Last Licks

by Troy Conway

  “Please,” she whimpered. “Please! Take me, take me.”

  I pushed her away, saying, “I had to ball these babes, honey. I have to keep them loyal to me the only way I know how. Besides, I’m tired. Haven’t you been watching what I’ve been doing?”

  “Yes! Oh, yes—I have. That’s why——”

  “Some other time,” I grumbled.

  I turned over on my front and lay there, starting to fall asleep. Fleur crawled to me, placed herself on top of me, and began kissing my neck. It did her no good; I was already dreaming.

  I woke to the touch of a hand on my shoulder.

  “The submarine has returned, your majesty,” a soft voice told me. “It’s docking now at the marina.”

  I opened my eyes to the sight of Fleur’s taut white face. There were faint purple rings under her eyes and her blonde hair was all disheveled, falling about her shoulders like a wheaten mop. Her red mouth was quivering.

  “Good,” I muttered. “Fetch my clothes.”

  She stood while I got dressed, staring hungrily at my every move. I said guiltily, “We have to get the show on the road, honey. We have no time for bedwork, right?” She nodded, on the verge of tears.

  I felt like a heel. It would have taken only fifteen or twenty minutes to give her what she needed. Well, if she liked to suffer, and it had become quite evident to me that she did, she was getting a bellyful of it.

  We marched out into the sunlight and down to the marina. Fleur walked with her head held high, she would have died rather than let the other women see what she was suffering.

  The women were leaving the submarine, saluting me, satified looks on their faces. My redheaded lieutenant came to meet me, smiling happily.

  “A good haul, your majesty. Half a million dollars in cold cash and probably a million more in jewels. Valued in American money, that is, though it’s in Italian lire. How’ve things been going here?”

  “Just fine,” I told her, seeing her green eyes stab at Fleur and with the sure instincts of a woman in such matters read her face all too well. She said nothing, just made a moue with her pouty lips.

  She hooked her arm in mine. “I’ll give my report in private, if you like,” she told me.

  “Come along, Fleur,” I murmured, as to a dog at heel. In my office, Janine Karthos explained how the submarine had ejected its mermen through the escape hatch while submerged thirty feet below and fifty yards behind the pleasure yacht Julia Caesar. When they were on their way, swimming just below the surface, she brought the submarine up to periscope depth to watch what went on.

  She had seen them climb the side of the yacht, using sucker-discs on their hands and knees. She had seen nothing then, until a light blinked on and off at the yacht’s stem, which was the mermen’s signal for mission accomplished.

  “They told me all about it when they returned, of course,” she nodded. “It was a lead-pipe cinch. There hasn’t been any piracy in these waters since the American war with the Barbary corsairs more than a century and a half ago. The women screamed and fainted, and the men handed over their money without a fight. The mermen were on the yacht for less than thirty minutes.”

  “A good beginning,” I complimented her.

  It was only a beginning, however.

  In the next few days I alternated my time between the operation room where Ernst Bachmann was turning many of the women into mermaids, and the beds of these sea-girls where I tried to satisfy their intensified lusts.

  Frankly I was getting pretty tired of playing the part of human studhorse. The fun was gone out of it. It had become a chore. Not only that, but those hungry pussycats were wearing me out. I ate handfuls of vitamin tablets; I made Ernst Bachmann inject me with syringes of vitamin E, the fertility vitamin; I dined on oysters at every meal.

  Fleur tagged after me with her blue eyes begging for a few minutes of my bed time. I had none left over for her. Even Janine I had to bypass, because the mermaids were getting so out of hand with their sex needs I was needed to keep them under some sort of control.

  When Ernst Bachmann had made twenty mermaids, I called a halt. I summoned my lieutenants to a conference. I laid down the law.

  “I need help,” I told them honestly. “These nymphs will kill me if I don’t get it”

  “I’ll die if I don’t get it too,” muttered the redhead darkly. She had been getting as bad as Fleur, dogging my steps and hinting broadly that she needed to be laid.

  “I have an idea,” I said. “We need sturdy young men to take my place. Let’s go out and get them.”

  Yusefa squealed and clapped her hands. Theophano nodded happily. Janine merely muttered that she needed more than just one map by this time. Fleur stared at me hopefully. I guess she was figuring that if my bed duties were cut down, she might get to hold me in her arms.

  I called a meeting of the mermaids, informing them of our plan. They howled their approval. No matter what they thought of me, they figured there just wasn’t enough of me to go around.

  We would pick a select group of mermen and mermaids. I would go along with the raiding party, ostensibely to lead the party but privately—a fact which I did not share with anyone—to make my escape, if I could.

  If I made my escape with the notebooks I kept always within reach of my hand, I would reveal the location of the pirates’ lair to the police of Istanbul and Athens, so the united Greek and Turkish air force might bomb the laboratory compound out of existence.

  “Where’ll we raid?” wondered Yusefa. “Not Turkey! I would feel like a traitor.”

  “And not Greece or its islands,” hastily added Theophano.

  “Italy’s too far,” murmured Janine.

  “How about Albania?” I offered.

  We got out maps and checked on Albania, which bordered on the Greek state of Areas. There was a small fishing village, Vlanditsa, across from the Greek island of Corfu, which looked promising. Albanians feast on oysters, mussels and fish which they drag from the Adriatic Sea. Vlanditsa was a sleepy place, Theophano assured me, with no more than one policeman. It would be ripe for attack from the waters that fed its inhabitants.

  We would leave at dawn, and arrive the following day at nightfall. In the dark, the mermen and the mermaids would make their raid. Janine looked at me with bed-bounce in her eyes but I smiled and shook my head.

  For the first night in a long time I slept unaccompanied and unmated. The sun would rise early tomorrow. I meant to be energetic and enthusiastic when it did.

  I took Fleur with me as I walked down the stone path to the marina after breakfast. I do not think I could have left her behind, except by locking her in a room. She was armed to her pretty white teeth with an automatic rifle and a small Belgian automatic, holstered on her hip.

  Only the mermen knew how to run the submarine. The mermaids, Janine, Fleur and I were along for the ride. The Triton had been a Nazi U-boat in the last world war, with twin diesel motors capable of generating close to three thousand horsepower, so its speed reached a top figure of eighteen knots.

  I was not too well acquainted with a submarine and welcomed this chance to learn something of its functions. My first discovery was that the interior of a 1940 German submersible was more cramped than an American undersea craft. Every inch of space is accounted for, and from its forward port hydroplane to its twin rudders it was over two hundred and twenty-odd feet in length.

  The motors throbbed as the propellors carried us along the surface until the gongs clanged with the rig for diving alert. The hatch was secured, even while the klaxon was whooping, while the below-decks men twirled and pulled levers.

  “All secure,” a merman shouted.

  “Take her down,” came the order.

  We sank into a sea over which Ulysses had sailed his ship on his long voyage from Troy. The submarine moved quietly, just humming to its motor throbbings. You did not experience the sensation of being underwater. There was just the faint, forward surge underfoot and the awareness of motor noise
s in your ears.

  It grew boring, standing in the control room where the steel shaft of the periscope lay waiting in its circular well while the helmsman steered the U-boat by means of dual press-buttons. Aft of the helmsman were the diving coxswains who were in control of the hydroplanes.

  Janine nudged me with an elbow.

  “Let’s go to your cabin, your majesty.”

  I muttered, “Sorry, lieutenant. I really ought to familiarize myself with the operational procedure of the boat.”

  I wandered from the control room through the engine room and the neat, compact galley where a couple of the mermaids were readying a lunch, through the engine room where the throb of the Diesels was deafening, into the chamber just aft of it, where the torpedo loading hatches and the compressors were visible.

  Then I went forward past the control room to the captain’s cabin, which was mine when I was aboard, through the wardroom and the petty officers’ room into the forward torpedo room, and the crew’s quarters.

  To my surprise, four torpedos were stored on cradles, ready for use. When the merman in charge saw my upraised eyebrows, he grinned.

  “Never can tell when some ship might detect us and try to drop a few cans.”

  “We’re ready to fight, then?”

  “At the first whisper of the alarm gong.”

  I did not know whether to be reassured or not.

  I made my way back to my cabin. All this time Fleur had been right behind me. I told her I was going to lie down and rest, and that I was not to be disturbed.

  I slept for eight hours, comfortably and without dreaming.

  As I stretched under the covers upon awaking, I told myself that a couple more submarine rides like this, and I would be a new man. When I left the cabin, Fleur informed me that lunchtime and the dinner hour had come and gone. She had not permitted anybody to wake me.

  “Good girl. You haven’t eaten either, have you?”

  She shook her head until her long yellow hair flew. I patted her rump—she jumped at my touch—and followed her to the galley. We feasted on sandwiches and coffee until Fleur started yawning.

  It was close to midnight.

  “Fleur, you can lie down for a rest in my cabin,” I told her. “I have plans to make, so nobody’ll bother you.”

  “I wish you’d bother me,” she muttered.

  I patted her bare thigh under the short military jacket she still affected. Her leg quivered to my touch. “Later, honey. Later,” I more or less promised.

  Fleur wanted me to come into the cabin while she undressed, but I told her I had things to do. We would not be raiding until later. Albania lies roughly three hundred and fifty miles from Thraxos. At a steady fifteen knots per hour, it would take the Triton only twenty hours to reach its destination. We had been under way for almost eighteen hours.

  She agreed morosely that she did need some shut-eye.

  I went to find Janine.

  She was presiding over a meeting of ten mermen and fifteen mermaids. As I entered, they all came to their feet. I grinned and waved a hand.

  “I may be king of the hill on Thraxos, but here I’m a tyro. Go on with what you were doing. I’ll just listen.”

  Everything had been arranged. The Triton would be in the little harbor before Vlanditsa in two and a half hours. At three in the morning, the mermen and the mermaids would be crawling onto the quay to move off by groups of threes and fours for their prey. Each one had a tear gas container for indoor use.

  “All we need is a few minutes,” Janine pointed out. “We’ll hit a number of houses, maybe even a young men’s compound, if there is such a thing.” Her face brightened at the idea. “Say, does anyone here know anything about Albania? Do they have places like a Y.M.C.A.?”

  Nobody knew from nothing about Albania, except that it sided with the Red Chinese against the Russians over their ideological split.

  “A political jail,” I suggested suddenly. “They might have locked up a number of young college students who favor Russia.”

  “Even criminals would do,” a mermaid murmured.

  “No criminals,” I commanded. “At least, not hardened ones.”

  “Young ones,” simpered a mermaid, and everybody laughed.

  Motors slowed, the Triton crept into the harbor. It did not surface. There was no need for that, the mer-people could swim underwater to the quay.

  I reflected glumly that I had no chance to escape this way. I was no merman, I could scarcely go out with them and swim to shore. Or could I? There must be scuba equipment in the Triton.

  I asked Janine about it.

  “You want to go along?” she asked. There was a devilish glee in her green eyes.

  “I’d like to, yes.”

  “Good! So would I. Come along, well go find out about the skin-diving gear.”

  I smothered my groan. I could scarcely abandon ship with the redhead at my elbow. I could not back down, however. I went with her to find air tanks, goggles and rubber fins for our feet, thinking about Ernst Bachmann’s notebooks in my jacket pocket where they would have to stay.

  We uncovered our scuba equipment in a locker inside the ward room. I suppose S.E.L.L. needed the gear for training purposes. We each selected an air tank and mouthpiece, flippers for our feet, and a black leather belt that held a knife. Janine was giggling, then she was telling me we had forgotten to bring swimsuits.

  “I’ll wear shorts,” I chuckled.

  “I’ll wear panties,” she nodded.

  We dressed in my cabin. Janine wore one of my shirts as we strode into the galley—the escape hatch formed part of its ceiling—and joined the others. It was one minute to three. One of the mermen began the countdown. Then, one by one, the mermaids and the mermen clambered through the escape haatch and darted outward into the harbor waters.

  Janine dropped my shirt, exposing her heavy white breasts. She gurgled laughter when she saw me eyeing them. Her breasts shook lazily to her movements as she stepped up onto the metal ladder and began her climb. With my eyes on her jiggling white buttocks, only partially hidden by her bikini-type panties, I went after her.

  The water was black. I caught a glimpse of bare white legs where Janine was swimming, then the water closed around me and I was following her beachward. I swam easily, breathing in the tanked air. The swim was little more than a hundred yards, and I felt healthy and ready to go when my hands brushed against the quaystones on the harbor bottom.

  I surfaced and climbed up the quay, then turned to assist Janine. Her red hair was plastered to her head and shoulders, but her soft laughter was a crooning contentment as she realized my body was reacting to her near nakedness.

  “Come on,” she breathed, kicking off her rubber flippers. “We’ve got to join the others.”

  We ran on bare feet across the cool stones of the harbor quay, listening to the faint sounds that told where the mer-people were at their tasks of kidnapping. A woman screamed, then was silent. I heard a male voice cry out. A door opened and slammed.

  Janine and I were running up a narrow street between old houses. Ahead of us a line of young men, some in pajamas, some naked but for their trousers. Their hands were tied at their wrists behind their backs, and they were attached to a long rope. Each youth was gagged so he could not cry out.

  I am certain these Albanian young men though it was some kind of Communist raid being made on their village. Their faces were frightened, puzzled, as their eyes touched the merman who was leading them by the rope toward the quay. I counted seven before they moved on out of sight.

  Janine was framed in the doorway of a house. Her hand waved at me. I moved toward her. I had never broken into a house before; not to abduct a young man, at any rate. I wondered how we would go about it.

  Janine was fumbling at the lock. It was the old-fashioned kind that a hairpin could open if properly applied. Janine had a length of celluloid in her hand. In a moment the door swung wide upon the darkness. Janine moved inside with me at her pink heels
.

  There was the smell of cookery in the front room. With the moonlight shining in the big bay window, we could make out heavy furniture, and in the background, a stairway with a lattice-work balustrade. Janine leaped for the railing.

  Upstairs there were four bedrooms. In one room, two young men about eighteen and nineteen were sound asleep. Janine lifted out her knife, nodding her head at me. The touch of cold steel at two throats woke the youths from their slumbers.

  Their eye bulged. Their mouths opened.

  When the knifepoints bit in, they closed their mouths. Janine breathed, “Not a sound, you understand? Or we’ll slit your throats!”

  Fear showed in their faces. Janine chuckled. She tore a strip from a sheet and gagged each man. Her flashing knife told them to get on their feet. I tied their hands behind them. I pushed them out into the hall.

  There was another young man in the second room. In three minutes he was standing beside the others. In the third room a little girl lay sleeping. Janine closed the bedroom door softly. In the fourth room there was an older man, with a woman: evidently the father and mother.

  Janine closed the door. I urged the three men down the stairs and out onto the street. We pointed at the quay. The young men began to trot.

  When we arrived at the harbor, we found a dinghy filled with youthful male prisoners. Janine whispered that our captives were to join the others. As they got in, the gag of one of them came loose. Looking at Janine, he muttered something.

  “What did he say?” I asked.

  “He said, ‘First blood to the Russkys, but the Red Chinese have yet to be heard from.’” Her giggle was quite mirthful. “They think we’re Moscow agents. Good, let them think it.”

  The captives were made to ship oars and begin rowing. The night air was cool, and my wet flesh shivered to the bite of the sea wind. I saw Janine was shaking, so I put an arm about her and drew her against me. She nestled there contentedly.

  As the submarine surfaced, the captives were told to step out onto its deck still awash with water. One by one they mounted the conning tower steps, then climbed down the ladder into the kiosk. We followed them at the double, even as the order to submerge was being given.