Mission Earth 6: Death Quest Read online

  "There, there," he said. "You know that I love you. We'll succeed."

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

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

  Dreams are portents, that I knew.

  It was an omen.

  She had foreseen that they both would die.

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

  There was not the slightest doubt left in my mind.

  THE COUNTESS KRAK WAS GOING TO DIE!

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  1

  Chapter 4

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

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

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

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

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

  I was surprised, now that I looked at the place, how

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

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

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

  Suddenly Miss Pinch broke away from a cluster and said to me in an undertone, "Inkswitch, I have a frightful headache. All this will be over in minutes. You are not required to tell them good-bye. Here is five bucks. Run down to the all-night drugstore and get me a bottle of aspirin. They'll all be gone by the time you get back,

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  so come in quietly, as I feel so bad I want to go to bed at once and the light is hurting my eyes."

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

  I rolled over to my right.

  I started to do my duty.

  I suddenly halted.

  What was this?

  Something odd. How had Candy become a virgin again?

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

  The whole bed shook.

  A scream blasted my ears!

  Oh, well, Candy was always screaming.

  But her moans were certainly exaggerated, even for Candy.

  The sheet flew up into the air!

  A louder scream!

  A string of seashells on the wall chattered like castanets.

  WHOOSH!

  The body under me went limp.

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

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

  Where was this chattering coming from?

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

  Oh, well, she was just funning.

  I rolled and grabbed.

  Indrawn breath like terror.

  What on Earth was Pinch up to?

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

  Oh, well, just some more women's tricks. They're full of them. A scream! Then panting in rhythm.

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  I

  Moans in rhythm.

  WHOOSH!

  The sheet flew up.

  A shuddering cry!

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

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

  THE LIGHTS CAME ON!

  I looked up bewilderedly.

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

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

  Miss Pinch and Candy were in the lead!

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

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

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

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

  "My dear fellow," said a lesbian husband, leaning close to me and forgetting all about a bass voice, "I saw it all on this closed-circuit TV and I must say you

  deserve an Oscar. Ought to be on the national networks!"

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

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

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

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

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

  I climbed halfway up a phallic-symbol pillar.

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

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

  "Spike, God (bleep) it," said Miss Pinch, "sit up and give your evidence."

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

  "Tell them!" howled Miss Pinch.

  "Jesus," said Spike.

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

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  |iu^t|

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

  "Give your evidence!" howled Miss Pinch.

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

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

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

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

  All the others in that crowd nodded!

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

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

  Miss Pinch grabbed a box of drinking straws. "Now, listen, all of you. You may suspect that Spike and Lover-girl were in on it. But are you ready to believe that everyone in this room is in on it?"

  "Oh, pish, pish," said Marlene.

  "Nonsense," said somebody else.

  "That would be impossible as it includes me," said the one in the top hat.

  "Good," said Miss Pinch. "Now hear this. Would you be willing to BELIEVE if one of YOU, chosen by chance, reacted this way?"

  They generally thought that that would be a proof. They seemed very uneasy.

  Miss Pinch promptly presented the box. "The short straw gets it!" she said. "Agreed?"

  There were up to forty people in the room, all of them lesbians. They each evidently thought they wouldn't get it, and amused at the idea of more show and possibly Miss Pinch's defeat, they began to draw. Each one looked at his/her straw with relief.

  Then the husband in the top hat said, "Oh, no!" He/she had the short straw!

  "Algernon," said Miss Pinch, "get out of those clothes!"

  He/she didn't want to so they tore them off en masse. Miss Pinch forced what appeared to be a birth control pill in his/her mouth.

  They dragged the groggy Spike and Lover-girl over against the wall. They threw Algernon, naked, onto the bed where he/she landed with a bounce.

  "Inkswitch!" bawled Miss Pinch. "Get down off that God (bleeped) pillar and get to work!"

  Homosexuality has always turned my stomach. I had avoided looking at Algernon. But a certain glint, when it occurs in Miss Pinch's eye, commands respect—which is to say, fear. From my perch up on the phallic-symbol column I looked down at the naked body which was being held flat and face up on the bed by willing and boisterous lesbians.

  I saw what was really a brunette woman. They had torn off the breast compressors, and while the bosom was

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  not extraordinary, they were a woman's breasts. The hips, though a shade narrow, were woman's hips.

  I got down. Algernon was looking at me with a wild and terror-glazed eye. She was trying to shrink.

  I bent down from the pillar and a whiff of stale cigar smoke made me sneeze. I shook my head. Candy at once understood. She rushed away and came back in a moment with a quart of Spring Violets toilet water and dumped it with a splash on Algernon.

  Still reluctant, I felt my ankle seized by Pinch.

  Down I came with a thud upon the bed.

  The crowd's faces made a circle above me.

  I got to work.

  Algernon's face was in gibbering terror.

  A lesbian wife looked round-eyed at the bed.

  A lesbian husband went stiff and then hid his/her eyes.

  Algernon screamed.

  A lesbian with a face like a madonna was turned sideways, praying. I yelled at her, "Shut up! Just because she's a virgin is no reason you have to invoke the Virgin Mary!"

  "Oh, my God," a husband said, "Algernon's out cold!"

  "No, he isn't!" another cried, peering between shoulders. "She's coming around!"

  Strings of seashells began to swing.

  Into the miasma of Algernon's groans, a lesbian husband said, "Hey! Look at that! He likes it!" His voice sounded stunned.

  The seashell chains began to swing wider and wider.

  "Oh, my God!" howled Algernon.

  The whole circle of faces went into shock.

  WHOOSH!

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  Algernon screamed deafeningly.

  The top of the clamshell bed crashed down, hiding us.

  The mob was struggling to lift it. They got it halfway up.

  A lesbian, looking through the gap, screamed, "She's dead!"

  Another cried, "No, no! She's just out cold!"

  The mob of lesbians were looking at one another, stunned, unbelieving.

  I crawled out of the clamshell slit, wrapping a sheet around myself. They were staring at me with awe.

  Suddenly the whole bed convulsed.

  "She's having another one all by herself!" a lesbian cried, round-eyed.

  They looked at one another once more. The room was so quiet you could hear a faucet drip half a mile away.

  Then Miss Pinch leaned into the dark of the half-open bed. She said, "Well, how did you like it, Algernon?"

  The whole bed went into an earthquake convulsion.

  "She did it again!" said a popeyed husband.

  Miss Pinch and Candy were propping the bed fully open. They got it hooked back up.

  There lay Algernon, sheet up to her chin. She had a beautiful, blissful smile upon her face. "Ohhhhhh, Pinchy!" she said. "Wonderful. Wonderful."

  The whole roomful of people were suddenly wide-eyed and e
ager. Slavering, in fact.

  Then suddenly Marlene folded up on the floor and had an orgasm of her own.

  Spike was sitting up over by the wall. She said, pleading, "Pinchy, can't I have it once again?"

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  |j|K^

  That set off Miss Pinch. She said, "Get out of here, you disbelieving (bleepards)." And waved shooing hands at the crowd.

  A lesbian husband was tearing off her tie and shirt. "But, Pinchy, we do believe you now."

  A lesbian wife was down on her knees, hands folded in prayer, " 'Fore God, Pinchy, tell us, tell us please, where can we get a MAN?"

  "You can't have him," said Pinch with folded arms. "He's private property, under contract." She raised her voice and addressed the throng, "Now what do you think of Psychiatric Birth Control, you (bleepards)?"

  "It's (bleep)!" said Marlene, coming to.

  "From what I've seen tonight," said a lesbian husband, "Psychiatric Birth Control is pure crap." And she took out a cigar case and threw it violently into the fireplace.

  "But Pinchy," said Marlene, "you've done us an awful dirty trick. You know (bleeped) well that every unmarried male in the company is a homo. There are no men left!"

  "That (bleeped) Miss Peace has a monopoly on all the elevator boys and she'd ruin our reputations with Rockie if we took those," said a lesbian wife distractedly.

  "The married men are so slugged up on drugs they're impotent," mourned a lesbian husband.

  "We go outside the company, it's our jobs," said another.

  "What the HELL are we going to do?" said another.

  "You got to do something," said the naked Lover-girl from the rug. "After a bang like that I'll never go back to biting and scratching and calling it sex. No SIR!"

  They got their heads together. They drifted into the back room, following Pinch.

  I was pretty sleepy, really. Three was not all that heroic but it was just the emotional strain.

  I must have dozed. Suddenly I woke up. Pinch in a bathrobe was standing there. All the company had gone. Candy had her clothes off but was licking cake plates over by the refreshment bar.

  My apprehension rose when I saw that Pinch was holding something behind her back. In my groggy state I thought of the Greek sacrificial rites. Now that I had publicly performed, was I going to join Uranus in losing my (bleeps)?