The Ecstasy Connection

by Paul Kenyon

  "And are you saying that the human organism likewise rarely reaches its potential to fully experience pleasure?"

  "Precisely. Pleasure is a reward for indulging in those activities that contribute to the survival of the individual — or the species. The pleasure of food, to encourage the organism to nourish itself. The pleasure of sex, to encourage the species to reproduce itself."

  "Yes, but what about those pleasures that seem to have no survival value? Alcohol, drugs, fur against your bare skin, music?"

  Mr. Sim chuckled. His vast belly shook like loose dough. "Precisely my point. We use only a fraction of our inborn talent for pleasure, just as we use only a fraction of our brains to think with. We have possibly over twenty senses, if you include such perceptions as the sense of balance, the sense of muscle tension and such things. There are pleasures associated with each one of them. If we could systematically and scientifically explore the limits of each of these pleasures, we could play whole sensory symphonies on our own nervous systems."

  "And have you reached any limits, Mr. Sim?"

  "Not yet, not yet. But I'm trying." The rosebud lips between the huge jowls parted in a smile, showing little white teeth.

  Pickering said, "But each of those sensations ends up as a signal in the brain. Couldn't we someday learn to bypass our sense receptors and all the nerve pathways in between?"

  "Very good, very good, my dear fellow. You're perfectly correct. If our cerebral cortex were spread out flat, it would look like a map about two feet square. To give just one example, you'd find a strip on either side that acts like a precise musical keyboard. The octaves are found at regular intervals about a tenth of an inch apart. If you stimulated the proper points electrically, you might hear an entire symphony — without a note actually being played. Or you might experience the most exquisite sensations of sex, without actually using your genitals."

  "Are you serious?" Penelope asked.

  "Quite serious. After all, isn't that what drugs do? And some drugs scramble your senses. For example, under the influence of LSD, some people 'see' sounds, 'hear' colors, and so forth. If we could learn to bring it under control, we'd unlock a whole universe of pleasure."

  Penelope felt a cold chill travel up her spine. Mr. Sim was a madman. She'd heard similar raving before — from a sadistic interrogator in a Bulgarian torture cellar. The Bulgarian had shown her a whole rack of ingenious instruments he'd devised to stimulate new kinds of pain, and promised to use them on her. When she'd killed him to make her escape, she'd felt she was cleansing the world of a piece of filth.

  She looked straight into Mr. Sim's piggy eyes. "I don't think it's possible to unlock that universe, Mr. Sim," she said.

  "Indeed, indeed!" The enormous jowls quivered. "You must talk to my associate, Dr. Jolly, some day. Brilliant neurosurgeon! Too brilliant for the British College of Surgeons. They disbarred him for some of his experiments. Dr. Jolly thinks it's possible. And so do I. I'm subsidizing his research."

  "Speaking of pleasure," Pickering put in, "shall we order lunch? I'm famished."

  Lunch for Penelope and Pickering was salad, a rare roast beef carved from a silver cart that was wheeled to their table, and Yorkshire pudding. But Mr. Sim's lunch was something else. He had called the Club in advance, and they had put on two extra chefs to get it all prepared and served at the orchestrated tempo he required.

  Penelope watched, fascinated and repelled, as he shoveled the stupendous meal into his face.

  He began with an enormous steak-and-kidney pie, a foot across, washed down with four pints of stout. Next were a dozen wood pigeons stuffed with chestnuts and truffles. He cleared his palate with a serving tureen of simple consommé, then started all over again with five dozen oysters and a bottle of Pouilly-Fuisse 39. A serving of Peking Duck came next, with a bottle of Mumm Double Cordon. Then he was ready for a huge oval platter of finger food — stuffed Chinese meat pastries and steamed dumplings, little meatballs and shrimps impaled on toothpicks, marinated artichoke hearts, assorted pates and a bottle of thirty-year-old John Exshaw Fine Champagne. Grunting with effort, he went on to an entire Beef Wellington with two bottles of Cote d'Or red burgundy. He paused to wipe his mouth on an oversize napkin, then told the waiter, "I believe I'll just sample the Veal Cordon Blue with a chilled Cote de Beaune 1961." He smacked his lips through this, then leaned back in the bath chair and said to Penelope, "Are we ready for coffee and dessert?"

  Penelope thought it was time. Mr. Sim was puffing with exertion, his eyes glazed with the effort of digestion. He was too relaxed to be on his guard.

  "Yes, thank you." She let the waiter pour her a steaming demitasse, then said, "No, I don't believe I'll have sugar. I carry my own saccharine. It's here somewhere." She rummaged in her straw bag.

  She put the little silver music box on the table. Mr. Sim stared at the engraved P. S. on the lid, his face sagging. Penelope lifted the lid. A few bars of "Puff, The Magic Dragon" tinkled forth. She reached daintily into the box and took out a little white saccharine tablet. She dropped it into her coffee and closed the lid. The box sat on the table, the engraved initials facing the fat man.

  "A pretty box," he said at last.

  "Isn't it?" She smiled brilliantly. "I got it from my friend Cynthia Rawlings. The actress. Perhaps you've heard of her. Poor Cynthia died a few weeks ago."

  Mr. Sim drummed his sausagelike fingers on the table. "Yes. Tragic loss to the American theater. I met Cynthia Rawlings several months ago. She was taking a vacation in Hong Kong with her brother."

  "My goodness, what a coincidence! Did you have lunch with her, too?"

  "I did. And she and her brother stayed for a few days at my villa on Victoria Peak. I can't say I cared for the young man. A junkie and a thief."

  "Do you know," Penelope said serenely, "I wondered about those initials on the lid. I thought perhaps you had given the box to Cynthia. But could Peter have taken the box from you?" She paused and gave him a challenging look. "I hope there was nothing valuable in it."

  "It doesn't matter, it doesn't matter." He drummed his fingers on the table again. "I'd like you to keep the box anyway, Baroness." He laced his fingers together. They looked like a nest of frankfurters. "I want you to remember me."

  Mr. Sim seemed to have lost his appetite. He spooned his way indifferently through the mountainous trifle they brought him, and hardly touched the fruit and cheese. He belched, a sound like a hippopotamus breaking the surface of a pool. At last he turned his vast squash of a head toward her.

  "I'd be delighted, my dear, to have you spend a few days at my villa as a guest. I think you might find the view… interesting."

  Pickering looked worried. "Mr. Sim," he began, "do you think…"

  Penelope cut him off. The trap was set. She put herself into it as the piece of cheese.

  "I'd love to come," she said.

  * * *

  Skytop stood behind the tree, watching the cricket players on the lawn. The players, trim and neat in their white outfits, had been at it for at least an hour and a half. Once a liveried attendant had come out of the Club entrance and asked him if there was anything he required, and Skytop had said, "I was just curious to see how sticky the wickets were." The attendant had stared at him, then laughed and said, "Oh, a Yank," and gone back inside.

  Now there was some activity taking place at the entrance. Skytop slipped farther behind the tree trunk and watched.

  It was the fat man. The big bozo with the dented head was wheeling him down a ramp that had been laid over the steps. A motor started, and a Rolls Royce pulled up at the entrance. The Rolls was painted baby pink. It was a big custom job with an old-fashioned leather convertible top that made it look like a giant baby carriage. Pink curtains covered the passenger windows.

  Two burly footmen in lavender uniforms sprang out of the Rolls and placed a folding ramp at the passenger door. The bozo with the dented head wheeled the fat man into the car. The Rolls sank down at least a foot on its springs.
It glided smoothly down the drive.

  A small Toyota followed it a moment later. That would be Sumo. Skytop looked at his watch. The Baroness and Pickering should be down any moment.

  The beeper in his pocket gave a signal. Two longs and three shorts. That was the Baroness telling him that she wouldn't be dropping Pickering off in her own car; that Skytop should be prepared to follow him on foot.

  Sure enough, there they were, saying good by to one another on the steps. Wharton pulled up in the hired Bentley and the Baroness got in. Pickering waved and watched them out of sight.

  Pickering began strolling purposefully down Chater Road in the direction of Thieves Market. Skytop gave him a long headstart before trailing him. Pickering was a professional. He'd know if he were being followed.

  Skytop was a professional too. After half a block or so, he became aware that he was being followed himself. He paused in front of an outdoor street stall to tie his shoe, getting an upside-down look as he bent over.

  There were two of them, both Chinese. One was a gaunt unsmiling man in blue pajamas. The other was a white-shirted youth. He must have picked them up right at the Club entrance. Probably stationed there to see if anyone trailed Pickering. Skytop was willing to bet that there'd been another car following Sumo's Toyota. It meant that the Baroness's cover was blown — probably had been since the hour of their arrival. Well, that was a useful thing to know. It meant that they'd made contact.

  Pickering was doing his best to help his bodyguards, if that's what they were. He turned abruptly at Ice House Street and again at Connaught Road, doubling back toward Queen's Pier. Skytop made the same turns. The Chinese shadows would have no doubt now that he was following Pickering.

  Pickering hurried his steps as he reached the waterfront, striding past the long ranks of waiting taxis, the darting touts and pimps, toward the Star Ferry terminal. One of the double-decked craft was about to cast off. Skytop barely had time to buy a ticket and follow Pickering on board.

  The two Chinese were right behind him. Skytop was tempted to grin and wave, but decided not to let on for a while that he knew they were there. They wouldn't be trying any rough stuff — not on the crowded ferry. It would be more useful to wait and see what developed.

  Pickering spent the ten-minute ride up above, in the first-class saloon. Skytop discovered that he had a second-class ticket. But Pickering made no attempt to evade him. When they docked, he strode innocently down the gangplank and got into a taxi.

  Skytop sighed and got into a taxi too. He told the driver to follow Pickering's cab, but not to get too close. The driver, a squat, flat-nosed man, nodded, showing no signs of surprise. As they pulled away, Skytop looked through the rear window and saw the two Chinese shadows piling into a cab behind him. It was going to be a parade.

  Apparently they were going to take a drive into the countryside. Skytop watched through the windows as the crowded Kowloon streets gave way to a serene landscape where bullocks pulling primitive wooden plows were driven by peasant women, and fanners wearing conical straw hats toted buckets on yokes balanced on their shoulders.

  "Where are we?" Skytop asked the driver.

  The driver turned around and grinned, showing yellowed teeth. The cab almost went off the road into a rice paddy. "We go New Territories, to Luk Ma Chao Mountain. Very interesting. See People's Republic from border."

  Skytop could see them in the distance through the windshield, the drab mountains of Communist China looming like sentinels. What the devil was Pickering driving to the border for?

  Pickering's cab stopped at the police checkpoint, a narrow wooden booth guarding a simple barber-striped pole across the road. There was a similar booth on the other side, manned by a pair of tough-looking Communist soldiers with submachine guns. Skytop's driver began to slow down.

  "No, no," Skytop told him. "Keep going."

  The cab continued down the road skirting the barbed wire along the border. The road took a twist, and they were in a tree-lined avenue, out of sight of the checkpoint. A tall red pagoda rose nearby, with a smiling statue of Buddha squatting in the courtyard. Skytop told the driver to turn back.

  They were waiting for him just before the curve. The other taxi was parked sideways across the road, blocking it. The frightened driver was backed against a fender, a gun at his head.

  Skytop didn't wait for his driver to brake to a stop. He hurtled out the door, rolling across the dusty road, before the startled Chinese had time to react. He scrambled into the roadside foliage just as a bullet went splat into a tree trunk next to him. He didn't hear the sound of the shot. They were using a silencer. Gunfire would attract unwelcome attention this close to the border.

  There was a dismayed cry of "Ken sui, ken sui!" Skytop heard footsteps blundering into the underbrush after him. He grinned. A pair of Chinese hoods didn't have a chance in the world against a full-blooded Cherokee Indian in an outdoor environment.

  Another sound came from the road: two engines roaring away. The taxi drivers were getting while the getting was good. It was going to be a long walk back to Kowloon.

  It was ridiculously easy. The white-shirted youth moved like a city man. It was easy to predict the direction he'd go: the enticing route where the vegetation was relatively thin and there was little foliage to entangle his city-bred feet. Skytop waited behind a convenient tree. His Cherokee ears traced their movements. They'd spread far apart. He could deal with them one at a time.

  He didn't bother taking his clasp knife out of his pocket. The city man bumbled through the leaves, imagining that he was being silent. From the sounds, Skytop could tell precisely where he was, how he was holding his body. A gun barrel appeared, held out in front of the bumbler like a flashlight. Skytop grabbed the skinny wrist and pulled on it. The gun spat once, harmlessly, while the Chinese hood was jerked toward Skytop's balled fist. It caught him in the solar plexus, driving the wind out of him and preventing an outcry. Skytop raised his hand like a mace and chopped down on the back of the man's neck. He sagged, unconscious.

  Skytop had the gun now. He grabbed the unconscious man by the waistband of his slacks and hauled him out to the road. "Hey, you!" he shouted.

  The other man, the one in the blue peasant pajamas, stepped into view, looking bewildered. He had a knife in his hand.

  Skytop pointed the gun at him and motioned him to come over. The man stared at the gun, then took in the sight of his friend lying at Skytop's feet. A look of profound sorrow came over his face. He passed the knife across his throat. A gout of red blood spurted out. The man took a faltering step and crumpled to the ground.

  "Hey!" Skytop shouted, but he knew the man was dead. He searched both of them. There was nothing very interesting in their pockets, just some loose Hong Kong currency, keys, their ferry ticket stubs. No identification. But the pajama-clad one had something clipped to his waistband that looked like a transistor radio. Skytop pocketed it.

  Something odd on the dead man's scalp caught his eye. He parted a few strands of hair and found a small metal plate set into the skull. There was a tiny socket in the plate, about big enough to accommodate an RCA jack. Skytop turned and examined the other man's scalp. There was a plate with a socket in his head too.

  There was no point in waiting around to interrogate the unconscious man. Skytop knew the type. He probably couldn't make him talk, even with all his Cherokee skills, and if he did, he wouldn't be able to understand Chinese anyway.

  He walked back along the road until he came to the checkpoint. Pickering's cab was gone. Thanks to the two hoods he'd lost him. He sighed and headed toward the sentry booth. Maybe he could talk them into calling a cab.

  * * *

  The Baroness pondered the electronic components spread across the table top. There weren't very many of them: a capacitor, a few resistors, a tunable modulator with a printed computer-type circuit, two Eveready transistor radio batteries.

  Sumo, a screwdriver in his hand, said, "As far as I can see, it doesn't do muc
h of anything."

  Skytop said, "When I took it off the guy, I figured it was some kind of a transmitter he was signaling Pickering with."

  The Baroness shook her head. "Apparently it's just a primitive current-switching device. Tommy, can you think of any use for it?"

  "No, nothing. All it does is take the current from these one-point-five-volt batteries and filter it down to a few milliamperes. You have to dial the right numerical code into it first, so the trickle of current can get through the computer circuit. Then the current continues to flow for five, ten minutes, or whatever, until this automatic timer switches it off."

  The Baroness picked up the thin wire with the thing that looked like an RCA jack at the end. "Chief," she said, "does this look about the right size to fit into that socket you saw in their heads?"

  "Could be," Skytop said.

  "It gets more and more curious," the Baroness said.

  Sumo frowned. "Why would anyone want to give himself an electric shock in the head?"

  The Baroness stood up, tightening the belt of her robe. "Perhaps Dr. Jolly can explain it."

  "Dr. Jolly?"

  "That's what he's called." She walked over to the bed and continued packing her overnight case. "Mr. Sim promised me a talk with him."

  12

  Dr. Jolly didn't fit his name. He was tall, bent, cadaverous, with fishy eyes and a thin dry mouth. He wore a blue double-breasted blazer with nautical brass buttons and white flannel slacks with a knife-edge crease. An unpleasant smell of green soap and formaldehyde came from him.

  "Delighted, Baroness, delighted," he said distractedly. "Mr. Sim sends his regrets. He asked me to greet you and say that he'll be down shortly."