by Troy Conway
“They have an incinerator where they bum them. Sometimes, of course, a robot comes all unprogrammed—what you might term ‘goes mad.’ Then she has to be destroyed before she can hurt anyone.”
“How do they do that?”
“The guards have tiny flame-throwers attached to their belts. Their range is not much, about ten feet. But the flames are so hot the robots catch fire and the heat damages their controls immediately so they cannot move. They just stand there and are consumed.”
“Those guards—are any of them robots?”
“Oh, yes. The more robots they use, the less people they have to worry about feeding—or talking.”
“Is there any way of knowing a robot from a real person?”
She lifted my hand and put it to the back of her neck where I felt the smooth, soft skin and under it the cervical vertibrae. “A robot will have a ceramic plate here,” She explained.
I went on stroking her neck. She nuzzled her head into my neck as she rested it on my shoulder. It was more than disturbing to fall asleep with that bundle of golden curves cuddled up to me, but I managed it. Just before I drifted off, I managed to work out a plan of action for our escape. My fingers were crossed on both hands when I started to dream.
Next morning, we acted like robot and master for the whole compound to see. Lee Chi stood behind me as I ate, she brought me coffee and food, she sneaked little bites of food when nobody was looking. Since she was supposed to be with me all the time and robots do not eat, Lee Chi had to grab her vitamins on the gallop, so to speak. She had become quite adept at it.
She helped herself to the vitamin supply the Robot Development Center kept for the human beings. She snitched eggs and ate them raw. She grabbed glasses of milk on their way into the dining hall. She had to be careful so as not to lose weight, and be sure she did not gain weight. It was a problem, all right, but she had managed it so. far.
We decided it might be best to make our try to get away at once, without waiting. I put on my happy face when I met Kang Chow, and later when I stopped to chat with Fedor Novotny.
They seemed pleased that I was accepting my new role in life with such good grace. I nodded pleasently to all the personnel we encountered along the corridors.
Lee Chi pinched me as we walked along an empty tunnel-way. “There! I know that one. He is a robot.”
There was a guard up ahead, standing stiff and straight, staring straight ahead down an intersecting corridor. My heart picked up its beat. I could see the portable flame thrower attached to his belt. I kept on walking and felt Lee Chi pressing something round and smooth into my palm.
It was a pretty stone paperweight she had stolen from a desk past which we had walked, flat on one side. It would do just as nicely as the leather-covered sap with which Shu Shang had broken the ceramic plete of Yi Lou. My fingers tightened around it.
I started my swing from the floor.
The robot guard was completely unsuspecting.
The paperweight slammed into his ceramic plate with the force of an express train. It made a dull cracking sound when it hit The robot guard gave off sparks from the opening in his neck-covering, then fell forward.
I grabbed the flam-thrower.
Lee Chi whispered frantically, “We can’t leave him here. Somebody might find him. Wait! There are storage closets along these corridors. Over here!”
We dragged the guard along the tunnel. It would have been easier to burn him to ashes, I suppose, but the burning would take a little time and only God knew who might come strolling along here.
I closed the door on the inert thing.
“Professor Damon!” a voice called.
I whirled, feeling my heart sink. The flame-thrower was on the floor near the closet door where I’d set it to open the door. And Dmitri Kolsikoff was hurrying toward me.
“It is time for our love festival, Professor. I am sure yon would be interested in seeing it.”
I waited, my back to Lee Chi, whom I could hear breathing in nervous gusts behind me. I called, “I’d be delighted, Doctor Kolsikoff. Er—how do I get there?”
“I would go with you, but I am otherwise occupied. Lee Chi will see you safely there. Lee Chi! What are you doing?”
The girl stepped forward. The storage room door was open, sir. I merely closed it securely.”
Kolsikoff nodded, stared hard at us a moment, then turned on a heel and walked away. I turned to stare at the flame thrower. It was gone.
“I kicked it into the closet,” La Chi panted, grabbing my arm and hurrying me along. “I had to open and shut the door. Your back was to me, you hid what I was doing from Kolsikoff, but I guess he saw the door moving.”
“If they find that robot, we’re done for.”
She nodded soberly. “I know. You they will keep alive until the final tests are made. Me, I’ll die right away.”
We walked in gloom all the way to the love festival.
It was held in a large room surrounded by tiered seats such as were in the observation room where I had been hypnotized about Feng Ti. Soft mattresses had been spread all across the floor. A raised mattress stood on a dais in the middle of the room. There was nobody in the seats.
“What do we do?” I asked.
“We sit and watch, I guess. The male personnel are given this love festival every week, to make sure their tensions at this confinement do not build up too much. Instead of the saltpeter they hand out to prisoners in your United States prisons, the Red Chinese use this method.”
“I like your way better.” I said. As we sat down to await developments, I got an inspiration. “Listen! If all the person nel are in here making love, why don’t we just slip out and make our break for it? Everybody will be too busy to notice us.”
Lee Chi turned her head, eyes brilliant with hope. “Oh, yes! I should have thought of that myself. It is the one time there won’t be any real people in the compound, except for this mom. Oh, it’s marvelous!”
A blue door opened in the far wall.
About three hundred Chinese dolls came prancing in, wearing their de jackets and pants. Each girl went to a mattress and stood there, waiting.
Lee Chi leaned to my ear. “When they were building this place, they employed more than three thousand people. They gave it out that the work they did was to beautify and preserve the Buddhist cave paintings. So nobody is the wiser in Red China, except the higher-ups.
“Today, of course, only about three hundred real people are involved in the running of this place. All of them are male.” She giggled. Except me, of course.”
The men were filing in now. They were all Chinese, and they were headed by Kang Chow. The thoughy touched my mind that under Communism, even their loving war done by herd instinct.
At the rear of the column came the two Russians.
Fedor Novotny had a big grin, indicating the fact that he was already relishing the fun-time ahead. Dmitri Kolsikoff was faintly scowling. The sex drive didn’t run so fast in him, I felt. This was almost a chore to the smaller man. He would have been much happier somewhere deep in his laboratories.
Lee Chi slid her hand into mine, Being only human, she slid forward to the edge of her seat and her red tongue ran around her lips. Well, I was almighty curious myself, but my mind was on escape rather than on eroticism.
In short minutes, no matter how interesting things got down them on those mattresses, Lee Chi and I would be on our way. We would grab the flam-thrower, mow down any robot guard that tried to stop us, and be out of this place in minutes—long before they finished the love festival.
I sat back, completely relaxed.
I was as good as on my way to Hong Kang .
Then a voice cut through my dreamings, “Professor Damon!”
It was Kang Chow calling. He stood there beaming his smile up at my astonished face. As a matter of fact they were all looking up at me.
“Will you lead us in love, Professor?”
My heart sank I heard Lee Chi gasp with the realization that
every eye was on us. Escape was impossible, if I had to go down to the one unoccupied mattress and play a frolicking follow-the-leader! My dreams want smash before reality.
I stood up and bowed. “I would be honored, Kang Chow.
But as you bow, I have a very date trauma about robot women.”
Kang Chow smiled grimly. “I’m anyhow, Professor!”
They knew! my thudding heart told me. They realized I knew Lee Chi was human and no android. They had chosen this way to expose us with all the traditional deviousness of the Chinese mind. Dmitri Kolsikoff had seen Lee Chi kick the flame-thrower into the closet and knew we were up to something, but he had remained quiet, knowing what was coming
Lee Chi cast me a despairing glance as she stood up.
She led the way to the slaughter.
CHAPTER NINE
Lee Chi stood beside the mattress on the raised dais. Her head was high and her full lips smiled, but in the black eyes there war heartbreak and despair which only I could read. She knew as well as I what this meant. I would get erotically excited by her human body. I was not supposed to get excited became I should have believed her to be a robot,
The Red Chinese had thought up a real mean way of making me betray Lee Chi to them. They would torture her to make her tell of our escape plans. No matter how brave she was, the Chinese knew ways to torment the human body that would make a wooden Indian howl.
Kang Chow began speaking.
“We will follow your lead, Professor. What you do with Lee Chi, we shall do with our own love mates. Since you are on the raised dais, it is easy for us to see you both.”
Was there a hint of mocking laughter in his voice?
He said, “You are known as a true adept in the love postures. Even in Maoist China, we know of your priapic prowess. We all have yearned to match strokes with you, deep in our hearts. Call it male jealousy if you will—but the need is there.
“Now we are going to get that chance!
“Lay on professor!”
The bastard!
I lifted my hands to the wooden buttons on Lee Chi’s coolie jacket and undid the first three. Then I dragged the jacket down off her shoulders and to her upper arms. The front of the jacket I then drew together just beneath her jutting breasts. I buttoned the jacket ftaps so that they pushed her boldly thrusting breasts upward and forward.
I glanced down at the rest of the gang.
Six hundred golden breasts poked outward above three hundred tightly buttoned coolie jackets. “If this is the way I’m going to go,” I thought. “I’ll make it a memorable experience!” I leaned and licked Lee Chi across each jutting nipple.
She moaned, unable to stop that sound of utter delight, Her breasts were familiar to me; I had made lip and lingual love to the bosoms of Ip Chung and Kai Lai. I knew their responses, their full curves. After all, Ip Chung and Kai Lai had been made in Lee Chi’s shape and form.
My lips gathered in her big nipples, one after the other. Below me, three hundred male heads bent and did what I did. Lee Chi was shifting her rounded hips in her growing need for satisfaction. I could hear her linen trousers scratching together as her thighs worked.
My fingers went under ha jacket, carressed her smooth torso flesh, all the way up to the tightened coolie jacket. Then I slid them downward, easing down her elasticized trouser belt, until the coolie pants were caught on the wide sweep of her bared hips.
Over her lower belly and upper buttocks I slid my fingertips gently, like feathers. Lee Chi was gasping in pleasure. So were three hundred other female throats, slightly below us.
I fondled, I teased. Lee Chi was making her hips go back and forth in rut-need. Ditto the three hundred female robots below.
I knelt and slowly, ever so slowly, drew down the coolie pants. I leaned to kiss her undercurve of belly. She let her head fall back and a low wail rose from her corded throat. My lips traced a network of caresses about her upper thighs, her hips. I turned her, devoted my attentions to her quivering buttocks.
I could hear the men now. They were growling. rasping curses. I gathered that I was prolonging connection far too long. I wondered at the intelligence of the other leaders the group might have had. What did they expect me to do, throw her down on the mattress and just hammer away? I wanted Lee Chi to have a good time too.
Even if it was for the last time.
I expected to hear Kang Chow yell up at me, ordering me to hurry it up, but he played the game. He was suffering along with all the rest of the males, but he meant what he said about trying to stay with me.
I teased Lee Chi a little longer about the backs of her upper thighs before I turned her and lifted her left leg onto my shoulder. Her hands came down to tangle in my hair as my lips kissed and my teeth nibbled her sensitives.
After about ten minutes, she panted, “Please! Oh, please!”
I put her down on the mattress very gentIy.
Then I squatted in the. lebeuss el djoureb of the Arabs, in which the slow insertion of the male member is aided by the vaginal flow of the female, and then begins a rhythmic to and fro swaying. This “fitting on the sock” is designed to give the woman the greatest pleasure, but the man enjoys it just as much.
I swung into a side posture, the djenabi, with Lee Chi on her side and with yours truly fitted into her, likewise on my side.
As a matter of fact I went through all eleven manners of the Arabs, with Lee Chi flat on her back or on her side, or stretched with her knees wide apart as she knelt in the manner of the cow with the bull.
The hours went by and I went on and on.
Forgotten were the men and robot women below us. Lee Chi was my world, a world of sobs and gritted teeth, of fingernails raking my back, of thighs clamped tight about my middle. She was smooth and soft and perfumed, a mass of erogenous ecstasy. Her head went back and forth or rubbed savagely against the mattress-covering in her uncontrolled convulsions of delight. She was wet with sweat, but the hell with that. Since Kang Chow and the Russians had seen me with my pleasure ready for her pleasure, they knew damn well she was not a robot.
Until this moment, I suddenly realized, there had. been sounds and screams and curses rising up to my ears. Now I could hear only the harsh pantings of Lee Chi and my own bull-like breathing.
I risked a glance to my side.
The men lay collapsed in the arms and thighs of the robot women. Dmitri Kolsikoff was snoring, Fedor Novotny was smiling blissfully. The Chinese men were equally asleep, worn out with their erotic endeavors.
Hah! I remembered the words of Ip Chung and Kai Lai. So a Red Chinese man would put me to shame in the amative art, would he? Here were hundreds of them scattered about on their love mattresses and they had all caved in long, long ago.
I was still going strong.
I grinned down at Lee Chi. “Come on, honey—let’s beat feet. There’s nobody around to stop us.”
Her arms and thighs tightened about me. “More,” she breathed. “Oh, more! I’ve never known anything like this.
Please, please.”
Jeez! No wonder Ip Chung and Kai Lai had been such heterocoital hounds! Lee Chi was the master model.
So I devoted myself to her.
I went through three of the erotic exploits of the legendary hero Kokah Pundit, by which he hoped to overcome the priestess demon Naugee-Devah, before Lee Chi fainted. She was what Naugee-Devah had been, a jigger-khweyyah or one-who-eats-the-liver-of-a-man, with her amorous embraces.
Any normal male would have given up long ago, with Lee Chi. Me, I was just warming up.
I got to my feet. I bent and picked Lee Chi up in my arms. I walked down the few steps of the dais and stepped a path between the mattresses. I was going to walk out of this place with her and nobody was going to stop me. Or so I thought.
But at this moment—
Dmitri Kolsikoff got to his knees, then rose to his feet at sight of me. He was scowling malignantly.
“Go to your room, Professor. Fedor and I must con
sult about you Guards! Guards!”
Our escape plans went flying in the running feet of the guards who came racing into the rooms to take up their position on either side of me. Kolsikoff nodded his head.
“Food will be brought to you, Professor,” he snapped.
I stared back at him. “Am I a prisoner?”
His shoulders shrugged. “Perhaps, perhaps not. It is what I wish to consult about” His eyes touched Lee Chi, who lay there in my arms dead to the world. “And about that one, as well.”
The fat was in the fire. I carried Lee Chi back to my round room and put her down on the bed. Dmitri Kolsikoff knew Lee Chi was human, and suspected that she and I were working in cahoots to escape.
The delegation came three hours later. It consisted of Kang Chow and the two Russians. Kang Chow was beaming in delight, so was Fedor Novotny. Only Dmitri Kolsikoff was frowning.
With both hands, Kang Chow caught my right hand, shaking it. “Professor, never has there been such a love festival as there was today. It lasted close to four hours!
Everyone agrees that as a love leader, you are a veritable Shou Lou. My congratulations!”
I was flabbergasted. I looked at Fedor Novotny.
“I thought at first I was going to fail you,” I told him. “You, see with a robot woman such as Lee Chi— “
Novotny clapped me on the shoulder with a hamlike hand. His laughter boomed out and bounced around from wall to wall.
“Professor, I hypnotized you. Remember? You see robot women as real women now. And you always will.”
Kolsikoff snarled. “I do not like it, I tell you. This man is a monster! He will kill everyone by making them love themselves to death trying to keep up with him.”
Novotny gave his friend a good-natured push. “Go on, Dmitri. Just because you are undersexed, don’t try to spoil things for the rest of us. No, no. Kang Chow and I have voted him perpetual love leader and that is how it shall be.
Imagine sharing the erotic knowledge and know-how of Professor Rod Damon!”
I said, “I’m flattered, naturally. But I had hoped to go back to the university and—”
Kang Chow held up a hand. I am sorry, Professor. But that cannot be. You see, we had intended to kill you after we completed our final tests. Your performance today was so marvelous that we voted against that drastic measure.