Descent from Xanadu

by Harold Robbins

  Bridget turned back to her bed. She stared up in the dark; she heard no sounds. Her room was toward the rear of the plane. She closed her eyes and tried her best to go back to sleep.

  Fast Eddie already had twelve long lines of cocaine on the mirrorlike finish of the table. The girls laughed and giggled even louder as they picked up the straws and snorted.

  “That’s crazy,” he said. “I’ve never done something like this before. Which one do you want?”

  “All of them,” Judd laughed. “Right now, with the kind of hard-on I have, I feel I can fuck all of them into the ground.”

  Doc Sawyer looked at Judd. “Wait a minute. Don’t forget you have to be somewhat careful.”

  “I’ll be careful tomorrow,” Judd said. “Right now, I’m a kid in a candy store.”

  ***

  “Why you don’t come, Judd?” Sylvia gasped. “Your prick is so hard my cunt has been killed with the pain.”

  Two other girls murmured agreement. “And I too! I never felt one so hard like that!” one said. The other one insisted: “It does not become even just a little soft. It just goes straight always like a steel pipe. All I can feel is the pain. And the divine pleasure!”

  Judd looked at the fourth girl. “What about you, kid?”

  She hesitated for a moment. “Even when I think I feel blood, the joy is ecstatic!”

  He sat up between the girls. “I am sorry,” he said. “I truly didn’t mean to hurt you. Perhaps I have done too much cocaine.”

  “Usually too much cocaine makes it soft,” Sylvia offered.

  “Drugs do different things for different people,” he said. He got to his feet and covered himself with a robe. “It is getting late,” he said. “Perhaps you would all like to go now. And maybe it will be better the next time for all of us.”

  Sylvia looked up at him. “But you are still hard,” she said. “We feel that we are cheating you.”

  “You are all beautiful,” he said. “And you have not cheated me. I loved being with you.”

  “Will you see us again soon?” Sylvia asked.

  “As soon as I can,” he said.

  Quickly the girls slipped into their dresses. Judd pressed the button for Fast Eddie. “Take care of them.”

  Judd kissed each of the girls on the cheek as they left his stateroom. “Now remember, Judd,” Sylvia said. “You said soon.”

  “I’ll remember,” he said.

  He began to walk to his door slowly. From the corner of his eye he saw Fast Eddie lay a thousand-dollar bill on each of the girls. He closed the door and dropped his robe. His erection was even harder and was beginning to hurt intensely. He went into the shower hurriedly and turned on the water, cold as ice.

  26

  Doc Sawyer came into Judd’s salon. Fast Eddie was cleaning the bar. “Is Mr. Crane in his stateroom?”

  “Yes,” Fast Eddie nodded.

  “Think he’s still awake?”

  “I just heard him turn off the shower,” Fast Eddie answered.

  Doc Sawyer knocked on the stateroom door. “May I come in?” he called.

  Judd’s voice was muffled. “Yes.”

  Sawyer opened the door. At first, he could hardly see; the stateroom lights had been dimmed almost completely. Then his eyes adjusted themselves to the faint glow.

  Judd was sitting on a chair, his feet against the floor, his body knotted in a crouch over his arms, which were held tightly across his groin. His head was bent far down, the chin resting against his chest.

  “The girl,” Doc Sawyer began to say, but broke off quickly. “What’s wrong?”

  Judd looked up at him. “I don’t know.” His voice was strained, it seemed to emerge from a great distance and not come from him at all. “I think I’m in big trouble.”

  Doc searched for the wall rheostat. Light filled the room. He saw Judd’s face, pale and heavy with the perspiration that comes from pain. The cobalt-blue eyes had turned almost completely black. Quickly, he stepped over to Judd’s bent figure. He reached to touch Judd’s forehead. Under the dampness, it was cold. “Can you stand up?” he asked, not trying to help him.

  “I think so,” Judd said.

  Slowly, he began to uncoil and to straighten himself. He carefully positioned his hands flat against the chair arms and pushed himself up. His lips were white and grimly pressed together; his nostrils flared as he sought to suck in air; the sweat continued to fall from him in droplets. He was able to raise himself partly, then he had to stop. “I can’t make it,” he said in a curiously calm voice.

  “Don’t try then,” Sawyer said. “I’ll help you.” He put his arms under Judd’s shoulders. “We’ll move you slowly to the bed. Don’t panic. You’ll be okay.”

  “I won’t panic,” Judd replied with a hollow laugh. “Don’t you know I’m immortal?”

  Doc stretched him on the bed. He called out through the open door to Fast Eddie. “Get the nurse and tell her to bring down my bag and also the first aid kit. Also call Dr. Ivancich to come right down. And have Raoul bring down the portable oxygen tank.”

  “Got you.” Fast Eddie didn’t waste time.

  Doc knelt beside the bed. “Tell me about the pain. Where is it?”

  Judd stared into his eyes. “It started in my prick, then my balls seemed to turn into rocks and the prick got so hard beyond them that they seemed to go inside my asshole. Then the pain began to spread inside me. It stemmed across my groin to each side as if my kidneys and bladder had turned to stone. I wanted to piss but nothing could go through. I felt as if my prick had turned to solid rock, urethra and all.”

  “Okay,” Doc said. “Try to relax. We’ll take care of it.”

  Judd grimaced. “I guess partying wasn’t such a good idea after all.”

  “Maybe,” Doc Sawyer said. “But it was a fun idea. Probably you just overdid it, that’s all.”

  “Doc Sawyer.” Bridget was standing behind him.

  “Set up an intravenous drip,” he ordered. “Twenty milligrams Valium, five cc of morphine in a thirty-minute saline solution.”

  She nodded and went to the emergency medical box. Quickly she assembled the metal stand to hold the bottle, then infused the Valium and morphine into the solution. Finally she attached the tube to the bottle, adjusted the needle to the end and hung the bottle on the stand. “Will you inject, Doctor?”

  “Yes,” he said. “Hold his arm straight.”

  She nodded, and a moment later, Doc Sawyer slipped the needle into his vein. Quickly she taped it to Judd’s arm. She looked at Doc Sawyer. “The oxygen bottle is here on the caddy.”

  “Nostril spectacles,” he said. “Let’s begin with two liters a minute for an hour.”

  “Yes, sir,” she said.

  He turned to his bag while she set up the oxygen. He opened it to take out the electronic thermometer. He found the reading low, 97.9. The electronic blood pressure digital numbers flashed their red L.E.D. lights, 102 over 70.

  Judd saw the reading. The intravenous drip was already beginning to work. He smiled faintly. “What did you expect, Doc?” he said. “Probably all my blood is stuck in my cock.”

  “I can check that too if you want,” Doc Sawyer laughed. “It probably is big enough to fit.”

  Judd looked at Bridget. “Only if she does it.”

  She didn’t answer.

  “Bet you never saw a prick like this,” Judd said. “No matter how much experience you had in that hospital.”

  “Don’t brag,” she said in her faint brogue. “I’ve seen some that make yours look like a baby’s.”

  Sofia came into the room. “Sorry I took so long. I couldn’t dress because of the sling. What happened?”

  “Acute priapism,” Doc Sawyer said.

  She looked over his shoulder at Judd. Judd smiled up at her. “Something, isn’t it?”

  She laughed. “Fantastic. I’m in love.”

  Judd turned to tease Bridget. “At least some people appreciate me.”

  Bridget di
dn’t smile. “I would expect she would.”

  “How are you feeling now?” Doc asked him, to deflect the antagonism between the two women.

  “Better,” Judd said. “Now I feel I have to urinate.”

  “Get a bottle, nurse,” Doc Sawyer said.

  Bridget looked at him. “Ice packs will help.”

  “You’re the expert,” Doc Sawyer said. “Okay.”

  Bridget left the stateroom. Judd looked up at Sofia. “The least you can do is kiss it a little.”

  “I’d be afraid,” she said. “It seems to me you have enough problems already.”

  Judd turned to Doc Sawyer. The intravenous was really working now. “See,” he said, “how the mighty have fallen.”

  ***

  They were seated around the table in Judd’s salon when Bridget came from the stateroom, closing the door behind her. “He’s sleeping,” she said.

  “Good,” Doc Sawyer said. “Any visible change in his condition?”

  “Slight,” she answered. “He’s been able to pass a little water, but even in his sleep it seems painful.”

  “I spoke to the urologist in the hospital in Florida. He thought it would be helpful if we could express his prostate gland.”

  “I’ve had several patients with the same condition in Devon,” she said. “We couldn’t do anything until the turgidity was relaxed slightly, so we could induce ejaculation. That in turn reduced the pressure enough to help the patient achieve normal flaccidity.”

  Doc Sawyer looked across the table at Sofia. “What do you think if we give him a shot of Compazine?”

  Sofia nodded. “It should help him relax and at least, if it doesn’t work, it can’t hurt him.”

  “How much do we have left with the intravenous?” he asked.

  “About fifteen minutes,” Bridget answered.

  “Okay,” Doc Sawyer said. “We’ll give him the Compazine as soon as that’s completed.”

  “Do you want him to keep on with oxygen, Doctor?”

  “Yes.”

  “Thank you, Doctor.” Bridget returned to Judd’s stateroom.

  Sofia looked at Sawyer. “She’s a strange girl,” she said. “What made her specialize in becoming a prick nurse?”

  Sawyer smiled. “Maybe she spent her childhood in the back seat of automobiles giving hand-jobs.”

  Merlin smiled, but Sofia didn’t understand any of it. Merlin looked at Doc Sawyer. “What do you want us to do now?” he asked. “Stay here or head for home?”

  “Head for home,” Doc said. “I’ll feel better when we have him under the care of the specialists.”

  “That creates another problem,” Merlin said. “This one concerns Dr. Ivancich.”

  “Yes?” Sofia asked.

  “Security has informed us of a sudden influx of Cubans into our area. Strangers that we haven’t yet got a make on. We can only surmise they’re looking for you.”

  “I was afraid of that,” Sofia said. “I even mentioned that to Judd.”

  “I know,” Merlin said. “Judd has already asked me to arrange another travel plan for you.”

  “You’ve done it?” she asked.

  He nodded. “Yes. New identity papers, passport, everything. You’ll travel as the wife of one of the security men on this plane right now. From here you’ll travel on Varig to Dallas, from Dallas by American Airlines to Washington. We own a private hospital on the outskirts of the city. You’ll be registered there under still another name. Judd will see you there next week when he attends the inauguration.”

  She hesitated for a moment. “I guess I have no choice, do I?”

  “Not if you want to stay alive,” Merlin said.

  She nodded slowly. “I suppose they will arrange the abortion at the same time?”

  “That’s correct.”

  She moistened her lips that had gone suddenly dry. “There’s no chance that Judd will drop me now, is there?”

  “If he wanted to drop you, he would have left you in Mexico,” Doc Sawyer answered. “But that’s not the way he plays the game.”

  27

  “It’s microsurgery by laser,” the urologist, Dr. Orrin, said quietly. “The technique’s adapted from retina transplantation, but as far advanced as the Columbia space shuttle from the Wright Brothers’ plane at Kitty Hawk.”

  Judd looked at him. “It’s been tested before?”

  “Not in humans, not even in animals,” the doctor said. “This has been developed especially for you. But it’s been checked and rechecked by the computer. There’s no way it can go wrong.”

  Judd was silent for a moment before he turned to Doc Sawyer. “What do you think?”

  “I’ve thought about it and also spoken to Dr. Zabiski on the telephone to Yugoslavia. We both agree that it’s completely feasible and would show no harmful results to our other program.”

  “I still don’t know,” Judd said.

  Doc Sawyer laughed. “You’re strange. You’ve risked your life with every dangerous experiment we’ve done. Any one of them might have killed you, but here you hesitate. I’m beginning to think your prick’s more important than your life.”

  Judd turned to the urologist. “What’s the alternative choice?”

  “Only the old method. We snip the vein that supplies blood to the capillaries in the penis. Then it’s over, once and for all, but of course you’re impotent for life, and it cannot be reversed,” Dr. Orrin replied. “It’s your prick and your option.”

  Judd looked down at the microchip only slightly larger than the head of a pin. “That’s all it is?” he asked. “Never has to be changed? No battery to be replaced?”

  Dr. Orrin nodded. “That’s it. The power is supplied by the electricity of your nervous system. The microchip is made of titanium and is completely organ-tolerable. It replaces the physical functions of that little part of the nerve damaged by the nuclear treatment and, perhaps even more important, it will last forever.”

  “Then I can perform as if I were normal?”

  “Not as if. You will be normal, Mr. Crane. We’re simply transplanting a manufactured nerve for your own. The erection normal, the orgasm and ejaculation normal, and blood return to flaccidity completely normal,” Dr. Orrin said.

  “Then how long would it take me to achieve another erection?” he asked.

  Dr. Orrin laughed. “That depends on you, Mr. Crane. I can’t anticipate the how and whom of your fucking for you.”

  Judd laughed. “How long does the whole thing take?”

  “The physical operation, seven minutes, only because we have to go near the prostate. You should be completely healed and ready for action in twenty-four to thirty-six hours.”

  Judd looked from Doc Sawyer to the urologist. “Tomorrow morning,” he said. He waited until the urologist left the room. “Isn’t it ironic that the first part of my body to achieve immortality will be my prick?”

  ***

  “Harlem, baby!” Fast Eddie pointed out the window of the helicopter bringing them into New York from Newark Airport. “Harlem! We’re home!”

  Judd laughed. He felt good. And it was only three days after his operation. The doctor was right. There was no pain.

  “I can see the Empire State Building,” Bridget said in an excited voice. “I can’t believe it’s real and not a film.”

  “You’ve never been to New York?” Judd asked.

  “Never,” she replied.

  “Then you’ll have time to see it,” he said. “We’ll be here for two days before we go to Washington for Reagan’s inauguration.”

  “Can I get a couple of days off, too, boss?” Fast Eddie asked. “I’d like to see my old grandpa and look up a few friends.”

  “You got it,” Judd said. He turned to Bridget. “You have the two days too.”

  “Are you sure you don’t need me?” she asked.

  “What for?” he smiled. “I’m healed. It’s better.”

  Merlin said from across the aisle, “Don’t forget we’re due in
the office in an hour.”

  “We’ll be there,” Judd said. “Fast Eddie will take Bridget to the apartment in the second limo.”

  New York traffic, as usual, was impossible. Though the office was only thirty blocks from the heliport, the limousine took thirty-five minutes.

  It was a quarter to eleven, fifteen minutes before the meeting was scheduled to begin, when Judd walked into his office, the same one that had belonged to his father. He closed the door behind him and looked at the portrait of his father looking down at him. In his mind he heard his father’s voice. “Hello, Son.”

  Softly, he spoke a response: “Hello, Father. You see, nothing’s been changed. Just as you wished.”

  “Nothing’s been changed,” echoed in his mind, yet he thought he could hear his father’s voice: “Yet, everything has changed.”

  Judd stood silent, looking up at the portrait.

  The echo continued. “But that’s the way it should be, Son. It’s a new world out there, your world.”

  “It’s your world, too, Father,” he whispered. “We both made it. Without you it would never have happened.”

  The echo was gone. Judd walked behind the desk, looked out the windows high over the city, then turned his back to it and sat down. The old-fashioned high-backed leather chair creaked comfortably beneath him. This, too, had belonged to his father. Slowly he picked up the telephone and pressed the secretary’s button. “Crane speaking,” he said to the machine. “I apologize for not knowing your name.”

  “No apologies needed, Mr. Crane.” The voice was crisply efficient and completely familiar.

  “Mother!” He laughed into the phone.

  “This is a business office, Mr. Crane, and no familiarity will be tolerated,” she said in a straight voice. “But you may call me Barbara, if you wish.”

  He left the receiver on the desk and crossed the office, opening the door and catching her still holding the telephone. “Barbara!” he exclaimed, lifting her off her feet into his arms.

  She was laughing as he kissed her. “Judd.”

  He led her into the office. “For a moment there,” he said, “I felt I was a little boy again.”