She took a sip of her brandy and said approvingly, “And who has a better right?”
So, he was right, she did recognize him. He tried his. In actuality, Don Mathers had never been in a whorehouse before. They were an unknown in Center City; much too much amateur competition. The brandy was excellent. Not as good as what he had in the penthouse gardens of Lawrence Demming, of course, but unbelievably good. Guzzle wasn’t particularly palatable these days, you drank for the effect, not the taste.
He said, “This is very good guzzle.”
She ignored the term he used and said, “It was left to me by my grandfather. There was a note attached. He said it was to await a notable occasion. My grandfather carried the Legion of Honor, the Croix de Guerre—and various other decorations.”
Don, despite being slightly drenched, tried to rise to the occasion, though in a whorehouse. He raised his glass and said, “To your grandfather and to his decorations which I am convinced he deserved manyfold.”
She smiled in gratitude, lifted her own glass in answer to the toast, but said, “They were as nothing, compared to your own decoration, Monsieur.”
She recognized him, all right. Evidently, in a Parisian bordello they pretended, even if they knew who you were, that they didn’t. At least, they didn’t use your name.
Girls began to drift into the large sitting room. And, on the face of it, they had been alerted to his identity since they were inclined to be a bit wide-eyed. They carried on the theme of the house in their dress. Some were fully clothed in much the same style as the madam. Some were in the negligee of an earlier age, some in ludicrous underwear complete to baggy bloomers, or whatever they called them.
They came in all sizes and flavors, and, by the time all had gathered, some score of them, they represented just about every type of the feminine beauty Earth produced, ranging from Sengalese ebony to the blondness of the Finns, in complexion; from overly thin to overly plump in figure; from several types of Orientals to a Black Irish girl who was possibly the most striking of all to Don’s North American taste.
They took seats around the room, or draped themselves here and there in what he assumed were meant to be seductive poses. The last to enter had him gawking at first. It was a little girl, say of eleven or twelve, and she was dressed like Alice In Wonderland of the early illustrations. It wasn’t until he saw her closer up that he realized that in spite of her stature and dress she was somewhat older than projected.
Twenty of them! he thought. Surely this place couldn’t boast any more.
He said to his hostess, “But haven’t you any other, uh,
She smiled. “We sent them all away. The establishment is yours, exclusively.”
“Sent them away?” he said. “How could you do that without an uproar?”
She laughed in great amusement. “I had them informed, through the girls, that we were expecting a raid by the flics.”
“Flics?”
“The police. They departed hurriedly. And now, would Monsieur, perhaps, wish to see an exhibition?”
Don Mathers had never seen an exhibition, as she called it, though he had read about them in older books. Matters involving donkeys and so forth. The fact was, particularly in America, matters pornographic were becoming all but unknown. There had been a swing of the pendulum, since the all-out days of the 60s and 70s, which had accelerated after the coming of the Kradens. The booming Universal Reformed Church had taken a particularly dim view of all-out sexual freedom. The only thing that truly mattered was the defense against the extraterrestrials and frivolity was frowned upon. Don Mathers had been raised in this atmosphere and though he had never really thought it out, subconsciously revolted against other than the standard sex practices.
“I… I guess not,” he said, bolting back the remainder of his brandy.
She gave him another generous tot and said, “Perhaps Monsieur would rather just select two or three of the girls and… retire. Or perhaps Monsieur enjoys even more… at a time.”
“Two or three?” Don said blankly, taking down another healthy gulp of fine brandy which should have been treated with more appreciation. “What would I do with two or three at a time?”
One of the platinum blondes who boasted a fabulous derriere, among other attributes, shrilled a laugh and said, with a British accent, “We know tricks.”
Don cleared his throat.
The madam had a sudden inspiration and came to her feet. “Or, I know something that might intrigue Monsieur. I believe it is the only one in existence.”
Don Mathers had become somewhat overwhelmed by all of this available pulchritude. He was glad to follow her.
She led him up a flight of stairs, down a corridor which continued to maintain the Victorian decor, and to a very dimly lit bedroom.
On the bed, beneath the antique canopy, was stretched a stunningly beautiful brunette, quite nude.
Madam said, “The idea was given us by a fellow American of yours. It is based on a limerick, evidently famed in your land. It begins,
Don said hurriedly, I’ve heard it.” He had carried his glass with him. He took another jolt, even as he stared. “You mean, well, that’s not a real girl?” he said.
She laughed, pleased with herself and the ingenuity of it all. “No, it
Don had a sour taste in his mouth. He said, “As I recall one version of the last line of the limerick was,
“Oh, not at all,” she assured him hastily. “No difficulty whatsoever.”
But that had been the first night of his stay in Paris. As in Geneva earlier, one day, one night, faded into another, and finally, together with his drinking friends, who had accumulated one by one, he was on his way back to North America. It was a well-lubricated flight.
The aircraft, one of the various devoted to high echelon brass, was lavishly equipped. It even had bedrooms and baths, though none of the party took time out to either bathe or sleep. The flight wasn’t as long as all that.
Although all outranked him, and most of them considerably, Don was the focus of the party. Most of them were chairborne officers, only one or two had ever seen space duty. None had ever seen a single Kraden. Everything he said had them round-eyed.
A fleet admiral said, “Colonel Mathers, I’ve never heard a detailed account of your action. Could you give us a blow by blow description?”
Don took a pull at his drink, he seldom, these days, seemed to be without a drink in his hand and said, modestly, “Well, it all happened so fast that parts of it are blank to me.”
A commodore pressed him. “The last thing we saw from the video-tapes, you had just told your admiral that you were going in, and we could see you cocking your flakflak gun. You blanked out the screen and the scanners and the next thing we saw were the shots Commodore Franco of Monitor Task Force Three took of both the Kraden wreck and your One Man Scout. Couldn’t you fill us in?”
“Well…” Don began.
They all learned forward. One stretched forth a bottle and refilled his glass.
He said, “I came in as fast as I could and got as close as I could, figuring, I suppose, that the closer I was the more difficult it would be for them to bring their weapons to bear on me. Sometimes, I was within a meter or two of their hull.”
“Almighty Ultimate,” one of them muttered.
“On my first pass, I raked them from stern to bow. Then I flipped over—I have a suspicion it was the quickest turn in the history of the One Man Scout—and started back, raking them again.”
“Were they firing at you?” A fleet admiral broke in.
The others scowled at him for interrupting.
But Don looked at him and frowned, as though trying to remember details. “In actuality, I don’t know. I suppose so. Things were going so fast, I can’t truly remember. I came back and raked them again from bow to stern. I hadn’t the time to make out what effect my flakflak gun was having, if any. I wasn’t sure but that their defenses’ were proof against anything as puny as a short beam flakflak. At any rate, I rolled and hit them again
