Sighing, Flash gestured with his palm upturned. “I came here with Dale.”
“She’s not here now. And you know the old saying: ‘If your baby’s millions of parsecs away, love the one you’re with.’ ”
In exasperation, Flash looked toward the ceiling. He saw the amplifier over his head. “Wait! Could I call Dale with that?”
Aura accentuated her perpetually pouting expression. “If I showed you how. But I’m not about to.”
Flash exuded friendliness and warmth; he had switched on the old Gordon charm. “Pretty please?”
“You’ll have to use more effective persuasion than that,” she said, leaning over to touch his hair.
He moved away from her and felt relieved when she sank into her seat and pondered her next strategy. Rubbing his hand over his mouth as if to wipe away an imaginary kiss, he studied the consoles. Why didn’t you watch what she was doing? He pressed buttons, passed his hands over panels, and flicked switches, but nothing happened. He scowled. Suddenly, he passed his hand over the flight control console with a determined, final air. Frigia began to grow ominously larger through the window.
“What are you doing?” asked Aura.
Flash ignored her; he did not even shrug. Aura scrambled for the controls, but Flash grabbed her arm; he roughly threw her to her seat. She stared at him with loathing. After a moment she stood up before the controls so it would be more difficult for Flash to restrain her. He, too, stood, bracing himself behind her and tightly holding her wrists, forcing her hands to rest against her breasts.
“Let me go!” she squealed. “We’re diving into Frigia!”
“So what else is new?”
Aura attempted to kick him. Wrapping his left leg about hers, he held her easily. She gave up, realizing his strength could incapacitate her with a mere second of effort. “We’re going to be killed!”
“Not if I tune in on Dale,” said Flash.
Dale lay on her stomach; her eyes were closed and she tried to block out the chattering harem women. She wished the minutes were longer, so as to delay Ming’s approach, and she wished they were shorter so the ordeal would be over that much more quickly. The nameless drug was unable to combat her ever-growing fear of the immediate future.
Dale—it’s me—Flash—are you—receiving me?
Her heart pounding, her breathing rapid, she sat up, verging on sheer panic for the first time since arriving on Mongo. Suddenly her greatest fear had become that of losing her sanity.
It’s telepathy. I’m inside your head. Just try to think of me!
Flash clenched his fist in front of Aura’s face; he was not threatening her, he was merely expressing his frustration. The amplifier bars around his head shimmered with a dull blue glow. “She’s not getting me!”
“I must reverse my earlier sentiments and tell you not to use your brain, but your mouth instead.” She straddled him, rubbing her groin and inner thighs against his legs. The heat of her body as well as the heat of the blue glow caused him to break out in a sweat.
I’m with you, Dale. Just concentrate hard and think to me!
Can this be real? I saw you executed. You sure this isn’t an instance of Jung’s active imagination?
I was saved, I tell you, thought Flash, desperate to convince her. I’m still alive. I never felt so alive!
Oh thank God! thought Dale, nearly swooning. Where are you?
In a rocket, racing to the moon of Arboria for help. Are you okay?
I’m terrific. Even in her thoughts, Dale’s sarcasm was like undiluted lemon extract. I’m a prisoner in Ming’s royal sack.
Flash did not know which development shocked him the most: Dale’s predicament or the fact that Aura was now kissing him, expertly nibbling at his lips and caressing his teeth with her tongue. Somehow she had divined every erogenous zone around and inside his mouth. Her fingers quickly unfastened his jacket; beneath his T-shirt, his chest smoldered with her heat, pouring through the material as if it did not exist. Flash tried not to pay attention to what her other hand was doing. Fake Ming out! he thought.
How?
Come on, girls know how. It’s been done to me before.
It has? Dale asked.
Just pretend you’re in high school, and fake Ming out till I get back.
It’s too dangerous for you here. You can’t come back. Stay where you’re safe and I’ll find Dr. Zarkov somehow!
God! This chick really knows how to turn a man on!
I didn’t quite get that, thought Dale. Think it again.
Flash shoved Aura off his lap; she landed on her elbow and her coccyx, her back smashing against the console. Forget I thought it. It wasn’t about you anyway!
What!? Dale heard a door slide open; the knuckle of her right forefinger in her mouth, she turned to look, expecting Ming prancing like a stallion, ready to shower her with the most personal and (in this case) repulsive attention. But it was only a slave girl, a tall, buxom redhead wearing a shimmering golden gown, carrying another chalice filled with a liquid.
Hang up, Dale thought to Flash. I’ve got to go!
Where?
Someone’s in here. We’ve got to stop thinking like this!
The slave girl bowed. “I am pleased to inform you that his Imperial Majesty shall grace you with his presence very soon. I have with me a potion which shall prepare you physically and emotionally for the ardors of love which will surely follow close upon his arrival.”
Dale patted a silk cushion beside her. “Come here, sit down.”
The slave girl shook her head. “I regret to inform you it is forbidden.”
“By whom?”
“No one in particular. It simply is not customary.”
“It is if I ask it. Now sit and chat a spell. Besides, I hate to drink alone.”
Sitting, the slave girl offered Dale the chalice. Dale took it, but did not drink; she said, “Tell me, what’s your opinion of Ming?”
“He is the Most Illustrious Ruler of the Universe.”
“Don’t give me that. I mean, what’s your opinion of him sexually?”
The slave girl paled. “I’ve never heard any complaints. No one would dare; she would be executed.” She paused. “I do not believe we are permitted to have an opinion, though of course if Ming the Merciless ever desired me, I would gladly submit to the rigors of his investigations.”
“So then you would enjoy it?”
“I would strive to do so,” replied the slave girl, demurely bowing her head.
“What attracts you to Ming?”
The slave girl looked toward the ceiling; a dreamy haze glistened in her eyes. “He is so forceful, so ready to order executed those who slightly displease him. Those who greatly displease him are tortured. When he personally slew Prince Thun today, I experienced a beautiful tingling sensation, as if my spirit had flown to the stars and back. Yes, I admit it; I would freely submit to the caresses of Ming. However, I fear I am unworthy, for he has never noticed me.” Again, she bowed her head.
“Would you care for a sip?” asked Dale, holding the chalice toward her.
The slave girl shook her head. “It is forbidden. This ration was selected for Ming’s Chosen, and I shall not receive my slave’s rations until the end of the week.”
“Oh go ahead. I can’t finish it all by myself.”
With trembling fingers, the slave girl took the chalice. She sipped it, then paused.
Dale nodded. “Quality stuff, isn’t it?” As the slave girl prepared to take another sip, Dale tilted the chalice, forcing her to take larger and larger gulps. “Bottoms up, sweety.” In more ways than one.
Aura’s pouting expression was uncharacteristically sincere as she sat with her arms folded beneath her breasts and her eyes straight ahead. Flash could not resist smiling to himself, but only because she would not see it. Extrapolating from hints about her past and what little he knew about Mongian society, Flash deduced she was confused and hurt, for surely she had never been so rudely and s
oundly rejected.
“You men!” she snarled, breaking a silence of several minutes. “You think your pride is so important that you must maintain your so-called honor because it somehow supplies you with your masculine attributes. I must inform you, Gordon, I know from long personal experience that all men give in sooner or later, regardless of their pride. In the end, nothing is more important to them than coupling with a woman like me. You’re no different, Gordon. You’ll succumb to my charms . . . eventually.”
Despite himself, Flash felt sorry for her. He sadly shook his head. “Aura, I’ll be frank with you. I get the itch every once in awhile, and I scratch it too, just like every other robust, red-blooded American male I know, but I don’t scratch it with just anybody. Honey, you just don’t understand what makes a man tick. There’s more to a satisfying relationship than physical beauty, sophisticated techniques, compatible perversions, and a ravenous sexual appetite. There has to be mutual respect, kindness, consideration, the desire to have a mature and meaningful relationship however long it lasts, and full acknowledgment of the male as a human being in his own right. Men aren’t cheap vessels you can use up and throw away. Men have feelings too, and the sooner you realize that, the sooner you’ll reach some of the more rewarding plateaus of life.”
Aura stuck out her lower lip. I don’t think she believes me, Flash thought as he suffered a long moment of despondency. It would certainly make things a lot easier if he reached the center of decency he sensed in her evil, perverted heart.
The red flier was hurtling through the verdant skies spotted with yellow droplets that warmed the moon of Arboria, trapping and holding the heat generated by the cosmic whirlpool. White mists swirling about, dissipating in the flier’s wake like fibers shorn by antimatter energy rays. Eventually, the tiny rocket created only a minimal disruption, for soon the intertwining strands of mist averaged a hundred yards in diameter. “Can’t we avoid them?” asked Flash. “Every time we pass through one, I can’t see a blamed thing.”
“Don’t worry; the automatic pilot sees better than we can.”
As they broke through an especially large strand into the verdant skies, Flash saw Arboria for the first time. Tremendous roots and limbs tapering into nothingness rose from the light green fog screening the moon. The realization of their size numbed Flash. They were like the legs of gigantic dead spiders, somehow trapped in an eternal milky liquid.
Flash stared at a weaving tan root with green veins as they descended into the thick fog which seemed to cling to their flier like an ineffective adhesive. Their instruments showed them to be nearing their landing site, and the fog quickly became thicker and more tenacious. Flash gave Aura a questioning look.
Aura shook her head to demonstrate her mystification. “The fog’s usually not so bad at this time of the year.”
“How far to the landing pad?”
“Six-point-four. I’ll just drop the flaps a little.” She smiled with wide eyes, genuinely amused, when Flash touched her wrist to prevent her from manipulating the controls. “Trust me.” She flicked a switch.
The electronic command could not have been completely transmitted to the flaps when the flier lurched and there was a scraping that sounded as if its underbelly was being torn off. The engines coughed; parts ground into one another; a shower of red and yellow sparks flew from a console to Flash’s left.
Not again! thought Flash. “Pull ’er up!”
But it was already too late. Branches snapped loudly in quick succession; one cracked the window in front of Aura before it broke; she covered her face and screamed. The flier grazed one huge trunk only to graze another; though its fall was gradually slowing, it was being battered around by nature’s indifferent creations as if it was a rubber ball that had been dropped from the limbs above the green fog. Flash’s seat belt and shoulder strap threatened to tear through his uniform as he bounced in his seat.
Suddenly the flier smacked head on into a trunk, throwing Flash and Aura then backward, as it careened into thick heavy vines. The flier rose and fell for several minutes like a yo-yo; the vines had caught it. When it finally ceased moving, Flash, pale and out of breath, smiled weakly at Aura. “Trust you, huh?”
Interlude
AT first the people of Earth failed to realize that their way of life, not to mention their very planet, was at the mercy of powerful forces originating in a cosmic whirlpool at the crossroads of time and space. They took the heat waves, thunderstorms, tornadoes, tidal waves, earthquakes, and atmospheric disturbances in stride; these events had been occurring throughout the millenniums and were nothing to get too excited about. (However, even the long-lived President of the Yogurt Consumption Union could not recall the time when they had happened all at once.)
The scientific fraternity began to notice some truly unusual phenomena; membership in the Charles Fort Society boomed. Hordes of deceased white mice rained on Mobile, Alabama. The residents of a small Canadian fishing village awoke one morning to find the streets covered with a sticky black goo. A volcano erupted magnificently in Siberia—where three weeks before there had been no volcano! The Amazon River froze over during a blizzard. Half a million crows descended upon Paris and waged a vicious war against the pigeon population. Every leaf in Southern Africa withered and died, but the grass grew tall and strong, choking the countryside. Most perplexing, in the eyes of the layman, was that the birthrate in Japan had dropped dramatically.
The most useful accomplishment of these events was the selling of newspapers; circulation rose to record heights even as television ratings soared. But the world waited for the Reverend Bernard P. Johnson to put the proper perspective on matters. One sunny morning, as he sat in the kitchen reading a newspaper article on Palestinian terrorists machine gunning the marauding magic mushrooms springing up throughout the Middle East, he said to his wife, “You know, if I didn’t know better—and I don’t, because the Lord hasn’t been speaking to me lately—I’d say Judgment Day was upon us.”
That started his wife to thinking, and pretty soon the rumors were flying thick and fast all over the world.
9
Zarkov’s Treachery
IMMEDIATELY after Ming instructed Klytus to indoctrinate Zarkov, he ordered the execution of the Minister of Propaganda. It was but a whim, an eminently satisfactory one, Ming decided as he watched the prolonged ritual. The minister’s screams were loud and anguished, and he implored the Celestial One for mercy. “I fear the tack will not be successful a second time,” Ming replied, savoring the minister’s groans. “A pity; if you’d been more original, We might have been moved. As it is . . . Well, we shall spend a few moments in your honor, reflecting on the truths to be learned from your death. It is odd, isn’t it, that the old, who have given what they had to give and who should be overjoyed to make way for the young, are the most regretful when departing the shadowed stage; instead, they should readily accept their fate, with a grace that will cause their souls to radiate contentment on their final journey.”
The minister’s only coherent answer was an ear-splitting scream, but Ming had expected that.
The execution merely whetted Ming’s appetite for the sexual conquest of the Earth woman. Regardless of his words to his daughter (which apparently had surprised both of them equally), he had not anticipated the obtainment of a royal prerogative since he had ascended the throne over his father’s mangled corpse. Never before had he encountered a woman with this Arden’s sexual potential. Must be something in Terran water, he deduced as he entered the sensory deprivation chamber where he habitually meditated before releasing his lustful self upon some fortunate female flesh.
Lying horizontally above the floor, suspended by antigravity magnetic beams, Ming heard only his breathing and his heartbeat. His eyes were open, but they saw only blackness; when he closed them, he saw red and gray shadings, and he searched for pictures whose only reality was in imagination. Soon he saw torrents of blood, the screams of the dying throughout the eons, the futility o
f all human ideals and accomplishments. There was but the sensation of the moment to live for, since ultimately all monuments—whether poems or statues—would be less than dust. Then Ming perceived the essence of the cosmic whirlpool; he touched the moments of the past and future; he had reached the eternal parts of his soul. Planets slowly, majestically moved in the black depths of space. Disruptions in the ether revealed unfathomable dimensions and impossible destinations. Ming the Merciless felt valuable insights verging on forbidden knowledge merge with his soul. For moments which stretched until time was a meaningless concept, Ming lay floating, experiencing the peace his turbulent emotions denied him, discovering the nuances of existence overwhelmed by his burdensome ennui. Finally, his spirit was tainted by the cravings of his body; his desire for Arden distracted him from oneness, divided his concept of self into many pieces. Yet this time Ming was not disappointed that his insights had fled, leaving him essentially unchanged for all his mystical experience. Quite inexplicably, his sexual desire did not seem unclean in comparison to his meditations. In fact, there was something supernaturally pure about his cravings, as if they had become an ideal as lofty as achieving permanent communion with the universe.
Acting upon another whim, Ming prepared his appearance. He bathed in a pool with mineral water imported from a prehistoric spring of an alternate universe. The incense mimicked the fragrance of crystals thrown onto the planet by the cosmic whirlpool a thousand years ago. (The crystals had long since been lost, but their fragrance lingered on.) Lobotomized eunuchs, their hungers unable to taint his, dried him with electronic equipment that blew heated, filtered air. He dressed himself in his finest red robes, concealing in the pockets various devices which would increase the pleasure.
The door providing access to his bedroom dilated open silently. His hands were in his sleeves, ensuring that the Earth woman would not see him tremble; he must be ever neutral, ever on guard with this one (perhaps a reason why she excited him so). He noted with satisfaction that she was clad in white, as he had wished. She lay on her stomach, facing away from him, her eyes fixed upon some point in her imagination.
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