Don Pendleton's Science Fiction Collection, 3 Books Box Set, (The Guns of Terra 10; The Godmakers; The Olympians)

by Don Pendleton

  “Just, uh, how far does that extend?”

  “Well...we dress for dinner, and undress for just about everything else. Is that far enough?”

  “I, uh, wasn’t speaking particularly of the manner of dress,” he admitted.

  She was walking him around the observation deck which ringed the outer perimeter. “The view’s really glorious from here; especially on a clear day. We can see clear into the Grand Tetons.”

  “I wasn’t speaking of the manner of dress,” Hunter said again.

  She halted in mid-stride and turned to gaze into his eyes. “There isn’t any marriage here,” she declared solemnly. “Not unless...unless somebody wants to make babies. Then the social customs are observed, and Brian builds them a bungalow. They are irrevocably committed, then, for as long as they have children. After that, the marriage can be dissolved by mutual consent.”

  “After that?” Hunter was wondering if he’d forgotten to wake up that morning.

  “After the last child of the marriage has matured,” she explained. “We are considered mature, here, at puberty, and we take our places as individuals in the community. That means that we leave the bungalow and move in here with Brian.

  “I believe you were asking me, in a roundabout way, about sex here at Olympia,” she continued. “Sex, Dick, is a natural human activity. Every one at Olympia has complete access to sex.”

  Hunter suddenly felt ludicrous, and downright uncomfortable in the heavy parka. Mannclift had abandoned her mink and muffs at the elevator door, while idly conversing with the near-nude couple, and Hunter was only now aware of that fact. He shrugged out of the parka and dropped it onto a couch, meanwhile ruminating over the surprising last-minute disclosures regarding life on Donaldson’s Olympus.

  “I don’t know why you’d be pulling my leg,” he commented finally.

  “I’m not pulling your leg.” She was tugging at the belt of her leather slacks, obviously preparing to remove them. “I grew up here. My father was one of Brian’s legal advisors, and my mother was his statistician. I was illegitimate, but that happened before we came here.”

  The slacks fell to the floor, revealing glowing thighs and lace. She immediately began working on the buttons of her blouse. Hunter simply didn’t believe it.

  “The first bungalow Brian had built was for my father and mother. I was about six, I guess, when we moved in. Brian absolutely insisted that they live together as man and wife, and that they give me a proper home environment. He’s very fussy about things like that.” The blouse was grounded; her hands went high behind her back in search of the clasp of the bra. Hunter’s eyes had moved jerkily to the panorama of the flats, his face hot with blood again.

  “I matured a bit early.”

  I’ll bet you did, Hunter agreed silently.

  “I had my twelfth birthday here at Olympia. Mother and Father moved back also, and their marriage was dissolved. We had a very pleasant relationship after that, but not in a family sense. I began my deeper studies, you see, and I was very busy. My specialty is political science, but I’m also quite effective in corporation law. Father and Mother took their pensions and left six years ago.”

  “Pensions?” Hunter was staring doggedly out the window, fully realizing the limitations of his own flesh.

  “Yes. It’s actually a lump-sum salary maturation. You see, everything we require is provided for us here; We have no need for money. But if we stay, in a working capacity, for a minimum of ten years, then we can leave at any time, with a lump-sum settlement which can be regarded as a pension. It’s an equitable arrangement. Workers at my father’s level receive forty thousand dollars for each year of service. My mother received thirty thousand per year. Between the two of them, they had a nice nest-egg. But of course they went their separate ways.”

  “Of course,” Hunter muttered.

  “Father’s in Rio. Mother settled in Vienna.”

  “How nice.”

  “You can’t stare out that window forever, you know.”

  He faced her then, smiling to hide his embarrassment. She wore lace panties, and nothing else. The skin-tones were dazzling to his skittery eyes—the long legs extending in a dizzying taper from the snug vee and lilting flare of the thighs. Saucily sculpted breasts, ample but not oversized or over-commanding, heaved slightly in mute provocation in time with her breathing. The nipples were erected, protruding daintily from their glowing background. The curve of neck and shoulders Hunter found entirely divine, the hollow of the soft throat all but demanding attention; and there was a totally new expression on the lovely face a controlled fire in the eyes.

  “Do you find me attractive?”

  “Don’t play games with me, Paula. I am no Olympian, you know. I’m a mortal. Entirely so.”

  “I was wondering if you’d like to kiss me.”

  Hunter flung a wild glance in a quick 360 of his surroundings, as though perhaps to re-orient himself as to time and place. “Not if that’s all there’s going to be to it; no, I definitely would not,” he said.

  Mannclift hooked her thumbs into the waistband of the panties and snapped them down and off, straightening with an enigmatic smile.

  “No, uh...no G-string, eh?” He knew it to be a stupid comment even as he was saying it; but then, the entire scene was becoming stupidly unreal, to his mind.

  Mannclift stood with one hand resting lightly on her mons veneris; the other cupped a flaring hipbone. Her lashes were lowered, and one knee was slightly bent. Hunter knew precisely how Eve had looked to Adam in the garden. “We undress appropriately here,” she reminded him. “I believe that you should, unless you want to kiss me first.”

  He grabbed her then—a sweeping clutch of a grab—and she came into his arms with a gasp and a moan, their mouths joining violently under the impact of Hunter’s suddenly overflowing ardor. She gave him his way briefly, then pushed him off, tasting her lips with her tongue. “We don’t copulate here,” she told him. “It isn’t allowed, and besides, you aren’t dressed properly.”

  “I wasn’t copulating,” he said raggedly, wondering if he was going nuts.

  “Only by virtue of a technicality of penis position,” she replied, smiling as though she were enjoying his discomfiture. “We kiss here only with the lips, not with the hips.”

  “What d’ya mean, you don’t copulate here?” Hunter growled, the full meaning of the statement just dawning in his consciousness. “What do you do—sit around and stare each other to orgasm?”

  She laughed lightly and moved back into his arms. “I meant not out here, in the living room. We have better places. I do wish you’d undress here, though.”

  “Why?”

  “So that I may...have the benefit of visual stimuli. I haven’t even seen your penis yet.”

  Hunter burst out laughing. “Shit,” he said softly, as soon as he could control his speech.

  Mannclift didn’t like the word. “Vulgarity has no place here,” she told him.

  “I’m sorry,” he said; and he meant it. “Just keep in mind, will you, that I was not raised in this kooky place. I believe, in fact, that at this moment I am not in a state of sexual stimulation at all. I believe what I am in is a state of shock. Can you understand that?”

  She touched his pubic area with the back of her hand, then turned her wrist for a palm and finger contact. “It isn’t shock,” she said simply.

  “Well, hell, let’s go find that place,” Hunter suggested.

  “What place?” She had removed her hand and replaced it with her own pubic warmth, which she was lightly agitating against him.

  “That copulating place you mentioned,” he groaned.

  She moved reluctantly back, her respiration rate definitely increasing. “Yes,” she said. “I’m highly stimulated.”

  They moved in the direction taken by the other couple. “Do you know that you are my first...my very first?” she whispered, leaning against him as they walked.

  Hunter nearly choked, but continued his
gentle rubbing of her bare hip. “I can hardly believe that you’re a virgin,” he told her. He didn’t believe it at all.

  “No, no. Of course not. I told you: We enter sex at puberty here.” They were through the doorway now, and walking past a series of closed doors on both sides of the gently curving hallway. “I meant that you’re my first experience with an outsider.”

  Hunter couldn’t get over the ridiculous feeling of unreality. “Don’t you have a steady boy friend?” he asked, moving his hand from hip to breast, tenderly cupping its delicacy—realizing that he was still talking and behaving like an adolescent, and giving not a damn.

  “I haven’t yet grown into the understanding of love, if that’s what you mean,” she replied. “Here— Wait; this is my place.” She had dragged him to a halt before a door that looked exactly like all the others. It wasn’t numbered or otherwise identified, nor was it locked. She pushed the door open, and they entered. Soft lights came on immediately, though Hunter hadn’t noticed her touch a light switch, nor could be see a switch.

  There was no furniture in the room. The floor was of the same soft carpeting he’d encountered everywhere since stepping off the elevator. It was a small room, hardly more than a cell, without windows, skylight, or any other visible outlet to the outside world. The ceiling was curved, like the inside of an egg shell, and appeared to be some sort of seamless plastic. The air was fresh and nicely scented, but Hunter could see no evidence of vents, gratings or other atmosphere-control devices. Past a partially opened folding screen, he could see a small toilet and shower, and then a larger room; obviously a dressing room, for it sported a built-in vanity, and closets overflowing with feminine clothing.

  Mannclift had immediately gone to work on his clothing, undressing him swiftly and methodically. And as she removed, she kissed—“...to get the taste of you all over,” she explained. Hunter found himself also kissing wherever he could reach, and it wasn’t until later that he appreciated the anatomical limitations thus encountered.

  His hostess was puffing with the exertions of passion by the time she completed her valet chores; she sank to the floor and tumbled toward the center of the room. Hunter was amazed to see that she bounced, and that the floor bounced with her. He quickly joined her there, and discovered that the entire central area of the floor was a sort of floor-flush bed, velvetized and yielding, almost kinetic in its response to pressure. “Did you say this is Mars, lady?” he panted, grinning.

  “No. It’s Venus,” she hissed happily. “And at this moment I am Venus, Goddess of Sex. Kiss my breasts, Dick darling; kiss them... Ohhh, you do have a nice penis! Some day I’ll kiss it for you. But not until—”

  “God, let go of it,” Hunter groaned. “I’m going outta my—”

  “It’s all right,” she assured him, encircling him immediately with quivering legs and drawing him into liquid convulsion. “Ahhh, yes! Yes. Don’t worry; just do your part, I’ll do mine...let yourself go!”

  Jesus Christ! Jesus Christ! That was Hunter’s total commitment to intelligible thought-forms for the ensuing few moments. He had never been so thoroughly dominated by a female during his adult life. She exploded around him in a wrenching cataclysm of galvanized velvet, burying her cries in his shoulder, and as Hunter experienced the explosive flow of vital forces, then his rapidly deflating tension, he closed his eyes and rolled onto his side, carrying her with him in relaxed embrace and to the inward sigh, Ah, Olympia!

  7: CONJUNCTION

  He spent that first night in Mannclift’s “place.” Their friendship mellowed, and he learned many things, but nothing of Brian Donaldson’s interest in politics, nor in Richard Hunter and Weekly. And he met the dawn bleary-eyed and with the summons from his host.

  “This means you go to the aerie for breakfast,” Mannclift told him, folding the note and returning it to Hunter. “He likes to eat with the sun rising over the crags, so you’d better get moving.”

  Hunter nodded and went wearily to the shower, peppered himself with darts of stinging water, and reappeared moments later an almost convincing semblance of the bright-eyed young editor of a national weekly. “God, look at that suit!” he growled, gingerly nudging the pile of wrinkled clothing with a bare toe.

  “Those are hardly appropriate anyway,” Mannclift said, wrinkling her nose in distaste. She disappeared into the dressing room, returning almost immediately with an object resembling an over-sized jock strap, or an undersized male bikini. She tossed it to Hunter. “This would be more like it,” she told him. “And it’s a stretchy; fits any size.”

  He stared at the elasticized strap of material for a moment, then raised pained eyes to his hostess. “You are, of course, kidding,” he declared.

  “No. Believe me, it fits any size,” she replied, misunderstanding his objection.

  Hunter sighed and put the thing on, then raised his hands to shoulder level and performed a pirouette.

  “Lovely,” she said, smiling. “Scarlet becomes you. Goes with those funny little veins in your eyes.”

  “Those veins weren’t there at this time yesterday,” he reminded her. His gaze dropped to his midsection. “Richard Hunter, political editor of Weekly, going calling in his scarlet ginch,” he said mournfully.

  Mannclift laughed out loud, then hastened to assure him that he looked “just fine.” Hunter started to remove it, but she would have none of that. “I wasn’t laughing at the way you look in your ginch, as you call it. I was tickled by the kicked-dog look on your face, that’s all. Listen: Brian will be wearing one; take my word for it. Nothing else is ever worn in the aerie.”

  “What do you wear when you go up there?” Hunter wanted to know.

  She stared at him for a moment, then went back to the dressing room and returned twirling what appeared to be a pendant on a string.

  “What’s that?” he asked. But he already knew; he’d seen one the evening before.

  Mannclift handed it to him. On closer inspection, it looked more like a slingshot than a pendant. The body of it was triangular, about four inches long and no more than two inches wide at the top, narrowing to a half-inch or so. It was black. Three looped elastic strings told the story of attachment—a rather tenuous story.

  Hunter gave it back to her. “Show me,” he commanded.

  She complied without hesitation, spreading the loops with practiced fingers, moving both feet through the higher and larger loop and expertly fitting the other two onto separate legs, all in one swift motion. A slight adjustment at the end of the journey, and she was girded—austerely so, but girded nonetheless.

  Hunter inspected the costume closely. She leaned against him.

  “Not now,” Hunter said quickly. “The sun must be up on the crags by now.”

  She smiled and pushed him toward the door. “Save some for me,” she said.

  He turned and stared at her. “Some what?”

  Her eyes flicked to his midsection and she wet her lips with her tongue.

  “Uh...wait a minute. Brian isn’t...I mean, what’s he usually have for breakfast?” Hunter stammered.

  She shrieked in genuine amusement and shoved him on out the door, following close behind, giggling and jostling him along the hallway. “I am just taking you to the elevator,” she explained. “From that point, you’re on your own.”

  “In my teeny-weeny bikini?” he said, chuckling, infected with her high humor. “Pardon my scarlet ginch, Mr. Billionaire. I’m from Weekly, you see and we’re planning a feature on nut farms, you see. And how is your ginch feeling today?”

  “What in the world is a ginch?” Mannclift squealed, falling against him in convulsive mirth.

  “I dunno. You’ll have to ask the lady. She’s the one gimme the ginch. And God, that ain’t all she gimme!”

  Mannclift was gasping for breath and clutching her tummy with both hands when they reached the restricted elevator to the fourth level. “I didn’t...know this could be...so funny,” she said, leaning weakly against her new buddy.
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  “This what?” he asked, grinning.

  “You know; about dressing and...and sex and all.”

  “It’s one of the values of our society,” he replied soberly. “Or at least of my society. It’s one of the things that makes it all bearable. If we couldn’t laugh about it, I guess we’d all go mad.”

  She nodded. “I understand that. But what am I laughing at.”

  He smiled, kissed her briefly, and said, “I guess you’re vicariously sharing my sense of humiliation and confusion. It’s okay.”

  “Are you humiliated and confused?” she asked, pressing against him and encircling him with her arms.

  “Not just at this instant,” he replied softly.

  They kissed, tenderly and lingeringly, and when they broke there were glinting lights in Mannclift’s eyes. “I’ll be in my office, down on Level Two,” she told him. “Let me know how you make out with Brian.”

  Hunter nodded. ‘You’re going down there in nothing but your mini-ginch?”

  She smiled. She picked up a gold telephone which was recessed into the wall by the elevator door, eyeing Hunter with a droll smile, and spoke into the mouthpiece. “This is Mannclift. Hunter is ready for aerie.” She replaced the instrument, formed a kiss with her lips and blew it toward him, then walked down to the main elevator and punched the call button. The cars arrived at Level Three almost simultaneously. They stepped into their separate cubicles, and as Hunter turned to face the door which was sliding closed in front of him, he felt a curious sadness, an emptiness, and he realized that the feeling was prompted by Mannclift’s absence.

  “Wouldn’t it be a helluva thing to fall in love with her?” he told the door. Then it slid open once more, and he walked out into the eagle’s nest.

  Brian Donaldson turned out to be a pleasant shock for Weekly’ s political editor. So averse was the man to publicity, there were no more than a handful of photographs of him in circulation, and most of these were old and of poor quality. Hunter knew most of the vital statistics: age, 58; height, 6’1”; weight 210; reputed to be a bachelor; wealth, several billion; personality disposition, coldly ruthless; political orientation, well right of center; religious and/or philanthropic affiliations, none. From these gleanings, Hunter had fashioned an image of the man which was sort of a cross between Hughes, Getty and Onassis. The confrontation revealed the errors of imagery.