The Sex Sphere (10 page)

An Italian news commentator was talking into a microphone.

“
Badada ladada borra borra Signora Sybil Bitter lo dadada famma donna di badda da dadda da Professore Alwin Bitter ba dadadadad la preterra dinidini buhduh fla ceticini Morte Verdi
.” This went on for awhile. Finally he flashed a smile at Sybil and posed his question. “
Lo quando billo flant flant de budadda cargo cargo flidovi oggi quan deeda dee? Oscorbidulchos volivorco?
”

A slender lady in purple-tinted glasses leaned over Sybil’s shoulder and whispered the translation.

“He asks if you have received word from your husband’s terrorist organization. And did he warn you he was leaving?”

“My husband has been the unwilling victim of a double-kidnapping,” Sybil said. Her hands were shaking badly. “They want to force him to build an atomic bomb. This development is entirely the fault of the US Embassy. They have calculatedly used my husband as bait to draw out the terrorists who have the reactor fuel.” She paused and took a wobbly breath while the slender lady translated her answer.

The commentator posed his next question, one for the
bambino
.

“Tom, do you miss your father?”

It went on for another half hour. Sybil wondered numbly if Alwin might see them on TV. As the questions became more technical, she struggled to decide what answers would be best for him. Should the terrorists think that Alwin could build a bomb? Should they think he was in the CIA? If he was worthless they might kill him, but if he was valuable they might never let him go. Finally she started crying. This was, of course, what the cameramen had been waiting for.

When Sybil and the children got back up to their room, the phone was ringing. She had no intention of answering, but before she could stop him, Tom had picked it up.

“Hello?”

A faint voice talking volubly.

“Yes,” Tom said. “She’s here.” He handed Sybil the phone. “It’s Grandma.”

“Sybil!” Lotte Burton’s voice was vibrant with emotion. “You poor child. Your father and I just saw you on the news.”

“Oh, Mother,” wailed Sybil. “Isn’t it awful? They kidnapped Alwin twice, and the US Embassy is trying to frame him as a terrorist. I don’t know what to do!”

“We’re flying down, darling. Cortland has already made the plane and hotel reservations. You can move in right now and get ready for us.”

“Move where?”

“To the Savoy. Room 431. It’s a three-bedroom suite.”

“That’s bigger than our apartment in Heidelberg!” exclaimed Sybil. “Are you bringing Sorrel?”

“Of course. Now, move over there and make sure that there’s plenty of ice for your father, and three extra pillows for his back.” An excited voice shouted in the background. “And he says to get a case of Heineken sent up…for you, and for when Alwin gets back. Don’t forget the pillows, dear.”

“All right,” Sybil said. “Wonderful. When will you get in?”

“After midnight. Don’t wait up.” In the background Cortland hollered, urging haste. But Lotte had one more thing to add. “You know, Sybil, it doesn’t surprise me a bit.”

“What?”

“That Alwin would fall in with these people. He’s always
been
the Anarchist Archimedes.”

“It’s not his fault, Mother. Really.”

“Cortland’s getting a good German lawyer for him. We’ll try to have the trial in Heidelberg.” Violent, prolonged shouting. “I have to hang up, dear. The pillows. Don’t wait up.”

“Of course I’ll wait up. How could I sleep!”

“How are the little ones taking it?”

Tom and Ida were in the bathroom, refilling the tub. Sybil could hear their voices, earnest as two co-workers in a research lab. SPLOOSH! Something big hitting the water. Not the electric fan!

“What was that?” screamed Sybil.

“I’m sorry, Mama!”

“WHAT WAS IT?”

“Sybil? Is something wrong?”

“We got your little bag all wet.”

“My toiletries?”

“Toilet!” Squeals of laughter.

“Sybil! What’s going on?”

“Oh, it’s all right. The children just dropped my little travel-kit in the bathtub. I thought it was the fan.”

“I must hang up. Your father is frantic.” Hoarse, angry yelling. “He’s worried we’ll miss the plane, which is ridiculous. There is no traffic on Good Friday. Did you find time to go to church today?”

“I didn’t have a moment. I wish I had.”

“In Rome there are many churches. I was at the cathedral today. The chants, Sybil. It was indescribable.”

“I may still make it. It’s only eight o’clock.”

“
Eight?
We’ll miss our plane!”

“Good-bye, Mother.”

“Good-bye.”

CHAPTER SEVEN

Sex and Death

Friday afternoon, after we finished talking, Peter showed me around the workroom where the fuel assemblies were waiting. We spent a couple of hours prying the ends off the concrete casings. Now it would be just a matter of pulling out the fuel rods and extracting the pellets of plutonium oxide.

Just? Airborne plutonium particles are among the most toxic substances known to man. We’d need glove boxes and breathing suits, if not remote manipulators. Back in the office I tried to explain this to Beatrice, but she flew into a rage and called me a coward.

She made it clear that I’d be shot if I didn’t get a bomb together in time for Easter, a bomb for St. Peter’s Square. If we all got poisoned in the process of assembling the bomb, it didn’t matter; there were others to take our places in the front lines of revolutionary justice. Crazy bitch.

There was another problem, the business about St. Peter’s Square. Presumably Sybil and Tom and Ida would be there. No way I was going to let the bomb go off. I’d show Beatrice who was a coward. For all practical purposes I was already dead. Or nearly so. I only hoped I could still get lucky.

That evening we watched TV in their little apartment. My passport photo flashed on the screen, then Lafcadio’s. Beatrice translated for me. Lafcadio had been running proton-decay experiments in a lab off the Mont Blanc tunnel. There’d been an accident and Zsuzsi Szabo, Lafcadio’s beloved co-worker, had been killed. Lafcadio had flipped out and disappeared, stealing a sample of some kind of degenerate hypermatter from the lab. The police were just as glad to have him dead, but the hypermatter was still missing.

The hypermatter thing didn’t seem to interest my Green Death captors. They were focused on the factional politics, and on the nuclear explosion we were cooking up.

The TV news described me as a radical atomic physicist with close ties to the US Embassy. Picture of the Embassy, picture of our hotel. Old news photo of me at a demonstration. Then someone began translating the note Virgilio had gotten me to write.

Now I realized I’d been framed.
Il Archimedes Anarchisti
. The TV showed the gun that had my fingerprints on it. According to the news, I’d met Lafcadio to buy the degenerate hypermatter, possibly for CIA use, possibly for the terrorists. I could be a double or even a triple agent. In any case, I had murdered Lafcadio Caron.

Suddenly Sybil was on the TV screen. Her eyes were desperate and she bit her lips. It was hard to make out her faint voice over the machine-gun rattle of the translator’s Italian. For an instant she looked directly out at me, and my heart stopped. Then the bastards put the children on…tiny, serious, confused. I started hitting and yelling.

The three terrorists manhandled me out of their little apartment and left me alone in the office. I smashed a few plants against the wall, then sat down exhausted on the couch. I was supposed to sleep here. All the doors…apartment, outer, workroom…were locked. I tried to stop thinking, tried to stop seeing Tom’s puzzled face.

After a while I found myself wondering if Peter was getting any off those two women. Imagining various three-ways, I slid my hand into my pants. Sybil, baby. It had been so good last night.

How was I ever going to get to sleep here on a vinyl couch with death all around me? My back was killing me. My hurt finger and the wounds on my face throbbed. Did I have any cigarettes?

Going through my pockets I found the little spherelet which Lafcadio had given me. Had that really happened today? Was this the missing sample? The tiny ball glowed mysteriously in the pitch-dark room.

“Smeep,” I went, pursing my lips. “Smeep smeep.” The ball grew slightly larger. There were faint patterns on it, like half-seen continents on a clouded planet. I felt a stirring of excitement in my loins. The thing gave off an incredible aura of sexuality.
Pheromones
—the airborne organic molecules that people give off when they’re sexually excited. Invisible little PLEASE FUCK MEs. Leaning over the sphere was like putting my face between Sybil’s legs. Without really knowing why, I licked my lips and began smothering the tiny sphere with kisses. I was just so lonely. The sphere grew and became warm to the touch, bigger and bigger. What was going on?

With an effort I drew my face away from the magic sphere and looked it over. The side facing me had a cleft down it, like a peach…like a woman’s beautiful ass. My hands dropped away in astonishment. The mildly glowing sphere hung there weightlessly. Now she was turning, showing herself off.

The perfect buttocks rotated out of sight, and I was facing the lovely naveled round of a pregnant woman’s belly. I reached out to caress her, running my hand down through her wiry pubic hair to fondle the pouty labia. The sphere hummed gently and floated closer. On top were the mounds of two stiff-nippled breasts. Between the breasts nestled a perfect, full-lipped mouth.

My hands were wooden and trembling with excitement, with rechanneled hysteria. I fumbled my pants open and drew the sex sphere down onto my distended penis. This was madness, but I couldn’t stop.

My cock slid in easily. The sphere’s mouth smiled loosely up at me, showing white teeth and a pink tongue. I leaned over, trying to kiss her, but she was just out of reach. Obligingly, she grew a bit larger and plastered her sweet-smelling wet lips against mine, shoving her tongue into my mouth.

I came.

In the sudden silence I could hear one of my captors shifting in bed next door. Was this really happening? I stared down at the object in my lap. A skin-colored sphere the size of a giant beach ball, with breasts on top and a mouth between the breasts. At the bottom were the generous buttocks, a crinkly anus and a vaginal passage containing my rapidly limpening penis. Was this safe?

The sphere giggled, shrugged me out, and rotated one hundred eighty degrees about the horizontal. The intoxicating scent of her south pole filled my nostrils. Pheromones locked into receptor sites. Her soft lips and sandy tongue were at work on my genitals. I sighed with pleasure and sank my face into her deeply rounded cleft.

The harder I licked, the bigger she grew…past beach-ball size, past the size of a library’s big Earth globe, past all reasonable dimensions. My arms could no longer reach all the way around her. The huge mouth held my testicles as well as my penis, and her luscious vagina covered my entire face.

I came again.

Once more the sphere rotated, and I noticed a twinkling brown eye set in her side, just below the crease at the base of her breast. Next to her eye was the delicate shell of an ear.

“Who are you?” I breathed. “Where do you come from?”

The fat breast nudged me and I tongued the chewy nipple.

“Who are you?” I repeated. “Talk to me.”

The smiling mouth came swinging around to plant some sticky kisses on my face. The mouth was almost a foot long now. The teeth looked very big and strong.

“Please shrink a little,” I begged. “You make me nervous like this.”

Obligingly she dwindled down to a more manageable size…maybe a meter in diameter. I happened to be holding her breasts as she shrank, and it was a strange sensation…not as if she were a balloon losing air, but rather as if she were sliding out from under me. Yet when she was through shrinking, her breasts were still in my hands.

“Thank you,” I said, planting another kiss on her mouth. “Please talk to me.”

She pressed her lips together and rocked sweetly one-two, one-two from left to right. Shaking no. Then blew a last kiss at me and shrank slidingly down to orange-pip size.

I smeeped fruitlessly awhile, then put the bright spherelet back in my pants pocket. The two orgasms had left me tired and relaxed. I stretched out on the couch and fell asleep.

***

I woke to Beatrice prodding me with her machine gun.

“Let’s go, Alwin. I want that Easter egg ready for tomorrow. Big workday today.”

My cock was still hanging out. I tucked it into my pants. Beatrice refrained from comment. The memory of last night’s…orgy came rushing over me, filling me with horror and shame. What had I done? Forgotten my wife and had sex with an alien? An evil spirit? A succubus? I was lucky to be alive.

Peter brought me a mug of coffee and a roll with cheese on it.

“I talked to Rectelli, Alwin. He’s bringing us a couple of hazard suits.”

My heart sank. These people were really serious. Really crazy. “We should have glove boxes, too. Or manipulators. You don’t realize how poisonous plutonium is.”

“Shut up!” Beatrice snapped. “Shut up or I’ll make you do it naked.” Her knuckles were white on the gun’s wire stock.

There was a knock on the door. Giulia drifted out of the apartment and got it. It was one of the snoids. He handed in two flat boxes.

“OK, Bitter,” Beatrice snarled. “If you’re not too busy jacking off, could you get your fucking suit on?”

Peter and I put the suits on over our clothes. They were white plastic, airtight with face-windows. You breathed through a mouthpiece connected to a filter-system set in the back. It was hot and uncomfortable. I had only the vaguest idea of what to do next.

But Beatrice was ready to shoot me, so I hustled on into the workroom with Peter.

It was a big room—say, ten meters by twenty—with concrete floors and walls. The six fuel assemblies were lined up in the middle of the room like giant stone coffins. Or complimentary airline packs of two cigarettes each; the cancer-sticks being, in this case, long metal fuel rods.