Mission: Earth "Death Quest" (38 page)

"Now listen," I said sternly, oblivious of the fact it was probably the marijuana talking, "such men usually are sterile. They've been operated on so as not to embarrass husbands whose wives they treat. So you've just proved nothing!"

"Oh, yeah?" she said, in her turn very superior. "So try this on for size, buster. The school psychologist had a lot of very mentally sick boys in the school. They were classified as oversexed. And he used to line them up in his office and go down on them to cool them off. And every day or two he'd get an overload of cases and he'd send and get me excused from class so I could come in and help. He'd stand and watch. There were so many of those boys sometimes that I could hardly get my breath from one before another had to be done. It was a fast clinical line, let me tell you. And some of those boys were fifteen and sixteen and pretty foamy. You just couldn't help swallowing! And I never got pregnant once, so there!"

I dazedly seemed to realize that she had a point.

"But that wasn't what I had against that (bleeped) psychologist," she said. "Oh, yes, when I was through he would kiss me and tell me what a good girl I was and give me my own treatment, which was doing it to him. BUT, never one God (bleeped) time did he offer the least word of criticism, coaching or anything. He'd just stand there watching and holding himself. So I never got real top-grade education. A thing like that requires coaching.... You're not listening to me again."

The marijuana had not worked. Or if it had, this rat-tly (bleep) was making it worse. "I feel terrible," I said. "Please leave."

"Hey," she said, "there's other things which make you feel good. I may never have had proper education in it but experience counts for something."

Before I realized what was happening she had come over, knelt in front of me and was peeling back my robe. She looked at me with her oversized eyes and said, "This therapy will help."

I looked down at her, not realizing at first what she was actually doing.

Then suddenly I had an awful thought. "Utanc!" I cried. "I must not betray you!"

I leaped out of my chair as though I were shot from a catapult.

Teenie was thrown backward on her (bleep) with an awful jolt.

She looked at me woundedly. "You see," she said, "I'm not even well enough trained to do that!"

"GET OUT OF HERE!" I bellowed at her.

She just sat there, staring at me.

I was baffled, and frightened, too. There was no telling what this teen-age female monster might do next.

I backed up. I tripped over a footstool and landed flat on my spine.

She was up off the floor like a leaping panther.

She sprang astraddle of me!

I gave her a tremendous shove!

She flew across the room, hit the wall and sat down at the bottom of it with a crash.

She got up. She walked around in a very fidgety way. She looked at me a little crossly and then she went into the front room and put on another record.

The drums were booming hard enough to lift my aching hair half an inch each stroke!

A whiny, high-pitched voice came on. A man? A woman? Who could tell? Amongst the whang and wow of guitars and the echoes of a chorale, the song went:

The piece ended with a pistol shot and the thud of a body falling. And a spoken, hoarse voice said,
"It served 'em right!"
After the mangling effect the drums had had on my brain, I felt like the shot had gone straight through my tortured skull.

Teenie came back in, switching her ponytail. "Now, how is that? Is your headache all gone now?"

I was too much in pain to get off the floor and find a gun and shoot her. "God (bleep) you," I grated in a deadly voice. "Get the Hells out of here and now, now, now!"

"Well, I like that!" she said indignantly. "I'm only trying to help you!" Her eyes got deadly. She stamped her foot. "The trouble with you, you (bleepard), is pretty plain! You're a JERK! I try to give you a hand and what do you do? You spit on me! You don't know what decency is! Where the hell are your manners? Listen, you (bleepard), you've got the finest sex equipment I've ever seen in my life and believe me, I'm an expert! And do you know what to do with it? NO! You're cruel, obscene, selfish, rotten, mean, perverted, depraved, sadistic, vicious and STUPID!" She stopped. She had run out of adjectives. Her large eyes glared like a panther's. "And besides that," she finished, "you're no gentleman!"

I tried to find something to say. Every word had gone into my skull like a sledgehammer. I wanted to strangle her. But the room was spinning.

"So you haven't got a thing to say," she said. "Well,

that's good, because I have! I came over here today, thinking that in my plight, you could help. You're rich. I haven't even got a job now. I got no job because I'm uneducated. I came over here thinking that out of decency you would give me enough money to go to school. But you're so rotten, you don't have the slightest God (bleeped) idea of anything but wrecking people's nerves. So there's only one thing I can do."

I was horrified that she might put on another record. What came was far worse!

"And you know what I'm going to do?" she demanded. "I am going to stay right here and reform the hell out of you until you are decent enough to at least associate with mangy dogs! I'm going to nag, nag, nag you until you decide there is somebody else in the world besides yourself. I'm going to– – "

"Wait," I pleaded, for I could stand it no more. "What would it take to get you to leave and never come back and never see you again, ever?"

"Five thousand dollars," she said. "I got to finish my education. I live in an attic by myself so living don't cost much, but tuition does. There's a Hong Kong whore that runs a special school that teaches all the ins and outs of sex. I can buy a crash course. Then I'll know what I'm doing! I've got to unlearn everything the psychiatrist and psychologist taught me and everything in the grammar-school sex textbook. And I got to get me some real education! I'm a fast learner: you got to learn fast if you live on the streets of New York and want to stay alive. So I'm quick. She'll take me as a pupil, despite my age. But I need five thousand dollars. Then I can find some satisfaction and succeed in life. I can grow up and amount to something. I can make people happy and..."

Her voice had been literally smashing what was left

of my brain cells into ragged, mangled pulp. I said, "If I do that, will you promise faithfully, swear, attest, affirm that I will never in all my life, ever, ever, lay eyes on you again?"

"Cross my heart and hope to die!" she said.

Oh, Gods, it was worth it. I crept to my money hoard. I counted out five thousand dollars.

She took it. She counted it. Then she put it in the pocket of her cloth coat and pinned it there with a safety pin.

Before I could stop her, she gave me a moist kiss. She pulled back. She smiled happily. "I'm sorry I had to tell you the truth about yourself," she said. "But sometimes the truth pays. Are you sure I can't do anything else for you? Fix you another bhong? Play you some more records? Go down on you so you will have a calm afternoon?"

"Get out of here," I wept.

"Well," she said. "I'm not as ungrateful as you are. If you ever change your mind about seeing me, I live in the garret of one of the old houses in Tudor City." And she gave me the exact number. "All you have to do is climb the fire escape and slide in the window. It's permanently stuck open. Tudor City, you know, is just south of the United Nations and you get there over a bridge from 42nd Street. The buildings used to be kept up and they had little parks of their own and private footpaths, but the last couple of years they've gone to hell and the parks are used to grow marijuana, mostly. At least that's what I use them for. Now, please remember the number." And she gave it again twice. "If you don't mind climbing a fire escape and if you don't mind dust and old trunks, we can just lie there and do it for hours and hours the right way, or if your back gets tired I can use my mouth

on you while you rest up. I'm used to that, you see, and I don't mind a bit, really. And then when your back gets rested, we can do it the right way again. And then you can rest while I– – "

"Get OUT of here!" I wailed.

"I'm going," she said. "I keep my bargains. But don't forget the number." And she pve it to me again. "In case you change your mind. Good-bye, now, although it is a shame with us alone in the house not to use the rest of the afternoon..."

I got my hands over my ears.

She picked up her coat and put it on. She went out the back door and climbed the garden fence. She waved from the top. And at last I was left to my fuddled misery.

How often in life does one go through the first tremors of a catastrophe and never realize that they were but the unheeded warning? Ah, but if only one could change the fleeting moments of a yesteryear. How different would life be. I should have killed her when I had the chance!

The following morning, I had twice the head I had had the day before.

The reason was not hard to isolate. Preparing me for the proper execution of my duties, Adora had unfortunately heeded my plea that I must have something to drink. My throat had been dry as dust itself. She had found the bhong set up.

"You've been at the Acapulco Gold," she said. "That is what is making you so thirsty." She had come in with a full tumbler of beautifully cold liquid. It looked like water. I had drunk it gratefully, gulp, gulp, gulp.

VODKA!

The effect was almost instant. I not only had no headache, I had no head. It had blown off!

Consequently, I have no slightest recollection of what had gone on that evening. If there were two lesbians who had then become ex-lesbians, I could not tell you to this day. Since, when I woke, I had no bruises on me nor daggers sticking in me and no one was arresting me for bigamy, I could only assume that I had performed.

I felt so bad that even my loss of memory did not disturb me.

I pottered about in the midmorning empty apartment. I got an aspirin. I went out into the garden and gazed with distaste at the sunlit day. I went back in and glanced at the viewers.

Crobe was busy giving electric shocks and the emotion digitals in his viewer kept flashing

SATISFACTION

every time a patient was carted away, sheet over his face, en route to the morgue. Normal Earth psychiatric duties. One never would have suspected that he was an extraterrestrial. Not very educational. I turned it off after a while.

Krak's viewer was completely blank, so I was not disturbed at all. This evidence showed to me she must be miles and miles away, even the North Pole, perhaps.

Heller's was a view of the sea. He was leaning on a

rail, puffing. "Wow," he said, "the lady was right. I've gotten out of condition."

"Oh, I wouldn't say that, Mr. Haggarty. Anyone who can run up to the top of the mainmast and down ten times without stopping can't be said to be in serious shape." It was a gravelly voice and Heller looked sideways. The man had a broken nose and the words
Spans Director
were on his T-shirt. "I think you've achieved a remarkably fast recovery from those multiple injuries. CIA agents are seldom so resilient."

Heller swept a hand toward the sea. "Where are we, anyway?"

"See those high, towering clouds? Shaped like castles? Now look at the water. See the little scraps of seaweed? And look at its color: indigo blue. We're in the Gulf Stream. That's what makes the weather feel so balmy."

"How long a swim to get ashore?" said Heller. •

The sports director laughed. "You'd have to swim awfully fast to beat the tropical sharks. You're not going anywhere, Mr. Haggarty. The next item on your schedule today is a hundred laps in the sun pool. It's just been refilled with warm Gulf Stream water. So let's go."

I pondered this. The Gulf Stream. The yacht must be somewhere in the Caribbean. How did it get down there so quickly? No yacht is that fast. The problem made my head ache worse.

Totally oblivious that I had all the evidence of absolute catastrophe around me, I went back to bed.

Some hours later, I was apparently having a nightmare. There was a mighty roll of drums and then a rhythmic beat. The whine and yowl of electric guitars shrieked and dripped with sex. A chorale beat at me:

What strange music for a nightmare! It must be a nightmare, for everything was black. But it was accompanied by a moist, delightful sensation. I lay there. The music had stopped but the sensation continued. Then the same piece started up again and the sensation mounted. Was the music the sensation?