That opinion was re-enforced when the plane landed in a quite scenic and modern looking city, quaintly named Leopoldville, in that part of the continent run by the Belgians, known, Milton believed, as The Congo. Milton was not aware that 99.99% of all the wealth in the Belgian Congo was located, in fact, within a circle twelve miles in diameter around the airport the plane landed at.
Milton felt a thrill as negotiations were conducted with a real, live Black African. He didn't look very ferocious, which was perfectly all right with Milton. But he did look at the white barrister with what could only be called a 'fixed stare'.
Milton grandly announced that a guide to the present living quarters of one "Tarzan of the Apes" would be required, as well as someone to carry the luggage, hopefully in a motorized convoy that would not be exposed to rain or dust. Milton would retain control of the thick briefcase in which reposed the Last Will and Testament of Godfried Parker, father of Jane Parker, currently believed to be married to or in the company of this Tarzan person.
The not-so-vicious Black African, when he heard the demand, was heard to say "Pana! Mobuta ataya cissyvera no ataya bunada loquato ataya bunada monkasso."
Now the reader must here forgive the author, who does not speak Congolese, or Bantu, or whatever language was spoken by the man. The author has only heard these words repeated... in the oral tradition sort of way. In fact the spelling of the words is even in question, since the author had to guess at it.
However! The meaning of the words is quite clear, and has been verified many times over by people who do speak whatever language that was. Those words meant:
"Oh shit, not another fucking rich white person looking for fucking mythical Tarzan of the fucking mythical apes!"
This, of course, is a paraphrase of the actual concept, but the meaning is clear.
Milton had a line of credit, however, which invariably makes negotiations go much better than the phrase might have led one to believe.
The negotiations went well and, within hours, Milton and all of Milton's baggage, consisting of four suitcases and one trunk, were loaded in the back of an old Land Rover, being driven, more or less, by an ancient wizened man who was much more chocolate colored than black, to Milton's dismay. How would it look in the memoirs if the mission hinged on some sort of mixed blood driver? Moreover, this chauffeur did not speak English, and so Milton was unable to learn much of anything. Grumbling
about how things weren't off to an auspicious start, effort was expended in an attempt to watch where they were going.
Everything looked exactly the same.
What is known after this point is a topic for discussion, both philosophical and legal. Since a barrister is involved, any discussion
would necessarily involve legal issues, even if it were a discussion about whether or not you would pass me a Kleenex, so I might blow my nose.
This is to say that there is some confusion about the actual facts of occurrence in the ... adventure ... from this point on.
There are, however, a few indisputable facts known.
One is that, after four days, the elderly chauffeur returned. It is known that the Land Rover came back empty, of both Milton and the luggage. Another agreed upon fact is that, several months later, a search party duly put together and enfranchised by Hoffington, Burke, blah blah blah, found clothing positively identified as being Milton's in what could only be described as "deepest, darkest, most dangerous part of Africa." That clothing was torn to shreds and scattered in the jungle.
No body was found.
No trace of what might have been a body was found.
The elders of the firm would have been ecstatic, except that Milton's briefcase, containing the Last Will and Testament of Lord Parker, also was not found. All those facts are indisputable, as is the fact that Milton was not seen nor heard from for seven months after the disappearance.
It is also quite plain that, when Milton turned back up, all hell broke loose.
Your humble servant, the author, just happens to be a cousin to J.P. Milton, and it was for this reason that I was able to interview my cousin and record the story of some of what happened during those mysterious seven months. Of course there were participants in the story who could not be interviewed, so there is some small license taken by the author, merely in the interests of providing a story that is readable. But most of it came from my cousin.
And so, without further ado, this... is her story.
Julia Penelope Milton (Penny to those she deemed friends), age twenty-six, and third in her law class at Oxford, had a pretty good idea that she was out of her element. What had seemed to start well had deteriorated with every mile the old bouncing vehicle plowed through the jungle.
She had a hard time communicating with the ancient geezer who was driving the land rover, but through a series of pantomimes that she was extremely glad no one else saw, she was able to get across the idea that the bouncing and jarring of the rutted road had dribbled her bladder around like a basketball, and that she had to pee.
He obligingly stopped in the middle of nowhere and she climbed out of the vehicle. The glittering black eyes of the driver were on her, which didn't surprise her. She was relatively sure, by now, that she was the first white woman the man had ever seen. By virtue of having seen a number of native women walking along what was laughingly called a road in this part of the seriously uncivilized world, she also knew she looked completely different from them.
The native women came in two basic types. One consisted of young, slim young women, girls really, with either tight high riding breasts, or hanging, droopy dugs that went along with the baby(s) the girl might be carrying. The other were older women, thick with fat and perhaps muscle, all of which had the sad looking sagging breasts that gave testimony that they had suckled many babies before they got old. All these breasts were naked, the women of that region being dressed only in long wrap around skirts, if they wore anything at all.
This made Penny a little nervous, in that she was probably the only woman in three hundred miles who had big soft breasts that didn't sag, and which bulged outward in her smart and formerly pressed safari shirt in a manner that probably made it look like she had given birth to a calf, which was currently somewhere bawling for it's supper. That supper, it was plain to see, was in the wilds of Africa riding around inside her shirt.
That Penny stood out among women wasn't a new thing. While she normally kept her waist length blond hair in a series of braids that were then woven into a bun, all that hair still made men look and think about what it would look like, draped all over her naked body. Her eyes were that piercing blue that looked like the colored contact lenses of today. She had what people might have called an Greek nose which, despite her diminutive 5' 6" height she could look down at one from (and did quite regularly).
In short, she was sex, packaged up in bright paper and bows, in a box that was just the right size to be every man's fantasy fuck mate.
And, she was completely aware of the effect she had on men. Every single partner in her firm had tried to get into what they glibly referred to as "her knickers" when she was hired on as a junior researcher. Penny, though, came from a hard driving, dog eat dog legal program at a university that took only the best to begin with. She knew the value of the hymen that was still firmly intact between her glorious, soft thighs. She also knew how to use that to get what she wanted. She let each man get within almost literally an inch of picking that cherry before she burst into tears, pushing them away, moaning about how this was so unfair to Melody, or Margaret, or whatever the wife's name was, and how she just knew they couldn't possibly respect each other if she 'forced' her attentions on the poor man. She then made it a point to say, as she got dressed, that she didn't think it was necessary that Melody or Margaret or whoever be told about the almost incident, "even though you did suck my nipples most hotly". She managed to run through all four partners within the astonishing space of three and a half weeks, at which point she had a
ll four partners by the balls, both literally, during those three and a half weeks, and figuratively thereafter. Her career skyrocketed, naturally, as she got whatever she wanted in exchange for keeping her beautiful mouth shut.
It was also the reason she was sent to the Belgian Congo to hopefully expire in the most heroic of circumstances.
At any rate, some of this went through her mind as she stepped out of the land rover, briefcase firmly clutched in her hand, and endured the lustful eyes of the geezer, who she viewed as completely harmless. He probably hadn't had a serviceable erection in thirty years. Nonetheless, she stepped deeper into the bush until she was hidden so she could squat and do her business without him peeking.
Which is why, when the thieving old bastard pulled a U turn in the clearing and drove back the way he'd come, with her luggage, she couldn't do anything except scream profanities at him as he disappeared into the jungle.
Penny had never thought about how quiet the jungle might be until she stopped screaming, and then stopped sobbing from the fear that seized her. When she finally did those two things, and what was, to the ears of a city dweller, the eerie silence of the deep Jungle washed over her, she discovered a new level of heart-stopping terror that she had never known before. It literally paralyzed her. Eventually, though, sanity forced its way to the surface of her mind and she began trying to decide what to do. The most obvious choice was to simply walk back down the track, following that horrible old man who had abandoned her.
She suddenly felt the weight of the briefcase in her hand and looked down to stare at it. Now her mind kicked up into survival mode.
Not survival in the jungle - oh no - Penny began to think about survival in her firm.
If she didn't complete her mission, those lecherous old men would grumble on about how she couldn't complete such a simple job and demote her back into the research department. And her veiled threats about exposing their nasty little attempts at deflowering her wouldn't mean much, because she'd be a failure, and nobody listens to a failure. In the end it was simple politics that caused Penny to make the most momentous decision of her life. She decided to go deeper into the jungle and find this Tarzan person and the woman who, in Penny's mind, was probably his live-in slut.
* * *
The jungle's a big place.
And, if you get more than, say two or three hundred meters from anything man-made, it pretty much all looks the same. Penny had already noticed that, but she failed to remember it at that particular point.
And, with the top and middle canopies of leaves filtering the sunlight, not only is it pretty dark on the forest floor, you can't really see the sun or tell where it is.
Which means you have no real sense of direction.
Penny got lost within the first hour of her sojourn deeper into the jungle. She did, over the next three or four hours, manage to get deeper into the jungle than most of the native population ever did, and undeniably deeper than all but a very few white people. But by the time she got there she was a wreck, both physically and emotionally. She had always characterized herself as a "tough cookie" and prided herself on being able to stare down a mugger, which she had actually done once, though, admittedly she was holding a canister of mace at the time.
But now, every sound caused terror to grip her heart. Often she stopped and whirled around in a circle looking for the Tiger she knew was stalking her, or the Gorilla she knew was going to kidnap her, or the giant snake that was going to swallow her whole. The good news was that she didn't hear very many sounds. That's because she was making so much noise herself, it was unlikely she'd actually hear a charging Elephant, much less a more quiet denizen of the jungle. And, though she'll never admit it in
her memoirs, to be published at a later date, she was making so much noise that a good many of the denizens of the jungle were running the other way. In the end, she was reduced to plodding, one foot stubbornly in front of the other, pushing huge leafy plants out her way and breathing like she'd just run a marathon at full speed.
So, when one of the denizens of the jungle did strike, she had no warning whatsoever.
* * *
Malatiku had been following the strange woman for perhaps thirty minutes. He was far from his home territory, and nervous about that because he was in a forbidden section of the jungle. He had taken the risk, though, because the little pieces of heavy yellow metal that all the National Geographic people seemed to love so much came from this region, and those people who came to his village with their strange customs had many wonderful things they would trade for the worthless yellow stuff.
Malatiku knew that he risked his life to be in this part of the jungle, because this was Tarzan's range and Tarzan killed Malatiku's people on sight. This was because, when Tarzan had told the elders that eating the slaves they took captive in raids was wrong, and that they would have to stop, they had declared war on Tarzan, and had tried to kill him.
The tribe almost didn't survive.
Now, Tarzan's territory was forbidden to the men of his tribe. But that's where the yellow metal was. And the animals there were easier to hunt and kill too. They didn't seem to be afraid of men.
In fact, he had just killed a fat hog and had cut himself out a nice piece of raw flesh on which to dine, when he heard what had to be some strange new animal charging through the forest. He abandoned his kill and leapt into a tree where he sought refuge in the mid level canopy.
What he saw plunging through the jungle was Penny.
He followed her for a while, studying her. He knew she was female from her shape. The only female with skin this color was Tarzan's mate, but this female didn't act like she knew how to live in the jungle. Malatiku finally arrived at the conclusion that this one was a new one, and that quite possibly no one knew she was here.
She looked soft and tender, like she might taste very very good indeed. So he bounded ahead of her and waited. When she approached his hidden position he stepped out behind her and bashed her head with his war club.
Penny regained consciousness like a seal, slowly drifting toward the surface of the water, seeing the destination, and knowing it was where she wanted to be, but in no hurry to get there. That may have been because part of her mind knew that when she woke up it was going to hurt like hell where the club had not quite fractured her skull.
Malatiku had pulled his blow at the last second, not because he wanted to avoid breaking the skull - that made it so much easier to get to the delicious gray flesh inside - but because he wanted his captive alive, for the present. You could always crush the skull later.
But there was something Malatiku had never done, and he wanted to try it. He had never had sex with a white woman. And, if by some wild chance, this was the infamous Tarzan's mate, his fortunes would be made when he brought her head back to his people, triumphant, with her heart and liver in his belly. He'd be the most famous of his people ever! Girls would flock to him to have him bestow his heroic seed in them. Thus it was that Penny regained consciousness with a splitting headache, as Malatiku was
cutting the last remaining garments from her staked-out body.
Penny was a pragmatic girl, for the most part, and, other than an overactive imagination, she rarely looked at the world through anything other than glasses that she believed showed her only stark reality. Currently her 'glasses' were off, thanks to double vision which was blurred to boot.
But she knew she was in trouble. Bad trouble. What she believed to be a man was cutting the clothing from her body.
It was her theory that sometimes, in an abnormal situation, if one acted normally enough, one might be able to effect enough influence on the situation to knock it back to something closer to normal.
"What are you doing?" she said in a calm, normal voice. Her vision tunneled, but sharpened up a little.
"Ugh!" said Malatiku as he lovingly drew the flat of the tip of his knife from her throat to her navel, where he planned later to open her up and feast.
Perhap
s it was the sign language he displayed with the knife. Or maybe it was his individually sharpened teeth, filed to points and rotten from a diet of raw meat and a complete lack of oral hygiene. Maybe it was his unhealthy pallor and the glint of insanity in his eyes, also probably a result of his diet.
Whatever it was, Penny recognized that her situation was no longer merely abnormal, it was dire, and acting normally wasn't going to do the trick.
So she took in the largest breath she could and screamed as long and loudly as she could.
Which, when you stop and think about it, is probably the most normal thing to do in a situation like that.
Ironic, huh?
Ironic because that piercing scream was heard by another denizen of the forest, who was curious enough to investigate. What he saw was so interesting that he just had to tell somebody, and off through the jungle he went.
Jungle Virgins - Two Book Combo Page 4
