Back home at the O.R.G.Y.

STEVE VICTOR AND THE TIME MACHINE

It all started in a small Tibetan village. In studying the customs of these little-known people, Steve Victor met with the local Lolita, Miss Ti Nih Baapuh, and proceeded to break several Lamaist taboos regarding the art of love.

He might have been content to continue his researches with this uninhibited sexual dynamo, if it hadn't been for Papa Baapuh’s time machine. Once inside it, Steve Victor unbelievingly found himself catapulted into the lap of the Queen of Sheba in ancient Ethiopia. And a very obliging lap it was. In no time at all he was being propelled from one century to another — now an orgy with the Princess Julia in ancient Rome, now a quivering clinch with Eleanor of Aquitaine during the Second Crusade in Damascus.

It was quite a novel way of getting inside history and Steve Victor, always a willing scholar, decided To let himself go and make the most of it. . .

BACK HOME AT THE O.R.G.Y.

Ted Mark

1968

Chapter One

THE EVENING OF MAY 12TH, 1967, I SLIPPED BETWEEN the sheets of a bed in a Hollywood hotel, established contact with the world famous cinema sex-kitten Misty Milo, and proceeded to break several California statutes having to do with erotic practices between unmarried members of opposing sexes. Two weeks later I rode a yak up a Tibetan mountain located well behind the Bamboo Curtain, dismounted at a snowed-in tape to meet with a priestess of polyandry, and proceeded to bust several Lamaist taboos relating to sexuality. Some hours after my arrival I entered an elaborate palace in Northern Arabia, found myself face-to-face with the Queen of Sheba, and proceeded to shatter several Sheban mores designed to restrict queenly carnality.

The Queen of Sheba!—“Balkis,” to label her with historical accuracy-—-circa 950 B.C., or thereabouts—which is quite a “circa” for a mod cat like me who always thought H. G. and Jules¹ dropped their time machines right between the gratings of the Credibility Gap² . The Queen of Sheba!

Well, why not the Queen of Sheba? And why not Eleanor of Aquitaine? Or Julia, Empress of Rome? Or my own Grandma, for that matter? Why not, indeed!

In my line, you learn to accept what’s available. That’s only practical, because my line is sex. Also, my line is often my leisure. Little did I guess that evening of May 12th, 1967, that my leisure might become legend!

Steve Victor a legend! Now there was a thought! But not a legend in my own time. And that’s the story—the fantastic, improbable, unbelievable, impossible, ridiculous, incredible, insane, adjective-straining story!

Steve Victor is me. Maybe you’ve heard of me. I’m the man from O.R.G.Y. If you have, then you know that the initials stand for the Organization for the Rational Guidance of Youth, a one-man sex survey outfit profoundly dedicated to latching onto research grants from those lucre-leaking foundations who finance scientific investigations. If you haven’t heard of me before, I might mention that I’m a man who enjoys his work.

It wasn’t work that night in Hollywood with Misty Milo; just sort of a busman’s holiday. The bus was going full speed down the freeway when the telephone rang. I jammed on the brakes to answer it, leaving the only other passenger somewhat shook up and disgruntled.

“Hello!” I honked into the mouthpiece-—and get the hell out of the way; you’re blocking traffic!

“Hostile-hostile,” the jaywalker answered. “What kind of tone is that to take with a dying man, Steve?”

“Dudley!” I exclaimed. “Dudley Nightshade!” I identified the caller. “How the hell are you?”

“Excuse me.” Misty’s voice drifted up small but indignant from beneath me. “Would you mind leaning on your elbows? You’re cracking my ribs!”

“Sorry.” I shifted position.

“And well you should be!” Dudley was indignant.

“That’s some question to ask a dying man! ‘How are you?’ You’ve got the kind of tact if you dated Helen Keller³ , you’d take her to a Technicolor movie and ask her how she liked the scenery and dialogue!”

“Same old Dudley!”

“Do you mind if I get out?” Misty wriggled. “I have to go to the john.”

“See what I mean? ‘Same old Dudley’! A tactful person would never use that word to a man at death’s door.”

“Go ahead.” I rolled over and Misty scrambled off the bed. “Right through that door over there,” I directed her.

“That’s not funny!” Dudley was indignant. “I could go like that—-poof!—just from talking to you. I should have known better than to call you. You have no sensitivity!”

“Why did you call me, Dudley?” It was a rhetorical question. My mind was on one million dollars worth of bare derrière jiggling into the bathroom. For real! Misty’s rump was her cinematic trademark, and it was insured by Lloyds of London for that amount.

“I want to die in Tibet. I thought you might help me.”

He was serious. The peculiar thing is that he had reason to be serious. I’d known Dudley for about six years, and for six years he’d been a dying man. Well, aren’t we all, you may ask? Don’t we all begin dying from the moment we’re discharged from that universal pop-up toaster, the womb? Isn’t it just a matter of “sooner or later”?

Yeah. But with Dudley it was different. Six years ago he’d martini’d away one of his kidneys. After its removal, the other one had started pining away with a carcinoma of loneliness. By the time science had really perfected kidney transplants, it was too late for Dudley Nightshade. He was too far gone. It was a matter of weeks, the doctors had told him, maybe months, possibly a year. Six years later the prognosis was the same. Dudley was a dying man; but his remaining kidney kept stalling.

Psychologically, this period of impending death was traumatic for Dudley. In regard to his health, it made him insecure. Indeed, if he hadn’t actually been dying, any shrink worth his Dream Book would have labeled Dudley a hypochondriac. Even given the reality, it must in honesty be admitted that Dudley was a kvetch. He was constantly moaning and groaning about his aches and pains, always in a tone of dread—lip-licking dread, anticipating corpse-hood.

A side effect of his dying, his concern for his health had weighted him down with possessions of a medicinal nature. Wherever he went his portable drug store went with him. Pills, capsules and suppositories, bottles, phials and inhalators, hypodermic needles, thermometers designed for every bodily orifice and enema bags, empty tubes for blood and urine, slides for smears, microscopes and stethoscopes—-all this and more accompanied Dudley wherever he went.

And now he wanted to go to Tibet. “Why Tibet?” I asked him.

“Nirvana. The Lamas have the secret. I want to die at peace.”

“Oh, come on, Dudley.”

“I mean it. Maybe I’m grasping at straws, but a man in my position can’t afford to be cynical.”

“All right. But what do you need me for? I have no reason to go to Tibet,” I pointed out.

“Yes you do.” He explained. Tibet is one of the few places in the world where polyandry-—the' practice of women taking two or more husbands—-is still practiced. That I knew. What I didn’t know was that Dudley had arranged a grant for me from one of the largest research foundations in the country to investigate polyandry in Tibet. Dudley was a biologist. He’d presented us as a team, he to study the anatomical responses of polyandry, I to survey the sociological scene.

“Why me?” I wanted to know.

“Because Tibet is occupied by the Red Chinese. I need somebody who could arrange for me to get into the country. I remembered that you have some sort of Washington contacts. I figured if could arrange for the grant, you’d manage the entry.”

It intrigued me. I’d never been to Tibet. And polyandry was a relatively unstudied terrain in the field of sexology. What’s more, Dudley was right. There were strings I could pull to get into Red China.

The strings led to Charles Putnam. He was the man who’d recruited my services for the U.S. government on more than one occasion. He was the human question mark between the State Department and the C.I.A. He was part of neither organization, accountable to neither, yet instrumental on a policy level with both. He was the invisible man, for where he stood in government there was a void that perhaps only the president and one or two others knew he filled. His influence in both diplomacy and espionage was immense. And he owed me a favor.

I collected. Which is how, two weeks later, I found myself riding a yak through a blizzard that was blanketing a Tibetan mountain some 15,000 feet above sea level. Behind me, in the valley below, the Red Chinese authorities in charge of the garrison occupying the city of Shigatse were in a state of angry confusion. The order to allow me to travel had come from the top; how Putnam arranged that, I’ll never know. I could guess that there was also an order to keep tabs on me since I was by definition a capitalistic American and must therefore be engaged in some sort of spying. Just how to keep me under surveillance in the middle of a Tibetan blizzard while still supposedly extending the hospitality of the country must have been quite a problem for them. I could also guess that somewhere behind me in the blizzard there was a Red Guard tail blood-hounding yak prints in the snowdrifts.

Ahead of me by only a few feet, but still almost invisible in the snowfall, was the yak-borne Dudley Nightshade. Ordinarily Dudley was a man of about forty years who looked sixty. With his small, emaciated body hunched against the cold and his blubbery lips freezing green, now he looked more like eighty. When we paused he pulled a scarf up to cover the lower half of his face and for a moment he looked like an octogenarian mouse with tiny red eyes and a sharp, colorless wax nose that looked as if it might be snapped off by the cold like a twig.

Under me, as we resumed our trek, was a yak. The yak is just about the only form of transportation in Tibet. It has a very hostile back—which may explain why one-sixth of the male population of Tibet is composed of chaste monks. Indeed, quite a few of these are actually eunuchs — a bit of data which made me sit my yak very carefully indeed. I made a point of riding like the other five-sixths of the population, my bottom raised above the hairy red leather skin of the yak, leaning forward to hold onto its large, curved horns for support. In Tibet a yak is no laughing matter.

Neither is Tibet. It’s the highest country in the world (elevation, not LSD), and one of the coldest. Once you leave the Tsangpo valley for the Himalayan and Kunlun mountain ranges which surround it, you’re in some of the roughest terrain and weather on earth. The upper parts of the mountains are beset by constant blizzards, but the snow freezes into ice and below the mountain slopes suffer from lack of water; rainfall is sparse and the growing season is short-lived every place but in the Tsangpo Valley itself where the Tsangpo River irrigates the soil. Even here, grains and barley are the only crops hardy enough to survive. Our trek had led from the valley up the barren, rocky slopes to the ice caps ringing the mountain tops.

It was a Rinso-white⁴ world with fangs of ice through which we were yak-bouncing. Finally the curtain of snow parted and I could make out a tape in the distance. Its bulbous dome crowned with a gilded copper parasol and crescent was a welcome sight.

Less than an hour later we reached it. It was a Lamaist temple staffed by monks. It stood in the center of a small village of thatched huts which extended into ice caves. For the purpose of our research, I was more interested in the village than the temple.

Despite their proximity, they were separate entities. The tope was Lamaist~Buddhist, the village a sort of matriarchy ruled by women who imposed a system of polyandry. The two were constantly in religious conflict, the pagan customs of the villagers opposed to the sex mores of the monks.

The head-woman of the village was a sort of combination between a pagan priestess and a matriarch mayor. Besides running things, she was entrusted with overseeing the system and rites and taboos of the polyandric society. After we dismounted our yak, Dudley and I were taken to her.

Her cave-hut was the biggest in the village. It was staffed by her husbands, half a dozen Milquetoast males. The head-lady herself was an aging harridan without benefit of Elizabeth Arden. Even her wrinkles had wrinkles.

Through our interpreter, we explained our mission. She agreed to cooperate. We could have the freedom of the village and she would instruct her people to tell us whatever we wanted to know. Dripping thanks, we bowed our way out.

As soon as we were outside, Dudley began muttering frosty smoke clouds of “Nirvana” into the subzero and tried to get me to head for the temple. But I was more interested in our research. So we arranged to meet later and split up.

The village had been situated on the mountainside in a manner that shielded it from the wind and snow. Walking around it was a cold stroll, but since I wasn’t being buffeted by the elements, it wasn’t too unpleasant. The villagers -—particularly the women—were quite friendly. And nobody proved friendlier than Ti Nih Baapuh.

Ti Nih was a Tibetan Tuesday Weld⁵ who nibbled on raowolfa hors d’oeuvres and had an ever-present appetite for a main course of passion. By Tibetan standards, each of her breasts was double-breasted. Her legs were longer and more slender than average and her golden-hued derrière might have served as a model for one of those erotic temple sculptures found throughout Asia. The golden tones of her face were shaded with delicate pinks. The features were firmly molded, yet childlike, her doe-soft eyes filled with a sparkling mischief. Her face was framed by thick, lustrous black hair which fell past her narrow waist to the ample curve of her hips.

I encountered Ti Nih by chance. The mountain wind must have shifted because a sudden, strong, icy gale knifed through the compound. Villagers scurried for their homes, some pausing to tether their yaks behind crude wooden shelters. I dived for the doorway to the nearest hut and then backed further into it to get away from the wind.

I’d been standing there a moment when the voice trilled from behind me. Not speaking the language, I could only suppose the words were a greeting. I turned to face the speaker.

“Hello.” I took my first look at Ti Nih Baapuh. “Well, hello-o-o.” It was a long look. “Is this your house?”

“It is Papa house.”

“You speak English?” I was surprised.

“Papa pay temple Lama teach me when I have very young.”

“That can’t have been very long ago,” I observed. “You’re still pretty young.”

“Please. No make sounds as Papa.” She scowled, then smiled. “I be Ti Nih Baapuh,” she introduced herself.

“I be Steve Victor.”

“How do you do it?”

“I have a feeling you know the answer to that one.”

“Begging pardon.”

“Never mind. Just a silly joke. Is your father home? Or your mother?”

“Mama in ground many years. Papa with Lamas. After Mama bury, he convert very strong. Make him angry no me though. I yet Bon.”

I understood that by this she meant she clung to the primitive cult of polyandry which predates the Mahayana form of Buddhism practiced by the Lamas and their followers in Tibet. “Bon” is an animistic belief which holds that all objects—even inanimate ones—are possessed of a soul which may affect the life and health of persons who corne in contact with them. In Tibet “Bon” and polyandry are fused, while Lamaism and asceticism go hand-in-hand. It was unusual to find the two views in one household.

“Then there is no woman in the house,” I observed.

“I woman!” She was indignant. “Much woman! You come right time now see.” She motioned me to follow her as if by way of explanation.

Ti Nih led the way to the cave part of the dwelling. We passed between a pair of lavish draperies and I found myself in a sort of sitting-room with a teak floor and some yakskin rugs thrown about. Four young men were waiting there. They were sitting on low, wide ottonians, also covered with yak hide. Ti Nih motioned me to a chair while she herself stretched out on a couch. It was a little like being the tenth man to arrive at a minyan. Now that I was here, the rites could proceed apace.

They did. Ti Nih Baapuh produced a pipe with a large bowl and a long stem connected to a container filled with some kind of liquid. It was the kind of pipe used by opium smokers, but the shredded gook she proceeded to tamp down in the bowl wasn’t opium. It was a blend of hashish and some kind of aphrodisiac which is known in Persia as bhang. But Ti Nih’s Tibetan version added yet one more ingredient -- raowolfa, the leaf from India which contains a hallucinatory drug of the LSD type. It was a potent mixture.

Ti Nih sucked on the pipe for about five minutes and then passed it on to one of the young men. She began writhing on the couch and moaning low in her throat. Her eyes were like ebony pinballs in a state of electric shock.

By the time the pipe had been passed along to the second man, Ti Nih was tearing at the bodice of the long, loose, rough-woven garment she was wearing. As the third man started puffing at the bhang mixture, she parted the garment in the middle and exposed her large, firm, golden breasts to our view. The brown aureoles were large as half dollars, the maroon tips springing from their centers long and quivering, aglow with desire. The garment was forced down over her lush hips by the spasms of trembling which had seized her body as the fourth man received the pipe. When he’d finished it was down around her ankles. She kicked it to the floor.

Now it was my turn. I took the pipe, determined to try to fake it. But with all eyes darting from her to me impatiently, waiting for me to finish so that the second phase of the rites might begin, it wasn’t easy to pretend. I couldn’t help getting a few lungfuls.

The first one merely made me cough. After that there were more marked effects. The focus of my eyes altered and everything I looked at took on a razor-edge clarity; the colors became more intense; the shapes and forms of objects and flesh were perceived in depth. The top of my head seemed to be trying to disattach itself from the rest of the cranium; it was an odd sensation, not so much painful as nerveless—-almost as if my synapses had been snapped. But the third result was the most marked and it tended to overwhelm the other two. This was a tumescence in the obvious part of my body, but a localized tumescence. No, it was as if the rigidity had spread from my toes to my forehead, as if it had claimed my entire body and converted it into a phallus.

I put the pipe aside. I was the last smoker and the others reacted to the movement as if it was a signal. There were only four of them, but they swarmed over Ti Nih like they were an army of locusts and she was a crop of Pall Malls in the raw.

I was slower than they, but the bhang had me moving with them, tumescent from top to toe, a phallus looking or a nesting place. Ti Nih was as eager to receive us as we were to claim her. Young as she was, she spread out there like the universal whore, all-knowing, all-demanding, a thirsty vessel no amount of love juice could fill.

It’s only in retrospect that I can appreciate that I was a participant in one of the most unusual practices of polyandry, a woman having multiple sex with five men, an act of “Bon,” compounded by drugs—a Bon-bhang-bang, if you will. At the time though, I was too caught up in the action to appreciate the anthropological significance. I was no pure research scientist-observer; I was one of the guinea pigs.

How? You may well ask. How does a girl accommodate five men at the same time? Places kept changing as the frenzy grew, but the basic positioning was something like this:

One man was flat on the floor with Ti Nih in a kneeling position straddling him and bending over so that the golden roundness of her bottom protruded. It was a posterior par excellence, and it wriggled wildly in response as it was pounded by a second lover. Leaning on her hands, the upper parts of Ti Nih’s arms were pressed closely against the sides of her heavy breasts. Despite the attempts of one of the other two men to assail a more oral orifice, she had succeeded in relegating both of them to the armpits. Leaning over her, they buffeted the armpits wildly, the enraged tips of their organs striking her breasts as if they were a pair of gongs and making them swing from side to side.

Ti Nih raised her head as I approached and her lips formed an invitational O. I would have fallen on an angry porcupine to gain release from the unquenchable bhang fire within me. Ti Nih’s lips were a far more satifying target. My eagerness led me to an exploratory of her tonsils, but Ti Nih was adept and welcomed me without choking. Wham! Bam! Thank you, Ma’am! It was that fast, but desire didn’t leave me. Lust had found no temporary dwelling place in my body, but rather a permanent erection. Immediately it started another duel with her sweetly torturing tongue.

Hipe! The backfield shifted. The duel was never finished. Everybody scrambled and I ended up at the bottom of the pile-up. The sweet-smelling blossom of Ti Nih’s womanhood presented its nectar to my lips while one of her hands granted me a second release. Still the rigidity didn’t lessen. It was as if rigor mortis had set in. With the next shift I plunged into the deep cleavage between her breasts. Ti Nih was lying on her back now and I had to nudge a couple of armpit lovers out of the way to claim the breast-works. Of the other two men, one was pinned beneath her, the other behind me and atop her, bouncing madly. Ti Nih herself was an entire temple of erotica in the throes of an earthquake. Her breasts heaved and moved as if contracting to grasp my manhood. Her body was a torch being consumed by its own fires.

Hipe! Tireless, I was finally lodged between her hot, quivering thighs. I bumped heads with the man facing me, but we were both too blinded by lust to pay much attention to the contact. My entire being was centered at the fused cores of Ti Nih’s body and my own. She screamed ecstatically as we soared together to the heights of our passion.

And so it went. I don’t know how long it lasted, but I don’t think there was a possible receptacle of love that Ti Nih had to offer which I didn’t assail. The same held true for the others. Yet even when it was over, none of us—not the other four men, not Ti Nih, not myself—had expended our sex drives. It taught me an important lesson. Under the influence of bhang, the libido is tireless—but satisfaction is impossible.

Ti Nih was the one who called a halt. Her father was due back from the Lamaist temple soon. His wrath would be great if he discovered what had been happening. So the other four men left at Ti Nih’s bidding.

Cautioning me to be discreet, she said it would be all right for me to stay and meet her father. Still throbbing, I dressed-—which did not exactly conceal my still aroused lust—and tried to resume the role of the casual visitor. Ti Nih also made an effort to don the facade of an obedient and virtuous daughter. But like me she was still hungry for more love-making.

To distract both of us, she took me on a tour of the cave dwelling. The rooms were typical of a Tibetan house, the furnishings perhaps a little more lavish than usual, indicating that Ti Nih’s father was a man of more than ordinary wealth. But then we entered a large enclosure at the rear of the cave and my jaw dropped as I did a series of double takes.

The place was tilled with machinery. The second part of my double take told me that most of it consisted of crude, but identifiable appliances. I inspected one of them. Rough-made as it was, there could be no doubt that it was a washing machine. Another turned out to be a vacuum cleaner. There was a pop-up toaster, a radio, an electric stove, a refrigerator, an adding machine and a sewing machine. None of these were manufactured items. All were crude and had undoubtedly been painstakingly assembled by hand. In one corner of the room was a very large, equally crude, electric generator.

“What is all this?” I asked Ti Nih.

She told me. It seemed that Papa Baapuh fancied himself an inventor. In this primitive spot, secluded from the outside world, uninhibited by any knowledge of the progress of mankind, he had developed the principle of electric energy, built the generator, which was operated by a hand crank, and gone on to create the gadgets which fed off that energy.

The man was a genius. Thomas Edison was a mere tinkerer compared with him. There was only one trouble. All the things Papa Baapuh had invented had been in production in the U.S.A. for many years. All but one, that is.

“What’s that?” I pointed to the one contraption I couldn’t identify. It was a large boxlike structure taller than a man and attached to a gadget that looked like a cross between a diathermy machine and one of Dr. Frankenstein’s bad dreams.

“Is Papa’s latest invention, not work yet.” Ti Nih crossed over to pull aside a sort of sliding door. The inside of the large cabinet was revealed to have a raised platform with a screening of wire filaments around it. The screening went over the top, too, forming a transparent roof.

Ti Nih moved to the machine and threw a switch. The filaments crackled and multicolored electric sparks bounced inside the wire screening. Obviously some sort of force field was being created in the wire enclosure.

“What’s it supposed to do?” I asked Ti Nih.

“Is timing machine,” she told me. “Travel past, future, present,” she paused. “Much frustrating Papa. He finish, but not going no place.”

“Oh, well, back to the drawing board.” I chuckled to myself at the naiveté of this simple Tibetan inventing things long since invented and then going on to try to develop a time machine, which would mean solving a problem that baffled the world’s top Einsteins. “What’s that?” I added, pointing to a gadget hanging from the inside of the door to the time machine.

“Is radio both ways so when machine work travel man talk back-forth with control here.”

“Just like Dick Tracy, hey?” Now that she’d explained, I realized that the gismo did indeed look like a two-way wrist radio. I came up beside her to look at it more closely.

The proximity was too much for us. The bhang was still operative. Before I knew it, my hands were on her hips and I was yanking up yards of material to get at her. ZIP! Ti Nih freed rne. I fastened my hands over her now bare derrière and slammed into the target. Her body arched to meet me. We swayed back and forth for a long moment. Then Ti Nih gave a little leap and locked her legs around my hips. Her arms around my neck, she rotated like a spinning wheel. It wasn’t easy to stay on my feet, but I managed. Finally I whirled in a dervish circle as the two of us exploded together.

The way we were feeling, that probably wouldn’t have ended it if outside circumstances hadn’t intruded. What happened was that Papa Baapuh had returned home. He was calling Ti Nih’s name, the way his voice was getting louder telling us that he was approaching the laboratory.

During the action I had dropped my pants and kicked them to one side. They had landed on the platform of the time machine. Now I scrambled for them. Papa Baapuh’s voice was very close now. As I bent to retrieve them, Ti Nih thought fast and closed the door to the time machine behind me. I could hear them talking as I pulled on my pants.

Of course, since they were speaking their native lingo, I couldn’t understand a word they said. Still, from the tone I could tell that the old man sounded angry. Then there was the slamming of a door. Ti Nih must have left, because I could hear her father mumbling to himself as he moved around the laboratory.

Suddenly there was a hum within the cabinet where I was hiding. It grew and there was a crackling of electricity. The wire filaments began to glow. They shot off a crossfire of sparks and it felt like I was getting a scalp massage all over my body. I lunged for the door and in my frenzy I grabbed onto the wrist radio hanging there. The platform spun under my feet. The sparks whirled. I whirled-—right out of this world. Then everything went black.

I came to in the middle of a desert, the hot sun beating down on me, an oasis in the distance. It was a long time before I could even begin to try to orient myself. When I was able, the attempt was still a long way from successful.

Finally I noticed that I was still clutching the wrist radio. Still completely confused, I twisted one of the miniature dials. A voice snag out loud and clear.

“HEADACHE GOT YOU DOWN? . . .”

Yeah!

“DO YOU FEEL NERVOUS AND JITTERY? . . .”

Uh-huh!

“ARE DAILY TENSIONS TOO MUCH FOR YOU? . . .”

And how!

“ARE MILLIONS OF TINY NERVE BUDS JANGLING YOUR BODY? . . .”

You said it!

“THEN NOW’S THE TIME TO VISIT YOUR LOCAL DRUG STORE AND . . .”

The hell it is!

I twirled the dial. Then I looked more closely at the wrist radio and found the switch to transmit. I flicked it and spoke into the tiny mouthpiece. My message was short and to the point:

“HELP!”

I repeated it several times. Then I switched back to receive and tuned the dial until I recognized the voice of Papa Baapuh. The only trouble was that he was speaking Tibetan. I couldn’t understand him and he couldn’t understand me. Finally I managed to get across to him that I wanted to talk with Ti Nih.

“Ooh!” she opened. “Is terrible mistake you time travel. Papa much angry. He no know you there but hear voice from radio. How I ever explain?”

“Never mind that! I thought you said this thing didn’t work? What happened?”

“Is peculiar. Papa hook washer machine make undies snow white. Him not know I hook time machine before leave hooked. So him crank generator then washer time machine go same time make time machine work. Him no understand. Me neither.”

“Me neither,” I agreed. “But all I know is I want to get out of here. Wherever the hell I am. Where is the time machine anyway? If I got here on it, how come it’s not here now?”

“Is here like always. Wait.” There was a pause during which Ti Nih and her father spouted Tibetan at each other. Then she got back to me. “Him say machine no move, only what in it. Force field fourth dimension make travel.”

“Can he get me back?’

“Maybe later.”

“Why not now?”

“Him very angry you in time machine. Guess about us humpty—humpty. Clothes in washer, he no turn off before done. Until turn off, washer work, time machine no. Only so much electric. Him very stubborn. You wait.”

“The hell you say. Go get my friend Dudley Nightshade. He’s probably at the temple. Tell him to get me out of here. Hurry!”

“Will do. Talk later.” Ti Nih signed off.

I took a look around me. Nothing but desert. Only the oasis in the distance. I became increasingly aware of how hot the sun was. The only thing to do if I was to avoid being fried was to head for the oasis. That’s what I did.

As I drew closer to it, I began wondering if it was a mirage. The splendor of the scene was like something out of the Arabian Nights. It was a large oasis, walled all around, lush with palm trees, and embracing enough tents and shacks to categorize it as a small city. In the center of it was a palace the likes of which l’d never seen. It seemed to be formed of pure gold, shimmering in the sunlight, its turrets crowned with rubies and emeralds. It was a mighty solid structure, yet its over-all appearance was ethereal, other-worldly. Nothing like it had survived to the Twentieth Century.

Still, in my travels I had seen ancient ruins of such gingerbread housing. The crumbs were unearthed in South Arabia, the area which includes Yemen and the Hadramaut and extends into Ethiopia. They confirmed the Bible story of the Queen of Sheba and testified to a very hip civilization ruled over by her. It existed around 950 B.C., the heyday of the Hebrews, when King Solomon ruled.

Evidence is that the Shebans were one up culturally on the Hebrews and both were way ahead of the cats of Europe. While English men were still painting their behinds blue, and the Viking civilization was still almost two thousand years off, and the Greeks were just getting off the ground, the Shebans and the Hebrews had already devcloped the three R’s⁶ and a swinging culture.

Sheba lay smack in the middle of the trade route between India and Africa. The country’s bag was buying and selling and they did it so well that they became the fattest folk of their time. They were way ahead in other ways as well. Some of their engineering techniques would not be rediscovered for two thousand years. They built dams (the remains of one, near Marib, reveal principles of construction not seen again until the 1930s in the U.S.), erected rnultistoried pads, developed indoor plumbing facilities including flush toilets, mastered the techniques of forging and molding metals and their Kultur was snobby-rich in works of art and sculpture⁷ .

However, Sheba was far from being a Utopia. The Queen ran a tight ship and at times it was Queeg-ish to an extreme. There were scads of Sheban rulers post- and ante-Balkis, the Queen of Biblical renown, but Sheba reached its peak during her reign.

It was a reign glossy with the wealth of an economy leaning on slavery. The Shebans not only kept slaves, they bought and sold them. The masters were Negro, the slaves mostly Caucasian savages captured in Northern Arabia. The nomadic drift southward took many hundreds of years and there were whole generations of whiteys who cringed under Sheban whip and whim. The Shebans saw pale skins as proof of inborn inferiority and drummed up a biological theory in which black meant human and white something halfway between animal and human. Archeology shows that the white slaves accepted the verdict unquestioningly.

Being white-skinned myself, this knowledge didn’t exactly reassure me as I approached the gates to the oasis-city. It seemed pretty certain to me that I was roughly in the time period of Sheban civilization -- diffcult as that was for me to swallow. There just wasn’t any other time in history when this sort of architecture and opulence existed.

There were two guards at the gate. Both wore flowing, Arab-style-robes in rich colors. Both wore turbans. Both carried curved swords with murderous blades. They did a double take at my garb as I reached them.

“Hi there, fellows,” I greeted them “Hot, isn’t it?”

“Shalom.” One of them spoke.

I recognized the Semitic greeting and drew hope from it. If they spoke some sort of Arabic dialect then I might be able to communicate with them. The Semitic colonization of Ethiopia was made via Sheba and it seemed possible that they might speak a dialect with which I could cope.

But with their next words my hopes were dashed. The universal “shalom” was not related to the rest of their speech. Their lingo was Semitic, probably Himyaritic⁸ from what I knew of semantics, but it was beyond my comprehension. We were reduced to sign language.

They got it across to me that I should follow one of them to the palace. Here he turned me over to another guard with an explanation that was obviously puzzled, although I still couldn’t understand the words. This guard led me through plush corridors to some sort of anteroom. Here I waited under the scrutiny of a third sentry.

Finally I was ushered through a door into a room that was even more luxurious than the ones I’d passed through. There were more guards stationed along the walls. Two white women were dusting the beautifully crafted furniture. A white man was serving food to two or three negroes clustered around a divan at the far end of the room. As he moved away from them, I got my first look at the figure stretched out on the divan.

I gasped. It was an imposing vision of true nobility. The figure had the grace and beauty of a black panther. I don’t mean to imply that there was anything savage about her. There wasn’t. Hers was the sort of beauty which conveys culture and sophistication and unquestionable queenliness. Yet with it all there was an impression of dainty femininity.

She wore a simple green gown made of silk and covering her from her shoulders to her ankles. Her arms were bare save for a golden bracelet and they seemed made of sculptured, highly polished onyx. Her neck was long and sleek, her face high cheekboned and sensual, the lips very full and mahogany-red, the nostrils wide yet delicate and expressive. Her eyes were a warmer, lighter brown, set far apart, the kind of eyes capable of expressing tenderness or fury with equal ease. Her hair was long and tightly curled, as shiny black as her skin. On top of her head she wore a simple crown of silver.

When the guard had escorted me to her, she addressed me directly. The only word I recognized was “Balkis,” which I realized was her name. “Balkis”! The Queen of Sheba! I answered by pointing to myself and speaking my own name: “Steve Victor.”

She spoke again. Her voice was very soft, not unfriendly. I realized she was attempting to communicate in another language, one different from that which she’d first used. It was no use. I still couldn’t understand.

Then she spoke in a third language. Suddenly I could understand her! My jaw dropped open and I almost laughed aloud. The Queen of Sheba was speaking Yiddish!

“Vas machst du?” That’s what she said to me. “Vas machst du?”

Chapter Two

SOME ARE BORN JEWISH; SOME ACHIEVE JEWISHNESS; and some have Jewishness thrust upon them. I fell in the last category. At least part of the reason was linguistic.

I’ve traveled a great deal in my line of work and therefore Yiddish is a must language for me. Although I’ve been in many places where I didn’t speak the native tongue, I’ve almost always been able to find someone who speaks Yiddish and could act as interpreter for me. Now I needed no interpreter, for Balkis, Queen of Sheba, spoke Yiddish as well as I did⁹ -¹⁰ .

After we’d exchanged initial salutations, however, she switched back to Himyaritic for a conversation with a large, fierce-looking black man in baggy Arabian trousers and turban. I couldn’t understand what they were saying, but the fellow’s attitude was obviously hostile. His tone to Balkis was subservient, but when he gestured toward me, it became nasty. She cut him off firmly and he bowed and backed away a few feet.

“Tabari is suspicious of you. He asks for credentials,” Balkis told me in Yiddish. “I have told him that the tongue of the Israelites proves you come from Jedidiah, he who is Solomon.”

“Tabari,” I gathered, was the name of the hostile hunky who still stood glaring at me. If he pushed for credentials, then I was in trouble. As for the rest of what Balkis had said, my mind whirled with consideration of its meaning.

“Jedidiah” was another name for Solomon, King of ancient Israel. That much I remembered from Biblical history. Still, I was reasonably sure that Yiddish couIdn’t be the language of the ancient Israelites. They spoke Hebrew, a Semitic language of the Canaanite group, another version of the Himyaritic which the Shebans used. It wasn’t until later in my Sheban stay that I realized that Balkis_ not having had any direct contact with Hebrew at this time — had jumped to the conclusion that they spoke Yiddish because the white European slaves the Shebans bought and sold had adopted the dialect to communicate in the Arab lands. It was a mixture of European and Semitic tongues and Balkis had assumed it was the native language of the Israelites and therefore mastered it as a courtesy in preparation for her visit to Solomon.

This imminent visit had a bearing on the situation in which I found myself. Because of my strange garb and the fact that I spoke Yiddish, Balkis had assumed that I must be an emissary from Solomon sent to guide her during the final part of her journey. Tabari, however, was suspicious. He opposed the peaceful visit to the King of the Israelites. He was for conquering them before they conquered the Shebans. His was a sort of Dean Rusk¹¹ approach to diplomacy. Also, as far as Tabari was concerned, the color of my skin was against me. White men were slaves or enemies in his book. And since he was evidently some sort of Prime Minister, or Chief Advisor, to Balkis, his book was important.

As I became aware of this, I realized that I had no choice but to go along with the gag. I had to let Balkis go on thinking I was an emissary from Solomon. The alternative was at least slavery, and from the thunderclouds on Tabari’s face, it might as well be death. I ad libbed some felicitations from Solomon to the Queen of the Shebans and was welcomed warmly. Balkis extended the hospitality of the palace and I was conducted to a suite of rooms which she placed at my disposal.

Here I was greeted by a pair of Caucasian slaves assigned to serve me. Both spoke Yiddish fluently, although it turned out they were neither Hebrew nor Arabian, but European. They introduced themselves as Georgus and Lurlina, manslave and wife, and seemed to take their condition of servitude for granted.

“We’ve never served a white man before,” Georgus told me. There was a hint of resentment in his tone.

“Well, I’ve never had slaves before,” I told him.

“But how peculiar!” Lurlina was surprised. “I’d always heard the Israelites kept slaves.”

“You don’t look like an Israelite, Master,” Georgus added insolently.

“What’s an Israelite supposed to look like?” I inquired.

“They have very dark, curly hair and fair skin and their noses are hooked.”

I looked at Georgus. He had dark, curly hair and fair skin. I turned to Lurlina. Her nose was decidedly hooked.

“Pay no mind to Georgus,” she told me. “He doesn’t know how to behave in the house. He’s really a field slave.”

“I’m as much of a house slave as you are,” Georgus protested indignantly.

“You are not! My family have been house slaves for four generations. Yours were all cotton pickers in South Egypt. If I hadn’t married you, you’d still be hoeing cotton. You see,” she turned to me again, “I married beneath me.”

“She was a scullery maid in Memphis,” Georgus told me. “If she hadn’t married me, she never would have been sold to the Shebans. They wanted me because I spoke their language and they only took her because she was married to me.”

“I see. You don’t mind being slaves?” I asked as an afterthought.

“We were born white, and so we were born slaves. What else should we be? Perhaps if we’d been born black--” Lurlina mused.

“Nonsense! How could we have been born black? Our parents were white. Does a beast give birth to a human being? We are what we are. We must accept it. The Shebans are superior and we are inferior and that’s all there is to it!” Georgus was firm.

“There’s nothing worse than a field slave who gets to be a house slave,” Lurlina told me, disgust in her tone. “They’re the worst handkerchief-heads of all.”

“It’s foolish to try to change what you are,” Georgus insisted.

“That’s right. You just keep sucking up to Ol’ Massa!” she spat at him.

“You keep talking like that and they’ll come with their black sheets and put the both of us away altogether!”

“Fear is all he knows.” Lurlina was contemptuous. “When the cotton-pickers tried to revolt, he went running to the Egyptians and warned them. That’s really how we got to Sheba. They sold him to the Shebans as a palace slave as a reward. You’re still nothing but a field hand,” she spat at him. “Once a field hand, always a field hand!”

“Don’t be so hoity-toity. I have Negro blood in my veins! That’s more than you can say!”

“Just because some Moor slept with your grandmother doesn’t make you any better than I am,” Lurlina countered. “Lots of black masters have desired me. But I put them off with my pride.”

“Ha! Not likely! But have you noticed the way the Queen looks at me? There’s a lust there, I tell you.”

“That’s only because she’s like all the other Negroes. She thinks white men are the greatest when it comes to sex. She should know you like I do. And you’d better be careful. If the queen ever did take you and Master Tabari found out about it, he’d have you tortured to death. You know how these black men are about a white man daring to go near their women. He’d have you killed just for looking at her with lust in your eyes.”

“For once, I guess you’re right.” Georgus sighed and turned to me. “How is it that a white man is treated as a guest in this palace?” he wondered aloud.

“I come as an emissary from King Solomon,” I lied.

“Surprising they would make this distinction. Usually all white men look alike to them,” Lurlina commented.

“Let us not be sarcastic about our masters. We are fortunate. Further westward are black masters who are said to eat white people. White meat is said to be a great delicacy in that land.”

“I have heard our Sheban masters sneer at that practice,” Lurlina pointed out. “They say that the trouble with eating white people is that an hour later you’re hungry again.”

“Nevertheless, we’re privileged.” Georgus vanished into the next room and returned a moment later. “Your bath is ready, Master,” he told me. “Lurlina and I will be pleased to bathe you if you wish it now.”

“I’ll bathe myself,” I told them. “You can go now.”

They withdrew and I went into the lavishly tiled bathroom. I sat on the edge of the tub, which was the size of a small swimming pool, and turned a dial on the wrist radio.

“ ‘HISTORY TELLS US THAT THE NIGRA HAS ALWAYS BEEN INFERIOR, IS INFERIOR, AND ALWAYS WILL BE INFERIOR!’ WITH THESE WORDS EX-GOVERNOR GEORGE WALLACE OF ALABAMA BEGAN HIS SPEECH INTRODUCING HIS WIFE, THE CURRENT GOVERNOR, TO A GROUP OF . . .”

I switched off the news broadcast and got the transmitter working. Finally I was rewarded by the sound of Papa Baapuh’s voice muttering in Tibetan. After a moment Ti Nih replaced him.

“What’s going off there?” I demanded. “When are you going to get me out of here?”

“Still much mad Papa. Him put second load in washer machine. No do nothing before finish.”

“That’s ridiculous. Did you find Dudley?”

“Him here.”

“Hello, Steve. How are you, fella?” It was Dudley.

“Ginger-peachy!” I was sarcastic. “How are you?”

“Not so hot, Steve. Let’s face it. I don’t have long. I’m a dying man. My kidney has been acting up and . . .”

As his voice droned on, it suddenly occurred to me that I’d be in one helluva pickle if Dudley died while I was still in Sheba. Papa Baapuh might never agree to bring me back if Dudley wasn’t there to pressure him.

“Take care of yourself,” I interrupted Dudley, “take very good care of yourself, old buddy.”

“Well, I’ve been using this new drug and it does seem to help a bit. But let’s face it, it’s only a matter of time.”

“You can say that again. That’s just what it is. A matter of time. And I’m in the wrong one! Also, this place isn’t so hot either.”

“Just where are you?” Dudley asked.

“In Southern Arabia, the part that used to be called Sheba. As a matter of fact, I’m pretty sure I just met the Queen of Sheba. If I’m right, then I must be somewhere around 950 B.C. Now what are you doing about bringing me back?”

“I’ve spoken to Charles Putnam on the short-wave and told him what’s happened. He’s going to consult with experts on the problem. As a matter of fact, I’ve got him on right now. Just wait a minute.”

There was a long pause, then Dudley was back. “Gosh, is he mad,” Dudley told me.

“Mad! What the hell has he got to be mad about?”

“He says your passport wasn’t validated for Arab countries. He says you have no right to be there without checking with him first. He says it might have all kinds of international repercussions because our situation in the Middle East is very delicate.”

“Tell him I’m sorry. Tell him he can slap my hand when I get back. But tell him to get me out of here!”

There was another pause, then Dudley spoke again. “He wants to know if you’re Jewish.”

“This is a helluva time to discuss religion!”

“He says it could be very touchy if an American Jew sneaked into an Arab country. He says you could be jeopardizing our oil leases.”

“Tell him I'm not Jewish, but some of my best friends are.”

“He says not to mention them while you’re there.”

“Tell him I already have. Tell him the Queen of Sheba thinks I’m a messenger from the King of the Jews. Tell him that may be the only reason I’m still alive.”

A much longer pause now. Then—“He says the State Department isn’t going to like this.”

“I don’t like it either! Get me out of here!”

“We’re trying, Steve. But the old man refuses to cooperate. You’ll just have to wait until he gets through with the laundry.”

For the time being, that was that. I was stuck. So I soaked in the bathtub and then climbed into the Sheban duds Georgus had laid out for me. An hour later I was having dinner with the Queen of Sheba.

Balkis was a symphony in ebony draped in white silk counterpoint. She was a perfectly carved jewel of onyx balanced in a setting of opulence which shimmered with the intense colors of rugs and draperies from India. The scene was lit by flaming golden braziers from the African interior. The feast spread before us included wines from the Greek Isles, glazed fruits and nuts from the coast of what would one day be Turkey, wild boar trapped in the jungle and cooked to perfection, all manner of exotic side dishes reflecting Sheba’s strategic position along the trade routes of the world at that time. The delicacies were served by white slaves, eunuchs, and entertainment was supplied by jugglers from the East and dancing girls from the North; fire-eaters from the South and animal trainers from the West.

We lay back on a low couch, Balkis and I, and watched them. We sipped our wine at a leisurely clip and from time to time would pop one or another of the viands into our mouths. Behind us, at a discreet distance, Tabari supped. At first I could feel his eyes boring a hole in my back, but I soon forgot about him.

Nor was I really paying much attention to the entertainers. My mind was on Balkis. She was the most sensually compelling woman I’ve ever met. And she wasn’t even trying. She didn’t have to try. She was as naturally sexy as she was naturally queenly.

At first I tried to tell myself that my interest was professional. After all, I am a sex researcher. How many men in my profession ever get a chance to study one of history’s most famous sex figures at first hand? The opportunity was twofold. First of all, I might personally experience the sex patterns of the era. Secondly, I might do so not with any ordinary woman, but with one whose sexuality had become legend. It was an unparalleled opportunity.

Hogwash! All that was just the icing of rationalization on a cake I couldn’t resist. It was Steve Victor the man, not the scientific investigator, who wanted Balkis. Cool detachment was washed away with the third glass of wine. I blew my cool altogether and carve on like Gangbusters with a Don Juan complex. I purposely misfired a grape so that it landed on her bosom, reached for it, and left my hand there.

She’ glanced at the hand, and then into my face. “That’s what I call chutzpah!" she told me. But her tone of voice said she wasn’t angry, only surprised at the familiarity towards her queenly person.

“Who needs this mishagoss?" I waved my hand to indicate our surroundings. “Isn’t there some place we can be alone?” I squeezed her silk-covered breast to emphasize my meaning.

“You must be meshunginah!” She glanced over her shoulder at Tabari. “Do you know he would lop off your kopf for daring to touch his queen if I should protest.”

“So don’t protest.”

“You Israelites certainly come on strong. Tell me, is Solomon this aggressive?”

“You’ll be finding that out for yourself,” I told her, positive in my foreknowledge of the sizzling affair she and King Solomon would have. “But why are you hoching me a chahnuk? Don’t you want me to make love to you?” I’m not usually quite that bold, but the jug of wine was almost empty.

Balkis had drunk her share and it made her candid. “You bet your tookus!” she told me. “I‘ve. never had a white man before. I'd like to change my luck."

"Well then?"

“Tabari.”

“What about him? Tell him to leave. You’re the Queen, aren’t you?”

“It’s not that simple. There’s a lot of tsouris comes with being a queen. A queen has responsibilities. Tabari sees to it that I live up to mine.”

“What’s that got to do with us right now?” I wanted to know.

“In Sheba it is very common for the men to have a little white meat on the side. It’s sort of taken for granted. Many a boy goes down to the slave quarters to sow his wild oats. Many a married man makes up for having a frigid wife with a paleface woman. But it doesn’t work out in reverse. A colored lady doesn’t have anything to do with a white man unless she’s being raped. Even if she seduces him, she’s being raped. And then it’s a real tsimmis.”

“Even for a queen?”

“Especially for a queen. I’m supposed to set an example. If Tabari found out you and I made love, he’d have you punished for rape and there wouldn’t be anything I could do about it. I’d have to say that you took me by force.”

“And then I’d be lynched.”

“You would be castrated first, and then hung by your thumbs in the sun to fry to death. This is what would happen if they caught you with an ordinary black woman. But with me I think the punishment would be swifter and cleaner. Tabari would chop off your kopf.”

I took my hand off her breast. “Thank you for warning me,” I told her. “I’ve had a kind of strenuous day, so if you don’t mind, I think I’ll gai schlafen now.” I smiled in the face of Tabari’s glare as I backed out of the room.

I went to sleep. The next day, mindful of Balkis’ warning, I avoided her. I was tremendously attracted to her and fearful that I would succumb to the temptation to express my desire further. So not wanting my head to be disconnected from my shoulders, I stayed away from her.

I passed the day sunbathing on a little patio outside my suite of rooms. It was secluded there, and from time to time I tried to raise Tibet on the wrist radio. The attempts weren’t successful. I could get lots of cigarette ads, but no word from Dudley Nightshade.

The sun was stronger than I realized. By nightfall I had a nasty burn. I used it as an excuse to have dinner alone in my quarters.

I sunburn easily. But experience has taught me that the best way to overcome it is to go right back in the sun again. A second dose usually turns the burn into a tan and after that the sun doesn’t bother me. So the next day I hauled my blistered carcass right back onto the patio.

That’s where I was lying, only a brief Sheban loincloth covering me, when Balkis came along. “You’ve been hiding from me,” she chided.

“I just don’t want to lose my kopf over you.”

“And I had always heard the Hebrews had such great courage,” she teased.

“When it comes to being chopped up for strudel by your bully-boy, my courage turns to drek,” I admitted truthfully.

“You mean Tabari? He won’t give you any tsouris today. He’s tied up with affairs of state. It seems one of Jeroboam’s spies has been discovered. Tabari will deal with him strongly to prove our good faith to your master.”

Jeroboam was the leader of the North Israelis who were currently in rebellion against the rule of Solomon. An alliance between Solomon and the Shebans would leave him free to quell the revolt without worrying about his southern borders. Dealing “strongly” with one of Jeroboam’s spies would indeed convince Solomon of Balkis’ good intentions. I thought of Tabari and shuddered for the spy. Then I thought of Tabori again, this time of his being occupied elsewhere, and looked at Balkis more boldly.

She was wearing another of her loose, flowing, silken robes. This one was pale yellow and the material was quite thin. I couldn’t exactly see her magnificent body moving beneath its folds, but there were intriguing shadows which fell into place to paint an erotic picture in my mind.

“So Tabari is busy,” I mused.

“Yes.” She knelt beside me and studied my lobster-pink skin. “Why do you white people always toast yourselves in the sun so?” Balkis wondered aloud. “It will not make you dark like us. And even if it did, it could not change a slave to a master.”

“I’m not a slave,” I reminded her.

“I’m sorry. No offense. It’s just that I’m so accustomed to thinking of whites as slaves. Up until you came along, the only white people I met were slaves. Still, it is meshuginah to fry your skin this way.”

“Don’t you get sunburned?”

“I would if I lay out in the sun the way you do. My color is no protection against the rays of the sun. But I have too much sense to do that. Or perhaps it is because I have no need to try to deepen my color to be more like us Shebans.”

“What are you hoching me?” I laughed. “Mad dogs and Englishmen go out in the noonday sun. So what if I’m neither. It doesn’t stop me.”

“And you don’t mind that you shed your skin?”

“I’m just peeling.” I pulled off a piece of sunburned skin from my arm.

“Oh!” She clapped her hands. “That looks like fun. May I-—?”

“Help yourself.”

Her fingers trailed over my shoulders, searching for a likely spot to begin. They were long and delicate, her touch light. A small, odd sort of thrill went through me as she peeled away some skin. The sense memory of her touch remained as the hot sun washed over the stripped spot like some sort of aphrodisiac lotion.

Balkis’ perfume was even more aphrodisiac. I don’t know what it was -- some kind of rose attar, I think, light, not musky, but as teasing as an unrealized sneeze, provocative as the tickle of breath in one’s ear. It actually made my nostrils quiver.

Her long nails were flaking the skin on my chest now. I squirmed more from the heat of her gaze than from the sensation itself, which was strangely pleasant. She was lost in the sensual enjoyment of what she was doing. A sexual explorer, she’d discovered the territory of a new fetish. And her pleasure in it stirred me as the act of peeling my skin was stirring her.

She pulled a piece of skin down my rib cage past my waist to my hip. The movement caused her silk-covered breasts to graze my chest as she bent over me. I cupped my hand under one of them and squeezed gently.

It was hot and firm despite the relaxed way in which it was suspended. Soft as a marshmallow, except for the tip which was hard, distended and trembling. It expanded even more at my touch as if trying to nestle in my questing palm.

“I put my other hand around her neck and pulled her face down so that I could kiss her. Her lips were warm, eager and knowledgeable, her long, pink tongue exploratory. When she moved away after the kiss, I saw that the color of her lips had deepened. Before they had been rust colored m contrast to the shining blackness of her complexion. Now they were the deep, red color of mahogany. Traces of the same hue trailed a blush across her cheek like a patina of pink passion laid over ebony.

Her hand was on the outside of my thigh now, still peeling the skin. I pushed aside the loose material at her shoulder and the gown slid down her arm. After a bit more maneuvering, one of her breasts was free of the folds of the garment.

It was impressive against the pale yellow of the material. It aroused me. It was high, firm and full, its perfectly sculpted roundness coming to a sharp point. Its blackness seemed to shimmer before my eyes and shade into the brownish maroon of wide, pulsating roseates and deep maroon nipples. I covered the breast with kisses and my tongue wandered over its tip until Balkis moaned.

Her hands were busy at the insides of my thighs now, trying vainly to peel the skin there. But it wasn’t sun-burned and it wouldn’t come loose. Her efforts were thrilling despite the pain. I nipped her nipple by way of respionse and she pulled away and gave me an outraged look.

”You forget yourself. I am a queen,” she told me.

Right now you’re a woman!” I pulled her across me and gave her a few whacks on the derrière to establish the relationship.

She squirmed to escape the blows and I could see the outline of her round bottom under the yellow silk. But there was submission in the way she tried to avoid the spanking. “Nobody ever dared before,” she panted. “You are indeed a mensch!” But the submission wasn’t complete. She saved a little face by tearing some of the sun-burned skin from my leg.

Really excited now, I pulled up her yellow garment in back and bared her posterior. It was as well molded in its own way as her breasts. Small, ebony, round, and flushed from my slaps as her face had been from my kisses When she pulled away another piece of skin, I couldn’t resist it. I leaned over and sank my teeth into it.

She rolled over to escape the biting. Her long, shapely legs flailed about for a moment. When they settled, I found myself staring at the naked triangle of her womanhood. Tight black curls damp and glowing with passion. Pinkish, quivering nether lips at the apex of the triangle silently speaking her desire. I pulled off her garment altogether, and then shucked my own. I stood back to look at her a moment, enjoying the anticipation.

Balkis wriggled impatiently under my gaze. Her long, well-curved torso moved like an ebony flame. Her eyes devoured me, pleaded with me, commanded me. She stretched her arms out to me and her breasts filled and arched to the sky as I came into them.

I plunged straight to the pulsating target. Her legs locked around my waist with the impact. Her nails raked my back as we started to move, tearing away bits of sun-burned skin. We moved faster, plunging, spinning, teasing, pounding. I switched back and forth from a driving to a rotary motion and she stayed with me all the way. No matter how I altered the rhythm, she grasped the tempo and followed -- no, anticipated me is more like it. Finally there was no planning, no conscious guiding, only the flood of passion carrying us to the most ecstatic heights. Her body was shaken by a series of explosions culminating in one long-lasting tremor detonated by the explosion of my own passion.

It was over, but she didn’t release me. She clung to me and looked into my eyes. “Mazeltov!” She said.

“Mazeltov!” I replied automatically.

“Oy! A kaana hora!

“Huh?”

“Veys mir!” She was looking over my shoulder. I craned my head. There stood Tabari.

There was death on his face, black outrage at finding his queen in such a position with a member of an inferior race, death, black death!

I scrambled to my feet and pulled on my loincloth. Balkis also managed to slip into her garment. Then she recovered enough to address Tabari in their native tongue. I didn’t understand the words, of course, but the tone told me she was trying to brazen it out.

Tabari answered with a torrent of words, his face contorted. Balkis translated for me. “He says you must die,” she told me.

“We’ve all got to go some time, but I don’t really feel ready just yet.”

“You must die for raping his queen. That’s what he says.”

“But I didn’t rape you!”

“Of course you did. I’m black and you’re white. You raped me. It’s the only way what happened was possible. I had to be forced.”

“Nuts! You even implied we were safe because he was busy elsewhere. How come he got unbusy at such an awkward moment?”

Balkis turned back to Tabari. She said something to him and he replied with another torrent of words. When she looked at me again, her own face was angry. “The reason he came here was that he had discovered what drek you are,” she told me coldly. “He wasn’t looking for me. He came to take you prisoner. He just found out that you are an impostor. The man we thought was a spy of Jeroboam’s has credentials to prove he is really the emissary from King Solomon.” She held out her arm and pointed at me imperiously. “You are Jeroboam’s spy!” she announced with conviction. “You came here and seduced me to compromise the treaty with Solomon. But now you’ve been found out and you will die! Yes, goniff, you will die!”

“Can’t we talk this over a bissel?” My protest came too late. Tabori had clapped his hands and two massive guards had latched onto me with more muscle that I could counter. They dragged me through the palace to the courtyard below.

I waited there, the guards standing over me, until Balkis and Tabari came down. There were two other men with them, one white the other black.

Balkis addressed the white man. “You will tell Solomon how we keep faith with him by destroying his enemies,” she told him.

The black man came over to rne and yanked a long hair from my head. He crossed to a large wooden block set in the courtyard and carefully put the hair down on top of it. Then he hefted his large curved scimitar over his head with both hands and brought it down with a vicious blow. He held up two hairs for Balkis to look at, proof of the sharpness of the blade and the accuracy of his aim. He’d split the original hair lengthwise!

The executioner motioned for the two guards to drag me over to the chopping block. Frantically, I twisted one of the dials on my wrist radio. A voice blared forth:

“IS YOUR FAMILY PROVIDED FOR IN THE CASE OF DEATH? INSURANCE IS AN OBLIGATION EVERY MAN . . .”

Tabari jumped back. He pointed at my hand and spoke excitedly to Balkis. She answered him in a soothing tone and then switched to Yiddish for a last word to me.

“Tabari says it is sorcery that your hand speaks. But I have seen ventriloquism before. You will not save yourself that way. Off with his kopf!” She translated this last bit for the benefit of the executioner.

The two guards forced me to my knees and held me so that my hands dangled over the other side of the chopping block and my neck rested on the center of it. Somehow I managed to turn the dial on the wrist radio so that it would transmit. “HELP!” I yelled into it, my head dangling over the block. “GET ME OUT OF HERE! QUICK!”

The executioner hefted the scimitar. His two hands moved way back over his shoulder to deliver the blow. The blade sliced through the air with a mighty swoosh. It was too late to tell myself not to tell myself not to lose my head!

Chapter Three

“Co-o-orne seven!”

“Baby needs a new pair on shoes!”

“You’re covered and it comes up crr-a-a-caps!"

“Forty-second Street!”

“I’ll lay six to five.”

“A fin on the shooter.”

“Thirty-two. Add one! Blow on ’em for luck and add one!”

“Spin ’em and it comes up craps. Ahh! Boxcars!”

“Come on now! Quit smiling! Drop those ivories for seven and out!”

“Shake ’em but don’t break ’em!”

“Double three, double three!”

“And it comes up seven!”

I’d crapped out!

Well, you can’t win them all. I was lucky to be alive, never mind making my point. In case you’re wondering what I was doing in the middle of a crap game instead of watching my head roll off into the Sheban sunset, all I can say is I was wondering the same thing. It would be a little while before I came up with any answers.

Right now all I knew was that one minute I was kneeling with my head on the chopping block, Waiting for that final blow to cure the crick in my neck, and the next minute I was on my knees in the midst of a bunch of crapshooters and rattling a pair of dice. Popping up from nowhere as I had, dressed only in a Sheban loincloth, should have caused quite a commotion. But it didn’t.

There were three reasons why my sudden appearance and garb caused no stir. The main one was the psychology peculiar to crapshooters in any age, any place. Dice players possess a depth of concentration unmatched by any other breed. They have been known to stand steadfastly in the path of an erupting volcano, guarding their bets against a point being made or lost. They have straddled the fissures of earthquakes, laying the odds against a “natural.” They have pursued a stray ivory into the eye of the hurricane to read its spots and never even noticed the buffeting of the gale. Empires rise and fall, but the dedicated follower of galloping dominoes refuses to be distracted by events either large or small. So it was only natural that my materialization should bounce unheeded off the periphery of their concentration.

Add to this the second reason, which was that the crap game was open air and that it was a cloudy, dark night. All eyes were straining to make out the spotted cubes and even those that fell on me saw little more than one murky shadow among many. Besides-—and this was my third advantage—-the eyes were urban, accustomed to the variety of garb found in a great cosmopolis, and therefore used to shrugging off discrepancies among individuals.

Yet my fellow crapshooters were themselves similarly dressed. From their armor, helmets and short tunics, and from the fact that they were speaking Latin, I guessed that they were Roman soldiers. The Latin I’d studied in high school hadn’t exactly prepared me for the situation, but fortunately I’d gone far enough with it to be able to understand the crapshooters’ lingo. I wonder what the stern old Prof who’d crammed Latin into my head in the first place would have thought if he’d known I’d end up using it to urge on the ivories in the oldest established permanent floating crap game in ancient Rome.

Having crapped out, I stepped back to the outer fringes of the game. I stood a moment, trying to get my bearings. It wasn’t easy to orient myself. My surroundings —time and place—-were too alien to me. It was a relief to stop trying to figure things out when I was distracted by a friendly voice at my side.

“Have you gone broke?”

I peered into the dimness and made out the figure of a young man in his twenties. He was wearing a flowing toga and a laurel wreath on his brow—the hallmark of the Roman upper classes. He was slim and good-looking with a patrician face creased by a smile.

“I’m afraid I have,” I told him.

“You must be from Carthage or beyond.” His dark, piercing eyes swept over my Sheban garb.

Yes. Geographically he wasn’t far off. The city of Carthage, on a penisula in the Bay of Tunis on the northern shore of Africa, would not have been situated too far outside the bounds of the ancient Sheban empire.

“You must have great influence with Augustus to be allowed to travel to Rome. Citizens of Carthago usually only rnanage to get here in chains. Unless they are very wealthy and important merchants. Are you a merchant?”

“After a fashion.” I was noncommittal.

“Is this your first visit to Rome?”

Yes. I decided to capitalize on his curiosity by trying to satisfy my own. The city is strange to me. I’m not even sure where I am right now.”

You are a hick. He said it good naturedly. “You’re standing just outside the courtyard of the Forum itself, the most famous edifice in the civilized world. Look. If you crane your head, you can see the statue of Marsyas in the courtyard.”

I looked. I could indeed see the statue of the legendary Phrygian satyr. I recognized it immediately because I’d seen it before—-or rather after, to be accurate. On a June day in 1963 an artist friend of mine had pointed it out to me as we strolled past the Villa Albani in Rome and told me something of its importance in the history of art. The statue, known as The Flaying of Marsyas, was a prime example of Greek neorealisrn, a school of sculpture which had flowered under the reign of the Emperor Augustus when Greek sculptors had been brought to Rome to practice their art.

Since Augustus’ rule had begun in 30 B.C¹² ., the existence of the statue told me that the time period in which I found myself must be later than that date. My companion had mentioned Augustus, implying that he still ruled. I’d been a good history student. I remembered that Augustus’ reign had ended in 14 A.D. This narrowed down the time period for me. Subsequent events would narrow it still further and I would be able to pinpoint the year as 7 B.C.

“So that’s the Roman Forum.” I mused aloud. The shadows the famous structure cast seemed to shimmer in the just emerging moonlight, almost as though it was about to crumble into the ruin I’d once seen. I squinted. The illusion was the result of many people moving about in the shadows. “What’s all the activity over there?” I asked my companion.

“The whores are plying their trade.” He chuckled. “In the evening they all congregate in the courtyard of the Forum and sell themselves to soldiers and any other men who wish to buy. Are you in the market?”

He didn’t ask it like he was a procurer, but rather as an idle question. “I’m afraid I can’t afford it,” I told him. “If that’s all that’s stopping you, then you’re in luck. I can render you a service and you can render me one at the same time.”

“What do you mean?” I wondered if he was fruity and edged slightly away.

“Don’t be alarmed.” He chuckled as if he was reading my mind. “There is a noble lady who waits in the shadow of Marsyas for something exotic to stir her perhaps jaded appetite. It would be to my advantage to help satisfy her pleasure. She is my patroness. I think she might be pleased to know a man from Carthage.”

“All right.” What did I have to lose? I followed him into the courtyard of the Forum and up to the base of the statue.

It was shadowy there, but not so dark that I couldn’t make out the lady sitting propped against the pedestal. Indeed, anyone passing by would have been able to discern her figure, if not her features. Not her features because she had pulled her toga up from the bodice to conceal them. My companion knelt beside her and whispered something. Then he turned to me.

“I’ll wait right over there.” He gestured and strolled off into the shadows.

“Approach, man of Carthage.” The lady spoke.

I moved towards her. There was the rustle of material and I saw that she had pulled the toga all the way up over her shoulders. Only her face was concealed. Her body stretched out naked in the mud of the courtyard.

“What has Carthage to teach Rome?” Her voice was muffled by the folds of material, the tone teasing.

“What has Rome to learn?”

“I think not too much. But don’t be a defeatist. That way surely lies disappointment.”

I stood over her now. Her body was womanly and voluptuous. She wasn’t fat, but her hips and breasts were quite heavy. Her legs were well shaped, although a bit plump at the thighs. Her arms were stretched down the length of her body, the hands stroking the inner surface of the thighs. The area where they met was shaved clean and her mons veneris was clearly visible.

Mons veneris, Mound of Venus—it was aptly named where she was concerned. It was a smooth, palpitating round of flesh, neatly bisected and marked by a tense, blood-red arrow pointing the way to the pink arches marking its gateway. Her hands moved towards it as I knelt, fluttering sensually, making the skin beneath their light touch flush.

“Come, oh Hannibal of Carthage and storm the Roman citadel!” Her eyes glittered at me over the folds of the garment she’d raised to conceal her face.

I began to “storm the Roman citadel.”

“Ho-hum!” She was bored. “Has Carthage no more to offer than the most common Roman soldier then?” She yawned.

It made me mad. A man has his pride. Few things shake it so strongly as a woman who doesn’t respond to his lovemaking. I assaulted the citadel again with renewed vigor.

“You’re energetic,” she granted. “But—” She yawned again. “Is there nothing new to stir a woman’s fires?”

It was a challenge. My entire manhood was being questioned. I knew her type well. Outwardly a nympho, but inwardly frigid and incapable of being satisfied. She was the kind of woman to drive men dotty!

“Maybe the fires are dying down with time,” I suggested nastily.

“All they lack is a torch capable of igniting them.” She was just as nasty.

I redoubled my efforts. Angry, I pulled away, bent over her and flipped her roughly so that she was lying on her stomach. I switched targets by a scant inch and assaulted her again.

To no avail. “Anal is so banal,” she yawned.

Really bugged now, I flung her on her back again. I pushed her legs in the air and stretched out my body crosswise to hers. The new angle made for more direct contact with the most erogenous of all zones. It also gave me more leverage which enabled me to pound her even more violently. Still she didn’t really respond. Until—

A horse belonging to a soldier occupied with a prostitute on the other side of the statue had broken loose from its tether. Unnoticed by us, it had ambled over to where we were and now stood with its back to us, its hindquarters directly over the folds of the garment covering the lady’s face. Suddenly the horse relieved itself. The results almost buried the lady’s head.

“Now! Now! Now!” She went wild.

I felt myself drawn in, swallowed, submerged in molten fires which were erupting with an all-out vengeance. I met her halfway. Then it was over. I regained my senses. For the first time the aroma hit my nostrils. Somehow it ruined the esthetics, if you know what I mean. I reacted instinctively. I scrambled to my feet and backed away from my dung-covered passion flower. Her perfume, to put it mildly, was not to my taste.

My arm was grasped from behind. I turned and saw that it was the young man who’d gotten me together with the lady in the first place. He was pleased at the outcome.

“You really turned her on.” He grinned at me. “I don’t know how you did it. Believe me, I know it isn’t easy. Congratulations.”

I shrugged it off and turned back to look at the lady. She was on her feet now, her hands concealing her face, her gown spattered with the horse’s tribute. She clapped her hands loudly.

Immediately an entourage appeared. It consisted of six Roman guards and four slaves. The slaves carried an ornate litter. The lady was helped aboard. She drew the curtains and they moved off with her. As they passed us I did a double take at the insignia on the conveyance.

“Isn’t that the coat-of-arms of the Caesars?” I exclaimed.

“Shh! Not so loud. Yes, it is. But how is it that you, a Carthaginian, recognize it?’

“It’s the seal of authority in Carthage.” I lied glibly.

Actually I remembered it because it had been pointed out to me by the same artist friend who showed me the statue of Marsyas back (or do I mean forward?) in 1963. “Is the lady a member of the royal household then?”

“She is the Princess Julia.”

“The Emperor’s daughter?” I whistled. “How come she offers her body in such a public place?”

“It is her way of defying her father. For eleven years she has flaunted his Lex Julia.”

That clicked. As a budding sex investigator the Lex Julia de Adulteris—to give it its full name—had been one of the basic codes I’d studied. It consisted of a set of sex laws passed by the Emperor Augustus in 18 B.C., when his daughter Julia was just twenty-one years old. The “Julia,” however, didn’t refer to the chick, but to Emperor Julius Caesar, Augustus’ predecessor and uncle.

According to the historian Suetonius, Uncle Julius was a switch-hitter who batted a thousand with Augustus when the latter was a mere boy. In the intimacy of their buggery, Uncle Julius promised to make Augie heir to his throne. What with chicanery, assassination and war, the promise had ultimately been kept.

By then Augie had long since decided it was better to give than to receive, swapped the fairy wand of his boyhood for the straight torch of manhood and dipped his wick often enough to erase the memory of sharing Unc’s bunk while racking up an impressive score in the Hetero-Dept. He married the stepdaughter of Mark Antony for political reasons, then divorced her after Antony’s death. His second spouse was Scribonia, mother of the too juicy Julia. Throughout both marriages Augie fondled anything female that moved and upended a series of femmes ranging from ladies of the court to ladies of the night.

Then he met Livia, a married woman with a bun in the oven. Despite her bellyful, Augie was smitten. He forced her hubby to divorce her, himself ditched Scribonia, and wed Livia shortly after her baby was born. It was Livia who nagged him into morality and finally into promulgating the fanatic Lex Julia de Adulteris¹³ .

There’s no greater moralist than a reformed roué. The Lex Julia reflected this. It covered all aspects of sex, defined moral conduct and decreed stiff punishments for those who violated it. The roughest spank was reserved for kanoodling wives, but husbandly wanderings as well as so-called “sexual deviations” were covered in it.

This much I knew from my studies. Now my companion filled in the rest of the picture. A wellspring of information, he seemed privy to the innermost secrets of the royal household. He leaked them with the gusto of a gossip who enjoys his work.

His hatchetry hewed the rep out from under the Princess Julia. By the time she was fourteen, according to my informant, Julia had taken to sex like a quacker to H₂0. Even at that early age her round heels were rocking the throne and so Augustus married her off to calm her down.

The groom was M. Claudius Marcellus, a nobleman of strong appetite and weak bowels. The two combined and he died of acute diarrhea shortly after Julia’s eighteenth birthday. When the winsome widow spent her mourning period bouncing from bed to bed, Augustus arranged a second splicing.

Number Two was Marcus Vispanius Agrippa, the famous general, age fifty plus. From the first Julia pinned horns on him, but Agrippa was evidently too old to give a hoot. He ignored her series of mattress romps even when they became so blatant that some of the Emperor’s supporters dared call on Julia to plead with her to stop embarrassing Pops with her sexcapades. The Princess’ comeback was typical:

“If he forgets that he is Caesar, I will not forget that I am Caesar’s daughter!” she told them haughtily.

Augustus, like Agrippa, played deaf-mute to tales of Julia’s extramarital meanderings -- and for the same reason. There were signs of fidelity, five of them, five children produced during the first five years of her second marriage, and each of them the spitting image of her hubby. Once, asked how she managed to keep her offspring all in the family when she shared so many sheets with so many different sets of feet, Julia came up with a simple explanation:

“I only take on passengers,” she revealed, “when the boat is already full.”

The “boat” was empty when Agrippa died. Julia was twenty-seven and once again a widow. But once again Daddy was quick to mate his nymphy offspring.

Third batter was Tiberius, son of Livia by her first marriage. One day he would be Roman Emperor. But before that day his wife’s antics would almost bench him politically.

Tiberius at home plate didn’t stop Julia from running the bases. She stole so many of them so flagrantly that political enemies of the Emperor Augustus tried to pick her off with a quick pitch to the Senate demanding that the Lex Julia be invoked against the Princess. This force play found Augustus umpiring a game in which Tiberius was set up for a sacrifice. Going by the Lex Julia rule-book, a cuckolded husband was bound to go to bat before the Forum and peg his wife unfaithful, or have the book thrown at him for failing to blow the whistle. Thus Tiberius was caught in a squeeze between sliding down the razor blade of the Lex Julia, or tagging up to face the royal ump’s rage by calling a foul on his daughter and scoring her an adulteress.

The game was called on account of reign. The Emperor umpire sent Tiberius to the showers before inning one could open. It was Rhodes, the minor leagues, for Tiberius, and he stayed there, a self-exile on a royal pass-play, for five years, successfully ducking the Forum lineup. He was still there and showed no sign of returning to play Roman ball as long as his wife went on throwing the game with her open amours.

But now, with Tiberius out of action, it was open season on the ump and the word was that pretty soon the pop bottles would really start flying from the grandstand. The Lex Julia rulebook said that if a hubby refused to call the strikes on a balling wife, it was up to her father to holler “Foul!” and pitch against her. So right now the Emperor Augustus was faced with spiking his own offspring or being ruled off the diamond himself.

“It’s quite a pickle.” Having run down, my companion summed up the situation.

“You sure seem to be in the know,” I observed.

“I’m very close to the royal household. In some instances, you might say intimate.” He smiled. “You know, it just occurred to me that I don’t even know your name, man of Carthage.”

“Victor.”

“Hello, Victor. I am Ovid.”

“Ovid? The poet? Author of the Ars Amatoria?¹⁴ ”

“Then you’ve heard of me.” He was pleased. “I’d no idea my work was known in Carthage. But what is this Ars Amatoria of which you speak? It’s a good title, but I have written no such work.”

“But you will!” I exclaimed.

“I beg your pardon?” He was puzzled.

“Nothing. I’m just confused. I’m sorry.” I realized then that I was meeting Ovid at a time prior to his having written the masterpiece which would come to be known in the English-speaking world as The Art of Love.

“Still, it is a good title,” he mused. “Has someone else used it?”

“No,” I assured him. “Feel free to use it yourself.”

“Some day I will.”

It seems I’d made a contribution to posterity.

“Where are you staying in Rome?” Ovid asked.

“I’m not settled yet.”

“Then you must be my guest and stay at my villa.”

“Thank you.” I accepted the invitation.

A short time later I was ensconced in a suite of rooms in Ovid’s home. He bid me goodnight, left me alone, and sent a pair of slaves to see to my needs. When they entered, I was startled. They were ringers for Georgus and Lurlina, the slaves I’d met in Sheba.

“I am Wallatzius and this is my wife, Echo.” The man-slave introduced himself and the woman. “Master Ovid thought you might find this toga more suitable for wear in Rome than your native garb.” He handed me a toga. “If there is anything else, sir, we will be pleased to do your bidding.”

“Where are you from?” I asked, curious.

“Carthage. The same as yourself, sir. We were slaves there, as our parents before us. Then we were sold to a Roman merchant who in turn sold us to our master, Ovid.”

“I see. Then you’ve always been slaves.”

“And always will be. It is our lot in life, sir. Some are born nobles, some are born slaves.”

“Some are born nobles, some are born slaves,” his wife Echo echoed.

“Slavery is an institution.”

“An institution,” Echo confirmed.

“And institutions are sacred to the gods.”

“Sacred to the gods.”

“Besides,” Wallatzius added, “slaves are naturally inferior.”

“Naturally inferior . . .”

“And we take pride in our inferiority.”

“Pride in our inferiority . . .”

“Blissful are the ignorant,” Wallatzius said positively.

“Ignorant are the blissful . . .”

“No, no, you’ve got it backwards, Echo. It’s ‘blissful are the ignorant.’ ”

“Blissful are the ignorant.”

“She’s not too bright,” Wallatzius confided. “I have to guide her every step of the way.”

“Every step of the way.”

“I don’t think she’d ever say anything if I didn’t put the words in her mouth.” Wallatzius bowed low, scraping the floor with his nose. “Will there be anything else, sir?”

“Not right now. You can go.”

“Thank you, sir.” He bowed again and she followed suit. Then they both backed out of the room, bowing all the way.

Finally alone, I turned on my wrist radio.

“EX-GOVERNOR GEORGE WALLACE OF ALABAMA¹⁵ SAID TODAY THAT COMMUNIST AGENTS WERE BEHIND ATTEMPTS TO DESEGREGATE SOUTHERN SCHOOLS. HIS WIFE, MRS. LURLEEN WALLACE, THE CURRENT GOVERNOR, SPOKE AFTER HER HUSBAND. THE MAIN POINT OF HER ADDRESS WAS THE DANGER PRESENTED BY COMMUNIST AGENTS WHO HAVE INFILTRATED THE RANKS OF CIVIL RIGHTS WORKERS SEEKING TO INTEGRATE SOUTHERN SCHOOL SYSTEMS . . .”

I switched off the news broadcast and fiddled with the wrist radio until I’d managed to make contact with Tibet. I was in luck. Dudley Nightshade was waiting for my call.

“What the hell is going on?” I wanted to know. “First I land in Sheba, and now in Rome eight hundred years later. Why didn’t you bring me back to 1967?”

“Don’t yell, Steve. It makes me nervous. It’s very bad for me. My heart palpitates. I could drop dead just from aggravation. And believe me I’ve had plenty lately.”

“You’ve had plenty! What about me?”

“If you’ll give me a chance, I’ll tell you what happened.”

“So tell me.”

“Well, you’ll be glad to hear that Papa Baapuh finally finished his washing.”

“I trust everything came out Rinso-white,” I said sarcastically.

“Oh, yes. He was very pleased. You see, it’s an experiment and he’s keeping notes on each wash.”

“I see. With an eye peeled for tattle-tale gray,” I guessed.

“Exactly. Anyway, it put him in a good mood and he cooled down and I was finally able to get him back to the time machine. That’s how come we got you out of Sheba.”

“And in the nick of -- you’ll pardon the expression -- time,” I told him. “But why didn’t you bring me back altogether?”

“It’s not that simple. The way Papa Baapuh explains it is that it takes a lot more power to bring you forward than it did to send you back. His generator isn’t powerful enough. He can only do it in short hops.”

“Can’t you get him a bigger generator?”

“I suggested that, but he’s afraid to try it. He’s not sure how added power would affect the machine. He wouldn’t be able to control it. He might send you a thousand years into the future by mistake. You see, it’s still in the experimental stage.”

“That’s reassuring!”

“You’ll have to be patient.”

“That’s easy to say. But what’s holding up my next jump?”

“It was Papa Baapuh’s time to visit the Lamasery. He promised to crank up the generator and bring you forward another jump when he gets back. So there’s nothing for you to do but wait.”

“Great!” Still, I knew he was right. I had no choice. But if I was going to be stuck here, then I decided I’d need a better idea of the local situation. “Listen, Dudley,” I said, “do some research for me on Rome at the time of the Emperor Augustus. I’m particularly interested in his daughter Julia and the poet Ovid.”

“We may get you out of there before I can get that info for you.”

“Well, get it anyway. I’m curious.”

“All right. Be patient. And say a prayer I should live long enough to see you back here.”

“Take care of yourself, Dudley. Take very good care of yourself.”

“You’d better mean it, Steve. I don’t think Papa Baapuh would bother with you if I wasn’t here to nag him.”

“Eat lots of nourishing foods,” I told him. “Get plenty of rest. And don’t forget to take your pills.”

“Ooh! That reminds me. I’m due to take one right now. So long, Steve.” He signed off.

I sighed and got undressed for bed. Dudley was right. There was nothing to do but wait. I went out like a light as soon as my head hit the pillow.

It was still dark outside when the loud knock at my door woke me up. Groggily, I answered it. The slave Wallatzius was there. Standing behind him was a burly-looking Roman soldier. Before the slave could speak, the centurion pushed him roughly aside and addressed me himself.

“I come from the Princess Julia,” he announced. “She bids you come at once.”

His manner and the short sword at his waist precluded argument. I climbed into the toga Ovid had provided and went along with the soldier. “How did you know where to find me?” I asked when we were out on the street.

“I was sent to ask the Poet Ovid who you were and where I might find you. It is good that you were in his home. It will save time. The Princess will be pleased. She wants what she wants when she wants it. If I’d had to spend the night searching for you, she would have been in a pique by morning. And then your reception would not have been as warm as I suspect it will now be.”

He was right about the “warmth” of my “reception.” Princess Julia had raised the temperature of her bed to hot coals by the time I arrived. She immediately dimissed the soldier and her servants and came to the point.

“You are the first man to make me respond in a long time,” she told me. “Do you think you can do it again?”

I wondered where I could find a horse with a full intestine in a hurry. I wondered how I could get him up the stairs to her second-story bedroom. I wondered how I might get him to perform on cue.

“I can only try,” I told the Princess.

“Then do so at once.” She flung back the bedclothes.

My sense memory reacted to the sight of her body once again writhing in the moonlight streaming through the window. However, like the first time, I couldn‘t see her face. It was in the shadows.

No matter. It was her body I must satisfy. I set about doing so to the best of my ability.

“It’s not the same,” Princess Julia complained after a while.

“That’s what makes horse racing.” I redoubled my efforts.

I was redoubling them again when the door burst open. A platoon of centurions marched into the room. I was grabbed by the scruff of my butt and hurled to the floor. I lay there face down, a spear point playing dominoes with my spinal discs, a heavy boot grinding my neck into my Adam’s apple, while the commander of the soldiers read a decree from the Emperor Augustus himself.

“To the Roman Senate: This day I do denounce my daughter Julia as a shameless adulteress and lecher. I further denounce her for committing unnatural acts with members of both sexes and beasts both of the field and domesticated. I still further denounce her for carnal behavior with commoners and slaves. I even still further denounce her . . .”

The commander’s voice droned on interminably. The Emperor Augustus was a most specific and thorough man. His denunciation of his daughter was as spicy a document as I’ve ever heard. It concluded with a message to the Senate telling them that he was exiling Julia to the island of Pandataria, a barren rock off the coast of Greece, Where she would live out her days with only one woman servant for company.

The commander concluded and the guards marched off with Julia. “Hey, what about me?” I squeaked from my prone perch on the floor.

“My orders are to execute any man found with the Princess Julia immediately,” the commander told me. “You will be nailed to a wooden crosspiece and left to starve to death on the Capua-Rome highway where all may see the fate of those who defy the Lex Julia.”

Two husky centurions hauled me to my feet, picked me up by the elbows and hustled me out of the house. We marched a long way. Finally we reached a spot on the outskirts of Rome. Here they set me down while they erected the wooden crosspiece decreed. Then two of them held my arms wide and two others lifted me to the crossbar. A fifth centurion approached with what looked like a hammer in his hand. His lips were clenched and as he came closer I saw that there were nails held between his teeth.

I was about to be crucified!

I'm not the type! I couldn’t help thinking. I'm not the type at all!

Chapter Four

“ALLAY-OOP!”

One instant, arms spread wide, wrists tingling in anticipation of hammer-and-nails, I was facing up none too happily to my recent Messiah Complex. The next I was flying through the air, my toga swirling around me like a jet stream, my arms still spread wide in an effort to keep my balance as I soared towards two “catcher” acrobats.

They rolled expertly with my weight, bouncing to the floor and shifting so that I was tossed into a somersault and propelled into the air again. Two other members of their troupe caught me a second time, flipped me head-over-heels, then straightened up so that we landed on our feet, facing the audience. I followed their lead, responding to the applause with a long, low, sweeping bow.

It gave me a chance to case the house. Only it wasn’t exactly a house. We were outdoors, and most of the on-lookers were wearing outer garments over their togas and guzzling wine freely against the cold. Behind them the skyline seemed to be the same as the one I’d been looking at before my near crucifixion. Likewise their garb seemed to be Roman.

The immediate area was enclosed. It was a large area with a high stone wall marking its perimeter. Between myself and the wall were a complex of beautifully landscaped gardens, rich with the colors of autumn flowers, dazzling with the turning leaves of fruit trees. Imposing pieces of marble sculpture were arranged around the garden, some of them god figures, others animal figures, a few spouting water from the damnedest places. Closer at hand were several rows of stone benches on which the audience was seated.

Behind me, rising above the stone platform on which I was taking my bows, an imposing marble staircase rose to the patio of a majestic Roman villa built on a hillside. Now the next act, a troupe of performing dogs, appeared at the top of the steps. My fellow acrobats stopped bowing and moved off the stage. I followed their example.

As soon as we were out of the limelight, one of them turned on me. His manner was authoritative and I guessed that he was the head of the team. “Where did you come from?” he demanded.

“Out of the nowhere into the here,” I told him blithely, cryptically.

“What’s the big idea of lousing up our act?” He responded to my lightheartedness by getting nastier.

“I sort of thought I enhanced it.”

“Enhanced it!” He was indignant. “You were clumsy and your timing was off and you’re not even properly dressed!”

“Won’t anyone have any patience with a beginner?” I sighed.

“Amateurs are ruining the business,” he countered. “And I’d just like to know how you managed to pop up right in the middle of our routine.”

“That,” I told him frostily, “is a trade secret.”

I left him staring after me, puzzled and angry.

I walked to the right of the stone benches, keeping to the shadows of a grove of trees. It was night and lanterns had been strung around the gardens, but here it was relatively dark. I sat down on a bench to the rear of the others and off to one side and tried to get my bearings. Resurrection wasn’t my bag, and I was having a rough time adjusting.

It got rougher. Despite my trying to lose myself in the scenery, one pair of eyes had latched onto me and followed. Now their owner approached.

“Your pardon, acrobat—” His manner was the haughty one of an aristocrat addressing a paid performer. “—but you look familiar. Can you tell me where we’ve met before?”

I took a long time answering. The speaker was Ovid. There could be no doubt of that. And yet—

The poet was not the same man. Instead of the slender youth I’d met before, I found myself staring at a rather rotund man in his mid-thirties. The face had grown plump and showed signs of wear and tear. The curly hair was starting to turn gray at the temples.

“You are Ovid, the poet?” I asked cautiously.

“Yes.” He said it as if he was used to being recognized. “Have I seen you perform before? Is that why you look so familiar?”

“No. I believe we have met before.” I was still feeling my way.

“But where?” His tone was annoyed.

“In Rome.”

“Here? But when?”

“I’m not sure,” I told him truthfully.

“Are you from Rome?” He was determined to play Twenty Questions.

“Not originally.”

“Then where are you from?”

“Carthage.” I stayed with my previous story.

“Carthage? I’ve never been there,” he mused. “And I don’t know anyone from Carthage-—except slaves, of course. Are you a runaway slave?” he asked suspiciously.

“No.”

“Wait a minute!” Ovid snapped his fingers. “I met a man from Carthage once. A long time ago. But you can’t be him. He’s dead.”

“Are you sure?”

“Well, no—” he admitted. He struggled with his memory a moment longer. “No!” he decided. “He isn’t dead! You are he! Aren’t you?”

“Possibly.”

“Wait! His name was Victor. Is that your name?”

“Uh-huh.” I saw no reason to deny it.

“Of course! Now I remember you. It was ten years ago. The night of Julia Major’s banishment. You were with her when they came to seize her. But how is it they let you live?”

He’d identified me now and so I improvised. “I escaped and went back to Carthage. I’ve just recently dared to return to Rome.”

“You live dangerously, my friend. The Emperor still smolders at mention of his daughter. And with renewed reason.”

“What reason?”

He didn’t answer. Instead, he gestured towards the marble staircase. I followed his gaze. I noticed that the audience had grown very quiet; an expectant hush hung over the gardens. The respectful stillness continued as a female figure appeared at the top of the stairs and poised there.

It was the imposing figure of a girl in her early or mid twenties, a figure at the height of its ripeness. The girl was about five-eight, slender, but beautifully rounded in all the right places. Her breasts were large and round, carried proud and high, her hips sleekly curved to stress the narrowness of her waist and arching towards long, exciting legs. Her hair was thick and black and flowing, the features beneath both aristocratic and sensual, the nose and jawline Patrician, the eyes dark and smouldering behind long lashes, the cheekbones high, the forehead haughty, but the lips pouting and inviting. She was a Venus in flesh, and the flesh was all too apparent under the transparent green negligee she was wearing.

As I said before, it was a chilly night. I couldn’t see the girl’s goose pimples from this distance, but I could guess at them. Nor was I the only one to make such a guess. It wouldn’t be long before Ovid would immortalize the vision in the following satiric words:

“If she appear in her negligee, cry out:

“ ‘You inflame my passion!’

“Then add in anxious tones: ‘Take care!

“ ‘You’ll catch a cold in this fashion.’ ”

Ovid would pay dearly for indulging himself in writing this poem. The lady who was the subject of it would also pay. And so would I.

But I had no idea of any of that as I watched the beauty on the marble stairs. Nor had I any idea who she was. It was only after I voiced some noncommittal remark about her beauty that Ovid enlightened me as to her identity.

“Don’t you recognize her?” he asked.

“No. Should I?”

“I should think you would, she’s the image of her mother.”

I looked at him blankly. “Her mother?”

“Yes. Julia Major.”

“You mean the Princess Julia? The Emperor Augustus’ daughter?”

“Yes,” Ovid told me. “The lady who almost cost you your life. That is her daughter, Julia Minor.” He pointed towards the figure on the stairs. “They are called ‘Major’ and ‘Minor’ to distinguish between them.”

“I never really saw her mother’s face,” I told Ovid. “So I wouldn’t see the resemblance.”

We stopped speaking as the figure on the stairs began to descend. Her movements didn’t so much constitute a dance as an entrance, an undulating descent suitable to a goddess dropping in from Olympus-—a naughty goddess come to sport with the mortals. The flickering torches which lined the staircase highlighted her nudity under the diaphanous gown.

She undulated her ample hips, thrust her bosom insinuatingly, caressed her body in lewd, suggestive, yet graceful motions. The goddess she played was the goddess of fertility. And when she reached the foot of the stairs, she prostrated herself and lay panting, her skin moist despite the cold, the green gossamer clinging to its whiteness in a way that stressed her sexuality without concealing it.

The audience was now on its feet, still quiet, but poised, tensed, as if about to spring. Julia Minor’s eyes moved slowly over them. Finally they paused at Ovid. She raised a hand and beckoned to him. He moved towards her quickly. When he reached her she held up her arms. Ovid fell on her and immediately the restraint of the onlookers broke. The signal had been given, and now the orgy began!

People rushed at each other in a frenzy, tearing at their clothes. The chill of the night air was forgotten as the greed of lust swept over the crowd. Near me a girl stretched out on a bench and bared one breast, holding it up in her hand and shaking it in open invitation to any male who might care to respond. Just beyond her, two women had pinned a man to the ground and were tearing at his clothes while a third poured wine over his thighs.

Slaves moved among the frenzied guests dispensing more wine and aphrodisiacs and steaming platters of food. Too girls -- Lesbians— thrashed about in the bushes behind me, squealing with delight, each of their heads concealed beneath the other’s toga. In front of me now, three men and three women had formed a circle of eroticism, each joined to the other in a pattern that was genital, oral and anal. Behind them a group of young men were playing a sophisticated game of leapfrog with their togas pulled up over their waists.

I looked over the heads of the crowd towards Julia Minor and Ovid. She was astride him now, mother-naked, the green negligee thrown to the winds, her hair streaming wildly behind her as she bounced up and down in a frenzy of ecstasy. Ovid was beating her with his fists, pummeling her the way a jockey whips his mount with a riding crop. They were moving so fast their bodies merged in a blur.

The three women released the man they’d been assaulting and their eyes darted around to find another victim. One of them pointed at me and before I could move they were on me. Wine poured over a plump breast and it was thrust into my mouth as I was forced to the ground by their weight. The sour-sweet taste assailed my senses while a second of the girls half-tore the clothes from my lower body and fell on my thighs and belly with a series of hot kisses. The third——a petite, thin, but volatile red-head— had one of my hands between both of hers and lowered herself on it greedily, almost squatting, writhing about in mounting delight until her nether mouth became a vise which loosened only with the outpouring of the nectar of her passion.

The second girl, a voluptuous blonde, had located her target and was sipping at it voraciously now. She’d contrived to grasp my foot with the fulcrum of her sexuality and balanced there as she fulfilled her hunger, her lush body tense with exquisite anticipation. Meanwhile the first of the sirens had pulled her breast away and was trying to squeeze in so that her nether mouth might replace it at my lips.

I was overwhelmed. There was nothing to do but go along with the mounting sex play. At first I’d been passive, but now I became active. I heaved upwards and managed to displace all three of my playmates. I scrambled to my feet.

The blonde was left on her knees, crouching. I fell on her from behind, grasping her plump breasts. She reared and my manhood was locked as we began our fierce gallop.

The redhead knelt behind me and I felt the hot flame of her tongue sweep the sac of my virility to urge me on to even wilder thrusts. The first beauty, a brunette, stood in front of me and held her toga high, thrusting the thick black triangle of curls below her belly towards my lips. I obliged her, going berserk, riding the blonde with all my energy, spurred on by the exquisite sensation provided by the redhead’s eager tongue, virtually wallowing neck deep in the womanhood of the brunette.

My passion exploded. The blonde screamed and followed suit. The redhead encompassed me with her mouth urging the last of my passion to its release. The brunette almost suffocated me as she joined us on the final lap of our wild journey. A moment later the four of us fell to the ground in an exhausted tangle of arms and legs.

As I rose to a sitting position I glanced around me. It was like something out of a banned Eric von Stroheim¹⁶ movie. Twosomes, threesomes, twelvesomes were strewn about the garden in patterns of eroticism that were not to be believed. Bare breasts swung wildly in the night air. Male organs quivered wherever I looked. Derrières arched nakedly to the sky and every so often a whip hissed to turn them pink. Wine was poured over the lash marks; more wine was poured over the most intimate parts of male and female bodies and everywhere there were heads bent in eagerness to drink it.

The redhead produced a long feather. She fell on the brunette and began tickling her intimately with it. The brunette stretched her body to its full length and began laughing and crying hysterically as one spasm after another shook her body. She reached blindly out and grasped my manhood, squeezing it rhythmically in time to the paroxysms. The blonde was at my feet.

“What are you doing?” I gasped.

“Sucking your toes,” the blonde told me.

“Why?”

“I like it.”

“Well, everybody to their own fetish,” I told her.

The redhead switched targets with her feather. As she made contact, I felt an indescribable sensation spread over my body. The brunette released me and scrambled atop my chest. She contrived the position she wanted, and once again I felt as if I’d be suffocated. The redhead tossed aside the feather and climbed over me behind the brunette. She was built small and bounced with great enthusiasm. She held onto the brunette’s breasts and her grip urged the brunette onward. The blonde continued sucking my toes. Finally another quake shook the four of us and we rolled apart.

I darted away from the tireless threesome before they could involve me in another round. From the shadows of the grove of trees I looked towards the staircase to see how the Princess and the poet was faring. Julia Minor was still there, standing now, one large man in front of her, another equally large behind her, both phallically filling the front and rear entrances to her voluptuous body. Ovid was missing from the tableau.

I was still casually searching the crowd for him when he popped up beside me. “Pleasant orgy, don’t you think?” he asked conversationally.

“Ginger-peachy,” I agreed.

“It’s all in the people you know,” he told me. “If you’ve got a congenial group it’s bound to be a fun orgy.”

“I guess so.”

“The secret is in everybody feeling enough at ease with each other to drop their inhibitions.”

“Well, this gang doesn’t seem to have any problem.”

“Yes. They’re all swingers.” Ovid stretched. “Some of them are going on to a bridge game after the orgy’s over,” he told me. “I’m sure you’ll be welcome if you want to go along.”

“I’m not much for cards.”

“Well, I’m tired myself.” He stiffled a yawn. “I’m going to skip it. Would you like to join me for some coffee instead?”

“All right. Thanks.”

“You know—” The voice came from behind the bushes. “— a funny thing happened on my way to the orgy¹⁷ . . .”

“There goes Clautus with one of his interminable stories again,” Ovid observed. “Pity the poor girl he’s cornered. He always gets sidetracked talking and forgets to perform.”

“Sort of an absent-minded possessor,” I punned.

Ovid ignored it. He led the way out of the gardens and I followed him, the two of us picking our way carefully among the entwined bodies strewn everywhere. Just before we passed through the gates, Ovid paused for a last look back at the action on the marble staircase. He gave a low whistle and nudged me.

“Look at that!” he pointed.

I followed his gaze. Julia Minor stood naked with her head flung back, calling to all in her vicinity to witness her next antic. A giant slave, almost seven feet tall, stood in front of her. There were shackles around his ankles; he carried a tray with a beaker of wine and goblets; he wore only a brief white loincloth. His features were classically Greek, his skin a deep, glistening bronze color, his manner subservient.

Julia Minor knelt in front of him. Her hands pulled the loincloth away. The Greek’s phallus twanged like a spear as it was released. She grasped it with both hands. The slave was fantastically well endowed. Her jaws stretched wide to accommodate him.

“A slave!” Ovid exclaimed. “There’ll be hell to pay if her husband or grandfather hears about this!”

“Her husband?”

“Yes. This estate belongs to him. He’s away on business at the moment. Still, even his wrath isn’t to be feared as much as that of Augustus. He didn’t hesitate to exile her mother and he won’t stop at punishing her.”

Ovid’s prediction was accurate—perhaps even more so than he realized. I found that out later in the evening, after I’d once again accepted his hospitality. We’d gone to his house, had a snack, and then he’d offered to put me up for the night. I was shown to the same room I’d had on my first visit, and shortly after I entered, the two slaves, Wallatzius and Echo, had put in an appearance.

They didn’t remember me, which was natural enough. Evidently considerable time had passed since our last meeting. They looked older, perhaps a little meeker, but otherwise unchanged.

“I trust everything is satisfactory, sir,” Wallatzius remarked after the two of them had puttered around a few minutes. “Our master prides himself—as do we—on our southern hospitality.”

“Southern hospitality,” Echo repeated.

“Southern hospitality?” I queried.

“Yes sir. This villa is in the southern part of Rome and hospitality is part of the tradition of the region.”

“Tradition of the region,” Echo rondelayed.

I assured them that everything was fine and watched them bow out. When they were gone I activated my wrist radio.

“EX-GOVERNOR GEORGE WALLACE TODAY WARNED NORTHERN CIVIL RIGHTS ACTIVISTS THAT THEY INFILTRATE ALABAMA AT THEIR OWN RISK. HIS WIFE, THE CURRENT ALABAMA GOVERNOR, ISSUED A STATEMENT TO THE EFFECT THAT OUT-OF-STATE AGITATORS WOULD BE DEALT WITH HARSHLY.”

The voice ceased as I fiddled with the dials. It took a little while, but finally I’d established contact with Tibet, circa 1967. Dudley Nightshade had been waiting for my call.

“Steve! You’re alive!” he exclaimed when he heard my voice.

“Barely. What happened?”

“Just as Papa Baapuh was trying to move you up, the machine shorted out. Some kind of break in the wiring. We were afraid it might have affected the force field and electrocuted you.”

“Well, it didn’t. But I guess I haven’t progressed much either. I’m still in Rome and from what I can gather, not too many years have passed.”

“You’re still in Rome? That’s a coincidence.”

“What do you mean?”

“Well, the way this thing works, as far as I’ve been able to learn from Papa Baapuh, there’s no telling what place you’re going to land at after each movement. You see, the world is round and it revolves and—”

“Are you sure?” I asked sarcastically. “I’ve been hearing rumors that it may really be flat—that the sky is really a giant lid covering it, a sort of dome with holes in it for the light to shine through—and that we only think those holes are stars.”

“Steve, I’m not a well man and I don’t have time for nonsense. I’m only trying to tell you that because the world revolves and we don’t have absolute control over the time machine, there’s no way of knowing what part of the world you’re going to land on. That’s even harder to determine than what time period you arrive at. So, considering the short-circuit and all, it is remarkable that you’re back in Rome. Incidentally, I dug up some information about the Emperor Augustus and the others you asked me about. Are you still interested?”

“I sure am. What have you found out?”

“I have something here by the classical writer Seneca on Augustus and his daughter Julia Major. They call her Julia Major, incidentally, because she had a daughter named Julia, too. So its Julia Major and Julia Minor to distinguish between them. Quite a pair of floozies, by the way.”

“I know all that.”

“You do? Well, anyway, here’s what Seneca has to say: ‘Augustus learned that Julia Major had been accessible to scores of paramours . . . that the very forum and the rostrum from which her father had proposed a law against adultery had been chosen by the daughter for her debaucheries . . . there [she] sold her favors and sought the right to every indulgence. . . .’ Seneca goes on to tell how her father invoked the Lex Julia against her and had her banished.”

“I know all that. What have you found out about her daughter Julia Minor and the poet Ovid?”

“Ovid was evidently much involved with both ladies. According to his own writings, he was the lover of both. He escaped punishment in the case of the mother. But where the daughter was concerned, his gossipy poems regarding their relationship and her antics were finally his undoing.”

“How so?”

“Well, listen to this poem he wrote just before he published his famous Ars Amatoria.” Dudley quoted:

“About my temples go, triumphant bays!

“Conquered Corinna in my bosom lays:

“She whom her husband, guard, and gate, as foes

“(Lest Art should win her) firmly did enclose . . .

“No little ditched town, no lowly walls,

“But to my share a captive damsel falls.”

“I don’t get it. What has that poem to do with Julia the Younger?” I asked.

“To distinguish her from Julia the Elder, the daughter was also widely known as ‘Corinna.’ In this poem Ovid is actually bragging of possessing her and cuckolding the husband.”

“Sort of a kiss-and-tell poet,” I mused.

“What he had in talent, he lacked in diplomacy,” Dudley agreed. “But it wasn’t his personal attentions to the lady that finally did him in. It was his big mouth regarding her other peccadilloes. It seems one night when her husband was away she threw a sort of block party orgy and allowed the slaves to become involved in the action. As a matter of fact, she initiated the slaves herself. This was too juicy a tidbit for Ovid to resist and he spread the news around. The Romans were always touchy about their slaves. They’d already had the big Spartacus revolt and others. Augustus just naturally had to be concerned that sex between nobles and slaves might spur another revolt. Like her mother, Julia Minor had gone too far. Augustus banished her to Trimerus, a deserted island. And because Ovid blabbed, he was exiled to Tomis, a desolate settlement on the shores of the Black Sea. You see, Augustus was afraid Ovid would put the incident into one of his satiric poems and shake the throne even more.”

“When did all this happen?”

“Some time around 3 A.D.”

I Wondered what year I was in now. The bit with Julia Minor and the slaves—could that be the orgy Ovid and I had just left? If it was, then I was heading for more trouble.

“I think you’d better hurry up and get me out of here,” I told Dudley.

“I should live so long,” he sighed.

“Amen!”

“Papa Baapuh is trying to trace the break in the wiring,” he told me. “As soon as he fixes it, we’ll jump you again. Unless the Reds stop us.”

“The Chinese? Why should they interfere?”

“I’m not sure. We’ve had word from Putnam warning us that they’re suspicious about what we’re up to here. According to his info, there’s a troop of them on the way up to investigate. Red Guard soldiers, very tough.”

“Great! That’s all I need.”

“Just hold on, Steve. That’s what I’m doing. That’s all any of us can do.” Dudley signed off.

I took his advice. I held on for the next week. It wasn’t too hard. As a matter of fact, it was pretty luxurious living in Ovid’s villa as the poet’s guest. Indeed, the living was so easy it lulled my apprehensions. But a ravenous lion revived them.

The day I put my head in the lion’s mouth started out pretty much the same as the days that preceded it. A wine breakfast in bed served by Wallatzius and Echo, a warm bath scented with perfumed oils, a fresh-starched toga provided by my host, and I was ready to face the sunshiny Roman noon. Ovid was waiting for me when I descended to the patio of the villa.

“What’s on the agenda for today?” I greeted him.

“To the Colosseum to view the games. Have you ever been to the ‘Circus’?”

“The ‘Circus’?”

“Haven’t you read my Ars Amatoria?” There was some of the hurt pride of authorship in Ovid’s voice.

“Of course I have,” I hastened to reassure him. “But I’m afraid I don’t quite recall -”

“The ‘Circus’ is what I called the activities. Don’t you remember? I pointed out how it was an ideal place to heighten passion because of the sadistic enjoyment to be obtained from the life-and-death entertainment.” Ovid took a deep breath and quoted from his Ars Amatoria in sonorous tones:

“Love oft in that arena fights a bout.

“Then ’tis the looker-on who’s counted out.

“While chatting, buying a program, shaking hands,

“Or wagering on the match intent he stands,

“He feels the dart, and groaning ’neath the blow

“Himself becomes an item in the show.”

Ovid went on to tell me we were to join the Princess Julia Minor in the royal box at the games. Gossip that he was, he couldn’t resist detailing for me the sexual fillips the Princess added to the show. Her reputation was in tatters by the time we reached the high walls of the Colosseum.

Here Ovid paused to use a public convenience. I waited outside the little shack for him. Idly, I glanced at the graffiti scrawled on the wall there:

“MARK ANTONY WEARS MINI-SKIRTS!”

“STAMP OUT THE CENTURION REVIEW BOARD!”

“PAVE THE APPIAN WAY!”

“LEGALIZE PTOLEMY!”

“PHALLIC IS A SYMBOL!”

“BRING OUR BOYS HOME FROM EGYPT!”

“ROMULUS SUCKS WOLF-TIT!”

"VOTE ROW S-E-X!"

“CAESAR IS ALIVE AND WELL IN ALEXANDRIA!”

“DRUIDS ARE DRAGS!”

“STOP THE WAR IN GAUL!”

“JUPITER IS A LECH!”

“JUPITER IS DEAD!”

“BRUTUS DEFECTS!”

“ROME IS A FUN CITY!”

“WAS HE GLADIATOR?-—YOU BET HE WAS!”

“WHY DID CLEO FALL ON HER ASP?”

“CASSIUS IS A FINK."

“OLYMPUS IS FOR DROP-OUTS!”

“LOVED BEN!—-HA TED HUR!”

“BANANA MANNA!—-FLY NOW—LAY LATER!”

“MARS IS A WARMONGER!”

“OVID IS A YENTA!”

I pointed out this last one to the poet as he emerged from the johnny. He peered at it a moment and grinned wryly. “I recognize the handwriting,” he told me. “It’s the Princess Julia’s. Well, I’ll just show her!” He picked up a sharp rock and began carving up the wall. A small crowd of idlers collected around us to see what he was inscribing When he was finished he stood back to view his handiwork.

“JULIA BALLS WITH SLA VES!”

A ripple of laughter swept over the onlookers as we moved away. Looking back I saw some Roman offcers elbowing their way up to the inscription. From the scowls on their faces, I could see the handwriting on the wall . . .

The games were already in progress as we entered the Colosseum and made our way to the box occupied by the Princess Julia and her entourage. Ovid and I seated ourselves a little behind her and gazed out on the arena. A gladiator with a trident and net was locked in combat with another wielding a javelin and holding a shield. A moment after our arrival the trident went flying, the net swirled aside and the point of the javelin was at the throat of the first gladiator who was lying on the ground.

The second gladiator put his boot on the chest of his prostrate adversary and glanced up at our box. The Princess Julia stood, an imposing and voluptuous figure in a white toga, and casually pointed one of her thumbs towards the ground. The javelin point slashed the unfortunate gladiator’s throat and a thin stream of blood spurted momentarily into the air. The Princess Julia watched with sparkling eyes.

Ovid nudged me. I leaned back so he could whisper in my ear. “Look at the fellow next to Julia. Was I right about the ‘bouts of love’?”

I looked. The young fellow next to the Princess had raised his toga above his waist. Still staring at the blood staining the sands of the area, the Princess Julia was casually stroking his impressive spear. The others in the box watched surreptitiously, but nobody remarked on it.

Two naked slaves-—a giant Moor and a blond, Nordic-looking type—were in the center of the arena now. They fought bare handed. Only the survivor would live to fight again the next day. The blond lunged for the Moor’s throat. The Moor ducked away and chopped, connecting with a rib. He followed up the advantage by swinging low and grabbing for the others most vulnerable flesh. The blond screamed as he grabbed it with all his might, held on and wrenched.

The Princess Julia was on her feet, her lips moist, her breasts rising and falling with excitement. Even standing she retained her grip on the man beside her, as though emulating the cruelty of the Moor. The difference was that hers was the torture of tantalization while the Moor was out to kill. Behind her one of the other rakes slid his hand up under her toga from behind. She moved slightly, widening her stance so that he might have easier access to her. She stood thus, swaying from side to side with the ministrations of the hand, clenching the other man, her eyes riveted on the agonized slave trying to escape the Moor’s grip.

But the Moor was too strong for him. He twisted cruelly and his opponent fell to the ground in a semifaint. The Moor cast a brief glance at the Princess Julia, grinned slightly, then swooped down on the writhing loser. The Moor’s hands closed on the helpless throat and wrenched the last breath from it.

The Princess seemed to laugh and scream at the same time. The man she’d been grasping half-rose in his seat and sullied her toga with the release of his lust. The Princess fell back gasping, irnpaling herself on the hand of the other man.

Ovid nudged me and we moved in closer to the intimate grouping, finally merging with it. I found my hand grasped by Julia and thrust into the upper folds of her toga until her naked breast burned in my palm. There were four of us surrounding her now, each of us caressing a different part of her body. Behind us, two of her ladies-in-waiting were pressing to join in the activities.

A second Moor had replaced the first in the arena now. Armed only with a dagger, he waited as a lion was released from the far side of the field. The lion reared up, froze, then charged straight for the Moor. The man waited until the beast was almost upon him then swiveled with the grace of a matador. The fangs missed him by inches, the claws by less. The lion wheeled and again the gutsy Moor waited.

This time it looked momentarily as if the lion had bowled him over. But actually it was a planned maneuver on the part of the Moor. As he slid under the lion, he stabbed upwards, just missing the lion’s throat and burying his knife in the animal’s chest.

The lion roared with pain, swung around once again and almost pinned the scrambling Moor to the ground. But the man was too fast for him. Not only did he manage to get out from underneath, but he also managed to retrieve the dagger in the same motion. Before the lion could turn again, he pounced on top of him, riding his back for all the world like a bronco-buster at a rodeo, and stabbing repeatedly at the vulnerable spot between the muscles of the lion’s shoulder blades. It went on for a long time and the Moor was covered with blood before the lion finally fell to the ground, dead.

While it was going on, the erotic intensity was mounting in the royal box. The blood lust and sex lust combined just as Ovid had implied in his poem and we were all jammed closely together in a sitting, standing, reclining mass of passion. It was impossible to tell whose hand was where doing what to whom. The Princess Julia rose out of the center like a tall, willowy flower buffeted by the winds of her responses.

The second victorious Moor retired from the ring. Slaves emerged and carted oft the body of the dead lion. It was during this lull in the proceedings that we managed to disentangle ourselves somewhat. Refocusing, I suddenly realized that the royal box was surrounded by a platoon of centurions. The leader stepped forward and announced that the Princess Julia and Ovid were both under arrest on orders of the Emperor Augustus for having violated the Lex Julia.

The Princess was haughty and the ensuing argument turned into something of a pushing-shoving match. Ovid tried to take advantage of it to squeeze between two of the guards and make his escape. The pressure behind us increasing, I was pushed along with him. The guards closed ranks. Ovid was sent sprawling. I was propelled into the arms of two husky centurions. Holding the line, they reacted instinctively. I was tossed into the air, over the edge of the royal box, into the arena itself.

“Police brutality!” That’s what I felt like yelling as I went flying. But I didn’t have time. The words were still silent in my brain as I landed in the arena and bounced to my feet again. I was up in time to see the blur of a charging lion which had just been released from behind the wall nearby.

“You blabbermouth!” Princess Julia was berating Ovid in the box above me.

“Slave lover!” Ovid retorted.

“Look! The lion is going to eat him!” The Princess was distracted. “Ooh! How thrilling!”

“This is no time—” Ovid was protesting and trying to back away from her clutching hands.

“He’s going to bite off his head! Wow! I am really turned on!” The Princess leaned far over the edge of the box, away from the centurions sent to arrest her, and licked her lips at my impending doom.

The 1ion’s jaws stretched wide as he hurtled through the air towards me. My head plugged into the darkness of his craw. His foul breath was overpowering.

Courage deserted me. I couldn’t quite make the words cross my lips. I didn’t know how to tell him, but the thought was there. The thought was --

You have bad breath!

Chapter Five

“In days of old, when knights were bold,

“And ladies weren’t particular,

“They stood ’em up against the wall,

“And made out perpendicular.”

THE WALL WAS SYRIAN. THE LADY WAS ROYAL, AND I wasn’t a knight, but a eunuch; a designation which might give any sensitive male severe manhood problems.

A eunuch?

No, that Roman lion didn’t change directions, spare the head and spoil the man, commit fellatio in toto. On the contrary, his leonine gullet was frustrated altogether because a split second before his molars meshed, one of Papa Baapuh’s time jolts propelled me into a change of scenery. Not much of a change, however. Instead of surveying lion tonsils, I found myself peering down a camel’s craw.

Breathwise it was no improvement. The Quasimodo of the desert matched Leo’s halitosis in sour-smelling spades. The only advantage was one of egress. Removing my pate from the humpy beast’s maw was lots easier than extricating it from the lion’s larynx would have been.

Even with my head removed the camel’s jaw still hung open. It was as if he couldn’t quite get over his surprise at my sudden materialization in among his back biters. The face of the camel is not ordinarily the most expressive visage in the world, but this humpster was managing to register a mixture of alarm, outrage and morning-after mouth worthy of a star Stanislavski¹⁸ pupil. He looked like an overbred guest at a fancy dinner party who’d just taken in a mouthful of live frog with his soup and doesn’t know what to do with it.

“You should cover your mouth when you yawn,” I chided him as I peeked around his jawline to survey my surroundings.

Architecturally they were phallic. Towers, turrets, minarets—all with an Eastern flavor bespeaking a non-European culture and era. Closer at hand, the street scene made me aware that my Roman toga was definitely out of style. The street was crowded -- fifty-fifty with garbage and people— and the men all wore Arabian cloaks. The women were veiled. My borrowed garb stuck out like a gangrenous thumb.

To conceal it, I hid behind my hunch-backed friend. The beast was tethered to a post. Now, glancing behind me, I saw that it had been parked in front of an entrance to some sort of walled enclosure. I felt too conspicuous in the street, so I decided to chance going through the gateway behind me.

I passed into a grassy area with a large pool in the center of it. There were several men there, but no women. Some were stripping off their robes as they approached the pool. Others were already in the pool, their clothes arranged around the edges in neat little piles. I realized there was anonymity in nudity. I quickly stripped off my toga and waded into the water.

I kept my eyes peeled. After awhile I saw a man doff his garb and swim across the pool. Here he got into conversation with another man. The first man had his back to the pile of clothing he’d left. I pulled myself out of the water near his clothes, speedily pulled them on and started for the gate while I was still winding the turban around my head. I reached the street without the theft being noticed.

I strolled into an open marketplace and kept my ears open, trying to discover just where and when I was. The gabble of the rabble congregating there was in dialect Arabic, a lingo I can speak and understand. There was much gossip and rumor buzzing around, and by putting together bits and pieces I was able to come to certain conclusions. These added up to the fact that I’d been dropped in the middle of a powderkeg slated to blow sky high.

The city was Damascus. I’d arrived at a crucial moment during the Second Crusade in the year 1148 A.D. The big rumor concerned an army of Christian dogs only a few hours march from the walled city. The Emir of Damascus was rallying his subjects to withstand their assault.

On the Emir’s orders the water had been diverted from irrigation streams beyond the city so that the Crusaders wouldn’t have access to it. The produce from the numerous vegetable gardens tilled by the populace was being confiscated so that provisions could be rationed during the anticipated siege. All Damascenes were asked to pray to Allah to burn the souls from the unbelieving bodies of the enemy with the desert sun.

The “enemy” Crusaders were led by Louis Capet, King of France. With him was his wife, the legendary Eleanor of Aquitaine. Even in Damascus, citadel of Allah, Eleanor’s reputation was preceding her. From what I knew of the early life of this fabulous queen who would shape the manners and morals of the western world for hundreds of years to come, it wasn’t surprising that she should have caused gossip even here.

Eleanor of Aquitaine shinnied down the umbilical cord in 1122. Her father signed out fifteen years later and Eleanor became Countess of Poitou and Duchess of Aquitaine. The titles labeled her top mucky-muck of Provencal nobility. So, in order to cinch France’s claim to the district, King Louis the Fat spliced Ellie to his son, the seventeen-year-old Louis Capet. A trice or so later, Fat Louis gorged his way into the cemetery and sonny-boy became King with ’teenster Eleanor his Queen.

Eight years of whoopee followed for Eleanor, and she pinned more horns on Louis than a porcupine has quills. Every royal court in Europe buzzed with tales of Eleanor’s kanoodling, but politics being what it is, the King ignored the Jacks ruffing his Queen. But he was no fool. When he went off to command the Second Crusade he insisted she come along lest her bed-hopping antics topple the throne in his absence.

The Queen trumped the King. Doubtless tittering behind her fan, she took the holy vows of a crusader herself, enlisted other ladies of the court to do the same, and ended up leading a bevy of curvy warriors known as “Eleanor’s Amazons.”

The Amazons’ chief contribution to the Second Crusade was their talent as recruiters. The Second Crusade was scrambled by Saint Bernard of Clairvaux at Vezelay, a whistlestop in North Central France. A series of foulups delayed its start and many knights lost heart and copped out. It was here, at this early point, that Eleanor and her “Amazons” proved their worth by reviving the flagging manhood of the disgusted cavaliers.

She glad-ragged herself and the other ladies in revealing Greek costumes with gilded buskins, plumes and banners, mounted the troop on white horses, and set out to backwash the tide of desertion. They galloped forth over the hillsides, exhorting laggard knights and disillusioned warriors to rejoin the Holy Crusade. It was one of the campiest feminist movements in history and even if the wise money is right in laying odds that the “Amazons” pitch for reenlistment was more erotic than religious, so what? It worked, and surely such ungallant hair-splitting has no place in the annals of such a Holy Cause!

That, however, was the extent of Amazonian crusading. Somewhere between Vezelay and Damascus the ladies stopped digging the glories of holy battle. Eleanor herself tuned out and then turned on in Byzantium.

Byzantium, also pegged Constantinople and later Istanbul, was the capital city of the Byzantine Empire, stronghold of Eastern Christianity. The country was LBJ ’d by Manuel I. Although Manny was an ally of the Crusaders, that didn’t stop them from pillaging the Byzantine lands through which they passed. A politico worthy of South Vietnam, Manny welcomed the invaders to the palace of Blaquernae, his own royal habitat. King Louis and Eleanor moved in and Manuel I moved out. Somehow his Kyness had backfired.

So the headmen of the Second Crusade settled down in Manny’s lush pad to plan the action. But they kept postponing the plans as they fell more and more under the hype of their lush, sensual oriental surroundings. Eleanor in particular was hooked by the indulgences of the eastern Christians. She embarked on a love kick worthy of a hopped-up hippie. Two of her romantic romps are of more than passing interest.

The first was with Raymond, Prince of Antioch, who also happened to be Eleanor’s uncle. Raymond had lent his legions’ muscle to the Crusade, but he and Louis were out of joint on the strategy. Eleanor sided with Raymond. Then she escalated and told Louis she wanted to split for love of Uncle Ray. Louies make lousy lovers, she implied, while an unc in the bunk really turned her on. Succinctly, she told the king that bedwise, “You are not worth a rotten pear.”

But pearless Louis was buying no tickets to Splitsville. His prestige was already snake-belly low and he wasn’t about to lose any more face. He managed things so Raymond was kept busy with the Crusade and hoped Eleanor’s niecely passion would blow over. It didn’t, but Eleanor wasn’t the one to sit and wait while Unc dallied with battle plans. If he could dally, so could she, and her dally-mate was a dilly.

The sub-lover she brought into the game was none other than a Moslem lad who would one day be known throughout Islam as Saladin the Great. The young bopper was barely in his teens, only a smidgeon more than half Ellie’s age. But Arab boys make the scene early, and in her late memoirs Eleanor rated the youth at the top of her list of mattress mates.

History doesn’t say why the blueblood Moslem lad was in Christian Byzantium. The best guess is that he was a budding James Bond. He was there incognito, but events prove that he blabbed his identity to Eleanor. Many a secret slips out between the sheets.

And many a deal is made. In this case, the deal was for Eleanor to hand over her jewels to Saladin in return for his helping her escape from Louis. She planned to fly the coop and hitch up with Raymond in Antioch at some future date. Saladin was to smuggle her from Byzantium to Tyre where he would supply a galley on which she would sail away. She would turn over her jewels to him when they reached Tyre.

All went as planned until the final step when the dream of Tyre was punctured by the arrival of King Louis and the plan fell flat. He got there just as Eleanor was about to pay off young Saladin and sail away. Louis managed to save the gems and toss Saladin into the briny, where the plucky boy barely managed to swim to safety. Eleanor clanked back to Byzantium in chains.

Like many a hubby before and after him, Louis decided to meet his domestic problems by jogging off to war. Only this poor king had no choice but to take his troublesome Queen along with him. He set out with a force to attack Damascus, his faithless spouse held prisoner in the van of the army of the Crusaders. Deprived of his mare, and in any case not considering the stakes worth the ride to Damascus, Raymond of Antioch scratched himself and his army from the race.

Now, from the lip in the Damascus marketplace, Louis’ Crusaders were getting close. Saladin had returned to Damascus to pass out the word of their approach on to Nureddin, the Emir, in whose court Saladin’s uncle was a prominent noble. Servants from the court were also spreading the gossip about Eleanor around the marketplace. Here young Saladin was a hero and the rumor was that Louis was coming after his scalp for trying to help Eleanor skip. But admiration was streaked with yellow at the oncoming wrath Saladin had brought down on the city.

They shouldn’t have been so bugged. I could have told them that. I had foreknowledge. For instance, I knew that the siege of Damascus would flop and that the Cruaders would cop out at the precise instant when success lay within their grasp. I didn’t know why they’d be hung up; their flubbing would remain one of the big question marks in history. But I knew that the Saracens, to their own surprise, would come up roses.

I also knew what the crystal ball held for Eleanor of Aquitaine. I knew she would eventually shed Louis VII of France and marry Henry Plantagenet, Duke of Normandy and claimant to the English throne. I knew her Provencal armies would enable Henry to grab the throne and that then she would bug him until he waged war against her former spouse. Then Hank would do her dirt with a chick known as “the fair Rosamond” and Eleanor would protect her marital interests by having Rosie the rival rubbed out. And I knew that some years later Eleanor would hop back to Islam to spread some tears over her ex-lover, the mighty Saladina, in order to persuade him to release her captive son, King Richard the Lion-Hearted of England, who had been taken prisoner while leading the Third Crusade.

Between her two sojourns in Islam, Eleanor would pull off a real switcherino in her attitude towards sex and such. From a royal swinger of swingers she would be transformed into one of the most bluenosed bluebloods in history. And she would impose upon future generations the strictures of “courtly love.”

“Courtly love”--amor purus—-took off on the basis of two cockamamie contradictions. The first was that “true love” always finked out in marriage; the second held that unwed lovers could only maintain “true love” if it was “pure.” Balling was out. Sex was categorized as “false love.” “True love” might include necking, petting, kanoodling and even naked flesh-to-flesh bundling, but if a couple went the limit, their love was no longer “true.”

“Thou shalt not have an unauthorized orgasm!” was the first commandment of “courtly love”-—and no orgasm was ever authorized. The code recommended that wives have lovers and husbands mistresses, even countenanced coitus interruptus, but the first coming was always tagged sin. The chivalrous gent was always supposed to stop before he popped--which is the sort of thing that could give chivalry a bad name.

Still, chivalry was the cornerstone of “courtly love.” And when Eleanor set up her “Court of Love” at Poitiers in her later years, it spelled out the rules for chivalry in detail. These rules were masochistic and strongly feminist.

The “Court of Love” tried knights and ladies who goofed on “courtly love.” Presided over by Eleanor, trials considered such trivia as a lady’s right to refuse posies from her sweetie because they made, her sneeze, or such more important points as whether a knight had the right to chicken out on a duel with his lady love’s jealous hubby because the gent was a jousting master whilst he was strictly a piker with a pike. The “Court” passed more “laws” than it enforced, and each one was more anti-Eros than the one before. It was as if Eleanor was doing vicarious penance for her bed-bouncing during the Second Crusade when she was still young enough to enjoy sex personally.

The approach of that Second Crusade now was laying jitters on the Damascus marketplace. The Damascans knew that strategically their burg was the crotch where the two legs of the caliphates of Egypt and Baghdad met. Damascus was vulnerable, and if the Crusaders took it, the feat would be a buster splitting the entire Moslem world. If they flubbed, Damascus could become the rallying point from which two Moslem armies might join and counterattack the Crusaders. The battle that loomed would be a lulu with no quarter asked and none given.

It was the major concern of the gossiping groups when a procession heading towards the Emir’s palace halted in the marketplace and royal guards shunted the commoners off to the sides of the square. Like the others, I stood passively as servants detached themselves from the main group and descended on the food stalls to select delicacies for the palace table. I was still standing there, watching, when the servants, laden with foodstuffs, began straggling back to the procession.

“Laggard! Why do you dally?”

I found myself staring up at a large, bearded guardsman. I looked around and then back up at him. There could be no doubt that he was addressing me.

Now he glowered and shouted again. “Make haste to rejoin your fellows, eunuch, or delay and you shall know my wrath!” His hand wrapped itself around the hilt of the curved sword at his waist and he pulled it halfway out of its scabbard in a threatening manner.

The gesture precluded argument. I hurried over to the tail end of the procession which was starting to leave the marketplace and fell into line there. That was when I noticed that those assembled there were all wearing the exact same clothing as my own stolen garb—white turban, V-cut blouse and pantaloons, maroon sash. It wasn’t long before I deduced that this was the livery of the eunuchs attached to the royal palace.

Once inside the courtyard of the palace the eunuchs split into small groups of three and four. I attached myself to one of these groups and at the same time tried to remain inconspicuous. One large fellow who seemed to have some sort of authority strode over to us and ordered us to follow him.

A few moments later I found myself in a tiled, enormous hall. At one end of it there were steaming cauldrons behind roughly defined cubicles, which I could guess were used for shower stalls. In the center was a shallow pool in the shape of an oval about twenty feet by thirty feet. On the other side of the pool, closest to me, were a series of upholstered benches somewhat like massage tables. Smaller utility tables fringed these benches and on these stood many jars of oils and perfumes flanked by stacks of snowy white towels.

Some twenty eunuchs had distributed themselves around the hall, taking up various stations. Not knowing what else to do, I stood beside one of the padded benches and waited. After a few moments, exquisitely beautiful Arabian girls began drifting into the hall by ones and twos. I realized then that I was in the bathing quarters used by the members of the Emir’s harim.

Chatting and laughing, the girls waited in an area just to the rear of the steaming cauldrons. They fell into a sort of loose line. Two eunuchs, moving with great efficiency and no wasted motion, traveled down the line and divested each girl of her clothing. With each of the last thing to be removed was the veil covering the lower part of her face. When all but the last few girls were completely naked, the head of the line began moving slowly into the shower cubicles.

It was quite a procession. I was impressed by both the similarities and differences among the girls. Body hair had been shaved from each and every torso. All the girls were brunettes. All - despite variations - had excellent figures. All carried their nudity proudly and with no self-consciousness under the eyes of the eunuchs.

The colors of their skins varied from olive tinted with pink to a brown so deep it verged on black. There were tall, majestic beauties with large round breasts and long legs and heavy, sensual hips. There were petite nymphs with the up-tilted breast buds of early adolescence, cherry-red nipples, firm, high bottoms and narrow waists. There were plump girls—not fat—but round of breast and hip and buttock and possessed of a butter-soft sensuality. There were slender, catlike girls who looked Egyptian, shiny skinned with a lean, hungry eroticism expressed in sharp, pointy breasts and long scarlet nipples. There were sex kittens and voluptuously womanly cats, girls with pronounced mounds of womanhood carried high and hungry and others whose femininity remained a mystery lost at the juncture of velvety thighs, sirens who undulated their bodies as they walked and others who swung more blatantly. All in all, it was one helluva display of pulchritude.

The eunuchs, however, seemed not to notice. They went about their work in the most businesslike way, seemingly oblivious to the flesh rippling around them. They performed their tasks with the impersonal efficiency of factory workers. Indeed, the whole scene began to take on the aspect of a well-organized assembly line.

At the start of the line were the eunuchs stripping the harem girls. Each girl would then pass into one of the shower cubicles where two eunuchs would pour a mixture of steaming liquid from the cauldrons and cold water over them. As each beauty was wetted down, she would step in front of the shower stall and two more eunuchs would cover her body with suds from large, soapy sponges and scrub her with large, hairy brushes. Then the girl would step back into another shower stall to be rinsed. It was timed with the precision of a Saturday afternoon car wash.

From the showers, the girls would proceed to the pool where they would dunk themselves. Here they were evidently allowed to remain as long as they liked. It was quite a sight. There were ten or twelve naked beauties splashing each other and cavorting in an atmosphere of complete relaxation with the scenery changing every few moments as one group would drift off to be replaced by another.

As each girl left the pool, she was met by a eunuch holding a large towel. She would be enveloped in this and dried with light pats. There was no rubbing. I guessed this was to protect the shapely merchandise from damage.

Once she had been patted dry, a girl would stretch herself out on one of the padded tables and a eunuch would anoint every inch of her body with oil. Then she would proceed to a second table where the oil would be patted dry and perfumes applied to her most strategic bodily parts.

Without having planned it, I was an oiler. It was my job to give each body that stretched out on my table a grease job. Fortunately, I had a chance to watch some of the eunuchs assigned to the same task before my first client presented herself.

It was easy. I simply poured a mixture of the oils into the palm of my hand and applied it to the surface of my first customer’s naked body. Then I gently rubbed the entire surface, adding more oil as the need arose. Still, it put a strain on me that the other actual eunuchs didn’t have.

I managed to keep this under control until my fifth subject. She was a particularly curvaceous lass with high breasts so firmly uptilted that they seemed almost to graze the tip of her chin as she stretched out face up on the table. She had one of those lazily sensual faces found in the Near East: dark eyes, deepset and heavy lidded with long lashes, a high-planed facial structure with delicate features and a bronze-gold flush which lightened smoothly as it descended from her neck down the lines of her lithe body. Her hair was ebony and quite straight—- Cleopatra style. Her waist was narrow, her hips wide, her womanhood a cleft mound of shimmering gold.

At the first touch of my fingers on her flesh, she sighed and bent one of her legs at the knee so that it swayed rhythmically. Her legs were long and shapely, a trifle heavy at the thighs, but that only added to their sensual appeal. Her eyes met mine and she caught me admiring them. One of her eyebrows rose questioningly, but she said nothing.

My fingertips spread the balm from the curve of her shoulders to the hollow of her armpits. She giggled. “You tickle me, eunuch,” she said.

I muttered an apology. Then I cupped her breasts, leaning over her and working the oil between them, rubbing it into the large red aureoles around her straining nipples. She stretched one leg straight out, moving it up and down so that her thighs rubbed together.

“You have a nice, firm touch, eunuch,” she told me.

I grunted, poured a bit more oil, and worked my way down her belly. It was soft as velvet. Her hips writhed slightly as my hands moved from side to side. She was decidedly reacting to the massage. Afraid that I would respond to her reaction and betray my non-eunuch status, I quickly skipped over her mons veneris and started oiling her legs. But the lady wasn’t about to let me get away with the omission.

“You missed the most important spot,” she complained. Her thighs parted and her gesture was an imperious command that I correct the omission.

Aching, I pressed close against the table to hide the evidence of my manhood. The fulcrum of her body telegraphed demands and held my hands prisoner at the juncture of her legs. The sentinel guarding the flesh gates of her love tunnel sprang forth to duel with my fingertips. The duel was willingly lost and the entry widened amazingly to receive the ointments and turn their delivery into a prolonged caress. The caress ended in squeals of Arabian delight on her part, in the increased strain of frustration on mine.

Now the Syrian siren turned over on the table. I anointed her back and my hands massaged their way down the spine to the smooth-jutting roundness of her quivering gold nether cheeks. Again her thighs parted as I reached the valley separating them. Again my hand was clasped and, despite its slipperiness from the oil, urged deep into the hidden recesses of her body. It was in the mounting excitement of this moment that the harem Circe detected the evidence proving I was no eunuch.

“Ahh!” She leaned over the table and got a firm grip on the evidence with both hands, pulling the silk of the pantaloons tight about it like a sheath. “You’re an impostor!”

My body tensed to bolt and run. I couldn’t think of anything to say. All I knew was that if a bogus eunuch was discovered in the harem baths, the penalty would probably be severe—very possibly so severe as to turn me into a eunuch for real! From what I knew of the period and the place, that might well be the least of the punishments meted out to me.

But the lady wouldn’t let go. My obvious alarm at being discovered only caused her to grasp me more firmly. “Don’t worry,” she hissed. “I won’t give you away. Do you know how long it has been since I have held such a spear? There are forty-seven girls in the harem. And the Emir isn’t getting any younger. I am fortunate if he comes to me once in six months. The rest of the time I am surrounded by women and eunuchs. Just stay and let me hold you and you will be safe. But if you try to flee, I will reveal you for what you are!”

“But the others will see,” I protested.

“Wait.” She draped a towel over the edge of the bench and drew me closer. “Now you are concealed.” Her hands got busy under the cover of the towel and freed the object of her obsession from the folds of silk which had been covering it. “Bend low over me and continue with the massage,” she commanded.

She contrived it so that one of my hands was beneath her. She fit herself to it and writhed with such enthusiasm that I was sure we would be detected any moment. Her own two hands were squeezing and stroking so frantically that soon I was seized with a prolonged spasm of release that filled her palms with nectar. It was just at this moment that a teen-aged boy in the garb of a noble appeared in the doorway behind us and was greeted by the head eunuch.

“My Lord Saladin.” The head eunuch bowed low, almost prostrating himself.

“I have need of a eunuch,” Saladin told him. “That one will do.” He pointed straight at me.

The head half-man clapped his hands and I understood that it was a command to place myself at the young lord’s disposal. I patted the harem girl’s derrière by way of reluctant farewell, kept the towel carefully draped in front of me to conceal my lack of eunuchdom, and followed Saladin from the bathing hall. He led the way out of the palace to the gates of the city and beyond. Twilight had merged into night by the time we reached the desert sands. We mounted a dune and Saladin paused to contemplate the scene in the distance.

Young though he was, there was a royal and imposing demeanor about the lad as he poised there. He was large for his years and husky-muscular, his body the body of a man. His face, however, despite the craggy features and the toughness burned into it by the desert sun, still had the pouty, sullen look of a little boy. Now he discarded the royal trappings of his outer clothing and stood in breechcloth and turban, a knife sheathed at his waist and a garotte -- a long, silken cord knotted at each end—held in one hand. He continued to stare out across the desert, his brow furrowed as if he was trying to decide how to proceed.

In the distance were the new-lit fires of the Crusaders’ camp. They had arrived at sundown and entrenched themselves. Now they rested and waited for dawn to attack the city.

After awhile Saladin nodded to himself as though he’d arrived at some plan. Crouching low, he started across the sands towards the Crusaders’ camp. He motioned to me to follow and I did, not knowing what he was up to, Wondering what my part in it was to be.

When we reached the Crusaders’ outermost guardposts, I learned the answer. Bellied down behind a sand dune to conceal ourselves, Saladin told me what he wanted to do. “Stand up to your full height with your hands over your head,” he instructed me, “and walk directly towards the guard. I will be right behind you, but crawling low so as not to be seen. While you distract the guard’s attention, I’ll finish him off.” He snapped the silken cord in his hand.

“But he might decide to kill me first and ask questions later,” I protested.

“Well, we have to take some chances,” Saladin pointed out.

“I don’t think I like the odds.”

“There are worse odds you might face, eunuch.” The knife flashed from its scabbard and the blade nibbled at my belly.

I sucked in my stomach to keep from being punctured. “Okay.” I got the point.

“And don’t change your mind, eunuch,” Saladin cautioned. “I am a master at throwing the blade.”

I had no choice. I did what he wanted. I sprang to my feet, held my hands high in the air and started for the guardpost. Behind me, Saladin moved silently to take advantage of the distraction.

“What do you want, infidel dog?” They were the last words the Crusader sentry spoke. His lance was still solid against my ribs as Saladin leaped on him from one side and strangled him to death.

That then was my role, the reason he’d brought me along. I was the decoy. As far as Saladin was concerned, if the gambit hadn’t worked, it meant only the loss of one eunuch-—-and eunuchs didn’t count much in his world. Fortunately for me, his reflexes were good. We repeated the ruse successfully three more times before we gained the inner circle of the Crusaders’ camp.

We paused in the shadow of the tents while Saladin studied the layout. Then he pointed out one tent to me as our goal. Saladin did the talking. He told the sentries there that we had been sent by King Louis to fetch the queen to him. His manner was so imperious that they didn’t even question his authority. They simply stood aside and Saladin led the way into the tent.

The fabled Eleanor of Aquitaine was asleep in a lavish canopied bed. Saladin shook her gently by one shoulder and bent low over her so that she might see his face. Her eyes widened and she stood up immediately, an imposing figure in a billowing white nightdress.

Saladin indicated that I should guard the inside of the entrance to the tent. Then he told Eleanor to change her clothes. She gestured towards me as if to say that she couldn’t possibly dress with me watching. “He’s only a eunuch,” Saladin told her. “Ignore him.”

Evidently they were on intimate enough terms so that it didn’t faze the lady to reveal her body in front of Saladin. History had been accurate in its tributes to Eleanor’s beauty. She was a tall blonde with a long, voluptuous torso marked by wide hips and large breasts that were perfect spheres. Her skin was very fair and smooth, her face strong of feature, classic, yet smoldering with an earthy desire. Her eyes were very blue and they sparkled in the light from the flickering torch Saladin had lit. There was mischief in them as she pulled off her nightdress and took her time replacing it with a blue velvet gown. However, she didn’t take the time to put anything on underneath the gown.

We marched her from the tent as if she was our prisoner and we her guards. A royal crest identified the tent of King Louis and now Saladin led the way straight towards it. However, when we reached it, we ducked behind it, broke into a trot and slipped out of the camp by the route Saladin had established when we entered.

We were about halfway back to the city walls when we stopped running. We took cover behind a sand dune and got our breath. The interlude was a lesson in realpolitik¹⁹ .

“Have you come to rescue me?” Eleanor asked Saladin. “Or to hold me hostage?”

“A little of both,” the youth told her. “First we must dispense with the menace your husband presents. Then I shall share an Arabian idyll with you to outshine our memories of Byzantium.”

“Then I’m a hostage,” Eleanor concluded practically.

But she was more than that. She was the cornerstone of an elaborate edifice of strategy the youth Saladin was erecting for the purpose of having it crash down on the head of the Crusaders. She was the key to the historical puzzle of their defeat at Damascus, and I was to be the keeper of the key.

The plan was as follows: The Crusaders would naturally attack from the east side of the city where the walls were not as formidable because they had already been breeched in previous wars and never properly repaired. Also, the east side faced the major trade route and there was a series of gates there which constituted weak spots in the fortifications of the citadel. These gates could be easily stormed—the sheer weight of numbers would do the job -- and once the Crusaders were inside, the fall of Damascus was assured. Saladin’s aim was to thwart this obvious strategy.

He planned to have the east wall guarded by only a token force. He would gamble on having the Crusaders almost succeed in their attack there. But at the last minute he aimed to distract them from their objective and turn them towards a different goal. The distraction was to be Eleanor of Aquitaine.

His idea was to stake her out on the desert some hundred yards from the north wall of the city. At the crucial moment in the battle she would appear at the top of a sand dune where she could be easily seen and she would scream for help. As soon as one of the chivalrous leaders of the Crusade saw her and started to go to her aid, she would be hustled back to the city and inside the north wall. Here she would mount the parapet and be held in view of the Crusaders to urge them on to attack at this point.

The north wall was the strongest defensive point of the city. It was actually a double wall, a low wall on the outside with a much higher one just behind it. It was laced with towers and catwalks. It was possible for large numbers of defenders to be concentrated there at one time. In addition, a troop of crack horsemen would gallop from the western entrance to the city and attack the Crusaders from the rear as soon as they concentrated their forces on the north wall. In this way, Saladin hoped to turn defeat into victory.

There were many things he had to do if he was to succeed. It was midnight now and the Crusaders would attack at dawn. In the intervening hours Saladin had to convince the Emir of the worth of his plan, get word to King Louis that Eleanor was being held hostage, arrange for the proper distribution of forces and make sure that the men in charge of the various operations understood the timing involved. While he was doing all this, I was to remain behind the dune he’d selected near the north wall and guard Eleanor. In the morning’s fray, at the proper moment, a signal would be given from a designated turret and I was to take Eleanor to the top of the dune so the Crusaders would be sure to see her. Then I was to bolt for the north wall with her. If I didn’t respond to the signal, Saladin assured me, crack bowmen with drawn arrows would immediately let loose and kill both of us.

Why was I to guard Eleanor rather than some professional soldier or guardsman who might seem more qualified for the job? Because—as Saladin thought-—I was a eunuch! He knew the lady and his logic was simple. Any “normal” man, no matter how loyal a warrior, might fall prey to her charms if she chose to exercise them. Only a eunuch would be impervious.

So I spent the night guarding Eleanor of Aquitaine. She slept and I considered my plight. I could run away. But where would I go? I might try returning her to the Crusaders, but I wasn’t sure whether she’d appreciate that. On the contrary, she might resent it so strongly as to persuade her liege to punish me. And if I simply ran off by myself there was no place to go except the desert where I might easily get lost and die of thirst. I decided to simply stay put and wait for whatever dawn might bring.

It brought the anticipated attack on the east wall. As was also anticipated, the Crusaders came within a hairs-breadth of overwhelming the defenders there. It was at this point that I received the signal from the turret. Remembering Saladin’s warning about the bowmen zeroed in on us, I hurried to pull Eleanor to the top of the sand dune.

Twisting her arm behind her back, I forced her to stand erect there. “Scream,” I instructed her.

“Why should I?”

It was a good question. I answered it by pinching her plump derrière as hard as I was able. Eleanor screamed.

A second scream caused one of the attacking knights to rear up on his steed and point in our direction. A moment later a troop of cavaliers had swerved from their objective to start towards us. They broke ranks to allow an elaborately plumed knight to head the column. This, I guessed, would be King Louis himself.

They were thundering towards us now. I grabbed Eleanor’s arms and we ran for the gate to the city. I didn’t have to urge her to hurry because behind us a barrage of spears launched from the city walls was falling like a thick blanket covering the horsemen.

Once inside the wall, the gate was slammed shut and barricaded behind us. Eleanor and I climbed to a catwalk running between two turrets on the lower, outer wall. Saladin awaited us here. A sort of alcove provided by the back wall shielded us from the flying missiles while still revealing us to the view of the attackers. Saladin was making sure that Eleanor would be plainly seen and so encourage the Crusaders to attack at this point. He left her in my custody while he checked on how the battle was progressing.

So far it was going according to plan. The pressure on the east wall had been relieved. The attackers there were withdrawing to lend their weight to the force led by King Louis, the legions storming the area before us. Chivalry had cost them an easy victory and now they faced a strong, prepared, entrenched defense.

Bowmen lined the lower wall, firing in unison at the exposed flank of the attackers. Behind them, catapults had been set up and huge boulders and bunches of spears were being fired at the Crusaders in the rear, the reinforcements attempting to regroup and come to the aid of their fellows. Above us, on the high wall, cauldrons of boiling oil were being poured over the vanguard of the attackers, sending them into a screaming retreat before they could raise their ladders against the wall. On their other flanks, the Emir’s cavalry was just swooping down to the attack. Bravely, by the sheer example of his courage, King Louis managed to regroup the vanguard of his forces again and again to lead them to the foot of the wall only to be driven back by the savage defense.

The battle raged for a long time. Its ferocity terrified Eleanor. She clung to me as if only human contact—even if just with a despised eunuch—-would allay her fear. I was pretty afraid myself. I clung back.

Pressed together tightly, we huddled in the small alcove as the deadly missiles flew thickly about us. Eleanor wasn’t wearing anything under her blue velvet gown. Her trembling body was ablaze as if in the midst of all the death and destruction around us the life urge flared to its most fiery pitch; the answer to devastation and war, it seemed to silently scream, could only be sex. Her breasts were hard against my chest, her thighs quivering and slightly parted, her lips hot and moist, buried at the juncture of my neck and shoulder.

I responded automatically. As she felt the growing response, she lifted her head and looked into my eyes. Her own eyes widened. “You’re not a eun—-” she started to say. I kissed her to seal her lips.

It all happened very quickly after that. It was mindless response, instinctive, unplanned. The bodice of her gown was cut low. Standing in the alcove, with my body shielding her, I reached into it and withdrew the ripe fruit of her breasts, holding them in my hands like large, burning coals, bending to press my lips to their hard, trembling tips.

One of her hands clutched the turban I was wearing, urging my lips to even more intense contact. Her other hand dropped to her side, gathering the folds of her gown there, pulling it up over her shapely legs. She was grinding her body against mine, seeking to encompass the staff testifying that I had never been gelded.

How to explain it? On the highest plane I might say it was the life instinct. On a somewhat lower plane, at least it took our minds off the dangers around us. In any case —“perpendicular” as it were—we stood together, joined together and provided a counterpoint rhythm of our own to the rhythm of battle.

Eleanor’s knees were off the ground now, her knees firmly clasped about my hips, her skirt gathered out of the way at her waist. Her weight rested on the fulcrum of my manhood itself and my passion was such that I sustained it without strain. My hands balanced it by supporting her burning, writhing hindquarters. I thrust and Eleanor twirled and for one long, building moment of ecstasy everything else was forgotten.

The moment ended in a spiral of released passion that shook the very wall of the alcove we were propped against. At some point in my lovemaking I had lost my turban. The silk pantaloons of my eunuch costume were bunched around my ankles. Eleanor’s dress was still pulled up around her waist, her breasts still bared. We stayed that way for a long time, savoring the last of our lust.

“You are a unique eunuch!” Eleanor of Aquitaine sighed.

My mind was just formulating a compliment by way of answer when she squealed loudly and I turned my head to follow her startled glance over my shoulder. It was a good thing I did. Saladin was standing there, a curved scimitar dripping Crusader blood clenched in his hand. His face was a mixture of surprise and ferocity. The surprise made him hesitate just a split instant. I barely managed to jump out of the way of his swinging blade before it hacked off half of my fundament.

“Impostor!” he shouted. “Uncircumsized dog! Defiler of queens!”

“Only one queen,” I attempted to explain as I stepped out of my pantaloons and backed away from him. “Honest, just this one!”

“Lowborn impersonator of a eunuch!” he hissed. “For betraying my trust, you shall die!”

“Can’t we discuss this calmly?”

We couldn’t. His blade whistled under my nose and I jumped away from him again. He kept swinging and I kept jumping until we’d reached the very edge of the parapet. Behind me the Crusaders were hurling spears at the defenders. Above me the Saracens were pouring boiling oil over the attackers. In front of me Saladin was wielding his scimitar like a pilgrim butcher with an axe who has cornered the turkey for his Thanksgiving dinner.

I took a step backwards. It was the last step I took in Damascus. It carried me over the wall. Below were the upturned, waiting spears of the Crusaders, above the descending heat cloud of oil. Automatically, I covered my still inflamed manhood as my half-naked body hurtled downward.

Hey, fellas, I wanted to shout: Make Love, Not War²⁰ ! But it was too late . . .

Chapter Six

A SEAGULL ON THE WING NIPPED MY NUDE POSTERIOR as I flew past. “Ouch!” I commented. “Caw-pfui!” the gull replied shrilly, spitting out the bit of flesh between his beaks. Evidently my derrière wasn’t to his taste.

Since we were flying in different directions, that was the extent of our conversation. The gull continued its downward swoop, arcing out over the tropic blue waters, then sweeping back toward the deck of the fat galleon. Perhaps the bird sniffed the carrion, the fresh-let blood staining the planks. Perhaps he merely followed the bright—splashing sunrays to the glinting points of rapiers dancing a graceful retreat under the stampeding onslaught of broad swords.

I flapped my arms frantically toward white sailcloth, grazed an imperial Spanish flag and managed to get a handhold on a mast bucking in the sea wind. I slid down the mast a few feet, propelled by the impetus of my flight. My descent was stopped short by a crow’s nest and for a moment I perched precariously on the edge of it, high above the fray, stark naked.

The crow’s nest was shaped like a bucket. Now, from its bottom, beneath me, there came a loud, prolonged, wailing, female scream, which momentarily drowned out the sounds of the battle below. I bent to peer inside and immediately there was a second scream.

“Don’t be afraid.” I addressed the figure huddled there. The reply was a torrent of hysterical Spanish broken by sobs.

“Do you speak English?” I tried to make my voice soothing.

“Si.” The sobbing subsided to a series of loud sniffles.

“You have nothing to fear from me,” I assured her.

“Nothing to fear, Señor?” The voice was still trembling, but she had it more under control now. “You are an English pirate! You have the head of a crocodile, clawed feet like a lion’s, hooks for hands, and the staff of an ox to deflower poor Spanish virgins!”

“Oh, come on now, I don’t really have the head of a crocodile.” I leaned into the crow’s nest so that she might see my face more clearly.

“Your teeth are very long,” she said doubtfully. “And they do protrude a little,” she added.

“That’s because I was a thumb sucker,” I confessed. I dangled a foot towards the bottom of the crow’s nest. “See? Not at all like a lion’s. No claws.”

“Your toenails are very long and sharp.” She wasn’t convinced.

“They do need cutting,” I admitted. “But I’ve just been too busy to get a pedicure lately.” I pulled my foot out and let my hand dangle. “See? No hooks!”

“But they are not the hands of a nobleman. You have calluses.”

“A hangover from puberty. But it might have been worse. I could have sprouted warts.”

“I beg your pardon?”

“Nothing,” I told her. “Anyway, the point is that I’m not some kind of a monster. I’m a man like any other man. I don’t have a crocodile head or lion’s claws or hooks for hands.”

“And the staff of an ox?” She rose up a little to squint.

“Aha! You do!” She pointed.

“Well now, thanks.” I was flattered. “But you really are exaggerating.”

“The staff of an ox to deflower poor Spanish virgins!” she insisted.

“Not really. It’s just a fear reaction. As Kinsey pointed out in his chapter on stimuli, fear often causes arousal, a state of excitation in the male. And I remember reading somewhere else that hanged men invariably react in a similar manner. You see, I’ve just been through a rather frightful experience and . . .”

“You are a monster! A devil! A demon!” she insisted. “Didn‘t you fly through the air on wings?”

“Well, not exactly on wings. You see-—”

“Naked! Straight from hell! Come to wrest my virtue with brute force!” She was sitting up now, her eyes wild and gleaming, young and dark and very Latin, plump breasts fluttering against the white silk of the demure nightdress she was wearing. “RAPE!” she screamed vigorously,“HELP! RAPE!”

I jumped into the crow’s nest, sprawling on top of her and covering her mouth with my hand to silence her. “Hush,” I pleaded. “We don’t want to attract attention.”

“Warlock!” She bit my hand and wrenched free.

“Now I’m not anything of the sort. I’m just a perfectly ordinary man.”

“Then how do you explain flying through the air naked?”

“Everybody has their idiosyncrasies.”

“You’re going to rape me!” she persisted. “I’ve heard what you buccaneers do to Spanish women. You’re going to tear off my clothes and pry my thighs apart and rend me with your manhood!”

“I’m going to do no such thing!”

“You’re not?”

“I’m not.”

“Why?”

“I’m just not a rapist.”

“Don’t you find me attractive?”

“Very.”

“Aren’t I appealing?’

“You are.”

“I know my hair’s a mess.” She fluffed out her long ebony curls. “But it’s very windy up here and I don’t have a comb.”

“It looks fine,” I assured her.

“Well then, what kind of a pirate are you?”

“Undersexed, I guess.” I sighed.

“You’re supposed to murder and pillage and rape!” There was a slight whine in her voice. “What’s stopping you?”

“I’m feeling a little seasick,” I told her truthfully, increasingly aware of the pitching of the ship and the swaying crow’s nest.

“That’s no excuse!” She was indignant. She took a deep breath and screamed again. “RAPE!”

“Now you’ve done it!” I peered over the side of the crow’s nest, down the dizzying length of the mast. Not far from its base a Spanish type in Ponce de Leon pantaloons and a beard that seemed to come to a point as sharp as the sword he was just withdrawing from a sea—weathered neck heeded the cry. He leaped for the mast, obviously bent on rescuing the “damsel in distress.”

“That’s Pedro, my betrothed,” the girl told me. “When Morgan fired the first broadside he took me from my bed, flung me over his shoulder and climbed all the way up here so that I would be safe from your boarding party.”

“Morgan? You mean Henry Morgan, the buccaneer?”

“The Scourge of the Spanish Main.” She nodded. “He is your leader, is he not?” She didn’t wait for an answer. “If he were here I’ll wager there would be no question of raping me. He would just do it. Particularly if he was naked.” Her hip moved against me snugly as we stood up in the crow’s nest.

“From the look on your fiancé’s face, he wouldn’t have time,” I pointed out. “And neither do I.” What the hell, I wondered, was I going to do if that angry-looking Spaniard climbed up here and found me naked with his intended? “I don’t even have a sword,” I remarked aloud.

“Ahh, but you do. And it’s unsheathed.” Her fingers barely grazed the hilt of the weapon to which she referred.

“Phew!” I breathed easier. The Spaniard had barely started up the mast when he was assailed from behind. Now he was back on the quarterdeck fending off two scurvy-looking pirates.

“Now there is time,” the señorita murmured.

“Time for me to get out of here.” I scrambled over the edge of the crow’s nest, took one look down which filled me with sudden vertigo and panic, and scrambled right back into the crow’s nest again.

“You changed your mind,” the señorita noted. “You’re going to rape me after all.” Her hand fluttered to her forehead dramatically. “A fate worse than death!” She got it on the record. “By the way, my name is Elena,” she added.

I looked at her blankly.

“I thought we should know each other’s names if I’m going to be a victim of your bestial lust,” she explained.

“Oh. Steve Victor,” I introduced myself.

“To the victor belong the spoils²¹ ,” she punned with avid resignation.

“Look, I have no intention of behaving with ‘bestial lust.’ ”

“HELP!” She started screaming again. “RAPE!” “You’re a pirate and you’re supposed to rape me and besides, you’re naked. Do you think when my fiancé finds you here with me like this that he’ll believe you didn’t rape me?”

“I suppose not,” I sighed.

“Well, if he’s going to think I’ve been despoiled and perhaps break off our betrothal because of that, then I might as well be despoiled.”

“Don’t be insulted, but I’m really not in the mood,” I told her. “I’ve got a lot of things on my mind.”

“Not in the mood? Then how do you explain that?” She pointed.

“Fear. I told you. And probably seasickness too. It really has nothing to do with passion. Why sometimes, for no reason, in the morning—”

“You find it hard waking up,” Elena interrupted impatiently. “You know, for a bloodthirsty pirate, you do an awful lot of talking. I’m really not interested in the dialectics. I think I’ll scream again.” She took a deep breath.

I grabbed her and put my hand over her mouth again. After awhile I eased up the pressure cautiously.

“You have your hand over my mouth,” she murmured.

“I don’t want you to scream.”

“You have your other hand on my left breast.”

“Sorry. I must have grabbed it inadvertently.”

“You’ve probably noticed that I’m not wearing anything under this thin nightdress,” she commented.

“I noticed.”

“And you’ve probably become aware that despite my disgust at your assault, sheer physical biology over which I have no control has made me respond to the intimacy of your brutal touch.”

“I have become aware of that.” The nipple of her breast was hard in the palm of my hand.

“And your seasickness seems to have grown worse.” Her soft belly fluttered as it pressed against me.

“It’s just that there isn’t much room here. Proximity naturally—”

“Naturally. And I’m just too weak to fight off your revolting caresses any longer.” She swayed with her lips pouting very close to mine and her long eyelashes fluttered closed.

When I didn’t kiss her immediately she took another deep breath as if about to scream again. So I kissed her. Her lips clung to mine. Her nails raked my naked back. Her hips moved with a grinding motion under the long nightdress and her belly slapped against me rhythmically. Her long black hair trailed over my naked chest, tickling me.

Elena was a small girl, petite, but curvy and extremely energetic. Her teeth bit my lip, drawing blood, and then darted to the juncture of my neck and shoulders to bite again.

“Hey!” I protested.

“I’m not going to submit willingly, you know. I’m going to fight every inch of the way!”

It made me mad. Kinsey has observed that anger is frequently a sexual stimulus too. I ripped her gown at the neck and it fell away from one of her breasts. The breast was a delicate, creamy hue swelling to a small pink aureole and purplish nipple that was very long. Elena gasped and the nipple quivered against my chest.

“You brute!” she murmured. She reached down and grabbed me. For a moment I thought she was attacking. But while her clutch was firm, it was lacking in any real menace. “I’ve never known a man carnally before,” she said. “I don’t know how to defend myself.”

“You’re doing fine,” I assured her. I bent and my lips moved over the exposed, panting breast, fastening on the tip. She gasped again and her nails were sharp on the back of my neck, urging my lips to part more widely, pushing the breast flesh into my mouth, the tip hot and trembling against my tongue.

Elena was tugging at me now. Her thighs were clenching and unclenching, the material of her nightdress bunched between them. I slid down to a sitting position in the crow’s nest and pulled her over on top of me. She was straddling my lap now, facing me. My hands slid up her legs, pushing the nightdress over her hips. They jiggled under my touch, fleshy and burning. I caressed them for a moment, then her tiny waist and the delicate round of her belly with the beginning triangle of down. She moaned as I touched the soft curls there and then her body jerked spasmodically and the firmly arched breast I’d bared slapped hard against my cheek.

I slid my hands under her, pushing the material there out of the way. Her nether cheeks were fleshy like her hips, but firm, high and round, bouncing with the heat of her eagerness. They settled neatly into my hands, nestling and overflowing a bit as I pushed upwards to raise her.

“Woe is me,” she sighed, “to surrender my maidenhood to the vicious passion of a pirate!”

It wasn’t all hypocrisy. I realized that when I pushed her down on target. Elena’s virtue was as real as it was unwanted by her. And then it was demolished . . .

After which we both rocked feverishly with a lust that possessed us beyond any consideration of our position or situation. Her knees locked around my ribs, her breasts flying free—both of them now uncovered—in the sea breeze, her hair streaming behind her, Elena moved with a fury she couldn’t control. Spurred on by the swaying movement of the crow’s nest, I matched her motion, my body afire with lust, reaching deeper with each thrust as if to penetrate the very core of her with the oncoming explosion of my passion.

The sea around us had grown choppy. The mast swayed from one impossible angle to its opposite with the pitch and toss of the vessel. It was as if the angry sea reflected the raging battle on the deck beneath us. And the violence of our movements took on the tempo of the swaying crow’s nest.

The result was that as it leaned to starboard Elena rose upward and was thrust half out of the nest, a seminude houri in the throes of passion, hovering over the fray as if in defiance of the laws of gravity. When the ship rolled to port, Elena sank down and it was I who emerged like some jack-in-the-box (a thousand pardons for the phrase) on an aerial seesaw, beating the empty air with my lust, flailing the heights with only my fulcrum primed by the recently devirginized señorita. The motion was dizzying and soon I was keeping a delicate balance between seasickness and sex. With each downward movement my desire would build, with each upswing it would subside into nausea no matter how hard I tried to keep my eyes closed to avoid the ro1ler-coaster view swinging beneath me. All in all, the sensation was indescribable; it was quite an experience!