by Paul Kenyon
"Where are Le Sourd and the Emir?" she said. "They're going to miss the fun."
"They come, they come," he said complacently.
She shifted her gaze to the metal surface between her legs. The line of bubbling tin was only inches away from the tender grotto of her flesh now, mathematically straight, about to bisect her precisely along her central axis. She could feel the heat of the molten tin crawling closer. The phonon beam itself had no temperature. That threadlike inferno was caused when its trillions of vibrations interacted with the molecules — the very atoms — of a material substance.
Like her.
She strained once again at the thongs that bound her. It was no use. They were made of braided rawhide. For the hundredth time, she probed with her fingers along the edge of the tin housing. There was a clamshell crack there, where the whole top of the case lifted up for servicing. If only there were a sharp edge there!
She'd been able to get one finger inside the case. She almost lost it to the powerful gears that were driving the clock mechanism. Now, with the tip of the finger, she traced a portion of one of those serrated rims.
It wasn't moving.
But the clock was still ticking onward. What did a stationary gear wheel mean? She tried to remember what she knew about clocks.
She ran her finger along the teeth of the gear. There were twelve deep notches. Then a deeper notch, with some kind of a lever fitting into it. She moved her finger past the lever. There were eleven notches and another deeper notch.
That was as far as she could reach. But she knew with utter certainty that there would be only ten notches in the next section.
She was touching the escapement wheel for the chimes.
When the clock was ready to strike twelve, the lever j would lift out of the notch, releasing the wheel. Each notch would be a chime.
She grinned. A childhood memory came to her: Grandfather Worthington fiddling with the mantel clock. "Oh dear, Penny, I'm afraid I've let the chimes run down. This is how you help them catch up to the time."
"Ebrahim," she said sweetly, "it's less than fifteen minutes to go. I'm afraid the Emir isn't coming after all."
Was that a pout forming between those ballooning cheeks? "He come," he said.
"He's lost interest," she said firmly. "What are you going to do?"
His hippopotamus bulk stirred uneasily. "You die anyway."
"He was going to turn me over to you, did you know that? But Le Sourd said you were old-fashioned. He said his machine would keep me alive longer."
Ebrahim struck himself in the chest with a pudgy fist. His fat breasts quivered. "I can split man up between legs with axe. Just so far. He live until I let him die."
"Too bad," she said. "The Emir's punishment only goes up to my navel. The rest of me will go to waste."
He waddled over and stood by her. He was grinning again. "I know what you try to do," he said. "You think I cut you up, you die faster."
"You're a very smart eunuch."
"I show you," he said.
He removed his gold lame vest and pantaloons, and folded them neatly on a chair. He wasn't about to get blood on his gorgeous costume. Penelope looked at him with interest. She'd never seen a naked eunuch before. His body was hairless and fatty. There was a noticeable mound at his pelvis, like a woman's mons. From it there dangled a tiny member, like a limp strand of macaroni, no larger than it had been when they castrated him as a child. There was nothing beneath it but an old scar, shiny and flush with the skin.
He was standing over her with a little sickle-shaped knife, a happy smile on his face.
"I work on you until twelve," he said. "You see. I not make mistake."
He bent over her chest, his turbaned head coming between her and the painted face of the tin villain. He grasped one of her nipples between a thumb and finger and began teasing it outward, the little curved knife ready in his other hand.
"This is knife that gelded my father," he said proudly. "He was chief eunuch before me, in harem of Emir's father."
"It's always nice to be mutilated by a family heirloom," she said dryly.
His clever little massage had brought the nipple erect, despite herself. It was standing out far enough to satisfy him now. He ran his thumb over the edge of the castrating knife and brought the blade flush with her breast.
The Baroness hooked her middle finger under the brass lever of the chime escapement wheel. She flipped the finger upward in an immemorial gesture. The lever lifted out of its notch. The whole clock mechanism groaned.
A heavy lead fist flew out of nowhere and punched Ebrahim in the jaw.
The knife dropped out of his hand. His head flew back and struck the jaw of the tin Simon Legree with skull-crackling force. There was a loud bong.
But Dashing Dick wasn't through. As the eunuch's head bounced back, the lead fist connected again. He banged into the villain's face, and there was a second bong.
Incredibly, he was still conscious. His golfball eyes popped out of his head. The lead fist hit him again.
The bell tolled twelve times altogether, slamming Ebrahim's head back and forth between metal fist and the chiming jaw. When it released him, he slid to the floor. Penelope couldn't tell whether he was dead or not. There were white teeth scattered like dice everywhere, and the eunuch's head resembled a crushed eggplant.
She looked fondly up into the face of Dashing Dick. The tin features smiled down at her. He had a big jaw and a cleft chin and steely eyes where the blue paint had flaked away.
"My hero," she said.
The life-size dummy bowed and rotated on his gears and glided back to starting position.
She still had a problem. She hadn't gone back to starting position. The Emir's Swiss clockmaker had made a small adjustment, Le Sourd had said.
The invisible fury of the ultrasonic beam continued to burn away. It was only inches from the fork of her legs now. There was a toasty feeling at her groin, and she could smell the first suggestion of singed hair.
Ebrahim's knife was resting between her breasts. She strained her chin forward and got the end of the handle between her teeth. She moved her head sideways as far as she was able, but her bound hand was still out of reach, lashed to the side of the clock case.
Carefully, carefully, she positioned it for the drop. She had one try. She turned the bound hand palm-upward and spread her fingers. Her teeth let go. The knife dropped neatly into the palm of her hand. Her fingers closed on the handle.
She wouldn't have been able to do it if it had been an ordinary straight blade. But it was curved, like a linoleum knife, designed to remove a man's genitals with one quick, deft stroke. She was able to reverse the handle and hook the point of the blade under the rawhide tying her wrist. She sawed away. It only took a second. Ebrahim had kept the blade very sharp.
Her other wrist and her ankles took only a few more seconds. She reached forward cautiously, keeping away from the phonon beam's deadly path.
She rolled off the table and stood for a moment, trembling with relief. Over in the corner, the life-size Little Nell doll that she'd replaced was sitting, propped up, in her faded costume. The blank painted eyes stared at her.
The Baroness gave her a comradely nod. "I think it's about time to call in the Emir's mortgage," she said. "It's been overdue much too long."
* * *
Sumo slumped against the rough stone of the dungeon wall, sitting in a heap of dank straw. His shirt hung in ribbons, and he ached all over from the roughing-up they'd given him. He pulled experimentally at his manacles. They rattled. They rattled every time.
Around him, in the immense tunneled darkness, he could hear moans and sobs. Somewhere was the soft, hopeless sound of a man praying: "La ilaha Allah, wa-Mohammed rasul Allah…"
Over against the opposite wall he could dimly make out the chained forms of Inga and Yvette. They were sitting like awkward marionettes, backs against the stone, legs splayed stiffly outward. Inga's large pale breasts caught the feeble
light spilling through the barred archway; her blouse had been ripped down to her waist. Yvette's maid's uniform was still fairly intact; the jailer and his assistants were having a little rest before they raped her too.
"The bastards," Yvette's soft voice said. "Don't you worry, honey, when that man gets close to me, I gonna kill him with my elbow. I got the move all figured out."
"It doesn't matter," Inga said. She lifted her head wearily. "Tommy, do you think the Baroness got away?"
"She's dead," he said reluctantly. "They were talking about it when they beat me up. They killed her at the stroke of midnight."
"Our turn in a few hours," Yvette said. "We gonna be hyena bait."
"Maybe we've got a reprieve of a few days," Sumo said. "Did you hear all that activity outside? Troops, tank engines warming up? It's awfully quiet now. They've mounted some kind of military operation. The Emir has to lead the harka. That's the law of the desert."
"A few hours, a few days. We dead anyhow."
Footsteps approached, and there was a bulky square shape on the other side of the barred gate, blocking the torchlight. It was Moulay, the jailer, a big bluff man with a fringe of black beard around his lumpy jaw.
"Izzi elahwahl!" he said heartily. "Good news, dogs! The Emir won't be hunting tomorrow. He's too busy."
"Outa sight!" Yvette said tartly.
The jailer grinned. "He left instructions. The women will be given to the palace guard. The man will be given to the eunuchs. Then your bodies will fertilize the date grove."
"Groovy."
"I take man first." He saw Sumo tense, and he frowned. Moulay was a careful jailer. "Maybe I better cut off feet first."
He turned his head to call his assistants. His head kept on turning.
It turned all the way backward and fell off his shoulders. There was a smell of ozone and boiled blood. The headless body toppled to the ground.
Sumo looked up, astonished. A girl in an old-fashioned dress was walking toward the bars, carrying an object that looked like two elongated fire extinguishers joined in the shape of a V. A heavy battery pack was slung from one shoulder.
"Baroness!" he said.
She smiled at him through the bars. "Hello, Tommy."
Penelope pointed the peculiar V-shaped device at the thick iron bars. There was no sound, nothing to see except a brief shower of sparks that traced a thin line around the edges of the gate.
The entire massive structure fell inward with an enormous clanking sound. The Baroness stepped through the opening.
"What is that thing?" Sumo said.
"An ultrasonic buzz saw," the Baroness said.
She bent over them, adjusting the angle of the two cylinders. The beam of silent sound sliced through their heavy chains as if they were butter.
Sumo was looking at the device with lively interest. "Cryogenic vessels," he said. "Filled with solid helium, I'll bet. That's how you'd get vibrations in the terahertz range…"
"Later, Tommy," the Baroness said. "You can have it to play with after we get out of here."
"What about Moulay's assistant jailers?" Yvette said.
"Dead. They never heard a thing."
Inga looked worried. "Even with that thing, we're going to have a hard time going back through the palace. The Emir must have left enough household guards behind to manage things. And then getting past the gates…"
"We're not going through the palace. Or the gates."
A wailing sound was growing in the recesses of the dungeon. Entreaties were coming from the nearer prisoners, and back in the foul depths, voices were being raised in questions.
"But first," the Baroness said, "I'm going to give these poor devils a chance."
She strode to the nearest man, a living skeleton with ulcerated limbs, lying in his own filth. But he looked up at her, fierce and bright-eyed.
"Do you understand me?" she said.
He nodded vigorously.
"I'm going to cut you free," she said. "On condition that you start turning the others loose. You can get the first few to help you."
She tossed him a ring of keys. He caught them eagerly. As soon as she'd cut through his chains, he was on his feet, hurryng over to the other prisoners, unlocking manacles and whispering encouragement.
"Stand back," the Baroness said.
She aimed the twin cylinders at the thick outside wall, at about ground level, ten feet up. Nothing seemed to happen. Then they could see the hairline crack streaking across the masonry, forming a square. She etched a big X in the center of the square. Everything inside the boundary crumbled and fell away. Sumo danced backward to avoid being struck by a tumbling block. They could see the darkness of the night sky and the brilliant stars framed in the opening. A fresh desert breeze blew through.
"Quickly, now," the Baroness said.
They hoisted themselves up through the aperture and crawled out into the courtyard. There was a thin streak of dawn light showing at the eastern horizon.
A hulking shape was silhouetted against the stars.
A tank.
The Baroness squinted, tracing its outline. It was an M-60 Patton tank, with a huge 105mm cannon that was pointed straight at them.
They all froze. There was a clanking sound. A voice said in Arabic, "All fixed."
The Baroness relaxed. Stragglers. They'd been left behind while they made a repair.
A head popped out of the turret. "You'd better get Ferhat and Ahmed. We can catch up with the harja at the Irabya Oasis."
The Baroness pointed the ultrasound generator. The head fell off, leaving the decapitated torso wedged in the turret. The head rolled to the feet of the man who had been repairing the tread. He picked it up in both hands, his movements wary and uncertain.
"Youssef?" he said. "Youssef?"
The Baroness stitched him at the waist. The ultrasound beam sliced him across. The two halves of the body lay in the sand at right angles to one another.
Behind her, she heard Yvette gasp. Then the four of them were running for the tank, hauling out the headless body, and cramming themselves into the steel interior.
"Four-man crew," the Baroness said. "The other two mustn't have been aboard yet."
"Can you drive this thing?" Sumo said.
"What do you think?" the Baroness said.
She seated herself forward, in the driver's seat, and peered through the optical occluder. There were folding stools to her right for Inga and Yvette, and Sumo positioned himself over her left shoulder, surrounded by the racks of 105mm shells. She opened the twin throttles, and the diesel engine roared. The armored behemoth lurched forward, picking up speed.
She headed straight toward the gate, intending to crash through it, but at the last moment it swung open. Through the eyepiece she saw the gate guards wave at her. Then the palace was behind them, and they were lumbering out into the desert.
"Where are we going?" Inga asked.
Penelope's perfect face was a grim mask in the darkness. She hunched over the controls, a supple, smooth-muscled form wrapped in a carapace of stiff crinoline and whalebone.
"First we're going to regroup with Eric and the others," she said. "And then we're going to give the Emir the surprise of his life."
* * *
They ran out of gas a couple of miles from the border. "All right, children," the Baroness said. "We walk."
The sun was melting its way up the sky, a bloated orange blob low in the east. A stiff wind was coming up, blowing gritty particles of sand.
"How far?" Inga said. She looked exhausted.
The Baroness looked at her with quick concern. "Only another fifteen miles or so. We'll make it."
Sumo helped the girls down and began carrying out whatever supplies he could find in the tank. There were a couple of jerrycans of water, tins of meat and some kind of bean paste, chocolate, dried figs. There was also a .45 caliber automatic that had belonged to the tank commander.
The Baroness sat perched on the turret, scanning the horizon. She
was an incongruous figure painted against the desert sky: an old-fashioned tintype in a tight silk bodice and stiff skirt, swinging her legs, her long black hair tumbling down around her shoulders.
"We've got company," she said.
Sumo looked up at her. "Where?"
"A couple of miles back along our track. I can see their dust. They've been following us."
Sumo swung himself aboard the tank's steel tread. "I'll start dismounting the machine guns. The ultrasound generator's no good. It's been venting hydrogen — warming up. It'll have to be recharged."
The Baroness stopped him. "I want you to get that generator back to camp, Tommy. And the girls. Fill in Eric and Dan Wharton on what's been happening. I'll hold off our friends out there."
"Baroness, no!" Sumo's boyish Japanese face was a study in anguish. "I'll stay behind!"
She smiled down at him from her steel perch. "Don't be difficult, Tommy. There's something I want you to do." She told him.
He listened, nodding. "I can do it. But Baroness…"
"Get going, Tommy."
At the last moment he tried to hand her the .45 automatic.
"Keep it, darling," she said. "I don't want you and the girls out there on the desert without any of the comforts."
He looked worriedly at the approaching cloud of dust. "You'll need it."
She gave a harsh laugh. "I've got a whole tank, remember?"
She watched the three of them walk into the desert, Sumo's thin figure stumbling under the weight of a forty-pound can of water, the ultrasound machine slung across his back. Yvette, an improvised knapsack of food strapped to her shoulders, was supporting Inga discreetly. The blond girl, her ruined blouse replaced by a khaki jacket they'd found in the tank, was spunky, but her feet were dragging.
The dust cloud got closer. The Baroness could make them out now, a party of robed men on horseback: a couple of hundred of them. Tribesmen.
She slid down into the tank's dark interior, a 110-degree furnace in the day's heat. She loaded a shell into the breech of the 105mm. cannon. By the time she finished, her Little Nell costume was sopping with perspiration.
They weren't very friendly. They began firing at the tank while they were still out of range, just for the hell of it. They'd caught one of the Emir's tanks alone on the desert, disabled, with a lot of goodies inside and four men to have fun with. She smiled grimly. She could imagine how enthusiastic they'd get if they knew there was a woman inside.
