Reversion
a Novel by Varkel
Fall, 2001
Chapter 9: The
Too-Clean House
When I sat down for breakfast, Clara had already poured my morning coke. Alice raised her cup of coffee to her lips but paused. Eyes widening, she noted, “I thought the doctor said he would have to remove your tattooing!”
I responded, “Let me see your other wrist.”
She raised the hand to the table. Both wrists were free of tape and showed no evidence of bruising. She tossed her head. “I threw the wrappings away. They don’t hurt at all.”
“I heard him say you should wear it for several days.” I looked at Clara. “I didn’t know medicine was so incompetent in 1948.”
“It’s not,” she stated, looking distantly over my head.
“Just Dr. Grienbaum?” I sniffed. “I was surprised he didn’t order x-rays for Alice’s wrists. But why would he tell me I had to come to his office to remove the gunpowder?”
Alice grinned. “And males say they don’t need mirrors!”
“They need them,” I admitted stiffly, “to shave.”
Clara’s face was blank. Too blank. Suddenly I recalled a few things.
I studied her. She wouldn’t meet my eyes. “Clara,” I said softly, “don’t you think it’s time to clue us in?”
“Clue you in?” she repeated, looking down at the tabletop.
“The anomalies are starting to mount up.”
“Anomalies?”
“Are you practicing as a parrot?” I demanded snidely.
“Tim!” Alice protested.
Clara looked up at me at last. Her heart-shaped face showed concern and something else. She bit her lip. Then she squared her shoulders and composed her expression. “What anomalies, Tim?”
“I suspect it’s a long list.”
“Tell me.”
“Well … We can begin with my forehead and ear and Alice’s wrists. I guess sprained wrists can get well overnight, but powder particles embedded in the skin —”
“Yes, yes.” She interrupted, waving a hand impatiently. “What else?”
“I was going to say that I found loose black particles on my pillow, too big for dust, which is what caused me to check the mirror in the first place… What else, you ask? Let’s go back. You served us a hot supper last night when we had hardly hung up our coats. How could you possibly do that? And those fake birth certificates with the so-official looking seals that the FBI nevertheless believes are absolutely authentic — how’d you manage that? Hmm. Given that somebody tipped them about us being special, how did the Russians know we’d be in that restaurant? I can’t believe Rosalind is a spy.”
“She may have told someone,” Alice suggested, “quite innocently.”
“That she was taking a couple of kids to lunch? Her mother, maybe?”
Clara said, “You’ll soon find out about the Russians.”
I blinked. “What do you mean?”
She took an impatient breath. “Anything else on your list?”
“The closets,” said Alice.
“Yeah, the closet here and the one in Hightower with the super-duper locks. Why do they hum?”
When I ran down, Alice added another item. “And the self-cleaning houses. Our dirty clothes we throw in the hampers only to show up the next day in our chests of drawers, cleaned and pressed.”
I contributed, “And you still haven’t told us how you made those Mandelbrot paintings.”
Clara chuckled humorlessly. “I wondered if you noticed that I hadn’t.”
“Oh, we noticed!” I declared. “While we’re at it, you never said how you got so filthy rich. I’d guess on the stock market, but I’ve never caught you calling your broker.”
I recognized a flicker of apprehension in her face. She got up from the breakfast table and went to stand before the sink, her back turned to us. Her fists were clenched. Alice and I stared at each other in wonder.
“Tim,” Clara muttered. She heaved a sigh and turned around. “I meant to tell you. Both of you. When your degrees are conferred.”
“Tell us what?”
“How much more is available to you than you realize.”
I considered the implications of that. “Because of you?”
“Because of me and where I derive.”
“From the Twenty-Fourth Century?”
“Yes. And because of the fact that you are my grand obsession.”
I’m sure my astonishment showed. “Are you saying the people of your time have found a way to transmit more than minds between the continua? My math says that’s impossible!”
“Your math is still right. What we found was a way to enlarge the storage capacity of a mind — by orders of magnitude, then transmit the whole of it.”
Her face contorted. “Don’t look at me as if I’m some kind of monster! I always had genius-level intelligence, though not so high as yours, nor even approaching Alice’s. My intelligence was not enhanced. The only difference is that I have in my head all human knowledge that was — will be — publicly available in 2398, including the old records from the Twentieth Century, organized and more readily accessible to my consciousness than even your computerized encyclopedias of 2002.”
“How is it stored?” demanded Alice, the computer expert.
The woman turned to her. “I can give you all the details that you wish. Let me say now only that the process subtracts from the brain’s tremendous redundancy and in those detached neurons substitutes data-coded DNA for all functionality beyond simple cell maintenance. The level of complexity and thus capacity increases by many orders of magnitude.”
Alice blinked, wheels visibly turning.
I asserted petulantly, “Thought you said nanotech was outlawed in your time!”
“This isn’t nanotech, quite. It’s nanobiology.”
“Huh?”
“I told you we retained Springer’s electrostatic scheme to view the molecular scale. That’s key also to control of living cells. The human race in my time is master of its bacteria, fungi and viruses. In fact, Tim, we learned to direct them, to control their behavior, not just to kill them.”
“Huh?” I goggled at her.
“Good god!” murmured Alice.
Alice is smarter than I? I put that aside for later consideration.
“And I have all that information.” Clara put a finger to her temple. “Right here.”
I asked, “Have you been able to apply it?”
“Oh, yes. And you will take it even farther, I am confident.”
“How have you applied it?”
Her eyes twinkled. “One of my early projects was building a biological computer, that is, a device with a programmable brain. To test it, I had it produce those Mandelbrot paintings that so inadequately mystified you.”
“Why ‘inadequately?’”
“Because you didn’t press me for the explanation.”
I protested, “Because we respected your privacy, which is the same reason we didn’t ask you about your self-cleaning house and your humming closets with bank-vault locks.”
She smiled. “I didn’t think to camouflage the locks.”
“Where is this wonderful computer?” Alice asked.
“Replaced long ago. Of course I have others now.” The woman’s smile vanished. “Privacy.” She shook her head. “There’s our true problem.”
“Among ourselves?” asked Alice. “What privacy?”
“You still have an illusion of it,” Clara remarked, looking away.
“Not much illusion,” the girl retorted. “The only time I’m out of sight of one of you is at school or in the bathroom.”
Clara shook her head. “Not even then, Alice. You are never out of my sight.”
The younger eyes narrowed. I said quickly, “Explain what you mean, Clara.”
The woman took a deep breath. “All right. I guess I have to do it sooner or later. Brace yourselves, darlings. You’re in for a series of shocks, but please remember always, I love you both to death.”
Inset in the wall above the kitchen sink was a small, circular window, an eight-inch peephole perhaps designed to let a mother spy on children playing in the back yard. Clara grasped a bracket set into the side of it and pulled. The window rotated inward on a vertical hinge, somewhat as a porthole on a ship. I had not realized it opened at all!
But that was merely the beginning. With wings spread in a stall and only inches of clearance a small gray bird sailed through that opening and landed on Clara’s outstretched finger. It immediately folded its wings and looked twitchily around at us. Its head was black with white streaks. It could hardly have been more than three inches long.
“This is a chickadee,” Clara intoned. “It is friendly and wishes to tell you so.”
As her voice died the bird warbled shrilly, “Dee-dee-dee-dee.”
Alice got to her feet and approached. Gently the woman swung her hand around until the bird was perched almost in the girl’s face.
“You caused it to sing?” she asked.
“Yes.”
“How?”
“Milliwatt radio, powered by biological mechanisms, works very well at this range.”
“Do it again.”
Now the bird changed its tune: “Sweet-sweet-sweet.”
“Good god!” Alice exclaimed.
I licked dry lips and asked again, “So what?”
“Watch.” Clara raised her other hand before the bird, which leaned down, opened its beak and deposited a small black spheroid with a red dot — hell, a ladybug! — upon her palm. The bug spread its wings and flew up to perch in the lobe of the woman’s ear. I surged to my feet. Would it crawl into her ear canal? Apparently not yet.
“So the bird delivered you a ladybug,” I noted.
Alice had observed more than I. “In the middle of winter!”
Clara smiled. “Protected from the cold in the bird’s craw.”
“So what?” I’m sure my amazement sounded almost belligerent.
“So an enhanced insect brain is able to store hours of highly detailed environmental samplings.”
“Temperature and humidity?”
“Oh, them too. But scenes of human actions and conversation are much more interesting. And no one notices a beetle hanging high in a corner.”
I stared at her, at last beginning to understand.
The ladybug reversed its path, flying from earlobe to palm and folding its wings. The chickadee snapped it up in its beak and jerked its head presumably to swallow. In any case the bug disappeared. With a flutter of wings the bird launched itself into the kitchen air, swooped sharply and vanished outside through the circular window. The woman pushed it closed.
“Sit down,” she said, “and finish your breakfasts before they get completely cold, then I’ll show you a recent recording.”
We obeyed dumbly. Clara had just performed real magic of a kind reminiscent of fairy tales. My hand was shaking.
“Tim,” she admonished, “egg is falling into your lap. Please spread your napkin.”
“Yes, Mother,” I responded sarcastically and automatically.
“Mother!” Alice sniffed, picking up her fork. “And what does that make you?”
“A mother lover,” I submitted, biting off a chunk of ham. “Did you cook this, Clara?”
“I caused it to be cooked,” she said, sitting down before her own plate. She looked at me wistfully. “Would that I were your mother!”
“I prefer you as a lover,” I said around the food.
“It would make no difference to that. Think what control at this level means.”
“Of course!” I said, snapping my fingers. “That’s why you don’t worry about contraception.”
“Exactly.”
I recalled something. “That white powder in Harvey’s drink, ‘BC plus a little insurance,’ you said. What did you really do to him?”
Her eyes were cold. “Harvey Gambel Springer will never father a child. His spermatozoa are now and forever curiously susceptible to the protective acidity of the vagina. None can survive to reach his partner’s fallopian tubes.”
I felt a chill. “I’m damned glad I didn’t study nanotech.”
Alice sniffed. “You couldn’t until Drexler named it in the Eighties.”
“Then I’m damned glad I never thought up the idea.”
“That was Richard Feynman in the Sixties.”
“I might’ve known.”
Clara was first to finish. She excused herself and went upstairs. Alice and I stared silently at each other, eating the last of our breakfast, not yet prepared to discuss these incredible events.
The woman returned from her room with a strange object in each hand. She held out one to both of us. “Try these.”
They were opera glasses, the short, wide-field type of only two or three power. Her hand slipped into a pocket of her robe and passed each of us a flesh-colored “candy kiss.”
“Put that in an ear and hold the glasses to your eyes as if you meant to look out the side window.”
We obeyed her. I heard a man’s voice in my ear as I raised the opera glass, facing toward the bright morning sunlight flooding through the large side window. I saw a scene in both eyes: a conference table with several people around it: Clara, Alice, myself, Halleck, Raimer and Avery. I recognized Raimer’s voice. “Mrs. Edgeworth, are you in fact the boy’s aunt?”
The depicted Clara responded clearly, “We have already gone over this.”
“Please, ma’am. This is for the record.”
I sat in amazed fascination as yesterday’s meeting with the FBI played out in perfect detail. The kitchen table and my present companions faded from awareness. The camera — meaning whatever captured this image — was high at one end of the room. It was a wide-angle shot that, playing back in the opera glasses, filled half my own field of view. The stenographer, Vi, sat below me in the foreground, the top of her head visible along with the notepad and its curly shorthand loops. The other six people were gathered around the table as I remembered. My face was only too recognizable. The resolution was incredible! My own eye’s registry of the original scene could have been no better.
Alice’s comment in the restaurant, that I was a poor liar, proved on the mark. When Raimer mentioned Tonio, my surprise and consternation were obvious, though I thought at the time to exhibit only stolid indifference. I made a note to ask Clara why she had been forced to chuckle at that strategic moment, behavior Raimer had interpreted so accurately.
I was not at all impressed with my own performance, especially later when I faced the huge chieftain alone. I ended up as a child taunting his elder to react, when in fact it was the other way around. Clearly Avery got more from our interview than I did!
The image jumped. Artificial light illuminated the room instead of the light from the windows. The stenographer, Vi Jones, entered ahead of bald Raimer. She took a seat across the table, he next to the door, leaving it open. She sat with notepad spread before her, pencil poised.
He said, “This is the protection schedule for UGH.”
Vi giggled while her pencil looped. “That’s U.G.H., right? Tell me again what it means.”
Raimer grunted. “Some of Avery’s irony, assigned while we were still looking for them. ‘Unnatural Genius Hunt.’ It means those two Reverted kids. You do know, don’t you, Vi, not a word about them can get out of this office? In particular you can’t talk about that Reversion bit.”
“Sure. I keep a lot of secrets around here.”
“I know you do, you sweetie. All right, I want Halleck and Campbell to start the watch with a ten-hour heel and toe. We’ll add Smith when he finishes that surveillance on Tuesday. I mean, add him on Wednesday. Give him a day off.”
“Is three enough for a 24-hour watch?”
“No, but Avery has more help coming. The director definitely doesn’t want the Russians to get these kids.”
“So who do you want to take the duty tonight?”
“Campbell can start. He’s had the day off. That Russian wiretap Berensky found on the Edgeworth phone line: tell Berensky we’re taking it over. It will give us advance notice on their movements. Add it to his list. Also make a note for me to get the Edgeworth dame’s permission for it. Might as well do it legally. She ought to be very willing after that attempted kidnapping.”
He waited briefly while her pencil flew. When she looked up, he added, “And make out the application for a tap on Peyton Dell. His dossier has a red flag. Avery snarled at me for overlooking that, but he’s the one who passed it by!”
“Just his home?”
“Hell, no! Office too.”
“You think the kid was right?” she asked, still scribbling.
“It’s too good a chance to overlook. We know he corresponds with their consulate here. Avery has asked to close that down but Washington won’t agree. They’re afraid of a reciprocal closing in Leningrad. I don’t know what makes them think they get more from the Russians than —”
A door slammed somewhere in the building.
The woman folded up her notebook. “You think that’s Avery?”
“He was the last one here. That was the main door. Well, Vi, my sweet, the cat’s away.”
She grinned. “And now the mice will play.”
Both of them stood up. She reached under her skirt, bending and stooping. Raimer dropped his pants and shorts, pushed the chair back and sat down again. She hurried around the table, leaving pink panties on its surface.
“Ooo!” she murmured. “All ready for me.”
He grinned smugly. “I’ve been encouraging it.”
She threw a nylon-encased leg over his extended hairy ones, settling into his lap facing him. His hand slipped between them. Her hips performed a hook and twist.
He chuckled. “I’m not the only one who was ready.”
“I’m always ready. Oh god, Paul, that feels good!”
He chuckled. “The advantage of bald heads.”
Their arms went around each other and their faces met while hips rolled in counterpoint rhythm. His chair creaked. That and their breathing were the only sounds in the building.
I heard Alice say, “What was his title, supervisor? That son of a bitch! She ought to sue him.”
I lowered the glasses. Alice was still holding onto hers with both hands. Clara leaned against the sink with a wry smile.
I said incredulously, “You think Vi is being sexually coerced?”
Alice answered, “She can surely claim it!”
“40 years from now,” I muttered and turned to Clara. “You want to tell us how this works?”
“I released a beetle in that room. It flew out behind Raimer and Vi. The chickadee was waiting when they opened the outer door. It brought the beetle to me.”
“The same beetle?” asked Alice, who had finally lowered her glasses. We both removed the earpieces.
“No. It’s much easier to co-opt a fresh beetle than to erase the storage of a used one.”
Alice’s eyes glittered. “What happened to this one?”
“She became the chickadee’s reward.”
“Some reward!”
Clara chuckled. “I assure you the bird thought so.”
“And these glasses?” I asked. “How do they work?”
“By means of white light diffused and transmitted from some external source such as that window. It has not yet been noticed in 1948 that certain primitive retinal cells can work in reverse. That is, nerve impulses can cause them to absorb or transmit light of the frequency to which each is dimensionally attuned. I have replaced the objective lenses of those glasses with living tissue, consisting of a translucent substrate coated with avian retinal cells, having a salamander’s veins and gut for support and another insect brain for data storage and control. I can download them with an hour’s images by holding them close to my head for a few seconds.”
Alice may indeed be faster on the uptake. While my astonishment was still settling in, she asked, “Then you don’t need opera glasses to get the report!”
“That’s right. When you two have won your degrees so you can leave Chicago, I’ll install that capability in your heads too.”
“My god!” I breathed, turning the glasses this way and that. They were identical to standard opera glasses, including a Bausch and Lomb imprint on the lens rings. I noticed two small holes on either side of each lens barrel. One was dry. The other seemed moist. On an impulse I shoved it under my nose and sniffed: faintly offal.
“How often do you feed it?” I asked dryly.
Clara’s eyes twinkled. “It’s quite efficient. It emits no energy except a very slight amount of heat. Each lens needs a CC of beef stock about once a month.”
“If you use two beetles, can you sync them and get 3D images?”
“One beetle has two sets of eyes, you know.” She gestured toward the glasses. “What you saw was 3D, though set to wide-angle it is far less noticeable.”
“Implying a zoom capability?”
“By limiting the field, yes. But it gets grainy. Unfortunately a beetle cannot guess what you might consider important.”
I laid my instrument on the table and pushed back my chair. “We’ve learned a little,” I summarized. “The Russians found out about our trip to Spatenhaus because they had tapped our phone line. But how did they get interested in us in the first place? Maybe it wasn’t Dell, though it’s interesting the FBI has a red-flagged dossier on him, whatever that means. I’ll bet he at least verified something about us for the Russians. He’s still obsessed with a certain Russian woman. Wonder why he didn’t marry her and bring her back with him.”
Alice sniffed. “Because she’s more useful to the NKVD where she is.”
“Yeah, you may be right. What about the rest of my list, Clara?”
“List it again.”
“Huh! I shoulda wrote ’em down. All right. Alice’s wrists and my gunpowder marks.” I stared at her. “Have you started controlling our bugs?”
“Only marginally. You may have noticed that head colds and coughs have troubled neither of you this winter, though you told me, Alice, that half your Russian class was out for colds. I kissed your face and earlobe last night, Tim, as we made love, if you recall. Nanobiots in my saliva caused your skin to eject the powder particles and grow over the cavities during the night.”
Alice sniffed. “But you didn’t kiss my wrists!”
“Your tendons had to be strengthened from the inside. I blew programmed nanobiots into your lungs as we kissed.”
“My god!” I breathed again.
Clara laughed softly. “Does that make me a monster, Tim?”
“N-no.”
“Then please look upon me with love instead of horror.”
“I’m sorry, my darling,” I admitted, squaring my shoulders. “You did warn us of shocks.”
“They’re not over yet.”
“The self-cleaning house,” said Alice. “That’s gonna be a doozer.”
“Well,” Clara demurred, “it’s not truly self-cleaning!”
“Then what cleans it?”
Clara leaned forward over the table. Casually her arm swept out and knocked over my tumbler of coke, still with about an inch of dark liquid in the bottom. It fell toward the center of the table, where its content mostly splashed.
“What the hell?” demanded Alice, sliding her chair back.
“Watch,” said Clara, retreating from the table.
Suddenly I heard a humming buzz, growing louder. A dark shimmering cloud swept into the kitchen from the hall. It swooped onto the tabletop, where I finally recognized the individual forms of … wasps!
I surged away from the table involuntarily, knocking over my chair, stumbling to my feet, ready to flee.
But the swarm of insects ignored the humans. They settled on the sticky spilled liquid in churning clumps, their buzzing greatly reduced. Within five seconds they lifted off the table, buzzing fiercely again, formed into their writhing cloud and zoomed back into the hall. The humming died away. The enameled tabletop gleamed spotlessly.
Alice’s eyes were popping. I’m sure that mine were bulging exactly as she had described them for the FBI. I could only gasp, “Those are wasps!”
Clara stood with eyes dancing, a hand over her mouth. “Yes, they are. But even if you crush them they won’t harm you.”
Alice caught her breath. “You clean house with wasps? But how do they do the cooking? And the laundry?”
The woman’s humor faded. “Brace yourselves,” she advised, “and look again in the doorway.”
I spun about almost reluctantly, expectant some monstrous robot, thus momentarily overlooking what stood there — until it bowed low as if to conclude a stage performance. It was a small brown monkey with a black head and tufted ears, standing less than two feet high. Behind it curled a tail, the last half of which formed a tight coil.
It straightened up — he straightened up — and raised his sharp-nailed right hand, palm forward, as if greeting us. Suddenly he turned a forward somersault, stood erect and again raised his hand.
“How cute!” simpered Alice breathily.
I would have turned to stare at her in astonishment if the monkey had not obviously reacted to her remark. He clapped his hands several times over his head as if applauding, bowed once more, and lifted a piece of metal from a fine chain around his neck. He put the thing to his mouth — a whistle? — and leaned forward. I heard only the hiss of air, but it was nevertheless a signal.
Feet scampered in the hall and several other monkeys identical to the first appeared to form a phalanx of four, three monkeys deep, behind him. A dozen new monkeys now faced us. And bowed simultaneously.
Alice clapped. Shortly I joined in. When we ceased, they stood up and waited passively.
“These are your chefs and maids?” asked Alice in wonder.
“Our chefs and maids,” Clara corrected. “These are Capuchins, native to the Brazilian rainforest. They are my abject slaves, yours too when you graduate, but I assure you they don’t object to their status in the slightest. Sit quietly and watch.”
The first two ranks of monkeys swept forward, jumping to the tabletop, from there to the sink, in the process transferring all our plates, cups, tumblers and silverware. A paper napkin was snatched from my lap. I had a glimpse of it and others vanishing below the raised lid of the trashcan while water ran into the sink. One monkey was scattering washing powder over the stacked dishes.
Alice and I sat in complete bemusement under Clara’s proud smile while this small troop washed our dishes along with the greasy frying pan, dried them all, put them away in the proper cupboards and hung up the dishcloths. As they were finishing up, the earlier buzzing renewed itself, only stronger. A larger swarm of wasps appeared, settling on the table, on the floor where some of my coke had spattered, and on the sink among the monkeys. Neither kind of animal interfered with the other. Shortly the monkeys retreated to their formation, where the rear rank of four and the … alpha male? — waited stoically. Within half a minute the wasps concluded and reassembled in their own airborne formation before buzzing away up the hall.
The kitchen gleamed in spotless perfection. The whole thing had taken hardly four minutes.
“Well?” asked Clara, regarding us with amused pride.
I spread my hands. “I guess in two lifetimes that was the most amazing demonstration I ever witnessed.”
Alice asked sweetly, “More amazing than 15 Italian lovelies undulating for you at once?”
“Will you quit that!” I squawked. “Besides, they didn’t undulate all at once.”
“What are they waiting for?” asked Alice. Indeed the formation of monkeys waited unmoving just inside the doorway.
Clara answered, “Altering them necessarily increased their intelligence while giving it purpose. They know humans sometimes react badly to their species. They wait to see what you’ll do.”
I’m not that dumb. I said with a grin, “Because you are waiting.”
“Yes, of course.” She returned my grin.
My mind was beginning to work again. “The too-ready meals and too-clean house began on the second day. How did you get them here that quickly, Clara?”
“Watch this.”
Her voice had hardly died before the 13 monkeys merged. That is the only word. They came together, cheek to jowl, and I do mean nether cheek; arms, legs and tails intertwined, until they formed a bale of monkeys — a rectangular parallelepiped very like a small, brown and furry hay bale with beady black eyes watching us from all over its surface.
Clara asked, “Do you recall that large steamer chest you two kids helped me load into the trunk of the car? It contained the Capuchins and the Vespidae, plus my tools.”
“The Vespidae?” I asked.
“The wasps. ‘Paper wasps,’ they are called, because of the nests they make. Even unmodified they are much less toxic to humans than the hornets they somewhat resemble.”
I waved at the bale of monkeys, wondering at the correspondence to barrel of monkeys that nothing is supposed to be funnier than. “How long can they stay like that?”
“As a matter of fact, I can cause them to hibernate in that arrangement. Then they hardly breathe and can exist as such for several days. But they don’t like it very much.”
As she finished, the bale sprang apart and again became 13 monkeys standing in their previous formation.
I snapped my fingers. “Scurrying!”
Clara grinned. “You’ve heard them in the night, have you?”
“Yes. I thought it was squirrels in the attic. They only, ah, come out at night?”
“Until now, only when you two were both asleep or at school.” She smiled fondly at the waiting troop. “We meant to give the place a good general cleaning and airing yesterday afternoon, but that plan rather fell apart.”
Alice stepped forward, looking intently at the leader. “Does he have a name?”
“He does, and he knows it: Alazar.”
I’ll swear the male in front turned his head from woman to girl before she called him, suggesting that Clara had a mental finger involved in what happened next. Alice fell to one knee and called softly, “Alazar, come here, pretty boy. Come here, Alazar.”
The little figure strutted across the room to her, shoulders and arms swinging, in perfect mimicry of a small boy’s unjustified swagger. He bowed low, coiled tail rising comically behind him, raised up and stretched out furry arms toward her.
Of course she picked him up and hugged him gently to her flat chest. “Oh, Alazar, you little sweetheart!”
I stared in disbelief. Alice seldom shows affection. I never saw her offer it even to her own children. Only too rarely she shows it to me! But now her face was dissolved in love. The little boy in me wanted to puke. The old man wondered at the size of a monkey’s penis. Didn’t the Kama Sutra mention congress between monkeys and women? No, not monkeys: chimpanzees.
I forced my mind back onto the rails. “I gather both monkeys and wasps live in your humming closet.”
“Yes,” Clara admitted. “The wasps beat the air with their wings for circulation. When I tried suppressing that instinct, they suffocated.”
“When do you feed them? Also at night?”
“The monkeys eat as they clean up after us. Being as omnivorous as we, they take what else they need from our larder. They make up a nectar for the wasps.”
I allowed incredulity into my voice. “These monkeys installed those bank-vault locks?”
“With my help,” she admitted. “Some things are beyond their strength, of course.”
I shook my head. “The implications of such control are staggering. I am just beginning to appreciate this.”
“What else do you want to know, Tim?”
“How rich are you?”
She shrugged. “I have accounts in many banks, many millions of dollars. Money will never be a concern of ours.”
“All right, tell me this, then. How did your phony birth certificates fool the FBI?”
“The FBI took them from the county files in Hightower. If you wonder how false certificates came to be in those files, the answer is because I put them there, after creating them by reference to the paper, ink and typewriter peculiarities of your valid certificate. Present technology is not good enough to detect that forgery.”
“You couldn’t have done all that on Sunday afternoon!”
“No, of course not. I did it while we still lived in Hightower. I was confident we’d need them.”
I took a breath. “You are such a remarkable person, Clara!”
She came around the table in a rush and embraced me, compressing me against her breasts. “For you, Tim, only you!”
At those words I saw Alice look up. She released Alazar, who gathered up his troop and disappeared down the hall, leaving the girl to stare at us thoughtfully.
* * *
Rosalind failed to answer her telephone. I came back to the kitchen, where my women were discussing the different approaches required in programming the serial machines familiar to Alice versus the massively parallel structures of biological systems. I sat and listened for a while, gathering from Alice’s bemused expression that whole new vistas were opening for her, but when they segued into input-output techniques, discussing parallel sensoria and command-response channels, I interrupted.
“Excuse me, ladies. It’s Monday, you know.”
Alice’s eyes widened and she glared up at the clock over the door before relaxing. “I’ve got an hour and a half.”
“I guess Rosalind has already gone to school,” I responded obliquely.
She frowned at me. “What were you going to tell her anyway?”
“Tell her? I meant to make sure she was all right, that the FBI delivered her home.”
“Is that all? How did you mean to answer her questions?”
I shrugged. “Somehow.”
She sniffed. “I’ll bet you planned to spin some fancy lie about us being Tsar Nicholas’s grandchildren.”
I looked at her admiringly. “That’s not bad — about the Russians thinking so, at any rate!”
Alice stared meaningfully at Clara. “How like a man to lie!”
Clara chuckled and winked at me. “If his woman gives him the idea.” Her face became serious. “We’ve agreed Rosalind is socially valuable to us, one of the few who’d raise a stink if the government got too overbearing. We do need to tell her something.”
Alice’s eyes narrowed. “I’ll take care of it.”
“You?” I asked.
“Without angling for a blowjob, either. Timmy, what is it with her? Does she really do that so much better than Clara or I?”
I shook my head. “I can’t believe you’re asking for a comparison!” I spread my hands. “But that’s a good idea. You take care of it!”
“Don’t think I won’t!” She stood up. “I have time for a good long soak.” She grinned askance at Clara. “Do you suppose Alazar and some of his buddies might wash my back?”
Clara’s eyes twinkled. “You might miss your class.”
“Do you mean he actually does that?”
“Oh, yes. The Capuchin often help me with my toilet.”
The girl blinked and smiled sheepishly. “I just realized: I can’t tell him what to do.”
“Before you two came to live with me, I communicated for years with them in English.”
“They understand?”
“Simple words and gestures, nods and head-shakes, for example. One of these days I’ll undertake the throat modifications to let them speak.”
“Then …” Alice licked her lips. “Do I just knock on the closet door?”
Clara grinned. “Why not? Like this.” She rapped three times on the tabletop, paused then repeated. “I’ll tell him to expect you.” Her face took on a pronounced leer. “The males love our massive fleshiness.”
The girl nodded pensively and remarked in an off-hand manner, “I noticed Alazar’s erection.”
I stared at her in surprise. “When?”
She returned my stare levelly. “When I hugged him. I don’t think I need your permission. There’s only 13 of them, you know, not 15.”
I grunted and turned away. As Alice left the room, I saw that Clara had covered her mouth with her hand. I inquired, “Are Capuchins large enough?”
“No, Tim, not to replace a man,” she said with quick seriousness.
Somehow I didn’t have the courage to ask her about a boy.
* * *
“I’ve made a few improvements in the viewers,” said Clara, extending one to me.
The three of us lay entangled and sweaty upon her large bed. At Alice’s insistence we had adjourned early tonight for our usual evening calisthenics. The girl had behaved toward me with unusual tenderness. I thought snidely that the monkeys must be less than satisfactory — but I didn’t say it. She even detected my approaching climax, abandoned Clara’s cunt and swung down in the bed to take it from me orally. Afterwards she looked up at me with a pleased smile, a dollop of spunk on her chin. I could only stare in grateful disbelief until our breathing eased and Clara distracted me.
I took the modified opera glasses but she held on to them, pointing out features with the fingers of her other hand. “We all have perfect vision, so I set the eyepiece to a fixed focus and converted the focusing knob to a zoom control. Play with it and you’ll see how it works. This new button is the pause and release. Hold it down for two or three seconds and it will restart a scene at the beginning.” She released the device and handed me something from the headboard. “Here’s an earpiece.”
Both females were watching me. With a shrug I fell back beside Clara, tucked in the earpiece and put the glasses to my eyes but saw only dim grayness even when directed at the ceiling light.
“Nothing’s on,” I said as I might in ten years whenever the TV was uninteresting.
“Press the restart button,” Clara advised.
When I did so, sound arrived at my ear: the background rumble of a city and someone’s boots crunching in the snow. The scene presented to my eyes was a snow-lined neighborhood street along whose sidewalk the camera was moving with a slight bounce. I recognized it: 59th Street. Suddenly the camera — I know it wasn’t a camera but after years of using camcorders that’s how I thought of it — turned in a sidewalk to a familiar apartment building and began to descend the stairs to the basement. I recognized the scuffed door. This was Rosalind’s place.
I pressed the pause button and looked into Alice’s intent eyes. “You went to see Rosalind today?”
“This afternoon.”
I looked around at Clara. “Where was your ladybug, on her cap?”
“Not exactly,” the woman answered, eyes twinkling.
In the depicted scene a gloved fist rose and banged on the door. I also heard feet stomping, possibly to dislodge snow and stimulate blood circulation.
“Who’s there?” Rosalind’s voice came muffled from behind the door after an annoying wait.
“It’s Alice. Open up! I’m freezing!”
Stomping feet sounded again. After long seconds the gloved fist rose to knock again just as Rosalind called, “It’s a bad time, Alice. Could you come back later?”
“No!” the girl shouted angrily. “It’s ten degrees out here. Let me in!”
Again a wait. Alice began to kick the door with one foot, persistently but not too hard. Finally the lock clicked. The door opened a crack, just wide enough for Rosalind’s nose and half her face to peer at me directly. Suddenly I realized this camera must have been on Alice’s face itself.
“I have a visitor,” the older girl whispered urgently. “You can’t come in now.”
Alice’s face thrust toward the door. She grunted as it flew open. Rosalind was obviously thrown off balance. As she staggered backward her robe parted. Without its scant cover she would have been fully naked. The camera flicked oddly around the suddenly revealed room — a capability the ladybug had never demonstrated — and came to rest upon a young man lying stark naked atop the bed. He made no effort to conceal the smug grin on his handsome face or an erect penis of modest dimension.
Out of sight behind the camera the door shut solidly. Rosalind’s voice emitted stuttering objections. The camera rolled back and forth but remained centered on the erect member, as Alice shed her parka and pulled off blue snow pants in what must have been a comfortably warm room. The guy’s dick was thicker than my twelve year-old specimen but not much longer.
“Hah!” the fellow snorted in an amused baritone when her outer garments lay on the floor. “I thought you were a boy.”
She was probably still wearing a dress. The camera advanced beside the bed and stared pointedly at the dick too dry to have seen recent use. Alice sneered, “If I were a boy I’d be better equipped than you.”
The guy rose onto an elbow to retort indignantly, but Rosalind’s shoulder heaved into sight between them.
“You’d better go, Dicky,” she said in a flustered voice, looking around at Alice behind her.
“Little Dicky’s not finished,” Alice taunted. “I can wait. He won’t take a second.”
“That’s right!” the guy exclaimed and pulled Rosalind onto the bed.
He rolled atop her in a flash. His hips thrust unmistakably. The prone girl’s eyes went wide.
“Get off!” she screamed, flailing at the man. Apparently he was too heavy to dislodge. She wailed, “You’re not wearing a rubber!”
Alice reached down to seize the man’s hair in both hands. She pulled fiercely and Rosalind pushed. Their joint effort succeeded, sending him sprawling to the floor with a thump. Scowling, he jumped adroitly to his feet. His mouth opened as though to issue a stream of profanities, but instead he smiled. After a graceful wave of his arm with a courtly bow he collected his clothes and took them into the bathroom.
The two girls stared wordlessly at each other during the minute Dicky required to dress. He returned to the room ready for outdoors.
“Sorry about the misunderstanding, Ros,” he said with an arrogant grin. “I’ll see you after class tomorrow.”
With an amused glance at Alice and a slight toss of the head he left the apartment. Neither of the girls spoke until they heard the outside door close upstairs.
“He put it in me!” the older one exclaimed bitterly. “Do you think it was rape?”
“Perhaps.” Alice sat on the bed beside her. “But didn’t he only catch you by surprise? It was a playful way of saying good-bye after I interrupted your fuck.”
Rosalind glanced quickly at the smaller girl and then examined her fingernails. “You did interrupt, of course. We intended to spend the afternoon together.”
“So now you have an unscratched itch,” Alice responded snippily. “I’ll tell Tim. I’m sure he’ll rush over to help.”
Rosalind flushed slightly. “By the way: what are you doing here?”
“To make sure you’re all right. Tim couldn’t reach you on the phone.”
“He called?”
“Yes, this morning. He’s in class. You and I don’t have one on Monday afternoons, so I came to see if you had some good reason not to answer the phone.” I heard the smirk in her voice. “Not a very long reason, was it?”
Rosalind giggled. “I had a special use in mind for that short one.” Suddenly her face was serious. “What happened yesterday, Alice?”
“You mean after we left you?”
“Didn’t the FBI take you home? What I mean is, why did it happen? I’m a language student, remember? And I’m pretty sure that kidnapper you ran from spoke to you in Russian.”
“I didn’t understand it either,” Alice responded in tones that I recognized to imply no big deal. “My Russian studies haven’t got that far yet. But would you believe it was all a wrong number?”
Rosalind blinked. “Would I believe it?”
I chuckled, pleased that Alice could also be guilty of anachronisms.
Ignoring the question, the young girl asked airily, “You’ve heard of Anastasia, the lost daughter of Tsar Nicholas?”
Rosalind’s eyes widened. “By now she’d be in her forties!”
“It seems the Russians thought we were her children.”
“Good heavens!”
“Just a case of mistaken identity.” Alice’s hand appeared in a deprecating gesture. “Does Dicky being here mean you’re through with Tim?”
Rosalind smiled slowly. “Are you jealous for Tim?” She chuckled. “No need for that. Tim and I are just good friends.”
“That’s what Tim says,” Alice retorted. “But don’t you fuck regularly?”
“No.” Rosalind’s lips curled down, but her finger toyed with back of the girl’s hand. “I think he’s been avoiding me since the party — until Sunday, at least. And look what happened!” Her voice softened. “Tim was my first guy, you know.”
“Mine too,” Alice admitted quietly and tangled a finger around Rosalind’s.
“I thought so,” the larger girl said, taking the other’s hand. “But I hesitated to asked him about it because you’re only ten and also his cousin.”
Alice sighed and studied the other girl’s face. It denoted sincerity, perhaps an offer of friendship.
“I’ve only recently begun to enjoy sex,” the younger confided. I heard a smile in her voice. “I’d like to try it with other guys before, you know, Tim and I settle down together.”
“That should be years away, don’t you think?” the older said cheerfully. “You could have dozens of guys by then.” She raised an arm that seemed to go around Alice’s shoulders. Her head drew closer.
Alice asked boldly, “How about hundreds?”
“Hundreds!” Rosalind squealed in delight. “Wouldn’t that be something?”
“I’d mainly like to feel a adult cock while I’m still small.”
The older looked serious. “Why would you want that, Alice? Some of them can be rather long. They can hurt.”
Alice snuggled close and fingered one of the older girl’s curiously small breasts. “At least I’d like a fat one to fill me up. Have you ever been hurt? I mean after the first time.”
Rosalind’s face and neck began to flush apparently in response to Alice’s unexpected attention to a nipple. “The second guy,” she murmured in a distracted voice. “He was too long.”
“If it hurt maybe you put him in the wrong place.”
Rosalind’s stuttered, “But, but …”
“Right!” cried Alice with a giggle. “They can’t be too long there.”
“Are you … sure?”
“Try your big guy and you’ll see. Of course they can be too fat there. Was he too fat?”
“Oh, no!” Rosalind breathed dreamily. “He was perfect that way.”
Damn it!
“I want that too.” Alice’s hand frankly palmed the breast. Suddenly Rosalind’s cheek was so close the proximity cut off the light. Apparently Alice had kissed it. “Do you ever play with dolls?” she whispered.
I had a glimpse of Rosalind’s full face before the scene dimmed again. “I’ve never had a live doll,” she said in a quivery voice whose passion I recognized.
Both fell back onto the bed. Alice must have landed atop the other’s naked body. Both made tiny moaning sounds in curious harmony. After many mewling kisses Alice brushed her face quickly over the small breasts and flat stomach to find the moist pubic bush. With the experience of decades plus recent practice with Clara, Alice well knew what stimulates girls. She rapidly brought the elder to a screaming climax.
Shortly she backed away from an inflamed, wet clitoris and stood up. The darkness of her dress passed upward over her eyes, but she remained focused on Rosalind’s face, still registering its surprised delight in the quickness and deft satisfaction of that orgasm.
When Alice arose after removing panties and stockings, the reclining girl’s eyes raked her thoroughly. “You have the legs of an older girl, but the rest of you is only ten.”
“Almost eleven,” Alice corrected and returned to cuddle on the bed.
They were soon squirming their bodies together. The scene in the viewer wobbled enough to make me dizzy. After a while Alice fell back. Rosalind crouched beyond the hairless crotch to explore her new doll, to kiss its body, to fondle it and from the visible wrist contortion, to insert some fingers.
“I had to do that,” Rosalind giggled, tasting them afterwards. “I needed to prove you were truly not a virgin.”
Alice giggled. “What if I had been?”
“I don’t know.” The elder’s eyes widened at first but narrowed with a scornful laugh. “Not a chance of that! No virgin would know how to make me come so quickly.”
She took a breath. “Except for your legs, you look exactly like a little girl, but now I know better.” She chuckled. “Maybe you told that waiter the truth. I think you could certainly handle a grown man. If it were summer I’d have a cucumber and we could pretend it was a fat cock.”
“I prefer the real thing,” Alice remarked agreeably. “But right now I’d like something more gentle.”
Her hands appeared, pulling Rosalind’s head lower.
“I’ve never done this before,” the older girl protested nervously, but allowed her face to approach the soft stomach.
“You know how, Ros. You know exactly what to do.”
Alice’s hands fell away. She seemed to wait in total passivity after raising her knees and turning her hips upward. Rosalind’s eyes, staring with an almost ludicrous mixture of anticipation, timidity and reluctance, hovered just above the pale flesh at the bottom of the young belly — which writhed suddenly, accompanied by a soprano gasp.
“Oh, yes!” Alice sighed after some moments. “Now do me fast!” Her whole torso quivered and … the lights chose that moment to go out just as the young girl screamed.
Then I understood. She had clenched her eyes shut. Had Clara actually put her “camera” inside the girl’s eye?
The eyes fluttered open in time to reveal Rosalind rising to hands and knees.
“Was that good?” the elder asked. “Did I do it right, darling? As good as Tim?”
Her face approached. They folded into a gentle embrace.
“As good as Clara,” the young girl admitted dreamily.
“Clara!” Rosalind exclaimed, her eyes large in excited surprise. She sat up with an avid expression. “Does Tim do Clara too?”
“Yes.”
“You certainly have a naughty family,” the older girl remarked with a nervous laugh.
“That’s true,” Alice admitted. The perspective changed. Perhaps she had risen on an elbow. “But you love naughtiness too. Well, we can be naughty for the rest of the afternoon. Do you have any, uh, toys to play with?”
Rosalind’s pretty face took on an adventurous look. “I have a kielbasa,” she said with rising excitement. “It’s not as thick as a cucumber, but …’
“It’ll do,” Alice declared, lying back languidly on the bed. Again the lights went out.
“I’ll be right back!” Rosalind said breathlessly. I heard the unmistakable sound of a drawer pulled open, but the scene remained dark.
* * *
One afternoon about two weeks later when I had hung up my coats and flopped on the couch beside Clara, I found Fuzzytop waiting with a glass of coke on ice. That’s the way I love it, but the ice crusher built into the refrigerator door hasn’t been invented yet. A monkey, however, who is able and willing to take ice cubes from the freezer compartment, bash them up with a hammer in a cloth bag, scrape the results into a tumbler and pour coke over it, is even better than the machine, which after all can only do a part of that.
But as I thanked him and took the glass, the little bastard widened his tongue and deliberately licked my fingers. It tickled, almost causing me to spill the drink. He knows I hate that, at least from another male. He sat back on his haunches, stared up at me and made the “Tch-tch-tch-tch” sounds that Clara has declared to be Capuchin laughter.
“You little devil,” I intoned, which sent him away, chattering more frenziedly.
“He loves you, Tim,” advised Clara behind a warm smile, “almost as much as I do.”
“Why does he love my taste so much?”
Her smile became a giggle but she shook her head. “That’s not why he licks your fingers.”
“Yeah, I know. What he really loves is to annoy me.”
“Not even that, though he does love for you to recognize his existence. Think about it. When was the last time you washed your hands?”
I blinked. “I guess this morning.”
“Right. The Capuchins have much better developed senses of taste and smell than we. If he could speak I’m sure he’d tell you everything you’ve handled since you left here this morning.”
I sneered, “No doubt including how many times I stroked my dick.”
She chuckled, though with less humor. “I’m interested in that too, Tim. If it were possible, I’d love to follow you around and do it for you.”
I had to laugh a little. “You almost sound like you mean it.”
“Oh, I do, Tim. You have the sweetest little organ in the world.”
I cringed. “Emphasis on little, eh, Alice?”
The girl looked up with a snicker. “Enjoy it while you’ve got it.”
“Enjoy it?”
“Ask Clara. More bang for the buck in the little ones — for the owner, that is.”
“What are you talking about?”
“Tell him, Clara.”
The woman looked at me. “The lower blood volume and surface area result in marginally greater overall stamina.”
“You have measured this somehow?”
“Not I, but I have the results of a kinsey investigation in, ah, 2104, your reckoning, which produced such measurements. It only stands to reason, Tim.”
I spread my hands. “That may very well be true. That you claim it is good enough for me. But don’t you broads understand the problem better than that?
“Broads!” repeated Clara.
“Hey, don’t knock it!” Alice advised smugly. Damned if she didn’t sit straighter and twist her ass around! “What problem do you mean?”
“The problem of having a little dick!” I thundered.
Both sets of brows knit. “Explain, please,” intoned Alice.
“Who cares about stamina? The problem with having a little dick is you women prefer larger ones.”
“We do?” asked Alice.
“My god! Am I suddenly in the Land of Oz? Didn’t you and Rosalind go ga-ga about fat ones just this month?”
They stared at me. Clara smiled slowly. “We all love your little one, Tim.”
That made me feel slightly better, especially when Alice chimed in agreement. I sat back, sipped my coke and commented with a touch of smugness, “At least it’s the largest one in this house.”
“And we’ll take care of it,” Alice declared. “Just wait till you grow up.”
I sniffed. “I’m afraid to ask what that means” — which was literally true and suggested a fast change of subject. “What do your histories say, Clara, about the date when Chicago gets a reliable TV station?”
“You want to watch television?” asked Alice. “I can’t believe you said that.” She looked at Clara. “He bragged that he wouldn’t have a TV in his house.”
“That’s not true,” I retorted. “My palmtop could receive the news. On nine-eleven I hardly looked at anything else.”
“Nine-eleven?” asked Clara. “Oh, you mean those buildings in New York.”
“Poor Tim is bored.” Alice got to her feet and crossed the room to hand me an opera glass and an earpiece. “Here, if you want to watch TV.”
“What is it? — not more of you and Rosalind, I hope!”
Alice didn’t smile. “Just my family obligation.”
I took the device almost reluctantly. She studied me contemplatively.
In the viewer I was again seeing through her eyes. She shrugged off a heavy woolen coat immediately upon entering the foyer of some building, tossed it on a chair near the front door and looked back at the man behind her. I recognized him from my own experience of the last two weeks: FBI Agent David Campbell. He was more deliberate and hung his coat on a rack. They were in the commuter lounge, empty as usual because most local students preferred the dorm population to their own company.
The girl, tall for a ten year old, stood close to the large young man and grinned into his face. “But you know it’s true,” she said insistently, obviously continuing a discussion begun earlier. “You’ve been briefed. I’m really not ten years old and you don’t have to treat me like a little girl.”
He shook his head. “I’ve been told some strange things about you and your cousin, Alice, things I don’t think about because frankly they’re incredible, whoever says so! As far as I’m concerned, you’re just what you appear to be: a kid no older than my brother’s daughter.
Clara had improved the glasses again. I could feel the tension in my own face when Alice scowled, as she did now. She went into the main room where she flopped on a davenport, one leg half raised against the back of it while the other splayed to the floor. Her skirt bunched up to reveal shapely legs from white anklets to panties. She obviously knew what she was doing, because she ran fingertips along one inner thigh and stared up at the man, who took a chair nearby.
He groused, “I’m not supposed to be talking to you, except in an emergency. Hell, I’m not even supposed to follow you in here, at least not into the same room. You know all that, don’t you?”
She shrugged. “I don’t care about your rules.”
He took a breath and asked patiently, “What was so urgent, Alice?”
“Does your brother’s daughter sit in your lap?” she asked, now palming the thigh and kneading it.
“Sometimes, sure.” he replied in a distracted voice, his attention riveted on the exhibition before him.
“And squirm around deliberately?”
“Deliberately? I, ah, I don’t —”
“Does she masturbate?”
His eyes widened in shock. “What? How would I know? She, she must be too young for —”
“Many girls start at that age,” Alice persisted, a finger now tracing a crease in the front of her panties. “They discover the pleasure even before they develop hair or boobs.”
Campbell gawked as the girl’s hand slipped beneath the elastic top of her panties.
She asked as if continuing the statement, “You’d put a grown man in jail for violating a ten year old, wouldn’t you, Davy?”
It was a reasonable question to ask a lawman but she spoke the words distantly. She brazenly began to diddle herself.
“Yes, of course!” he replied with a nervous squeak, mouth agape. “Such guys should be shot!”
“But which is the greater sin — ravishing a young body or corrupting an innocent mind?” She stared at him intently.
His mouth sagged, eyes following the masturbating fingers, but he managed a cop’s response. “The law does not make a distinction. The age of consent is specific.”
“The age of consent!” Alice exclaimed. She wriggled languidly against the fist in her panties. “It’s the mind that drives sex, not the body. Can’t you imagine a boobless grown woman who has shaved her pubes to resemble a ten year old? Would she not meet your age criterion?”
Campbell shook his head as if to clear it. He smiled broadly. “Yes, that’s true, but why would an adult man be sexually interested in a hairless and titless female body?”
Alice uttered a small gasp and her body stiffened momentarily. I’ll say Clara had improved these glasses — I even felt a tingle!
The girl retrieved her hand from the panties and raised it to her face to suck on the forefinger.
“Why? For curiosity, perhaps,” she answered with a lascivious grin. “Especially if close up the woman could not be distinguished from a real ten year old.”
“That would be a perversion!” the man objected, yet his voice faltered.
“Yes,” Alice cooed seductively, “wouldn’t it?”
He stared blankly at her then stood and moved toward the hallway, perhaps seeking to put some distance between himself and the young temptress on the couch.
“Your aunt is waiting for you,” he said without turning to her.
“She knows I sometimes stop at the library.” Alice got to her feet and moved silently to stand behind him, adding in childish tones, “We have at least two hours, Davy.” She caressed his back.
He emitted a squawk and faced her. She stood close, more than a head shorter than he, her ponytail not quite grazing his chin. She took his hand in hers.
“I know a private place we can go,” she said softly with head against his chest. “And I know how to keep secrets better than anyone in the FBI.”
With hands gently on her shoulders he held her back to gaze into eyes that were limpid and inviting, judging by the reflected expression in his own.
“This is not right,” he said unconvincingly, even to himself.
Without a word of retort she took his hand and pulled him along the hallway to a door with flaking green paint. It opened to reveal a narrow, dusty staircase that led to an upper level above the lounge.
“Tim and I discovered this place last week,” she exclaimed in a tone of rising excitement. She closed the door behind them and pushed him up the stairs before her.
The stairs opened into a desolate windowless room, empty except for a wooden chair, a table and a bed at the head of which lay a rolled up, striped mattress. Campbell seemed reluctant to leave the head of the stairs, but Alice thrust him inside.
“No one ever comes here,” she whispered encouragingly yet with a hint of caution.
“How would you know?” he objected. “You’re as new to the university as I.”
He surveyed the place like a cop, which took just seconds considering the small, bare space. When he turned to the bed he found that Alice had rolled down the mattress and was sitting upon it demurely with hands in lap. He stood awkwardly in front of the girl and glanced at the stairway.
“Relax, Davy. I bolted the door from the inside.”
“What is this place?”
“Tim and I think it was meant for an after-hours guard or caretaker. But they found they didn’t need him.” She patted a spot next to her.
“Alice,” he began and then fell silent.
Clearly whatever had induced him to accompany the girl up the stairs was rapidly dissipating. Alice pulled on his arm. He sat stiffly beside her, leaning slightly away. She put her arms around his neck to bring him close.
“Let’s start by kissing,” she breathed against his lips.
He moved away abruptly and almost stood. “Please, Alice! You’re too small.”
“Too small? At least you didn’t say too young. I’d like to experience something big, Davy. Do you have it? I’m not a virgin, you know. You won’t hurt me.”
“Not a virgin!” He laughed scornfully. “What have you tried, the little boy next door?”
She smiled. “You guys would have a record of that, I expect.” She held up her forefingers about a foot apart. “Would you believe — I mean, I’ve used a kielbasa this long.”
“You — You’re pulling my leg. You couldn’t begin to get that in you.”
“Can’t I? Yours isn’t that long, is it, Davy?”
“Ah, not quite.”
“Ooo! I’ll bet it’s lovely.”
“God, kid, do you have any idea what you’re doing to me?”
“Making that lovely thing hard as a rock, I hope.”
“Oh, Jesus!” Whether because of curiosity or lust or more likely both, the man surrendered. Sadly declaiming, “You’re proving one thing: I for sure don’t belong in the FBI!” he embraced the girl for a kiss and ran his free hand up an illicit, smooth thigh until finger tips found her panties and the soft labia. I heard one small thud on the wooden floor and then another as Alice kicked off her boots. They leaned back onto the mattress, kissing passionately, his hand inside the panties, fingers exploring the hairless groin.
“Kiss me down there!” she gasped. “You’ll never find one fresher.”
In an instant he was on his knees pulling the panties down graceful young legs that dangled off the bed. With trembling hands he pushed up the skirt to see more clearly the naked, puffy lips with clit hood protruding invitingly. Doubtlessly he was familiar with the anatomy but never one so new, except perhaps glances stolen of careless sisters. He paused to gaze, tongue extended, then set to work with deft, practiced kisses, licks and gentle sucking. Alice responded immediately, squirming in delight, groans quickly reaching a crescendo until she cried aloud and pushed insistently at his head.
“Do it now!” she pleaded in a ragged voice, pulling on his ears, wanting him atop her.
But her lover had sudden second thoughts even as he undid the belt and unbuttoned his fly. When he raised his head to look at the girl he discovered she had undone her blouse to expose a flat chest with small nipples surmounting vague puffiness. As if in a dream he continued to expose himself, pushing down trousers and underpants, but his mighty manhood began to shrivel at the sight of a half naked ten year-old.
“I can’t do this,” he moaned to the girl, who raised herself on elbows to assess the problem.
“Jesus Christ, man!” she exclaimed in outrage. “You can’t leave me hanging!”
“I’m sorry, Alice,” he said resolutely, although his hand caressed a soft thigh. “I can’t fuck a child.”
“Get up here!” she commanded like an angry aunt and grabbed his arms.
He rose to his feet and then lay beside her on his back with no evident intention to proceed further. Alice had other plans. She knelt above him with a hand grasping his soft member. After several futile pumps she leaned down to take the head of it into her mouth. This had the desired effect, and it quickly grew to seven or more hard inches. With a determined look on her attractive face she swung a leg over the man and wriggled the pole into her until she sat comfortably upon his groin.
“Marvelous!” she exclaimed, a note of triumph in her voice. “Just marvelous!”
With the deed done, Campbell seemed to relax and enjoy the experience. He ran his hands up and down the girlish thighs and began to thrust urgently. When she leaned down to kiss him, he embraced her and finally fucked in earnest. His powerful, lengthy jabs did not cause her any distress. Moaning excitedly, she covered his face with kisses. Her orgasm was not dramatic or particularly loud; a delighted “Eek!” marked her finale. Campbell, however, roared like a bull soon afterwards
Alice sat upright atop him as the penis wilted inside her. She appeared to be very pleased with herself.
“I’ve wondered what it would feel like to have this small body fucked by a large cock,” she announced in high spirits. “The first time it happened I was too drunk to really appreciate it.”
His lust abated, Campbell’s troubled expression revealed conflicting emotions; fear of the consequences, disgust at himself and love for the impish girl-woman. He reached up to finger a boyish nipple.
“I could get a place for us, Alice,” he said fawningly. “Somewhere we could meet together. It would be exciting to watch your body grow to adulthood.”
“I doubt you could afford that on a cop’s pay, Davy,” she responded cruelly as she dismounted. “And besides I know being around you all the time would bore me. I was just curious. You did a good job, but this was a one-shot experiment, a one-night stand, if you know what I mean.”
The man’s face betrayed both anger and consternation. “You can’t mean you just used me for your own pleasure!” he exclaimed indignantly. “I suggest you think over my offer more seriously.”
“Can’t I mean it?” Her menacing expression was reflected in his wide eyes. “This never happened, Davy. If you insist that it did, you’ll be very sorry. I suggest you think that over!”