Sonic Slave

by Paul Kenyon

  "I wonder what he thinks of us," Yvette said behind her.

  Like the Baroness, she was dressed for travel in a nicely tailored pants suit. Hers was a crisp denim from Veneziano Boutique, with a patterned silk scarf wrapped around her head, turban-fashion.

  The Baroness was spectacular in an orange silk outfit by Scott Barrie, with big floppy trouser legs and a neckline that sliced all the way to her waist. Keeping her breasts separated and more or less out of sight was a bit of custom scaffolding by Lily of France: a suspenderlike yoke with a pair of half-cups. She carried a simple canvas drawstring bag by Mark Cross, and wore a hat and sandals of handwoven straw. She stretched luxuriantly, glad to be standing up.

  Up ahead, Sumo was unchaining the Salukis from their first-class seats. When the Ghazali Airline people had heard that the dogs were intended for the Emir, they had refused to allow them to be caged in the baggage compartment. Salukis are worshiped all through the Arab world. It is unthinkable for them to be sold; they may only be given — as a princely gift. If anything could put the Emir off his guard, these would.

  The Salukis were yapping with excitement, giving Sumo a hard time. They were incredibly beautiful, with their thin feminine faces and silky blond ears, their narrow, almost skeletal bodies with the long, feathered legs. They looked like what they were: desert hunters, nine thousand years worth of royal breeding in their veins, taught to cooperate with the sheik's falcon in the hunting of gazelle.

  They were drawing admiring glances from all the male passengers filing past. As Penelope reached Sumo's seat, she reached out a hand to pat the dogs.

  Somebody behind her seized her wrist in a horny grip.

  "She-dog!" a voice hissed. "Take your whore's hands off el Hor, the noble one!"

  It was the leathery old sheik. He was outraged by her unveiled Western face, but there was a bright thread of lust in his eyes.

  With a deft twist, Penelope broke free, caught his wrist in her steel fingers, and forced his arm behind his back. His voluminous robes hid the action from the other passengers.

  "Sibnee fihalee," she said contemptuously.

  He gasped in pain and surprise, and opened his mouth to make a fuss. Penelope didn't have to be told how that would end in an Arab country.

  She let him feel her strength, forcing his wrist upward until tears came from his eyes.

  "Do you really want to be made a fool of by a woman?" she said softly.

  She gave his wrist a cruel squeeze and released him. She continued up the aisle without looking back, Sumo following her with the dogs.

  There were two air-conditioned Rolls-Royces waiting on the tarmac. A broad-chested Arab in a white nightgown and green cloak and headdress spotted her and came over.

  "The Baroness Orsini?" he said.

  "You've got half of it," she told him.

  "I am his Majesty's kennel master," he said. "You have a gift for his Highness?" His eyes darted past her to the Salukis. He went over and took their leads from Sumo without a word.

  He ushered the dogs, like royalty, into the back seat of one of the Rolls-Royces. "Allah maak," he said to the Baroness. "God be with you." He climbed into the front seat beside the chauffeur. He closed the door. The car drove off.

  Inga, beside her, was speechless. "Well, I never!"

  "Don't take it personally," the Baroness said. "Arabs consider it bad manners to make a fuss over a gift."

  "But it's hot! And the dogs got a ride before we did!"

  The Baroness laughed. The chauffeur of the second Rolls-Royce came over and bowed. "The Baroness Orsini?"

  "The Baroness St. John-Orsini," Inga said severely.

  "His Highness is waiting."

  He escorted Penelope to the car and held the door open for her. It was cool and dim inside. The seats were made of antelope leather, and the carpeting was a fabulous hand-loomed rug, cut to measure. There was an armed soldier up front with the driver.

  She looked out the window and saw Inga and Yvette, standing in the sun surrounded by mountains of luggage. Sumo had retrieved the wolfhounds from the baggage handler and was hanging onto their leads, looking as if he hoped they wouldn't decide to run. Together, they outweighed him by at least sixty pounds.

  "What about my servants?" Penelope said.

  The driver turned around and gave her a brown-toothed grin. "The other car will be back for them."

  "And my dogs! I won't have them waiting in the sun like that!"

  The driver nodded approvingly. This was something he could understand. He sent the soldier to take the two borzois from Sumo. The dogs got into the back seat with her, curling up immediately at her feet. The Rolls purred into life. As they drove away, the Baroness got a last glimpse of Sumo and the two girls staring after her.

  * * *

  "She is on her way to the palace," the man said into the walkie-talkie. "She is not what she seems to be. She looks like a beautiful rich woman, spoiled like all those American bitches, with a blouse that shows her bizaz. But she did something to the old sheik in the airplane that had him speechless. It's too suspicious — her arriving here just at this time. She'll bear watching."

  He was a young Arab in an ill-fitting business suit. He looked as if he'd have been more comfortable in the olive-green fatigues of a guerrilla, with a Chinese AK-47 machine gun in his hands. He had a gaunt, passionate face and the burning eyes of a fanatic.

  He was concealed behind a pile of rubble from one of the old buildings that had been flattened to make way for the airport. The salesman's sample case he had carried on the plane was at his feet; it contained nothing more interesting than his own dirty laundry and a ripped pair of woman's panties — both souvenirs of the three days spent in Rome. From where he was hidden, he was able to keep an eye on the runways and the tinted glass walls of the little terminal. There didn't seem to be any alarming activity among the soldiers who guarded the place.

  "It's up to you now, Comrade Amar. Her name is the Baroness Orsini. She has three servants with her — two women and a Japanese man. They didn't act like servants in the plane. I…"

  He broke off as a shadow fell across him. It was a squad of the Emir's soldiers, led by a subaltern with a gold star-and-crescent pinned to his turban. They had crept up on him from the other side. He realized, with a pang of bitterness, that they must have had him spotted from the time he first boarded the plane in Rome.

  "On your feet, dog!" the subaltern said.

  He got up reluctantly. One of the soldiers immediately knocked him down again with a rifle butt to the kidneys.

  He lay there, gasping with pain. The subaltern smiled dangerously. "Get up, dog, I said."

  He struggled to his feet again, the hurt of the blow knifing through him. The soldier, grinning, drove the rifle butt into his head.

  He slumped to the ground. Experimentally, the subaltern kicked him. There was no response. Disappointed, the subaltern said: "Take this refuse to the palace and lock him up with the others. No doubt Professor Le Sourd will want to question him before the Emir feeds him to the birds."

  * * *

  The palace rose out of the desert sands, a glittering fantasy of multicolored tile. The Baroness had an impression of vast blue domes and peppermint towers and walls like intricate lace. There was a tall minaret with clock faces built into its sides just below the muezzin's balcony, and the gilded honeycomb of the Emir's private mosque.

  The Rolls bounced on its soft desert tires down a broad avenue paved with hand-decorated blue-and-green tiles. A tough-looking soldier in Arab headdress let them through an iron gate, and the Rolls pulled up in the palace courtyard.

  No sooner had she stepped from the car than the kennel master was there to take charge of the borzois. She watched them dwindle down a tiled path, turning their long narrow heads for a last look at her before they disappeared around the corner. She wondered if they'd hear anything interesting in the kennel. Their jeweled collars were bugged with universal tone-instigated pea FM units. You never co
uld tell.

  A bearded, middle-aged man in a green cloak appeared to escort her up the steps. "I am Abdullah bin Abbas, his Highness' chamberlain," he explained, glancing with a frightened expression at the open front of her costume. "His Highness is waiting for you in the audience room."

  They walked up broad marble steps between rows of uniformed riflemen and passed through a splendid archway that was outlined in beaten gold and decorated with blue-and-white tiles traced with curving, interwoven designs.

  The entrance to the audience room was guarded by a huge pear-shaped person she recognized as a eunuch. He had a smooth, round-cheeked face under a gold turban, billowing red pantaloons and an open vest that revealed fat, womanish breasts and a vast belly. At his sashed waist he wore a large curved scimitar and a heavy ring of iron keys that were at least a foot long.

  The eunuch smiled with gleaming white teeth at Penelope as she passed; a smile that chilled her because of its lack of sexual content. The chamberlain hurried her past him without introduction or comment; eunuchs, lacking genitalia, are offensive to Allah.

  She stepped through into a domed chamber that was like a toy department at Christmas.

  It was a mad clutter of clockwork toys and mechanical gewgaws, all ticking away in confusion. There were cuckoo clocks, and wind-up dolls in elaborate costumes, and music boxes, and flashing pinball machines, and half-open packing cases spilling forth an assortment of tawdry gadgets. A life-size stuffed camel with a huge brass key in its side staggered in uncertain circles round the floor. A merry-go-round with chipped plaster horses and peeling gilt paint wheezed jerkily in the center of the chamber. An electric train whose gold-plated cars were heaped with candies and cakes chugged around the walls, coming to a stop every few feet.

  She tripped over a tricycle and found herself face to face with a clockwork parrot on a stand. Its feathers were dusty and bedraggled, and one of its jeweled eyes was missing. It spread its wings creakily, and in a tinny mechanical voice said, "Polly want a cracker!"

  There was a delighted laugh and a clapping of hands from the other end of the room. With difficulty, Penelope located the Emir amidst the clutter. He was sitting in a throne mounted on an electric golf cart. There were two dwarfs in diapers and turbans in attendance, one of them staggering under the weight of a rolled-up rug. At the Emir's elbow was a row of motionless birds on stands. At first Penelope thought they were toys, like the mechanical parrot, but then she saw that they were hooded falcons. A gaunt sunburned man who must have been the royal falconer stood unobtrusively nearby.

  "Ah, my dear Baroness, how kind of you to come," the Emir said in a squeaky voice. "No, no, stay where you are. I'll come to you. Noblesse oblige, you know!"

  He rolled toward her on his electric cart, the dwarfs scurrying to keep pace with him. A fuzzy mechanical puppy with a wagging tail got in his way. With glee, he rolled over it, crushing it.

  "Quite a collection," she said, extending her hand.

  He took her hand, not getting up. "Yes," he said, sighing. "These distractions help me to relax after the affairs of state."

  He was a scruffy creature, with nasty eyes that he kept fixed on the rounded contents of her plunging neckline. He had a pocked, oily nose and a sparse beard surrounding a mouth that looked as if it had just tasted vinegar. He didn't look at all like one of the world's richest men, in his plain white robes and Arab headdress.

  "I was quite surprised to get the invitation from your Rome agent, Mr. Shirazi," she said.

  She thought with private amusement of the stack of photos and magazine covers and reels of film that Farnsworth must have arranged to be delivered to Shirazi, and which Shirazi must have forwarded to the Emir.

  "Ah yes, Shirazi," the Emir said vaguely, "a good man. He scours Italy and France looking for novelties for me. Last week he sent me this."

  He gestured toward an old-fashioned barrel organ with a mechanical monkey attached by a tether. An attendant caught the Emir's gesture, and leaped over to crank the barrel organ. It began to pipe out "O Solo Mio" in an irregular tempo. The mechanical monkey leaped into life, dancing around in circles, its red coat flapping. As the music stopped, it removed its pillbox of a hat and held it out toward her.

  Laughing, she took a coin out of her bag and put it in the hat. The coin was one of Sumo's bugs. Embedded in the metal was a thin electronic wafer containing a microphone, a pinhead transmitter and a power source the size of a rice grain. The monkey brought the coin back to the barrel organ and put its hat back on. Now she had a listening post in the Emir's audience room.

  She turned with a blinding smile toward the Emir. "And am I a novelty from Mr. Shirazi too?"

  He had the grace to look startled. "My dear Baroness, no! You're an honored guest."

  "You do have a reputation for enticing ladies here with splendid gifts," she said with mock coquetry.

  She remembered the famous film star who had been given a Bahrain pearl the size of an egg, and the French dancer who had gone back to Paris with a Swiss bank account and a diamond choker worth a quarter-million dollars.

  The Emir put a splayed hand to his chest. "My dear Baroness! What could I possibly give you? You're one of the world's wealthiest women!"

  "And all my money can't buy a suitable stud for the darling little Arabian filly I've just bought."

  "Ah yes, I read about that. Mr. Shirazi sent me a clipping. But surely he told you that the horses in my stable are of an ancient royal bloodline. There is a prohibition against their leaving my kingdom. It's never been done."

  "I quite understand. And I've never slept with a sheik."

  His beady little eyes were exploring her neckline again. She took a deep breath.

  "But perhaps," he said, "since you're an admirer of horseflesh, you'd like to see the stables later."

  "Perhaps," she said, "you can have someone show me to my quarters. I'd like to freshen up before dinner."

  The chamberlain made a move as if to escort her, but the Emir lifted a hand. "No, no, Abdullah, I'll do it. Le roi le veut. Majesty has its burdens."

  The chamberlain bowed and stepped back. The Emir heaved himself up out of his electrical throne. He took Penelope by the arm. The two dwarfs followed, one of them skipping just ahead of the Emir.

  As they left the audience room, the fat eunuch fell into step with them.

  "Am I being taken to the harem, your Highness?" Penelope said.

  He didn't know he was being teased. "What? No. Of course not. We're very modern here. Ebrahim will see to your comfort."

  They were passing through a lush enclosed garden with shade trees and fishponds. Penelope wondered how much precious desert water had to be pumped into the palace grounds to maintain it.

  The tiled path twisted and turned among the pools. Penelope was puzzled by the antics of the dwarf who ran ahead of them. The little man seemed to be walking sideways or backwards most of the time. Once or twice he stumbled, but recovered his footing and continued his crablike progress.

  "That's a magnetic dwarf," the Emir said, following her glance. "They come from Somaliland. They're very expensive. This one's been trained always to face Mecca. He's, my compass. No matter where I am, I always know in which direction to kneel when I pray."

  They'd only gone a few more steps when the clocks in the minaret struck noon. The muezzin's call to prayer, amplified, sounded from the tall tower.

  "Allah-hu akbar, Allah-hu akbar, ash-hadu Allah eelaha il-la Allah…"

  Penelope lifted her eyes to the muezzin's balcony, high above, but there was no one there. The call was recorded and broadcast through a loudspeaker.

  The Emir had begun to kneel the instant the call came. The second dwarf, the one with the rug, scurried forward, frantically trying to unroll it before the Emir's knees touched the ground.

  He made it just in time. The Emir was on the rug, facing in the same direction as the magnetic dwarf, who had frozen, stock-still, when the clocks struck. The second dwarf was smoothing out the
fringe on the rug's forward edge. He dodged out of the way as the Emir's forehead hit the rug in ritual prostration.

  Penelope felt a touch on her arm. It was Ebrahim, the eunuch. He put a finger to his lips and motioned her to follow him.

  She stole a last look at the Emir. He was lost in prayer, his white-robed rump sticking into the air. The dwarfs were kneeling on either side of him, at a respectful distance.

  "Lead on," she said to the eunuch, and followed him down the garden path.

  6

  The grave mounds stretched across the desert as far as the eye could see, an endless vista of low, rounded hillocks like waves in an ocean of sand. The ground was littered in every direction with sharp fragments of pottery, the leavings of seven thousand years of grave robbers.

  "Have fun, gentlemen," the sheik said.

  He was a small neat man with alert brown eyes and an impeccable British accent. He'd been most helpful. He'd loaned them two Land Rovers, seen to the unloading of their supplies and equipment, arranged for the hiring of native labor and taken them to the site himself.

  "Jesus, where do we start?" Skytop said. He squinted against the sun at the bumpy plain, a pick and shovel slung across one great shoulder as casually as if they were toothpicks.

  "A good question," Sheik Hamad said. "I've been cooperating with archaeological expeditions like yours for thirty years. This burial field has been pretty well combed over." He looked at Skytop with shrewd eyes. "Just what, exactly, do you hope to find?"

  Eric interposed himself hastily. "We're after evidence that'll establish a firmer connection between Sumer, Elam and the flourishing civilization that was taking root here along the Persian Gulf about that time. Nothing spectacular, I'm afraid. Just a lot of solid, hard work to establish probable trade routes through the pottery styles."