainted?"
And so saying, she reached for me again, again not grasping my hand, and tugged me suggestively down onto the foam rubber floor.
Where, nakedly, we became more intimately acquainted...
CHAPTER FOUR
PRONE AND NAKED ON the huge foam rubber mat I reached for Saka's nubile and totally nude charms.
I pulled her to me, savoring the sleek, hot perfection of her golden flesh, the pneumatic resiliency of her proud breasts, the soft enticement of her burnished belly, the languorous silken-fleshed contact of her ripe thighs.
Our mouths met and our lips locked. I thrust my tongue deep into her warm mouth and her tongue met mine, wrestled and slid against my tongue-suggestively, erotically.
I pulled her closer to me on the yielding mat letting my right hand slide down the golden roller-coaster curves of her back, tracing the hot and smooth curve of her shoulders and back, grasping a ripe handful of buttock flesh.
She wriggled against me, her breasts humming against my chest with soft and sensual sex fire, her belly and loins churning insistently, arousingly against my most sensitive flesh.
Who said East and West could never meet?
This Nipponese maiden was born to mix and mingle-carnally, fervently, sexily.
"Lie still," she whispered, breaking our deep soul kiss. "Lie still on your back."
I grunted assent, rolled over on my back.
"Going to try a judo hold on me?" I inquired.
"Later," she whispered. "First, why don't I test your stamina? Who knows what kind of seductive enemy agents you might meet in the near future? Girls who would do their best to raise your interest-and lower your guard. Pretend I'm a seductive enemy agent and see how well you can resist my wiles."
"Right," I said. "Start with the wiles."
And she started.
She started by crouching over me, her ripe lips scant inches from mine. "Lie still," she repeated, "he still and be indifferent to whatever I may do."
I lay still. Pulsing inwardly. What was she about to do?
All she did, at first, was lower her head a little and brush my lips with hers-and with her stroking tongue.
Maybe you think that doesn't sound too sexy. Well, if you think that, it only proves you've never been stretched prone on foam rubber while a sexually exciting young Japanese girl teases your mouth with her wet lips and tongue-tickles you, strokes you.
Then she began to kiss my face. Gentle, butterfly kisses-the merest touch of her lips and tongue against my cheeks, my eyes, my ears. My flesh burned and itched-erotically.
Her kisses went on-now firm and sexy, now light and ticklish.
She kissed my forehead, my cheekbones, the chin, the front and side of my neck. Teasing, provocative, kisses.
I closed my eyes in ecstasy while she kissed her way to my shoulders, my chest. She kissed each of my nipples, kissed every one of my ribs on both sides.
And went on kissing, while her lips moved lower and lower.
Despite my best efforts to remain cool, I could feel my expectation rising as she kissed her way teasingly down my hips and belly.
At any moment... and then the kisses paused momentarily.
I heard her shift her position on the thick foam rubber mat. Then the kisses commenced again. At my toes and the soles of my feet. It was all I could do to suppress a salacious giggle. I'm ticklish down there. Her soft lips and brazen tongue worked their way up my legs, past the knees to my thighs.
There she lingered, as I spread my legs wide to give her the maximum of kissable flesh area. And now her stroking fingers were joining in the fun, stroking and fondling each of my thighs in turn-as her mouth continued to pay liquid homage to my tingling, eager flesh.
Where would she kiss me next? Where, would her stroking fingers move now?
Her coaxing, kneading fingers moved to just the right spot.
And, a moment later, so did her lips and tongue. I groaned with sexual delight.
Saka paused in her labors. "You're supposed to remain indifferent," she reprimanded me.
"Yeah," I said. Yeah sure. Indifferent. How could any man remain indifferent to the kind of sexual stimulation Saka was giving me?
Nevertheless, I tried. I tried to think of other things-to count sheep and do mathematical sums in my head. I tried to remember the capitals of all fifty states, tried like heck to think of something- anything-except the surging stimulation of her mouth, the stroking exhortation of her fingers.
No use.
How could I think of anything-save the incredible titillation of my most responsive flesh?
I couldn't.
And after a while I didn't even try.
I just lay there and enjoyed myself.
And I sure had plenty to enjoy. The sexy little fool. Didn't she realize that within moments she was going to stimulate me past all control-past all stopping?
Didn't she realize that unless she stopped right then, at once, I couldn't be responsible for what might happen next?
Evidently not.
Or else she knew and didn't care.
Or knew and cared-but in a different way.
Meanwhile.
Meanwhile I wasn't about to tell her to stop kissing me, stop circling my pulsing flesh with her teasing tongue, stop squeezing and stroking me with her diabolically erotic fingers.
And then-then the inside of my skull seemed to light up as a million cases of fireworks exploded in my stomach, a billion sunrises rose within me, a trillion super-novae flashed into brilliance.
It was a scorching, soothing, erupting, arousing, satisfying, agonizing, blissful, pulsing succession of passionate paroxysms-an outpouring, upflowing, fast fountaining of unleashed lust.
And she never stopped kissing me.
Time passed.
While I rested, panting, my eyes still closed, Saka snuggled alongside of me.
Then Saka murmured in my ear, "You don't seem to be very resistant to the wiles of a determined woman."
"Just wait!" I gasped. "I have not yet begun to dight-I mean fight. Try me again."
"Oh, I will," said Saka. "But first, why don't we both have a cold beer? I have some Japanese beer on ice."
"Fine," I gasped.
She brought the beer. I struggled to a sitting position, drank. Saka sat crouched on her heels-drinking her beer through a straw, of all things.
She finished her beer. "Ready?" she queried seductively.
"No," I said. "How about another beer?"
"Your wish is my command," she murmured, and fetched more beer. A real handy chick to have around the house, Saka. If only I were fabulously rich I'd have a couple of seductive maid servants like Saka. Or maybe a couple of dozen. They could wake me in the morning-by kissing and fondling me. Wash me, sensuously. Feed me by hand. Comb my hair. Put on my clothes-take off my clothes...
Meanwhile.
Meanwhile I'd finished my second beer.
"Ready?" queried Saka eagerly.
I opened my mouth to tell her no, I certainly wasn't ready. Then I paused. Since I wasn't ready for more fun and games, she obviously would have no luck in trying to arouse and seduce me. So she'd figure I had a lot of will power-figure I was resisting her by sheer grit and determination, instead of physical depletion.
"Yeah, I'm ready," I said. "Do your worst-I mean best."
"You may depend on me," murmured Saka. "Lie back."
"Again?" I said.
"Yes. But do not fear dreary repetition. There are more ways than one to awaken the glorious dragon that sleeps in every man."
Glorious dragon! How's that for a figure of speech? Those Japanese girls can really talk a hot line.
I lay back again, closed my eyes again. What now? I wondered dreamily.
Thump, thump. Somebody was tapping me on the stomach. I opened my eyes. Saka was thumping me on the stomach. She smiled at me, began to thump me on the chest with her thumbs.
"What," I snarled, "do you think you're doing-you some kind of sexual nut or something?"
Saka looked hurt. "I am merely putting into practice the principles expounded in Ananga Ranga, a famous Indian treatise on sexual love, now on sale in paperback format all over the United States."
I looked at her. "And this book suggests a girl should thump a man with her thumbs? On the chest? And stomach?"
"Oh yes. It is full of explicit directions as to who should tap, thump, pat or bite whom-and where."
"You don't say," I said.
"I do say. For example, the book Ananga Ranga suggests such subtle refinements as the act of Sama-hastakakeshagrahana."
"What's that?" I gasped. "It must be incredibly dir-interesting."
"Oh yes. It means the man should hold the girl's hair between his palms at the same time as he kisses her lower lip."
"Big," I snorted, "deal. For this they have a name that long? What else does this book suggest?"
"Well, it contains a table of suggested actions."
"What kind of actions?" I asked eagerly.
"Well, the recommended action for the fifteenth day is holding hair and caressing the fingertips. For the next day, kissing the eyes. For the next, kissing and softly chewing the lower lip. For the next-"
"Stop right there," I said. "That's the slowest table for making love I ever heard. Fifteen days and you're only supposed to have gotten to the fingertips. Bells I Forget this stupid book."
_ "But it is famous, and thanks to the paperback editions now on newsstands all over the country, will be widely followed."
"Not," I said, "by me."
"But it is a very wise book. It describes all sorts of subtle tactile variations. Such as pataka, which is when the wife in congress with her husband pats him with her open hand."
"Stupid," I snorted. "How many wives and husbands both are elected to Congress? And if they spent their time patting each other with open hand... Forget this Ananga Ranga book, baby. Stick with Van de Velde or Candy."
"Just as you say," said Saka She frowned. Then smiled. "Well, as long as we've thrown the book away, what say we just have an orgy? For a start, what say I lie on my back? Then I press my breasts close together, and you..."
"Great idea!" I exclaimed.
"...between my breasts?" finished Saka, as she slithered onto her back, raised her dainty hands and pressed her ripe, rotund breasts together. So close together a man would have trouble shoving his hand between them. The best kind of trouble.
I sat astride her warm gold chest and played all manner of forbidden games with her rich-fleshed, eager-nippled breasts.
I patted them and prodded them and squeezed them as if they were overripe grapefruit I was trying to de-juice. I shook them and gently slapped them and then thrust my hand back and forth between them while Saka giggled in semi-drunken excitement and pressed her luscious breasts closer together.
And, tired though I was from my recent physical depletion, in a very short time I found myself throbbing with eagerness, pulsing with anticipation.
Should I go on stroking the valley between Saka's luscious breasts? No. It was time I gave her a few thrills.
I rolled over on my back.
"Climb aboard me, baby," I told her. "And have as much fun as you tike."
"Oh yes!" cried Saka, and scrambled into an astride position above me. Her knees on either side of my lower ribs, her ripe rump suspended above, she smiled down at me. "Now?" she queried.
"Now," I said. "Lower away, girl."
"Just so," said Saka, deftly shaking her lustrous black hair so that it streamed over her golden-yellow shoulders. She reached down, grasped me, then began slowly to lower herself on top of me.
I felt a preliminary wave of excitement flood my being as her soft flesh first made contact with mine. She wriggled lower, and lower, until her plump young buttocks thudded against my hipbones.
I let out a long, happy sigh. So did she.
Then she giggled and began to wriggle.
And oh how happy that wriggling made me.
Too much wriggling like that and I'd be insane with pleasure.
"What now?" asked Saka archly. As if she didn't know.
"Drive me," I suggested, "insane with pleasure."
"Just so," said Saka. And began to do just that.
First she squeezed me a few times with her muscles, just to let me know what exquisite control she had over all her musculature.
Then she began to sway her hips from side to side like an erotic metronome.
Katamandu! What a sensation!
"More," I gasped.
And she gave me more. And more and more and more exotic sensual thrills.
After swaying her hips from side to side a dozen times, she began to sway back and forth. And then around and around in a sliding, stimulating circle.
It stirred me. It must have stirred her plenty, too, because in a few moments she stopped grinning impishly and began to smile ecstatically.
From side to side swayed her hips, back and forth, around and around. Then she began to bounce up and down. Slowly, sensuously. Tight-grippingly.
Despite my best efforts to remain calm and cool, I gasped involuntarily from the sheer exquisite pleasure of her sliding, frictioning, clasping contact with me.
Nature had been very kind to both of us. I'm kind of a big man. Saka was kind of small. If I'd been a bit bigger and she'd been a bit smaller, things might have been difficult.
As it was, things were perfect. Just right. Just right for the maximum of sliding, squeezing sexual delight.
Around and around she churned, up and down moved her hips, and scintillating waves of rapture rippled out from the very core of my being.
I slid my hands down to stroke her knees, her long supple thighs. Then I reached up to grasp her swaying, dancing breasts-twin globes of golden flesh designed for a man's clasping hands.
I didn't have to shake her breasts-:-her bouncing, churning motion shook her breasts within my clutching hands.
Bliss.
Hot flaming bliss.
Her breasts bounced in my hands, her rump bounced on my body, her muscles gripped me and squeezed me as I'd never been squeezed before.
Rapture.
Hot rippling rapture.
While she bounced up and down and churned around and around, I played with the golden hemispheres of her breasts. I cupped them and clasped them, grabbed her big, dark, hot, fully erect nipples and toyed with them, tugged at them, twirled them.
And still she bounced, still she churned while wave after wave of ecstasy flowed though me.
This was living, the best kind of living.
Faster and faster her talented hips gyrated and bounced up and down, faster and faster the waves of rapture throbbed through me.
I couldn't pretend to be cool and detached any longer. I writhed and twisted on the foam rubber, aching with almost satisfied lust, pulsing with pent-up physical passion.
And then I felt a shudder rack her body and I saw her close her eyes tight and bite down on her lower lip at the same instant as the swirling, bouncing provocation of her body speeded up five-fold.
And I knew it was happening for her-the searing, scorching pleasure-pain that borders on total insanity, utter fulfillment.
And then, it was happening for me, too-and the huge room spun around me and the foam rubber ground seemed to heave and lurch in space and a great urgency within me was suddenly, pulsingly, released and I clutched her rounded breasts tight and let the surging rapture within me fountain upward, with the squirming writhing flesh-storm of her body-and, after a long, throbbing while, it was over...
We rested. Drank more beer. Smoked a pair of cigarettes lying side by side.
"Shouldn't," I queried some while later, "we be practicing judo holds on each other?"
"Oh," said Saka. "That. Yeah. No doubt. You want to practice judo?"
"Not me," I said.
"That makes two of us," murmured Saka.
"I just," I said, "don't want to get you into trouble."
"You won't," said Saka. "I take pills-vitamin pills, that is."
"I meant," I said, "I don't want the General to get mad because you haven't been doing your job."
"He does what he likes to do," chuckled Saka, "I do what I like to do. Besides, he'll never know. He has a closed circuit TV camera trained on us right now, but I painted the lens over with nail polish this afternoon. He'll think it's mechanical trouble. What do you want to do next?"
I made a suggestion.
"That sounds like fun!" gasped Saka. "Let's do it right now, if you're ready."
"If I'm not," I said, "I will be before very long-if you follow my instructions to the letter."
She did. And it was fun. The most fun I'd ever had without laughing aloud. More fun, in fact.
After that-what happened? Oh, yes. We rested, drank more beer. Then she stood on her hands. And I stood on my feet. And we embraced. And kissed. Fervently.
Remarkable girl, Saka. She could stand on her hands, on a pillow carefully selected to bring her to the right height, and...
But doubtless my readers wouldn't be interested in the details of our physical workout.
Suffice to say that-we had fun.
Volumes of fun. Tucked away in her private office, she had a seven-foot shelf of illustrated Oriental sex manuals.
We tried everything we had the stamina to try. For a day and a night (we had meals sent in).
By the end of that day and night, I knew less of judo than when I'd started, but I sure knew a lot about a certain Japanese girl. And she knew a lot about me.
It was a simple, uncomplicated orgy. Though orgy isn't quite the right word.
Come to think of it, the English language doesn't have a word to describe our time together. Affair implies an emotional entanglement-but I wasn't infatuated with Saka and she wasn't with me. Not emotionally, just physically.
What we had together was a sex bout. I got to know more about her physical capabilities and partialities in thirty-six hours than most men learn about their brides in the first six months of marriage.
We got drunk on sex together.
And became good friends in the process. Not lovers, friends. There was nothing romantic about our shared thirty-six hours-but then, romance has been greatly overrated.
We explored each other's bodies inch by erotic inch, and gloried in the thrill of sensual discovery. I learned that by simultaneously blowing in one of her ears while I fondled her nipples, I could give her a special thrill; and she discovered (and I learned) that I was strangely responsive to being kissed on the base of the spine while being lightly touched elsewhere.
Exciting, intimate, personal discoveries-for no two men (or women) have exactly the same erogenous regions. The touch, or kiss, or caress that thrills one man (or girl) may he merely pleasing to another.
With a one-time or one-night session with a girl, you really learn little, and during a long affair emotions and outside events color one's reactions.
Which is why I think that concentrated, unemotional sex bouts such as Saka and I enjoyed should be encouraged as a healthy, enjoyable pastime.
But I digress.
Suffice to say Saka and I had a ball.
A ball which, all too soon, came to an end.
What happened was that a phone rang, and Saka answered it.
"Oh," she said into the phone. "Yes, General. Right, General. If you say so, General."
She hung up, strolled over to where I was stretched on my back.
"That was the General," she said.
"What does he want?" I asked.
She sighed. "He wants," she said, "me to do-this."
And she jabbed her thumb at my neck. I saw her thumb coming, but I couldn't move aside in time. And, since judo was her business, she didn't need to jab me a second time. I was out cold half a second later.
After which (though I didn't of course know it at the time) I was given an anesthetic injection-and a very unusual operation was performed on me.
CHAPTER FIVE
TWO WEEKS LATER, with the small scar on my abdomen completely healed (thanks to advanced medical techniques), I was back at the private lake in Maine.
Alone. Vacationing again.
Also feeling kind of uneasy.
I felt, in fact, exactly as a tethered goat must feel-one of those they tie to a stake in a jungle clearing to attract a man-eating tiger.
I was bait. Bait for a mad billionaire named Cantwell Undershaft.. What a comedown for a trained SADISTO agent, even on vacation. But an easy job. All I had to do was relax and wait for Cantwell to grab me.
And possibly kill me. Damn, and on my holiday.
Needless to say, once I'd come out of the anesthetic-to find the operation already performed-I'd tried to talk my way out of the grisly situation.
The General had been firm.
"You have a perfect right to say no," he'd assured me. "After all, you are on vacation. However, in view of the fact that you now know so much about Cantwell Undershaft's operation, I really feel I would have to have you killed. To preserve security, of course. For the safety of the Free World, that is."
This interview had taken place in the private hospital room (twelve stories underground at SADISTO headquarters) where I was lying on a hospital bed still feeling pretty stiff and rotten after the operation.
The General had smiled at me apologetically, then raised his voice. "Nurse!" he called.
A trim brunette in a white nylon nurse's uniform had trotted through the door.
"Ah, Tina," the General had said. "Tina, 0008 hasn't decided if he wants to go through with the Cantwell caper. If his decision is negative..." He reached inside his jacket, pulled out a gleaming knife, tossed it at the nurse. She snaked out a hand, deftly grasped the handle of the knife in midair.
She smiled at me-horribly-then put the knife between her teeth, reached behind her back, unzipped her white uniform, let it slide to the floor.
Totally naked-and ripely beautiful of figure-she took the knife from between her teeth, grasped it firmly in her right hand, and strolled over to my bed.
"I hate to cut up people white I'm wearing clothes," she informed me conversationally. "You get so many hard-to-remove bloodstains on your clothes. Strip, then kill-is my motto." She prodded me gently with her sharp knife. "Say no, please? It's been weeks since I've had the fun of killing a human victim with a knife. I badly need the practice. And don't fret. You won't feel a thing...two or three hours from now when I tire of playing with you."
"Nurse!" I gasped. "You're supposed to heal people, not cut them up for kicks!"
"Tina may be a nurse," chuckled the General, "but she's also a trained SADISTO agent-licensed to kill other helpless but reactionary SADISTO agents who refuse to spend their hard-earned leisure relaxing for the Free World."
"In that case," I said, cringing away from Tina's prodding knife, "the answer is yes-I'll be your decoy. Or bait or whatever it is you want me to be, provided I can remain on vacation from SADISTO. That is, you and the other agents do all the work while I cool it."
Tina scowled, tossed the knife back to the General and stalked out of the room with her shapely rump switching angrily from side to side. She didn't even bother to pick up her uniform.
I clicked my teeth in appreciation, turned back to the smiling General, "About this operation-" I began.
"Nothing to worry about," the General assured me. "In fact it's just a part of our plot-I mean, heh, heh-our plan for ensuring that your holiday with be truly restful. Or as you just put it: The other bloodthirsty SADISTO agents will do all the dirty work while you, so to speak, 'take five'."
"Katamandu!" I roared. "You've not only schemed to use my time off for the safety of the Free World, you've cut me up-I'm impotent! Blast!"
"Not so," replied the General, shadow fighting with, his knife. "To all outward appearances, you have merely had your appendix removed. In fact, we did remove your appendix, to make room for the tiny plastic-sealed radio transmitter which is now a permanent resident in your abdominal cavity. It will transmit a single beep every day for six months. A beep our detectors can home on."
"Very ingenious, and sneaky," I said. "This Cantwell Undershaft kidnaps me, you follow my beeps to his lair, rescue me, deal with him-and all is well."
"Exactly," said the General.
"But won't Cantwell be suspicious if I start beeping?"
The General frowned. "The beep is entirely silent-except to someone with a transmitter tuned to the exact and highly secret frequency."
"Okay," I said. "But what if this Cantwell character has me X-rayed and learns I have a tiny radio transmitter inside me? What then, huh?"
The General frowned. "Never thought of that. I suppose he'd kill you-horribly. Well, let's hope he doesn't think of X-raying you. After all, those are the risks we must take."
Get that. We.
"Incidentally, as you have by now ho doubt realized," said the General, "the success of this mission depends entirely on your cover. Cantwell Undershaft must be absolutely convinced that he is kidnapping Rex Kingston, the famous weapons expert. If he should ever suspect that you are really the dreadful-I mean-dreaded SADISTO agent, 0008, he'd probably have you tossed into his tank of barracudas.
"Not even I myself, leader of SADISTO's gang, uh, group of highly trained secret agents, could order one of my triple-zero killers to remain inactive when kidnapped by anyone as vicious as Cantwell Undershaft. That's why a trained SADISTO agent, such as you, is the ideal sitting duck-I mean-decoy for this caper. As you know, SADISTO agents on vacation are not licensed to kill. That's why they hide out on their holidays.
"So keep your 'cool' at all times. Remember, this is our show-you're on vacation!"
Get that. Some vacation!
But, since I had no alternative, I allowed SADISTO to fly me back to the lake in Maine, there to await- something.
The first day back at the lake nothing happened. Maybe Cantwell Undershaft didn't want a weapons expert. Or had gotten another one. Or had sent his men to the lake the day before, and found me missing.
The second day back at the lake nothing happened. I tried to get back to relaxing in style. It was difficult. When Kami had dropped in, I'd been enjoying a book concerning dum-dum and explosive bullets and their effect on human flesh. Somehow, now, the subject repelled me. Was I going soft? I declined to answer myself to avoid possible self-recrimination.
The third day passed. Nothing.
I swam naked in the lake, fished naked in the stream, hunted naked in the woods. But nothing sinister happened.
And then, four days after my return from SADISTO HQ, a twin-engined Grumman amphibian circled high above the lake, circled lower, then landed in a plume of spray.
The plane taxied toward the primitive dock, cut engines, rocked in its own swell. A door opened in the fuselage, and out stepped Drusilla.
I didn't know her name then, of course. I merely noted her tanned bronze flesh, the skimpy bikini that emphasized rather than concealed, her wide, flaring hips and her outsurging breasts, her long and thick red hair.
She waved cheerfully at me, raised her shapely arms above her head, plunged headfirst into the lake and began to swim toward shore and me.
A couple of minutes later she waded out of the lake, sputtering and laughing.
"I say," she called, "jolly cold water you have up here, what?"
I stared at her. Suspiciously. She didn't look suspicious. She looked like a luscious hunk of red-haired female. But....
"Sorry to intrude and all that," she continued, brushing water off her shapely body, "but I rather ran short of petrol and thought you might-I say, you are feeling friendly, aren't you?"
I blinked at her, then realized her gaze was fixed on my swimming trunks. Only I wasn't wearing swimming trunks.
"Sorry," I said. "I forgot I was, uh, unclad. I'll go put on a towel."
"Wouldn't think of it, old boy," said the ripe-bodied redhead. "I mean to say, this is your lake, so I should conform, what?"
Upon saying which she reached behind her back, loosened her bikini bra, tossed it aside. Her breasts were fantastically full, firm, and high set. They thrust out from her chest like-well, like two huge but shapely breasts. No sag, no droop. Quite the contrary-her breasts pointed up, not down. Dual rounded cones of deliciously pointed, tanned flesh.
While I was thinking this, her hands had deftly untied her bikini diaper and tossed it aside-and she stood proudly nude before me.
"Better, what?" she said. "Chap feels conspicuous when overdressed. I say, you wouldn't have a spot of stimulant handy, would you? Awfully cold in that lake of yours." She shivered and her breasts and buttocks quivered.
Her luscious body, I noted almost objectively, was covered with goose pimples. Well, it was cold in the lake.
"Yes," I said. "This way." I led the way toward the cabin. Rough. Cantwell Undershaft had sent a lovely emissary. Too bad-for her. I had already decided, a decision reached while tossing restlessly in bed unable to sleep, that the safest course for me would be to execute whomever Cantwell Undershaft sent to get me.
After that I wasn't clear what I'd do-bury the body deep in the lake and say nothing, or else explain to the General that my gun or knife or crossbow had gone off accidentally.
Either way I'd be safe, at least relatively safe. Safer than if I allowed myself to be kidnapped one more time, and dragged off to some remote place to become an involuntary master at arms for a mad billionaire's revived Roman Games. Still, I couldn't sadistically murder a willowy redhead while I was on vacation-just not cricket, you know.
Meanwhile, the luscious redhead was inside my cabin, admiring the collection of lethal weapons.
"What jolly toys," she commented. "By the way, my name is Drusilla. Drusilla-Smith."
I told her my name-the cover name, that is-offered her a choice of warm bourbon or warm Scotch.
"Scotch, please. Easy on the soda, if you have soda. I say, are you the same Rex Kingston renowned for his knowledge of lethal weapons-the author of Cut 'Em, Slash 'Em, Hack 'Em or Stick 'Em-A Study of Swords, Daggers and Spears Through History?"
I grunted assent. She was an agent of Cantwell Undershaft all right. Or was she? After all, Rex Kingston did have an international reputation. Could she possibly be what she seemed-a rich, eccentric English girl who really had run out of petrol?
It would be awkward if she were. Awkward for both of us. She might wind up unjustly slaughtered, and I might end up being executed for murder.
Still, there was no sense in taking chances. I banded her a glass of Scotch and warm soda. She said, "Cheers!" and sat down carelessly on one of my easy chairs.
I sat a few yards away, next to a table on which rested a modern crossbow. The crossbow was already drawn, cocked and fitted with a cutting arrow that I used on deer. All I had to do was casually slide the crossbow around until it pointed at her left breast, touch the trigger-and swish, thud!
I could sink her in the middle of the lake. But her plane! Even if I sank that, too, the lake wasn't all that deep. It might be visible from the air if a search were made. Problems, problems.
Meanwhile the redhead had risen to her feet and was making a casual tour of the cabin, inspecting the weapon collection on the walls.
While she inspected the guns and swords I inspected her. Choice! Her flesh was flawless, and tanned an even bronze all over. Her breasts were firm and sumptuous-great glowing globes of taut, sublimely sculpted flesh.
A slim waist, a flat belly, wide, totally feminine hips, and lush, impudently rounded buttocks. Her legs were extra long, and most of the length was where it should be, in the thighs. Her thighs were sweetly curved, ripe without being fat, powerful looking without being marred by muscles.
"How does it happen," I said, "that you're flying around Maine in a twin-engined flying boat?"
"Two engines are safer than one, old boy," said Drusilla, lightly. "But I catch your drift. You mean who the devil am I?" She smiled. "I've been called a lot of things, but I think remittance woman would fit me best. Dear old Dad-back in Oxfordshire-sends me a generous monthly stipend. Provided I stay out of England, where they claim I disgraced the family name. Heaps of times."
"And did you?" I asked.
"Rather! But what some people call a disgrace, or a shocking incident, I prefer to call fun." She strolled over and smiled at me at point-blank range. Her eyes were huge, blue-violet in color; her lips full and sensual.
"If you see anything you like," she advised me, "just reach for it."
I gulped bourbon. Could this chick be on the level? Could she be nothing but a rich playgirl roaming the globe for kicks? Possibly. At the very least I should defer killing her until I'd made up my mind.
"Shy?" she inquired as I continued to sit there staring at her.
"Uh-no," I said. "Just thinking-thinking how lucky it was for me that you ran out of petrol over my lake." I stood up, slid my hands around her waist. She smiled, closed her eyes and tilted her head back to be kissed.
I pulled her to me and kissed her. Her lips tasted like crushed rose petals drenched in wine. Her breasts seemed to flow outward across my chest as the pressure of our embrace partially flattened them against my ribs. But only partially. Her breasts were too big, too ripely firm to ever really flatten.
I forced my tongue between her parted lips, slid my hands down to grasp the saucy flair of her rump, pull her loins tight against mine. Her flesh felt cool, smooth and delectable. Sensuous, provocative skin. Skin that cried out to be stroked, savored, caressed.
Her belly, tight pressed against mine, began to move back and forth, sliding inflamingly against my lower body. I dug my fingers deeper into the burnished bliss bowls of her buttocks, letting them sink like talons into the springy resiliency of her fun flesh.
Her tongue was a darting lambency in my mouth, a flickering, sliding, erotic organ of desire; her hands, were clutching, then stroking my back and the back of my neck.
I broke the surging suction of our kiss. "The bedroom," I suggested, jerking my head toward the doorway.
Drusilla's eyes were ultra-violet pools of unslaked passion. "No, I can't wait," she rasped. "Here-now. Let's do it standing." Her hands slid up my back, clamped over my shoulders.
I barely had time to brace myself before she half sprang, half pulled herself up me. I helped pull her up with my hands under the lower flare of her buttocks, and an instant later her legs were wound around my hips.
What with the leverage her legs gave her, the upward pull of my hands and her own arms pulling upward, she was able to maneuver just right-maneuver with the exactitude of a tanker aircraft locking on to the projecting nozzle of a bomber being refueled in midair.
A moment later we were firmly, lusciously locked together. Her legs wound around my hips, her belly pressing against mine.
She sighed, happily, shifted her hands one by one until they were clasping the back of my neck, then she let her upper body fall back until she was at arm's length from me.
Her head and shoulders, that is. Her belly was locked tightly, intimately to mine.
I let go her rump, reached for the full globes of breast flesh that swayed in front of me, clasped them, squeezed them, kneaded them-while Drusilla, her heavy-lidded eyes gleaming with lust, began to pulse and squeeze with her muscles.
"Bounce me," she pleaded, "bounce me up and down."
"Not with you off center so far," I said. "Come closer."
She pulled herself up against me until her breasts were snuggled ripely against my chest. I wrapped my arms around her and began to bounce up and down on my heels.
We both gasped with pleasure. Because every bounce I bounced caused our linked bodies to slide surgingly together.
"Walk me," Drusilla whispered in my ear, "walk me around."
And, despite the dual weight I was carrying on my feet, I walked her slowly around the room. Each step I took sent jolts of joy spreading through my body, spreading out from the glowing vortex of my thighs.
I walked us slowly, bouncingly through the doorway to my bedroom, over beside the bed.
"No," protested Drusilla. "I want to do it this way."
"Then that's the way we'll do it," I said, beginning to bounce up and down on my heels again. "But I want to have a soft place to fall on-if we fall."
"Stop talking," she whispered, "and bounce me faster."
I bounced her faster. It was hard work, seeing as how I had both our weights on my feet, but I managed it. And I had to admit it was exciting. Novel. Stimulating.
Drusilla helped the stimulation along by adroit and erotic use of her highly developed muscles. She tilted her head back again, and again we kissed, again our tongues played sensuous games in her mouth and mine. As I bounced us both up and down, the sliding, squeezing contact of her lust raised me to new heights of excitement teased and titillated me almost beyond endurance.
I slid my hands down again to clasp her writhing rump flesh, pull her tight to me as I continued to bounce up and down, as her muscles continued to ripple around me excitingly.
And then the tension within us both was too great to bear, and I felt a sudden spasmodic flickering of Drusilla's tummy, felt her fingernails bite into my back as her tongue lashed the inside of my mouth-and at that instant the detonations within her body triggered my own reaction. The cabin bedroom seemed to spin around me as surge after surge of pulsing, throbbing, fountaining wonder exploded.
Each pulsing throb of my ardor was met with a frenzied squeeze-coaxing and urging me on and on.
I felt her body jerk as if lust fire were cascading over her, and she broke our kiss and whimpered like an animal in pain-buried her sharp teeth deep into my shoulder. Then the cabin was spinning faster and faster around me, and I knew I couldn't keep on my feet an instant longer-and then I was falling, falling toward the bed, where I landed with a bounce, she beneath me, the bed springs creaking in protest.
We lay there a long time, our bodies still locked, the fires of passion still pulsing between us-though more gently now, as raging passion faded to sated gratification.
Our bodies were drenched with sweat, our meshed flesh slippery smooth, our hearts pounding frantically.
Then, slowly, we writhed apart, wriggled away from the edge of the bed and lay side by side, panting, utterly drained, completely happy.
A few moments later she turned her head, and we gazed at each other at point-blank range. Her face was flushed, her blue-violet eyes glazed.
"I say," she gasped, "that was all right eh?"
I nodded. I was too hushed to talk.
I was too bushed to do anything but just lie there, gasping, and recover from the fabulous lust festival I'd enjoyed.
What a sexual playmate this English chick was! What a desire doxie!
How could I have ever suspected her of being an agent for Cantwell Undershaft, the mad billionaire, the man called GAMEFINGER? Obviously all this chick wanted to do was enjoy herself and be enjoyed. This luscious bodied redhead couldn't-
And at that instant I caught a flash of motion and turned my head-just in time for her judo chop to land on my neck.
And again I went out like a light.
CHAPTER SIX
I AWOKE SUDDENLY TO A NIGHTMARE.
Specifically, I awoke on a huge, soft bed-with stars overhead. Tropical stars.
I'm no astronomer, but as a trained SADISTO agent (even on vacation) I know enough about the constellations to know when I'm south of the Equator. I raised my head and looked around. I was in a big, plainly furnished whitewashed room. The walls were made of what looked like sawn blocks of coral. The windows in the walls looked out on darkness. Barred windows, I noted. Overhead were more bars where the ceiling should be. At one end of the ceiling I could see a big roller rolled with canvas. Evidently, when it rained, the canvas was unrolled. When it wasn't raining the canvas was rolled back to reveal bars and the tropic sky.
The funny taste in my mouth told me that, once again. I'd been drugged. I looked quickly down at my body. I was naked. But at least I didn't have any new scars on my torso, so I hadn't been operated on again.
But where was I? Where had I been taken to this time? And, more important, how could I have been such a fool to allow Drusilla to catch me unaware and kidnap me?
At that instant a barred door swung open, a light was turned on and in strolled Drusilla. She was naked again. No, not completely naked. Around her waist she wore a wide canvas belt, a belt with little pockets in which were stuck things like cigarettes, matches, a couple of pencils, a handkerchief, et cetera.
In her hand was an odd-looking pistol (which I should have recognized but didn't).
"Well," she said briskly, "you're awake. I thought that stimulant would bring you around."
"Where am I?" I groaned.
"Why," said Drusilla, "you're on a tiny island in the Indian Ocean. Not more than a few hundred miles East of Songa Manara."
Songa Manara? Oh, yes. That was a tiny island off the coast of Tanganyika-Tanzania, now-an island where a ruined castle dating from the empire of the Queen of Sheba was being excavated.
"How did I get here?" I demanded, rubbing my head.
"You were flown here, of course. From your private lake in Maine I flew you to a large East Coast city. There you were transferred, suitably hidden, to a cargo plane belonging to Cantwell Undershaft. And the two of us-you out cold, me conscious, were flown to this island. This island we call Eros."
"Eros?"
"Right! Of course, that isn't the name you'll find on the map-if you have a marine chart detailed enough to show this island, which few do. Cantwell leases the island-for a hundred million a year-from the nation of-well, from a newly independent nation that needs the money. And in return for the high rent, the nation has agreed to stay far away from this tropic paradise.
Which is just as well, considering the kind of things that go on here."
I groaned, inwardly. The General's computer-based guess had come true. I had been kidnapped by Cantwell Undershaft, the mad billionaire.
"Cantwell," went on Drusilla, "would like to talk to you-now. Will you come quietly?"
"No!" I snarled. Foolishly.
Drusilla merely shrugged, aimed her pistol at my heart and pulled the trigger. A swish of compressed air, and a tiny hypo-dart thudded into my chest.
I let out a roar of rage, plucked it from me, but far too late. Already the super-powerful tranquilizer was taking effect. I tried to climb to my feet, only to black out and fall back on the bed.
Half an hour later I came to again. This time I was slumped in a big wicker chair. Seated directly in front of me was a fat, bloated-looking man dressed in a Roman toga.
Cantwell Undershaft! The man called GAMEFINGER!
He leered at me. "Welcome to my private island, Mr. Kingston," he cackled. "You don't know it yet, but you've been selected to fill an important job in my... crusade."
I groaned, but to myself.
"Yes," went on Cantwell, rubbing the bald spot on his big round head, "you have been selected to act as my master at arms and chief advisor, Weapons Division."
I opened my mouth to tell him that a trained SADISTO agent would never consent to become a part of his grisly schemes, but remembered just in time that I wasn't supposed to know anything about his grisly schemes. Watch it, Trevor (alias Rex), I thought to myself; one little slip like that and you'll be fed to the barracuda. Or worse.
"Master," I said innocently, "at arms?" I mopped my brow.
Cantwell beamed at me. "It is hot in here, isn't it?" he said, mopping his own brow. He raised his hands, clapped four times, and into the room trotted four magnificently naked young girls. An ebony-fleshed Nubian girl, a golden-fleshed Chinese girl, a tawny-skinned Polynesian chick, and a creamy-fleshed blonde.
All had the distant, wooden expression of zombies; all were nude; each carried a broad-leafed palm frond, and all, I noted with horror, had a kind of tattoo of green dye etched on their tummies: the letters CU. The brand of Cantwell Undershaft, no doubt. Two of the girls took up positions behind Cantwell, two behind me. They began to fan our brows with their palm fronds. If I were a mad billionaire, I thought, I'd install air conditioning. Or would I?
"Yes," continued Cantwell Undershaft, not even deigning to glance at his slave girls' luscious teen-age breasts, their provocatively flaring hips, their youthful but ripe thighs, "yes, I find myself at present in dire need of a weapons expert. Someone who can act both as a technical advisor and coach. You see, Mr. Kingston-or shall I call you Rex?-you see, I have revived, improved and modernized the ancient and wise custom created by the Romans, that of staging blood sports and human duels to the death. I'll show you."
He snapped his fingers twice. There was a brief pause and then, through a doorway marched two husky teenage girls. Burmese or Indo-Chinese chicks, I guessed. They, too, were totally naked (and incredibly voluptuous); they too had wooden expressions, and the letters CU stenciled in green on their bellies.
One was pushing a small movie screen on a wheeled tripod, the other a compact movie projector. More snapping of fingers on Cantwell's part, and a few moments later the lights were dimmed and the projector began to whir.
A film in full color was projected onto the screen.. The first scene was one I'd seen before at SADISTO headquarters. It was the ugly sword fight between the naked blonde and the nude redhead, the fight that had ended with the blonde hacking the stoic redhead to gory shreds.
Ordinarily, sadistic idler that I am, the scene wouldn't have phased me. But the furlough fever had me. "Ulp," I said to myself as the scene came to its blood-drenched conclusion. A moment later a new scene, one I hadn't seen, flashed on the screen. In this scene two husky males, one a Caucasian, the other Chinese, were standing back to back, each holding a .22 Colt Woodsman target pistol in each hand.
Neither man was wearing any armor, or clothes, for that matter. A whistle sounded on the sound track, and both men marched twenty paces woodenly, wheeled and began emptying their automatics at each other.
It was ugly! Although lethal weapons were my specialty, and I had studied plenty of still pictures and quite a few movies showing the effect of small arms fire on human flesh, still there was something chilling about watching two naked men pump slugs into each other so calmly and impassively.
A .22, of course, packs plenty of killing power but has no knock-down power. And neither of the two duelists were expert marksmen. As a result, they absorbed close to forty bullets between them before, their guns empty, they slowly sagged to the ground. Where they promptly expired.
"Ulp," I said again, inwardly.
Another scene came on the screen. This time of two nude, lithe-bodied young blondes swimming underwater above a coral reef. Each held a spring-loaded spear gun, and each had a slim-bladed knife attached to her right thigh with a rubber band. They were wearing face masks but not aqua lungs.
They circled each other warily in the clear water, spear guns aimed. Then both fired. One missed her opponent-the other skewered hers through the stomach.
The blonde with the fish spear projecting from her belly dropped her empty spear gun and drifted, writhing, through the crystalline water-a grim cloud of red suffusing behind her.
An instant later the victor drew her knife, swam in close and finished her off with four or five clumsy but effective stabs with her knife. The screen went dark and the lights came back on.
The two Burmese girls wheeled out the screen and projector; the four palm frond girls continued fanning our brows. They never paused, in fact.
"Well," cackled Cantwell, "what did you think? Of course, that's just a brief sample of the many hundreds of, uh, duels I've photographed here on Eros Island. Duels between man and man, girl and girl, animal and animal-and assorted combinations and permutations. All, you understand, training duels."
"Training?" I snapped. "How can anybody be said to be training when they wind up dead!"
"Training for me, my photographers and technical advisors," said Cantwell peevishly. "You can't make top-notch films of first-rate duels unless you have plenty of practice. Also sound technical advice, which is where you come in."
"One question," I said. "How do you make these men and girls fight each other to the death?"
Cantwell chuckled jovially. "That's a technician for you. Always interested in the how, never the why. How I brainwash my, uh, gladiators is something you need not worry about. Suffice to say that any real brainwashing expert can, with the aid of drugs and rigorous conditioning, brainwash formerly sane individuals to the point where they are not only insensible to pain-but are firmly convinced it is their duty to fight other gladiators to the death."
"That's hard to believe," I said, faking it. All SADISTO agents are trained to brainwash.
"Is it? It shouldn't be. The gladiators, male and female, back in Roman days fought and killed each other before cheering or jeering crowds. Not one in a thousand refused to fight. For that matter, consider how many hundreds of millions of conscripts, throughout history, have allowed themselves to be drafted into every kind of army-and then set to work killing other conscripts.
"Why? Not one man in ten could have told you. And those that thought they knew were, for the most part, victims of cynical propaganda."
I pursed my lips. Cantwell Undershaft sounded like a rotten pacifist.
"I'm no pacifist," Cantwell went on. "But consider that, in all human history, perhaps half a billion men have fought each other. Even if we grant that every single war had a good as well as bad side, then two hundred fifty million men went to war for bad or foolish reasons. Right?"
I considered his logic. Doubtless he was right.
"Of course I'm right," Cantwell snapped. "Men or women have a basic urge to fight. Brainwash 'em good, throw them at each other and they will fight. To the death. Especially if they've been conditioned by experts, and I have experts. One of my brainwashing experts is an ex-Nazi who worked for an Arab republic, until the Arab president caught him brain-washing his private harem. Another of my experts is a renegade Chinese Communist who successfully subverted over two hundred Allied prisoners during the Korean war. A third is-but I'm boring you with details. If you still doubt me-" He put his chubby index fingers in his mouth, whistled twice.
Two tall, stately nude girls marched into the room. One was a brunette with long, lustrous dark brown hair and fantastically large breasts. The other was an ash blonde, equally ripe and voluptuous. Both girls carried naked swords in their right hands. Cantwell's soldiers, evidently. Each, I noticed, had the initials CU tatooed or dyed on her abdomen in red, not green. Could the green tattoo signify slave girls, a red tattoo warrior girls? (Yes, I learned later.)
"You've no doubt heard," said Cantwell cheerfully, "of the famous demonstration once staged by the mad Emperor of Haiti? When, to show his soldiers' discipline to a visiting diplomat, he ordered a troop of his soldiers to march off a cliff? Well, I can't spare a troop, but-which of these warriors do you find the uglier?"
"Ugly?" I snarled. "They're both incredibly lovely!" Cantwell frowned.
"Then which do you find the most attractive?"
I studied the two impassive-faced girl swordsmen. It was hard to say, but-"The blonde," I said slowly, "is just a little more alluring."
"Then," said Cantwell, "the brunette is the uglier. And we can do without ugliness." He pointed at the blonde. "You! Prepare to dispatch this enemy-" he waved at the brunette "-at the command now!"
The blonde raised her slender-bladed sword in salute, then pressed the tip against the brunette's left breast, just below the nipple. The point slightly dimpled the brunette's full breast, and a tiny trickle of red flowed from where the sharp point had pierced the flesh. The brunette continued to stare rigidly ahead.
"Now!" barked Cantwell.
"No!" I shouted, at the same instant.
The brainwashed blonde obeyed Cantwell and thrust her sword deep into the brunette's breast-and heart. The brunette shuddered, then crumpled in death. The blonde put her foot on the brunette's chest, calmly tugged loose her sword.
"That is all," snapped Cantwell. "Resume sentry duty. And have some servants haul out this carrion." He waved a pudgy finger at the brunette's shapely corpse.
"A drink," I rasped. "I need a drink."
"Certainly," said Cantwell. He stamped his foot three times on the floor, and a few moments later a young but fully curved Japanese girl wheeled in a portable bar, bowed and departed impassively. I poured myself a full glass of bourbon, dropped in an ice cube and drank deep-while two naked, blank-faced Polynesian girls seized the defunct brunette by the ankles and dragged her corpse from the room.
"That demonstration," I said, between gulps of bourbon, "wasn't necessary."
Cantwell shrugged. "At least now you don't doubt the ability of my brainwashing experts to achieve maximal effectiveness. Drink as much bourbon as you like; I have a vast wine cellar and liquor store here on Eros Island."
I took him at his word and gulped more bourbon.
"Okay," I said when I'd stopped coughing, "okay-so you can brainwash naked men and nude girls into killing each other. And being killed. But why?"
Cantwell smiled and told me.
"To begin with," began Cantwell, "I don't pit nude girls against each other in fights to the death just for kicks-my kicks. Not at all."
Remembering the casual way in which he'd had the brunette skewered through her left breast just to make a point, I doubted him-but kept silent.
"No," continued Cantwell, "although I have had perhaps a couple hundred American, European, Chinese, Japanese, African, Arabian, Polynesian and other young men and girls kidnapped, brainwashed and made into slaves-the bulk of whom have since hacked, stabbed or shot each other to death, or been torn to shreds by wild animals-and although I intend to kidnap, brainwash and, uh, amusingly destroy several hundred more-still, I do what I do for the sake of humanity."
I poured more bourbon, drank, and said nothing.
I just listened. Listened to one of the most-in fact the most-fantastic scheme I'd ever heard.
His basic contention was that men and women were rapacious, savage animals with a built-in blood lust. I agreed with him there. Unless men and women found an outlet for their basic pugnacity, he argued further, wars would continue to be inevitable.
"We may like to think we're civilized," he told me, "but we all thirst for blood. The Spanish grandmother watching entranced as a bull is butchered in the bullring, the American infant clapping his hands as the Western hero guns down his enemies on TV, the demure English housewife who devours blood-drenched murder mysteries..."
"Yeah, yeah," I said.
"But what about the more horrible sports-such as motorcycle or stock car racing, where the spectators come to wait for, hope for bloody accidents? They prove my point exactly. Men and women thirst for blood. Give it to them, and they're happy. Keep it from them and they get restless and go to war."
"Well-" I began.
"Well we might ponder the foolishness of our historians and moralists who sneered at the Romans for providing their citizens with weekly bloodbaths at the coliseum. The Roman senators were no fools. They knew that if the public could watch men, girls and animals slaughter each other every Saturday, they wouldn't itch to go to war the rest of the week."
"But," I protested, "the Roman games were barbarous, frightful, inhuman. Sheer butchery!"
"Nonsense," snapped Cantwell. "Butchery, yes-but carefully staged, ingeniously dramatized butchery. Men and girls against lions, tigers, bulls, crocodiles, rhinos-and each other. Galley fights in a flooded arena. Fire fights, sword fights, whip fights-every form of sadistic perversion, served up red-hot-and live. No fictional dramatizations, no faked scenes. Just real swords slicing up real flesh, real lions eating real screaming teen-age girls alive. Fun for the whole family."
"You think so?" I asked.
"I know so," said Cantwell, adjusting his Roman toga, "More important, horrible, grisly, sadistic spectacles such as the Roman games provided a safety valve for the whole population. And that's what the world lacks today-a safety valve. A safety valve I intend to supply-for the sake of mankind."
I frowned. "Explain yourself," I said.
And he did just that, in fifty or sixty thousand well chosen (if often profane and lewd) words.
His plan was preposterous-ridiculous-yet, I had eventually to admit, technically feasible. If you had a billion dollars to spend, that is. Briefly, Cantwell's plan was to make several hundred short movies of naked girls, men and animals chopping, stabbing, shooting, spearing and biting each other to death. These, along with several hundred full-color stag movies-which he intended to purchase-he planned to record on micro video tape.
Then the tape, along with a compact but powerful television transmitting unit, would be packed into a satellite and sent into orbit around the earth. The satellite would be far enough out so that it would circle the globe twice a day. And all the time it would be transmitting-movies and grisly sadistic films of human and animal gladiators butchering each other.
I continually interrupted Cantwell's lecture to tell him why his scheme would never work. "You couldn't pack close to a thousand films into a tiny reel of tape," I told him.
"Nonsense. Thanks to micro-circuitry, a thousand hours of film can be packed into a reel the size of a beer can. The TV transmitter-extra powerful and with duplicate circuits for reliability-will be about the size of four beer cans. My entire satellite will be smaller than a basketball and weigh about fifty pounds."
"Yeah, maybe so," I said. "But you couldn't buy a rocket big enough to launch it."
"Sure I can. Solid fuel rockets developed in the last few years are cheap, simple and reliable. Ten million will buy me a rocket capable of orbiting a thousand pounds. And I have the ex-Nazi rocket experts to launch it."
"So you launch it and it works. The U.S. or the Russians would shoot it down."
Cantwell nodded his fat, bald head. "Eventually. But have you any idea of the job it would be hitting a target smaller than a basketball twenty-five thousand odd miles out in space? Don't forget, a hydrogen bomb exploding in the vacuum of space isn't the formidable weapon it is in the earth's atmosphere. It has nothing to act on. Technical articles in U.S. engineering journals and my experts agree that an H-bomb would have to explode within half a mile to destroy such a transmitter. At current aiming accuracy it would require an average of thirty-five H-homb tipped rockets to destroy one transmitter.
"And don't forget, my rocket will orbit a thousand pounds-twenty transmitters. The twenty would soon drift thousands of miles apart. When the first was transmitting, the other nineteen would be silent and just about undetectable. When the first was knocked out, the second would start to transmit. And so on. It should take the U.S. and the Russians, working together, some seven hundred H-bombs and a year of time to knock out my first twenty transmitters. And at the end of the year, I'll orbit another twenty. Or maybe forty."
"Your TV transmissions wouldn't get through," I objected. "Every decent nation in the world would jam them."
"They'll try, oh yes, you can believe they'll try. But ask any electronics expert. The hardest transmissions to jam are those coming straight down, as from a satellite. That's why the military likes satellite relays-they're jam-proof."
I thought over what he'd said. No doubt about it, if this madman succeeded in orbiting his transmitters, his programs would outdraw every other show on the air. Who would watch Peyton Place if, by the flick of a dial, they could watch lusty naked men and women perform every sexy trick in the book? Who would watch Combat if they could tune in on a show where voluptuous naked teen-age girls wrestled sharks and crocodiles and tigers and got torn to voluptuous shreds? A lot of people, that's who.
I myself, while between assignments at SADISTO HQ, would be tempted to turn the set to Cantwell's pirate frequency if I knew, for example, that I could watch (in glowing color) a nude full-breasted blonde and a naked ripe redhead fight it out with razor sharp daggers. The fact that I knew the wounds they inflicted were real and the blood that flowed was genuine might bore me-but would it bore me enough to turn the dial to I've Got A Secret? I doubted it.
No, if Cantwell put his scheme into operation, hundreds of millions of people would watch his ghastly shows-avidly!
Especially because they had no commercials.
"Your scheme," I told him, "is unpatriotic. It would engage the entire U.S. military space program. Instead of developing new intercontinental rockets they'd have to shoot off all their hardware at your transmitters."
"Right," chuckled Cantwell. "But so would the Russians. The Russians, remember, are much more prudish than Americans. My grisly spectacles, beamed from space, will preoccupy every nation on earth. And divert human minds and effort from war activities."
I thought more. He was right, curse it. Even the most bloodthirsty would forget about going to war if they could watch, hour after hour, night after night, human slaughter on TV.
"Your scheme," I told him, "while workable, is still inhuman. Maybe you can keep the world from going to war by broadcasting modern gladiatorial games from space. But you would have to kidnap, brainwash and sacrifice hundreds of young men and girls to make your films."
"True," agreed Cantwell, reaching out and fondling the nearest breast of the Chinese girl who was fanning his brow with a palm frond, "but wouldn't it be worth it? My operation, over a year's time, would kill less men and women than the average Fourth of July traffic toll. Consider the toll of World War I-twenty million dead. Of World War II-fifty million dead, most of them innocent civilians. World War III, if it takes place, will probably destroy, four or five hundred million human beings.
"Which would you choose-the loss of four or five hundred teen-age girls, or the loss of a million times that many in a world war?"
"It's not the same thing," I protested. "Wars are legal-killing people for kicks, even for the kicks of the entire world, is illegal."
"So," sneered Cantwell, "you'd rather have half a billion people burned alive in a legal war than kill five hundred to prevent it?"
"Of course," I said. "I'm a very moral and legalistic person."
Cantwell glowered at me. "If I didn't need your knowledge of modern and antique weapons," he snarled, "I'd have you thrown into a pit of starving rats this instant. However, perhaps you'll change your mind once you think things over. And if you don't change your mind, you have a choice-co-operate with me, or suffer a hideously painful death before one of my movie cameras."
Right then and there I made up my mind. If it came to a choice between losing my life, horribly, and helping slaughter other people-I'd help with the slaughter. I said nothing, however. Better to stall for time, let Cantwell think I needed persuading.
Because, I thought to myself, time is all I need. The General had installed a tiny radio transmitter inside my unwilling torso, hadn't he? Sure. And ever twenty-four hours my transmitter was emitting a beep-a beep that SADISTO agents could home on. All I had to do was relax.
Soon, very soon (I hoped) the General and my SADISTO colleagues would come to my rescue, and wipe out Cantwell and his evil crew of experts.
Meanwhile....
Meanwhile, Cantwell Undershaft was clanging a small gong. A moment later a tall, seductive-looking girl with ink-black hair falling to her waist strolled into the room. She was nude and fantastically beautiful.
Her flesh was a creamy, pearly, opalescent white; her breasts were set unusually high on her chest-firm, youthful, cone-shaped breasts tipped with coral-pink aureoles from which jutted flagrantly red nipples that projected like crimson fingers, fingers that seemed to beckon me.
Her waist was fantastically tiny, her hips wide and opulent, her belly as flat as her buttocks were un-flat. She had long, lithe, shapely legs with ripely rounded thighs.
She didn't, I noted, have the initials CU tatooed on her tummy. From this, and the fact that she didn't have a zombie-like expression, I deduced that she was a regular member of Cantwell's staff, and not one of his brainwashed slave girls.
"Natasha," said Cantwell, "this is Rex Kingston. Rex is dubious about joining our team. Soften him up a little, will you?"
"My pleasure," purred Natasha. She smiled at me, crooked a finger.
I rose from my chair. Like I said, I'd already decided to stall for time. But even if I hadn't so decided, I think I would have risen from my chair anyway. Natasha was the sort of girl who, when she beckons, men automatically obey. Just to get closer to her.
"Follow me," she purred. And I followed her swaying, sultry rump out of Cantwell's office.
Outside I found myself treading soft grass. All around were tropical trees and swaying palms and magnificent stone ruins.
"This island," said the sultry Natasha linking arms with mine, "was once an outpost of the Queen of Sheba's domain. The palace ruins here are even better than the ones at Songa Manara, in my opinion."
I looked around. In the slanting rays of the late afternoon sun, the ruins were awe inspiring. Looming stone walls intersected by crumbling doorways and windows. Vistas of stone courtyards, guard posts, benches and hewn stone chairs or thrones. Everywhere violent green tropic growth climbing over and around the ruins as if trying to devour them.
I grimaced. Two thousand years ago these great blocks of hewn coral had been gleaming white, the palace a many-splendored edifice of towering arches and shining pillars, and the courtyards and colonnades must have echoed to the sandaled tread of haughty envoys from King Solomon, the Hindu realms and the Arabian princedoms. Now it was ruins and the Queen of Sheba, that ebony Cleopatra whose beauty was "such as no man has ever beheld" was windblown dust in some far off land.
Would New York and Moscow and London and New Delhi become one day nothing but romantic ruins? Could it be that Cantwell Undershaft's mad scheme might save the world from thermo-nuclear war?
Was he right in saying that the lives of a few hundred brainwashed men and girls counted as nothing beside the prospect of a half billion dead? Could the spectacle of modern Roman Games-beamed from space-divert the world, intrigue the world, bemuse the world and avert war?
I shut my mind to such thoughts. True, if most of the three billion population of the world could watch spectacular blood sports via TV, their blood lust might be allayed. True, the loss of a few hundred men and girls was as nothing compared to the probable human casualties in a major war.
Nevertheless, war was legal, and blood sports involving human beings were definitely illegal. Cantwell was wrong, even if he was right. His mad scheme (basically humanitarian though it might be) had to be crushed.
Meanwhile, though, it behooved me to play it cool.
Natasha by my side said, "A penny for your thoughts, Rex."
I started. "Uh-just wondering what nationality you were, Natasha. Your name sounds kind of Russian."
"It should," said Natasha, nudging me with her wide and friendly hips. "I am Russian."
I thought that over. Interesting. So the Russians, too, had their renegades-men, or at least girls, willing to betray their national interest for the sake of a few hundred human lives. I glanced at Natasha coldly. She was nothing but a traitor, really. A girl willing to undermine her nation's prime need-the fear of war.
But I played it cool and leered at her. "You plan to soften me up, eh? I said. "Just how do you plan to do that?"
She smiled at me. Seductively. "I have my ways," she murmured, and, and drew me through a vine-covered doorway. Past the doorway I found myself in an open air, but ultramodern apartment.
Rough hewn coral-block walls. No ceiling. But a soft shag rug on the floor, luxurious easy chairs and couches scattered about the room, French Impressionist paintings on the walls, and a gleaming chrome and walnut bar.
"Lie down on this soft couch," murmured Natasha. "Would you like a little drinkee? Or would you like Natasha to massage you first?"
"Massage me," I grunted, stretching out on a huge couch and reaching for her. After all, I was supposed to be enjoying myself. I was still on vacation.
She came into my arms. Liquidly, excitingly, fervently. And began to massage me.
CHAPTER SEVEN
SHE DID BETTER THAN massage me, she swarmed all over me. Nakedly, suggestively.
Her pearly white body slithered and writhed over my bare flesh while her lips searched for and found my mouth, locked lips with my lips as her tongue proceeded to fence enthusiastically with mine.
I let my hands roam searchingly over her seal-sleek flesh, fingering and appreciating the subtle curves of her body. My hands traced the wide smooth span of her shoulders and back, the roller-coaster rapture of her spine, the flagrant flare of her buttocks.
My hands grasped the resilient femininity of her ripe rump, stroking the glossy hemispheres of her buttocks, my fingers sinking deep into the limber, licentious flesh.
I rolled on the wide couch, thrust her lovely body away from me until she was sprawled on her back, her exquisite body wide open to my searching gaze, my groping hands and lips.
I drew myself up, crouched beside her passionate curves and bent forward to sample her erotic promise. I captured her nearest breast with my hands, cupped it, held it-savoring the supple splendor of its softness-then leaned forward and kissed the ripe red summit of her nipple.
I clasped the nipple with my lips, suctioned it-and the whole tip of her breast-deep into my eager mouth. She gasped with excitement as my tongue circled the hard hot warhead of her sleek white bliss bomb.
I teased and tickled her pulsing nipple with my tongue, sliding my tongue over it, around it, back and forth across it until she began to squirm beneath me in a transport of sexual delight.
I moved my lips to her other breast tongued and lipped the now fully erect nipple, bit teasingly into the exquisitely soft flesh of her breast suctioned as much lush breast flesh as I could deep into my mouth.
She groaned with pleasure.
I moved my lips, moved them down to the pearly delight of her belly, kissing the sweet-tasting flesh from waist to navel, and from navel down to the warmest part of her being.
She gasped and gurgled with inarticulate ecstasy as I thrust her lovely thighs wide apart and went on kissing her.
I kissed the warm and wondrous inner surfaces of her thighs, kissed the sleek and perfect curves of her legs, kissed the ardent apex of her thighs. I kissed her well and I kissed her deep-where she most enjoyed being kissed, where I most enjoyed kissing her.
And she responded. Oh, how she responded.
Her body lurched and heaved beneath me, her thighs quivered and writhed under my kisses.
And still I kissed her, letting my tongue search and stab her supersensitive flesh.
She twisted passionately on the bed, flinging her long legs wide, wide apart. And I went on kissing her, my kisses suctioning bliss from her body, thrusting tongue messages of intimacy, arousing her, titillating her, exciting her.
I grasped her legs, thrust her luscious thighs still wider apart and my lips and tongue feasted on the pearly perfection of her belly, the ripe rounded rapture of her thighs;
She moaned, gasped and squealed with delight, patted and pawed my head as I bent to my erotic pleasures and pleasuring.
Then I drew back to pause for breath, slid her legs together and rolled her over on the couch-and began to explore the backs of her thighs and the gleaming white domes of her pleasure packed buttocks.
I kissed them, chidingly chewed them, patted them and squeezed them. I drew the last full measure of sexual delight from their domed delectability, cradled my cheek against her dual symphonies of softly rounded rump flesh. Buoyant bowls of bouncing bliss...richly rounded mountains of desire.
I squeezed and stroked and savored the great glossy hemispheres of erotic promise, then let my lips and fingertips browse over the gleaming columns of her might thighs.
Then back up her body, kissing the small of her back, her spine, her shoulders, the delicately curved nape of her neck.
I kissed her cheek, her earlobe. I rolled her on her back and kissed her full on the mouth, kissed once again her big, conical breasts, mouthed her pulsing scarlet nipples, tongued them, tormented them.
Her long, glossy black hair streamed in a rippling river of ebony across her opalescent breast and shoulder flesh, emphasizing by erotic contrast the satiny splendor of her supple, lustrous flesh.
I caressed her slowly, appreciatively. All too soon I would have to face the nightmarish situation I was in; but meanwhile I had Natasha's magnificent body to play with, and if I've learned anything in life it's that pleasures should be grabbed while the grabbing's good.
I grabbed her cantaloupe-sized breasts and shook them, toyed with them, rippled my closed fingers across, their impudent out-thrusting nipples. I touched them, teased them, poked and prodded them. I cupped them, cradled them in my palms, caressed them.
Natasha closed her eyes and crooned with delight.
"Squeeze them," she urged me, "squeeze them a lot. I-I like to be treated rough. At times."
Evidently this was the time. I squeezed her soft breasts hard, cuffed them with my open band, slapped them, shook them roughly.
And while I was doing this her slender, searching hands had slid down my chest and belly, stroked the inside of my upper thighs and then began to fondle me, stimulate me. Stimulate me where I least needed stimulation.
In a while, a very short while I gasped, "That's enough let's do it now, huh?"
"Oh yes!" cried Natasha, and rolled over on her belly.
She wriggled her plump, rounded rear seductively, smiled at me with ten thousand volts gleaming in her eyes.
"Pretend you're an animal," she whispered, "a savage, predatory animal. Pretend I'm your prey, your sexual prey."
Well, why not?
I grabbed for the swaying succulence of her buttocks, then craned my head forward and kissed them, alternately. I shook them and they swayed and trembled excitingly.
I thrust myself further forward until my chin and chest were resting on the small of her back. I inched forward some more. Now my cheek was resting on her shoulders and, a moment later, I felt the fronts of my legs nudge erotically against the rear of her thighs. I nuzzled her shoulder blades while I swung the front of my legs again and again against the back of her thighs, while my body thrust probingly against the resilience of her buttocks.
Again and again I thrust myself probingly against her soft flesh, and then Natasha hissed with pleasure as I locked myself tight against her.
"Oh," gasped Natasha, "oh, Yes!"
And she started to wriggle and sway her hips from side to side-wriggle and sway and twist and gyrate her tempting young tail back and forth and around and about.
Her churning flesh stirred me, aroused me, delighted me. The sliding, stroking, squeezing junction of our sexually keyed up bodies sent glowing waves of carnal ecstasy throbbing out through my body. Talk about the living end.
I slid my hands around her ribs, clutched the swaying, supple domes of her breasts, breasts swollen and turgid with passion, breasts whose hot whipped-cream softness contrasted excitingly with the hard, torrid tips of her nipples.
My cheek was pillowed on her back, the scent of her tumbled hair was heady in my nostrils; every atom of my being seemed to glow and pulse with excitement as I continued to piston.
The excitement pent-up inside of me mounted notch by notch and, judging by rippling quivers of delight that shook her whole body she, too, was rapidly reaching the golden point of no return.
And then-a blazing maelstrom of spinning lights and whirling sensations. It was as if a whirlpool of bubbling ecstasy had gripped the very core of my being while outwards fountained a gushing, rapture that rocked and transfigured me.
Rhapsodically, joltingly, soaringly the pulses of ecstatic madness flashed through ma Again and again and again.
And then, at long lingering last, it was over and Natasha and I lay side by side on the couch and gasped for breath.
In a few minutes Natasha slid off the couch, trotted over to the modernistic bar, mixed us a brace of tall, cold drinks, padded back to me, her breasts swaying, exhausted from our frantic bout of lovemaking.
We both drank thirstily as we lay sprawled on the huge couch. Natasha looking rather like a latter day Cleopatra. But more excitingly nude than any Cleo I'd seen on the screen.
"Now that you're relaxed and softened up," she murmured, "won't you reconsider Cantwell's invitation to join his team? He thinks very highly of your reputation as a weapons expert, I know. Enough so that he's willing to pay you three million dollars, in cash, tax-free, if you'll consent to act as coach and technical advisor while he makes his Roman Games-'66 films. Which shouldn't take more than a few months."
"And after that?" I said cynically. "He'd most likely cut my throat-all our throats-to keep us from ever betraying him."
Natasha shook her lovely head. "Not so. Cantwell has his quirks but she's fanatically loyal to the people who work for him. Also, why should he fear your turning him in fox mass murder? If you worked for him for a few months you'd be equally guilty, in the eyes of the law, of murder. And he certainly wouldn't kill you or me or any of his loyal staff to avoid paying them. He has more money now than he could spend in a dozen lifetimes."
I nodded. Her argument made sense. Equally potent an argument was the one she hadn't mentioned-that if I failed to play ball with Cantwell he'd throw me into a pit full of wild beasts, or wilder naked teen-age girls armed with razor sharp daggers.
"Well," I said slowly, "so long as Cantwell is going to go ahead and make his grisly films of human and animal combat anyway, and I'm powerless to stop him-I suppose I might just as well make a fast three million. If nude human warriors are going to slaughter each other for the cameras, they might as well do it scientifically."
"Good lad!" cried Natasha.
Actually, of course, I had no intention of helping Cantwell Undershaft even a little bit. I was simply stalling for time while taking a break. Surely, by now, SADISTO was homing on the beep my tiny internal transmitter was emitting.
Stall for time, that was it. Stall and keep alive and have fun.
"As soon as we've finished our drinks," said Natasha, "I'll take you to the Rec Hall and introduce you."
"Uh, yeah," I said. "Speaking of meeting people, where are my clothes?"
"Right here," said Natasha, trotting over to One wall and taking down a wide canvas belt fitted with little pockets. "With this tropic heat none of us bother with clothes except Cantwell, who likes to wear that silly Roman toga of his for some reason. These belts are what nudists often wear to carry cigarettes, combs, handkerchiefs, candy, et cetera."
I buckled the belt around my waist dubiously. "I don't know," I said, "I feel kind of uncomfortable meeting a bunch of people without even a loin cloth." At SADISTO HQ the male agents wear skivvy shorts. "You'll get over it," Natasha assured me. "Well, maybe," I said. "I've heard that men in nudist camps never get, uh, visibly excited even in the presence of voluptuous nudist girls."
Natasha smiled. "That my be true of nudist camps," she said, "but it sure isn't true here. Which I think is just fine. What's wrong with a man showing his true feelings when he meets a lovely girl-like me? We're all worldly, amoral, lusty people here. Not a prude on the island except possibly among the prisoners, of course."
Prisoners! The grim word, so casually dropped from Natasha's ripe lips, made me remember the true, unspeakable purpose of Eros Island. I said nothing, however, but let Natasha lead me toward the Rec Hall.
Outside night had fallen, and the sky blazed with stars. Our path toward the brightly lighted Rec Hall led along a soft, grassy path that felt refreshingly cool to my bare feet.
"Uh, what about poisonous snakes?" I asked. "Any on the island?"
"Heaps. But don't worry, we have several gallons of assorted snake vaccine."
Somehow I still worried. But not for long. Soon Natasha was leading me into the huge, luxurious recreation hall and I was introduced to the rest of Cantwell's Team.
An interesting group-all in their twenties or thirties, and about equally divided as to sex. More than a few had the gleam of a fanatic in their eyes, men and girls who obviously believed wholeheartedly in Cantwell's mad scheme to save the world from war. (They would have made excellent SADISTO agents, actually.) Others had a cynical glint in their eyes; they, obviously, were helping with the butchery because of the big money they'd been promised.
For a million dollars, a month, more or less, a lot of people will stoop to a lot of dirty things. Come to think of it, SADISTO agents stoop to a lot of dirty things for a lot less money.
Natasha introduced me as "Rex Kingston, the world-famous weapons expert who has decided to join our team," and the staff clustered around to shake my hand and introduce themselves.
It was odd, really. I mean, aside from the fact that they were all mostly or totally unclad, they didn't act like a bunch of homicidal monsters. ONCE I was assigned to wipe out a deadly SOVSMASH agent who had infiltrated a movie company on location, and Cantwell's group reminded me in many ways of that location crew-all experts in their own line, all dedicated to the success of the project they were jointly engaged in. In fact, they reminded me of the group at SADISTO HQ. Although we too are a bunch of homicidal monsters, we're working for the good of the Free World. At any rate, I might learn something that would benefit SADISTO. I decided to lie doggo; let them do the talking.
Several of the young men were construction experts-their job had been to supervise the construction of the living quarters and labs, and various arenas where the bloody contests would be staged. Were being staged, rather.
Other young men were electronics and rocket experts, film and sound technicians, SCUBA specialists, and so on. I was frankly staggered to realize the number of top-notch (if amoral) experts Cantwell had working for him. No wonder his reputed income of fifty million dollars a month wasn't enough to cover expenses, and he was dipping into his billion dollar savings.
Although many of the young men seemed like intelligent, personable types, I was naturally (being a red-blooded SADISTO agent) more interested in meeting the girl members of Cantwell's team-or Team, rather. And what a Girl Team he had!
The first of his distaff experts I met was a tall, Teutonic blonde maiden, Virna Von Brawn. Virna, a voluptuous Valkyrie type with beach-ball sized breasts and cold blue eyes, was Cantwell's rocket expert.
What fun to make a countdown with a chick like that!
Claudine Reynaud, a chestnut-haired French filly, was an electronics expert-it was she who was supervising the building of Cantwell's evil satellites.
Laura Lambert, a honey-haired, bronze-fleshed lovely from Culver City was Cantwell's camera, expert.
Mandy Ming, an exotic Eurasian girl, was on Cantwell's brainwashing staff; Carlotta Cortez, a fiesta-eyed Spanish lovely, was a defrocked M.D. who was now Cantwell's hypno-drug expert; Caterine Beldon, a svelte lovely with auburn hair and jade green eyes was his chief animal trainer, of all things.
"You train wild beasts?" I asked her, pouring myself a tall glass of (free) Beefeaters gin and Schweppes from the Rec Hall's commodious bar.
"I can train and tame wild beasts," said Caterine with a modest smile and a shrug (which caused her bare and bountiful breasts to leap like surfacing porpoises). "But here on Eros Island my job is mostly the opposite-I enrage and infuriate them. So they'll be in top fighting trim."
I gulped gin and tonic. "Doesn't-doesn't it make you feel bad-watching lions and tigers clawing and biting at screaming, naked teen-age girls and boys?"
Caterine nodded. "I'll say. Lots of them bite back or at least flail at my lions, tigers and leopards with their fists. I hate to see a wild animal ill treated."
"But those naked ripe-bodied girls and husky boys-they get torn to shreds, eaten alive, don't they?"
Caterine shrugged. "Of course. That's the whole idea."
"And it doesn't worry you?"
"Not at all. After all, everybody, at times, has thought about doing horrible things to other people. Men dream about chopping up girls, girls dream about bashing men on the head, children dream about machine-gunning both their parents and their brothers and sisters. Mankind, to quote Alexander Hamilton, is ambitious, vindictive and rapacious. Cantwell Undershaft, our beloved benefactor and employer, has found a way to vent this basic hostility of mankind. Harmlessly, relatively speaking."
"Harmlessly?" I rasped. "Men, girls and beasts slaughter each other in an arena, and you call this harmless?"
Caterine looked pained. "I said relatively harmless. After all, there're three billion people in the world. If the loss of a few hundred victims can bring peace, the price is worth it. When men plan a big dam they know it will cost maybe fifty human lives. A modern skyscraper costs a life every two floors. Bridges can't be built without casualties, but do men stop building giant bridges because they know that, statistically, every two hundred feet of span will cost a worker his life?"
"That's different," I snapped. "Bridges and dams and buildings are beneficial or at least profitable. But Cantwell's mad scheme-"
"-may well save the world from war," snapped Caterine, tossing her auburn hair and stalking off angrily, her proud buttocks switching from side to side.
I pondered her remarks. Curse it, she had logic on her side. Compared to the total population of the world, the loss of a few hundred or even a few thousand men and girls was nothing. And, as a SADISTO agent, I'd heard top secret estimates that placed the probable casualties from World War III as being considerably higher than five hundred million. Counting long range lingering deaths, it would be closer to a billion if both sides went all out. As they probably would. Still...
"You look troubled," said a tall, bronze-fleshed redhead. I did a double take. It was Drusilla, the magnificent-bodied English girl who'd kidnapped me from the private lake in Maine.
"Hi, Drusilla," I said. "As you can see, I joined the team."
"Thought you would, old boy," said Drusilla, pouring glass with tonic, plus a tiny ice cube. "I mean, a bloke has to consider his own welfare, right? Aside from the welfare of humanity, that is."
. "Very true," I said. "Speaking of the world's welfare, do you really think Cantwell Undershaft's mad-I mean unusual-scheme might really save the world from war?"
"Hard to say, old boy," said Drusilla, downing half her drink with one long swallow. "Most likely yes. Granted that most men and women are rather bloodthirsty, Cantwell's ultra-realistic movies should sate even the most sanguinary appetites. Think of it, old boy. Incredibly prurient, lewd films every single night on TV, followed by bloodchilling real-life combat with real human blood spilled all over the place. Ought to satisfy the most bloodthirsty types, what?"
"Perhaps so," I said. "Yet-"
"Yet you've been taught that the Roman Games were wrong. Well, perhaps they were, in some respects. Because they were only for the amusement of a jew. Personally, I say give the bloody world the circuses it craves.
"My own theory," she said, lowering her voice, "is that in place of mass war we should let the heads of state fight it out single-handed. Kings against presidents, prime ministers against premieres. But since the heads of state would never agree to settle international disputes by private duels-if they had to risk their own necks-why, Cantwell's scheme is the next best thing."
I poured myself another drink. "Perhaps you and Cantwell are right," I said. "Still, couldn't he achieve the same effect by just having his human gladiators pretend to fight?"
"Certainly not," scoffed Drusilla. "The human lust is very real, and can only be satiated by the shedding of real blood. We pride ourselves that we no longer sacrifice a virgin every spring to insure good crops. So hundreds of millions of people-including a large number of virgins-get sacrificed."
I studied her carefully. She, too, sounded a bit like an anti-war pacifistic fanatic. After all, slaughtering men, women and children was an accepted part of modern war. And war was legal. Or so I'd been taught.
"What part," I asked her casually, "do you play in Cantwell's mad-unique scheme?"
She smiled at me, "I'm a collector."
"Huh?" I said.
"A collector. You know what that is. Lots of people roam the world collecting wild animals for zoos or circuses or experimentation. Well, I roam the world collecting victims for Cantwell Undershaft. Healthy young men and sexually attractive females."
I'd have to be on my guard now. SADISTO also has a collection agency of sorts. Thing is, we collect only enemy spies like ravishing Red Chinese chicks, Cuban Castroite curies, robust Russian redheads, North Vietnam nymphets, Vietnik vixens. Although they are shot down sadistically in our huge underground live target range, it's for the good of the Free World.
"How sneaky!" I snapped.
"Not a bit. Jolly exciting, I call it. Of course, some regions are easier to collect in than others. In upper Burma, for instance, or in the outer islands of the Philippines my job is easy. I simply approach the local headman and tell him I want to buy a certain number of attractive virgins. We dicker over price, he brings out his current crop, I make my selection and pay his price-and that's it. A dozen or two ripe-bodied young teen-age native girls. Ripe and ready for Cantwell's arenas."
"Deplorable," I gasped, faking it.
"Labor saving," said Drusilla. "Saudi Arabia's another good collecting place, too. Lots of slave trading still going on there. Luscious young Arab and Nubian girls available in job lots for a few bagfulls of silver dollars. Marie Theresa dollars, preferably."
"And-and you think nothing about buying these young girls, knowing the hideous fate that awaits them?"
"Not half. But think of the fate that awaits them if I don't buy them. Lust slaves to Arab sheiks with incredibly sadistic minds. Know how some of those oil rich Arabs get their depraved kicks from the slave girls they buy?
"They tie the girl spread-eagled on her back on a big net hammock. Then they climbed aboard. Naturally the girl doesn't jump around and give them the sexy ride they crave. But they have ways of curing that. They have slaves crouched beneath the net, slaves with red-hot daggers in their hands. And they jab the poor girl in her rump. Which, quite naturally, makes her jump around plenty with the fat old Arab on top, getting his depraved kicks.
"And when he's through, for added amusement, they light a big fire under the net and-"
"Tell me no more," I urged her. "I've heard other tales about what those oil-rich Arabs do for kicks."
Drusilla smiled. "Better those same bestial tricks be done a few times for the camera and telecast to a lusty world, than they should be done hundreds of times for real, eh?"
I declined to comment. Instead I said,' "How about other parts of the world-America and Europe? How do you collect men and girls there?"
"Easily, though not quite as easily. The young men are the easiest. I run blinds hinting that I'm recruiting mercenaries to fight in the Congo for big pay. The lusty young men volunteer in droves, eager to prove their virility by shooting poorly trained natives for big profit and kicks. I give them all a thorough physical examination, posing as a female physician, and then hypo the specimens I decide to collect. The rest is up to Cantwell's world wide cargo airlines. They transport their drugged bodies, by devious routes, to Eros Island-and their appointment with destiny."
"Bestial!" I cried. "And the girls?"
"Almost as easy. I run ads in small-town papers in America and Europe, posing as a talent scout. Young, luscious-bodied girls apply by the score. I have them all strip one by one-they don't object to stripping for another girl, of course-and again make my selections. A few knock-out drops in the diet cola I offer them and the girls are mine. And, shortly, Cantwell's."
"Impossible!" I snorted.
Drusilla took me by the arm. "Look out that window. See that massive stone building looming against the night sky? That's the, heh, heh, barracks. Right at this moment over four hundred teen-age men and girls are penned them Awaiting Cantwell's depraved-if basically humanitarian-will."
I looked. And, without going to count the prisoners, somehow no longer doubted her.
"Doesn't it bother your conscience?" I asked.
Drusilla grinned, shook her head. "Does a recruiting sergeant he awake at night worrying about the young boys he's talked into joining the army-any army? Of course not. His job is collecting bodies. What happens to those bodies later is not his concern."
I nodded my head. She was right, curse her. Not for the first time I reflected on the fact that, in large part, the success of Cantwell's operation was due to the fact that it operated on such a large scale. Ask somebody to capture a young girl and deliver her to a secret hideout so you could torment her and or kill her for kicks, and you'd have few volunteers. Ask a doctor to drug the same girl, ask a psychologist to brainwash her, and again you'd have trouble.
But do it on a large scale, with a grandiose purpose and pay big money-and you'd have more volunteers than you needed. Wars, I realized with sudden and no doubt fallacious insight depended upon the same mass psychology effect. Ask a young man to journey to a foreign land and kill a young man his own age and he'd be outraged. Ask a million young men, and they'd sign up to prove their courage and hasten overseas to kill a million other young men.
People, I decided, were funny.
(Meanwhile I found time to wonder where the blazes the General and his highly trained SADISTO agents were keeping themselves. Hadn't they homed on me yet?)
"Another drink?" suggested Drusilla, emptying a gin bottle into my glass.
"Don't mind if I do," I said. I looked around the brilliantly lit recreation hall. Nude, vivacious young men and women were everywhere-laughing and talking, drinking and dancing, necking, and in secluded corners, making love. Others were feeding slugs into a juke box, pouring drinks, playing darts, watching television, making animated conversation.
A happy, convivial group of male and female experts and technicians relaxing after a hard day's work. Very much like similar groups all over the world (save for their lack of clothes). Only the work they were relaxing from was studied slaughter. If they were tired and in need of relaxation, it was because they'd tired themselves out arranging the horrible death of innocent boys and girls.
They looked, in fact, just like a bunch of soldiers, nurses and civilian war workers relaxing after a hard day's war. But that wasn't a fair comparison. War was legal, war was the legitimate extension of political aims to the field of physical conflict.
But this-this was something horribly different. Wasn't it?
"Stop looking so moody, old boy," said Drusilla. "Remember, we're saving the world. This is a crusade, a righteous war."
I stared at her. "Yeah," I said. "And wars are distinguished by atrocities, aren't they?"
I meant this as a cutting rejoinder. Unfortunately Drusilla took it the wrong way.
"I say, that's right, isn't it?" she gasped. She whirled. "Hey, gang! Rex here has just come up with a ripping suggestion. He says why don't we commit a few atrocities. Good idea, what? I mean to say, we're fighting a war-a righteous war, aren't we? Well, that should give us the right to commit an atrocity or two."
I opened my mouth to protest, but my protest was drowned out by a chorus of excited assents by the staff members within earshot.
"Vat-I mean what a fine idea!" cried Virna Von Brawn.
"Count me in!" squealed Claudine Reynaud, the electronics expert.
"Me too!" giggled Mandy Ming, the exotic Eurasian brainwasher.
"And me!" exclaimed Laura Lambert, the camera expert.
"Let's go!" yelped Drusilla, and before I could frame a reasoned reply I'd been grabbed by both arms and hustled out the door toward the building where the prisoners were kept.
I tried to pull free, but to no avail. Drusilla had one of my arms, Virna the other-and both were husky girls.
I was dragged toward the building where helpless prisoners were penned. Prisoners who were about to contribute-involuntarily-a few atrocity victims.
What to do?
I did what any sensible man anxious to keep alive would have done under the circumstances.
I kept quiet.
Maybe the whole thing would blow over, maybe the excited gang around me would change their lusty minds.
CHAPTER EIGHT
THE SQUEALING NAKED GIRLS-and a few men-around me burst into the prison building, turning on lights and whooping as they went.
I stared around. Bare stone walls. Gleaming lights overhead. A faint antiseptic smell.
The crowd around me surged through a doorway and there, before me, lay naked body after body. Male bodies and female bodies, all stretched out on stretchers, stacked six deep toward the ceiling.
At least a hundred nude teen-age girls and a few boys.
"Let's grab a few!" squealed an excited blonde. "And start having fun with them!"
"No!" cried Carlotta Cortez, the voluptuous ex-medico. "These are new arrivals. They are all still heavily drugged. It would take too long to un-drug them. This way!"
A huge, antiseptic looking operating room, in the center of which half a dozen nude men and women with surgical masks over their faces were bent over operating tables on which were stretched the unconscious bodies of four teen-age girls and two boys. They-the medics-looked up in annoyance as our drunken crew surged into the room.
"Not these," said Carlotta. "They're in the process of being operated on. Frontal lobotomy, you know. Slip the old needle into the skull, separate the old frontal lobe and presto, a zombie."
I'd read about the effect of frontal lobotomies. Before the advent of tranquilizing drugs they'd been used to "pacify" hopeless mental patients. The operation pacified them all right, but also turned them into listless human vegetables. People who wandered aimlessly about, obedient to any command.
(Perfect specimens, I realized, for an inhuman monster like Cantwell Undershaft, who could then order them to do anything he and his camera crew required.)
"This way!" cried Carlotta, leading us past the annoyed looking night shift who were busy transforming unconscious, helpless teen-agers into human zombies.
We surged into another huge room. This room was divided and subdivided into dozens of cubicles, each with a closed metal door.
Claudine, an exuberant type, began to bang on one of the doors.
"Not here!" cried Mandy Ming, the exotic Eurasian brainwasher. "These subjects are in the process of being brainwashed. Behind each metal door is a semiconscious male or female. Each with a pair of earphones attached to him or her. Earphones that, via pre-recorded tape messages, are brainwashing them."
I could imagine the kind of messages being drummed into the susceptible, no doubt drugged as well as lobotomized brains of the subjects. You are a warrior. Your destiny is to fight a man-eating crocodile. And you'll win.
And the lobotomized, drugged subjects would no doubt believe all they heard from the tape machines.
Inhuman. But, I had to admit, diabolically effective.
After twenty-four hours of that kind of message the "subjects" would climb to their feet smiling, and march out to fight the nearest man-eating crocodile-or tiger or lion or shark-they encountered. With "amusing" but disastrous results.
What ghastly triumphs modern science was capable of!
Meanwhile the crowd of jeering, sadistic, drunken, atrocity-happy staff workers around me had surged through the next doorway, carrying me with them.
Then followed an ugly few hours.
An ugly few hours that served to confirm my original suspicion: namely, that most of the people working for Cantwell were doing so because they were sadists at heart, not humanitarians.
A misguided humanitarian might support a scheme to telecast modern gladiatorial combats if they thought such spectacles would satisfy the human race's blood lust and avert war. But a misguided humanitarian would definitely not stage a dozen grisly murders for his or her own private kicks.
Since my readers are, I'm sure, humanitarian and kindly, I won't offend them with descriptions.
Even now, at times, I still hear those horrible screams, see again blood flowing like water....
That luscious teen-age German girl, the one with straw-yellow hair cascading to her waist, with firm, full breasts and luscious thighs, for example-was it really necessary to drop her in a pit with a snarling, blood-thirsty leopard?
True, the poor dumb brainwashed girl eagerly volunteered to do battle with the beast. But it wasn't really an even match-not with the luckless young girl naked and unarmed, save for a length of rubber hose.
The surprising thing was that the battle lasted as long as it did-three minutes.
The battle of slaughter took place in a medium-sized indoor arena, rather similar to the circular operating theaters where student doctors sit and watch operations being performed below them. Tiers of seats surrounded a sawdust covered pit about forty feet across Tall iron bars prevented any of the combatants from mingling with the audience.
A ghastly place which had, no doubt, witnessed many a blood-spattered duel before that one.
The nude blonde entered from a sliding door at one end, the snarling black leopard from the other end. They met in the middle, and the blonde-totally (and foolishly) without fear-promptly smacked the leopard over the head with her length of rubber hose.
Caterine, who had charge of all wild beasts on the island and obviously thought more of her beasts than of humans, winced in pain. The leopard snarled and retreated.
The ripe-bodied young blonde followed, flailing away with her rubber hose. The leopard, apparently intimidated, retreated fast-amid jeers and boos from the audience.
"Blood!" cried Claudine. "Let's see some blood!"
Virna, Laura, Carlotta and half a dozen others took up the same cry. What bloodthirsty monsters they all were, I mused as the snarling, half-starved leopard backed away from the luscious young blonde, licking his lips hungrily as he eyed his intended dinner.
The end, of course, was inevitable. The blonde swung at the leopard's head and missed, and the leopard swung a claw-tipped paw at the blonde's bosomy chest-and connected.
Shredded though she was, the blonde gave no sign of feeling any pain. In fact, she began to swing her rubber hose with renewed vigor.
I gasped in surprise.
"Nothing to gasp about," said the voluptuous Carlotta, the ex-medic who was sitting to one side of me. "Even a simple hypnotic suggestion can reverse the pleasure-pain reaction of the nervous system And thanks to the sophisticated brainwashing techniques we employ, subjects such as that fat young blonde actually enjoy pain. The more they're hurt, the happier and more vigorously they fight."
The blonde did just that. Despite the deep claw slashes that crimsoned her bosom, she charged the leopard and actually backed him against the arena wall-right below my seat.
The leopard crouched down, and the blonde flung herself on top of him, biting and clawing. The leopard rolled over, raked her tender underbody with his hind claws.
It was all over.
But no, it wasn't. The blonde continued to bite and punch the leopard, a look of excitement and joy on her face.
"Doesn't that poor fool know she's been disemboweled-torn to shreds?" I hushed.
Evidently not. She didn't even seem to notice that the starving leopard, more annoyed than hurt by her flailing fists, was busy eating her.
When I looked again the blonde was stretched out prone and dead, and the leopard was quietly enjoying his supper of human flesh.
(Note: Many readers by now have no doubt asked themselves why I hadn't done something heroic to save the blonde from being made big cat food, regardless that technically I was on vacation from SADISTO.)
Certainly any hero in the old pulp magazines or any current hero on TV would have rescued the fair maiden whether or not he was licensed to kill.
Unfortunately it has been my observation-and perhaps that of most of my readers-that real life almost never works out like a fictional adventure story. A TV hero has a sponsor, a network and a crew of writers looking out for his welfare, making sure he survives each episode so he can be heroic again next week.
I didn't have a sponsor. I was naked, surrounded by sadistic minded men and girls, and trapped on a remote tropical island with no place to hide. If I'd made a fuss I would simply have been dumped into the pit to make a second course for the leopard.
If something more hideous hadn't been dreamed up for me.
Since I couldn't save the blonde no matter what I did, I very wisely did nothing, which of course is precisely what the General had intended. Anyway most real life heroes are simply lucky survivors.
If a thousand men charge an enemy-held hill despite a hail of machine gun bullets, and one man survives to plant the flag high on the ruins, well fine.
But was he really a superman or just lucky?
As to the heroes of romantic fiction through the ages, well, I suspect that they either lied a lot or had good press agents. Though it may be heresy to say it, I daresay that even the knights of old weren't as bold as they hinted later back at the castle.
For every fair maid a knight saved from a dragon, I suspect a hundred knights sat on their horses a safe distance back and watched the dragon attack and devour a fair maiden. And contented themselves with yelling insults at the dragon and hoping he'd get indigestion.
To repeat: I would have done something heroic back on Eros Island, if I hadn't been on a holiday from SADISTO or if I could have been sure that I could be heroic safely.)
After the unfortunate demise of the blonde, I gulped from the bottle of bourbon someone had handed me and let myself be towed to the next arena.
Or rather, picture window. A huge picture window opening into a giant concrete-lined tank full of water. The tank of water was brilliantly illuminated and empty. But not for long. Six luscious young girls, streaming silver bubbles, dove into view and swam slowly past the viewing window, smiling.
Three were Americans or Europeans; three were Chinese. All were nude, save for a lead-weighted belt around their slender waists. And each had a wicked-looking curved dagger attached to her belt.
The ripe-bodied mermaids swam languorously past the window again and again, swimming in a huge underwater circle while the callous men and girls beside me estimated their fighting ability and made bets.
It was to be, I realized, an inter-continental battle-East against West Chinese girls against Occidentals.
"How interesting," I said little dreaming just how ghastly things were going to get. As the girls swam expertly past the window again and again I noticed that each had a number stenciled neatly on both sides of her rump.
I asked the girl next to me, Claudine it was, why.
"So their coach can direct them, of course," said Claudine. I looked around. At one end of the huge viewing window Mandy Ming, the exotic Eurasian girl was settling herself into a chair and adjusting a throat microphone. At the other end of the viewing window Virna was doing the same thing. Evidently Mandy was going to direct the Chinese team, Virna the Occidental.
I didn't ask how the girls in the water could hear them. Any trained SADISTO agent knew that sound carried much better in water than through air.
"Mandy and Virna are going to urge the girls on so they'll fight more fiercely, eh?" I said.
Claudine smiled. "In part. But mostly they'll be directing them, period. The girls will be fighting-I mean playing-blind. The object of this underwater game-devised by Cantwell Undershaft himself-is for each team to try and put the other team's goal out of action. You'll see."
And an instant later I saw.
With a dual splash two massive iron chairs were lowered to the bottom of the tank at opposite ends. Strapped tightly to each chair was a girl-a voluptuous blonde in one chair, a big breasted Chinese chick the other. Both girls had their eyes open and were smiling, rather stupidly, at nothing. Each, I noted, had a thin rubber hose running to her mouth. An air hose, of course.
"Those are the goals," Claudine explained. "The object of each team is to put the other team's goal out of play. See those two green lights overhead?"
I looked and saw.
"A tiny microphone is attached to each captive goal girl's back. While her heart continued to beat, the light stays green. When she's been put out of play, her heart stops beating. And the light turns red. Indicating that the other team has won the game."
"Some game," I snapped.
I didn't ask how come the players could stay so long under water without air hoses Or aqua lungs. I knew, thanks to the briefing that the General had given me, that human beings could stay under water for as long as fifteen minutes-provided they'd been breathing pure oxygen for some hours.
At that instant the three Chinese girls and the trio of blondes (actually one was more brown-haired than blonde, but she was almost blonde) rose to the surface. For a few moments only the shapely lower halves of their bodies were visible, long lissome legs kicking slowly as they trod water.
What was going on at the surface?
I soon found out. All six girls jack-knifed and dove deep, and I saw that each girl's eyes were blindfolded. The full sadistic horror of the game struck me then. The girls would truly be fighting and killing blind. Like modern fighter planes directed into combat from ground radar command posts, these chicks would never see the opponent they strove to kill and who strove to kill them.
From each side of me I heard a sudden babble of conversation. Chinese from Mandy, German from Virna. Evidently all three blonde girls were German or German-speaking.
All six girls swam slowly around the bottom of the gigantic tank, while Mandy continued to bark orders in Chinese, Virna in German. I can understand a little, very little German and-at the same moment as Mandy began to chatter fast in Chinese-I understood Virna to say, "Number three, you are now pointed directly toward the enemy goal. Continue swimming in the same direction-fast!"
A lush bodied blonde cutie-razor-sharp dagger extended-began to swim like crazy toward the full-breasted Chinese tart who was serving as goal for the opposing team.
An instant later a limber, lithe and lascivious-looking Chinese chick flashed through the water, directed no doubt by the stream of Chinese instructions Mandy Ming was giving out with.
Her course through the water intercepted the path of the blonde assassin. I watched, fascinated, as the two girls swam toward each other on collision course-each with a razor sharp dagger in their right hand-while Virna and Mandy Ming continued to shout orders and the remaining four Oriental and blonde underwater killers swung around and into action.
I admired, in an abstract, technical fashion, the brilliant coaching and direction by Mandy and Virna that brought all six active combatants into action simultaneously.
It would be hard enough to direct three girls on the ground, moving in two directions, but to accurately bark orders to girls swimming in three dimensions took real skill. Through the brilliantly, illuminated, crystal clear water the six girls swam, each with a savagely sharp and glittering dagger in her hand.
Meanwhile the two voluptuous-if slightly chubby-girls who served as goals in this grim game continued to smile vacantly at nothing and suck air through their air hoses.
In midwater a strong-swimming Chinese girl surged straight toward an undulating blonde damsel who was swimming, under orders from Virna no doubt, directly toward the yellow-fleshed captive who represented the enemy goal.
I heard a babble of conflicting orders in Chinese and German, and both girls, ripe-bodied and vulnerable, slashed at empty water with the daggers in their hands. To no avail, until suddenly the Chinese swimmer lunged up closer to her opponent and, with a savage, ripping stroke, opened up her unseen foe from hip to breast.
Blood plumed through the water and, jerking spasmodically, the opened-up blonde sank slowly to her death agonies on the bottom.
When I looked again the grim game was over. The blonde whose body served as goal for the Chinese team had a dagger protruding from her chest, and overhead a red light had gone on, indicating her heart had stopped.
Two of the players were floating dead at the bottom of the huge tank, and two others, horribly slashed by their opponents' daggers, were drifting toward the bottom kicking and writhing feebly as their life blood poured from them like scarlet smoke.
"That was fun!" sighed Caterine. "Didn't you think it was exciting, Rex?"
"Sure," I said.
"Mandy,"_ suggested Caterine, "since there are still two players in good condition, why don't you and Virna have them fight each other-only without blindfolds this time."
A chorus of approval greeted her suggestion.
"Listen," I grated, won't Cantwell get annoyed at your, uh, using up his prisoners? When he plans to photograph their death agonies for the sake of mankind?"
"Oh, those girls weren't wasted," Caterine assured me. "The cameras were going all the time. Must have gotten some splendid footage, too."
No doubt, I thought to myself. Footage that-if Cantwell's mad scheme was successful-would soon be telecast to the whole world. And the whole world would watch it. Who would watch boxers or wrestlers or a football game, if they could watch nude girls fighting with razor-sharp daggers underwater?
And just what effect would Cantwell's modern Roman Games have on the world, I wondered. Some of his predictions were undoubtedly correct. His tiny but powerful transmitters would be fantastically difficult to destroy once they were in space.
And he was doubtless right in predicting that both the United States and Russia would drop every other space project to concentrate on trying to knock out his satellites..
And certainly he was right in figuring that his pirate channel would attract a lot of viewers all over the world. A lot heck, he'd have 99.99 per cent of the world's TV audience-adult audience, at least.
But what then?
Would his nightly alternating films of erotic love and human duels to the death really act as a safety valve for the human race?
Or would he just put a lot of sadistic or masochistic ideas into a lot of peoples' minds?
No telling.
But if the General and his SADISTO agents didn't arrive pretty soon, I and the rest of the world might soon find out.
I took another pull from the bottle of bourbon and I was holding and tried-without success-to slip away from the group I was with. The group that was hell bent on staging more impromptu spectacles that night.
And they did.
I watched as lovely stark-naked young girls smilingly wrestled savage crocodiles and infuriated anacondas-and lost.
I gazed at the spectacle of a nude lady bullfighter fighting, at close range in an indoor arena, not a bull, but an enraged African rhinoceros. (The rhino won, of course.)
I looked on passively at the sight of a pair of fantastically well-stacked chicks doing battle with a snarling grizzly bear. (The grizzly squashed both busty girls flat, naturally.)
Needless to say, I didn't make any attempt to stop any of the tournament's spectacles. To have done so would have been fatal as well as futile-and not in keeping with SADISTO's vacation policy.
But after a dozen or so gorgeous damsels (plus a few husky males) had been chewed, chomped, clawed, crushed or swallowed by various wild beasts-to the tune of cheers and applause from the sin crowd I was with-I was moved to make a protest.
"These contests," I protested, "are as good as rigged. The animal always wins. Even though the naked girls have a knife-or a length of rubber hose or a broomstick-they don't have a chance. Why don't you let a human win now and then?"
Mandy shook her lovely Eurasian head, sending her long black hair rippling across her proud Eurasian breasts. "You don't," she told me, "grasp the psychology of these duels we're filming in the hope of diverting mankind from war."
"Sure they're rigged. We're not tossing nude teenage girls or boys into a pit full of hungry crocodiles to find out who will win. We know who will win. So will the hundreds of millions who will soon view these duels via Cantwell's satellites. And they want the wild beasts to win."
"Really?" I said.
"Absolutely. Did the Romans throw Christians to the lions well armed and armored, with ten Christians to a lion? They did not. They tossed in naked and unarmed Christians, one to every ten lions-and made sure the lions were good and hungry."
"She's quite right," said Virna. "Who wants to see a naked teen-age girl spear and kill a tiger? Nobody likes to see animals ill treated..."
"Hear, hear," said Claudine.
"These films we're making," Virna continued, "are designed to relieve the hostility, frustration and latent sadism of the average person. A man comes home tired from his office. He's had a bad day-his boss hinted his work was inferior, a younger man was promoted over his head, the transmission on his new car has given out (the day after the guarantee expired), his kids have broken the power lawn mower, his mother-in-law has just moved in and his wife is nagging him.
"He may seem outwardly calm, but inwardly he's seething with anger and hostility. Being irrational, like most normal human beings, he doesn't beat his kids, hit his wife and throw his mother-in-law out in the snow. But by golly, he's going to get even some way. A man in that mood is perfectly capable of voting for nuclear war, just to relieve his own hostility."
"Hmm," I said ambiguously.
"I'm glad you agree," said Virna. "But suppose this man sits down in front of his TV, turns to Cantwell's illegal channel and watches real naked men and girls chop, hack, stab and spear each other to death. He may shake his head in pretended distaste, but actually he's happily identifying with the winning gladiators. His tension is alleviated, his hostility drained from him.
"Multiply this average man by a couple of billion, and you have the perfect preventative for war-William James once said the human race needed a moral equivalent of war. Cantwell, in my opinion, has found an immoral substitute for war-his modern Roman Games."
"I see," I said. "And that's why you are helping him with his project because you want to save the world from war?"
"Heck no," chuckled Virna. "I'm working for the three million he's promised me and for the kicks I must get.
I nodded. Just as I'd figured. True, the fact that Virna's motives were less than pure didn't mean Cantwell's scheme was automatically bad. Lots of men and women have fought on the right side for the wrong reasons.
But her actions if not her words poked holes in Cantwell's hypothesis. Far from slaking her thirst for blood, the gory duels she'd already watched that night had only sharpened her appetite for more."
"I know what you're thinking," chuckled Virna. "And you're wrong. You see we-you and me-are natural, instinctive sadists."
Whoops! She had me there.
"You and me," Virna continued, "can't get enough so far as sadistic slaughter is concerned. But the average person has only a small amount of hostility and sadism-an amount our filmed duels will easily satisfy. Come on, let's throw a few teen-agers to Sam."
"Sam?"
"Sam-our seven hundred pound male gorilla. Most gorillas are basically gentle. Sam's an exception-he's a monster."
"And he just loves blonde teen-age girls," said Caterine. "First he sort of...plays with them. Then he pulls their arms and legs off. You'll see."
And I did.
It was close to dawn when I was finally able to slip away and retire to my stone cabin...or prison.
I fell asleep at once and dreamed I was a huge gorilla, a gorilla who liked to play with teen-age blondes.
CHAPTER NINE
THE NEXT MORNING I woke to find an orgy raging.
It was Saturday and, I was told, weekends at Eros Island were devoted to "staff games"-that is, orgies.
I found out the easy way: four giggling girls woke me by grabbing me-one to each arm and leg. They carried me, protesting and struggling (but feebly) out of my coral-block cabin and across a grassy lawn toward the big staff swimming pool.
I guess they intended to toss me in and I wouldn't have objected, seeing as how the pool was packed with squealing, amorous and nude young girls.
But halfway across the lawn the girls holding me had a better idea. They spotted a sensuous looking, full-bodied brunette who was lying on her back relaxing in the sun, and carried me over toward her.
In case I didn't mention it, I'd been sleeping on my stomach when the girls had grabbed me by my arms and legs; hence they were lugging me along face and other things down.
The brunette saw us coming, squealed in anticipation, opened her eyes and thighs wide.
You can guess what the four doxies holding me did next. Right! They began to slowly swing me back and forth while holding me just above the ripe-bodied brunette.
What a swinging sensation! The flesh of my chest, belly and loins slid over the brunette's jutting breasts, her sleek belly...
Soon, very soon, I became rigid with excitement. The brunette gasped in anticipation. The four girls holding and swinging me adjusted their aim-and thud!
The brunette and I made sliding, stroking contact.
The girls swung me back again, then forward again, pistoning me against the hot and eager softness of the brunette's ripe young body.
Back and forth I was swung, back and forth while my hard flesh surged with this realm of bliss.
What a lazy, luxurious way to make love-no exertion needed. Just relax and let four girls do all the work while you enjoy to the hilt the churning charms of a fifth chick.
All too soon the mounting excitement within me reached a peak of intensity, and I gasped with pleasure and begged the girls holding me to swing me faster, and they did, and the brunette began to whimper with the super-charged delight and then...
Then it was as if a big gun in my stomach were firing again and again, firing golden bullets that set off shock waves of rapture throughout my body.
And after the soaring, flaming passion ebbed in a sultry glow, I got tossed into the swimming pool.
I came up spluttering, trod water, looked around me. A sleek-skinned nymph with wet golden hair and pouting breasts swam up to me, nuzzled her lips to my mouth, wriggled her breasts against my chest.
I slid an arm around her supple waist, returned her brazen kiss, then pulled free, still treading water.
She whispered a suggestion in my ear. I didn't understand the language she spoke-it might have been Rumanian or Albanian-but her meaning was clear.
I shook my head. "Not now, baby," I told her. "Maybe later after I get my strength back."
She scowled at me. "Party pooper!" she snapped, switching to English. She wriggled from my grasp and swam away. Through the astonishingly transparent water I could see her plump young buttocks rippling as she kicked her long legs behind her.
I sighed, rolled in the water and dove deep, washing the dust and sweat from my limbs and body. The blazing tropical sun, already high in the sky, made the entire swimming pool glitter like a multi-faceted diamond.
I surfaced near the edge of the pool, and a smiling, half-drunk floozy with flaxen hair spotted me, handed me a can of ice-cold beer. I drank it while treading water, looked around me.
In the pool itself a dozen guys and dolls were swimming, dunking each other, kissing and or making love. On the shaded lawn beside the pool more couples were cavorting in a refreshingly pagan and sylvan scene-a painting of nymphs and satyrs come to life. One guy, a show-off obviously, had even gone to the trouble of tying a pair of goat horns to the top of his head.
Speaking personally: I'm an indoor orgy man myself but every now and then I go for a really swinging outdoor bash. And this outdoor orgy really had style, I had to admit.
Plenty of naked couples doing the conventional things, boy on girl or girl on boy-but also quite a lot of ingenious teamwork was in evidence. Until that morning I'd never fully appreciated the almost infinite combinations and positions six or seven really athletic and ingenious boys and girls can get into.
Fantastically ingenious! But then, when you get a high class of professional men and women you can expect high standards of imagination.
I finished my can of cold beer, tossed it away and started swimming toward the shallow end of the pool.
Halfway there a lissome libertine with long chestnut-red hair and twin voluptuous volcanoes of breasts intercepted me and threw her arms around my neck. Then her legs around my hips.
Unprepared for her amorous assault, I went under, swallowed water and came up spluttering with annoyance. I didn't stay annoyed long, though. Who could be annoyed with an incredibly beautiful girl with exquisite features, a ripe cupid's bow of a mouth, fathomless gray-green eyes and an utterly fantastic figure?
Her breasts and hips would have been voluptuous on a six-foot chick but this babe was about four-feet-ten. Every place where a well-stacked girl has curves, this lass had double helpings. Don't get me wrong-she wasn't fat. Just ripe and voluptuous. Fantastically ripe and fantastically voluptuous.
We stood leering at each other. The water only came halfway up my chest, though she could barely keep her lovely head above water. There was no doubt about her figure, though. The water was translucent as glass; every detail of her gleaming white breasts-tipped with rich red nipples like bull's-eyes-her slender waist, her flat belly and her flaring hips was entrancingly visible to my eyes.
"Hi," she said, "I'm Henderson from Computer Control. Who are you?"
"Kingston," I said. "Weapons Expert. What does Cantwell need a computer for?"
"To figure his rocket's trajectory, silly."
"Oh," I said, "yes. Tell me-can he really build a rocket and send up a mess of satellites for ten million dollars? Seems awfully cheap."
"Expensive, you mean. What's that private company in. America that's building a relay satellite? ComSat? The U.S. Government launched their satellite for them-for three and a half million."
"You mean," I said, "that anybody can have a satellite put in orbit for three and a half million?"
"Sure. Only the U.S. Government would have to approve it, of course, which is why Cantwell has to spend three times as much to assemble his own rocket."
Cantwell Undershaft's mad scheme seemed to get less mad and more possible the more I learned.
"But let's not talk shop," urged Henderson, moving closer to me. "It's Saturday-the day for making love. Let's do it, huh?"
"Here?" I said.
She smiled and slid her slender arms about me, pillowed her mighty breasts against my chest. "Can you think of a better place?"
. She had a point all right-two points, in fact. I pulled her to me. Her nude young body was deliciously cool and (in the water) excitingly sleek, almost slippery.
Stroking her back and buttocks was like fondling a wet seal-or what I would guess fondling a wet seal would be like.
The luscious Miss Henderson bent her knees, bounced upwards in the water and locked her soft thighs around me. We were both busy for a moment adjusting ourselves to each other and then we were tightly locked together.
And the fun began!
With most of our mutual weight buoyed up by the water, she was no burden at all but plenty of excitement. She wriggled happily, then tilted back her head to smile deep into my eyes while she began to squeeze me pulsingly, throbbingly.
What a lucky chick-fantastically endowed everywhere. Her muscles rippled and flowed around me, squeezed and teased me as I'd never been teased and squeezed before, or in quite a while, at least.
I leaned against the side of the pool to steady myself, then began to bounce up and down a little to further the fun. I let my hands caress her shapely thighs, the rich-fleshed rapture of her buttocks, then slid them up her sleek flanks to toy with the titanic hemispheres of her breasts.
What a cool way to make love in a hot climate-liquid cooled love. Lazy, languorous, libidinous love.
I dug my fingers deep into the great globes of her breasts, bounced, faster on my heels, while Miss Henderson continued to play churning, flickering, enfolding, wanton tricks with her muscles-tricks that all but demolished me.
Tricks that, a few precious minutes later, detonated ma The thrill went through her, and we locked lips and clung to each other as paroxysm after paroxysm of ecstasy racked us, thrilled us, overwhelmed us!
I swayed as the sky seemed to darken and then pulse with dazzling light, swayed and then lost my balance and we both slid under water-our bodies still locked, a glowing arc of sexual joy still flashing between our meshed loins.
Then we came up for air and more cold beer.
After that I lost track of the computerized Miss Henderson, but I didn't really miss her. I had too many other luscious dolls to leer at. Leer at feebly, because I was really spent now.
I lay on soft grass under a big tree and drank a third can of cold beer and watched, with interest but physical detachment, the erotic games and pastimes of my fellow staff members.
(I winced even as I phrased that thought. I wasn't really a part of Cantwell's mad scheme; in fact, I was pledged to help destroy it and, presumably, him. Where was the General and his crew of SADISTO agents? UNCLE would have finished the job long ago.)
Thus agitated, I fell asleep.
The sun was almost directly overhead when I spoke, but the orgy, if anything, had picked up steam. I managed to snare another can of cold beer without being snared by any reaching female hand or leg, drank it and then, since I had nothing better to do, I let myself be snared by a luscious and naked young female-a torrid, tawny-haired tramp who identified herself simply as Mopsy, from Wild Animal Husbandry.
A curious girl, Mopsy. Her idea of fun-that noon, at least-was to sprawl on her back while I teased and tickled her with my fingertips. She was acutely responsive to fingertips, was Mopsy. Inside of a couple of minutes she was gasping and flailing at the grass with her fists.
After that she leaned back against a tree, and I leaned back against her full breasts and belly while she slid her hands around me to stroke my belly and upper thighs and so on. She had a pretty talented set of fingers herself, and a light, teasing touch that kept me gasping on the very brink of bliss for long, exciting minutes.
As a regular thing I wouldn't care too much for love-making Mopsy's way, but as a novelty at an orgy, it was kind of fun.
Then I opened another can of cold beer, and then another-dozed-and woke and had a ball again.
Every kind of ball. With an astonishing variety of chicks. (Cantwell, the old lecher, had obviously hired two or three female experts for every male; well, in his depraved place I'd have done the same thing.)
That afternoon I made love on the grass, in the pool again, and in a swinging hammock (with one girl under me and another on top). I made love with single girls and with duos and trios and quartets of girls. It was a sun-drenched phantasmagoria of luscious young female breasts and thighs and bellies and buttocks. Every rounded surface of the female body came into sliding, intimate contact with every inch of my flesh.
It was great.
To be quite frank, it was the wildest orgy I'd ever attended.
Not the only one. As a trained SADISTO agent I've been to more than a few wild sex bases throughout the world-in Greenwich Village, and while traveling through North Africa and the Middle East (in quest of vicious enemy agents threatening the security of the Free World), I'd been invited to and attended several far out hashish and harem girl parties; and once in California, I attended a wild pool party at an apartment complex called Fortuna Arms. But none of those orgies could compare with the informal, impromptu orgy that raged all Saturday morning, afternoon, evening, night-then picked up again at dawn Sunday.
Partially drunk as I was the whole time, and wholly sated with sex, it was easy to think of Eros Island as some erotic and ideal Garden of Eden, easy to forget that this staff of lusty men and sexually charged girls had been assembled for a grim and grisly purpose. Brought out and "used up." I'd been half afraid, at first, that the orgy might be enlivened by the shrieks of terrified captive teen-agers being dispatched slowly for kicks.
But the orgy remained strictly a staff party. And, thinking it over later, I could see why. In the heat of a drunken orgy the revelers might find it hard to remember which luscious girls were captives to be tortured or killed for kicks and which were valuable staff members.
At any rate, it was strictly a staff orgy, and strictly a sex orgy-no sadism at all, except for a little friendly cuffing around of masochistically inclined girls who begged to be roughed up.
Yes, it was a wild party all right-so much happened in those forty-eight hours, in fact, that even now I still find myself remembering new, thrilling episodes that I'd forgotten when I woke up Monday morning.
You know how it is when you've gotten hammered out drunk the night before, and can hardly remember anything that happened? And then all at once you get a quick flash of memory, just one scene, of when you were standing on the bar yelling you could tick any girl in the house; or when you got stuck in a revolving door; or when you thought it was clever to put a lampshade on your head and sing tike Sophie Tucker?
That's the way it was-and is-with me and my memories of that two-day, two-night orgy. Only instead of cringing when a new memory slips into my mind, I get a kind of kick.
Memories, memories...
Of my riding bareback on a huge and magnificently built Chinese girl who was crawling across the lawn neighing like a horse. What rides she'd given me!
Of a kind of roulette I played, where eight lovely and naked young girls crouched in a circle on their knees, eyes shut and heads-and lips-thrust forward. My role in the game was simple and easy. I just stood naked and excited in the middle of the tight circle and let each girl kiss me ardently in turn. Each girl was limited to a five-second kiss, and the winner was the girl who made me cry bingo!
What a game that had been!
What fun I'd had turning slowly, with pair after pair of ripe young lips pressing against my overheated flesh, with tongue after tongue circling and teasing me.
There were other memories, too! Crawling across the lawn in hot pursuit of a girl with a golden rump who was crawling away from me slowly enough so that I had no trouble catching her. She proved to be Japanese and her name in that language, she told me, meant Butterfly.
She was the kind of butterfly every red-blooded boy would like to mount.
And then there was that shameless trollop with breasts like great domes of golden sand but softer, and infinitely more resilient. Her kick was to crouch in front of a man, jut out her great breasts, and then shake her torso from side to side so that her soft breasts pummeled a man's kneecap. Or something....
What a bosom companion she'd been.
And then there'd been that wild-eyed wanton who'd been born in Florida, by the banks of the Kissimmee River. What had her name been? Of course-Kate. Kissimmee Kate. What a kissable quail she'd been, and how potently she could kiss in return. And where she kissed....
Memories, memories!
Of the heady perfume of naked female flesh-the tingling, spicy scent of dusky-hued Nubian maidens; the exotic, Oriental aroma of Chinese chicks and Japanese jades; the buttercup fragrance of nude and lovely blonde Vikingettes....
Memories of tastes-of a dozen flavors of lipstick... of the honeysweet taste of dainty female tongues as they slid like serpents into my mouth...the salty taste of sweat-soaked breast flesh as you kiss your partner in the climactic spasms of your wrestling match.
Memories of sounds, too-of throaty female spoken words of love or lust...high-pitched squeals and giggles as you give a girl what she wants, but in a place where she wasn't expecting it...groans and moans of ultimate female passion-and other sounds: the slap, slap of your belly bouncing against a young girl's tummy...the varied sounds different areas of female flesh make as you pat or slap them, the poop, poop of patted breasts, the thump, thump of tapped female bellies, the phlat, phlat, of your palms slapping a girl's ripe rump, the whap, whap when you play with her full thighs....
Yes, it was a great orgy, all right.
Even now, long after, I still get kind of dizzy remembering all the breasts I played with-full, swaying breasts; young, cone-shaped breasts; eager, uptilted breasts; saucy, impudent breasts; haughty, arrogant breasts-breasts of all shapes and assorted skin colors. And with excitingly different owners attached.
And breasts weren't the only objects of beauty I stroked and savored, cupped and caressed. I viewed and touched and enjoyed full, deep-fleshed thighs; svelte, shapely thighs; rounded, resilient thighs-and rumps: rounded rumps and heart-shaped rumps; swaying rumps and switching rumps; rumps that rolled from side to side as their owners walked, and rumps that bounced up and down....
Yes, it was a gorgeous, sex-drenched orgy. Getting plastered was fun, too. In fact kind of essential. Because, to my way of thinking, a man (or a girl) should never approach or participate in an orgy cold sober.
Getting too drunk is fatal, of course. You may have the lustiest intentions in the world but, if you get too drunk, you can't put your intentions into practice-or the girl of your choice.
No, the right way to be at an orgy is slightly drunk-the whole time.
Show me a man who manages to stay slightly drunk through a two-day orgy, and I'll show you a happy man.
Like all good things, however, the two-day orgy finally wound to a lusty finish.
And I staggered off to bed (with a girl on each arm).
And all too soon came Monday morning. And the staff of Eros Island started work.
Grim, ghastly work!
CHAPTER TEN
CARLOTTA CORTEZ, NUDE as usual, woke me about nine Monday morning. The ex-doctor looked fresh and energetic. Me, I was hung over like I'd never been before.
Also tired out.
Two days and nights of nonstop sex take it out of a man-but evidently put it into a girl. At least Carlotta looked radiant; and I knew for a fact she'd been balling with the rest all weekend. In fact if memory served, we'd balled a couple of times together.
Women!
Who said they were the weaker sex?
"Time to rise and shine," said Carlotta briskly, while I tried to focus my bloodshot eyes. "I'm to take you on a tour of the island today. Let you see the rehearsals and trials now in progress."
Rehearsals. A polite way of saying they chopped up people for practice to see how the spectacle would photograph. Then they did it over again, with all new victims, for a final take.
How had I gotten into this nightmare situation?
More important why hadn't I been gotten out? The General had gone to all the trouble of operating on me and replacing my perfectly sound appendix with a tiny radio transmitter, so, why hadn't he homed on my beam?
Confound the man.
Carlotta whistling cheerfully, waited while I brushed my teeth and took a quick shower. No towels. Who needed towels when you walked around naked? The sun would dry you fast enough. Or so Carlotta assured me.
I followed her, dripping, out the door into the bright sunlight and our nightmare tour of the island began.
After Carlotta had stowed a couple of six packs of cold beer into a plastic ice chest we climbed into a jeep and roared off along a bumpy road. Accustomed though I was to surprises on Eros Island, I was amazed at the amount of construction work that had been done on the once uninhabited island-now an uninhibited island-since Cantwell Undershaft had taken it over and poured tens, if not hundreds of millions into it.
The first point of interest we stopped at was a huge arena that looked almost as large as the ancient Roman Coliseum.
It wasn't, Carlotta assured me; nor was it as permanent. Only the lower sections were made of stone (coral block, actually). The upper tiers, she explained, were made of paper mache. It looked impressive, though and business-like.
"It's modeled after the Roman original, of course," Carlotta informed me. "Even to the gates through which wild animals and doomed human gladiators are fed into the arena. And," she added with a sadistic chuckle, "many a wild beast has already dined on screaming men and girls since Cantwell had this built."
"Imagine," I said.
"Fact. We did pull one hilarious boner. The first week after this arena was completed we fed over a hundred luscious, naked young girls-imported from all over the world-to a whole collection of ferocious animals-lions, tigers, water buffalo, assorted bears, ostriches fitted with steel spurs like fighting cocks, wolves and a pack of attack-trained dogs. And you know what?"
"What?" I asked.
"We found the camera man-camera girl, actually-had forgotten to remove the lens covers from the cameras. We wasted over a hundred girls, and didn't get a single foot of film. What a joke on us!"
"Yes," I said, "yes indeed. What happened to the camera girl? Did she get fed to a lion?"
"Of course not! Cantwell is very considerate of his staff. And of his victims, too, for that matter. He gives them all pain killers before he has them slaughtered; that is, if he doesn't brainwash them into enjoying pain."
"A kindly man," I said sarcastically.
"He may not seem so," she argued, "but he really is, at heart."
I said nothing, cynically.
"Notice," continued Carlotta, "that the arena is empty right now. The technicians are planning to flood it this afternoon."
"Flood it?"
"Right, just like the Romans used to do. Didn't you take ancient history? The Romans used to put four or five feet of water in the Coliseum and then stage galley fights. We're building some galleys now. I dare say you'll be consulted as to the correct weapons to fight them with. Meanwhile, we're going to stage some modern games-outboard-motor fights. Nude boys and girls piloting souped up aquaplanes. They'll try to ram each other. And the best part is, the aquaplanes are rigged so they'll burst into flames when rammed-provided they don't get chopped to pieces in the initial impact."
"Sounds like fun," I said.
"You bet," agreed Carlotta.-"And of course well have plenty of saltwater crocodiles and man-eating sharks, just in case anybody falls in the water alive."
"Sound policy," I said, trying not to gag.
From the reconstructed Coliseum we drove to the island's airstrip.
"When not being, used for takeoffs and landings," Carlotta said, "we use the airstrip for jousting." She pulled up close to a big movie camera, behind which a couple of unclad female camera girls were crouched.
"We're in luck," said Carlotta. "A joust is about to take place."
"Where?" I said. "I don't see any horses, just a couple of naked voluptuous girls on motorcycles."
"A modern joust," Carlotta explained patiently.
She was right. I watched as the two nude motorcycle riders roared toward each other at sixty miles an hour. Neither girl had any armor or even a crash helmet. All they had was a long aluminum spear. They flashed by each other at a hundred twenty miles an hour. One of the spear-armed, motorized Amazons missed-the other didn't. The speared girl roared in a wide circle, still accelerating, with the long aluminum spear projecting five feet on either side of her back and abdomen. Then her motorcycle went out of control, and she and the cycle went somersaulting end over end about a dozen times.
Since she wasn't thrown clear, it was obvious she'd been strapped to her steel steed. For the last five or six somersaults her cycle had been trailing flames, and when it crashed to earth for the last time it blossomed into a gasoline-fed inferno.
"Wasn't that spectacular?" sighed Carlotta clapping her hands together. "Cantwell certainly is ingenious in thinking up modernized Roman Games. And I helped brainwash those girls into wanting to joust."
"You should be proud," I said, but my irony was lost on Carlotta who smiled at me and told me yes, she was proud.
"Just how," I asked her, "do you get girls like that to murder each other with a smile?"
Carlotta shrugged. "It isn't easy but it isn't too hard, either. Take those two girls for example. The one being roasted out there and the one circling her victim on her cycle, waving one hand in triumph, were, believe it or not, seniors at Venice and Santa Monica High Schools in California-until a few days ago when one of Cantwell's collectors captured them, drugged them and had them flown here."
"Horrible," I said. "I mean, amazing."
"Right. As soon as they got here they were both given a frontal lobotomy. That destroyed their personality and made them partial zombies. After that they were brainwashed. While in a semiconscious state earphones repeated over and over in their ears the, heh, heh, fact that they were warrior girls for their respective high school. Venice and Santa Monica, of course, are arch rivals, high-school-wise."
"I didn't know that," I said.
"Fact. Then they were drugged, by me, with a number of sophisticated mind-bending drugs. After which I brainwashed 'em some more, about what great motorcycle jousters they were, and what an honor it was to fight and die for dear old Venice or Samohi."
"Barbarous-I mean ingenious."
"Absolutely. The only slip we made was we forgot to teach them to ride a motorcycle before making totally brainwashed warrior zombies out of them. Fortunately, as it turned out they both already knew how to ride a motorcycle, so we were in luck.
"Yes," I said, "oh, yes. You must have gotten some great film for Cantwell that time."
"Rather. The next motorcycle joust is between two college boys from Kansas and Oklahoma. Care to stay and watch?"
"No," I said, reaching behind me and pulling a can of beer out of the cooler. I don't usually drink in the morning but I was more than willing to make an exception.
Carlotta frowned at me. "You're sweating. Did that amusing joust upset you?"
"Certainly not," I assured her. "It's just that I'm not used to this heat."
"It is hot here close to the Equator," Carlotta agreed. "What say we take a boat ride and cool off?"
"Fine idea," I said, gulping beer. At least for a while I wouldn't be forced to watch any more slaughter, or so I thought!
The boat proved to be a surplus PT boat, and it was crowded with movie cameras pointing astern and fun-loving technicians. We roared out across the dead-calm ocean, towing half a dozen nude and voluptuous (and smiling) water-skiers.
"Are those water-skiers," I asked hopefully, "staff members out for some fun?"
"Certainly not," laughed Carlotta. "They're victims-brainwashed water-skiing victims. About to be immortalized on film-film which, when telecast from space, will satisfy the latent sadism and hostility of hundreds of millions. Thereby alleviating the risk of world war and making their sacrifice well worth while." I glared at her. Was she trying to brainwash me? No. She was just dedicated to her job. Her grisly job.
She picked up a mike. "Start the cameras rolling," she barked. And then, when the cameras were going, she said crisply into the mike: "Water-skier number five-start evasive action."
Alerted by the loudspeaker command, water-skier number five-a ripe-bodied redhead-began to weave back and forth across the water astern of us.
Carlotta picked up a weapon I knew only too well-a modern crossbow.
"The object of this amusing game-invented by Cantwell himself-is to drop the water-skiers in as few shots as possible. Care to have a go?"
"Uh-no, thank you," I said. "My hands are still unsteady from all the drinking I did this weekend."
Carlotta shrugged, raised the crossbow, aimed at the weaving redhead! on water skis behind us and let fly. The arrow flashed through the air, its trail clearly marked by a trail of red smoke from a pyrotechnic device in the tail end of the shaft. The redhead zagged just in time, and the arrow flashed past her right breast. An instant later another crossbow-armed staff member fired, and another arrow streaked toward the weaving redhead. This one almost got her-passed between her shapely legs, in fact. The third arrow was a wide miss but the fourth struck home, burying itself in the redhead's right breast.
Unbelievably, she continued to smile and to weave back and forth on her skis. At least for a few seconds. Then she jerked spasmodically and let go of her tow bar to splash resoundingly into the water.
A few streaking shark fins testified to her fate.
"Ready number six-start evasive action!" yelled Carlotta into her mike, and busied herself reloading her crossbow while other cheerful staff members began firing arrows at number six-a full-breasted brunette with a fixed, zombie-like smile on her face.
"The trouble with these brainwashed girls," said Carlotta, "is that they don't know when to quit and die gracefully. When we first tried out this game, some of the girls kept on smiting and skiing with as many as six arrows in them. After that we tipped the arrows with strychnine. That always does the job in a few seconds."
"Most inventive," I snapped, reaching for yet another beer.
At that moment a smoke-trailing arrow plunged into the belly of the ripe-breasted brunette. She, too, continued to weave and ski for a few seconds, only to jerk convulsively and topple from her skis with a splash.
The rest went the same way, one by one.
Some relaxing boat trip.
"Cantwell is hoping," confided Carlotta on the trip home, sans water-skiers, "that you can build him some arrows with delayed action exploding warheads."
"Why, that shouldn't be too hard," I began, and then I realized that this wasn't an abstract technical question-that the explosive warhead arrows I might design and build would be used on live human targets for the ultimate purpose of ending war-and SADISTO's mission.
Could it possibly be, I mused, that there was something intrinsically immoral in human beings devising ingenious and effective means of killing and maiming other human beings?
Impossible. To think like that was to think like a dirty pacifist. Where would the art of weaponry be if everybody practiced passive resistance?
Nowhere.
I shuddered all over. My world-built up over long years of sadistically murdering enemy agents of the Free World-
I grabbed the nearest crossbow.
"I'll get one," I snarled. "I'll shoot down a naked water-skier in cold blood. You see if I don't. Where are they?"
I broke off. Carlotta was staring at me. Everybody on the boat was staring at me. And no wonder: all six voluptuous water-skiers had already been disposed of.
"My," said Carlotta, "you are eager for blood, or have you just had too much beer?"
I mumbled incoherently, put down the crossbow.
A few minutes later the boat docked.
Carlotta took me by the hand. "Come on, Rex. Well tour the rest of the island tomorrow. Let's go to a nice cool air-conditioned projection room now and watch some movies."
I followed her gladly. That was what I needed. A relaxing afternoon at the movies. Where I could forget what I'd seen and thought about. I hoped they'd be showing a Doris Day movie...
Poor deluded fool that I was.
When I got to the air-conditioned projection room, with a cold beer in my hand and Carlotta sitting nakedly by my side, they projected the movies they'd shot in the past few weeks on Eros Island.
And what incredibly shocking movies they were.
Some of them started out real pretty-like a shot of nude young girls swimming sensuously under water past glittering coral formations and over gleaming white sand.
And then some chuckling sadist (at least I assume he was chuckling), some sadist in a boat overhead began dropping hand grenades into the water.
You wouldn't believe-unless you've seen it with your own eyes-the mess one hand grenade exploding underwater can make of a shapely young girl.
I swallowed the rest of my beer in a gulp and asked Carlotta to fetch me another six cans.
She did. I drank them, in rapid succession.
"While I drank them Carlotta gave me a running commentary on the film I was watching.
"This one," she crooned, "is a really ingenious modern Roman Game. Virna thought it up."
I watched the screen.
A blur of fast moving clouds and then a close shot of Virna herself dropping through space, a pair of Lugers in her hands. And plunging through space a few yards away from her, was a screaming teen-age girl.
"To get this shot," Carlotta explained, "Virna, the target girl and the camera man all jumped from a plane at the same moment. Virna and the camera man are wearing parachutes, of course. The target-girl won't need one, obviously. But they'll all free fall for a while."
I watched and nodded.
As I watched, Virna, her nude charms only slightly concealed by the parachute harness and chute she wore, aimed one Luger at the naked girl plunging through space close by.
She fired and a bright red spot blossomed on the target-girl's left thigh. The girl began to cartwheel through the air slowly, end over end. Virna drifted away from her-propelled by the recoil, of course.
A moment later Virna pointed the Luger in her left hand behind her, pulled the trigger. The second recoil, compensated for the first, and she began to drift toward the target girl again.
Again she fired and another spot of crimson showed on the target-girl's body. Quickly Virna fired her left hand Luger behind her and the recoil stopped her drift backwards and sent her drifting toward the target-girl again.
And so it went until Virna had emptied the magazines of both Lugers, and the target-girl was riddled. Strangely-but understandably-the riddled target-girl didn't drip blood. She and her blood were dropping at the same velocity in free fall.
She continued to cartwheel through the air looking like a set of polka-dotted spokes.
Then Virna pulled her rip cord, and an instant later she flashed upward across the screen as her chute opened. A moment later the screen went black-the free-falling camera man had pulled his own rip cord.
As to the target-girl-well, she never felt it when she hit the ground, that was for sure.
"Wasn't that novel?" queried Carlotta. "Target practice in free fall with a live human target. That film should cause some talk when it's telecast from space to hundreds of millions of homes. Thereby draining hostility and latent sadism and helping prevent world war."
"Right," I said, starting a new can of beer, "you bet."
And then, while I continued to drink can after can of beer, I watched more film.
Films of grotesquely grinning naked men and girls flailing at each other with primitive, barbaric weapons; for example, whip-like lengths of rubber hose studded with sharp nails.
Films of tiger-stripe painted nude girls battling with steel (and razor sharp) claws attached to their fingers-girls whose teeth (to make matters worse) had been sharpened to the point where they could easily bite through flesh.
I knew that this was only a more sophisticated adaptation of the weapons of the African Leopard-Man cult; but even so, it was a pretty sickening film to watch, as once-civilized girls clawed and chewed each other to shreds.
I watched too many other films, even more horrible. Too horrible to describe, in fact.
All the time I thought, where the blazes is the General and my trained SADISTO buddies?
Why hasn't he homed on my beam, arrived to rescue me and wiped out this nest of subsidized sadists deluding themselves that they're killing human victims for the sake of mankind?
But I didn't ask these questions aloud, of course.
Finally the screen went black for the last time, and I tottered out into the afternoon sunlight.
"My," said Carlotta, lending me a hand, "you have had a lot of beer, haven't you?"
"No more than I needed," I gasped. "Less, in fact."
Carlotta took me firmly by the hand.
"Where are you taking me now?" I asked.
"You'll see," said Carlotta, leading me down a long flight of stairs. I stared around me when we reached the final level. On all sides were modernistic dungeons. Where was I being taken?
A good question.
Carlotta led me into a large room and instantly all the lights went out. Strong hands grabbed me. I struggled, but in vain. The hands holding me were more than a match for my beer-sapped strength.
When, a few moments later, the lights came back on, I was firmly strapped to a big wooden chair.
Panic possessed me for a few moments. I've been discovered, I thought. They've found out that I'm working against them, found out I have a tiny radio transmitter inside my abdominal cavity that's emitting beeps that SADISTO can pick up. They're about to put me to death, horribly.
But I was wrong.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
"HAVE NO FEAR," SAID Carlotta, standing smiling down at me-idly scratching her naked breast. "Have no fear that we intend to harm you personally. It's simply that Cantwell insists that all his employees pass a simple test."
I stared at her. At her magnificent nude body, at the cold smile on her lips. "What kind of test?" I asked.
"Simply that all of his staff employees must prove themselves capable of joining in his crusade."
"Cru-" I gasped, "-sade?"
"Right. His crusade, of course, is filming human slaughter for the ultimate benefit of mankind. Naturally he doesn't want any bleeding hearts or weak sisters in his ranks. So you must prove your good faith. By disposing of a human being."
"Me?" I gasped, knowing that as a vacationing SADISTO agent I had no license to kill.
"You," smiled Carlotta. "But don't worry. Well make it easy for you. Here-"
She thrust something into my right hand. I looked down. It was the butt of a long-barreled .22 target pistol. I tried to swing it around to shoot Carlotta through her evil if shapely heart, but the gun was mounted on a swivel, a swivel that only permitted me to fire it straight ahead of me. Carlotta was standing by my side.
"No doubt," she chuckled, "you're wondering where your target is. It's coming up."
She pressed a button, and a wooden panel slid up directly in front of me about ten feet away, and out of the panel slid a kind of platform to which was tied a young, totally nude girl. She was sitting on her heels, tied so that her hands were behind her back-her breasts and belly nakedly exposed to my eyes and the gun in my hand.
"There's your first target," said Carlotta cheerfully. "See if you can plug her through the heart, first shot."
I stared at the young and naked girl before me. She smiled at me vacantly. Obviously she'd been drugged or brainwashed. She didn't fear me or my gun in the slightest.
I stared at her and knew right then that I could not kill her in cold blood. She was an innocent girl, not a grisly, if shapely, enemy agent.
Carlotta pressed another button, and a green light came on. "I must warn you," she said, "that the green light you see will only stay on for fifteen seconds. During that time you may fire up to ten shots. After that time a red light will come on, and the trigger of your gun will be locked.
"So hurry! You only have fifteen seconds in which to make your first score."
The girl before me might be brainwashed and doomed, but still I couldn't kill her. Not personally. Cantwell Undershaft and his mad assistants might do with me as they would, I was not going to shoot the naked girl before me.
I sat strapped in my chair, the butt of the gun in my hand, the sweat pouring down my brow despite the air conditioning in the room.
The seconds ticked slowly away and then, at last, the red light came on.
"Thought you wouldn't," said Carlotta casually. "You will next time, though."
She glanced at a clock on the wall. "Taking a few seconds more than usual," she said conversationally. "Ah, now it's taking effect."
And at that instant a horrible scream of pain ripped the air. The tightly bound naked girl in front of me was no longer smiling at me vacantly. Her face was contorted in horrible agony. Her whole body writhed and twisted in vain against the bonds that held her. Obviously she was enduring the tortures of the damned. Again and again she writhed against the straps that held her while she screamed again and again, her screams tearing through my skull.
I stood it for maybe ten seconds, then I leveled the clamped gun in my right hand, aimed and pulled the trigger. Nothing happened. Nothing save that the girl's screams reverberated through the room.
Of course. The trigger was useless now. The red light had gone on and the trigger was locked.
So I did what I had to do-sat struggling against the straps that held me to my chair, while the girl in front of me writhed and then, eventually died.
It took her some five minutes.
Then she gave one last scream, her body jerked and she sagged in death.
Carlotta stifled a yawn. "Five and a half minutes," she said. "She was tough." She reached out a languid finger, pressed a button. A trap-door opened in the floor in front of me, and both the girl and the platform she was tied to dropped out of sight. A few moments later I heard a distant splash. Her corpse was no doubt floating out to sea to make a meal for some passing shark.
I shuddered. Carlotta grinned.
"What-what happened?" I gasped.
Carlotta chuckled. "Nothing unusual. You see, I forgot to tell you. That girl had been brainwashed to be impervious to pain inflicted by bullets. Bullets you didn't fire. But she'd also been brainwashed to feel-with double intensity-any pains inside her stomach. And, as you've no doubt guessed, just before she was slid through that sliding panel to serve as your target, she was made to swallow a gelatin-covered capsule of strychnine."
"No!" I cried.
"Yes!" chortled Carlotta. "And nineteen seconds later the gelatin dissolved and the strychnine hit her stomach. Strychnine, as I'm sure you know, is about the most painful poison it's possible to die from. So-your humanitarian gesture in not shooting her caused her to die a horrible death, needlessly."
"There's a moral to be learned," continued Carlotta. "And the moral is-kindness to an individual may result in even more pain to humanity. Get the point? Cantwell is slaughtering hundreds, but only for the good of billions."
I shook my head. I couldn't believe her moral.
"You may shake your head," laughed Carlotta. "But in a few moments you'll find out the truth of what I say."
She reached up and pushed a button. And again the sliding panel moved up and another naked, tightly-bound girl slid into firing range before me.
A young blonde this time. Really young-about sixteen I guessed. A ripe, full-breasted sixteen. She, too, smiled at me vacantly, unafraid of me or the gun in my hand.
Carlotta smiled, reached up and touched another button and the green light flashed on. "Make up your mind fast," said Carlotta. "You have fifteen seconds in which to dispatch this girl painlessly. She won't feel your bullets, remember-or else you can hold your fire, and watch her spend five minutes dying. Or maybe longer, if she's tougher."
I stared at the nude young girl before me. Sweat poured off my brow. This couldn't be happening-this ghastly choice couldn't be mine. Would it be mere killing or murder?
And why me?
Why did I have to make such a hideous decision? I was supposed to be enjoying my vacation.
For all of ten seconds I did nothing.
It was the longest ten seconds I'd ever lived though. I wouldn't have believed that ten seconds could last so long, that a man could think so many things in a sixth of a minute.
I thought of the happy home the young girl before me had no doubt come from. I thought of all the plans and hopes she'd no doubt had. I thought of a dozen reasons why I couldn't, ever, pump a bullet into her heart.
And I also thought of the horrible scene I'd just witnessed-thought of the five long minutes of incredible agony this vacant eyes, smiling young girl was doomed to endure.
She was going to die, that was for sure.
The question was, would she die easily and painlessly from bullets I fired (she'd been brainwashed not to feel bullet wounds, Carlotta had told me), or would she die slowly, in horrible agony?
The seconds ticked away.
I looked at her sleek, smooth-fleshed, ripe but still adolescent body.
How many furtive-handed young high school boys had slid their sweaty palms over her already ripe breasts? How many daring males had stroked her lovely thighs, her smooth young belly? How often had she dreamed of the rich, full, exciting life ahead of her?
How could I possibly kill her?
Yet-how could I possibly see her awaken from her trance-like sleep to unimaginable agony?
I took a deep breath, and fired at the blonde girl's heart. My palm was sweaty and my aim bad. The bullet drilled into her belly. She continued to smile at me vacantly. I fired once more and drilled her through the left breast, right into her heart. She smiled at me, and then her eyes rolled back in her head and her head lolled forward in death.
Carlotta chuckled throatily, punched a button and the trap-door in the floor opened and the girl's body dropped through. A few moments later I heard the splash.
"Very good," laughed Carlotta, "excellent. You've just proved you're one of us-that you're willing to sacrifice a life for humanitarian reasons."
I said nothing, I just stared at her.
"I can guess what you're thinking," said Carlotta with a smile. "You're thinking we're all sadistic brutes. But we're not, really. We have the interest of mankind at heart."
"What good for mankind did those two deaths accomplish?" I asked coldly. "I mean, they weren't filmed, were they? Or were they?"
"No. But they were necessary to prove to us that you aren't a fanatic pacifist a loony who wouldn't kill even for a good cause."
Loony, I thought to myself. She's a fine one to talk about loonies. Heck they're all loonies and sadistic monsters.
"What next?" I asked. "Do I have to kill anybody else to prove something?"
"Of course not," said Carlotta soothingly. "The next killings you participate in will be strictly, uh, functional. Cantwell has a new batch of victims arriving tomorrow. After they've been moderately brain-washed he wants you to give them all sword aptitude tests. The twenty who score highest you're to give intensive saber, epee and foil training."
I frowned. "It takes years to train an expert swordsman."
"Maybe so. But these boys and girls don't have to be good-they just have to look good. After all, they train actors in costume movies to use swords, don't they? It doesn't take long to look good with a sword."
"Yeah," I said, "but those movie sword fights aren't like a real duel. They're staged and rehearsed stroke by stroke."
"Exactly what we want," cried Carlotta. "We're making movies too, remember. We're not interested in sportsmanship, just in a gory duel. You can train them in pairs, boys against girls. Cantwell wants some mixed duels.
Have them wear padding and rehearse just where each is to poke the other sword-wise. Then, heh, heh, we take off the padding, and let them poke swords through each other for real, for the camera, and for-"
"-the benefit of mankind," I finished.
"Exactly. I think you're going to work out fine, Rex. Just fine."
She began to untie the straps that still held me to the massive wooden chair. "Now, take the rest of the afternoon off so you'll be fresh to give those sword aptitude tests tomorrow."
I rose to my feet, looked at her. We were alone in the room. Should I slide my hands around her lovely throat and choke her to death?
No. It wouldn't do any good. Do me any good, that is. I'd still have to battle dozens of fanatical staff members as well as Cantwell himself.
If I were an actor in a TV show I'd triumph easily, of course. Put Carlotta out of action, race to the prisoners quarters, release them and arm then, then lead them in a heroic and successful charge against the forces of evil, as represented by Cantwell Undershaft and his crew.
Only it wouldn't work, because the prisoners at hand had already been brainwashed. They wanted to be killed off in duels. If they did any charging with weapons, it would be at me-for trying to stop their fun.
Problems, problems....
Carlotta walked me to my private coral-block cottage, then left me with a cheery wave.
I flung myself down on my bed and began to brood.
I didn't get too brood for long, though. Because a few minutes later Mandy Ming sauntered nakedly into my cottage, took a long, appraising look at me and then flung herself nakedly and fervently on top of me.
I tried to push her lush nakedness away.
"Another time, Mandy," I pleaded. "I'm just not in the mood right now."
"Nonsense," she crooned. "Men are always in the mood and so are girls, if they know what's good for them. And you look plenty good to me."
I tried once more to push her away from me but only once more.
What the heck, I'm human. There's a limit to the amount of provocation I can take without getting provoked myself-sexually provoked.
And Mandy Ming's exotic Eurasian flesh was smothering me, enveloping me, arousing me.
Her golden flesh was drum taut, satin smooth, utterly flawless and excitingly hot to the touch. Her breasts, proud, high, full and arrogant were taut-fleshed as an over inflated inner-tube. But a lot more exciting, of course.
They excited the hell out of me, for a fact.
I grabbed a breast in each hand and let my fingers sink deep into the golden, opulent flesh. Her breasts yielded excitingly to my grasping fingers, seemed to squirm and twist in my hands.
By heaven, they were squirming and twisting. Mandy was simultaneously writhing and twisting on the bed and operating her tassel-twirling muscles. What a tassel dancer she'd have made! I guess some girls are just naturally talented when it comes to making their breasts twitch, jump and wriggle, and Mandy had talent to spare.
It was like grasping twin bowls of vibrating, churning bliss. I groaned with pleasure, squeezed and manipulated the luscious spheres of frolic flesh, worked them and kneaded them, washboarded them and polished them.
Then I cupped both hands around one of her magic mountains, and bet my head and imprisoned the hot, throbbing erectness of her dark brown nipple with my lips.
She moaned with pleasure as my tongue traced the pulsing outline of her big nipple, whimpered with ecstasy as I sucked her breast tip deep into my mouth, bit gently with lip sheathed teeth.
I transferred my lips, tongue and teeth to her other breast, gave it the same treatment. Mandy purred like an erotic big cat.
Then I let my lips graze over other areas of her golden, glowing body. I kissed the flickering hollow of her throat, the sleek firmness of her shoulders, the sides of her throat, behind her dainty ears.
I kissed her chin, her cheeks, her forehead and eyes. Then I kissed her full on her ripe mouth. I was prepared for erotic fireworks and I got them.
Her tongue slid between my open lips like the original serpent of Eden, probing, twisting, teasing, provoking me. I thrust back with my own, and our tongues played sensuous sliding games within the hot liquid caves of our linked mouths.
And while her tongue played havoc with my sexual susceptibilities, her hands were gliding over my flesh, her fingertips tracing lazy spirals of rapture across my body, all parts of my body.
Simultaneously, her ripe breasts and hot belly surged against me, all but scorching my skin, driving me halfway out of my lust-inflamed mind.
I broke our kiss, let my lips continue to explore all the golden slopes and rich curves of her passionate body.
I kissed the up-flung curves of her breasts again, kissed the sweet-scented valley between them, kissed the delicious warmth of her waist, the lustrous gently rounded surface of her navel-dimpled belly.
I kissed the great sweeping curves of her thighs; first the outer sides, then the top sides, and then the inner surfaces of her luscious upper legs.
I kissed her hottest flesh, kissed her long and deep where the pagan fires of lust within her flared the most.
Then I rolled her lovely body over and kissed her some more.
I kissed the golden succulence of her enticingly rounded thighs, the soaring, insolently full and rounded spheres of her buttocks.
I toyed with her delectable rump a long time, biting, chewing, tonguing and kissing the rich, vibrant, responsive flesh.
I squeezed it and fondled it, shook it-to see how magnificently her buttocks rippled-patted it, stroked it-even sat astride her thighs to feel the soft enchantment of her buttocks against my lower belly.
I wriggled, she wriggled and a wave of hot excitement coursed upward through me.
I didn't stop my sexual survey of her south side at her buttocks, though.
I continued to work my way up her back, kissing and fondling the baby-soft flesh of her back, the smoothness of her shoulders, the golden slenderness of her neck.
I stroked her from the nape of her neck to the base of her spine and then retraced the curved route with my lips.
I kissed and caressed her until her whole body was throbbing with bliss, quivering with the force of the passion I'd kindled within her.
Then I flipped her over on her back again and once more foraged on the pleasure pasture of her frontal flesh.
I rubbed my cheeks along the golden flesh of her belly, let my lips trace the limber, lascivious curves of her writhing thighs, kissed again the jutting joy of her huge, uplifted breasts and their passion-engorged tips.
I knelt alongside of her and nuzzled the proud perfection of her frontal fruit, burying my nose in the hot soft flesh as I pressed my lips against her golden flesh.
And all the while she was murmuring softly in a high-pitched exotic language-Chinese, perhaps-murmuring in ecstasy as she stroked me, fondled me.
What a wonderland of wanton flesh was her body, what a playground for a man's lips and tongue and tracing fingers.
How ardently she responded to the tactile stimulation I plied her with, how fervently she reciprocated...
The next thing I knew, she'd thrust me down on my back and was toying with my body as I'd toyed with hers.
I stretched luxuriantly on the bed, folded my arms behind my head and lay back to enjoy whatever she had in store for me-and she had plenty.
She crouched beside me and traced erotic patterns across my tingling flesh.
You know how it is at night on the ocean when the sea is alive with phosphorescence, and you move your hand through the water and leave a glowing wake of living sparks behind you?
That was the way it was when she stroked me with her fingertips. Her hands left five glowing trails across my flesh.
The flesh of my chest and shoulders, my belly and loins, my thighs and...other parts.
My flesh seemed to glow, to tingle, to burn with sexual excitement.
And she didn't use just her fingers to excite me. She stroked my body from end to end with the whispering magic of her long hair-letting her long, midnight-black tresses tumble over my body to tickle and tease and please me.
Then she bent lower and stroked me and rubbed me with her huge, ripe breasts.
And then-the ultimate in stimulation-she bent over me further yet and began to stroke and tease me with her tongue.
Here and there-everywhere, in fact. But in some wondrous places more than others. Mandy Ming was obviously well trained or experienced in the art of pleasing men. She knew just where a man most appreciates the tickling, sliding, stroking touch of a girl's tongue.
Her lips and tongue roamed over my flesh like summer lightning-striking electric explosions of pure pleasure, on my flesh and deep inside of me.
Finally I could stand her stimulation no longer. I grabbed her golden body and thrust her down on the bed and-as her lovely legs swung invitingly apart-I thrust myself forward and took the realm of rapture with a plunging, swooping movement of my lower body.
Those first few frantic moments of initial inter-locking were sheer bliss, pure sensation-scorching, stroking, sliding, sensation.
Her golden thighs wound around me, locking me tight to her as her arms encircled my neck. Our lips met and meshed, her tongue slipped between my lips tentatively, then retreated as I sent my tongue thrusting deep, deep into her mouth.
What roiling rapture, what surging liquid friction of hot flesh against flesh.
I let her ripe breasts carry the weight of my chest as I slid my hands down the sleek perfection of her body to find and grasp the rippling hemispheres of her buttocks.
My fingers dug deep into her soft and squirming flesh, pulled her close against me, around me as I began to forcefully piston my urgency against her.
Her hips began to roll and churn, to writhe and plunge while her muscles, her tight-squeezing muscles rippled around my already tightly gripped desire.
Her flickering, pulsing muscles flared around me while I steadily increased the speed of my pistoning hips.
Faster and faster I plunged against the bubbling bliss of her body.
She began to rear and buck, to twist her hips from side to side as if trying to dismount-the last thing she intended, of course.
All she did was excite me and herself even more.
Her ample breasts were twin pillows of rolling pleasure beneath my chest, her belly was a scorching delight against my stomach, her grasping thighs aroused me to new heights of frenzy.
Faster I moved, and faster. I was pounding her, pile-driving her, battering her body down against the soft bed from which her hips rebounded with ever increased enthusiasm.
Her luscious belly churned, her lovely naked legs flailed against the bed, against my flesh.
And, steadily, I increased the tempo of my love-making.
I did more.
I began to swing my hips from side to side, back and forth, around and around in a swirling, stirring motion that made her shriek with raw sexual pleasure.
It didn't do me any harm, either. It just about drove me mad with delight, in fact.
I probed and explored her, kindling a vortex passion and then, abruptly, violently, the passion burst its bounds.
I was no longer a sane human being but a raging, twisting vehicle of lust.
Lust spurted through me, rolled out of me while my stomach recoiled like the stock of an automatic rifle. I clutched Mandy to me savagely, spasmodically as I pumped against her like a machine out of control.
Ecstasy escalated inside of me as our bodies slammed together, as her fingernails gashed my back and her teeth sank deep into my shoulder.
I seemed to soar in an effortless, weightless, never-ending orbit of maximum sexual sensation. She, too, I knew, was being shattered and battered by the tumultuous tides of lust foaming through her.
I lost all sanity, all identity as I plunged into a whirlpool of glowing sensuality, a detonating, thundering maelstrom of lust.
I heard her scream, heard myself cry aloud, felt bolts of searing, jolting sexual lightning flash between us and then the rocking, pulsing, inter-meshing movement of our bodies slowed.
And rapture became relief, sensation became satiation; and, limp and drained, we rested in each other's embrace.
CHAPTER TWELVE
THE NEXT MORNING I SLEPT LATE. Understandably. But unfortunately.
When I awoke alone, with only the fragrance of her perfume and flesh to tell me Mandy Ming had been with me in all her naked splendor, I remembered my half-formed thought of the evening before.
Of getting the prisoners to revolt against their captors. At the time I'd dismissed the idea casually, ironically-telling myself it was hopeless because the prisoners had already been brainwashed into wanting to die in gory gladiatorial combat. Besides, this was to be the General's show. I was to do nothing that might botch up his plans. Even now his fanatical SADISTO agents, my colleagues, were homing in on my tummy transmitter while I released and enjoyed my hard-earned vacation.
Yipes! It hit me like a thunderball-my vacation was up!
I had spent five days at Rex Kingston's cabin retreat before Kami dropped in and kidnapped me, then two weeks at SADISTO HQ while the transmitter operation was performed-but that wasn't vacation time, the General had made it clear. In fact, I got time and a half. But I had been back at the cabin for three days before Cantwell had kidnapped me and on Eros Island six days, as of yesterday. Altogether, fourteen days holiday-two weeks, that's it!
Back to work as a trained agent for SADISTO. Back to ruthless and sadistic slaughter and or seduction for the preservation of the Free World.
And who needed slaughtering worst of all at this moment? Who was the greatest menace to freedom, for that matter to SADISTO itself and all it stood for?
Cantwell Undershaft! That's who. Undershaft and his band of highly trained but sadistically monstrous technicians.
And I was just the sadistically monstrous agent to pull off the caper-Trevor Anderson, SADISTO agent 0008, licensed to kill, alias famous weapons expert, Rex Kingston.
Quickly, I reviewed what I knew about Cantwell's operation.
Yesterday, Carlotta had mentioned a new arrival of prisoners. Fresh, as yet unbrainwashed prisoners.
Prisoners I might be able to release and, with a stirring speech about human rights, send against Cantwell and his staff. With me leading them, or at least coaching and advising them from the sidelines.
I jumped to my feet, ran to the door.
A shapely female-Claudine-was just passing.
"Hi," she said, smiling at me suggestively. "Got something sexy in mind? I'm in the mood if you are."
"Uh-later," I said. "Did that new shipment of prisoners arrive?"
"Did it ever," sighed Claudine. "I've been up since seven helping unload them and cart them to the brainwashing center."
I flinched. "They're already being brainwashed?"
"Yep. Pretty soon now they'll be clamoring to chop each other to pieces-for our cameras and the benefit of mankind. Or get fed to crocodiles. Or something worse. Silly, isn't it how easily boys and girls can be conned into dying for somebody else's benefit?"
"Yeah," I said with a forced laugh. "But then, it's been happening, all through history."
"Right," agreed Claudine. "What's the difference if those saps get sent off to some silly war to die, or die before our cameras-for the benefit of mankind."
"None whatsoever," I agreed-inwardly gnashing my teeth.
"Sure you're not in the mood for some sexual pranks?" Claudine asked wistfully and suggestively.
"Quite sure. Call me later," I added.
"Sure will," said Claudine, and trotted on her way.
I stood in my doorway cursing to myself. Thanks to sleeping late I'd missed my chance. The new prisoners were already being brainwashed. Brainwashed into believing it was their glorious destiny to kill and be killed.
But wait-perhaps there was still a chance...
I hurried to the Rec Hall, found pencil and paper and posted a notice.
Rex Kingston, noted weapons expert, my notice read, is developing some new and terrible weapons to use against our helpless prisoners. He needs technical assistance. Will one electronics expert and one language expert please call at his coral-block cottage? Number forty-four.
I posted the notice and then retreated to my home away from home to wait.
Ten minutes later a tall, willowy ash blonde sauntered into my private quarters.
"Hi," she said. "You Rex? I'm Lucinda, an electronics expert. What do you have in mind? Something horrible?"
"Just so," I said. "Close your eyes, please." She closed her eyes.
Whap! I slugged her right on the tip of her jaw. She dropped stunned to the floor. I tied her naked body to my bed.
Five minutes later a full-breasted brunette sauntered through my doorway and told me she was Brinda, a language expert. She asked me what she could do for me. I told her she could close her eyes. She did so. I slugged her and tied her to a chair.
No long after they both awoke-thanks to the wet towels I slapped in their faces.
They struggled against their ropes, gurgles their gags.
I sneered at them and told them who I was and what I wanted. I didn't have to torture either one of them. All I had to do was brandish a knife in front of them and threaten to torture them.
They told me what I needed to know.
I noted their words and then, after considering matters, dispatched them both quickly and humanely with my knife. It would have been just too dangerous to leave them alive.
Ten minutes later, thanks to the instructions given me by the ash blonde electronics expert, I was in the brainwashing center of the prisoners' building, surrounded by whirring tape recorders.
I unplugged them, rewound them and then, in English and the assorted languages I'd been briefed on by the (late) shapely language expert, I fed new instructions into the tape machines.
The details of what happened half an hour later are still classified as Top Secret.
Suffice to say that, thirty minutes later, after I'd opened (by remote control) the main gate of the prisoner compound, some one hundred new male and female prisoners raced through the gate brandishing swords and headed for the Rec Hall-where the entire staff was eating lunch. Without, of course, any weapons.
I dare say what happened inside the Rec Hall was ugly, very ugly. But then, who deserved to die (horribly) more than Cantwell and his staff?
A few staff members tried to escape by swimming out to sea only to be devoured by ferocious sharks and barracuda. A few others tried to out-run the pack of blood-thirsty prisoners, but none got more than a hundred yards before being tackled or cut down.
After that, I got a short-wave set going and contacted SADISTO headquarters. Half a day later the General and a score of his agents arrived, and we did what mopping up needed to be done.
"Good show, 0008, old boy," said the General a few hours later. "You seem to have wiped out this nest of antiwar mongers almost single handed. Too bad the transmitter we installed in you didn't work. But it all worked out all right, what? Incidentally, how did you spend your vacation?"
