Chapter 10

Lenny parted from the dusky gypsy-beauty with some sadness. She knew that a grueling and perhaps dangerous task still lay ahead of her. After leaving a full report with Lenora she returned to her own apartment and changed into a suit and put her silky blonde hair up in a bun.

"That," she said snappily to the mirror, ought to do for the sex-machine nuts."

She then caught a cross-town cab for the office of Masters McClain. The day, for this young woman at least, had just barely begun.

Though Masters McClain was waiting for her in his office at seven o'clock, he only saw her briefly. He instructed her to report to Mr. Cubbings immediately for a briefing on the performance.

"By the way, Miss Morgan," the dwarfish technology magnate snapped as she was about to leave his office, "I hope you brought your toothbrush."

"Toothbrush?"

"Yes," he grinned wickedly over his pencil-thin cigar, "you see, the performance will begin tonight at eleven o'clock, precisely. We'll make some overnight arrangements for you immediately after the performance. Unless, of course, you make some of your own." With this last comment, the little man arched his eyebrows scandalously and gestured for her to get out of his office.

Lenny rushed down the hall to the office of the second-in- command, Mr. Harold Cubbings.

Cubbings was waiting for her with a somewhat displeased look.

"Honestly," he complained, "I never know what the hell Masters is up to. To think of his inviting the guests for this very night."

"If it's so inconvenient," Lenny interceded, "couldn't you just postpone it and notify the..."

"Damn it, no!" snapped the irate Cubbings, "that's the point-- the bastards are all as important as hell, they have to be invited to this damned bullroar months in advance."

"You mean that these guests were chosen before I was even hired?"

"Could it be any other way?" Cubbings rubbed his forehead despondently with the back of his sweating hand. "The bastard gambles on everything. Why, we'd begun advertising this little machine long before it was even off the fucking drawing boards."

Lenny noticed with some dismay that it was exceedingly difficult to pick out Cubbings' English accent when he was cursing so fluently. He sounded for all the world like a Boston stevedore; nevertheless, he was frightening her some with this talk of the performance. These people were obviously rather influential, if they were invited so far in advance. They must be the most prominent figures in American society.

It was a question of time, now. Somehow or other, the young Lenny Morgan had to get word out to Lenora or Boss Carl that the performance was to be tonight. The arrangements for the Carl Industries' counter-plot were not simple in any sense of the word.

If she failed to get word through to her compatriots, the elite and cosmopolitan citizens might very well fall for McClain's absurd and degenerate plan. Fall! She thought bitterly, they would probably swallow the whole thing, hook, line and sinker!

There was no question in Lenny's pressured mind that these people--once they were convinced that the xylotrope was a desirable sexual status device--would lead millions of less advantaged and more envious dupes to stampede them like mistletoe in Christmas season.

A shiver coursed down Lenny Morgan's spine as the weak Cubbings began to give her the necessary instructions for sale of the fiendish xylotrope.

"The main difficulty, of course," Cubbings had gained some semblance of self-control and was trying to rid himself of his plague of doubts by sounding as officiously confident as possible, "it is obvious isn't it, the main difficulty will be in convincing these devils that the xylotrope is more exciting, that isn't quite the right word, huh, that the xylotrope is more exotic as an experience than any physical relationship with a living body could ever be."

Boss Carl's parting instructions came up into the very back of Lenny's mind. She stiffened slightly as she heard them echoing through her consciousness once more.

"The trick is, baby," Boss Carl had admonished her with a gesture of putrid cigar smoke through the rancid air, "the whole trick for you is to make these dupes see that the one fault of this foul machine that McClain is putting on the market, the one single, fatal fault..."

Desperately, Lenny tried to bring the words into her memory, into clear focus in the edges of her mind. They would not come, however, everything was mixed up with the ugly control board blinking red lights and visions of gypsy queens flaunting their bodies with an almost holy abandon.

"What?" she asked suddenly, realizing that not a single word from Cubbings' mouth had entered her tormented skull. "What did you say, Cubbie?"

Harold Cubbings tried to look as out-of-patience as he possibly could. He performed this remarkable feat of physiognomical control by mimicking the exasperated expressions he had seen so often on the faces of those people to whom he attempted to tell amusing anecdotes from his past, or those even less fortunate bastards to whom he had on occasion imparted one of his latest stale jokes.

"I said," the slightly demented Britisher began again, "that the great problem you will face is..."

"Yes," Lenny leaned forward eagerly, hoping that she might make some connection between his "crucial problem" and her own. "Yes? What?"

"Uhhh! Damn it all! What bloody difference does it make!"

"I think it must make whole lots of difference, Mr. Cubbings," Lenny chirped helpfully, "or else you wouldn't have brought the whole business up at all."

"Yeah, bloody lot of difference."

The second-in-command was obviously suffering from a sudden recurrence of his old battle fatigue. His face had fondly smiled at the young woman before him, then contorted violently into a most horrible expression of disgust. Immediately, after these symptoms appeared the fellow went ash white and fell over backwards in his electronic swivel chair.

Lenny coughed her embarrassment and stood quickly. She supposed that she had ought to do something to help the weird character. On the other hand, her mother had always told her not to touch anyone who was having a fit.

"Are you having a fit, Mr. Cubbings?"

He scrambled clumsily up from behind the swivel chair and smiled weakly.

"No, of course not, just this infernal machine. For hell's sake!" he slid easily into a rather uneducated cockney accent. This both surprised and pleased young Lenny Morgan, at least he wasn't lying about being English, she thought.

"Excuse me, Miss Morgan," he said primly adjusting his wide tie carefully. "It was just a slip of the tongue, you understand, connected with my old war injuries."

"Lenny," he went on more seriously, attempting to regain some sort of control of the situation, "the responsibilities that you carry on your slender, lovely shoulders are manifold."

Lenny nodded, not really knowing what manifold meant--but not particularly caring inasmuch as she knew that it didn't have to mean anything, coming out of the rather garbled mouth of Cubbings.

"You must completely commit these patrons of ours to a life of sensual bliss with the xylotrope and its soon-to-be-completed companion--the zylotrope. The zylotrope, naturally, will be the version of the device that is being designed for male enjoyment."

"I understand that, sir," Lenny commented coldly, "but there was something you were trying to say before-something about a special problem that I might have in selling this machine."

He nodded. "Yes, there will be one particular problem involved with your demonstration. You have to convince these suckers that our machine is more desirable from the psychosexual point of view than any woman-man or woman-woman or even, I shudder to think of it, woman-animal relationship-could ever be conceived to be!"

"You mean, sexier?"

"Precisely--as you know, sex is not only physical but mental. The essence of your assignment is to indoctrinate the potential customer with the idea that there is something, well, dirtier in sex with a zylotrope or xylotrope than with any living thing."

"Dirtier?"

"Yes. You see, Miss Morgan, you may not be aware of it--but most sexual relationships are enjoyed partly because of the sensation of guilt they engender."

"Guilt?"

"Exactly!" Cubbings congratulated himself on how easily the young woman was catching on to his simple explanation of a complicated subject.

Lenny sighed sadly, she didn't actually understand a single word this demented man was trying to say to her--but one thing was obvious to her anyhow--he knew absolutely nothing about sex!

"So you see," Cubbings went on eloquently, "the man is unfaithful to his wife, not because the other woman is inherently more attractive--but because she is forbidden fruit. The same goes for all types of homosexual relations and really despicable things like relationships with animals."

He stared at her proudly.

She nodded. Not a word of what he had said made any sense to her at all.

Except! Suddenly the clue in his statement brought back everything that Boss Carl had said to her in those last, critically important instructions.

"The thing that makes the ultimate difference, is your ability to have a good sex thing going with the animals. But the real thing--the final element needed--that thing is the human need to sin!