Beautiful You: A Novel
Page 15
Penny cowered in the van, but her father leaped from behind the steering wheel and grabbed the coil of rope. Together, the two men trussed up the woman in the bathrobe and carried her quickly back to their vehicle. Through all of this, she was screaming, “Not without my playthings! Let me have my toys!”
Milo slid the heavy door shut and Penny’s father hit the gas, peeling rubber. Behind them the abandoned shopping cart and its sad cargo receded into the distance.
The entire abduction had taken less than ninety seconds. In the dark back of the van the kidnapped woman continued to shriek until Milo plunged the syringe into her arm.
Still breathing hard, but driving slower, her father said, “I’m sorry you had to see that, sweetheart.”
Only now did Penny recognize the sedated wretch wrapped in rope on the floor.
It was her mother.
“Look at her, the poor woman,” Milo said compassionately, as he sealed her mouth with duct tape. “We need to deprogram her.” They drove through picturesque streets and neighborhoods Penny recalled from childhood.
Her dad described how her mom had quickly spiraled into madness. He and fellow members of their church had staged an intervention and confronted Penny’s mom about her Beautiful You compulsion, but she denied she had a problem. Tonight they were taking her home, where they could keep her tranquilized while she’d undergo a series of hypnosis and aversion therapies to help manage her self-destructive behavior.
Penny wasn’t surprised that she’d failed to recognize this ranting maniac. Her mother’s face was jaundiced and lined with exhaustion. At the family home they carefully carried the trussed body up the porch steps and through the front door. Once the patient was safely stripped of her clothing, and her wrists and ankles were tied to the bedposts of an attic bed for her own protection, Penny ventured to the basement, where her mother’s collection of National Enquirers filled floor-to-ceiling shelves. Each shelf was labeled with years and months which corresponded with the back issues, but Penny didn’t have to look far. Set aside in a stack were issues that contained the facts pertaining to C. Linus Maxwell. Bless her mother, Penny thought. The beleaguered wretch had gotten this far in her research, winnowing out these precious copies from the thousands she’d hoarded over the past half century.
After fixing herself a well-deserved cup of cocoa, Penny carried the tabloid newspapers to a favorite overstuffed chair near the fireplace in the living room and began to read.
There wasn’t much new information to be gleaned. Maxwell had been born as Cornelius Linus Maxwell, January 24, 19—at Harborview Medical Center in Seattle. There was no record of his father. His mother had raised him by herself. She’d had no other children.
He’d attended the University of Washington, but dropped out his junior year when his mother had been killed. It was rumored that he’d abandoned his studies in order to apprentice to some mystic in the Himalayas. Less savory gossip placed him in far-flung brothels and covert medical facilities, where anything could be bought. Debauched sex … designer drugs … whatever the case, Corny Maxwell had disappeared for six years. Within a few months of his reappearance he’d allied himself with the youthful, ambitious Clarissa Hind.
In an issue dated ten years ago the business section of the Enquirer contained a ten-part series about DataMicroCom’s ongoing research projects. Over the following ten installments, the tabloid detailed how Max had become a pioneer in the field of tiny-robot technology. Called “nanobots” or “nanites,” these were robots so small they were measured in millionths of a meter. They were hardly larger than molecules. Science had always bored Penny, but she found the reading fascinating. The primary application for nanobots was in medicine. More correctly referred to as “nanomedibots,” these robots were so infinitesimal that they could travel freely through the bloodstream or neural pathways and repair damaged tissue on a molecular level.
An in-depth feature in the science section of the National Enquirer filled in the picture. Some nanobots were designed to scour veins and arteries, removing dangerous buildups of plaque. Other swarms of nanobots sought out cancerous tissue and killed it with heat or targeted chemotherapy.
A faint voice in Penny’s head whispered, And some nanobots leak out of personal care products and hijack the crura of your clitoris!
She searched for more news about nanobot development, but the newspaper articles arrived at a dead end. Following a decade of groundbreaking work in the field of miniature robots, DataMicroCom had apparently dropped the entire matter. A small follow-up article quoted Max as saying that nanobots weren’t cost-effective. He’d closed the bot division and redirected those resources toward the development of the more lucrative Beautiful You line of products.
Shocked, Penny remembered the episode in the president’s limousine. Without any apparent stimulus she had felt herself becoming aroused. And not merely aroused—she’d been building toward an orgasm. Her entire awareness had been reduced to the tips of her erect nipples and clit. Only the president’s gentle assurances had coaxed her through the tidal wave of erotic frenzy.
She thought of Alouette’s breakdown onstage at the Kodak Theatre. And of her own bedeviled mother, bound to the bed upstairs. It was the broken item: the Dragonfly. The idea sounded crazy, like some conspiracy that a frothing-at-the-mouth women’s libber might propose. But it was possible that the toy hadn’t broken so much as it had hatched. Its body had split, releasing swarms of microscopic robots small enough to navigate upstream through her cervix into her uterus. Small enough to pass through the blood barrier in her ovaries and travel throughout her nervous system. Even to her brain. Who knew how they might be affecting her behavior and perceptions?
On her flight from New York, Penny had read about a crowd of twenty thousand female shoppers who rioted in Times Square, fighting one another for the chance to buy a new perfume. Likewise, in Rome, female shoppers were battling to lay their hands on a new face cream that was being heavily advertised.
That X-ray Penny had had after her attack on the subway platform, of course it’d shown nothing. Nanomedibots were smaller than anything a diagnostic tool could detect. And now, Penny realized, now they were implanted in tens of millions of women throughout the industrialized world.
If Brillstein was to be believed, and Max had caused Alouette’s death, then perhaps the nanobots could do more than bring pleasure. Perhaps they could also kill.
Penny finished her mug of cocoa, then slowly climbed the stairs to the attic. In the darkness her father and Milo stood over the nude form of her mother writhing in bondage, moaning and gagged with duct tape.
“We can’t cure her,” Milo was saying bravely, “but we can curtail her self-destructive habits.” The men knelt on either side of the bed and began to pray quietly into clasped hands. Fresh syringes and bottles of tranquilizer crowded the top of a bedside table.
Looking on, helpless, Penny wondered whether she might be correct. Nanobots might be behind her mother’s wild sexual acting-out.
“Dad,” she said. “I have to go.”
Her father looked up, stricken. “You know, Pen-Pen, back when your mother and I lived in Shippee, the doctors warned us that she could never have children.”
Penny listened. She’d never heard this. She checked her watch. The jet was already waiting on the tarmac.
Gazing down on his wife’s dazed, helpless form, Penny’s dad said, “Every expert we saw said she’d never have a baby. That’s why you were such a miracle.”
Penny stepped closer and hugged him around the neck.
Still kneeling, he smiled up at her. “You were our little gift from God.” In a hopeful tone, he said, “If God can give us a daughter as wonderful as you …” He reached up and mussed her hair. “Then maybe God can deliver your mom from this hideous affliction.”
Milo looked on, beaming with simple faith. Penny’s naked, deranged mother was in good hands. “Stay,” Milo insisted brightly. “Stay and bake us something!”
“Where to?” her dad asked. The poor man. His whole world was falling apart.
Her voice cold and resolute, in the voice of a stranger, Penny said, “To Nepal.” She repeated, “I have to go to Nepal.”
The yak would only carry Penny so high up the rocky slopes of the Himalayas. After the remote hamlet of Hop Tsing she was forced to ride the narrow, bony backs of Sherpas the last three almost-vertical miles. And even they would not take Penny the full way. As a distant cave came into view, the Sherpas trembled with fear. Muttering oaths to ward off evil, they lowered her to the sun-baked ground and began to retrace their steps. When she protested, one stout fellow pointed toward the distant cave and babbled in his native talk, hysterical.
Penny had no other choice but to continue on alone.
As she scaled the crumbling stone face of the mountain, she could picture Maxwell making this same pilgrimage as a young man. In Paris, he’d described spending years with this strange, aged mystic. He had presented himself to her as a willing apprentice, and she had agreed to mentor him in the most esoteric ways of the tantric. Despite his youthful vigor, Maxwell said those years practicing sex magic with the crone had almost killed him.
In fact—and this detail frightened Penny—he said the cave where the mystic dwelt was littered with the skeletons of men and women she had sexed to death. Their bones frozen in Kama Sutric positions of unbearable erotic contortion.
With her Louis Vuitton roller bag strapped to her back, she inched higher, clinging to toeholds in the sheer stone wall. Remembering the tales of orgasmic agony Max had told, she almost hoped the mystic had died. It had been a decade since anyone had seen her. The dry, icy winds threatened to pluck her fingertips from the thin cracks at which she clawed. Native birds dived at her, pecking and scratching to protect their nearby nesting grounds. The stench of guano was overpowering.
What choice did she have? Even the president had sworn this was the only means to counter Maxwell’s plot. By murdering Alouette in such a public fashion, he’d proved he could murder anyone, anywhere. He held millions hostage whether they knew it or not. Even if they discovered the nanobots, it was too late.
Only Baba Gray-Beard might offer an antidote … a treatment … a training that could counteract the legions of implanted microrobots.
A gust of wind tugged at Penny, tearing her grip from the rocks. In desperation, she unbuckled the Prada belt that held the suitcase to her back and watched it plummet into the void below her. It seemed to fall forever, turning in the air slowly before exploding in a burst of vividly colored Anne Klein separates. Unencumbered, she climbed faster. By midday, she felt exhausted as she hauled herself over the lip of the cave. It was unoccupied.
According to Max, Baba Gray-Beard spent most of her lonely days creeping about the steep cliff faces, gathering the lichen and mosses that constituted her meager diet. She subsisted on pillaging the eggs of cliff-nesting birds. Many of her aphrodisiac salves and poultices were formulated from the wild fungi she foraged. Her nights, Max said, she spent alone. For two centuries she’d lived in such solitude, exploring new, ever more powerful ways to pleasure herself. These were the techniques the Baba had schooled into Max and that he was co-opting in the mass-produced products of Beautiful You.
Just as he’d described, the cave was populated by skeletons and desiccated cadavers of people who appeared to have expired in the grip of extreme climaxes. Among the deceased were other items. Man-made items. These were the crude prototypes of what Maxwell had perfected and tested on Penny. Here, crafted from dried reindeer antlers and lashed together with animal sinews, were the erotic inventions of the solitary Baba. To endure innumerable nights of isolation, she had crafted and perfected these many devices for stimulating herself. Her boundless solitude had yielded this treasure trove of sensual tools.
Penny crossed the cave and examined them. Some, carved of living rock and polished to a glassy smoothness, were obviously designed to abrade the perineal sponge. Others were fashioned of bird bones and wrought to excite the clitoral legs that encircled the vagina. Still others had clearly been used rectally.
Evil Maxwell. With a single glimpse of these ingenious sex toys, the inventions of this aged hermit, he must’ve known that their power would overwhelm and enslave the civilized female. Each was astounding, and Penny marveled over them, not noticing that a stooped figure had climbed into the cave’s entrance and was shambling toward her.
A creaking, quavering voice said, “I have a guest.”
Penny spun around and caught sight of a hag who strongly resembled the surrounding devices and skeletons. Baba Gray-Beard was herself sculpted of bones and tendons, a knotted tangle of dried muscles and gray hairs. Her eyes shone like two moonstones, entirely white with thick cataracts. Her wasted body was unclothed, and her namesake abundance of ratted, off-white pubic hair had grown so long that it swept the ground between her bare feet.
Maxwell had said she was blind. The Baba, he said, found her way along the cliffs, climbing and hunting entirely by touch and smell. She knew the feel of every cleft and crevice in these mountains. She knew the distinct scent of every dirty crack.
She lifted her nose and sniffed the dank air. In a weathered voice, she said, “Do I detect a young, fresh pussy?”
Penny held stock-still. She quieted her breathing.
“Do not try to hide your smell,” the crone chided. “It has been many years since I have had a student.” She lowered a ragged pack from her back and began to remove clumps of moss from it. Carefully she lifted out small bird eggs, while saying, “From your odor alone, I know you arrive here from New York City, and that you come by way of Omaha.”
Maxwell had warned that the Baba could tell a person’s entire sexual history from the taste of his or her genitals.
“Expose yourself,” the hag beckoned. “Let your flavor tell me all the truths that you cannot.” She took another step closer, but waited.
Penny knew that she had no choice. Her mother and her best friend might be dying. A vast segment of the population was implanted with a power they refused to believe existed. Slowly she slipped off her Christian Louboutin shoes. Followed by her DKNY slacks and blouse. Lastly she lowered her Agent Provocateur panties. Each item she folded and carefully laid over a large rock.
When Penny was nude except for her Victoria Secret Miracle Bra, she stood and waited.
Baba Gray-Beard waddled up to her. The spotted crone petted between Penny’s thighs with a trembling hand, croaking, “Ah!” Marveling, she whispered, “You have no hair. Is this Maxwell’s malevolent doing?”
It was, but Penny was too frightened to speak. She nodded. It was the Uzbek tribal method with aloe and pine nuts.
The Baba proudly tapped a wizened fingertip on the cracked skin of her own chest. The constant tug of dry, icy winds had stretched her breasts until they flapped like leathery dugs. She nodded and smiled to herself. “It was I who taught him that technique.”
Without hesitating in her caresses, the hag lifted the same bent finger toward Penny. Inserting just the gnarled tip of the finger, she said, “Little one, your vagina is so juicy!”
Like a dried twig, knobby and brittle, the rest of the finger slid inside as far as the knuckle. The old woman cackled. “So receptive, too! You will make an excellent student, my dear!”
As the centuries-old recluse probed her, Penny tried to remember all the things she loved in the world. Things like the carriage ride she and Tad had taken through Central Park. And butter brickle ice cream. And Tom Berenger movies. She thought of Fendi purses and summer carnivals with Ferris wheels and cotton candy. Wistfully, she recalled how much she’d admired Clarissa Hind, and how excited she’d been to see the first female president sworn into office.
When she could no longer dredge up pleasant thoughts, Penny squirmed in futile resistance to the old wit
ch’s finger. It seemed to be exploring the deepest recesses of her psyche.
After much poking about, the finger withdrew. It glistened in the dim light of the cave for only a moment before it disappeared between the hag’s puckered lips. Sucking at it, the Baba groaned with understanding. She pulled the finger from her craw and licked it several times with a gray tongue before she spoke. “C. Linus Maxwell, he is the one who taught you.” She was reading everything about Penny from this one sample. “He instructed you in all the arts which I taught him. He was my greatest student. A teacher craves such a student. But modern persons are too impatient; they seek only the fastest route to orgasm. They have no time for an old teacher. Maxwell had time.”
The thorough examination sated the old mystic’s curiosity. As her coarse red hands continued to stroke Penny, she said, “Yes, I trained Maxwell in the erotic ways of the ancients.” Her voice creaked like the rusty hinges of a door opening onto someplace truly awful. “Those practices are almost lost to humanity. No one will devote the copious time and diligence required to acquire the sensual arts.” Maxwell did. She was glad to have a student to mentor after all these years. “Before Max, my last apprentice was sixty years ago. His name was Ron Jeremy.”
She continued to lick the finger, savoring it as she spoke. “Maxwell learned everything that was mine to teach. Those centuries of self-stimulating my loins, he benefits from all I’ve discovered.” Dismay clouded the hag’s expression. Even her blind, pale eyes darkened. “Now Maxwell has used the sexual wisdom of the ages to hurt many women and benefit himself.”
Penny was shocked at the mystic’s comprehension. When the hag again extended her twig of a finger, Penny gladly mounted it and rode it with excitement.