The Sex Machine

by Troy Conway

  Ip Chung just stared at me.

  “Well?” I demanded. “Am I Rod Damon?”

  “I guess so. I’ll report that you are, anyhow. Although you are a bit of a disappointment, you know. They told me you would make love for a week without stopping. I am very sorry. You are not like a virile Chinaman, but I knew that before coming here.”

  “Now you look here,” I snarled, shaking my finger at her pert little nose. “I can out-screw the greatest Chinaman who ever lived. I’11 prove it if you bring in a Chinaman and put him to work in the next bed.”

  Her shoulders lifted in a lazy shrug as if to tell me she couldn’t care less about h a fellow Chinese, that all she was concerned about was me, and I had let her down. She really got to me, I guess, because my pride was hurt. Nobody but nobody had ever made me say uncle in a love-bout before.

  She got to her feet and stretched, letting me see her nakedness in the hope (I assumed) that I would be so smitten with lust for it that I would throw her on the bed again. My eyes met her stare. I smiled and shook my head.

  “I’ve had it, honey,” I told her.

  She bent and picked up her dress. “Then I might as well put this on again.” she told me coldly. She slipped her arms into the blue cloth, then let the rest of it slide down her slimly curved body.

  Ip Chung moved toward the door. “So long, fairy.”

  I threw the sandwich plate after her. It shattered on the door. The Hell with you, sister! Go get yourself bunged somewhere else, next time. I sat there glumly, something like the dying gladiator, and felt sorry for myself.

  A woman had beaten me at my own game. She had taken all I had to offer and had come back for more while I’d crept off like a dog with his tail between his legs, howling for mercy. Or just about. My vaunted superiority was a myth as far as Ip Chung was concerned. I was in the dumps so deep I began to think maybe I didn’t have priapism, after all.

  I thought about going out to some place like the Tsimshatsui district, where the call girls worked. If I could make one of those slant-eyed sweeties say uncle, I would know this was only a temporary thing with me.

  I got up to get dressed. A knock sounded at the door. When I opened it I saw a bellhop standing there with a telegram in his hand.

  I handed him half a buck and tore open the envelope. There was a couple of pages of typed words, all from Walrus-moustache. The substance of his communique was that the latest word out of Red China, as given by a Thaddeus X Coxe Foundation agent in Saigon, was that Red China was going in big for robots. Yeah, mechanical men and women. Their vaunted population explosion was a myth to fool the rest of the world.

  Instead of half a billon people, .Red China had maybe half that. Plenty of hands to do the work,-you understand, but not too many to spare for the armies with which Mao Tse-Tung hoped to overrun the world. Since. I was .going into Red China, it might be a marvelous idea to check on this and let Walrus-moustache know at my earliest opportunity.

  I remembered reading about the regimentation of Chinese men and women, in which men have been herded together in compounds and the women in similar concentration camps. There is no mingling of husbands and wives, no sex between them, and so naturally the birthrate. will drop. The idea behind this great inspiration of Mao. Tse-tung was that the fields needed workers to plant the crops and tend them, and then harvest them.

  Crops were needed for food. Maybe Mao also felt that the fewer mouths to eat the food, namely babies, would make more food for all the men and women in their palisaded camps. Now Mao-Tse-tung was reaping these past years of sexlessness. No sex, no kids.

  Just recently, a girl escapee from Red China to Hong Kong spoke of shifting populations. I don’t mean the Red Guards, I mean the men and women who live in the cities like Peking, Changsha, Foochow. As many as fifty million men and women were being sent into the country sides, including the young Red Guards. This may have been a plot to explain the dwindling populations to such newsmen who were permitted inside the Bamboo Curtain.

  It all began to add up in my mind:

  Walrus-moustache might have hold of something.

  If he did, it was my job to ferret it out and get answers. Were robots the answer? Had some Chinese scientific genius found a way to manufacture machines to do what a man could do? To hold guns and fire them and man battlefields to attack Russia, Japan, the United States? It might not be so impossible as one might think.

  A cold shiver ran down my spine.

  I could visualize rows upon rows of spindley metallic things with inbuilt computer banks, fitted out with machine guns and small catapults for hurling hand grenades, moving in unison across a battlefield strewn with dead American soldiers. Bullets would merely bounce off such metal men. If you didn’t hit a very sensitive computer spot, protected no doubt by .an extra-thick layer of steel, you just couldn’t kill such things. There would be no wounded robot soldiers, only disabled ones, so there would be no less for a medic corps.

  Maybe they could even program these robot doughboys so that they would blow themselves up like a bomb when they advanced into a group of our boys. The prospect was scary. I thought about Russia and the troubles it had had with Red China at Chenpao Island. Could be that the Soviets had some first-hand information about such robots. Naturally they would keep such information to themselves.

  It might be also that with enough robot soldiers, China could hurl itself into an atomic war, realizing that the fallout would not affect their armies in the field. With robots, too, the Red Chinese would not need trucks to carry their soldiers. They could refuel them, when necessary, from the air with a helicopter fleet.

  Yeah, the more I thought about it, the less I liked it. Walrus-moustache did right to worry. I determined to find out all I could.

  This was no help about my uptightness on my priapic problem, of course, but it did let me worry about something else. I figured I could get loose by finding myself another girl. As far as the robots went, I would have to wait until—

  The telephone shrilled.

  A suave voiced asked, “Professor Damon?” It went on, when I identified myself: “I am your contact man in Hong Kong, Chang Li. It is my pleasure to see you, to bring you your passport into the glorious land of Mao Tse-tung, and to arrange for your safe travel.”

  I figured it would be no harm to be civil. I said, “Praise to your great leader. I am very anxious to do what I can to make Mao Tse-tung understand how much I admire him. When can I expect you?”

  The voice was pleasantly surprised. “In ten minutes. I am happy that you feel this way, Professor. I was given to understand that—but then, stupid servants make stupid mistakes.”

  “I’ll be waiting for you,” I told the voice.

  In ten minutes, a neatly dressed Chinaman in his forties was standing in the hotel corridor, introducing himself as Chang Li while bowing low. I bowed back. He came in and, as Ching Kow had done in my university town, extracted a passport book from his pocket. There was a sheaf of paper money placed inside the book, together with a letter of introduction and a greenish-blue ticket.

  “If you permit, I shall be your escort to the river junk, Poi Lu, meaning ‘White Dew’. Captain Shu Shang is to be your host and captain. It is hi duty to make your trip up the Canton river a pleasant one. If he fails to do this, please report him.”

  I bowed, telling Chang Li that I was positive Captain Shu Shang would be everything Chang Li said he would. “lie Chinese are, above all else, most truthful,” I added. It was the clincher. Chang Li beamed.

  I got dressed under hi watchful eye. I expected hi to raise a commotion about my Luger that I slipped into my shoulder holster, but he only smiled some more and nodded. “You must be careful. There are bandits in the interior. It will not hurt to have a gun.”

  “By the way,” I mentioned, “there was a girl in here before, who said she was named Ip Chung. She gave me some sort of sex test, I understand.”

  “Ah, yes. A test that you passed with flying colon, Professo
r. Ip Chung was profuse in her praise. She said you were no ordinary sexual giant. You are a carnal colossus. I believe that was the term she used.”

  “She did?” I asked, gaping in amazement.

  His answer was a soft laugh. “She insulted you, you think? No, no. It was merely her way of seeing if you could meet dl her challenges. If she showed contempt for your priapic prowess, it was merely to rouse you up some more to demonstrate again how magnificent a man you are.”

  “Well, now.” I grinned, feeling better.

  Maybe I would not need a Tsimshatsui district call girl, after all. If Ip Chung was being insulting in the hope I’d bed her down again, I guessed I could forgive her.

  “Let’s go, Chang Li,” I said.

  We taxied to the docks from the Hong Kong Hilton. We braked to a stop just beyond Connaught Road Central. This was where the Star Ferries run. There was also a sampan of red paint and teakwood, with a lateen sail flipping in the harbour breeze, riding at anchor.

  Chang Li bowed me across the gangplank and onto the deck of the junk. A. big Chinaman with a black patch over his left eye and a silk handkerchief on his bald pate advanced with a rolling walk. He was a pirate if I ever saw one. He carried no gun or cutlass, but there was a leather-covered sap tied to his broad leather belt. His blue shirt was open to reveal a heavily muscled but hairless chest.

  “Captain Shu Shang, Professor Rod Damon.”

  Shu Shang said something in Chinese. Chang Li translated it as: “The captain wishes you a long life and a merry one, and wishes to add that while you are his guest you must do everything you wish to enjoy your voyage.”

  “Just how far are we going?” I asked innocently.

  Chang Li smiled. “Into the interior, as far as you can on the Pai Lu. Then a car will take you from a small fishing village in Hunan province and deposit you in a village named Tin Song. It is at Tin Song that the purpose of your visit will be made plain. I am sure you know when Ti Song is, if you know your geography, Professor.”

  “It was my one weakness in school.”

  He chuckled, delighted. I guess he figured he could tell me any damn thing he wanted, and get away with it. As a matter of fact, my geography is pretty good. 1 know all about China, Russia, India and Korea, all the “maybe trouble” spots of the world, where I might be sent as a Coxesman.

  I heard slapping slippers coming along the deck. Quite casually, I turned my head. My eyes popped.

  She was a knockout. Sure, she was Chinese but her face was exquisite, even by movie star standards. Long black hair hung down to her behind and framed a tilted nose, pleasantly slanted eyes, a mouth like a ripe red fruit, and skin the color of a fresh peach.

  There was a striped jersey on her from neck to bellybutton. Below this she wore blue denim slacks. Her feet were bare except for the flapping leather sandals. Her breasts bounced under the jersey, up and down, up and down, up and down, to her every step. Her hips swung lazily, insultingly, as if she knew that what she had in her blue denim was too much for any man. Especially me.

  “Kai Lai, Professor. She is the captain’s daughter.”

  I could not help it. My eyes went to his ugly old face, then back to the girl. Shu Shang was grinning wickedly. Chang Li laughed outright. The girl just stared at me with her charmingly slanted black eyes. She didn’t crack a smile.

  Not that she was hostile; she just was not about to be gracious. When Chang Li gestured to her, she nodded her head. As she went by, her eyes slid toward me and challenged me. If I ever saw invitation in a pair of female eyeballs, hers were full of it. I dropped my stare to her jouncing buttocks that were almost embarrassingly revealed in the tight blue denim.

  “Congratulations,” I breathed to the captain.

  “Kai Lai take care of you, I assign her to you for—how is it?—for guide on trip. Yes.”

  I bowed low. “My thanks, Captain. My eternal thanks.”

  Chang Li held out his hand. “I leave you now. I have other things to do beside enjoy your friendly company, Professor. Farewell for now.”

  He went dockside, trotting over the gangplank. Two burly sailors came running to shove the gangplank over onto the dock. Then they cast off. I heard the rattle of the anchor chains. Underfoot, the deck throbbed as a powerful diesel engine thundered into life.

  The captain nodded at my glance. “Sail good when wind blows; motor better to make sure junk carry passenger to destination.” His one good eye winked. Then he turned on a heel and went off about his duties.

  I sauntered to the starboard rail and leaned there, staring at the harbor, at the walla-wallas, those taxi-motorboats carrying their passengers here and there from and to Kow-loon Peninsula and Victoria, together with the Star Ferries plying their routes back and forth to the same destinations. It was a peaceful scene. A couple of pretty girls in a Chris-Craft waved bare arms at me. I waved back, admiring their slender shapes in black bikinis.

  “You do like girls,” a soft voice said.

  I turned. Kai Lai stood leaning on the rail beside me. The large red mouth was smiling now, its curves matching the invitation in the glistening black eyes.

  She said, “I have heard of you, Professor. I spoke with Ip Chung.” She laughed as invitingly as she smiled, I decided.

  “I’m not sure my ears didn’t burn.” I said smiling back.

  Her thin black brows rose. “Oh, you must forgive Ip Chung her crudities. She gets very angry when she exhausts a man. She thinks she exhausted you. I do not believe she did. A man tires of too much sex, too fast. Am I right?”

  “Ordinarily, I do not tire. But as you say, she came on too fast. Sex is like a glass of water to a thirsty man, it should be sipped slowly and enjoyed.”

  She clapped her palms together, nodding. “It is so. I have told Ip Chang the same thing, again and again. We shall be good friends, you and I. We think very much alike.”

  “In that case, we both admire your loveliness very much. You have the same sort of body as Ip Chang, but your face is even prettier. I don’t know when I’ve seen such a beautiful woman.”

  “Do go on talking. You say delightful things.”

  My head nodded at the scene around us as the junk gathered speed. “‘Right now I would prefer you to act as the guide your father said you’d be to me. The sun is hot, and I prefer moonlight for romance. I11 fill your pretty ears with compliments a little later on.”

  Her hand rested on mine. The skin was very warm. I lifted her hand to my lips and kissed it. She beamed at me

  “Hong Kong means ‘Fragrant Waters Island’ in the English,’’ she prattled. “It lies in the South China Sea just below the Tropic of Cancer. It was founded, according to the legend, by a Chinese scholar who sought the most beautiful place on earth for his grave, just about the time when the Normans were invading England under William the Conqueror.”

  She had a lovely voice, with a sing-song intonation that was melody to the ears. I could listen to her for hours.

  Her eyes laughed at me, as if she understood my thoughts. “From that time until the middle of the nineteenth century, this territory belonged’ to China Then it was ceded to England. It has been a British Crown Colony ever since. Did you do much shopping?”

  “Ip Chung kept me too busy.”

  Her hand clapped again, that one ringing sound that indicated her approval, I gathered. Every time she clapped, her bream jiggled enticingly. I decided, staring at them, that I would keep her approving of what I said, as often as I could.

  We moved out of the harbor and into the waters of the South China Sea, where the West Lamma Channel runs. To our rightthe starboard side-were the New Territories that merged into a aeries of islands and then the greater bulk of Lantau Island. We steamed into the Canton River estuary and plowed our way through those gray, murky waters until we were making progress up the Canton River itself.

  Tin Song lay five hundred miles away.

  Kai Lai was a real font of information about almost anything Chinese. She explained
quite carefully how the women of China were coming out of the cocoons which they had inhabited for so many centuries. As a mark of their submissiveness, long ago, Chinese ladies had had .their feet bound up so tightly that they could hardly walk. Their feet grew distorted by this cramped position, yet were considered beautiful by their husbands and lovers.

  As a matter of fact, these deformed feet were usually covered with velvet and satin slippers; it was considered the height of indecency to let a man see them uncovered. The most lascivious caress the Chinese Lady of those years when the feet were bound could bestow on a husband or a lover to take his penis between her hoof-like feet and toy with it.

  Today, the wives of high government officials are entirely than their female ancestors. As female feet have been freed from those intolerable old bindings with the coming of western civilization, so the modern-day Chinese woman was thinking freedom for everybody, Kai Lai assured me, in a kind of sin-suffragette movement. Much of this has been attributed to Siang Ching, the fourth wife of Mao Tse-tung.

  Madame Ching has changed the old order. She is a determined woman, energetic and ambitious. At one time she had been an actress, and now she was determined to become the number two power in Red China behind her husband. She is ably seconded by the wife of Li Pao, Yeh Chun. When Mao Tse-tung dies, Yeh Chun may well become First Lady of China Today she serves as deputy chief of the army’s cultural revolution and as director of the ruling Politburo’s military affairs committee.

  “There’s an old Chinese saying that when women rule China,” I said, “then China is decaying.”

  Kai Lai straightened. “This is capitalistic propaganda! The women of China are its future. Ladies like Siang Ching, Yeh Chun, Tsao Yi-ou and Teng Ying-chao are brilliant in their accomplishments.”

  Slyly. I pointed out that the Hsia and the Shang dynasties crumpled because of too much power in the hands of women, and that it was the Empress Dowager T’zu-hsi who succumbed to the revolt that eventually led to China’s. going Communist.