by Paul Kenyon
There were hundreds of them, of all shapes and sizes, milling about in a vast blue-tiled interior covered by about an acre of carved and painted ceiling. They were lounging on cushions, paddling in an azure pool or sipping drinks beside it, clustering in little groups, chattering and gossiping with one another.
She shuddered at all the high-pitched gabble. It sounded like Schrafft's during the lunch hour.
No one noticed her. It was the reverse of the dream where you're conspicuous in a crowd because you're naked. Here she would have been conspicuous with clothes on.
She picked up a tall lime drink for camouflage and strolled through the crowd. It was quite a collection. There were round, overfed Arab girls with breasts like beachballs and bellies like drums, ears and nostrils pierced by gold wires. There were pretty Europeans with figures like showgirls. There was a tall, elongated Watusi girl, seven feet tall, her neck stretched by brass rings, chatting with a Pygmy girl who barely reached her hip. There was a dumpy French whore wearing nothing but black stockings. The sea of breasts and thighs and buttocks was stupefying.
They'd take her for one of the new girls, if they bothered to notice her at all. The Emir's agents were constantly shipping him novelties. Life in the harem must have been boring for them. They saw no man except the Emir, and — with hundreds of them to get through — were lucky to experience sex once a year or so. There was nothing except gossip and petty intrigues and food and crushes on one another and raising the children until they were taken away from them.
"Just get here, ducks?" an English voice said.
Penelope turned around. She was looking at a statuesque strawberry blonde with freckles all over her body. The girl smiled at her out of music hall lips.
"A little while ago," she said.
"My name's Angie," the blond girl said. "Lord, but it's good to speak English. I've been here a week, in the middle of all these wogs." She grimaced at the surrounding sea of flesh.
"How did you get here?"
"My agent booked me."
Penelope laughed. "Your agent?"
"Yes, for a year. Limited engagement. One of the Emir's scouts saw me in London — I was playing in a little revue. I go home in a year with fifty thousand quid. It's in my contract."
"Most of the girls are here for life."
"Not the ones like us, though." Angie cast an admiring eye over Penelope's figure. "You're smashing! Haven't I seen you somewhere before?"
Penelope made her voice casual. "I don't think so."
"Don't tell me you're not in show business. Or a model. Your face is awfully familiar…"
"Oh, maybe you've seen me at auditions. In London. My name's Samantha. Samantha Phillips." Penelope had subtly changed her voice, the set of her jaw, the shape of her lips. She was holding her body differently. In a minute she'd made herself a little cheaper, a little older. It wasn't too obvious, but it gave Angie a new handle to grab her by.
"Samantha Phillips… I'm sure I know the name. Let me just think…"
"Why don't you show me around?" Penelope said hastily.
Angie took her by the hand and led her through the tiled amphitheater. "Not much to see out here, except a lot of boobs and bums. The Emir likes us to be naked when he strolls through." She shrugged, and her freckled breasts quivered. "Not much different from some of the shows I've been in."
They passed through a flame-shaped archway. There was a long corridor with carved yew doors down its length. Penelope could hear a baby crying somewhere, and kitchen sounds.
"Private apartments," Angie said. "You can bunk with me until you're set. The Emir hasn't sent for me yet. The ball-less wonder — you know, the fatty with the turban and the sword — says it may be months before he gets around to me." She laughed harshly. "He'd better get to it if he wants his fifty thousand quid worth."
They were in another corridor. The harem seemed to go on forever.
"The Emir's toy collections are along here," Angie said. "The girls tell me he has some pretty kinky ideas."
She pushed open a door. Inside was a vast aviary of stuffed and mounted birds. Some of them were moving clockwork wings feebly, or moving their heads in a series of run-down jerks.
"He had three of the French girls in here last night," Angie said. "Made them stick feathers up their arse, while he put on a flapping pair of wings and cried cock-a-doodle-doo."
The next room was an aquarium. Three walls were tanks of living fish, ranging from colorful tropical varieties to an unpleasant assortment of squid and cuttlefish. There was a rippling light in the room that made the whole place appear to be under water, an illusion that was helped along by the realistic fish mobiles swaying from the ceiling. In the center of the floor was a pool with rubber beach toys in the form of sea horses and porpoises with saddles.
"I'd hate to tell you what he does in here," Angie said.
"What?"
"Well it takes about a thousand quid worth of caviar to do it," Angie laughed.
She pushed open another door.
"This is his favorite," she said.
A confused ticking sound filled the air.
"He's mad for clocks," Angie said.
The room was crowded with every imaginable sort of clock. There were cuckoo clocks, Hansel and Gretel clocks with little carved figures, grandfather clocks, clocks with wooden gears from the Black Forest, miniature tower clocks, clocks in the form of esoteric erotica, with little naked mechanical figures ticking away at one another like pendulums.
"He has a Swiss clockmaker who comes in here once a day and winds them up and oils them," Angie said.
"In the harem?"
"He's the only man allowed here. The eunuchs lead him through the place with a blindfold. The women clear out of the way. Ebrahim stays with him while he does his work, and then they blindfold him and lead him out again."
Penelope wandered over to one of the larger specimens, an incredible pop art fantasy of stamped and painted tin mounted on a ten-foot platform.
"He bought it up at one of those auctions of Hollywood memorabilia," Angie said.
The clock was a scene out of The Perils of Pauline, or some other melodrama. There was a life-size heroine, dressed in a threadbare wig and mildewed dress, tied to a bench that moved her, inch by inch, toward a buzzing circular saw. A tin villain, with mustache and top hat, leered down at her. And there was the hero, Dashing Dick, fair-haired and handsome, just coming to the rescue.
"That must be one of a kind," Penelope said dryly.
As she watched, the whirring blade moved closer to the bound figure, notch by notch. It was almost touching the faded costume now. There was a clock face mounted in the villain's top hat. It was almost ready to strike the hour.
Other chimes and bells started to go off in the room, building up to bedlam.
"This one's a little slow," Angie said. "Watch."
The hour struck. And so did Dashing Dick.
A brawny lead arm, covered with peeling flesh-colored paint, swung round. A lead fist connected with the jaw of the villain. There was a sound like a loud gong.
"Simon Legree's jaw is the bell," Angie said.
The lead fist socked the villain seven more times, once for each hour. The gong reverberated. The clockwork mechanism stopped feeding the heroine to the buzz saw. In the nick of time, she slid back to starting position. The villain was leering down at her again. The hero rotated on his gears and stood back, waiting for nine o'clock.
"Fantastic," Penelope said.
"I think the Emir really prefers the ones that fuck," Angie said. She pointed toward a life-size tin bed with a huge key sticking out of the side. There were two naked mannequins on top. The man had rolled over on top of the woman as the hour struck, and now he was thrusting with his steel prong, once for each chime.
"They're custom-made for him some place in Japan," Angie said.
"Imaginative," Penelope said.
"You should see what happens at nine o'clock."
They
went back to the main chamber. Penelope felt better there, lost amidst all the anonymous female flesh. It would be dark outside soon. Time to work out a plan for getting away.
She was standing by the edge of the pool, talking to Angie, when the level of female chittering went up a couple of decibels. Some minor event was interrupting the boredom. Penelope turned her head and saw Ebrahim and a couple of his assistant eunuchs coming through.
He waddled with massive dignity through his naked flock, grinning and shaking his head as he fended off their questions and little demands. He was heading straight in her direction.
She moved unobtrusively around so that her back would be toward him when he passed. Angie went on talking, not noticing.
She could sense Ebrahim's approach by the progress of the female clamor he was causing. Then she felt his warm bulk behind her, still moving. He was going to pass her by.
"The Baroness Penelope St. John-Orsini!" Angie suddenly exclaimed. "I thought I recognized you! What's someone like you doing in a place like this?"
Penelope whirled. Ebrahim was standing there open-mouthed. She kicked him in the balls. But he didn't have any balls. The kick that would have disabled a normal man just left him standing there, looking slightly greenish.
Another pair of hands was reaching for her. One of the assistant eunuchs. She hit him in the face and made a dash for the door.
The women screamed and chittered, getting in her way. She was bumping her way through a nightmare of breasts and bare limbs and pneumatic bottoms. They ran around like hens when a fox is loose in the chicken yard.
There were more eunuchs popping out of archways. Ebrahim was bellowing behind her. She pushed at the naked flesh that surrounded her, knocking women over. There was only one eunuch near the door. She could cope with him if she could just get past the press of nude bodies.
And then there were hands clutching at her ankles, and she went over. The women screamed, getting out of the way, clearing a space around her. The eunuch who had tackled her was holding on to her legs for all he was worth.
She twisted, trying to get up on one elbow. Ebrahim's enormous gleaming face loomed above her, grinning. The immense curved blade of his scimitar was whirling down, all his strength behind it, toward her head.
There was a blinding pain in her head, and then darkness, as final and complete as the end of the universe.
* * *
She woke up with a pounding headache. That was something. At least she still had a head.
"Ebrahim hit you with the flat of his blade," Le Sourd's voice said.
She opened her eyes. She was in the laboratory room. The phonon cannon loomed at one side, and she could make out the stainless-steel tank.
"You've given us a great deal of trouble," Le Sourd went on. "We've locked up your servants in the dungeon. We'll have another hunt tomorrow. But you're too dangerous for that. We saw the way you moved when the soldiers came to arrest you."
Penelope groaned. "Octave," she said. "Could you please try not to speak so loudly."
She was tied down to something cold and hard, with sharp edges poking up here and there. She was lying on her back, spread-eagled, and there was a tin painted face leaning over her with a mustachioed leer.
She looked around. Little Nell, or whoever the heroine doll was supposed to be, was propped against the wall, the threadbare blond wig askew.
"The English girl, Angie, told us that you were fascinated by this clockwork melodrama," Le Sourd continued. "The Emir thought it would be amusing to let you be a part of it."
Penelope raised her head with an effort and looked straight down between her naked thighs. The circular blade had been removed. In its place were the two metal tubes of the ultrasonic torture device, angled in a V to point to a spot somewhere between her knees.
"You see what will happen," Le Sourd said. "The clockwork mechanism will feed you, inch by inch, toward the focus of the two phonon beams. When the hour strikes, Dashing Dick will of course hit the villain. But the Emir's clockmaker has made a small adjustment. You won't go back to the starting point. You'll continue moving into my ultrasonic buzz saw. It acts like a laser beam. It will slice you in half, from crotch to throat. Like a split chicken."
"Ah, yes," Penelope said. "His Highness is fascinated by birds, isn't he?"
There was a spluttering sound behind her. She twisted her head back and was just able to make out the Emir, turning purple and apoplectic.
"You should not have killed my falcons," he choked.
Le Sourd's rich, lovely voice went on: "The Emir was going to turn you over to Ebrahim. But we're very modern here now. I persuaded him that it would be more entertaining to automate your punishment."
"Octave, you're a pathetic specimen," she said contemptuously. "Sick. Playing with sound, because that's all you have. Now you've arranged a way to commit rape with it."
Le Sourd flushed. He made a gesture toward his hearing aids, as though he wanted to tune her out.
"You'll sing a different tune when the clock strikes," he said. "Too bad I won't be able to enjoy your screams at full volume. It will be slow and excruciating, I promise you. First, the phonon beam will touch the sensitive tissue of your pelvis. It will tear your flesh apart on a submolecular level. It will, burn in a razor slice upward, through your reproductive organs, your bowel, your bladder — slice your spinal cord neatly in two, like the halves of a carrot. But you won't die. Not for at least an hour. Not until the phonon beam reaches the major fork of the iliac artery, somewhere around the level of your navel. In the meantime, all the most sensitive nerve endings of your body will remain open and flayed. No one has experienced such pain since time began."
She looked up at the clock mounted in the villain's top hat. It was a few minutes after eleven. She'd been out almost three hours. The clockwork was ticking. The tin platform she was lying on vibrated imperceptibly at each tap of the clock escapement. She couldn't feel any forward motion; it was too slow for that.
Twelve o'clock. That's all the time she had left. Cinderella was a lucky girl. All that had happened to her was that her coach turned into a pumpkin, and she had to walk home. It was going to be very difficult to walk when your crotch reached up to your navel.
Le Sourd suddenly gave an impish grin. "I've always been partial to American melodramas," he said. "Very quaint. But so predictable, having that stupid heroine saved at the end by the lout of a hero. This will be très amusant."
The clockwork ticked. She might have moved a sixteenth of an inch while he talked. The Simon Legree face of the wind-up villain was bright and shiny above her.
"Now," Le Sourd said, "I think it's time to turn on the phonon beam."
There was a whirring sound and a smell of ozone as the incredible energy of the phonon packets collided with oxygen atoms in the air. Penelope peered between her breasts, down past the softness of her belly, down toward the space between her parted knees.
The tin was bubbling and melting down there. She could feel the heat along the insides of her legs. There was a thin curl of smoke — paint and vaporized metal. After a few minutes there was a razor-thin crack, no more than a quarter-inch long, with a tiny furrow of melted and solidified tin on either side of it.
Le Sourd yawned and stretched. He got up off his stool. "Shall we go, your Highness? Ebrahim can watch her for a while. You and I can return at…" He looked at the clock in the top hat. " — about a quarter to twelve."
* * *
They were sipping coffee, killing time by watching a reel of a flickering old blue movie from the Emir's father's collection, when the chamberlain came in and whispered in the Emir's ear.
"Send him in," the Emir said.
Farrash, the Egyptian-trained staff intelligence officer, walked into the projection room and prostrated himself in front of the Emir. He was a thin, dour man with a bushy mustache. His face was agitated.
"Salaam 'aleikum, Captain," the Emir said. "What is it?"
"Salaam 'aleikum, your
Highness. The rebels are delivered into our hands, inshallah!"
The Emir leaned forward. "What do you mean?"
"They are gathering their main forces along the border of Sheik Hamad's territory. Small groups have been assembling through the night. They're working up to some major operation."
Le Sourd broke in. "They're not PFLOAG?" he said. "The Chinese promised that PFLOAG would keep hands off Ghazal."
Captain Farrash smirked. "It was my contacts in PFLOAG who alerted me," he said. "No, the rebels who are assembling are those sons of pigs of the Ghazali Freedom Party and their pretender."
The Emir propelled himself out of his seat, "Wake all the unit commanders! Assemble the troops! Get the staff officers up here for orders. Now, by the will of Allah, is our chance to crush them once and for all!"
Captain Farrash backed away, bowing. "It shall be done."
The Emir faced Le Sourd, his eyes burning. "The dogs want my throne, do they? I'll feed their flesh to my animals!"
Le Sourd stood up, slim and elegant. "I'll start dismounting the heavy ultrasound equipment for travel," he said.
The Emir put a hand on his arm. "No, you can do that later. I want you here for the strategy meeting."
"As you wish."
Somewhere in the room a cuckoo clock peeped at the half-hour.
Le Sourd looked up. "Thirty minutes to midnight. You'd better send someone down to tell Ebrahim to turn off the clockwork. We can continue with the Baroness when this is over."
The Emir looked horrified. "Stop a clock? By the Prophet's mercy, no! What has been set in motion must continue. It is the will of Allah."
"Certainement, your Highness," Le Sourd said, looking disappointed. "She will be punished all the same. And punctually."
15
Ebrahim grinned cheerfully at her, his teeth sparkling in his fat charcoal face.
"Soon," he said. "Soon."
The Baroness took another look at the dial in the tin villain's top hat. It was getting close to midnight.
