The Ecstasy Connection

by Paul Kenyon

  Penelope looked with interest around the villa. Everything was on a huge scale: unusually wide doors to accommodate Mr. Sim's bath chair, vast tall windows looking out on manicured Chinese gardens, high ceilings to maintain a sense of proportion. It looked more like a public hall than a home.

  And everything in the room tended to be soft, rounded, with a minimum of sharp edges. The very corners of the walls and ceilings were gently beveled, and the tops of doors and windows were arched. The upholstered pieces were puffy and pneumatic looking. The fuzzy pastel carpet seemed as thick and soft as a mattress.

  It's a womb, she thought. A womb with a view.

  Dr. Jolly clapped his hands. A pair of somber houseboys appeared, clad in silk pajamas and carpet slippers. "Take the lady's bags to the Number One guest room," he ordered.

  Penelope watched her bags disappear with a touch of uneasiness. The Bernadelli VB was snug in its holster on her inner thigh, and she was wearing the special polymer bra under her scoop-necked silk dress. But the Fragonard pillbox and the shoes with their deadly heels and the other devices were in her overnight case. She was sure it would be searched. She hoped they'd get by unrecognized.

  "Mr. Sim tells me you're a brain surgeon," she said as he led her through an archway into a cavernous domed chamber that seemed to function as a drawing room. She sank into a round mauve chair that had the texture of a woman's breast. "Do you practice here in Hong Kong?"

  He looked pained. "Actually I'm retired from practice. Not accredited here and all that. I'm doing research."

  A tiny Chinese girl with a face as soft as flower petals appeared with a tray of drinks. Penelope chose a cool-looking Pimms Cup in a pewter mug, garnished with a strip of cucumber. The doctor, a teetotaler if she'd ever seen one, took a lemon squash.

  "Mr. Sim tells me you're doing research into the cause of pleasure."

  She saw something in his eyes switch on like a light. It was the light of a fanatic.

  "Yes, Mr. Sim planned that I should show you my work. You may find it amusing."

  A soft, ethereal sound began to grow in the room. It was a thousand human voices, a mist of violins and flutes. After a moment she was able to identify it as Debussy.

  "Here comes Mr. Sim now," Dr. Jolly said.

  She looked at him inquiringly.

  "He likes to be surrounded by music when he's in the mood," the doctor explained. "There are loudspeakers everywhere. They're switched on by body sensors when he approaches. The sound follows him."

  The voices swelled to a heartbreak sweetness. Mr. Sim lumbered into the room, a pinkish elephant in white silk. His feet sank into the rug up to the ankles.

  She must have looked surprised. He smiled, amused. "Yes, I do get up and move about sometimes. Out of my own environment, it's less tedious to be wheeled."

  There was a houseboy at either elbow. One of them sprayed a perfume atomizer in front of Mr. Sim's face. He inhaled deeply. "Ah, essence of roses," he said. "My fragrance of the day."

  He waddled over to the chair facing her. It was a great puffy thing that seemed too high and convex to sit in. One of the houseboys pushed it into his enormous buttocks. Mr. Sim leaned, rather than sat. The chair began to give, like soft dough. In a few moments he had sunk into a sitting position. The serving girl brought him something that looked like a pink basketball with a tube protruding from it. He put the tube in his mouth and sucked, squeezing the ball.

  "We found the infrared scope in the heel of your shoe, by the way," Mr. Sim said pleasantly.

  Penelope said nothing. Did that mean that the other devices had gone undetected?

  "I don't enjoy fencing," Mr. Sim continued. "The need for instant gratification has always been one of my character defects. Who are you, Baroness? Who do you work for, and just why have you taken an interest in me?"

  Penelope estimated the distance and positions of Mr. Sim, Dr. Jolly, the two houseboys — who she saw now were rather muscular and hard-looking types. A quick leap out of the damned billowy chair she was sitting in, and she thought she could disable the two houseboys before they could react. Dr. Jolly wasn't a physical type, and Mr. Sim wouldn't be able to get out of his chair fast enough to be a threat.

  "You will tell me," Mr. Sim said. "Eventually, that is. It would be more pleasant for all of us if we cleared the air now. I'm quite aware that your man followed Major Pickering yesterday, and that you must be wondering about a device he took from one of my servants."

  Before she could throw herself out of the chair, Penelope felt a pair of incredibly strong hands imprisoning her arms. She twisted around and saw the granite-rough face of Happy. He had crept up behind her chair silently, his footsteps muffled by the thick carpet.

  She tried to break free, but he pushed her back into the soft trap of the chair. Her feet were off the floor. There was no way for her magnificent musculature to gain the proper leverage.

  "Damn you! Tell this ape to turn me loose," she said.

  Mr. Sim looked pained. "Please, no harsh words. It's esthetically upsetting to hear them from someone as lovely as you. Now I think we'll just search you for weapons, and remove any possible source of tensions. Hsun mi!"

  One of the burly houseboys approached her warily. He circled to her side, to avoid any possibility of a frontal kick. He bent to give her a pat-down.

  The iron grip Happy was holding her in was what made it possible, giving her something to brace against. With a lightning motion she swung both legs sideways. Her heels caught him just below the knees. He pitched forward, off-balance. Her knee, one of the body's eight deadly striking weapons, came up sharply to catch him in the face. She felt his bone and cartilage crunch. He screamed. She continued the upward momentum. Happy's instinctive reaction, when she kicked the houseboy, was to tighten his grip and tug backwards. That helped. She swung her legs up and back over her head, supple as a circus acrobat, and caught him squarely in the chest with both heels. No man could have withstood the incredible striking force concentrated in the tiny heel areas — not even Happy. It would be like being stabbed by two billys, wielded by two brawny policemen simultaneously. He staggered backward, his grip broken.

  She landed behind the chair, head over heels, already planning her fall and the smooth motion to draw the Bernadelli VB. But Happy had tugged her off-balance, throwing her timing off a second or two. She heard Dr. Jolly shout, "Stop!"

  She froze. It was the unmistakable tone of a man with a gun in his hand. She tossed her hair out of her eyes and saw him standing there, holding a .32-caliber Beretta Puma very professionally in two hands. It was pointed unwaveringly at her chest.

  More incredibly, Mr. Sim was on his feet too, aiming a fat little Colt Police Python with the trigger guard sawed off to accommodate his swollen finger. She couldn't understand how he got out of the chair so quickly, unless it pushed as well as yielded.

  "My instincts are confirmed," Mr. Sim said. "You are a very dangerous young lady. You move beautifully, my dear, like a jungle animal. But be assured that it would not be possible for you to leave this villa alive."

  "May I get up?" she said.

  "Yes. But carefully, carefully."

  She stood up and looked around. The houseboy she'd damaged was on his knees, moaning, his hands over his crushed face. Blood dribbled through his fingers. Happy came up behind her and clamped a grip on her wrists.

  "You have lovely thighs, my dear," Mr. Sim said. "It was a treat to see your skirts flying over your head. But we'll have to remove that gun, won't we?"

  He nodded. The other houseboy, looking frightened of her, circled round out of line of fire and knelt in front of her. He put his hand under her skirt and drew the Bernadelli VB out of its thigh holster. Happy's hands tightened on her warningly. The houseboy scurried back to Mr. Sim and handed him the gun.

  He grunted approvingly at the engraved gold-plated finish. "You have exquisite taste in weapons, my dear Baroness," he said.

  "What do you plan to do with me?"

 
"We'll discuss that later. For now, possibly you'd find it amusing to see some of Dr. Jolly's experiments?"

  She shrugged. That's what she'd come here for, after all. Prisoner or not, she might as well make the most of the opportunity. She could figure out an escape later. She'd been in worse places than Mr. Sim's pleasure palace.

  "Very good, very good," Mr. Sim said. "You'll be treated as a guest as long as you behave yourself. Please don't injure any more of my servants." He gestured at the moaning houseboy.

  "I hope you appreciate your situation," Dr. Jolly said. "You'll accomplish nothing by violence. If you were to leave this room without an escort, for example, you'd encounter a guard who would blow your head off with a shotgun."

  Mr. Sim shuddered. "Please, Dr. Jolly. I'll quite lose my appetite for lunch." He gestured and Happy snapped a handcuff over her right wrist. The other half was locked on his own wrist.

  Mr. Sim pocketed his gun, and Dr. Jolly, after a show of hesitation, did the same. "That's better," he said. "You realize, of course, that should you succeed in disabling Happy, you'd simply be dragging some two hundred and thirty pounds along with you. It would hamper your ability to deal with the rest of us, I think. Don't you agree? Happy will be chained to you day and night. But you needn't be concerned about the… delicacy… of the arrangement. He's quite uninterested in sex. Aren't you, Happy?"

  "Yessir, Mr. Sim."

  Mr. Sim laughed. "Happy prefers another form of pleasure now, Baroness. And before you leave this villa, you will too."

  Penelope gave a start of surprise. She'd assumed that Mr. Sim intended to kill her, after amusing himself with her. Otherwise it would make no sense to show her his secrets.

  "Don't look so worried, Baroness," Dr. Jolly said. "I assure you that you'll thoroughly enjoy what we intend to do to you. You'll be grateful. You'll be begging to work for us. There isn't any chance in the world that you'll ever tell your superiors what you've seen here. I do hope you're American intelligence, not British. It would be useful to have a plant among the Yanks."

  Penelope said nothing. Dr. Jolly's words implied that they had someone working for them among the British authorities. Pickering, of course.

  "Later, later, Dr. Jolly," Mr. Sim said. "There'll be time to go into all that afterward. First, let's have lunch."

  Penelope shuddered. Whatever they had in store for her, it couldn't be much worse than enduring another lunch with Mr. Sim.

  They ate reclining on couches, Roman style. Mr. Sim looked like a great beached whale, stretched out on a lounge that resembled a giant pink powder puff. Dr. Jolly, stiff and uncomfortable on his own upholstered platform, ate sparingly. Penelope lay on her side on an Egyptian-looking chaise, with Happy squatting like a monument behind her, his wrist chained to hers.

  Lunch was a man han feast of sixty-nine courses, including braised venison, bear's paw, and silver fungus soup. An army of fetching Chinese girls scurried about, clearing plates and occasionally hand-feeding Mr. Sim. Penelope chose carefully, concentrating on strength-giving protein.

  Mr. Sim was cheerful and voluable. He talked incessantly between mouthfuls, waving his spoon.

  "I'm quite an unusual specimen of humanity, Baroness. I admit it. I make no apologies. I pity ordinary people, in fact. They're incapable of experiencing pleasure to the degree that I've trained myself to feel it. Other men throughout history have devoted themselves to the pursuit of pleasure — Epicurus and his followers, Apollodorus, Marius, my great namesake Petronius Arbiter. But none has been as single-minded as I. I'm a genius at it, a connoisseur of pleasure."

  "As the Marquise de Sade was a connoisseur of pain?" Penelope suggested.

  "Precisely."

  "How did you start?" she said, masking her distaste.

  He laughed. "At birth. I was born weighing eighteen pounds. Even in the womb, I treated myself to what I wanted. I was born with congenital priapism — delivered with a full erection. Medically, I believe, the condition is caused by a constriction of the blood vessels that drain the penis. In any case, I've been priapic all my life."

  "Disguised by your obesity?"

  "And loose trousers," he chuckled.

  "And what corner of the earth did you bless with your birth, Mr. Sim?"

  "A dreary little hamlet in the south of England. In Sussex. My mother blamed the proximity of France for my erection and my gluttony."

  "So you were a glutton even as a child?"

  "Yes, and a satyr. One fed the other. The good wives of Sussex made good use of my priapism while their husbands were out in the fields, and rewarded my infant performance with sweetmeats and other tidbits."

  "And," Penelope said sarcastically, "from these humble beginnings you became the prodigy you are today?"

  He refused to be fazed. "Not all at once, Baroness. I was a country lad, a lout. I had none of the advantages of class and education. But I persevered. I experimented with sex, food, drugs, tactile sensations. Naturally this all took a good deal of money."

  Penelope tried to sit up. Happy gave her a warning tug. She reclined again and popped a ginger-glazed grape into her mouth. "Where did you get the money?"

  "Fortunately I was a criminal genius as well as a genius at pleasure. I made quite a name for myself as a youth, doing chores for the rather rustic mob that ran the rackets in Sussex and Hampshire. I was strong, quick, ruthless. I attracted the attention of the big boys in London. They sent for me. I became what your American mobsters would have called a soldier, then a capo. I was given a district of my own while I was still in my twenties. I controlled the drug traffic, prostitution, the fencing of stolen goods in quite a large area north of the Thames."

  "What happened?"

  "I got… too big for my britches, as you Americans would say. I failed in an attempt to take over the entire organization. If I'd waited another year, I think I might have succeeded. I was a hunted man. I had killed my superior — though he died happy — with an overdose of pure heroin. I escaped to Shanghai with most of the treasury of the London mob."

  Penelope tried to get up again. Happy gave her another warning tug. "Shanghai was quite a cesspool in those days," she said.

  "I found it quite profitable. I became an enormously powerful and wealthy vice lord, catering to both the wealthy Chinese merchants and the British Establishment. Of course I was forced to flee Shanghai when the Communists took over, but I carried most of my wealth to Hong Kong and began anew."

  "You're behind the international drug traffic here, of course?"

  "A very large share of it. The local criminal organization is quite unhappy about my activities, but there's nothing they can do about it. They tried to assassinate me once or twice, so I… punished them. They're afraid of me now. The Communists in Peking find me more reliable than their usual conduits, so they deal with me in their attempts to subvert the Western world with their state-grown heroin. I pay a ridiculously low wholesale price for the drugs."

  "Does that include your ecstasy drug?"

  He looked taken aback. "So, you know about that, do you? You are a dangerous young lady. When you're more tractable, I'll have to ask you about how you acquired that particular knowledge."

  "Well?"

  He sighed. "It doesn't matter. No, my dear Baroness, the ecstasy drug, as you call it, is my own invention and Dr. Jolly's. But it's imperfect. The dosages have yet to be established. A fanatical element among my Peking colleagues became impatient and began distributing the drug prematurely in America, through the local mob contacts. I was forced to take extreme measures to recall the drug and cover up my tracks. The mob cooperated splendidly, once the necessity was explained to them."

  The Baroness felt herself growing angry, remembering the slaughter in the loft on Sullivan Street, the machine-gunning of the hippies in the Vermont commune. "You won't get away with it!" she flung at him.

  "On the contrary, I shall get away with it. The Communists believe they're using me. After all, I've been collecting intelligence for them
for years, through my network of dope pushers and brothel keepers. But once my new drug is unleashed on the world, I shall be the one in control. I'll turn the government leaders of the world into my slaves — including the Chinese and the American governments. And they'll be my willing slaves. No human being can withstand the ultimate sensation. The man who controls it will control the world."

  "You're a madman!" she cried. "You're stark raving mad!"

  "Mad, am I?" His vast cheeks quivered. The rosebud lips pouted like a baby's. "I'll show you how mad I am!"

  Dr. Jolly said, "You've upset Mr. Sim."

  The fat man heaved himself to his feet. He swayed like a captive balloon. "By the time I'm through with you, Baroness, you'll be a mindless puppet. You'll lick my boots and beg for the chance to please me. I want you to know exactly what's about to happen to you. Come along, and you'll see how it's done."

  13

  They led her down a maze of corridors that were illuminated by a cool undersea-green light. Happy plodded beside her like a walking granite slab, pulling on the chain that joined their wrists. Mr. Sim and Dr. Jolly were just behind her. There was a Chinese carrying a light carbine three yards ahead of her, too far to reach, and another bringing up the rear.

  They stopped frequently to let Mr. Sim catch his breath. Penelope caught glimpses through glass doors of white-coated Chinese lab workers bent over tangles of tubing and glassware, or tending stacked cages of laboratory rats.

  "We began with laboratory animals, of course," Dr. Jolly said, "but we've since moved on to extensive human experimentation."

  "Yes, we've been very fortunate to be based in Hong Kong," Mr. Sim said. "The refugees come in from China by the hundreds of thousands. They're here illegally. Most of them have no official existence. They're never missed. We dispose of the bodies in the harbor. They're just a few more floating bodies among hundreds."

  "You bastards!" Penelope said.

  Mr. Sim went on imperturbably, "We don't even bother to kidnap them. They swarm to my villa on the promise of work. Many of them do find work. These guards and the laboratory workers for example."