by Troy Conway
The White Dew moved steadily onward.
When night came, I got into my cabin before Kai Lai could follow me, and bolted the door. She hammered its wood with her fists and pleaded with me to let her in, but I lay back in the bunk, pulled up the covers, and drifted off to dreamland.
Next morning, I felt fit as a bikini on a movie starlet. I ate a breakfast worthy of a gourmet and drank three cups of rice wine. I did miss my coffee, I admit that, but Kai Lai brought me Cantonese tea to make up for it.
She was quite cheerful, I saw. Apparently the twenty-odd hours we had spent in embrace had been enough for her. Or else she considered the bolted door by which I kept her out of my cabin to be a sufficiently strong hint. At any rate, for the next few days she was most circumspect.
When I teased her about having forgotten her needs for fanq shu, she giggled. “It was forbidden, after night before last. It would not be fair to you.”
“Oh? How’s that?”
“We dock soon, at Pong Chi. Then we go overland to Tin Song. We are deep in the interior here. At Tin Song, you will begin the great experiment, to see if you can make love well enough to exhaust Chinese joy girls.”
The answer was obvious, her eyes told me. I was quite a man but nobody could exhaust women like Ip Chung or Kai Lai. As if she could read my thoughts, she said, “And we’re just a casual sampling of Chinese women.”
“You’re a little more than that,” I accused.
“What do you mean?”
“You’re like no women I ever met, and I’ve met a lot of dames. I’ve knocked them all out with my erotic endeavors, believe me.”
“Not a woman of Red China!”
“Oh, yes.” I mentioned Tao Yuan with whom I had traded some yang for her yin on my Kashmir caper to help Prince Setura Khan. “Tao Yuan was no superwoman and she was just as Chinese as you are. As a matter of fact, she was a Maoist secret agent.”
Kai Lai looked disturbed. She cried out, “I do not believe you! No man can keep up with a daughter of Mao Tse tung!”
“I don’t know how you do it, baby—but I’ll & d out.”
Kai Lai turned and walked away.
Next day the Pai Lu turned toward shore, heading for a long pier standing out from a small town, jutting into the muddy waters. Half a dozen peasants in blue linen jackets and baggy pants, wearing straw cone hats, were waiting there for us. The White Dew anchored about fifty feet offshore. The men in the blue linen suits shoved a shallow-bottomed rowboat into the water. Two of them manned its double oars.
Captain Shu Shang came to stand beside me’ at the rail. He said pleasantly, “I myself will accompany you, Professor, to the village of Tin Song.”
“And Kai Lai?”
“My daughter has other duties that demand her presence elsewhere.” He chuckled. “You will not miss her, there will be many pretty girls where you are going.”
I moved down the little ladder to a thwart of the rowboat. The captain came after me, practically walking on my heels. He was still very friendly and I began to think that maybe he meant what he said about being my escort. I sat down and the two men with the oars stroked back and forth. They nosed the boat up against the pier.
I stepped up and breathed in the smell of river waters. As I did so, I heard the sound of a car motor. A black touring car pulled up alongside the crowd lining the banks, watching me in silence. A man in a black suit got out and came striding forward.
He bowed law. “Professor Damon? I am Ling Tow, your guide. I am to take you and Captain Shu Shang to Tin Song. If you will be good enough to come with me?”
I went along, with Shu Shang falling into step. We got in the car together and the driver hit ninety traveling along a dusty road toward the small fishing village of Pong Chi. I did some thinking when I could. Ninety miles an hour on a rutted .dirt road is quite an experience, however, so my thought processes were somewhat limited.
The Red Chinese wanted me for a reason. I could not swallow the idea that they merely wanted to test the strength of my penis. There was another reason, there had to be. Walrus-moustache wanted me to spy on them, to check for the possibility of robots in Red China. This made good sense. It did not make good sense when I pondered over their invitation to me. What did they have in mind? Certainly not the mere idea of giving me physical pleasure! Nor did the other reason, the idea of screwing me to death’ with pretty Chinese bimbos particularly apply.
The car stopped before a house.
Ling Tow said, “Please light down, Professor. There is a necessary task yet to be performed before you are ready for your journey.”
My shoulders shrugged. I stepped down and went into the house with Ling Tow and the captain. A girl who had been standing in the room into which we walked came forward.
“Is everything ready?” Ling Tow snapped.
The girl made a little bow.
“You will go with her, please,” Ling Tow said. “It is very necessary. It is part of your visit.”
The girl turned and led the way to another room.
This house I was in was an old one. It held silk screens and very delicate furniture painted with red lacquer and gold. Chinese furniture consists of benches and chairs, for the most part. Some of them were of ebony, inlaid with ivory and lapis-lazuli. A moon window opened onto a garden in the back of the house.
The girl waited until I was in a small bedroom. Then she closed the door and gestured me to the low bed. I raised my eyebrows at her. She did not speak, she came across the room and began undoing the buttons of my suit.
I pushed her back.
“I’ve had enough loving, honey. I’m waiting for the contest.”
She looked puzzled. Then she turned on a heel and went to the door. She beckoned Ling Tow.
“What’s the trouble?” he asked. “Yi Lou here is a mute. She cannot speak. She is to undress you and cover your body with a pigment that will make you look like a man of the Chinese republic.”
“How come?” I asked. “Isn’t my white skin good enough for you?”
“Certainly, my dear Professor. It is just that—”
He frowned thoughtfully. I could read his face as I could a book. His eyes widened in delight as an idea came to him. He exclaimed triumphantly, “However, there are roving bands of Red Guards hereabouts. They hate foreigners. They may stop our car on its way to Tin Song. If they find a white American with us, they will pull you out and execute you very slowly, with sharpened bamboo stakes.”
“And you can’t protect me?”
Ling Tow shrugged.
I did not believe him for one moment. There was another reason why I should pose as a Chinaman. Bide your time. I counseled myself. Put on a good face and let them do what they want. I put my hands to my jacket, lifting it off.
“All right, I’ll go along with you.”
Ling Tow went out and closed the door. The girl came for me again, hands outstretched. She wanted to undress me, so I let her. She seemed very detached about the whole thing. there was none of the hot rut about her that had characterized Ip Chung and Kai Lai.
When I was naked, she gestured at the low bed. I lay down my front. Yi Lou lifted an ointment jar, smeared some gold salve on it, and began rubbing the stuff into my pores. She sat close beside me on the bed, leaning over me. Her breathing was soft, unmoved. Her palms were smooth, gentle.
Those hands lulled me to sleep.
A hand shook me. I opened my eyes. Yi Lou was smiling down at me. She put her -hands on my shoulders and tried to roll me over. I got the idea. I turned over and lay on my back.
The girl stared at my loins, eyes wide. I guess the sleep must have refreshed me because my priapism was showing. My manhood was limp but bloated. As Yi Lou stared at it, it started to rise.
She gasped. She turned away her eyes and filled her hands with the ointment. Leaning over me so that her heavy breasts brushed my chest, she began working on my face. Into my forehead and cheeks and ears she rubbed. I found myself staring at the way he
r breasts bulged out the linen of her jacket. She had breasts like Ip Chung and Kai Lai, round and full. Her nipples were stiff too.
My head reeled. My studies have told me that most Chinese women have small bosoms. The three examples of femininity I’d met so far were just the opposite. Their mammary endowments were almost western, by comparsion. I stared into her face.
She was just as pretty as Ip Chung and Kai Lai, except that her features were subtlely different. A full red mouth, black eyes with long black lashes, glossy black hair that hung down over her shoulders, made her seem almost like a sister to them.
The yellow hands were moving down my neck and chest, rubbing in the salve. She was breathing a little faster as she let her palms and fingers slide over my rock-muscled belly. I have a good body—I need a strong body to accomplish my tasks as a member of the Coxe Foundation. Apparently Yi Lou liked it. She was having a good time with it, rubbing in that golden salve.
When she came to my loins, she drew away her quivering fingers and turned to the jar of ointment. Dipping in her fingers, she started applying more of the salve, directly on my swollen manhood.
“Easy,” I said, grabbing her wrists.
I did not want her to weaken me. I knew damn well I’d need all my strength for sex once we got to Tin Song. Yi Lou did not understand. Her wrists turned slowly in my hands. She tugged them to free herself.
Her eyes pleaded with me for understanding. She had a job to do. I must allow her to continue. I allowed her, by releasing her wrists. The notion came to me that all she had to do to free herself was pull free of my hands. The manner in which she had turned her wrists had told me she was incredibly strong.
Puzzle after puzzle. What kind of women was Red China breeding, these days? They were super-sexed, and apparently super-muscled as well. I eyed her more closely. Her body was slim, almost the exact duplicate of the bodies of Ip Chung and Kai Lai. She had no reason to be so strong. For strength, a person needs big muscles. And her muscles were no larger than those of any other girl.
She was still rubbing salve into my manhood. Her black eyes were enormous, staring down at me. You might have thought I was the first man she had ever seen. Around and around my privates her salve-sticky fingers worked. I stared down at myself. From my loins upward. I was the color of a Chinaman. My legs were still tanned white, and somewhat hairy. Yi Lou had not gotten around to them yet. It began to look as if she never would.
“Don’t make me lose my yang essence,” I warned.
Her lips curved in a gentle smile even as her slippery fingers writhed and stroked all around my jade stick. The Chinese place much store by the yang essence. It is supposed to give longevity if retained during intercourse, and if the yin essence of the female bathes it regularly.
The all but legendary Shou Lou is reputed to have had thousands of wives and concubines, and to have kept them all happy with his phallic prowess. He is always shown with a peach, the symbol of the female private parts, clutched in a hand. Sometimes a dragon, representative of the cosmic yang essence which has risen up his spine to his enlarged head, and which gives him his nearly eternal youth, is shown entwined about his body. At times I have thought that Shou Lou was as afflicted with priapism as I was myself.
Yi Lou bent and kissed me with slightly parted lips. Her tongue ran about my tortoise head in a lazy circling. Her hands that held me squeezed me tight. She was building me up for a bedtime bout, but I was mindful of the tests that were to be held in Ti Song.
Gently I reached out, slid my fingers into her back hair, and lifted her away from her plaything by force. Her pretty face was set in a caricature of sensual joy, which changed soon enough to an angry grimace.
Her lips opened and closed. She could not speak, she was a mute, but her working lips told me that she needed me, that she was going to have me. Her red-nailed hands went to her peasant jacket, ripped it down the front. Big golden globes leaped out to hang before my eyes. Her breasts were almost the exact duplicates of those of Ip Chung and Kai Lai.
“Sorry about this, honey,” I said, and swung my unyellow legs off the bed.
She hurled herself at me and wrapped her arms about my chest while she slapped her open mouth on mine. She was really something, rubbing her bare nipples up and down on my chest hairs, panting and sobbing between my lips.
It took all my strength to throw her off. Once again I was reminded of the physical prowess of Kai Lai. I slammed the back of my hand against her jaw and damn near broke it.
I ran for the door.
Yi Lou was right at my heels, silent except for the slap of her slippered feet on the carpets. I bolted for the open air. Yi Lou followed.
I am a good runner. I have nm the hundred-yard dash in close to ten seconds. I ran from that house as if the devil were after me with a red-hot pitchfork, but Yi Lou gained on me. I could hear Ling Tow calling after us, with something like pure fury in his voice. I didn’t stop to argue.
She caught me under a peach tree, appropriately enough. Those bare yellow arms went around me and we both fell to the ground. Yi Lou was grunting and groaning, scrabbling at her jacket, lifting it off over her head and then putting her thumbs to her thin trousers. They went down to disclose her golden belly and the black brush at her loins.
Naked, she sprang at me again.
This time I was ready for her. I grabbed her right arm, whirled and threw her over my shoulder in the Flying Mare wrestling hold. She thudded to the ground. I expected to see her lying there, broken in spirit if not in body. But Yi Lou was a regular rubber ball.
She bounced up and came for me again.
I socked her in the belly. I hit her on the jaw. She took both punches, grinning, and came on, digging in her bare feet for better traction.
What kind of woman was this?
I was getting scared. No matter what I did to her, it was as if she had not felt it. Her skin darkened where I’d hit, but aside from that she showed absolutely no effects from my blows.
In desperation, I caught her arm again and rode her over my hip, tossing her upside down at the peach tree below which we were fighting. Her left arm, wildly outflung so as to maintain her balance, hit the thick, low branch that almost scraped the ground.
She hit the ground and bounced.
I damn near screamed in horror!
CHAPTER SEVEN
Her left arm had snapped off at the elbow!
I expected to see broken bone and a lot of blood and hear her screeching in agony. Instead she got to her feet and came for me again. My eyes bugged out, I guess, at sight of that stump of a left arm.
There was no broken bones, no blood!
Only wires! They dangled from the stump, jutting out of a hollow upper arm as if she was some kind of machine. I gulped. I swallowed. She damn well was a machine. She was one of those robots old Walrus-moustache had told me to be on the lookout for.
“You aren’t real,” I breathed, backing slowly.
Her movements were even slower than they had been, as if the breaking of her arm had jarred loose other connections inside her skull or chest. She moved like a man under water, almost painfully. But her eyes still glistened and her red mouth went on cooing to me.
Men were running up to us by this time. I saw a panting, sweating Ling Tow following close behind the patch-eyed captain, Shu Shang. They looked fit to kill, glowering at me and at the robot girl who kept coming for me.
“Somebody stop her,” I yelled.
Shu Shang was the one who did the deed. He leaped forward, yanking the leather sap from its belt-hook. He brought the sap around in a vicious swing, just at the nape of Yi Lou’s neck. There was a crack as if he had broken a ceramic plate.
Yi Iau totted, emitting sparks from her broken arm. Her eyes rolled up in her head. Her good arm waved around and around like a windmill blade as she twisted sideways, beginning her fall to the ground.
Ling Tow was mopping his wet face as he pulled up beside me. “Terrible, terrible,” he kept muttering i
n a Chinese dialect. “I told them that this would happen. I begged them not to send me defective model!”
“Hey, what’s going on?” 1 asked dazedly, trying not to let him know I understood him.
My words snapped him to attention. His black eyes peered sharply at me. Then his shoulders rose in a casual shrug. His mouth smiled apologetically.
“You were not to know of this as yet,” he said ruefully. “It was to be a surprise when we reached Tin Song.”
“Maybe I’d better not go on, then,” I offered.
His hand whipped out of his coat pocket, holding a small Chinese automatic. His eyes had turned hard. Gone was the professional smile of the escort. “You will come with us, please. If you do not come, you will die here and now.”
He looked as if he meant it, so I raised my hands td him, palms up. “Okay, okay.” I tried to keep the jubilation out of my voice. Apparently my being in Red China had something to do with the manufacture of the robot women, though I didn’t know what. I was being taken to Tin Song by force, so they certainly could not suspect me of wanting to go to Tin Song as a Coxeman secret agent.
Just beyond Ling Tow, Shu Shang was glowering at me with his one good eye, slapping his leather sap into his calloused palm. Half a dozen of his bullyboys from the Poi Lu were also staring at me, as if daring me to try to escape.
Not me. I smiled at everybody and said, “I’m only too happy to go with you Ling Tow. Just tell me what to do.”
Since I was naked and he was surrounded by all those musclemen off the White Dew, he figured he was safe. He put the gun away.
“You will finish putting the golden slave on your legs, please. It is mast important that you be a Chinaman.”
“Why?”
His sober face shook from side to side. “I cannot ten you that; it is forbidden. You will learn why in Tin Song.”