by Troy Conway
“That was a funny place,” she laughed.
I told her it was a love garden. I explained that in the old days, before the coming to power of Mao Tse-tung, the Chinese had built love gardens and pavilions as adjuncts to their homes, to exhort their deities for much love and long life. The peach tree, the plum tree, the banana tree, symbolic of earthly lusts, were all a necessary part of them.
The custom was fading out. The modern Chinaman had no time for such conceits; he was too busy parading for Mao Tse-tung. I called down blessings on the heads of that house, which thought so much of the love between man and woman that they erected shrines to it.
“A sad loss,” I said, and meant it.
I am no flower child but I do think the world would be a better place if there were more love and less hate and criticism in it. Lee Chi listened to me and my opinions, her eyes wide and earnest, as we walked along through the Chinese moonlight.
“If I ever get out of this and have my own love garden, Professor,” she told me in her melodious voice, “I shall put a statute of you in it and offer food to you every night.”
I grimed and hugged her as we walked.
We followed the winding Canton river, because it was as good as a compass. It would lead us to Hong Kong. It did not guarantee our safe arrival, but nothing and nobody could do that.
It was close to dawn when we tired.
Lee Chi was yawning, stumbling dong with bleary eyes.
I studied the few houses past which we walked, the bushes and the trees. If I could find a nice hiding place we would hole up and sleep, then walk through the night again. The night would be our safest time for travel. There would be fewer eyes to see us. I finally settled on a little clearing between a lot of tall cattails by the river’s edge.
I turned and caught Lee Chi by the wrist and drew her with me toward the circle of bare dirt.
We lay down and slept
A booted toe kicked me awake. I sat up to stare into the flat face of a grinning soldier who had his AK-47 aimed at my bellybutton. Another soldier was yanking Lee Chi upright with a hand fastened in her long black hair.
“Up.” said my soldier. “Up!”
I upped to my feet. His rifle barrel signaled me to raise my arms. I lifted them high. Lee Chi was standing with bowed head, the tears running down her cheeks and dropping onto her tom coolie jacket
We were finished.
CHAPTER TEN
At the business ends of two AK-47s, we were marched out onto a dusty road, and along a stand of chestnut trees. I expected a burst of machine gun fire in my back at any moment, but we just plodded on and on until I saw a big brown helicopter perched on its tires in a field.
This was not the same chopper that had fired on the Daimler. It was a larger version that could hold about a dozen soldiers. As we approached. I saw three more soldiers and the whirlybird pilot emerge from the helicopter.
We walked straight ahead.
Behind us, I heard a burst of automatic rifle fire. I almost fell down dead, figuring the two men behind us were polishing us off. The bullets never thudded into Lee Chi and me.
Instead, I saw the man who’d just come out of the helicopter unslinging their AK-47s. .getting ready to go into action. I grabbed Lee Chi, knocked her down, and leaped for the two dead soldiers.
My hands closed on one of the rifles.
I swiveled around and lifted the AK-47. Behind me from the dusty road, that automatic rifle opened up again. Whoever was holding it was a lousy shot, the bullets skipped and danced all around the soldiers in front of the helicopter without hitting them. The men in the Red Chinese quilted jackets were ready to let go with their own artillery when I raised my stolen AK-47.
We Coxemen are trained to fire all kinds of weapons— accurately. I had used an AK-47, that imitation of the Russian AK-50, on the firing range at Foundation Field Headquarters. I had scored perfect scores with it, in practice.
In actual combat conditions I scored another perfect score. My bullets chopped a bloody line across the chests of the soldiers Blood came out on their quilted jackets as they stood there, gaping at me, their own automatic rifles sagging in their hands.
Their knees sagged. Their bodies tilted slowly, their legs going rubbery under them. They fell.
The pilot was yanking a revolver from his holster. I swung the automatic rifle his way and squeezed off a burst of bullets. Every one cut into him. He stood there dead on his booted feet, eyes wide and staring. He went back on his heels, slammed into the chopper craft and slid groundward.
I whirled, wanting a look at my rescuer.
“Come on out,” I yelled. “We’re friends!”
The bushes moved. A white woman stepped into view, wearing a torn skirt that had been ripped off just below her behind, and without much more in front. Above her skirt she wore a black brassiere that tried valiantly to hold in her loosely shaking breasts.
Her legs were bare, and there were peasant sandals on her feet. She came toward me with the AK-47 ready in her hands. Her face was dirty, there were dark smudges on her cheeks and jaw, but her black eyes were bright with relief.
When she got a little closer, her eyes got real big.
“Why, Professor! Fancy meeting you here.”
Her laughter rang out. She tossed back her head, still advancing toward me on those handsome legs. Her hair was black, faintly streaked with gray. I should have known her, but I didn’t.
Not until she got up real close.
“Priscilla Saunders l” I howled.
I ran to her, I threw both arms around her and gave her a great big kiss. She met my mouth with open lips and her tongue & we into my mouth. She rocked me back on my heels with the ardor of her embrace. This hungry wanton was not the Priscilla Saunders I had known!
She felt my priapic response rising against her upper thighs. She wriggled them against me and then pushed free, laughing.
“I’m a widow now, Professor. My husband died almost six months ago. That’s why the Red Chinese tried to steal those scrolls from me in Tokyo and Hong Kong. They couldn’t carry out their part of the bargain,”
“It’s a marvel to me you’re still alive,” I said wryly.
“And to me, too.”
“You can tell me about it later. Right now we’ve got to get the hell out of here.”
Lee Chi was at my elbow, staring daggerblades at Priscilla I caught her by a hand, brought her forward and introduced them. Priscilla smiled and held out her hand. Lee Chi smiled suddenly, to my surprise, and held out her own hand.
The girls were good friends from that moment on.
I took them at a run for the helicopter.
Priscilla asked, “Can you fly that thing?”
“I can and will, as soon as we’re aboard. Now into the cabin, both of you.”
As Lee Chi put a foot into the cabin, with me below her pushing her upward with both hands on her behind, I got a fast idea. Not pushing Lee Chi, just holding her suspended between helicopter and ground, I looked at the widow.
“What about your scrolls, honey? I asked.
“The Red Chinese have them.”
“Yeah, I figured that. But where?”
Her arm lifted. Her finger pointed at the village I had seen in the distance. There. I got away at dawn and hid. The villagers alerted the army, I guess, because the helicopter came when I was hiding in those big bushes beside the road.
“I watched them searching the entire area. I had stolen a rifle from my guard whom I hit over the head with a rock. I was going to sell my life dearly when they found me.
Instead, they brought you in.”
So much for vanity. I’d figured the helicopter and all these soldiers were here because of Lee Chi and me. It had been pure dumb luck that they’d found us piling up the zzzs.
I looked across the fields at the village. The Chao Meng Fu scrolls were about a mile away. AU the instincts of the treasure hunter, the bandits of history, the gold seekers and the greedy-guts of
all T i e , churned in my middle.
It wasn’t for their value that I wanted thaw scrolls: not for the money I could get for them, that is. I wanted those Chao Meng Fu masterpieces for the Eros wing of the university museum. They would be the star attraction of the League for Sexual Dynamics exhibits.
My fingers tightened on my AK-47 rifle. “Take me there,” I told Priscilla.
Her face went ashen. “They’ll kill us”
“Who? A lot of villagers? We’re armed, they won’t dare try to stop us.”
Lee Chi wriggled her backside, saying, “Let me down. I can handle an automatic rifle. All us Chinese girls are taught to fight.”
She sounded very proud of the fact, I let her down gently to the ground. She ran to the nearest dead body and snatched up the fallen weapon.
Then we set off across the fields, using the bushes and trees as shelter. As we moved along, Priscilla Saunders talked.
“They keep the mils in the largest hut, that’s a sort of communal meeting house. There are two old men there—scholars, both of them—who came to identify the scrolls as the authentic work of Chao Meng Fu. I they didn’t trust the judgment of Pak Dong.”
“What about soldiers”
“Outside of the one guard I slugged, there aren’t any-but there are a number of young Red Guards in the village. They’ve been stationed there to give the peasants a hand with the crops. They may fight.”
We moved forward slowly. Most of the people in the town were out in the fields, planting or harvesting or some damn thing. I figured we were playing in real luck. Our feet skirted the back of the huts on our side of the one road. When we were behind the largest hut, we stepped forward.
My hand lifted a bamboo screen.
Two old men were bent over a table. rolling up the scrolls inside a glossy, imitation leather carrying case. The guard was watching them, his head bandaged. Two tough-looking young teenagers—Red Guards, I was positive—stood at the doorway, framing it with their bodies and looking out across the fields.
If they had heard the sound of gunfire, they must have assumed that the soldiers had found Priscilla Saunders, that she had put up some kind of struggle, and that she was now dead.
“Hold it right where you are!” I snapped.
The Red Guards whirled. The soldier looked up. The two old men went on sliding the scrolls into the leather case. I waited until they fastened the straps that held it.
“You—back up!” I ordered the soldiers.
One of the Red Guards turned on a heel and ran out the door. He took me completely by surprise. Not so with Lee Chi. Her barrel spat red flame. The youth arched his back and went down the steps in a flying stumble. I saw the pattern of red on his back that showed where Lea Chi had pumped a dozen bullets into him.
The soldier moved back half a dozen steps.
I motioned to Priscilla to get the scrolls. She stepped forward, hand outstretched. One of the old men lifted his right hand and leaped for her. A dagger glinted in his wrinkled hand. Priscilla was between us. I couldn’t fire, neither could Lee Chi.
Priscilla said, “Haaa!”
Her two hands grabbed the thin old wrist, bent it side ways. The other old man leaped for her.
I jumped forward.
While Priscilla struggled with her attacker, my riflebutt drove over her head into the face of the old man who was coming to lend his help. I sympathized with them. I knew how valuable and how rare those scrolls were. But I wanted them for me.
The man I hit went backward, nose smashed. I turned to help Priscilla but the soldier and the Red Guard were getting in on the action too. They dove for me, the soldier yanking out a revolver, the Red Guard a long knife.
It was too close to use the AK-47. I couldn’t even swing it. I fell forward, half throwing myself at the knees of the soldier. He hit me and toppled, just as a would-be tackler might be taken out of the play by a veteran blocking back. I was on my knees. I whirled for the Red Guard who was aiming his knife at me.
My hands caught him, swung him sideways.
Lee Chi was crouched behind us, rifle barrel up. As the Red Guard hurtled away from me, she squeezed her trigger and damn near cut him in half with her spray of bullets.
The old man struggling with Pricilla Saunders cried out in a high shrill voice. My eyes darted his way. The widow had turned his wrist, had driven the long knife-blade into his belly. The old man tottered, fell against the table and collapsed half over it before he dropped to the floor.
Priscilla grabbed the leather carrying case.
I landed with both knees on the soldier. The breath whooshed out of him as his front slammed into the flooring. My hands raised the AK-47. I drove its butt plate downward. When the soldier came to, he was going to have a headache to end all headaches. I got up, seeing Lee Chi and Priscilla waiting for me at the bamboo curtain that Lee Chi was holding up.
“Go on,” I yelled. “I’m coming.”
We ran like crazy across the fields. Behind us we could hear the angry cries and screeches of the villagers, aroused by the sound of gunfire in their own huts. Some of them carried pitchforks, same held hoes. There were half a dozen Red Guards with them, easily outdistancing the older men.
I boosted Lee Chi up into the whirlybird. Priscilla was dancing around in her eagerness. She tossed the scrolls up to Lee Chi, put a sandaled foot on my thigh and let me shove her upward.
I whirled. I aimed the AK-47 in the general direction of the oncoming villagers and gave them a fast burst. Two of the foremost Red Guards went down. The others slowed their run, and fell flat
I tossed the automatic f i e up into the chopper craft and went after it. Priscilla was there to lend a hand. Lee Chi crouched at an open door, her own weapon ready to fire.
I leaped for the pilot’s seat.
The motor started and revved up smoothly. Overhead, the blades sliced the air with a clean stroke, building speed. I handled the controls with a little unfamiliarity, this Red Chinese copter was only vaguely similar to the one I’d learned to fly at the Thaddeus X Coxe Foundation training center, but I got it up into the air.
I checked the compass.
Then I made a wide swing about five hundred feet up in the air and headed for Hang Kong. Priscilla sagged down behind me while Lee Chi sank back into her seat.
“We’re on our way,” I yelled.
The girls were quiet for about fifteen minutes. Priscilla Saunders had stationed herself half over my right shoulder so that if I glanced away from the control board, I would be sure to see her big white breasts in their cobwebby black brassiere. When she exhaled, the breasts seemed to shrink slightly in the black nylon cups so I could catch a glimpse of her brown nipples.
When she drew in breath, the breasts ballooned outward. bulging above the bra cups. It was very intriguing. I saw that Lee Chi was smiling faintly, watching the direction .of my eyes.
“You are good friends, you two?” she asked.
Priscilla would have blushed, some days ago. Now she put her bare left arm about my neck and hugged me. “We ought to be what you call ‘good friends.’ Unfortunately, we are only acquaintances. Traveling companions.”
She went on to tell her story to a sympathetic Lee Chi.
The Chinese girl was very interested. Her lips were partly open and her eyes sparkled as Priscilla explained how she and I had become excited in the Tokyo coffee shop and how she had gone off all by her lonesome, working her hips against mine.
And how later, in the Tokyo hotel, she would not let me take her. Lee Chi tch-tched and shook her head at the un-wisdom of Caucasian females.
“I was a married woman,” exclaimed Priscilla hotly.
“Now you are a. widow. You see how wrong it is to keep the door locked when opportunity knocks?”
Priscilla smiled faintly, and let her brassiered breasts stir against my neck. Her breasts seemed to be getting. bigger, or else the bra cups were shrinking. They wobbled and trembled almost out of the sheer nylon.
&nb
sp; “Suppose we hadn’t happened along and those soldiers had found you? They’d have killed you and you’d have gone to the grave without knowing the joy of Rod Damon’s rod.”
Priscilla looked slightly stunned. “You mean, you’ve sampled it?”
“Oh my, yes. Shall I tell you?”
“Please do,” muttered Priscilla coldly.
Lee Chi told about how I had been invited into Red China to have robot males made from my body. Of course, now that we had left the Robot Development Center a blazing inferno, no machines could have come through that holocaust unscathed, so there would be no more robots, either male or female.
The personnel, including the two Russians and their inventions, would all perish. Red China would have to depend on its depleted manpower now, without android help. I had found out about the robots and destroyed them—while servicing La Chi.
She told how my body would not respond to Feng Ti without hypnosis. Then she giggled. “But you should have seen him in action after Fedor Novotny worked on his psyche with his watch.”
“I’d have loved to,” breathed Priscilla Saunders. She sounded as if she might be thawing.
“Maybe I can describe it,” exclaimed Lee Chi cheerfully. She was a regular Michelangelo with words, this pretty Chinese doll. She told how Feng Ti and I had made it together until they had to pull us apart with a dozen or more hands and then stick me with a hypodermic needle to bring down my manhood.
“My goodness!” cried the widow, eyeing me with bold black eyes. Her breasts rubbed harder against the back of my neck.
Lee Chi told about how she and I had played love-in follow-the-leader for the personnel at the Robot Development Center. In detail and highly colored by admiration for my manly qualities.
I flushed with embarrassment, and maybe something else, because Lee Chi leaned over and put her hand down on me, gently stroking the stiffness of my ever ready phallus that had been enlivened by her talk and the feel of the Saunders breasts.
“I’ll bet a fortune cookie you don’t believe me,” Lee Chi said to Priscilla
