Sonic Slave

by Paul Kenyon

  After a while, bullets began to spang off the tank's exterior. Penelope squinted through the eyepiece of the optical sighter. There wasn't any power to turn the turret, but the cannon was pointing in the right direction. She pulled the lanyard.

  She couldn't hear for at least a minute. Her head was a reverberating brass gong. She couldn't see much, either, through the dust she'd raised. When it cleared, she could see the mangled men and horses scattered in an ugly coronet around the point of explosion.

  The rest of them backed off. They were milling about, giving the cannon's line of fire a wide berth. She raised the magnification. Through the lens she could see contorted faces, mouthing obscenities. She focused on one evil-looking character who was making complicated gestures at the tank. He was telling the men inside what he was going to do to them. She shuddered. They couldn't do that to her, but she had no doubt they'd find an equivalent.

  She loaded and fired again. Again the explosion inside the cramped quarters deafened her. She looked through the eyepiece. Nothing. Nobody had been within range.

  They circled the tank, growing confident. Lead splattered off the armor plate. A bullet got inside somehow, banging about like a trapped hornet. She couldn't find the opening it had flown through. A few more of those, and she was going to get hurt. Even a spent bullet can kill.

  She got out of the gunner's stool and crammed her head and shoulders into the little turret with the machine guns. It swung easily on its oiled bearings. She gave a long burst, sweeping the tank's surroundings in a circle.

  She could hear the cries of surprise and pain, even through steel. She fired another burst. Men fell off their horses, clawing at the sand.

  But there were too many of them. Some had gotten close to the tank. She could feel the chassis sway as they climbed on board. She couldn't depress the barrel of the machine gun low enough to get at them.

  Below her, the hatch of the main turret opened. She whirled to deal with the intruder.

  But it was a bottle. A bottle wrapped in a flaming rag. Jesus, what were these savages doing with gasoline? The good old days were gone forever.

  The Molotov cocktail seemed to hang in the air forever. Her adrenaline was pumping at high speed. Before it smashed against the floor plates, she was swarming upward, popping through the hatch like a convention girl bursting out of a cake. She thudded into hard bodies, scattering them. There were cries of surprise. She rolled down the tank's side, into the sand, just as flames shot out of the tank's every opening.

  There were a million hands on her. There were a million rifles pointed at her too, ancient long muskets with brass rings binding the barrels.

  They looked in wonder at her long hair, her chiseled face, the old-fashioned costume with its flounces and ruffles.

  Then they all began to grin. Rough hands pulled her to her feet. They frog-marched her to a riderless horse and tied her across the saddle like a sack of onions. A moment later she was surrounded by a howling rabble, being borne away to God knows where.

  * * *

  She was tied to some kind of framework they'd erected by lashing three tent poles together. She dangled by her wrists, her feet swinging a foot off the ground.

  The whole damned tribe was gathered in a semicircle to watch the show. The men, that is. The women were in purdah, secluded in the tents, watching through discreet slits and peepholes.

  She couldn't figure out what was going on. She'd expected a brisk rape by two hundred men, torture, and then some ultimate disposal, like being buried up to her neck in the sand while they poured boiling oil over her head.

  Instead, here was this stern leathery sheik, looking like some Old Testament character in his robes and shawl, haranguing the tribe in a dialect she couldn't understand. He was talking about her, no doubt about it. He kept stabbing a gnarled finger in her direction, his voice rich with horror and indignation.

  After a while she got the gist of it. He was calling her the Whore of Babylon, warning the young men not to defile themselves by being enticed by her infidel flesh. He warned of disease, impiety, the fall from Allah's grace.

  He reached under his robes and took out a cracked and dog-eared photograph. It was a daguerreotype — no, an old picture postcard. He waved it at the crowd.

  Then he marched up to where the Baroness hung in her tripod and began lecturing her. She yawned. His face twisted with fury. He held the picture postcard up close to her face, practically spitting out a stream of abuse.

  She gathered that he'd bought it during a youthful trip to Port Said. His one experience with the fleshpots of the world. Probably got the clap. And almost certainly got rolled by some smart city Arab.

  She looked at the postcard, and she understood.

  The woman in the picture must have been dead for decades. She was posed in the usual acrobatics, an earnest expression on her face. Any collector of early erotica would have given his eyeteeth for it. But the costume she was wearing was out of the same era as the one Penelope had stripped from the Little Nell doll. There were the stays, the silk bodice, the flounces, the layered petticoats.

  The sheik must have had a start when the thing he feared most popped out of a fiery chariot in the desert and landed at his feet.

  He stepped back, breathless. He clapped his hands and gave orders.

  The men of the tribe looked disappointed. They weren't going to get the rape. Just the torture, mutilation and death.

  Penelope tensed her arms. With her feet hanging off the ground, she had no leverage. But she could hook a leg around the tripod, maybe knock it over.

  Then what? She'd still be tied to the fallen framework. She was in the middle of an encampment, with two hundred armed men between her and the open desert. There was no use trying. No use at all.

  But try telling your raw, screaming,, survival instincts that, when there's an enormous white-hot iron used for branding camels coming straight at your face!

  Penelope lashed out with both feet and caught the sheik n the groin. He cried out and dropped the branding iron. It sizzled in the sand at his feet.

  It hadn't been a very good kick. No leverage. He was still standing, gasping, recovering from the pain. He clapped his hands, and two burly young Bedouins grabbed her by the legs. She wriggled. They hauled her back a little. She hung from her wrists, in the approximate position of a swan dive. She couldn't move at all now.

  The sheik had a new idea. He called for another branding iron and hobbled over with the pair of them, crossed. He was going to X out her face, the face in the postcard. The two irons clinked together, making a little knell of death. Penelope struggled, twisting her body in its scratchy crinoline from side to side, but the two Arabs held her legs fast. She pulled on her wrist ropes, and they pulled her back. She was about as mobile as a hammock.

  He raised the glowing cross. She could feel the heat on her face.

  And then there was a growing murmur from the quarter-acre of white robes facing her across the sand, and the sheik turned his head to see what was happening. There was a growing roar of engines coming closer, and a couple of jeep aerials poking above the crest of a dune, and then a whole line of vehicles burst into view.

  The tribesmen were getting to their feet in consternation. The sheik stared, open-jawed, the incandescent cross forgotten in his hands.

  There was an entire army rolling toward them.

  16

  They pulled to a stop less than two hundred yards away, a long ragged line of jeeps, halftracks, canvas-backed trucks, a few motley civilian cars and rusty city taxicabs with desert tires. There were even a couple of ancient Soviet T-34 tanks. Spreading across the sands behind the vehicles was a force of at least two thousand men — black-robed Jeballis on camelback, Shihuh tribesmen with their ceremonial axes, fanatical Sayids in blue-dyed headcloths.

  The Baroness narrowed her eyes at the banner fluttering from the aerial of the lead jeep. It showed two stylized hands breaking a chain that bound the Ghazali crescent.

  T
he leader climbed out of his jeep and strode toward the sheik. He was a young, wiry man in an olive uniform.

  It was Amar.

  He flicked a brief, indifferent glance over Penelope, then turned to the sheik. "Salaam 'aleikum," he said.

  They began a lengthy, effusive conversation in the native dialect. There was a lot of mutual bowing and shoulder clutching and hands over the heart.

  Fifteen minutes later, the sheik hurried off, giving orders along the way, and Amar turned to the Baroness.

  His face and voice were utterly cold. "The sheik tells me you're a bad woman," he said.

  "Positively wicked, darling," she said.

  "Be that as it may, I've persuaded him that — infidel or not — you saved my life. He's agreed to give you to me, so that I can convert you."

  "That sounds like fun. What are you going to convert me to?"

  He frowned. "Go easy. They may not understand what you're saying, but they can understand your tone of voice."

  "I'll behave in a properly chastised fashion, darling."

  The two burly tribesmen were already cutting her down. She stood there in her faded stiff frock, rubbing the circulation back into her wrists. A couple of Amar's olive-uniformed guerrillas were standing at either elbow.

  Amar pointed at a large six-wheeled truck with a canvas top. "You'd better stay out of sight. Some of my own auxiliaries are as fanatical as the sheik. That's our field hospital. The orderly will look after you and give you some tea."

  "I'd rather have a drink, darling."

  His eyes twinkled. "Tell him I said to apply the medical alcohol. From the hundred-proof bottle with the crown on the label."

  "What will you be doing?"

  "Trying to persuade the sheik to join my forces. He's already said yes, but it won't be official until he and I eat a couple of sheep together. It may take a while."

  She gave an old-fashioned curtsy in the Little Nell dress. The surrounding tribesmen murmured their stern approval at her submissiveness. She turned on her heel and headed toward the canvas-topped truck, escorted by Amar's men.

  The feasting went on all night. There were dozens of sheep, roasting whole over spits, and a lot of traffic between the encampments of the various native contingents. The bitter, ceremonial smell of coffee came drifting through the darkness along with snatches of conversation and twangy Arab music. From time to time, she heard rough voices outside the truck, demanding to see the foreign woman, but Amar's men always shooed them away.

  Amar returned a couple of hours before dawn. He moved heavily, as though his wiry frame weighed a ton. She could see his shirt, covered with grease spots, and smell the camel's-dung smoke that clung to his uniform.

  "It's all arranged," he said. "The sheik's men will follow me. We'll move out in the morning."

  He motioned the orderlies out of the truck and tied the flaps closed. A gas lantern hung from the arched canvas roof, throwing a bright lemony light over the rows of bottles and instruments and the little row of hospital cots with their khaki blankets. He settled down wearily on one of the cots and reached for the bottle of whiskey.

  Penelope raised her eyebrows.

  He laughed. "I learned to drink at Harvard," he said.

  "A Harvard man! My goodness!"

  "I've also studied at Oxford."

  "What did you study?"

  "Hate, Penelope, hate. My family sent me abroad to prepare myself for my responsibilities here in Ghazal. When I got back, I found that the Emir had killed them all." He swallowed hard. "My father, my mother, my brothers and two sisters. We were a threat to him. You see, the royal blood of Ghazal runs through our veins. The Emir's great-grandfather was an upstart desert sheik who assassinated the reigning sultan. His maternal grandmother was a Turkish whore."

  She regarded him ironically. "It's strange that someone with royal blood is leading a guerrilla movement."

  "My people are simple and devout. They don't trust PFLOAG or the Chinese communists. They believe in the old-fashioned verities. I'm the only symbol they can rally around."

  "How convenient for you. Your people, my goodness! When you take over, do you plan to have them marching around in great rallies and plastering wall posters of you all over the mosques?"

  She'd made him angry. "I'll tell you what I'm going to do! I'm going to use some of those oil revenues to build schools and hospitals instead of palaces full of clockwork toys!"

  She touched his arm. "Calm down, darling. It's probably academic anyhow. You can't beat the Emir with your camels and your secondhand military equipment. He outnumbers you. And he's got tanks and jets and all those fashionable, up-to-date rockets that so many countries are falling over themselves to supply him with."

  He smiled at her and poured them both a drink. "I'll surprise him."

  "You can't do that any more, darling." She told him about the Emir's expeditionary force.

  He took a long, thoughtful swallow of whiskey. "That's bad news. I suppose the rumblings got back to him about our battle with PFLOAG yesterday. It's the first time I've assembled the whole GFP force in one place like this. It was too much of a temptation for him."

  She looked up with quick interest. "You fought with PFLOAG?"

  "That's how I got hold of the T-34 tanks. And all those jeeps and halftracks. Ambushed them on bivouac. Wiped them out. PFLOAG is out of the picture in Ghazal, for the time being."

  "You've made a quick recovery, darling. You didn't look very much like Lawrence of Arabia when I pointed you across the border toward that archaeological camp."

  He laughed. "Your man Skytop was a great help. He broke the necks of the PFLOAG guards. And that fellow Wharton. Where did he learn to combine military strategy with insurgency techniques?"

  "In the Green Berets," she said.

  He looked at her shrewdly. "A pretty Baroness. Who is not what she seems. And a crew of archaeologists who turn out to be working for her."

  "I'm glad we could help, darling."

  He turned somber. "But if what you say is true, I haven't a chance. With the Emir's army already out in the field, mobilized, I've lost my advantage."

  "Disband and start over."

  "Hear that crowd outside? I can't disband them. It's now or never."

  "How long can you hold them off?"

  "A day. By that time, the Emir's planes will have spotted me anyhow. It's not a very big patch of desert."

  "A day is all I need. Can you loan me a jeep and a radioman, so I can get back to my dear archaeologist friends?"

  "What do you need a radioman for?"

  "To let you know when it's safe to attack the Emir's harja."

  "Safe? What do you mean?"

  "The Emir doesn't have to fight you, darling. He just has to shout at you."

  "Shout?"

  "An ultrasonic shout." She told him about the phonon beam cannons.

  He pursed his lips thoughtfully. "I'd heard stories. That village that was wiped out. I thought they were fairy tales."

  "It's no fairy tale. I've seen it."

  He was looking glum now. "Penelope, you're a very pretty woman. But what can you do about it?"

  She gave a clear, tinkling laugh. "Shout louder," she said.

  * * *

  She was lying on her back, the rough khaki blanket under her. Amar's hawklike face hung over her, highlighted in gold by the gas lantern, looking as romantically mythical as an Arabian Nights vision.

  "Have I converted you yet?" he said.

  Her finger traced a circle on his hard, spare chest. "Not yet, darling. You've only climbed in the pulpit four times so far. We'd better try again."

  "We don't have pulpits in Arabia."

  "I'm so glad."

  He leaned over and kissed one breast. "There's a story by Scheherazade…"

  "She had a thousand and one nights. We only have a couple of hours."

  "Then we'd better get to it again."

  He put his lips on the nipple. It was the same one Ebrahim had been so int
erested in. This was much nicer.

  She reached between his legs and found the axe handle sprouting there. It was warm and smooth and stiff, with a slight upward curve. She tugged him closer to her by it.

  An involuntary groan escaped his lips. She felt the thing in her hand twitch.

  She pulled it to her lips and sampled the end of it. It tasted of hundred-proof whiskey, very expensive.

  "How thoughtful of you, darling," she said, "anointing yourself like that."

  "I'm still conventional. The Hadith teaches us to wash after each act of intercourse."

  "But four times, darling! Isn't that a waste of good Scotch?"

  "Water would be more precious out here."

  "What do all those tribesmen of yours do?"

  "They use sand."

  "How devout."

  "How painful."

  She took another taste. He squirmed in a sweet torment. She could feel his whole body begin to vibrate. When she thought he'd had about as much as he could stand, she moved up the length of his body, nipped his ear, and reversed herself, spoon-fashion. He immediately clasped her to him, cradling her breasts in two hands.

  He began a slow, thoughtful massage of both nipples with his thumbs. She could feel those points of flesh standing out, tight to bursting, sending an electric charge through her breasts. She moaned. He responded by rubbing the taut cones with thumb and two fingers, twisting them gently and pulling on them.

  The electricity grew, sending little snappers of static through her body. She sighed, her senses warm and dissolving. He was pressing himself against her spine, the hard pole of his sex fitting comfortably between her thighs. It was like riding a broomstick. The broomstick began a slow backward and forward motion, rubbing the swollen lips to her entryway and parting them slightly. His groin had been shaved according to Arab notions of hygiene, and she could feel the scratchy stubble, an erotic scrub-brush that added to the sensation. She squeezed his stick between her thighs holding it tight against her cleft.