The Living Death (7 page)

"You are upset," she said, leaning her head against my chest. It was true, but she was making me less so. The points of her breasts were soft against me, excitingly inviting. Anyway, I was really more angry at Denny tonight than I was upset. She seemed almost bent on popping up when she wasn't expected and being out when I tried to get to her. Amoretta was moving in my arms and we began to dance again, her body warm and firmly soft in my arms. I switched off the large lamp as we danced past it and there was only the soft glow of the moonlight filtering in through the window. If Denny wanted to jump to conclusions without even hearing what I had to say she could damn well stew about it by herself. Amoretta was pressing her hand hard against my back, her stomach touching my own. Her voice was husky, sensual, promising.

"In the mountains of my home, we have a saying," she breathed. "There
is
a reason for everything."

She nuzzled her face against my shoulder and I could feel the throbbing vibrations that emanated from her.

"In other words," I commented, "there's a reason for what happened a little while ago and there's a reason why you're here with me now."

Her shoulders lifted in a small shrug. Her old Calabrian saying fell on fertile ground. I was never one to look a gift horse in the mouth, anyway. Amoretta was obviously smoldering, eager, desiring and desirable. If it was that and nothing more, or if she had a reason, I'd find out in the only way to find out. I slipped my hands inside the silk robe. She had a thin nightgown on. Parting the robe, I let it fall from her shoulders. She quivered and her arms flew around my neck and her lips, those full, soft lips, closed on mine and in moments she was naked in my arms. I lifted her and put her down on the sofa, brushing her round, full breasts with my lips. She gasped and her hands reached out for me as I stripped off shirt and trousers. When I pressed my body down against her, reveling in the tactile pleasures of her skin against mine, Amoretta gasped and clutched at me.

"Oh, yes… yes… yes," she breathed. My fingers traced a slow path down her body, lingering on the full, smooth breasts, small nipples coming to life as they responded to the touch, rising, reaching upwards for my lips. Amoretta pulled my head down onto them, pressing me down so hard I was afraid she would cry in pain. But there were no cries of pain, only of ecstacy. She moaned in pleasure and cried out, small, urging sounds, while she writhed and moved, thrusting her body up against mine. Her skin was smooth, as though a thin film of oil covered her body, and as I moved down across her deep rib cage, down along her softly rounded belly and down further, her head tossed from side to side in uncontrollable rapture. I lingered for a moment, then left and pressed her luscious, full lips, now devouring. The probing, darting touch of my tongue acted like a spark of flame on a twig. Her body quivered and writhed and she gasped in desire, the volcano erupting into flame. All the throbbing sensuality exploded into feverish desire, a consuming passion that swept away all else. This was not, I realized, a girl who knew how to make love but a girl whose intense desires to be made love to were stimulus enough for two. Such hunger was a gift of itself and I responded, finding the very center of her femaleness, rewarded by the pleasure of her cries. As I held myself in her, I let her press her mouth against my shoulder to muffle her real cries of ecstacy. When her climax seized her body, her scream was into my chest or it would have wakened the hotel to say nothing of the professor and his wife next door.

Amoretta sank back upon the sofa for just a moment and then she turned to lie over me, her silken body a tingling blanket. She moved her legs over mine, her belly across my muscles and she whispered into my cheek. "More,
cara mia,"
she said. "I must have more." This was a moment of escape for her, I could see. Her visits away from her mountain home of Calabria were obviously moments she waited for all year. Her sensuality was such that it could never be hidden anyplace, but I'd known the people of those hills. There she was equally desired, equally desirous, but their own strict code forbid it until she was wed and, unless I missed my guess, Amoretta had seen too much of the outside world to wed one of the peasant boys. And so her home was a kind of sexual prison for her. It was no wonder that away from it, she could not restrain the terrible pent-up hunger within her. I stroked her back, and she pressed her full breasts down into me as once again, small sounds of ecstacy began to well from her. There was no part of this throbbing creature that was not sensuously sensitive to the touch, I learned. I turned her over and she offered herself again as a flower offers itself to the sun. Her small nipples hardened under my tongue and she thrust them deeper into my mouth. Before the moon began to fade, I had made love to this fantastically hungry Venus three times, and each time she was a creature of pure passion, unsubtle and unwise, yet thrillingly responsive to the slightest touch. Finally, with a great sigh of contentment, she fell asleep with her breast in my mouth, cradling my head to her. I moved back to hold her quiet form, admiring the full-hipped lusciousness of her body as she lay still. I slept beside her till the sun, coming in through the window, reflecting brightly from the blue waters of the bay, woke me.

I lay quietly, watching Amoretta's deep, regular breathing. Her legs, slightly parted, were half-turned toward me, her round, full breasts stood out eagerly, as though she waited in her sleep for me to waken her in that most wonderful way of all. I wished I had the time but I didn't. The ISS seminars got off to an early start. I slipped from her encircling arm across my chest without waking her. I had shaved and dressed when she woke. She pouted some but eventually came and put her head against me.

"I have no words to tell you how it was last night," she said.

"You don't need words, Amoretta," I answered. "You told me already."

She smiled, a slow, comprehending smile, and I went to answer the polite tapping on the adjoining door. The professor was very much all right. After I took the alarm device from the front door, we went down and breakfasted together in the hotel lounge. If anything in the food was going to turn him into a vegetable, there'd be two of us.

The day was taken up with more seminars, more meetings and more of those brilliantly dull papers. I concluded, by the end of the day, that every scientist should be forced to take a course in creative writing. If there was anything sinister going on at the seminars it was those papers. In the evening Karl Krisst had arranged a conducted tour of the resort area. I stayed close to the professor and Amoretta stayed close to me. She wasn't purposely trying to be a distraction. She just couldn't help it. By ten everyone was safely locked up for the night and Amoretta was in my room waiting. She didn't have long to wait. She was everything she had been the night before, everything and more for she'd learned a few things. When dawn came neither of us had had too much sleep, but then, I consoled myself, how much sleep does a fellow really need? I'd stopped growing long ago.

It was the last day of the meeting, the time glad-hand Karl Krisst had called Relaxation Day, and he'd arranged a buffet at the beach.

'This is a happy day and a sad day," Amoretta said, running a slim finger down my chest. "Happy, because you will be with me all day and sad because when the day ends we must part. I will never see you again. I know it."

"Never is a word I never use," I grinned. "You may come to America or I may get to Calabria. Our paths may cross. I get around."

I didn't know it then, naturally, but I wished, later, that I had not been such a good prophet. As I hadn't figured on beach parties, I hadn't brought swimwear so I just took off my shut when we reached the beach, arranged the beach chairs so I could keep a constant eye on the professor, and relaxed. He was more than content to stay resting in his chair, and Amoretta curled up alongside me like a contented kitten. I brought the lunch from the buffet Krisst had set up, taking no chances on this last day. When the afternoon finally wore to an end, Karl Krisst made the rounds, looking even more rotund in shorts and a bright, yellow shirt of terry cloth. I watched him as he went from member to member, clasping an arm around each one, giving each a fond pat on the back, telling each one what a wonderful tan he had gotten. I found myself watching him with a mixture of amusement and irritation. The irritation bothered me and I decided it was because he seemed so out of place amongst these sincere men who were, for the most part, both brilliant and simple at once. When he reached Professor Caldone, he helped him struggle out of the beach chair, and between pats on the shoulder, helped him into a beach robe.

"I hope you enjoyed your brief visit with us, Mr. Carter," he said, turning to me. "Not that we do not welcome having you, but whatever reason prompted your government to send you along with the professor will soon disappear, I hope."

"I hope so, too," I smiled. "If it hasn't, I'll be back for another meeting."

"And we will look forward to having you again," he said, easily outsmiling me. He turned after a brief handshake, made his way through the others, and, as I watched him bound up the stone steps leading from the beach, I felt a touch of sympathy for him. I'd always felt there was something pathetically lonely about the professional glad-hander. The true face of the clown behind the mask is so often a very different one.

Feeling a little like a mother hen with her brood, I herded everyone back to the hotel, checked out every piece of the professor's luggage, and we piled into the professor's little Fiat for the drive to Rome.

I wasn't risking any last-minute occurrence after the meeting or just outside the immediate area. In Rome, there was another round of good-byes and thank yous. The professor and his wife had been nice people to know, erudite, pleasant and honest. Amoretta's eyes held a silent message. I knew she didn't want to return to the mountains of Calabria, and I was sorry for her. She really wasn't ready to leave the hills, there were still too many unfinished edges about her; yet she deserved something better than she could find there. Another few visits with her uncle and aunt ought to do it for her, I was sure.

I left for the Rome airport with the feeling of a job well done. If anything had taken place at the previous ISS meetings, it hadn't taken place this time. If there had been a plot against Professor Caldone, it hadn't come off. Of course, I also knew that this one instance couldn't be looked at as a victory. The horrible sinisterness of it was still very much there and it raised an even bigger question. Where did we go from here? We had prevented whatever might have been planned for this meeting, which left us really nowhere. I put aside those irksome questions for my meeting with Hawk. I had something I wanted to clear up first. I caught a direct flight from Rome to London. It was my turn to pop up unexpectedly, which
is
exactly what I did, only to have the thrill of talking to Denny's landlady. Denny was away at a horse show and wouldn't be back for two days. The woman, a pleasant-faced old gal, was kind enough to take a note from me which I scribbled on the back of an envelope. I made it short. There was too much to say for a note. I wrote:

The sky fell in. The world stopped spinning. I hadn't heard correctly, I told myself. It just couldn't be! Hawk's steel-gray eyes facing me across his desk were expressionless. Maybe I was dreaming.

"Say it again," I asked. He nodded slowly.

"Professor Caldone is a vegetable," he repeated. "His wife contacted us last night."

"I don't believe it," I said angrily. "Damn it to hell, I covered him like a wetnurse. Nothing could have happened."

Hawk shrugged. "Something did," he said quietly. I did some fast calculating. I'd left him in Rome in the early evening and caught a plane for London. Finding Denny away, I had to stay overnight because I couldn't get a flight out immediately. Then I'd come back here yesterday and this morning arrived at AXE headquarters. Altogether about thirty-six hours had elapsed between now and the time I'd left the scientist. Someone could have gotten to him in those thirty-six hours. I had to go with it. I'd stuck too close to the professor during the meeting itself.

"I'd like to go see for myself," I said, still angry.

"I figured as much," Hawk answered blandly. "I've booked passage for you on the eleven o'clock flight to Rome."

"Damn it," I said, "there's got to be some explanation for this."

Hawk's expression was all I needed. "Okay," I said. "I'll find it. But then this has got to be the weirdest bit or the cleverest one I've seen in a long time."

I stalked out, angry at myself, angry at the world, but mostly angry at the unused-to feeling of having been taken. No one likes to fail, most of all me. But to fail is one thing. To have been taken, right under my nose, that was something else. It was a new experience for me and I fumed and thought about it all the way to Rome. I was sticking with the idea that whatever happened had taken place after I'd left the professor. As I said, I had to stay with it. But I wasn't that sure of it. Hawk had cabled on ahead for the team of medical specialists to meet me at the professor's house. He wanted me to hear what they had to say with my own ears. These were the doctors who had examined each one of the stricken scientists. At the professor's home a maid admitted me and Signora Caldone greeted me with more composure than I'd expected her to have.

My anger turned into something else as I was ushered into the living room where a white-uniformed nurse sat in a straight chair beside the professor. He was seated in a deep, leather chair and suddenly I wasn't so concerned over my own anger, my own feelings. The cherubic face was now a gray, lifeless mask, the twinkling blue eyes now expressionless, staring orbs. His mouth hung slack, a small, continuous line of drool trickling down the corners which the nurse wiped off periodically with a gauze pad. I went over to him and called his name. There was absolutely no response. Every so often his throat would make small, guttural noises, sub-human sounds. I turned away, an icy band wrapping itself around my innards.