Don Pendleton's Science Fiction Collection, 3 Books Box Set, (The Guns of Terra 10; The Godmakers; The Olympians)

by Don Pendleton

  “The reason I called...” Hunter mused. “Why shouldn’t Mannclift be visiting the party faithful? I mean, if Donaldson is in the camp. Maybe she’s just delivering nice little rewards for a job well done, huh? These electors, after all, are just party people who’ve been working their asses off for the candidate.”

  “It just doesn’t ring,” Martens replied. “Not between Donaldson and Younghart. Besides: since you’ve been dogging her, how many loyal workers has she visited who aren’t Electors?”

  “Uh...well, yeah. There’s that. You’ve, uh, got a bit of a storm in the hallowed halls of Weekly, eh?”

  “No storm yet; just the gathering of the winds, so far. I’m looking for anything—just anything. Next time you call in, you may have yourself a new managing editor.”

  “That’ll be the Goddamned day,” Hunter grunted.

  “Yeah. Any Goddamned day. Keep in close touch, Dick.”

  “You know it.” He ended the call, took another sip at the gimlet, retrieved his briefcase and moved back into the ballroom.

  Paula Mannclift was standing just outside the door. Their eyes met, and the woman’s sparkled in warm recognition.

  “You are Richard Hunter!” she informed him.

  He nodded, smiling, and allowed himself to be pushed back into the library. She kicked the door shut with her foot, impaled him on a warmly interested gaze, and said, “I’ve felt like an idiot about the other day.”

  “I’d forgotten all about it,” he lied. Then he hastened to add, “But of course I hadn’t forgotten you.”

  Her hands were gripping both his arms, just above the elbows, and she was pressing against him. “Well, I should hope not,” she cooed melodiously. “And you are still following me, aren’t you?”

  Gazing down into the brown pools of muted fire that were the Mannclift eyes, Hunter felt ridiculous. He still held the cocktail glass in one hand, and the other was busy with the briefcase. And the lovely woman he’d been tracking from a distance for the past several days was now standing belly-to-belly against him, gazing into his eyes and calling his hand.

  He decided to show it. “Yes, I’ve been following you,” he said agreeably.

  A tiny muscle ticked in her upper lip. “Why?”

  “Because I smell a story.” He grinned. “And because you’re a very lovely woman, Miss Mannclift.”

  She leaned in closer. “So you know my name. Stamp a gold star on your forehead.”

  He wished he could do something with the damned glass. “I also know about Jackass Crags,” he told her.

  Her hands immediately released their grip on his arms and she took a short back-step. “Good,” she said, suddenly businesslike. “That simplifies things. I want you to go there with me.”

  “Go where with me?”

  “To Jackass Crags, of course.”

  “You want me to go to Jackass Crags.” It was a flat statement.

  “Yes. The plane’s at New Haven. We’ll leave my car here. Are you ready to go now?”

  Hunter cleared his throat. “The plane?”

  “Brian’s executive jet.”

  “Brian?”

  “Brian Donaldson, of course. We’ll take your car to New Haven.” She removed the glass, still half-full, from his hand and set it on a table, then placed a warm hand in his. “Ready?”

  “I, uh...I should call my office and let them know,” he said feebly.

  “That isn’t necessary.” She tugged him toward the door.

  “It isn’t?”

  “Huh-uh. They know.”

  “They know that I’m going to Jackass Crags?”

  She glanced at her watch. “By now, yes. I’d say they know.”

  Hunter moved woodenly through the ballroom, the lovely girl clinging to his arm, his brain whirring numbly in an attempt to assimilate the sudden turn of things. He wasn’t even aware of being outdoors until the chill November air penetrated his perspiring frame. Mechanically, he held the car door while Paula Mannclift slipped inside, then he walked around to the driver’s side, pausing to unconsciously kick a front tire. He climbed into the Porsche, fastened his seat belt and started the engine. Then he turned to his beauteous companion. “Paula,” he said thoughtfully, “does Brian Donaldson have an interest in Weekly?”

  She smiled benignly. “As of about thirty minutes ago, he owns it.”

  “I see,” he said.

  He put the car in reverse and spun out of the parking space, shifted again and careened onto the macadam drive in a spray of gravel. He glanced at the girl and grinned, though he felt not at all humorous.

  She was sprawled on the leather seat, an arm flung out atop the back, one leg drawn up into the seat and the other extended straight out. Her skirt, short under the best of conditions, now rode right around her hips, revealing creamy thighs and the lacy fringe of nylon panties. Hunter averted his gaze to stare doggedly ahead at the winding drive, his mind still stuck on the spit of Jackass Crags.

  Paula Mannclift didn’t miss his quick assessment of her display. “Like what you saw?” she asked lazily.

  He nodded, hunching over the steering wheel to cover his embarrassment.

  “Get used to it,” she advised him. “You’ll be seeing a lot of it from here on in.”

  “You make it sound like a threat,” he mumbled.

  She giggled then, dropping her hand onto his shoulder. “Can’t you distinguish between a threat and a promise?” she asked softly.

  When she removed her hand from his shoulder, it crept warmly into his, and he squeezed it gently. “Sure you can,” she breathed, moving closer.

  But Hunter wasn’t so sure he could. He couldn’t shake off a vision of the Black Widow, the passionate female spider who mates and then devours her partner.

  “What’s this Jackass Crags like?” he asked, interested chiefly in changing the emotional atmosphere.

  “Mount Olympus,” she replied.

  “Huh?”

  “It is. It’s just like Mount Olympus—high above the clouds; a place for gods and goddesses.”

  “But I’m a mere mortal,” he said, showing her a grin.

  “Not lately,” she told him. “Tell me truthfully, now: Haven’t you ever wanted to be an Olympian?”

  “I really hadn’t given it much thought,” he admitted.

  “Better start thinking about it,” she said. She raised his arm and slid beneath it, slipping her knees up onto Hunter’s driving leg to huddle close against him. “You’re going to get your chance,” she whispered.

  And still he saw the Black Widow’s dance.

  5: JACKASS GRAGS

  Hunter couldn’t figure Paula Mannclift. throughout the drive to New Haven. Then they’d boarded the plane, she had escorted him to a lavishly appointed cabin, excused herself, and disappeared. He hadn’t seen her since; indeed, he wasn’t at all sure that she was still aboard.

  The two-engine luxury jet made the trip in something under four hours, evidently flying at very high altitude. For all Hunter knew, he could have been en route to Russia or Red China.

  A swing-away bar and snack-kitchen contained all the bubbly and gourmet comforts of home; there was even a small library set in one wall. He had munched a ham-and-cheese sandwich and washed it down with Scotch and water while idly studying titles, working on the idea that one can get to know much about a man by the books he keeps. He noted Nietzche’s Twilight of the Gods, and a volume by Von Clausewitz, On War, alongside selections by Schopenhauer and Spinoza. They told him nothing, aside from the fact that they were rather heavy stuff—too heavy for casual reading at fifty thousand feet, for Hunter at any rate.

  By and large, he was happy to see the cabin light flash on in a warning that the landing descent was commencing. They had run away from the sun’s advance, and there was still plenty of daylight to give him an eagle’s view of the odd mountain formation below. He couldn’t make out a jackass in the weird configuration, but crags there were plenty of, some jutting as much as a thousand feel in
nearly perpendicular reaches. And Mannclift had been right about the clouds; they were several hundred feet below the peaks.

  The plane had dropped swiftly, losing altitude almost in the manner of an elevator, and angling into a sweeping turn. Hunter spotted Jackass Crags then, several miles downleg; there was no mistaking the donkey’s-head arrangement of rocky peaks—and from the looks of things, the airstrip lay squarely between the donkey’s ears. The biggest jackass, to Hunter’s mind at the moment, was the guy who had decided to make his home on that pile of rocks two miles up in the sky. As the plane angled in on the downwind run, however, Hunter was forced to reassess his impression. There was beauty and majesty on the mountain-top, from the obvious glacier on the north face, across snow-covered flats and sheer canyon walls to the straight ribbon of runway and the cluster of buildings, and up to the opposite bluff, from which projected an architectural masterpiece of steel and stone that could only be Donaldson’s mansion.

  There was livestock on the flats, and barns and covered hayracks and various other evidence of man’s domination of environment. All in all, Hunter counted some forty scattered buildings outside the main cluster at the end of the runway—and all dominated by the curious architectural mass which hung suspended from the south bluff. He could understand why Mannclift had called it Mount Olympus, and he recalled the crack Martens had made about somebody playing God in American politics. It wouldn’t be difficult for a man to develop Olympian feelings in such an environment.

  The plane heeled around into its final approach. Hunter closed his eyes and relaxed into his seat-harness trusting that the pilot had made many successful landings on this improbable spot. A moment later he felt the slight bump of wheels on solid earth, and heard the whine of jet engines in reverse-thrust. Snow-covered fields raced past his window; then they were slowing perceptibly, and a gleaming black Cadillac was pacing them down the final few hundred yards of runway. A jeep appeared, almost beneath the wing, then pulled out in front of the plane, but not before Hunter could note the arctic-type clothing of the driver; only then did it occur to him that it would be bitterly cold outside.

  This was confirmed a moment later when Paula Mannclift made a sudden reappearance. She wore the chubby mink he had first seen her in; but the leather mini-skirt had been replaced by heavy slacks, and furry muffs were perched jauntily just ahead of her ears. She was carrying a bulky wool parka with fur hood; this she dropped onto Hunter’s lap. “Better get into this,” she told him.

  “Looks pretty cold out there,” he remarked morosely.

  “It is. A little below zero. It’s the wind that tears you up, though. Keep your face turned away from the wind, no matter what. It’ll freeze the moisture in your nostrils.”

  The plane had slowed to a controlled taxi. Hunter stood up and struggled into the parka. “I never heard of Aphrodite with goose-bumps,” he said, in a pointed allusion to Olympia. “I thought she glided around in a diaphanous negligee or something.”

  Mannclift smiled. “That’s right, but in the winter she wears long johns under that negligee.” She was helping him button up the parka. Their eyes met, and her face sobered. “Listen,” she said. “Be yourself around Brian. He has an instinct for poses, and he detests them. Be completely honest with him.”

  She had started a movement toward the end of the cabin, but Hunter restrained her. “Why should I give a damn about what Brian Donaldson thinks of me?” he asked.

  “You’d better be giving a damn,” she advised him solemnly. “Your whole life depends on what he thinks about you.”

  “Are you speaking in terms of longevity, or career-fulfillment?”

  Her eyes swept his face. “Both,” she said simply. “Come on. They’re waiting for us.”

  The plane had come to a halt, and Hunter could see the corner of a metal building set just off the runway. The black Cadillac was standing beside the plane, engine idling. The jet engines were silenced suddenly, their noise partially replaced by a howling wind moving across the metal and glass surfaces. Hunter could have sworn that the Cadillac was rocking in the buffeting assault.

  ‘You weren’t kidding about the wind,” he remarked to Mannclift as he followed her toward the door. “Are we having a storm?”

  “Sure,” she said jauntily. “But it only lasts from September to June.”

  “Why would anybody want to live—” The words were lost as the aircraft’s door was opened suddenly from the outside, the wind rushing in the cabin to drown his voice. Mannclift was drawing on leather mittens; she glanced significantly at the pockets of Hunter’s parka, then spun about and stepped through the doorway. He took the unspoken advice and thrust his hands into the pockets, then plunged down the mobile ramp ladder behind her.

  A group of men in arctic clothing clustered about the plane showed the pair no attention whatever. The driver of the Cadillac had leaned over to open the back door; Mannclift scooted in, and Hunter boomed in on her heels, slamming the door almost before his feet were clear. The car started moving immediately. They drove onto a narrow, paved roadway, glided past a low-slung building bearing the sign COMMISSARY, and another labeled DISPENSARY, then through a cluster of stone bungalows and past an unmistakable “little red school house.”

  “There are kids up here?” Hunter asked.

  “Of course.” The girl showed him a warm smile. “How do you suppose we spend these long, wintry nights? Playing checkers?”

  Hunter let the matter drop, and gave full attention to the scenery. They were beginning a snaking progression up the face of the bluff, the big eagle’s nest near the top looming larger at every turn; already the airstrip and buildings on the flats were taking on the faraway look. Lights were beginning to come on here and there in the cluster.

  “It’s getting dark,” Hunter observed, trying only for conversation.

  “Yes; it comes on suddenly up here,” she replied.

  A beacon came to life, down near the airstrip, adding somehow to the grotesque feeling of isolation which was beginning to settle into Hunter’s bones. “Some people call it heaven, and some would call it hell,” he murmured.

  “What’s that?”

  He smiled, no more than a thin curling of the lips, and settled back in the seat. “Just a line from some poem,” he said. “It just came drifting up out of the guts of my memory.”

  “And it’s very apropos,” Mannclift said softly. “Very.”

  6: OLYMPIA

  The house was constructed of four levels, each with its own curving glass front of panoramic sweep, and each seemingly independent of the others, from a structural standpoint. “The architect made full use of the scoops in the cliff,” Mannclift explained. “Actually, the place is built back into the rock. The parts you can see are hardly more than enclosed platforms banging out in front. There are more than fifty rooms in Olympia. Would you believe it?”

  Hunter would believe it even if the glass-fronted projections had comprised the entire structure. “Did you say Olympia?” he muttered, angling his head and straining for a better view through the window of the automobile.

  “Yes. Brian believes in naming houses. And he couldn’t have named this one better—don’t you agree?”

  “If it was my place, I’d kill the architect.” Hunter turned to her with a grin. “To preserve the originality,” he added.

  The driver had activated a garage door from a dashboard control; he now pulled inside, the door closed behind them, and Hunter found himself in a huge circular garage with about a dozen automobile bays, most of them occupied. He was moved to inquire into the necessity for so many vehicles on a mountaintop that could only be reached by air, but the chauffeur—a young man of about 18—had scrambled out of the big limousine and was now standing respectfully at the opened rear door.

  “You like it here?” he asked the young man as he slid off the seat.

  He received only a polite smile in reply; then Mannclift had him by the hand and was leading him toward an elevator. They stepped
inside, she punched a button, the door closed, and the car began a rapid ascent.

  “The elevator shaft is built along the face of the bluff,” she explained. “This one goes only as far as the third level. There’s a separate elevator connecting the third level to the aerie. That’s what Brian calls his private domain—the fourth level.” She gave him a speculative glance. “You’d be surprised how few visitors ever get beyond level three. You will, though.”

  “I will what?” Hunter wanted to know.

  “You’ll get to the aerie. Probably not tonight, but you’ll get there.”

  The car came to a gentle halt, the door opened, and they stepped out onto deep carpeting and into warm luxury. They were on the Level Three “porch”, a semi-circular, unbroken expanse of splendid furnishings and the most spectacular view Hunter had ever witnessed.

  A man and woman rose from a nearby couch and approached with expectant smiles. Hunter felt the heat of blood rushing to his face; his first impression, in the muted fighting, was that the couple were stark naked, and he was 99% right. The woman was probably early-thirties, he judged, tall and well-formed, heavy of breast and hip, but entirely pleasing to the eye. She was clad only in a tiny G-string affair which didn’t even completely cover the mons veneris. The man was in roughly the same state of exposure; he was athletically built, had a nice smile, and seemed totally unembarrassed.

  Mannclift performed introductions, which Hunter heard only faintly through the buzzing of his ears. He did catch a fragment of something the woman was saying: “...and of course the sun is long gone, but we were just too comfortable to leave with it, and I told...”

  The couple took their leave, heading toward an open doorway downrange from the elevator. “An obvious lack of savoir faire is sticking out all over you,” Mannclift told Hunter, her eyes gleaming in obvious appreciation of his discomfort.

  “You should have warned me this place was a nudist camp,” he replied.

  “Don’t be silly,” she said. “They were just getting a bit of sun. We believe in dressing appropriately—or undressing appropriately, as you choose to look at it. Everybody here is completely natural; understand? Brian likes it that way—no pretensions, no silly low-class modesties. Get the message?”