by John Barnes
The cafe would have been a pleasant enough place, and the company nice enough, if it had all just been a social occasion. I hadn’t been to Mexico before, but the beer lived up to its reputation, and we all sat, chatting and waiting for something to happen, getting to know a little bit about each other. I observed that the version of Helen here—the weapons-proficient secret agent— seemed to bond instantly with Esmé and Paula, and was not altogether sure that I liked that; I missed what I was now thinking of as “plain old Helen,” a term I was trying to lose track of as quickly as I could because I didn’t want to think of the Helen that I really wanted as either plain or old. Jesús and Roger both seemed to have a knack for waiting that I desperately envied; I’d have thought after my four years in the Navy I’d have mastered the skill of sitting about waiting to be useful, but I was tense and nervous.
At least Ulrike was responding reasonably—she was fidgeting too. We spent a while talking about academic life, since in her world she had been a professor of Scandinavian Studies at the University, but there wasn’t much to say that it hadn’t been possible to say since the 1100s when the first universities came into being: administrators had no idea what was going on, faculty politics was vicious and silly, students were often lazy and sometimes plain stupid, and nobody cared very much about human knowledge. Ulrike’s situation was the mirror image of Helen’s— Helen had crossed over into this adventure for which she was well prepared, where apparently Ulrike’s more adventurous self, the hired assassin, had crossed out of this world and left the Ulrike now sitting across from me to hold the bag.
There weren’t many people passing on the street, which might have been any street in a poor section of a city in the sunny part of the developed world, or a middle-class street in any of the poor countries. There were a few whitewashed buildings and some walls of plain CBS block, interspersed with some wooden structures that seemed to have been put up improvisationally. Cables and wires ran everywhere, antennae and dishes sprouted from every flat surface, and crude handbills covered anywhere that people didn’t walk. Little breezes stirred pale gold-yellow dust on the broken asphalt now and then.
I had gotten so used to the scene being static that I would start, just a little, every time that someone went by, or even when a dog emerged from an alley. After pretending to listen for five solid minutes to Ulrike whining about her department chair and all the credit that got stolen, I suppose I was getting desperate for something to break the monotony, since my other choices for conversation were the three women chattering about what nine-millimeter round had the greatest stopping power and the two men discussing fine points of baseball.
That was when the two women came around the corner. The older of the two, who might have been in her late twenties or early thirties, was strikingly beautiful, a honey blonde with her hair done in an elaborate coif from which several tendrils descended in tight curls, wearing a crisp white dress that revealed perfectly tanned arms and shoulders, and rounded, strappy sandals with midheels that seemed to have been specially chosen to exactly complement the perfect calves.
Beside her, the other figure seemed a little awkward and clumsy; the much younger woman, perhaps fifteen or sixteen years old, had pleasant but not extraordinary features, a saddle of freckles across the nose, mouth too wide, pale blonde hair cut very close, and was wearing a silly-looking pair of Ben Franklin wire-rimmed glasses, a bright pink T-shirt, and a baggy denim skirt with knee socks and sneakers. Both were carrying suitcases.
They approached the cafe, heading directly for our table, and I had a sense that I had seen someone move that way before. I stopped listening to Ulrike entirely, which was probably a good choice. The honey blonde stood still in a very attractive pose, looked over the whole table of people, then spoke with the kind of clear voice that comes from years of training, and said, pointing at Roger, “Now, you’ve got to be the Colonel. And that means you—” she pointed at me—”must be Lyle. But I can’t figure out which of you is Helen.”
“That would be me,” Helen said, “and—good golly. Kelly and Terri, aren’t you?”
Kelly nodded and said, “Yes, that’s me. Geoffrey Iphwin called me late last night and told me to pack a bag and go to Josef Stalin Airport—that’s just outside Paris—and that there would be a ticket and a person waiting for me. The ticket was for Mexico City, and the person was Terri, here.”
“Glad to meet you all,” she said, clearly trying to look poised and confident at the moment when she was unexpectedly face to face with all her adult friends. She didn’t do badly. “You wouldn’t believe how long Mr. Iphwin had to talk to my father to get me permission to do this, and I’m still not sure how he did it. We’ve been arguing all the way here about whether that airport was named after Stalin or Petain.”
They sat down to join us, and we made introductions all around the table. The energy that had dwindled into idle conversation, just as if this were a long afternoon off from our regular jobs for all of us, picked back up in a burst of eager babble, and just as it was getting hard to hear among the too-many voices clamoring for your attention, a waiter came running out of the cafe, carrying a phone with a speaker attachment, and set it down on the table among us.
We waited for a long moment in the hot, gold sunshine, everyone holding a drink or catching someone else’s eye, before the phone spoke. By the time the phone did speak, I think we all knew that it would be Iphwin. “Roll call,” he said. “Lyle?”
I was confused a moment, then Ulrike nudged me. “Here.”
“Helen?”
“Here.”
He worked his way around the table and got a “here” from everyone; then he asked “Is there anyone present I haven’t named?”
“No,” Roger said, “unless you count the waiter who’s inside the building at the moment.”
“Good. Then we can begin. Perhaps I can start by clearing a few things up for you. But first of all, I have a couple more tests to make to be sure that everything is finally in place. These aren’t what you’d call the most normal things you’ve ever done, I’m afraid, but there’s a point to all of them. Is there an electric plug on the outside wall of the cafe?”
I looked and saw that there were several of them. “Yes.”
“Would you please plug something in and out of one of them a few times?”
There was a string of lights across the tops of the posts that ringed the outdoor dining areas. The plug lay on the ground by one of the outlets. I walked over and plugged and unplugged it a few times, feeling like someone was pulling some kind of incredibly elaborate prank on me. Of course, I had been feeling that way for five days.
“Excellent!” Iphwin said. “Now, would you please get the phone from the waiter inside, and then phone Paris directory assistance and hang up as soon as they answer?”
Before anyone else moved, Kelly got up and said, “If there’s any number I know, it’s that one—I’m constantly forgetting phone numbers.” She walked into the cafe.
“What are your little experiments about?” I asked the speaker phone.
“I can’t tell you that just now but I will very soon. Just let Kelly do her experiment, and let me do one more, and then we’ll be in good shape.”
Kelly came out, holding a portable phone, and said, “All right, I’m going to try,” loud enough for the speaker phone to pick it up. Then she dialed and hung up.
A moment later the speaker phone said, “Sorry, try it again.”
“And you still want me to hang up as soon as they answer?”
“Yes. Exactly as you did before.”
She dialed, waited, and hit the button.
“Perfect!” Iphwin said, triumph and satisfaction evident in his voice even through the speaker phone, and immediately added, “Now there’s just one more task. Is there any music coming over the speakers in the cafe?”
“No,” we all chorused.
“Do you want them to put some on?” Terri asked. “I can run and ask them.”
She got up and darted inside; I was beginning to wonder what the staff inside was thinking of our behavior and our requests, but at least so far they hadn’t come out to tell us to knock it off. A moment later, a style of music I’d never heard before—maybe it was something more Latin than my Nazi-run world had retained?—came blaring through the speakers, and Terri came running out, breathlessly. “Thank god for four required languages,” she said, flinging herself back into her chair.
“Just a moment...” Iphwin said. “Now, the phone you were using for calling Paris ... do not pick it up when it rings. It’s going to ring for several minutes. Leave the radio on and leave the speaker phone on. Move the phone to the table, and put an empty chair by the place where you put the phone down, but do not pick up the call.”
The phone began to ring almost immediately, and with a shrug, Helen got up and moved it to the table, then dragged another chair over to the table as it continued to ring and ring.
“Is the phone in place?” Iphwin asked through the speaker.
“Yep. You ought to be able to hear it,” the Colonel said. The phone rang on and on, a maddening sound, and the radio played loudly through the speakers overhead; I was beginning to wonder if this was some kind of complex plan to drive us all mad.
“And is the chair empty?”
Jesús Picardin leaned forward and looked at it, making sure, before he said, “The chair is empty.”
“Everyone sit still for my count of 100. Don’t move while I count. One, two, three, four, five, six, hello.”
The phone had stopped ringing. The speaker phone had shrieked briefly, a burst of high-pitched feedback, at the word “hello.”
And there, sitting in the chair that had been empty an instant ago, holding the phone he had just answered, sat Geoffrey Iphwin, in a magnificent white suit with dark striped tie, a bright red carnation in his lapel.
Everyone jumped back, tipping chairs over and taking big steps backward. Helen, Esmé, Paula, and Jesús had hands on weapons. Iphwin raised his hands, one still holding the phone, and then hit the hang-up switch on the phone. “Is anyone going to shoot?” he asked.
“No, you just startled me,” Esmé said.
“Guess not.” Paula sounded regretful.
“No,” Helen said flatly.
“At least not yet,” Picardin said.
“Good.” Iphwin set the handset down, and reached over to turn off the speaker phone. He looked around. “Well, at last I have all of you in the same world, and now I can explain everything to you. I have identified you all as people I need for an important mission, for which, besides the possible glory if you survive and the undying thanks of your country if it works, I offer to make all of you wealthy beyond your wildest dreams. That’s the offer—take it or leave it—high risk, but glory, service to country, and great wealth.”
“What’s the mission?” the Colonel asked.
Iphwin sat back, crossed his legs, and smiled at all of us, a warm friendly smile as if he were about to tell us the best joke in the world. “It’s really a very simple job. Drive north and find America. It’s been missing for at least three decades, you see, in trillions of worlds, and it’s time we found out why.” He got up and said, “Well, now. If you’ll all accept the deal, I can put us up in a nice hotel and we can hold a little strategic conference this evening, and get an early start tomorrow. Is everyone prepared to accept the deal?”
I was nodding, and then I realized we had all said “Yes” in unison. I wondered if Iphwin had arranged that one, or if it was a real coincidence, or just contagious idiocy. The distinction didn’t seem to matter much.
* * * *
I
phwin had gotten us reservations in a big, modern hotel, one of those places they set up in poor countries so that the well-off can go there without having to meet the poor. We rode there in near-silence. I got the shotgun seat so that Paula could show me how everything worked.
Iphwin told us all, firmly, that we were to rest and eat, discuss as little as we could, neither make nor accept phone calls for any reason, and meet him in a large conference room at 8:00 P.M. sharp. Other than that, he wasn’t about to answer any questions.
Helen and I had been given adjoining rooms with a door between that we could unlock; we promptly did. We ordered room service—happily, Agent Helen Perdita’s tastes in food were very nearly the same as Professor Helen Perdita’s, so at least there was something I knew about this person—then took quick, separate showers. I was about to tumble into bed for a nap, since it was almost an hour till we were to meet downstairs, when there was a knock at the door that connected my room to Helen’s. “I’m naked,” I said.
“Perfect.”
Something about the tone of her voice made me open the door very quickly. When she charged in, I had barely a moment to see that all she was wearing was a pair of satin gloves and a pair of spike heels. She’d gotten hold of two of my neckties, and she rushed in and had me hog-tied behind my back, with my ankles and wrists in one big bundle, before I got done asking her what she was doing. Then she gagged me with a pair of her panties tied on with a stocking, turned me on my face, and said, “You’ve been bad,” and proceeded to spank me till tears ran down my face.
The whole time I was trying to work the gag loose to tell her I didn’t like this kind of thing, that whatever she had done with the Lyle she used to know, I wasn’t him. At least I wanted her to know that she was hurting my buttocks and that I didn’t like it and wanted her to stop. I was twitching and screaming through the gag, unable to breathe, terrified about how far she might go or what she might do to me.
She turned me on my side and I frantically shook my head, trying to tell her that no, I didn’t want or like this, but she gave me a smile that froze my blood, took off one of her shoes, and— very gently, to my surprise—inserted the spike heel in my anus and moved it back and forth. I thought I would throw up; my breath, stopped by her gag, was hot and foul in my lungs, my stomach and chest were heaving, my nose clogged with snot from crying.
She wrapped my penis in one of those satin gloves and stroked me, slowly, a few times. I was more erect than I had ever been in my life.
She flipped me onto my back; that might be a good position for someone who does a great deal of yoga, I suppose, but the pressure on my shoulders, ankles, elbows, wrists, and knees was terrible, and I screamed again, choking now on the tears and mucus dribbling down my throat. My penis, as if it had a mind of its own, kept right on responding to the strokes of the satin gloves, and then she hopped up on the bed and sat on it.
Helen rode me for what seemed forever, and though every joint shrieked with pain, and huge sobs heaved in my chest, at the same time I had never felt a pleasure more intense. She jerked and spasmed three times in big, sloppy orgasms while I struggled and wept; finally, everything gave way—my gut muscles cramped as if I’d been punched in the solar plexus after running ten miles—and I came hard enough to give myself a stomach cramp.
She got off me and got a warm washcloth, then slowly bathed my sore genitals. I wanted her to untie me, but clearly that would only happen on her schedule. Then she rolled me to the side and undid my bonds; I flopped out of the hog-tie like a rag doll, unable to move my arms or legs. She turned me back to her and undid the stocking, then pulled it and the panties out of my mouth. I started to speak but she bent low and kissed me intensely, for a long time.
When she had finished and I lay there, spent and barely able to breathe, with most of my muscles screaming, she said, “You were really a good boy. That’s the best it’s ever been.”
“I’ve never done that...” I said. “Never. I had no idea you were going to ... I don’t play games like that. That wasn’t me.”
“Then whose erection was that?”
I turned on my side, away from her. “I didn’t say I don’t respond to it. It’s nothing I haven’t dreamed about. I said I don’t do it. I don’t want to do things l
ike that.” I crept sideways across the bed, face still turned down toward the covers, hoping to get away from her.
“You’ll be suggesting it to me in a few days, if we’re both alive.”
I hated that snotty confidence in her voice. “I don’t care what you did with any other Lyle. You don’t do that with me. And if you even think it might be me, you ask first.”
She laughed, and it was like Helen in one way, but frightening in another—I didn’t even begin to know this person. “Let me tell you something else, little Lyle. You’re now going to have the sweetest little nap you’ve had in years. I know that your body reacts that way. And as for me—this always seems to sharpen my eye and shorten my reaction time. I’ll be fast, precise, and relaxed for the next few days. Whatever you may think at the moment, my little crybaby tramp, we’re both better off. And you enjoyed it whether you admit or not, you little whore.”
