Last Licks

by Troy Conway

  They had heard how I killed Henri Vachon with my bare hands. I saw grudging respect and a faint fear in all their eyes. Their chemical-and-radiation-changed personalities compelled them to bow to a superior personality.

  My next port of call was Ernst Bachmann.

  He blustered at first when I entered his luxurious quarters. He was indignant at this treatment until I told him how the albino sharks had been fed. Then fright made livid furrows on his face, and he could not control the shaking of his hands.

  “Wh-what do you want with me?”

  “A little information, that’s all. You can go on living here if you join forces with us. You can even go on—experimenting.”

  I wagged a finger at Fleur, standing beside me with her hand on the gun at her hip. “Beat it,” I told her.

  Obediently she went out and closed the door.

  “The grave outside. Whose is it?”

  A woman lies buried there,” he muttered.

  I had been thinking hard about that grave, so I hazarded a guess. “You treated her with the same chemicals and radiation that altered men into mermen, didn’t you?”

  He nodded. I went on talking. “You didn’t realize your radiations would affect the hormones of the men, changing them into homosexuals. What was the result on the woman?”

  “She became nymphomanjacal. Hysterical with her need for sex. She all but attacked and raped every man in the compound. We had to—destroy her.”

  “I want you to treat every woman to that same radiation. Turn them into mermaids.”

  His surprise was laughable. “Are you mad? They’d attack us—you and me, as being the only males potent enough to satisfy their demands.”

  “No. I have a better use for them. Now do as I say.”

  His smile was sly. “I’ll need my notebooks. You took them.”

  “I’ll put them at your disposal at every operation. I’ll be standing by, to make sure you don’t destroy them.”

  “I’m no martyr,” he muttered. I believed him.

  I went out, closing and locking the door behind me.

  Everything was going according to the plan I had worked out. All that remained was to select the women to be turned into mermaids. I decided I would work this out with my four lieutenants.

  None of the four raised any objections when I proposed my plan. Naturally I did not tell them what the effect of the operation would be; time enough for them to learn that after the event. I explained that we needed women who would go along with the mermen as officers, to direct the piracy, to make certain the mermen did not desert or take more than their share of the loot.

  We agreed to put it to a vote of the women themselves. I did not anticipate any difficulty. When the amazons learned they would be getting their share of jewels and money, they would give my suggestion an unanimous vote of approval.

  To keep so many women in a subservient mood, S.E.L.L. had been forced to dope them. It explained why these females had never revolted until yesterday. Bachmann had run out of the chemical he fed them, as prisons feed saltpeter to the chemical he fed them, as prisons feed saltpeter to male prisoners, and Georges Fortescu had been ordered to fetch more.

  The kegs that held these chemicals had been taken from the Athena. They reposed now in the laboratory storeroom. I did not need them; I wanted women whose senses were alert to do my bidding. But enough of the residue of the dope still remained in their systems to destroy their moral fibers.

  The girls were ready for rape or robbery, believe me.

  That very night, I was going to send out my first detachment of mermen. I needed some women to go with them. Every hand in the audience room was raised to volunteer. I selected ten, and Yusefa marched them across the compound walk to the operating room.

  I sent Theophano to fetch Ernst Bachmann.

  With Fleur at my side, I would be a witness to what happened. I was anxious to watch the technique so I could report back to Walrus-moustache about it. I went to Ernst Bachmann’s office safe, took out his notebooks, and slipped them into an attaché case.

  Bachmann was very proficient. His hands were deft as he filled his hypodermic cartridges and laid them out on an instrument table. One of the mermen was to serve as a nurse. There was an operating table set beneath a row of lenses in a shallow steel box fitted with a dozen cables. I gathered that this was the radiation machine which, in conjunction with the chemicals—or sea-serum—injected into their veins, would transfer a man into a creature able to live beneath the sea.

  A woman came in, naked under a loose hospital gown.

  The woman climbed on the table, the smock was opened and its flaps dropped downward so her body was revealed to the boxed lenses a yard above the table. I studied her body with a cool eye. I had made love to that body last night. I had entertained it with the wheelbarrow position.

  As if she remembered this, her eyes sought mine. She smiled, winked. I smiled back at her and blew her a kiss. Then Ernst Bachmann took over. With cotton dipped in disinfectant, he cleaned an area on her upper left arm, then on her groin, then on her left thigh. He reached for a needle.

  Three injections of the sea-serum. The woman winced each time, but with correspondingly less emphasis. Noting my interest, Bachmann smiled.

  “The sea-serum puts them to sleep. They are asleep during the two hours they are under the radiation lenses.”

  He covered her closed eyes with little plastic cups. As she slept, she would remain utterly motionless, Bachmann assured me.

  There would be a two-hour wait, and after that she would be kept asleep another two hours in sea water, under drugs. It was one of these mermen, so drugged, that the baroness had inadvertently walked in on, when she had been on Thraxos.

  I was curious. I asked, “As we were driven here, we passed through a town, and several farmsteads. Haven’t those people ever a wondered what you might be doing here?”

  Bachmann smiled, “We made cash contributions to the towns. We explained that we were experimenting with radiations, and that nobody would be hurt if they stayed clear of our compound. So far, nobody has been curious enough to find out what it is the radiation does.”

  I could spend no more time in the operations room.

  Other matters demanded my attention.

  The target for tonight was a small yacht owned by a rich Italian manufacturer. Luckily, S.E.L.L. keeps a file on such things; theirs is a far-flung operation—this laboratory-compound on Thraxos was only a small part of their setup—and they never knew when they might need to kidnap a person off the high seas or steal a bundle of cash from some yacht safe.

  I marked the Julia Ceasar down for attack.

  The submarine which would carry the mermen out into the Aegean lay at anchor in a hidden cove surrounded by high crags. I visited it with Fleur and Janine, explaining to Janine that a complement of ten mermen ought to be enough to board and take the yacht. With the mermen, I wanted a complement of twenty Amazons, to make sure the mermen did not rebel.

  Janine nodded, “I’d like to volunteer for that duty.”

  At dusk, I went down to the little quay where the submarine was anchored and watched my troops march off to pirate the Julia Caesar. They were all armed, mermen and Amazons.

  Fleur was nudging my elbow with her left breast as the submarine sank beneath the surface of the sea. I guess she figured it was time for me to pay her some attention. She made an appetizing sight in her military jacket and long bare legs, I must admit. Knowing that only a pair of black nylon panties were under that jacket, aside from her own nakedness, was an added temptation.

  But first I owed a visit to Yusefa, Stella and Theophano.

  I had balled Fleur Devot last night in the dormitory. I had not so much as raised a finger to my lieutenants.

  As I grinned down at Fleur, I said, “Tell Yusefa, Stella and Theophano to report to me in my rooms at nine sharp. Oh, yes—I want you there too, Fleur.”

  She smiled in utter delight and ran off to spread the word, h
eedless of the fact that the back flap of her military jacket went up and down to furnish delightful glimpses of her buttocks scarcely contained by the black nylon.

  Poor Fleur! She was in for a bad night.

  I had taken over the suite that had been assigned to the Fortescus. It boasted a large living room, an equally large bedroom with attached bath that looked a little like something out of a Roman bathing scene, with solid gold fixtures, king-sized tub and other assorted decorations and utilities. I mixed up a batch of martinis, switched on the stereo, and changed into a maroon lounging robe that fit me rather well, as the bathroom mirror attested. Georges Fortescu and I, before the albino sharks got him, had been something of the same size.

  The girls were there right on time.

  Stella was wearing a clinging evening gown of transparent silk under which an onlooker could catch glimpses of dark red nipples and a blonde pubic thatch. I on-looked liked crazy as she strolled in, breasts doing their provocative little bounce, hips swaying roguishly.

  I tore my eyes away to stare at Yusefa Suleyman, who was wrapped in a long evening cloak of black satin. She started to drop it as her left foot—in a golden sandal—stepped over the threshold of my suite. As it fell, it revealed the fact that my Turkish bellydancer wore only a girdle of golden links and a gold satin panel about her plump hips. She had tinted her nipples a bright red and her eyelids a faint green. Her long black hair fell down her back to her solid buttocks. She was a walking invitation to venery.

  Theophano Linitka wore a black lace jump suit, out of two holes in which her heavy white breasts protruded, shaking to her step. Between her navel and her upper thighs, only two black lace panels hid her sides. In front and back, the black lace left her naked from thighs to bellybutton.

  I heard Fleur whimper. The little French starlet had planted her spine up against the wall and she was looking from each of the three girls to me, and back again. In her military jacket, she must have thought herself awfully dowdy alongside these glamazons.

  She knew what was about to happen.

  Theophano came toward me and plastered her soft white body and its black lace decoration right up against me. I was naked under the lounging robe. As her arms went about my neck and her pelvis brushed against mine, my manhood reacted with instant interest. She cooed as she rubbed it, as her soft red mouth opened for my kiss. I put my arms about her and began to stroke her soft, quivering buttocks. I lost myself in that tongue-darting kiss, that movement of female flesh against my own.

  I felt pressure against my knuckles.

  My eyes opened and I looked past Theophano’s bare shoulder into Yusefa’s smiling face. She was nudging herself against the backs of my hands that gripped the Greek girl’s soft behind.

  “Is this going to be a crowd thing?” I asked the soft lips that were caressing my own very wetly. Theophano nodded.

  “We’ve talked it all over. We’ve decided.”

  “Oh? And what of me?”

  Stella had come up behind me to press her breasts to my back and her mons veneris to my bottom. Her hands were sliding under the lounging jacket, up and down my naked chest and belly. Into my ear she crooned, “You are a king on the island, but in your own bedroom, you shall be our slave.”

  Yusefa was working herself to a froth against my knuckles. She panted, “You took two dozen women last night. Tonight you only have to take three.”

  “Eight times each.” gurgled the Grecian lovely.

  Fleur made a sound deep in her throat from where she was pressed against the wall. I turned my head and looked at her. She was going to get her full of masochistic pleasure.

  “You stand guard, Fleur,” I rasped. “Don’t let anybody in.”

  “Except our plaything,” laughed Stella.

  Fleur gasped, “What about me?”

  “Guess you’ll just have to suffer, honey.”

  Blonde Stella was tugging at my lounging robe, sliding it down off my back, leaving me stark naked against the cooing, writhing Theophano. As my robe dropped, Stella replaced it with her soft palms, sliding them across my taut buttocks, up over my tensed, muscular back, and around under my arms to my sides.

  I shook like a leaf in a windstorm.

  Those hands on my back, red fingernails scratching, the gurgling Greek girl in front, caressing my straining manhood with her soft bare thighs, and Yusefa, in front of me and behind Theophano, arching her mons veneris against my knuckles. Three lush, fleshy women, all working on my lone male body, slowly and with feeling.

  I was ready to blow up.

  Off to one side, Fleur was sobbing softly.

  It was almost as hard on her as it was on me.

  CHAPTER NINE

  Yusefa was drawing back and away from me, arms over her head to display her shaven armpits. The stereo was grinding out appropriate music for a Turkish belly dance, and Yusefa was going to oblige me.

  I stared at her revolving belly and shimmying thighs with my eyes while Theophano was kissing my throat and Stella was reaching down past my middle to grope at my loins for what she wanted to hold. Sandwiched between two women who were as good as naked, watching a third woman who showed even more of her body to my bulging eyes, I felt like a sex-crazed sultan.

  Maybe the girls figured that after last night, I needed some foreplay before they ganged up on me. Whether I did or not, I was sure getting it. And liking every lascivious moment of it.

  Yusefa was holding her arms out at right angles to her body. Her tinted eyelashes were fluttering as she watched Theophano sinking downward, as Stella was scratching my most sensitive sense with her long red fingernails. Her lush red mouth was open to aid her breathing as she widened her thighs, crouching down, and sent her olive-tinted belly bobbling like a beach ball spinning.

  I was panting just as hard as the Turkish girl.

  Theophano was kneeling and drawing her breasts back and forth across my erotic excitement. Behind me, Stella was kissing me all the way down to my rump. I quivered and shook between those stroking breasts and those kissing lips. I felt as if every muscle in my body were standing up and going rigid.

  I looked as Yusefa went into a grind and bump. The gold satin panel, modeled on the stripper’s panel of the good old U.S.A., was beginning to lift and flap in front of her pelvis. Her bold black eyes dared me not to be affected by what I was seeing. I could not take her dare. I was too affected already, because every time her satin panel went flying, it showed more and more of what the real Yusefa Suleyman was like. I saw her inner thighs; I saw the soft flesh jiggle; I saw the dark forest of her groin. All the while her black eyes blazed a challenge at me to which my male flesh was responding like a pointer on the scent of a pheasant.

  The belly dance—the res es-surreh of the Arabs—is as old as our recorded history. Slave girls danced it before the Pharaohs of Egypt, they entertained such notables of the ancient world as Hammurabi of Babylon and Sennacherib of Assyria with their ventral contortions. Bits of pottery and Egyptian friezes show them in their gyrations. In Roman times, the women of Gades were especially noted for their exciting performances, so much so that a Gadean dance has come to mean the same as our more modem danse du ventre.

  In 1890, a woman known as Little Egypt introduced a watered-down version of the bellyroll to United States audiences at the Chicago World Fair. There is a world-famed group of such dancers, the Ghawazi. A branch of this group—the Ouled Nails of Northern Africa—flourishes from Casablanca to Cairo.

  The Turks are a part of the belly dance tradition, I reminded myself as I watched Yusefa contort her soft, olive-tinted flesh before my bulging eyes. Her tantalizing twists were being helped along by the ministrations of the girls who knelt before and behind me. I was making a kind of gurgling sound in my throat that was the preliminary to a pounce on one or maybe even all three of my tormentors.

  I was swaying back and forth.

  Stella grabbed my waist and yanked me backwards. Theophano screeched and leaped, sinking herself down on
my most upstanding attraction. Yusefa came toward us, belly bobbing and thighs jerking. She laughed down at my contorted face—Theophano was doing a bump and grind on my puffed-up pride, accounting for the faces of agonized joy I was making—and then came to stand over my head.

  I stared up at the Turkish delight Yusefa was showing me. My back was cradled on the soft feminine body of Stella Marakza while the Greek glamor girl slowly did the split above me, bringing her halvah down so I could sample its delicate flavor.

  I sampled it while Yusefa squealed and wriggled.

  Somebody was sobbing off to one side. Dazedly I realized it must be Flew, watching us with wide eyes and writhing in her personal torment. If she was a masochist, she sure was getting her bang-bangs, being unable to participate in what she was seeing. I felt a little sorry for her.

  However, to be honest about it, I had very little feelings left over for Flew. My trio of temptresses was taking care of my feelings. Theophano leaped and bobbed, Yusefa’ squirmed and panted, while Stella was getting her kicks by being squashed beneath me, moving her hips in a steady twisting, back and forth against my buttocks, so that I could feel the spur of her distended clitoral bud.

  At a signal, the girls played switch.

  Yusefa moved forward, Stella squirmed out from under, Theophano lay down beside me. As my Turkish dancer engulfed me, I engulfed Stella crouched over my face, while the Greek girl caressed Yusefa and me with her long red fingernails.

  Our sexual saraband went on and on.

  After half an hour the girls switched again. And then again, thirty minutes later. And so on, ad infinifurn, all through the rest of the night.

  Theophano was the first girl to fall asleep, Stella was next, and then the belly dancer. They were snoring in minutes. It was now that Fleur left her post by the door and crawled on her hands and knees across the carpet to me.