by Ryder Stacy
“That’s much better, much better,” Fabres said with the slightest of smiles flickering across one side of his face for a second. Maybe he would actually get control of the damned place—and get the meeting going.
“Now, you’re all welcome to have your say. After the official debate—by these gentlemen here,” Fabres turned to Rockson, Intel Chief Rath, and Thayers and Bertel, the two reps from what were basically C.C.’s opposing parties. There were actually a number of special-interest groups, as there must always be in a community of men. But in general there were more “right wingers” in the community—favoring increased strikes against the Russian cities and increased attacks on Soviet troops around the country to drive them out. Versus the “left wingers”—those who believed that perhaps for the first time in the century since the Russians had occupied America there was a real chance for peace, for a gradual if not immediate withdrawal of troops. They sat—as the English Parliament had done—on the right and left sides of the chamber, which enabled them to scream their heads off at one another without having to engage physically.
“Now, the question of the day is, what part if any should Century City play in the Peace Conference being called by Premier Vassily and Zhabnov in Washington? And what should be our recommendations to the other Free Cities, as we all know that our decisions here often have great affect on the voting of the smaller towns and villages in the territory. I’ll begin with you Rath. But, please—just your information, no politicking right now.”
“I wouldn’t think of it,” Rath said, rising from his folding wooden chair on which the four men sat side by side, none really looking at the others. “Honored colleagues, ladies and gentlemen,” Rath said—at his most charming, which was not much, but more than he usually doled out. “I’m here to report to you tonight of yet another plot on the part of the Russians to—”
Voices began rising angrily from the left side of the chamber at Rath’s obviously slanted viewpoint. But with a cough he seemed to drop the bull and just proceeded with the basic facts. “Our radio units have picked up the fact that the Russians are transmitting to every part of the country—not just the Rockies. So, for those who suggested it is just a ploy to get Rockson—that doesn’t seem too likely. Secondly, we have confirmed that Russian troops do seem to be pulling back into their fortresses. That virtually all search-and-destroy and slave-labor-gathering operations have been ceased. For the moment . . . Finally, against our advice, a number of Free Cities have contacted one another through radio transmissions. If the Reds are putting much energy into tracking these signals, they may have just discovered half the hidden cities in America without firing a bullet. But we shall see.” Rath went on, telling them everything he knew, and then sat down.
Then it was the right wing that got to speak first, since it was the majority party at the moment, having won in the last elections. The articulate, mocking, Hans Thayers told the other reps why they had to vote not to send Rockson or any peace delegation to D.C. He said they should recommend increased attack on the Reds, since this peace proposal only proved the fact that they were hurting, weakening—that the time was right for all-out war.
Then the minority spokesman gave his version of the truth. Bertel was a mellower type, with a country lawyer kind of style about him, pausing for long sips of water, pulling on his suspenders, addressing the other reps with jokes and gossip as if he were addressing a jury. Bertel spoke of the need to respond to the olive branch—whatever the outcome. “The reality is,” he concluded after nearly half an hour of speaking, “that we have nothing to lose. Things are already terrible, half the country’s a wasteland, we’ve been fighting the Reds for a century. Maybe a breather wouldn’t hurt. Just to see what the hell is going on out there. Just to see. Give peace a chance, I say.”
Then it was Rockson’s turn. He had always favored the Gary Cooper approach. That is, he said his piece, and then they could all decide on just what the hell they wanted to do with that information. Rock wasn’t the type to argue anyone into anything. That wasn’t how he operated. So he just told them very simply how he felt.
“As far as I can see—I say go. As head of combat operations for Century City, I’ve seen the death out there. As have many of you. It’s no glorious fantasy to die, or have your guts strewn out on a serving board of dirt. So as a man who has been responsible for the deaths of many men—and will doubtless be responsible for many more—I say it’s worth a try. Peace with freedom. Even down to your last breath. Peace is what we’re all fighting for. If it’s worth dying for, it’s worth traveling a few miles for.” With that, Rockson sat back down and folded his arms.
Then the proceedings were opened up to the public—as was always the case on any issue strong enough to attract interest. Here, the yelling and arguing, the red faces and swollen tongues went on for nearly three hours, with neither side particularly swaying anyone on the other. At last a vote was called. And it was a near tie. Down to the bone. Twenty-six for, twenty-seven delegates against.
And in these emergency votes, the speaker, Fabres, didn’t have a vote, though he would have voted for sending the delegation.
“Then it looks as if the motion is defeated,” Fabres said with a downcast face, as he believed the Council was making the mistake of its political life. Even the chance for peace might not come again for another hundred years. But it was a democracy—and this was the price, sometimes.
Suddenly Rockson rose again and was at the mike before Fabres even realized the Doomsday Warrior had slid by him. “I know this is going to cause me a lot of trouble,” Rock said, looking out coolly over the representatives. “But as military commander of field operations, it’s my prerogative to undertake all missions that I feel are necessary to the security of Century City. I take it upon myself to state that this mission is such. And I hereby appoint myself, and my combat quick-strike team, to go to D.C. I will report my findings to you all,” he paused dramatically, “when I return!” And with that, he walked forward, jumped off the edge of the wooden stage some five feet to the floor, and strode quickly up the aisle and out the door. Not a man, even those who disagreed violently with the idea, dared reach out or say a loud word. The fighting abilities of Ted Rockson were known by all.
The moment he exited the place, pandemonium broke loose. Within seconds Fabres completely and totally lost control of the situation, as voices screamed out for court martial, for arresting Rockson for going against the Council’s decree, and much more. But the Doomsday Warrior had no time for it. No time at all. If anyone wanted to stop him—they could try.
Seven
She stared at him with the kind of frank admiration that women feel for their men when they see them do something powerful, perform some feat of strength or daring through pure will. The will of one man over another, one man over a group. He was powerful. That’s what turned her on so much about him. No other man in Century City could even come close to his strength, physical and mental. Many had tried. But she had thrown them on their backs with a judo throw or foot sweep. She wasn’t a woman to play around with. If she could beat up a man—she couldn’t love him.
“Rock—they’re angry out there,” Rona whispered softly as Rockson lay on his bed, staring up at the white ceiling as if deep in thought. “Talking about—about all kinds of things. They don’t like the will of the Council thwarted.” She spoke the words nervously, but her eyes betrayed that whatever he did was fine with her.
“There was no decree, Rona,” Rock said softly, not moving his eyes from the invisible thing they were focused on straight above his head. “The vote was close. Thus, nothing was decided. The situation was neutral. I moved in and filled the space. At any rate, I’m willing to take the consequences—whatever they are. They’ll either let me go or shoot me.”
“Take me,” she said, lying alongside him.
“Not a chance, baby,” Rock answered, turning his head and letting his mismatched eyes take in her full beauty. “This one’s going to be bad
—real bad; I can feel it in my bones. I’m not saying the Premier’s not on the up-and-up, but something’s wrong, somewhere. There’s a dark veil hanging over the future.”
“Then don’t go Rock, for God’s sake. Your intuition has saved your ass before. You always told me you would never go against it, that it was that very mutant ability that had let you live—when so many others didn’t.”
“I’ve got to go, Rona, for the reasons I said. It is a military operation—if it’s a trap, maybe it can be sprung on them. They’re stupid up there at the top, Rona, you and I both know that. Perhaps somehow this whole thing can be used for our good. Can be something that does help peace, even if there’s treachery.”
“Oh shut up, Rockson,” the redhead said suddenly, pulling herself to him hard, slamming her lips down against his. She pressed her tongue in like a snake looking for a mouse and cleaved against him so he could feel her firm melon breasts pumping with desire, pressing against him. Her hands snaked around his neck and her hips pressed hard, turning in little circles. Rock held the kiss for nearly a minute as she just seemed to come at him stronger every second. At last he came up for air.
“My God, the woman is aggressive,” Rock laughed, pulling his face a few inches away from hers, but holding her just as tight.
“If you’re going to get taken prisoner and tortured—and all your bodily appendages snipped off one by one,” she said with a look of mock anger at him, “then I want one last fuck. Before it’s all gone.”
“You really know how to get a guy excited,” Rock laughed. But though his words were critical, his hands and body weren’t. He couldn’t resist her sweet smell, her soft flesh pressing him over the whole front of his body. The woman was a siren, she was irresistible. How could any man be anything but a puppet on a string of desire in her hands?
She pushed back away from him coyly all of a sudden, so that his strong hands instinctively reached out for her, wanting more. But Rona stood back and up. She undid her wrist communicator, which all citizens of the city wore, and pressed a small button on one side. The little device, Shecter-designed, garbled into life. Jazz—old horn stuff with a back beat. And though the transmission was not the greatest, as the C.C. radio station could only use an extremely small amount of power so as to avoid being picked up by Russian instrumentation, it was enough to get the job done.
Her smile growing wide as a Cheshire cat’s, Rona began swaying to the sexy beat and Rock’s own lips twisted upward, as did other parts of him, too. For she began removing her clothes, slowly, nastily, one by one. First her jacket came off, then a thin sweater. Then she slowed down a little as she played with his mind, his desire for her. She seduced him with the tricks of the female species going back to caveman days. She made him crave her, want her more than he had ever wanted her. Want her as much as she wanted him.
She pulled the T-shirt off, with the words I SAW KANSAS AND IT SUCKS printed across its black chest, and threw it at Rock so that it landed atop his head. When he pulled it free, she was rolling her breasts at him, her perfect, pink-tipped fruits of pleasure, wanting to be taken. Then her pants slipped off, and after a requisite amount of time, making him wait—everything else slipped off as well.
She stood there before him completely naked, moving in the semi-darkness like some princess from neolithic times, her red hair flaming down around her breasts and back as she turned and swayed and did a dance of pure sexuality. When Rock swore he could stand no more and began to rise up, she leaped at him nearly six feet through the air and came down right atop his still-clothed body. Which she began working on immediately, before he even had a chance to get up from his prone position.
“What, what—” Rock sputtered, but she pushed his struggling head down with one finger and began undressing him. Within a minute she had his body as naked as hers. She stroked him with increasing urgency, pressure, rubbing her hands up and down his muscled flesh. Rock could smell the flowery scent of her desire—it filled him with an intoxicating sensation, as if he were on the verge of fainting. She was so beautiful. Like a goddess more than a woman. Every curve of her, every pore was made of something from some other dimension than his.
She slid down over him, rubbing her face along his chest, then his stomach. Then she worked her way down lower and found his manhood. He was lost. By now, he was starting to enter that animal realm of the senses himself, where the mind, the rational part, dives into a deep pool while the sensual part comes to life. There was only her—now—as he lifted her up in his powerful arms, so that their faces were just inches apart, and then kissed her hard. As her body came down on his, she slid her legs apart, so that he suddenly just entered her, just like that, without any preparation. But she was ready for him. The fur triangle between her thighs was already soaked through like a forest after a rain. A rain of her own desire. She let out a long moan of sheer animal pleasure as he sank deep inside her. They both didn’t know where the hell they were. Just that they were. And it felt beautiful.
Eight
If lusty—but loving—sex was being carried out with great gusto in at least one of Century City’s subterranean bedroom chambers, the same was not the case thousands of miles off in Washington, D.C., the capital of the U.S.S.A. Here, the opposite end of the spectrum of the sensations that can be produced by the physical were the center of attention. Or the means for carrying out such sensations. That is, girls—hundreds of them. All brought to D.C. from every outlying part of the country, all for Zhabnov’s use—for distribution to men whose favor he courted. He expected to bribe the American delegates to vote his way on any treaty. Money, sex, perverted sex—yes.
Two of his top procurers, Kranslov and Bortuski, walked up and down the rows of women who stood before them, chained one to another. The women were dressed in rags, tatters of clothes. Many had lost their shoes, their few meager possessions on their long journeys from the far west and south; plucked from roads, from houses, taken out of schoolyards. The sex squads of the President swept far and wide. And none escaped their sight.
“They look beautiful, do they not?” a swarthy-looking fellow was asking as he rubbed his hands together, walking along and in between the two fur-clad officers who perused the potential purchase.
“Beautiful? Beautiful?” the taller of the two Red Army inventory officers, asked with a sneering laugh. “I have hardly seen an uglier bunch since my days in Afghanistan.” The second twisted-nosed officer glanced at the breasts of every female who stood in front of him, pausing here and there to examine or squeeze one that caught his fancy.
“This one, for example,” he said stopping directly before a short, squat female perhaps only four feet high and nearly as wide, with what appeared to be two female openings in the lower part of her body. “I said unusual—but not hideously ugly. What man would ride something like this?”
“She was quite popular where I bought her,” the female-flesh peddler Porschvk said defensively, squinting through his one good eye as he looked at her.
“And where was that?” the Red officer asked, amused, as he and his associate stood with hands behind their backs inside the warehouse-of-deposit, just a few blocks from the Capitol Building.
“It was—it was,” the slaver said, slapping his hand hard against his face as if trying to shock it back to him. “Dorganville, a small mining village up near the Minnesota border.”
“No wonder, fool,” the procurer laughed, “filthy miners would fuck a radioactive raccoon if that was all that presented its furry bottom to them! You must be losing your eyesight; this creature is so foul her mother must have thrown her from the crib.” The woman, if she could understand, paid it all no mind. She had been insulted a lot worse than that. In fact, in the mining town where she had come from, the main form of fun on Saturday night had been for the entire mining community of 250 men, 78 dogs and assorted other mammals to come pay her a visit, one at a time or all at once. So words, to say the least, were not about to inflict any damage. Thus, she lifted
her misshapen head, opened her purplish lips in a terrible smile, and winked lasciviously at the two officers—who quickly moved off, shuddering at the very thought of being forced to copulate with the she-thing.
But secretly both men were highly pleased. Though there were a number of defective selections in the group, overall the quality was high—and the mutations quite unusual in some cases. One of the procurers stopped before a beautiful teenage girl, her blonde hair falling down around her shoulders and partially covering her young breasts, which popped out of the torn shirt like fruits emerging from their protective skins. And she had three of them—three breasts. One of the rarest of the sexual mutations. For, in fact, though there were countless mutations occurring throughout the country all the time, most of them died. Died screaming, ugly, scaley things, killed at birth. And the better off for it. But some survived. And some were even . . . beautiful.
As was this tender child.
“Virgin?” the procurer asked, turning her around by the shoulders with his firm fingers, digging into her young flesh so that he left little imprints on her, making the girl wince.
“I swear it. On Lenin’s sacred tomb,” the Russian trader said. He was one of many whose families had come long ago from the motherland to the occupied country where the pickings were said to be plentiful. They had been for his grandfather, and his father, who has established and built up the sex-slave business. Gathering the girls like any annual crop grown by man. And selling them to the highest bidder. They had become rich men for finding just the right things. The special things.
“She is a virgin,” the slaver went on, getting down on one knee and putting his hand up against her blonde triangle of fur that seemed hardly enough to protect what lay behind it from the ravages of cruel men.
“See?” he pushed mockingly, as if with all his might, up into her and acted as if he couldn’t get through. “See—mutant virgin. Her virginity is made of steel!” Both officers broke up at that. The man was humorous, even if he did try to pawn off some of his refuse on them. But with the grain always came the chaff. As it was with grain—such it was with whores.
