by Paul Kenyon
She had a penis.
She couldn't see it, but she knew it was there. She looked down between her spread-eagled legs and saw the rounded hill of the mons veneris, looking as it always had. But she could feel the presence of a male organ there. It felt long, rigid, pulsing with heat.
Her entire abdomen felt different. Somehow emptier, less packed.
The ghostly penis was growing. It ached for contact with… what?
The dim chamber and the transparent Mr. Sim faded away entirely. She was back in that strange universe of swirling colors and sounds and fragrances.
And now Penelope herself was a giant penis. That's all there was in the universe, this rigid member, miles and miles long, that was herself. It was moving in and out of a vast, moist, velvety cavern. The sensation was exquisite. She could feel an unbearable friction on the huge bulb, big as the planet Earth, that was her far end. She could feel the soft caress along her cosmic stem, trailing like a comet's tail into space.
And then, somehow, she was a vagina too. A starry tunnel bored into the sky. The two parts of herself, male and female, worked together at their cosmic copulation, and she could feel all of it.
And then the universe ended in a galactic explosion. There was a vast milky spurt that shot to the boundaries of creation, and an answering shudder from the vaginal sky. Fiery meteors rained down from the heavens. The solar system shook.
She broke through to reality, gasping for air. There was the hallucination of the lemon smell again, and then she was staring straight up at Mr. Sim's fat face.
She was trembling all over from weakness and exhaustion.
"I don't know what you were experiencing, my dear," Mr. Sim said, "but the needles went right off the graphs."
"I've got it," Dr. Jolly called. "You can see the lights there in the brain model. This woman has an extraordinary capacity to feel sex."
"Let me up, you son of a bitch," Penelope croaked. She felt dry, parched.
"Are we ready to continue, Doctor?" Mr. Sim said.
Dr. Jolly was away from his console, at her side. His bony fingers were on her strapped wrists, feeling her pulse. She saw him frown.
"She's a little weak. I think we've taxed her today. Let's give her a rest, get some amino acids and vitamins into her."
For the first time Penelope saw the rubber tube, the needle disappearing into a vein in her arm. How many days had this been going on?"
"I suppose we can wait till tomorrow morning," Mr. Sim said. He sounded disappointed. "What have we got on the agenda for her then?"
Dr. Jolly licked his thin lips.
"Pain," he said.
* * *
Skytop sat hunched over the wheel of the van, ignoring the honking horn of the car that was after his parking space. He was dressed in an open-necked white shirt and slacks. His broad Cherokee face might have passed for Chinese.
"I don't like it, Dan," he said. "He's been in there a long time."
"Wait a minute," Wharton said from the rear of the van. "I'm getting a signal. It's in clear Morse. Same frequency as the transmitter Tommy has built into his teeth."
"He's tonguing it," Skytop said. "Somebody must be holding on to his arms, or he'd be using his pocket transmitter."
Wharton's pencil flew across the pad. "It says, 'Everybody split. Pickering on warpath. Roundup coming. Fuzz doing dirty work for him.' "
A dozen uniformed policemen spilled out of the entrance to the building across the street and into waiting wagons. They were armed — unusual in Hong Kong. The wagons pulled away from the curb, sirens silent.
Skytop leaned over the wheel, doing his best to look impassive. Nobody gave him a second look. The police wagons threaded their way down the packed downtown street.
"They're heading in the direction of the Peninsula," Skytop said. "It'll take them five, six minutes."
"I'm sending a signal now," Wharton said from the rear. "Inga's supposed to be on station. I hope she gets it."
"Hurry up, will you," Skytop said nervously.
"She acknowledged. They're picking up their gear and clearing out. Let's go."
Skytop started the motor. He steered the van into traffic, being careful not to go too fast.
"Do we have a rendezvous point?"
"No, we're splitting. We're working in pairs. You and I are going to crack Mr. Sim's villa."
"When?"
Wharton thought it over. "Tonight. About three A. M."
Skytop grunted his approval. "I hope to hell we won't be too late."
15
Something told her to keep swimming up, up. She was deep in an emerald-green sea. her lungs burning for breath. The surface was miles above. It would be easier… so much easier… just to drift here in the warm emerald depths.
But her survival instinct, her superb strength of character, made her fight. She swam up, up, toward the dim pink light at the surface. It took years and years.
And then she popped through like a cork to the cool, clean air.
Penelope blinked.
There was no emerald sea. She was in a large, egg-shaped bedroom, fussy with satins and frills. She was nude, lying on her stomach on a pink coverlet. Her hands were chained behind her back. There was something heavy and cold on her ankle.
She twisted round and sat up. The pink light she'd imagined was a night light over by the door. The cool air was coming from an air conditioner over at the window. The window had steel bars, painted pink.
Slowly, gingerly, she stood up. There was a wave of dizziness that passed after a moment. God, she was weak! Her senses were muzzy from the drugs they'd been giving her to keep her quiet.
Drugs!
They'd underestimated her magnificent physical condition, her reserves of strength. The drug had worn off before it was supposed to.
That meant that somebody would be coming to give her another dose. Probably soon.
It would be her last chance to get out of this padded hellhole. If she failed in this attempt, they wouldn't give her another chance.
Tomorrow morning, Dr. Jolly had promised to give her pain. The other sensations he'd inflicted had been the most extreme she'd ever experienced. She shuddered, unable to imagine what the pain might be like.
The chain on her ankle kept her within a five-foot radius of the bed. She bent over and tugged at it with all her strength. It was no use. It would have anchored an elephant.
There was a dressing table over at the wall, a bathroom door on the other side. She couldn't reach them. There was nothing she could use as a weapon. Nothing.
There was a sound at the door. A key in the lock.
The Baroness leaped back on the bed. She was on her back, her hands behind her. She closed her eyes to slits. She forced her breathing to slow down, approximating a drugged sleep. A yoga exercise slowed her heart, drained the blood from her face.
The door opened.
Penelope concentrated on her yoga exercise, making the entire remaining strength of her body flow into her leg, the one with the chain on it.
A muscular Chinese girl in a nurse's uniform padded into the room. She crossed to the bed. Penelope closed her eyes all the way, just in time, as the nurse thumbed her eyelid to look at the pupil. By that time Penelope had rolled her eyeballs back in their sockets, the pupils dilated by the yoga technique. The nurse gave a little grunt of approval.
When she dared open an eye slightly, the nurse was standing by the side of the bed, adjusting a syringe. She put a hand on Penelope's hip; apparently she intended to give the injection in the buttock.
The nurse heaved. She was bent over Penelope, just about where Penelope wanted her.
Penelope whipped her leg in an arc. The slack chain came up like a jump rope and curled around the nurse's throat. Penelope wound it round once more with another flashing movement and pulled down with all her might.
It was too quick for anything more than a strangled squawk from the nurse. She slid down like a broken doll to the floor, her neck snapped.
Penelope hopped to the floor, one leg imprisoned by the nurse's weight. She squatted, her back to the body, and felt around the nurse's cap. She was in luck. It was held in place by two bobbie pins.
It was no use attacking the steel stanchion. The chain was permanently welded to a metal ring. But the cuffs would have to be snapped on and off. So would the band around her ankle.
She probed the lock. It was a good one. That helped. She was able to kick over the tumbler without jamming it. It took her more than twenty tries, less than three minutes. The cuffs fell off. The anklet was easier. She could see what she was doing.
She tiptoed naked to the door and risked a peek. The nurse's cart was outside, a tray of syringes on it. No one was in sight. She pulled the cart inside and shut the door.
Penelope stared down at the nurse's body. She felt no pity. She'd seen the metal plate and socket in the woman's skull. She was no longer human. She was better off dead.
But someone would be missing her, when she failed to return from her rounds. Penelope counted the syringes and unused ampules on the cart, and tried to estimate. She had at least ten minutes. A lot could be done in ten minutes.
First she needed a weapon. The chains were out; even the cuffs were connected by links to the leg iron and the stanchion. There was no scalpel — nothing — among the nurse's equipment.
And she was fast using up her reserves of strength. She didn't know if she could depend on her body alone to kill again.
Her face in the dressing table mirror shocked her. It was drawn, pale, with dark circles around the eyes. She could hardly keep her hands from trembling. The hair-trigger weapon that was her body was badly out of adjustment.
She searched the closet and almost wept for joy. Her overnight bag was there. She'd been imprisoned in her own "guest room."
She spread her possessions over the bed. The special pair of shoes was there, but one of the shoes had its heel ripped off. That was the infrared scope that Mr. Sim had found. But he hadn't recognized that thermite core of the other heel; probably thought it was a spike reinforcement. She broke the heel off and put it to one side.
The filmy bra was there, the one with the super polymer threads. Quickly she lowered her breasts into the cups, hooked it in back.
And the blouse! She ripped off the two top buttons and pulled. They came free, connected by a two-foot thread. She tugged at the buttons experimentally. The long-chain polymer thread held like a cable.
What else? They'd taken away her cigarette lighter on general principles, but left a book of matches from the Peninsula Hotel.
It made rather a scanty death kit, but it would have to do.
There was one thing she had to do first. She found the Fragonard pillbox with its electronic uppers and downers. It hadn't occurred to Mr. Sim or his henchmen to suspect them. They lived in a universe of drugs. Pills must have seemed entirely normal.
She felt around in her hair and pulled loose a couple of the platinum threads woven in her scalp. The black paint had worn away; Dr. Jolly must have thought his treatments were turning her hair gray.
She threaded the pills on the wires the way Sumo had shown her. The stiff wire pushed easily through the soft spots and made contact. Now if only Wharton or Eric were in range! And listening.
"Coin calling. Coin calling," she whispered into the 20-mg. black amphetamine capsule that was really a button microphone. "Is anyone there?"
There was no answer from the earplug, one of the black-and-white biphetamines.
She tried again. There was a faint crackle, as if someone was trying to contact her, but was out of range.
Something must have happened outside to move her agents off station. Something drastic.
She was on her own.
She unhooked the capsules and put them back in the pillbox. She was just poking through her clothes, looking for something to wear, when there was a sound at the door.
Someone had finally come to look for the nurse.
She spun to the doorway and flattened herself against the wall beside it. She was thankful that she'd at least had time to put on the bra; it would hold her comfortably in the next ten seconds of violent physical action.
The two buttons, connected by their long thread, were in her right hand.
The door swung open. A burly orderly with red hair stepped into the room. When he saw the cart, and the nurse's body beyond it, he took a step toward them.
Penelope flipped one of the buttons. It swung around his neck like a bolo on its thread. She caught the button in her other hand, the wrists crossed over. It was the style of assassination invented by the thuggees of India, except that they'd used a coin knotted into a kerchief. She pulled her wrists past each other with all her strength. The noose tightened.
The orderly's hands clawed at his throat, unable to find anything to grasp. Penelope hauled on the buttons. The thread sank deep into the orderly's neck. He sagged to the floor, dead.
She didn't know whether she'd strangled him or severed his windpipe. She worked the thread out of its hairline slice in the neck and wiped the blood off on his white jacket. She might need the polymer garrote again.
She dressed quickly, in crepe-soled sneakers and a pink dress that zippered down the front. Around Mr. Sim's villa, pink was the best camouflage.
She took the tray of syringes and ampules with her. That was camouflage too. It gave her an errand to pretend to be on. It was the kind of errand that must be commonplace in Mr. Sim's pleasure palace.
Holding the tray in front of her, she slipped into the corridor. She walked quickly, her head held high as if she were in a hurry.
There was a soft pink light in the corridor — Mr. Sim's nighttime illumination. It was a help. The occasional slipper-shod Chinese she passed had skin with as rosy a hue as her own. She was glad she wasn't a blonde.
There was an armed guard at the branch of the corridor — a towering shaven-headed Mongol with a submachine gun. He stepped out to challenge her.
Penelope didn't slow down; that would have been fatal. She looked up and smiled at him. Hesitation showed in his posture. Acting self-assured was a kind of magical passport; Penelope knew the guard was thinking that she probably had a right to be there.
He opened his mouth to question her, and Penelope dropped the tray. She made herself look dismayed, and stared helplessly at the scattered ampules. He bent over to help her pick them up.
She tossed the button past his throat and stepped quickly behind him to catch it in her other hand. She gave the violent thuggee pull, cross-wristed. There was no outcry. There never was. That's what had made the thuggees the most successful band of assassins the world has ever known. The guard sank to his knees, his fingers digging into his throat. There was nothing he could get his fingers under.
He died. Penelope worked the thread loose.
She looked regretfully at the submachine gun and decided she'd be better off without it. She picked the ampules off the floor and replaced them in the tray.
The next guard didn't try to stop her. He waved her on impatiently. Penelope smiled at him and went on past.
There were no stairs. A corkscrew ramp wound around a central well instead. She looked down the well. There was a little nighttime traffic on the ramp — slow-moving servants, a nurse pushing a man in a wheelchair. The man had a bandaged head — one of Dr. Jolly's brain surgery patients.
Was this the way out? She had to take a chance. She'd killed three members of the staff in the last quarter-hour. One of the bodies was sure to be discovered momentarily. If an alarm went off, there would be no way out.
She was dizzy, out of breath from the experiments, the drugs, the lack of food and exercise. She gulped great lungfuls of oxygen and prayed that her strength would hold out a while longer.
She walked briskly down the ramp, carrying the tray, a preoccupied expression on her face. The nurse looked up as she passed and said, in a Cockney accent, "If that's for Dr. Lee, 'e's 'owling for your blood."
/>
Penelope said, in accents of purest Mayfair, "This is the Group C medication, love." She had no idea what that meant. Neither, apparently, did the nurse. She was trying to look intelligent as Penelope passed.
There were two mean-looking Chinese guards with shotguns at the foot of the ramp. It was a major checkpoint.
They were already looking in her direction. They were good professionals, standing well apart, out of one another's shot patterns. Even if she'd been in good shape, Penelope would have been unable to take both of them simultaneously. Now it was hopeless.
Penelope slowed her steps. The guards looked interested. She turned her head. The nurse with the wheelchair was only a few yards behind her.
Everything depended on timing. She called to the nurse, "Oh, by the way, love, Dr. Lee wants to see you when you've delivered your patient."
The nurse frowned. "What the bloody hell are you talking about? Dr. Lee doesn't…"
She was abreast of Penelope now. Penelope had fallen in step with her, putting an arm companionably around her shoulder: two staff members having a chat. But the nurse had stiffened under her touch. A look of suspicion was dawning in her eyes.
Penelope pressed down hard on the nurse's carotid artery, her fingers hidden from the guards. The nurse realized what she was doing and tried to struggle. But her oxygen-starved brain made her movements sluggish. After a moment she lapsed into unconsciousness.
Penelope exerted all her strength to keep the woman upright, trying not to look as if she were straining. The wheelchair slipped from the nurse's grasp and began bouncing crazily toward the guards, the bandaged patient nodding from side to side. The guards shouted.
Penelope eased up on the carotid, enough to let the nurse get her feet under her. The woman didn't know where she was. She walked her like a floppy doll down the ramp.
The guards had caught the wheelchair. One of them had actually put his shotgun down. The other was heading toward her, the weapon leveled at her chest.
"Point that thing the other way!" Penelope shouted. "Help me, you bloody fool! She's having some sort of a seizure!"
