Mission: Earth "The Enemy Within" (7 page)

"O my master, I am sad because I cannot tolerate the thought of being cooped up all day in a single room and garden. Were I to move about on foot, I would be stared at or attacked upon the roads. I feel I can never be happy without a BMW 320, fuel-injected engine, five-speed stick shift, rally-model sedan."

For the first time I felt a surge of horror. Such a car would cost a million and a half Turkish lira!

She sighed tremulously. But then, of course, she would feel cooped up. A wild, primitive desert girl, she was used to the limitless vistas, rolling dunes and the vast sky of Russian Turkmen. Her leg moved slightly. I was terrified she would run away.

"It is yours," I said.

She began to hum quietly. She picked up the two torches and went over to the open lamps. She lit them. She came back to the center of the room.

She stood there, a torch in each hand. Their light and the lamplight made moving shadows around her on the floor. The live flame seemed to make her body writhe.

Humming, she began to juggle the torches, tossing them and catching them, one after the other, in rhythm.

Then she sped to the right and sped to the left and back and forth. I was turning my whole body to follow her. At the end of the run, she tossed a torch high, turning and then catching it.

She narrowed the run. And then she was standing in one place. She was still juggling the torches. But now, each time a hand was momentarily free, she was tugging at her red veil. Little by little, her face was becoming bare.

Then the veil was gone!

She stood there juggling the torches. But now there was a change. The torches were crossing from one hand to the other, both together as they spun. I turned right and left, following the flame. Her feet began to beat the rhythm of the tune.

Her body now seemed to be writhing more. Or was it just the flame shadows?

It was her body!

Her belly was moving!

She was beginning to grind with her hips. She was going from one foot to the other. The torches both together were being tossed from left to right and back again. My body moved of its own accord to follow them.

Her chin was coming down. Her eyes were fixed upon me.

Then, as she stood there, grinding her hips, moving her belly, her head began to come up. Up and up! Her eyes began to glaze!

Her mouth was open, slack. I had never noticed before that her mouth was large, that her lips were full and red. And wet.

The tune she hummed was phasing over into moans!

Left, right, my own body was jerking back and forth in time to those grinding hips and flying torches.

Then suddenly she stood still. She was shuddering. A torch was in each hand now. She was crying out faintly.

She was having an orgasm!

The two torches, one in each of her hands, held level, began to approach each other.

Suddenly the flame heads ground together!

She screamed in ecstasy!

Then she sank abruptly down, cross-legged. At the same moment she dropped the torches into the bucket where they hissed and steamed.

She seemed dejected.

Her fingers fumbled out and she found her cura irizva.

She struck a plaintive, quavering chord.

Her eyes came up and fixed themselves on me. There were tears in them!

The indefinite oriental music began to flow sadly from her fingers. In a voice that was a dirge of sorrow, she sang:

You have no need of me,

You beautiful man.

You do not want my arms.

You do not wish to feel

The entwine of my legs.

You have no need Of pressures from my breasts.

You do not need

My hands with their caress.

You do not crave

To flood me

With your juice.

But OH, you brutal male,

If ONLY that you DID!

As her crying words died away in the hall, I was totally beyond the ability to react.

I sank back. I whispered, "Oh, Utanc, have pity on me. I do want you. I will die, Utanc, unless I have you."

There was a tiny sound beside me.

A hand was lightly caressing my cheek. The softest whisper floating in a haze of perfume, "Lie quietly, darling."

There was the click of a light switch. Then the sound of the lamps being capped.

It was totally dark.

Another stir beside me. A delicate hand on my chest. Lips, full and soft and moist against my cheek—a delicate kiss.

I reached up to grasp her jacket to pull it off.

"No, no," she whispered. "I am much too modest to be seen undressed by a man in the dark."

She pressed my arm back against my side. She kissed my throat. "This is all for you. Do not think of me. Think only of yourself. Tonight is yours."

She was removing my turban in the dark. Then she kissed my eyes.

She removed the caftan from me and then she kissed my chest.

She pulled off my boots and kissed my feet.

Then she gently undid my belt and slowly began to pull off my pants, her lips kissing lower and lower as the flesh was bared.

Lightly she began to caress my shoulders and arms with her fingertips. She took my ear lobe between her teeth in a gentle way. Then her tongue sought the entrance of my ear.

Quivers of pleasure began to go through me. I once more sought to reach her with my hands and pull her garments away.

"No, no," she whispered. "There is no need for me to undress. I am too shy. This is your night and your pleasure."

She kissed me on the mouth!

I felt like I would faint with pleasure!

Her tongue pried my lips apart and sought the inmost reaches of my mouth.

She sucked my willing tongue out and her lips drew upon it and her teeth lightly held it.

I was going into a daze of pleasure.

Her hands were stroking me, touching spots in my body I had never suspected had any pleasure in them. I began to breathe heavily.

She stroked my breast. "Darling, darling," she was whispering. And then, "The mouth is everything."

She kissed down my throat. She kissed down my chest. She kissed down my stomach. She kissed down my thighs.

Suddenly all the blackness around me was a vortex, pulling me in as though I were being swirled right down, helpless with sensuous pleasure.

I floated suspended in joy amongst the stars.

White lightning seemed to flash across the whole universe.

I lay in an utter daze. I had never felt such a thing before. Lights were spinning in the utter blackness of the room.

My heart was pounding so hard I felt my chest was going to explode.

We lay quietly in the velvet dark.

I could feel the spent relaxedness of her.

Time passed.

Then her hands upon my cheeks. She stroked them. "That was very good," she whispered.

Weakly, with one hand, I sought to pluck at her breast. Gently she steered my hand away. "This is all for you," she said. "The mouth is everything." She kissed me. "Everything," she said. She kissed me more passionately. "The mouth is everything" she moaned. "Oh, darling, lie still. This is all for you. Just spread out your arms and legs and enjoy it."

Her tongue was stroking my lips. Then her whole mouth was cupping and stroking my lips. Then her mouth and tongue and hands were once more finding secret places in my body.

My passion began to stir anew.

Her hands suddenly caught my hair on either side of my head. She was gripping my head passionately. I could feel her eyes like black coals in the dark as she looked at me.

"Oh, darling," she said with choked passion. "The mouth is EVERYTHING!" She kissed me. She drew back. "It is many hours until dawn."

And her mouth once more began its journey down my body to culmination in sublime ecstasy. It seemed to me that never before in my life had I ever had sex. And not like this! But it was beyond anything I had ever dreamed for or of. Nothing, absolutely nothing in Heavens or on Earth had felt that good before!

When I awoke it was well into the afternoon.

I showered, something new for me. I put on clean clothes. Something new for me. I smiled at Melahat Hanim. Something new for me. She was helping the waiter serve me breakfast.

The whole world smelled good, looked bright. Something very new for me.

"Where is my darling Utanc?" I said.

Melahat said, "When the car was delivered, she and Karagoz went off to get her driver's license."

Of course, that was easy. I had given her the proper identification and birth certificate of an actual baby girl that, had it not unreportedly died, would have been about Utanc's age by now. But Karagoz would have to teach her quite a bit before she could pass any driving test.

I went out to the cool patio and sat in a chair. One of the small boys came tearing out of Utanc's room without any clothes on, spun about and vanished. He returned with pants on and tried to sneak by me. It was too narrow a gap. I tousled his head and smiled at him. He gaped back.

I reached in my pocket and got a coin. I gave it to him. He stared at it suspiciously.

I reached into my pocket and gave him a ten-lira note. He took it and looked at it in amazement.

I reached in my pocket and gave him a hundred-lira note, almost a U.S. dollar. "Just tell Utanc, when next you see her," I said, "that the moon and sun together are dim compared to her."

He didn't know what to make of it. He went off muttering the phrase so he could remember it. Suddenly he was back. "Sultan Bey," he said, "can we eat all the grapes we want?"

I smiled indulgently. "Of course."

A little while later, there was a roar of an approaching car. I got up and looked out toward the gate.

A vehicle shot in, braked with a squeal of tires and slid exactly into the parking place.

It was a white BMW road-rally car. A sedan with a low profile and a big trunk. Plastic no-see-through glass covers had been put over the inside of the windscreen and windows. You couldn't see who was in it.

Utanc got out on the driver's side. She was garbed in a white cloak with a peaked hood, and veiled, and all that was visible of her were her sloe-black eyes and even these were shadowed by the hood.

Daintily and modestly, she crept across the yard and when I would have stopped her, turned her body and slid past me, eyes downcast, and was into her room.

I was in a state of alarm at once! Had I done something to offend her?

Karagoz was getting out. He had some bundles. A small boy grabbed them and sped to Utanc's room. The door slammed behind him.

I went over to Karagoz in alarm. "Is the car all right?"

Karagoz said, "It's fine. They had one all ready to deliver to a rich official and, for a premium, they sent it right over this morning as soon as I relayed your note. Drives great. Awful (bleeped) fast, though."

"Did she like it?"

"Oh, yes! Drooled over it."

"And when does she get her driver's test and all?"

"Oh, we got the license. I only had to show her a few things the salesman showed me. Then I showed her how to steer and so on. In about ten minutes she had it. The test man said she was the best driver he'd seen for some time. Mysterious."

"Well, of course anyone expert at driving camels would have no trouble learning to drive a road-rally, stick-shift car," I said.

"That's true," said Karagoz.

"Then what's she upset about!" I demanded.

He thought and thought. Then he said, "In the store where they sell cassettes, she wanted some Tchaikovsky—he's some composer or other—and some piece called 'The Overture of 1812'—she said she wanted the one with real cannons in it—and they didn't have either one and said they'd have to send to Istanbul for it. But she really wasn't upset. She just told them she'd take the Beatles that they did have and they could order the rest." He thought a while longer. "Oh, yes. She said the high-frequency band was missing on the audio cassette deck they tried to sell her and that they better get some decent hi-fi equipment in if they wanted her for a customer.

"But actually, she was very sweet about it. She's very shy and not forward at all. You can tell from her accent she's been raised amongst the wild nomads of Russia. Really, she's the most mannerly and demure person I ever met. Except, of course, when she gets behind the wheel of that car!"

So I had no slightest clue of how I had upset her.

The day dimmed for me.

I could hear some laughter coming from her private garden, her own throaty amusement and the high-pitched little squeals from the two small boys. So she wasn't mad at them. She had drooled over the car. She had not been mad at the merchants. She had gotten her driver's license. She was not upset with Karagoz. There was only one conclusion I could reach.

She was mad at me.

I stared for hours unseeingly into a discarded pile of shriveled grass.

I knew I could not live without Utanc.

Now and then in a lifetime, somebody catches a glimpse of Heavens and then promptly plunges into Hells. And that was what was about to happen to me.

That night, there was no messenger from Utanc. I fretted away the hours fruitlessly.

In the morning, red-eyed and bushy-haired from lack of sleep and worry, I thought that if I could just speak to her and ask her what was wrong, it would all come out all right. At least I would know.

Accordingly, realizing it would be fruitless to knock and fearing to just get the door slammed in my face, I conceived a cunning plan. I would lie in wait in the patio and when somebody came in or out, I would be able to go in and quietly put my question to her.

Looking back on it now, it still seems sensible. Yet it was rash beyond belief.