The Vulcan Disaster

Chapter Twenty-One

The questions started out being about astrological lore, and at first I thought I had trouble coming, because they sounded like knowledgeable questions. Gradually, though, I came to the conclusion that whatever it was that she was on, opium, acid or whatever, it was calling the tune. She’d listen to the first two words or so of whatever answer I managed to think up, for tone, and then her mind would start wandering.

While I answered, I had a good, long look at her. The lady was handsome enough; if you’re rich enough you can always hire someone to keep the body in presentable shape if it had anything to start with, and she’d started out okay. The face, too, was pretty enough, in the way Mediterranean women are pretty — dark, eyes almost black, strong nose — but that face and that body were inhabited by something creepy and crawly out of some science fiction movie.

My mind was running fast. I knew my limitations. There are very few things I will not do for AXE. I’m still playing it by ear. But if it meant making love to this stoned-out sea monster... I was casting about madly for ideas. There was one possibility.

“Say,” I said, “I’m a little tense, uptight, you know. Would it be possible to come up with a little something to put in the coffee? Something nice and kicky? Or maybe a nice soothing downer?” I gave her my Harry Archer smile.

Her jeweled hand touched mine; it was cold. Wow, I thought, you sure don’t need any more of anything. “Certainly,” her blurred husky voice said, thick with downers already. “Here. Try a little of this.” And her other hand handed me a little vial. “Nice,” she said. “Very nice.” Her hand, with its gilt nails, lingered on mine a moment. I shuddered; she brought chills. Her deep voice whispered, “Laudanum.”

“Mmmmm,” I said. I kept her eyes on mine, smiling my fortune-teller smile, as I cracked the little vial and poured enough of the stuff into one cup to knock out an elephant Laudanum? Just what the doctor ordered. I reached down and picked up the other cup — hers — and raised it to my lips, keeping her gaze locked. I made a nice appreciative face... and swallowed.

For God’s sake, I thought. She’s already doped her own coffee. The switch hadn’t done me a damn bit of good. I put the coffee down with a faltering hand. The room was swimming. “Hey,” I said, “that’s strong stuff.”

“I’m glad you liked it,” she said. Her face went out of focus. The lights near the ceiling were going round and round. “Here, darling, why don’t you get a little more comfortable.” She reached over and untied my tie.

“Hey,” I said, “I...” But the world was spinning like an out-of-control carousel. Her hands shoved the coat off my shoulders, pinning my arms. “Just let me get my bearings...”

I blanked out.

When I awoke — it couldn’t have been much more than ten minutes later — I was in my shorts, and the lady, a dull gleam in her eye, was trying to part me from those. “That was marvelous,” I said. “This, I can see, is going to be quite an evening.”

“It certainly is, my darling,” she said. I was stretched out on the pillows and she was kneeling above me, the gilt paint on her large nipples gleaming through the gauze. “This will be a night to remember. See?”

And her hand pulled something out from under the coverlet and ran it quickly across my chest. Something cold. I looked down. There was a thin line of my own bright red blood bisecting me just above the bandage, just below the collarbone. Then I saw the razor-sharp little knife in her hand, coming toward me again. I rolled away from her; her hand caught me and held me. I was still weak and woozy from the dope.

“No,” she said. “Don’t resist me. That’s an order. I...” And that knife headed for my face.

Sometimes blind instinct is the best guide. I let one hand do whatever it wanted to; it went to her wrist, twisted so hard she yelped like a puppy, and forced the knife free. That hand — it was the left one, the one I do a lot of my own dirty work with — handed it to the other, which heaved it across the room to stick, quivering, in one of those priceless paneled walls. Then the left hand backhanded her a good one across the mouth.

To my amazement it put her out cold. She just collapsed on the cushions and, in a moment, started to snore. Well, she’d had a lot more of those downers than I had tonight; she’d started long before I arrived on the scene.

What do I do now? I wondered. For all I knew, my cover ID was blown. How she’d take to this I had no way of knowing, but I’d have put money on the notion that I had myself a whole mess of new problems I hadn’t had before. I reached for my pants.

“My lord wants wine?”

I wheeled, pants in hand. The naked little slave stood before me, the silver decanter in her hand, her eyes averted. I just stood there like a ninny.

“Hey, look,” I said, “I’m getting out of here. Do you want to come along? I mean, you can’t stay here with somebody who treats you like this. You...”

“My lord clapped his hands for wine?” she said. Her eyes were still on the floor.

“Listen to me,” I said. “What you heard was no hand clap. It was a slap. She’s out cold. Now’s your chance, if you want to get out. We’ll go to the closet and find you a couple of changes of clothes and I’ll give you some money. We’re still close to land, and we’re going so slowly under sail, that if you’re a good swimmer you ought to be able to make it. You...”

“I will pour my lord’s wine,” she said in that beaten, dejected voice. “Begging his pardon for my forward behavior.” She picked up my glass and poured. The full glass she placed on the couchside table. “My lord will drink with a peaceful heart.” She stood there in that exaggerated pose of submission, the little chains tinkling softly. Her face would have been as lovely as her body if it hadn’t had that expression on it.

“She’s going to come out of that in a little while,” I said. “We don’t have long. I...” She just stood there.

My head ached. I picked up the glass the naked and chained little girl had handed me, made a little here’s-looking-at-your-twisted-little-psyche gesture with it, and drank deep.

I shouldn’t have. It was drugged too — even worse than the coffee had been. Apparently the lady had a little scenario that she followed every time, and it called for more dope as the evening wore on. And her tolerance for the stuff, by now, was so far past mine... But by now I was down to my knees and sinking fast, into what felt like a vast, black sea of Turkish coffee...

I awoke on her cushions on the floor. Daylight was coming in through the fancy windows in one corner. I sat up, expecting my head to punish me unmercifully, but the only sign of a hangover, seemed to be a thick coating on my tongue.

I looked around. There was no sign of the Great Lady... but no, there was after all. She’d dressed before leaving, and over by the big wall mirror she’d strewn those queen-of-the- pagan-Nile clothes all over the floor like any other spoiled rich kid.

I had a sudden thought. I looked up and down my body. If she’d found that knife again, and gone to work while I slept...

But I was all there, or at least as much as usual. I got up, feeling, strangely, a few less aches and pains from the chest and the other bruises than usual. Laudanum — and whatever she’d spiked the wine with — were apparently good for broken ribs.

There was no sign of the little slave. Apparently she slept days, when her mistress was otherwise occupied... but where, I couldn’t say. There might be a door somewhere in that wall, past the curtains, but if there was it was well hidden by the paneling. I shook my head again and went to find my clothes.

On the big couch — the one she’d been on — there was another one of those notes of hers, on paper whose edges had been torn, not cut. Always first class. I opened it and read:

I felt a little ridiculous coming out in the open air and making my way back to the cabin in evening clothes, but the way things were on that crazy boat I didn’t draw a single solitary stare. A knowing wink from Michel, perhaps, but from the crew and the galley staff (from whom I got a pot of undoctored coffee), nothing.

By the time I’d showered and shaved and got into deck clothes it was nearly noon, and by that time the coffee had me feeling as though I could face life again. I could hear through the porthole a lot of activity on deck: people hauling on lines, shortening sail. Sailboats, particularly square-rigged dinosaurs like the Vulcan, require an incredible amount of hard labor — which is why they’re such a satisfying hobby, and why nobody in the world uses one to make a living with anymore. I wondered what was happening.

When I got out on deck again I found out. We were coming into the harbor of the little island where we’d be staying the night. It was a spectacular entry: the island itself was nothing more nor less than a gigantic dead volcano, its guts blown out thousands of years before by an explosion of incredible force. The harbor, like so many harbors in the Greek Islands, was itself a drowned caldera, its remaining walls forming three sides of a nearly perfect circle, and we were preparing to enter through the gap carved by fire and lava eons before. On all sides of us loomed tall, precipitous cliffs; far ahead on the land side of the caldera you could see the white, gleaming walls of a tiny town full of scrubbed little fishermen’s houses. My guess was that we’d lie at anchor not near the village, but farther out in deep water; in the calm provided by the natural mole, we’d anchor the big ship and hire the villagers’ caiques for going ashore.

I couldn’t wait for that party to get started.

I must have muttered something like that under my breath. All of a sudden Michel was beside me at the rail, agreeing with me. “Yes, Harry, it is a most lovely sight, isn’t it? I may call you Harry, mayn’t I? And what a marvelous party it will be.” He drew the adjective out: mah-velous.

“Michel,” I said. “I was thinking. I, ah, wonder if the party might not be the right time to make a play for Mlle. Weiner. She really turns me on. Have you seen her?”

“My word,” he said. He turned and looked at me. “Dear boy. You’ve just had an evening in the Forbidden City — with Alex — and you’re already thinking of sex again? My word. Oh, what I wouldn’t give to be ten years younger, with all that vigor and elan. But Vicki? Dear me, I wouldn’t have thought her your type. You surprise me.”

“Fach to his own,” I said.

“Well,” he said, watching — with a more than academic interest, it seemed to me — a sailor hand-over-hand it up through the rigging and hook a bare leg over a yard. “She might, of course, be more fun than one of those dumpy Greek cows in the village.” He shuddered delicately. “Nevertheless, my dear fellow, it’s all academic.”

“Why?” I said. I looked at him, his lined little face taking on an air of world-weary smugness.

“Why, she’s gone, old man. Disappeared during the night. Overboard, someone suggested. Nobody’s been able to find the smallest sign of her all morning.”