The Best Laid Plans

by Troy Conway

  I shrugged. “I also assume that you have placed electronic miniatures in my head, as you did with Rhea Carson. I am therefore under your direct control and supervision.”

  Hell, I might as well be honest with them. They knew my background and could guess at why I had come to Paris. I knew something about them. Why not put our cards on the table? I was playing this by ear, and my ear told me to do what I had done.

  Yves Roger-Viollet regarded me thoughtfully. “You are either a very brilliant man, Professor—or a very stupid one.”

  I grinned, “Do I have a choice?”

  “Not really,” Matelot announced.

  My hands went wide. “Then why fool around with words? I’m your man, whether I like it or not. I assume that while I work for you, I’ll live high off the hog, as they say in the American southland. Good food, good shelter, exciting women to bed down.”

  Matelot chuckled with ribald enjoyment. “I have heard how Claudine carried on when you were taken away from her. You must be a very efficient courailleur, Professor.”

  “I do all right.”

  Yves Roger-Viollet made a sudden motion with his hand. “Let me get this straight. You are a secret agent for an American organization. You came to Paris to investigate HECATE. Now that we have you in our power, you are quite willing to accept the fact? Without fuss and fury? Without putting up a fight?”

  “Could I put up a fight?” I asked.

  Matelot said, “No. Not in the least.”

  They did not know that a counter-button was hidden away somewhere inside my body, and that with its help I could break their electronic control over my brain any time I chose. It was my ace in the hole, my card up the sleeve. I kept my features to a poker face so as not to betray my thoughts.

  “We may have selected better than we knew,” muttered Doctor Roger-Viollet. “However, we shall soon know the answers to that. Professor, please come with us.”

  In the hallway outside my room, half a dozen muscular young men in tight black uniforms were waiting. I grinned at sight of them.

  “In case I had put up a fight?” I wondered.

  Roger-Viollet nodded. “To be sure. Ours is an efficient, foresighted operation. We try always to anticipate the possible.”

  The six guards fell into step behind us, the overhead lights reflecting off the silver crescents on their skin-tight blouses. I knew a little about the goddess Hecate, enough at least to understand that she was also known as Diana on Earth and Luna in the sky. A moon goddess, among other things, which would explain the crescent.

  I said something of this and Matelot nodded.

  “Hecate was a mysterious divinity,” he explained. “Actually, she was three persons in one, Luna or Selene in the sky, Diana or Artemis on Earth, and Proserpina or Persephone in the underworld.

  “She is represented by three bodies or three heads, or by the moon in one of its phases. She could send terrible demons from the lower world. She was a sorceress and the mother of all witchcraft. She was to be found wherever two roads intersected or near tombs or even where the blood of a murdered person had dripped onto the ground.”

  “A rather terrifying lady,” I murmured.

  “Indeed she was—and is, Professor.”

  “Okay, okay.-I get the hint.”

  I was taken on a guided tour of the HECATE compound. There was the hospital and its attached laboratories, the gymnasiums where the patients exercised, a large swimming pool, and various assorted buildings. This was the public image.

  Beyond the acre of lawn that surrounded the compound, there was a small forest. We walked along a narrow path between the trees for about half a mile. Then the real headquarters of HECATE came into view.

  Three low buildings, windowless, were surrounded by a high wire fence that was flooded with enough electricity to kill any man or animal who might come in contact with it. Roger-Viollet touched a gadget on his belt and the metal gate swung back silently. We went through and it closed behind us. All very efficient, and designed to safeguard the privacy of the HECATE family.

  The door of the nearest building opened as we approached. A girl guard in the same black-and-silver-crescent uniform of the male guards in the hospital, stood at attention. The skintight uniform blouse looked better on her than it had on the men. Ditto the hip-hugging tights and leggins.

  I eyed her. She eyed me, choking back a smile at my swift perusal of her uniform and what was under it.

  “This is operations headquarters,” explained Matelot. “It is the brain of HECATE. I tell you this because we expect you to be one of our finest operatives, Damon. You might as well understand what it is you’re a part of. Here we keep contact with our men all over the world. Here we receive information and send out orders.”

  And keep the files on those operatives, I thought.

  “Beyond this building is our testing grounds,” Roger-Viollet chimed in. “It is there we prove the ability of our secret agents—as you will be tested in a few days. We have a rating chart for each individual, based on fighting prowess, on sex ability, on perception of danger and reaction to obstacles. It is a thorough rating system. You shall be so rated.”

  We moved on to the testing grounds.

  “We regret we cannot show you the testing mazes themselves, which are underground,” Yves Roger-Viollet murmured. “No contestant can see them until the actual event It might give him an unfair advantage.”

  What I was permitted to see was a room filled with what looked like giant computers. They had control panels inset into all the lower walls, with television screens above them. What transpired in the testing mazes could be seen and assessed here, corrections made, new dangers added or old ones removed during the course of the trial. It was a room of flawless metal walls and glistening data processing and mind-control machines. It was a little frightening in its efficiency. In here, I would be judged and found wanting, or accepted to full membership in HECATE. For my purposes, I wanted not only to be accepted, but to pass these tests with flying colors.

  “You have three days of rest, Professor,” Matelot smiled.

  Then the tests.

  The tour was over. We turned and marched out into the French sunlight. I was determined to give a good account of myself, not only for my individual reputation, but for the honor of the Thaddeus X. Coxe Foundation. I had done so many jobs for the Foundation I felt a lot of loyalty to it.

  I spent the next three days in the gymnasium and in the outdoor swimming pool. I exercised, I worked until the sweat ran down off my six-foot-tall frame. I normally stay in perfect physical condition—my tasks for the Foundation see to that—but I figured to add an edge to my muscles by a steady honing.

  Biggest sacrifice of all, I ignored the nurses. From time immemorial, warriors going off to war have abstained from sex. I considered that I was a warrior marching off to war, if the tests were to be anything like I imagined them to be. So I offered up my abstinence to Mars and hoped that Venus would be understanding.

  I slept and ate like a child too.

  On the morning of the fourth day, energy was bubbling in my every vein. I was awakened by a guardsman and told to come with him, dressed only in a bathrobe and slippers.

  I paraded out of the hospital and along the walk toward the testing grounds with a dozen nurses staring after me. Just before I entered the woods, I turned and blew kisses back at them. They cheered and waved their handkerchiefs. At least I had somebody rooting for me.

  I was marched through a hall of the headquarters building and conducted down a staircase to a metal door. The guardsman knocked. The door opened, revealing a long corridor, with a second metal door at its far end.

  When this metal door opened, I found myself staring into what seemed to be a lounge room, with divan and matching chairs, pictures on the wall, magazines on a coffee table, an oriental rug underfoot. The guard motioned and I removed my bathrobe and slippers. I was stark naked.

  The guard said, “Bon chance, m’sieu!”

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nbsp; The metal door clanked shut, locking me in.

  I did not move. There was trouble here. I could sense it. My head told me this was the first test, this room. Something about it was damn dangerous. I squatted down, patting the rug, head cocked to listen. Nothing. I put a foot on the rug, gingerly testing my weight. No gas, no explosive.

  I took another step, and another.

  “Bon, bon!” said a voice. “You are no blunderer, Professor Damon. We are happy to see this. But we are not destroyers. We shall not trap you with hidden death—unless we give you a very obvious clue. The dangers you shall face, for the most part, will be quite apparent ones.”

  I figured HECATE did not want to kill me. That was reasonably obvious. But I was determined to rack up a good score on their marking sheets. I would do my own thinking, thank you, and the hell with their bland advice.

  I was halfway across the rug when I saw it.

  The glass on one of the large pictures above the divan was foggy. The room was warm, but not that warm, and the air was not humid. Ergo, as the mathmeticians say, something like warm gas was coming into the room—and close to the picture.

  I leaped onto the divan. I shifted the picture on its wiring. There was a hole in the wall behind it, out of which an odorless gas was pouring. I was naked. I had no cloth on me which which to plug it.

  I glanced around the room. The coffee table!

  Jumping down, I lifted the long, low table, got a grip on one of its legs, and snapped it off. I got back on the divan and rammed the small, lower end of the table leg into the hole, hard.

  No more gas.

  I heard somebody chuckle over the intercom.

  The far door of the room opened invitingly. I accepted the invitation and walked through it into another room. The door did not close behind me. Maybe my examiners were giving me a chance to back out, if I wanted.

  A wall of the room rose up. Three girl guardsmen stood there, just as naked as I was. Each of them had a bullwhip in her hand, however. Their faces did not look at all friendly.

  Three whips came up and lashed out, with me as their target. I dived forward under those flying thongs and drove hard into the bare legs of the three girls. One of them yelped as her bare back banged into the metal barrier behind her.

  A second girl tried to conk me with the butt of her whip.

  The third girl was coiling her whip for another try.

  I got a hand on a soft thigh of the second girl and my fingers bit in. She had no clothes on, so I had to get her into my flesh. I rolled under her so her belly got the bite yanked her down across me just as the whip started biting into my flesh. I rolled under her so her belly got the bite instead. She screamed in pain, doubling up.

  I reached over her breastworks for the whip.

  My fingers went around it. I tugged and the number three girl came tumbling forward. I erupted off the floor, driving the heel of my hand into her temple and slamming her other temple into the edge of the opened wall that had slid back to reveal them. She crumpled.

  The girl who had yelped sent her lash at me.

  I took it over my bent back as I got to my feet. The second girl was still conscious, so I gave her a karate chop on the neck an instant before I came up on my toes. She lay there motionless.

  I had one opponent left.

  She was a lush brunette, with quivering breasts and a belly that sucked in and out as she breathed. Her features were very attractive; all these HECATE honeys were good-looking, I was discovering. But attractive or ugly, the sight of her bullwhip roused something other than sex thoughts in my mind.

  My back stung where she had lashed me. We circled each other as she coiled her whip for another crack at my nakedness. I let her coil it, let her throw her arm back and up for the blow.

  I left my feet as if sliding for a base, feet out in front of me. My soles rammed her ankles, and she fell straight down on top of me.

  I locked my arms about her and squeezed, holding her arms to her soft sides. Her body was slick with sweat, and as she writhed against my grip, it moved easily, giving me the benefit of hard breasts and soft loins against my nakedness.

  My manhood responded with enthusiasm.

  I saw startled awareness spring to life in the eyes staring down into mine, only inches away. The soft thighs moved, my pulsing phallus trapped between them.

  I panted, “To the victor belongs the spoils, sweets!”

  My fingers were sunk deep in her buttockflesh as I shifted her slightly and rose up, making her know the strength of my manhood. She cried out at the invasion and her fevered eyes glaring down at me softened slightly, as she accepted me fully.

  She tried not to move, sought to free herself, but the hot blood was beating in my veins and I was not letting her go. My flesh needed the solace of her flesh; I was not finished with this obstacle course I was running; her flesh would renew mine, make me know I was a man, and enable me to act as a man should act.

  I rolled her over, I hammered myself at her. She cried out harshly, she flung her head from side to side, but my arms were about her slim middle and I kept her to her task until her rigidity melted and her long legs came up to lock about my waist.

  My flailing hips bounced her buttocks off the floor, rode them back and forth and sideways. I heard a squishy sound above the cries her open lips were pouring out, the wet pull and tug of our united genitals. She was tossing her head back and forth, her belly muscles knotted and loosed as she rode her hips along with mine, everything forgotten but the delight in her female flesh.

  I lasted a long time, as I always do. Even when her muscles went limp in the middle of a shrill scream, when her orgasmic spendings knocked her senseless, I was still in the throes of wild desire.

  Pulling free, I left her sprawled with thighs widespread on the floor, turning to the other women who were just coming to, lifting their heads and looking dazedly around them. I stalked the nearest girl, my desire out there ahead of me.

  Over the intercom I heard a woman pant, “Mon Dieul He is a horse! Look at him! Look at him!”

  My hand yanked the woman nearest me upward. She licked her lips, staring at my loins; her eyes were glazed, she was only half conscious. My arms went about her soft middle to fasten my fingers in her rump. I lifted her, thrust savagely.

  She whimpered, but she took me.

  I drove into her, backing her spine up against a wall in the suspended posture of the Hindu erotologists. She hung there, wailing softly in my ear, beaten, a conquered female fit only to be raped by the conqueror. Against my chest her breasts scratched deeply, her nipples swollen rigid. Her arms went about me, I could feel her coming alive in her female parts.

  Back and forth, pound and push and pull, I made her know I was her superior. A kind of madness was in me at the moment; I was unthinking, a beast subject only to his flesh fury. My teeth fastened in her shoulder as I felt her shudder into her first orgasmic spasm, the pain of my teeth in her flesh adding to her erotic enjoyment.

  There was a hand on my ankle. I took time off from my activities to glance down. The third woman was staring up at us, licking her lips, clawing at my leg to raise herself upward.

  She bit my thigh gently. Her tongue licked it. She was moving against my leg with jerky motions, rubbing her hard breasts against it. I got the feeling she might be something of a masochist, being left out of the sexual embrace yet stimulated by that very omission.

  I reached down, caught her long brown hair, yanked her upward, cupped her middle with an arm, and kissed her. Her mouth was open, wet. Our tongues fought between our lips. Her mount was thrust against my thigh, she moved it against me in a frottage frenzy.

  “Please,” she begged. “Please . . .”

  “Bend over—against the wall!”

  She broke away, turned and put her palms flat to the wall. Her rump thrust back, her white legs were spread wide. In my arms, the girl whose spine was rubbed raw against the wall gave a faint cry and loosened her grip on me.

 
I dropped her, swung to the other woman.

  My body invaded hers, she sobbed as she felt my strength. I reached around her, caught her dangling breasts and squeezed them gently, even while I drove myself furiously. She stayed right with me through three convulsions. Not until her knees weakened, telling me they could no longer support her pleasure-drained body, did I sink with her, still moving.

  I heard female voices crying out in awe and admiration over the intercom. The nurses? Were they here to watch, having heard all about Claudette Marly and me? I did not know, I didn’t care.

  I was the rat in the maze, being tested.

  If they wanted to watch—let them!

  The third woman was kneeling, moaning, finished with her share in my victory binge. I gave her soft buttocks a gentle pat, and got to my feet.

  There was a red door in the far wall. I began my walk toward it and my next test. As I approached, the red door slid back.

  I stepped into the neighboring chamber.

  The red door slammed shut.

  Instantly the metal floor fell away. Where the floor had been was one vast blue flame leaping ceilingward. The heat was unbearable. Sweat ran from my every pore, naked as I was. In a few minutes, I would be baked alive. Nothing could live inside this room. Nothing!

  I had to find the answer to this newest danger—fast!

  Just below my toes was the opening out of which the blue flame jumped and danced. A meshwork of metal rods and burners had been concealed below the floor. Under the burners was a second series of metal rods that crisscrossed the area.

  Heat rises. It would be hot under the flame, but not nearly so hot as it was in the room where I was being cooked.

  I stepped forward and dropped like a stone.

  My hands shot forward, caught at a metal rod. My muscles tightened, breaking my fall. I swung by the rod over black emptiness. It was not hot down there. A cool wind blew, and the rod itself was cool, almost cold to the grip of my fingers.

  Hand over hand I moved along that rod until I was at the opposite wall. Apparently I triggered off a mechanism of some kind, because as I stretched an arm upward to grip the flooring, the blue frame died out.