by Paul Kenyon
The gray mountains at the other end of the arena began to move. The elephants advanced in a line, the castle-shaped howdahs swaying.
Skytop backed up until he bumped into the Baroness' foot. He faced the control booth defiantly. "Here goes your scene, Sully!" he yelled at the top of his voice. He lifted the sword and hacked through the ropes that tied the Baroness down.
It sounded as if Sully were having a tantrum. "Stomp them!" he screamed. "Stomp them both! Grind them into paste!"
Skytop helped the Baroness up and supported her while she rubbed life back into her arms and legs. He picked up a trident and held it ready, facing the advancing gray beasts.
"That won't stop an elephant, Joe," the Baroness said quietly. "It'll only enrage him."
"So what do we do?"
"There's one chance. Maybe. How much does an elephant weigh?"
"Huh?"
"Maybe seven tons? About as much as a hundred men."
He furrowed his brow. "Yeah. I guess."
"Get behind me, Joe."
"But — "
"Get behind me, I said."
He took a position behind her, a puzzled expression on his face. But he held stubbornly onto the trident.
The lead elephant raised his trunk and trumpeted. The floor of the arena shook. Another elephant trumpeted. The sound of their feet was like thunder.
They loomed closer, like a prehistoric nightmare. The great cabbage-leaf ears flapped. The wrinkled trunks writhed, sniffing the air, as thick around as telephone poles. She could see the sharp ivory tusks, capable of supporting a mahogany log or impaling a tiger like a shrimp on a toothpick. The little pig eyes were fixed on her unblinkingly as they lumbered forward at a trot.
She could see Ringo, riding on the lead brute's head, brandishing the goad, a look of insane glee on his face. Behind him, in the swaying howdah, were a pair of turbaned Nubians with spears.
She stood facing them, erect and nude, nothing in her hands.
Above her, a camera zoomed in for a close-up. She looked as calm and unruffled as if she'd just stepped out of the bath. The long lens saw a naked goddess, shoulders thrown defiantly back, breasts thrusting forward, hands hanging loosely at her sides.
They faced one another for a frozen moment, the slender white figure and an immense leathery beast, standing twelve feet high at the shoulders.
A shout from Ringo broke the spell. The elephant lashed out with its great trunk. It was like being slammed by a giant padded boom. She was knocked sprawling.
She tried to roll out of the way, but a foot like an oil drum nudged her to a position directly under the enormous tusks. She raised herself up on her elbows and stared up at a yawning triangular mouth and the ridged underside of an upward-curved trunk. A massive round foot lifted to step on her, the toenails like big whitewashed stones.
The Baroness twisted like-a snake, and peeled the false sole off her left foot. The skewer was in her hand, a flat deadly needle the length of an icepick. She jabbed it into the descending foot and rolled away, over and over and over.
There was an outraged bellow from the elephant.
The black widow neurotoxin couldn't kill it. Not those seven tons of flesh. But it stung like hell. It hurt worse than anything the elephant had ever felt in its life.
And it kept on burning and burning as the venom raced along the nervous system, dissolving nerve endings, liquefying tissue and causing an enzymatic chain reaction. The black widow sting is one of the most excruciating pains known. The elephant had just been stung by a spider the size of a basketball.
The elephant went mad.
It reared up on its hind legs, its front feet pawing the air.- The Nubian spearmen tumbled out of the howdah; one of them got caught under a barrel-sized foot. Ringo stayed on the beast's monumental head, hanging on for all he was worth.
It blundered into the two elephants behind it and threw them into a panic. One of them gored a fourth elephant, a young bull who squealed his fear and rage. The two beasts pawed the ground. The remaining two elephants turned tail and lumbered off.
It was an elephant stampede.
The Baroness picked a net and trident off the bloody sands where they'd fallen. "Follow them, Joe!" she shouted. "Stay as close behind them as you can!"
She leaped nimbly after the rampaging monsters, a naked nymph with a three-pronged spear. Skytop lumbered after her like a trained bear.
People scattered frantically in front of the maddened beasts. A gladiator lost his footing and was trampled. A trembling centurion raised his shotgun and fired. The heavy pellets only irritated the elephant he'd fired at; it picked him up in its trunk and flung him screaming into the arena wall. The moving mountains crashed through the safety barrier, knocking over costumed hoodlums.
There, waiting in wooden cages, were the animals that Sully had brought up for the next scene: a moth-eaten Bengal tiger, a pair of black leopards, bears, a hunting cheetah. The elephants' feet smashed through the wood. The bears and the big cats poured out, running confused in all directions. Some of the cats got loose in the stands. Thousands of terrified people started milling around, looking for exits.
The elephants were looking for a way out, too. They launched themselves against the arena walls, against barriers, anything that looked as if it might give way. The lions that had been used in the morning's big scene were there; they hadn't been taken away yet. Snarling and spitting, frightened of the elephants and the noise, they leaped into the stands.
Nobody was paying any attention to Penelope and Skytop. In any case, with the elephants running interference for them, they couldn't be touched as long as they stayed close to the big creatures.
"Where are we going?" Skytop panted.
"To the sheriff's office!" Penelope said. "But there's something I want to do first."
The elephant she'd stung was standing on its hind legs again, its front feet flailing at the air, fighting off the invisible swarm of hornets. Ringo clung desperately to the head harness, his turban askew and his loin cloth flapping. The Baroness cast her fishnet. The end caught him around one ankle. She pulled, and the animal trainer came tumbling off his perch. He landed in the sand at her feet, trying to dodge the elephant's legs.
"How'd you like to be in an animal act?" the Baroness said. She thrust with her trident. The three prongs sank in, just below his rib cage. She lifted the impaled man high into the air, her fury giving her strength. He was still alive, wriggling and screaming. She pitched him like a bale of hay toward his elephant. The frenzied beast caught him in its trunk and threw him away. He landed on the point of another elephant's tusk. The huge ivory spike, as big as he was, almost split him in two. The elephant ambled off, trying to shake him loose.
Up above, a camera boom was starting to topple. An elephant had blundered into its dolly. The cameraman jumped for his life. The $75,000 Ultra Panavision camera went crashing to the ground. An elephant trampled it, mistaking it for an enemy.
"Where's Sully?" Penelope shouted above the pandemonium.
"Ran for it, I guess," Skytop shouted back.
They climbed a broken cage into the stands. Women were screaming. Injured people ran back and forth, clothing torn. Penelope and Skytop mounted an aisle toward an exit door. On the way they passed the Bengal tiger, crouched down in a tangle of broken seats, feeding on something.
The armed centurions were scattered through the crowd, trying to cope with the human floodtide. It was hopeless. They went down, trampled by maniacal feet, shoved aside by desperate people. As Penelope watched, one of them threw away an empty shotgun and ran, pursued by the hunting cheetah.
They reached the street, hearing the shouts and screams behind them. There was thick greasy smoke pouring into the sky; an animal or a frenzied human must have knocked over a torch. By the time they reached the sheriff's office, the first wave of extras had started to emerge from the Colosseum, running, looking for safety. There was a crash, and an elephant came through an arch, still bearing a
crumpled ironwork gate on its tusks.
There was a single guard on duty at the sheriff's office, staring open-mouthed at the people and animals boiling out of the great auditorium. He looked up at the naked woman approaching him, and his jaw dropped still farther. Penelope's bare foot lashed out, knocking his legs from under him. She smashed the rigid edge of her hand against the back of his neck, splintering the cervical vertebrae. Skytop picked up the body and tossed it into the alley beside the jail.
"It's got to still be here!" the Baroness said, opening the drawer of the sheriff's desk.
It was. It was all there. Everything Sully had taken from her or found in the Bugazzi. The Bernardelli VB. Her bra and pantyhose and the can of hair spray. But most important, her bag, with the miniaturized circuitry of a transmitter embedded in the clasp and scattered throughout the lining.
"Dan Wharton would have flown to Los Angeles as soon as Inga told him I was missing," she said. "He and the team will be waiting for a signal."
"But Baroness," Skytop said. "Los Angeles is two hundred miles away, over the curvature of the horizon. You can't reach it with that!"
The Baroness smiled. "Can't I?" she said.
Chapter 16
The Baroness picked up her bra. It was a delicate flimsy thing in pale blue, with a tiny bow between the cups. She stretched it across her bare breasts.
"Too bad," she said regretfully. "I could use one right now."
She and Skytop were on the roof, looking down at pandemonium. Extras were fleeing down the western street, tripping over their togas and rubber swords. Half-naked girls ran about screaming, trying to avoid the confused and frightened big cats. A rampaging elephant was butting the façade of the livery stable, tearing it down. A pickup truck, its back crowded with escapees, crashed through the window of the general store and burst into flame.
The Baroness tore loose the handle of her handbag and pulled four feet of wire out of it. She tied the end of the wire to the bra's blue bow. It made a fine antenna.
The clasp of the handbag was an ivory disc showing the signs of the zodiac. You could twist it like a dial. She tuned it to Aries.
It was the appropriate sign for a distress beacon, she thought wryly. Aries was ruled by Mars, the god of war.
The spiderweb circuitry embedded in the handbag began to warm up, powered by the tiny atomic battery in the jolly-looking sun sign in the center of the clasp. Wharton would be able to zero in on it with direction finders — if she could get it above the horizon.
"Help me, Joe," she said.
Skytop took one end of the bra in his ham-sized hands and hung on for dear life. The Baroness fitted the hair-spray can to the hidden valve in the other end. She pressed the release.
Gas hissed into the space between the two fabric layers. The bra flopped on the rooftop like a landed fish. It grew bigger. The two of them struggled, trying to hold it down. It started to lift. Skytop leaped on one of the cups, straddling it. The cup swelled, lifting him with it. It was the size of a pup tent now.
"That's enough, Joe!" the Baroness shouted.
Skytop slid down the enormous billowing breast and rolled clear. Penelope jerked the spray can free.
The bra floated upward, borne on its disembodied breasts of hydrogen. It rippled in the wind like a giant Macy's balloon, forty feet from hook to eye. The handbag dangled between the prodigious cups, stretching the length of antenna.
They watched as it floated out over the street, hovering high above the milling Roman throngs. A few faces turned upward, wondering at this new prodigy.
"So now all we do is wait," Skytop said.
"Not quite," the Baroness said. She leaned over the parapet. "Look here."
Skytop leaned out beside her. There was a dune buggy parked in front of the saloon. Sweating centurions were going in and out of the swinging doors, carrying film cans. They loaded them into the back of the dune buggy under Iron Man's supervision. Iron Man was stark naked, his weight-lifter's body glistening with oil. He'd probably been getting ready for a scene when the riot started.
"It's the fire," Skytop said. "They're afraid it'll spread. They're saving the important negatives."
"I don't like it," Penelope said. "It looks like they're getting ready for a getaway. Lord knows what's in those film cans. Today's rushes, maybe. Or more film he can blackmail officials with."
Sully's round figure came scurrying down the wooden sidewalk, beetle-sized at this distance. A black leopard was in his way, cowering at the noise and confusion. Sully kicked it absentmindedly. It spat at him and slinked away.
"He's got guts, I'll say that for him," Skytop said.
"He's got that film on his mind," the Baroness said. "There's nothing more important to him."
Sully stopped to talk to Iron Man. They seemed to be having an argument. Sully said something, then disappeared through the saloon's swinging doors.
"I've got to get down there," the Baroness said.
"But how?" Skytop gestured at the surging crowds, the patrolling shotgun men, the animals. "You'd never get across the street."
* * *
"Let me see if I understand you, Sully," said Mister Head. He swiveled round and round restlessly in the barber chair, rising higher and higher. His voice was calm and courteous, but his heavy lips twitched, and his wide nostrils were white with rage. "You're telling me that, somehow, a quarter-million dollars worth of camera equipment got destroyed, and a half-million dollars worth of sets, costumes and props is damaged, and thirty of my boys — my boys — are dead or injured, and Ruby Bill's ghost town is on fire, and there are a thousand witnesses running loose all over the desert?"
"Well, I gotta admit it doesn't sound so good, but…"
"And all you want is another million dollars so you can start over?"
There was silence at the other end of the line. Mister Head could hear faint screams in the background. There was a sound that might have been a trumpeting elephant.
Sully found his tongue. "I saved the footage, Mister Head. I could…"
"I don't think so, Sully. The Syn doesn't throw good money after bad. Your film seems to have proved a poor investment. We liquidate poor investments."
"But Mister Head…"
Mister Head hung up. He turned to his secretary.
"Get Gabriel for me," he said.
Gabriel's head flickered into view a few minutes later, centered on the opposite wall in one of the twelve videophone screens. "Yes, Mister Head?" he said.
"You are well?" Mister Head inquired.
"Very well, thank you," Gabriel said with well-mannered deference.
"Gabriel, I have a little job for you. I want you to round up some of the boys. At least twenty or thirty of them. You'll need to take five or six cars. Drive out to the Ruby Bill estate. There's a problem there. You may find some troublemakers out there — probably from the Org. One of them seems to be a big Indian. Reprimand them. Restore order. Reprimand Sully Flick, too, and all those people who work for him."
"You want me to reprimand them permanently?" Gabriel said.
"Yes. You can requisition a truckload of pick-and-shovel men. Tell Benedict I said so."
"If I can make a suggestion, Mister Head…"
"Yes?"
"Instead of a truckload of pick-and-shovel men, why don't I requisition a bulldozer and driver? We can get it out there on a flatbed truck. That way, instead of a dozen witnesses, you'll have just one."
"Very good thinking, Gabriel."
"Thank you, Mister Head."
"How long will it take you?"
"An hour to round them up, another hour to get there."
"Very good. One more thing, Gabriel."
"Yes, Mister Head?"
"Go through Sully's film. There are some negatives and prints that are very important to us. Very valuable. Don't let anything happen to them. Bring them back to me."
* * *
There was the rattle of automatic fire in the distance. The Baroness lifted her
head.
"That's a Galil assault rifle," she said. "That has to be Wharton and the team."
Skytop cocked his head and listened. "The new Israeli submachine gun?" he said. "The 5.56mm job? Yeah, Wharton said he wanted to use them on our next job. Said they're the best in the world. But they're not on the market yet. How the hell did he equip our arsenal with them so fast?"
"What is he shooting at?"
"Mopping up Sully's boys?"
"No. Listen."
There was answering automatic fire. It sounded like M-3 machine guns.
"Look!" Skytop yelled.
A convoy of black limousines was careening through the Roman ruins, followed by a dangerously swaying flatbed truck with a bright yellow bulldozer lashed to it. The lead limousine pulled to a stop, unable to get through the hordes of extras. Car doors opened and slammed shut. Dark-suited men began to filter through the ruins, firing at unseen opponents. There was a grenade explosion. The windshield of one of the limousines shattered, and the driver leaped hastily out, looking for cover.
"We can work our way out there," Skytop said. "Go through the alley, around back. There are some guns downstairs in the jail. We can set up a crossfire…"
The Baroness was peering down" at the street in front of the saloon. Sully was pointing at the limousines and saying something. Iron Man nodded. They jumped into the dune buggy, Sully at the wheel. They crept slowly through the thick crowds, heading away from the limousines and the gun battle.
"Sully's afraid of his friends," the Baroness said. "I wonder why. He's trying to get away with that film."
Skytop said, "If we can fight our way through to Dan, we can maybe get clear, intercept Sully with whatever transportation he's brought…"
"No, I can't take the chance. Sully's got an off-road vehicle."
"We can't get to him!"
"Joe, listen to me. I want you to get through to Dan. I want him to clean up this cesspool. Blow up those buildings — make sure the Syn never uses them again. I'm going after Sully."
"We can do it. Those punks ought to be easy to handle. But…"