The Sex Sphere Read online

  With the moon as bright as it was, I was going to have to move fast. It was a choice of up or down. The kidnappers had wanted to take me down, so I chose up, first slipping off my shoes.

  With a leap and a wriggle I got up onto the butt of one of the slanting support walls. I was lucky, for it wasn't half-collapsed like some of the others. My wall angled smoothly all the way to the top. Silently I rushed up the moon-silvered stone slope. There was a puddle of shadow by the parapet of the outer wall. I flung myself into the shadow just as the wart stepped into the stadium. He was cradling a machine gun with a wire stock.

  I pressed myself deeper into the shadow, hardly daring to breathe. He found my shoes, glanced up, failed to see me, walked over to the edge of the arena and stared down. Virgilio called something from outside, and the wart called something back. For a while nothing happened, and then I saw the guard moving about in the arena's sunken maze, machine gun at the ready. The little wart followed the guard's movements like a hunter watching a bird dog.

  I was going to have to do something before they searched up here. My shoes were right down there, showing them where to look.

  I wormed a bit higher and peered down the outer wall to the ground. Quite a drop, twenty-five meters at least. But the wall was cracked and pocked enough to climb down. I decided to go for it.

  Virgilio had joined the wart in staring down into the arena, where the guard was hoping to flush me out. Neither of them saw me slink out of my shadow-pool and slide over the edge.

  The low moon lit up every cranny and fissure of the stone. I picked my way down over some decorative ledges. So far, so good. Next came a bunch of arches separated by pillars. I hung onto one of the cornices and swung my legs down, scissoring madly. Finally I got them wrapped around a big column. I leaned my head back and let go with my hands, starting a slide down the shaft. I caught the column with my arms and got the next few meters for free.

  When I slammed into the column's base I almost lost hold. Fatigue. I was still too high above the street to jump, and the next stretch of wall looked dangerously smooth. I got in one of the arch's shadows and sat down to rest. I'd killed my back, torn a fingernail and rubbed my cheek raw. Some more moldings and another slide down a column and I'd be on the street. If I didn't fall on my head. I sat there sucking my hurt finger.

  I could see my watch. 3:30. The hangover from yesterday's drinking was starting up.

  Virgilio's smooth voice came drifting down from somewhere overhead. What was the matter with those guys? Were they political terrorists or just in it for the money? They thought I was some bigwig from the American Embassy. I cursed myself for the lie.

  God, I was tired. Utterly drained. Maybe it would be a good idea to just stay put. If I started running off down the street, they'd spot me and chase me down. Every now and then a little truck full of vegetables buzzed by, but other than that there was no one to turn to.

  It seemed fairly safe where I was. My sheltering arch opened into an arcade ringing the second story of the Colosseum, but this arcade wasn't connected, in any obvious way, to the central area where they were looking for me. I was so tired that the stone behind my back felt like foam rubber. I decided to stay here till morning. Then the rats would go back into their holes, and I'd get a cab back to the hotel, and we'd get the hell out of Italy. I had no intention of getting involved with Italian police. Just put me and Sybil and Tom and Ida on the train back to Heidelberg. Basta!

  I could have dropped right off to sleep, except that I had to piss. That last beer on its way out. I struggled to my feet and stepped over to the other side of the arch, leaned up against the cool stone and . . .

  "ECCO!" screamed a voice below. The madman with the robot!

  The crazy rotten fuck. Waving his goddamn light-up toy. I'd show him death rays! Aiming quickly, I fired my pistol at him, capering on the pavement some ten meters below. Missed. No time for another shot. I could hear someone running down some stairs to my left. I took off down the arcade in the other direction.

  And ran right into Virgilio. He darted out at me from a shadow and had his pistol back before I knew what had happened.

  "You make good sport, Alvino." He twisted my arm behind me in a hammerlock and pressed the gun against my spine. "Come quickly now."

  I groaned and went along quietly. Down the stairs to the ground-level arcade. Down more stairs. Some doors and stairs again. Doors. A cubical concrete room lit by a single caged light bulb.

  The guard was there, and the madman, and a businessman-gangster. The businessman-gangster seemed to be running the show. He was comfortably overweight, with amused, blinking eyes. They called him Minos.

  At his direction, Virgilio put leg-irons on me, and chained the irons to a heavy staple set into the wall. Minos watched from a sofa across the room. I had a pile of rags to sit on. The guard left, while the madman stood watch with a machine gun.

  "You are from the US Embassy," Virgilio began.

  "I am not. I'm just a poor physicist living in Germany on a research grant."

  "Fancy words," Virgilio replied. "Signifying nothing." Now that he was no longer playing the pimp, his English had improved considerably.

  "You don't have any girls at all, do you?" I demanded. "Your whole living is kidnapping people off the Via Veneto. How long do you think you can get away with it?"

  "Virgilio is a very good trapper," Minos remarked in his mild, cultured voice. He had a cupid's-bow mouth. He looked as clean and well cared for as a newborn baby. "I often buy from him. But how much are you worth?"

  "He is very important," Virgilio insisted. "The Embassy will pay billions of lire. I'll let you have him for only one million."

  "He says he's merely a scientist," Minos said doubtfully. "Perhaps you should just . . . " He made a negligent, lethal hand-gesture. "Why couldn't you get me a spy?"

  "Kree kree," the madman said, swinging his machine gun around. "Kree kree kree." The businessman-gangster said something to him, and he sat down on the sofa too, with his robot on one knee and the machine gun on the other. They talked quietly for a minute. The madman's name seemed to be Lafcadio.

  Virgilio paced back and forth slowly, exuding menace. Suddenly he stopped and stood over me, his fists clenched.

  "You are from the US Embassy."

  "Don't start hitting me," I said in alarm. "If you want to think that, you just go right ahead. Phone them up when they open. It shouldn't be much longer." I looked at my watch. It was almost 5:00.

  "What kind of physicist?" Minos wanted to know. "Lafcadio was a physicist, too, before he went crazy. Lafcadio Caron. You know of?"

  Lafcadio Caron? This lunatic? Sure, I'd heard of him. I'd even read some of his papers. He'd been in charge of the proton-decay experiment in the Mont Blanc tunnel. There'd been an accident there a few months ago. But how . . . ?

  "What kind of physics?" Minos repeated. "I must decide if you are of any value."

  "Atoms," I blurted out. "I study atomic and nuclear physics." This was a simplification. My precise specialty was the mathematical analysis of quantum-mechanical Hilbert Space operators.

  "He can build a bomb!" Virgilio cried excitedly. "Just think what the government will pay to stop him!"

  "Maybe I could build an atomic bomb," I said, playing along. "But you'd have to steal me some reactor fuel."

  "Boomawhooma pow pow pow."

  "Perhaps we know where to find some. Or perhaps the Embassy will think we know where." Minos and Virgilio exchanged a significant glance.

  I was getting in deeper all the time. "I'm not a weapons expert," I pointed out. "I'm simply a theoretical physicist doing research on infinite-dimensional space in Heidelberg, Germany. I wrote a little book about dimensions called Geometry and Reality? That helped me get the grant for Heidelberg. And I came to Rome with my wife and children for a vacation. My wife wants to see the Pope at St. Peter's on Easter."

  "Today will be Good Friday," Minos said absently. "A day for human sacrifice." The del
icate little mouth formed a small smile in the fat face. "Get a manifesto from him, Virgilio, just in case. Then contact the Embassy."

  Minos and Virgilio talked a bit more in rapid Italian, patting each other on the shoulders. Minos left, throwing me a smile and a negligent wave of his pinky.

  "OK," Virgilio said to me. "Sit down and write." He dragged a chair and card table over to where I was chained. He had paper and a ball-point pen. Lafcadio still bounced on the couch, making explosion noises and cradling his gun.

  "What's this supposed to be?" I demanded.

  "Self-incrimination. Revolutionary manifesto. Write."

  This is what I wrote:

  I HAVE JOINED THE PEOPLE'S ARMY OF MY OWN FREE WILL. DEATH TO THE FASCIST PIG. CUT OFF HIS BLACK PLASTIC TROTTERS. ROAST HIM WITH GAMMA RAYS. USE EVERYTHING EXCEPT THE SQUEAL. FUCK AMERIKKKA, FUCK KKKOMUNISM, FUCK KKKOD. SINCERELY, DR. ALWIN BITTER, THE ARCHIMEDES OF ANARCHY.

  I wouldn't want to say that I composed the whole message myself, but I did have a hand in it here and there. On one level, I even meant it. But on the level that counts, I didn't mean a word. Honest! I just wanted to get out alive.

  Virgilio was pleased with our collaboration, and taped the note up on the wall. "Here, Alvino," he said, handing me a small machine gun. "Try it on for size."

  The gun was an Uzi, Israeli-made, lethal as a cobra's fang. It had a snap-on wire stock. I clicked the trigger. Empty of course. I realized Virgilio had just wanted to get my fingerprints on the weapon. I threw it at him. He dodged easily, then left, laughing at me. Lafcadio was still there on the couch, standing guard.

  "Per altra via, per altri porti verrai a piaggia, non qui, per passare," he said suddenly, staring at me with glowing eyes.

  I noticed that he had a photograph glued to his robot's face, a photograph of a plump blond woman. His mother? Some lost love? Was this really the famous Lafcadio Caron? No point stirring him up with a question.

  I smiled politely and lay down on the rags to sleep. Maybe by the time I woke up, this would all be over. Virgilio would contact the Embassy, and they'd tell him I was an academic, a scholar, a nobody. Then he'd just have to let me go.

  Or would he? The businessman-gangster hadn't come right out and said so, but I had the impression they might kill me if I wasn't worth a good ransom. Dead men tell no tales.

  I pushed the thought away. Once Virgilio realized his mistake, surely he'd put me out on the street. I wouldn't press charges; he could be sure of that. All I wanted was to get the next train out of Rome. The next train. I drifted off to sleep, a bad sleep filled with bad dreams.

  Chapter Three: Sybil

  The children woke Sybil up. They were in the bathroom playing with the water. Their little voices were very loud on the tiles.

  "Alwin," she called, "make them stop."

  The noise kept on, Ida, five years old, liked to giggle. Tom, seven, liked to roar. He'd only learned the roar recently, from some school friends in Heidelberg.

  "BAAAOOOOUUUUUU! BAAAOOOOUUUUUU! UUUUUUUUUUHHHHHHHOOOOOUUUU!" Tom.

  "Gligeeglegleheeehegligiheeheeteeheeegleeheepeepegigteehee." Ida.

  "Stop the NOISE!" Sybil shouted, "You'll wake everyone in the hotel!"

  Ida gave a happy scream and came running out of the bathroom. She was waving a towel that had been rolled into a loose tube.

  "Poo-worm bite Mama!" she shouted with a burst of laughter, and threw the towel at Sybil. One end of the towel was soaking wet. It smacked onto the bed, right where Alwin's sleeping, reassuring bulk should have been.

  "Is Daddy taking a bath?" Sybil asked.

  "Dada gone!"

  "Tom," she called to her son, invisible in the bathroom. "Where did Daddy go?"

  No answer. She repeated the question. Still no answer.

  Sun was coming in the window. Sybil looked at her watch. 7:30. Nice and early, and good weather. They could do the Forum today. Maybe Alwin had gone downstairs to order coffee for them. But why couldn't he have just phoned room service?

  She got out of bed, a tall woman with voluptuous features and a nice, willowy figure. When she stood still, as she did now for a moment, her body described a gracefully attenuated S. She had a way of standing still and staring, moving only her head and her lovely neck. Craning, Alwin called it.

  Sybil craned at the bathroom door, then went in. Tom was busy floating things in the partially filled tub. A toothbrush case, a dirty metal ashtray, two reddened wine glasses, the drawer of a matchbox, a folded bit of paper. As always, the sight of his bulging, intent forehead filled her with love.

  "Tommy, where's Daddy?"

  "I don't know. I didn't see him yet today."

  Sybil felt the first pang of fear. Alwin must have gone out in the night and gotten into trouble. They had drunk a bottle of the hotel's cheap wine, then made love, and then . . . ? He often got back up after sex, a habit which annoyed her, struck her as slighting; but where could he still be at 7:30 in the morning? How thoughtless could you get?

  "Let's get dressed and go downstairs, children."

  "Is Daddy downstairs?" Tom asked, looking up from his water-play.

  "Yes, I think so." Her voice grew brittle with sudden anger. "Now, don't make Mommy do everything. Find your clothes and put them on. You can wear what you had yesterday. I'll give you new socks and underpants."

  "OK." Tom jumped up and ran into the bedroom, making a race-car noise at the corner. Ida gave an abandoned squeal of delight. When Sybil came back into the bedroom, both of the children were bouncing on the bed.

  "Double Ting!"

  "Triple Ting!"

  "Ostrich Ting!"

  That was one of the children's chants. They were such little people, the children, little elves with their own elvish ways. For a moment Sybil wished that their oldest child, Sorrel, the ringleader, were there too. To simplify the trip a bit, Sorrel had been parked in Frankfurt with Sybil's parents, Lotte and Cortland Burton. Cortland was a big vice-president for Miltech, an international conglomerate of high-tech engineering companies.

  Tom threw a pillow and knocked the phone off the bedside table.

  "That's IT!" cried Sybil, springing into action. "You get those clothes on now or there's no breakfast!"

  "What's for breakfast?" Tom asked in a put-on fussy voice.

  "Yeah," Ida cackled, joining in the joke. "What are we eating for breakfast?"

  "Fried egg with spinach?"

  "Yucky hot milk?"

  "Pancake with pig gravy?"

  "Broken waggy waggy?"

  "Booger pie?"

  "Poo and pee?"

  "BAAAAOOOOUUUUUU!"

  "Gligeeglegleheehegligihee!"

  The children were on the bed, snorting and grunting and rolling around. Sybil lunged forward and caught hold of them. "I'VE HAD IT, KIDS!"

  As the children began to dress, Sybil harangued them. "I don't know why you two can't behave normally. Here we are in Rome for a lovely vacation and you roll around like animals. Now let's go downstairs and find Daddy."

  Alwin was not in the breakfast room, not in the lobby, not to be seen on the street outside. Sybil even walked to the Via Veneto and craned. Pale, empty sunshine. God damn him.

  Back in the hotel, she approached the desk clerk, a cadaverous man with a horse-face. This was Beppo, the night-clerk, tired and waiting to be relieved.

  "Have you seen my husband?"

  Beppo smiled broadly. "Si, si. I see him go in the night. He no come back. Where you think he go?" The last question was a blend of malice and idle curiosity.

  "I don't know!" Sybil exclaimed, her voice rising. Suddenly she was afraid. "Something must have happened to him! Can you call the police for me?" Her hands were shaking.

  Beppo jerked his head and shoulders in an ambiguous gesture . . . part shrug and part nod. "I will attempt. But perhaps no one there today. Venerdì santo."

  "Good Friday," Sybil translated. "Oh Lord, what a mess. Everything will be closed. Try the hospitals, too."

  To
m and Ida bounced past. They held their forearms together and their hands up under their chins. They were playing Easter rabbit. Poor little orphans. Sybil's eyes filled with quick tears.

  The night-clerk dialed a number, listened briefly, then hung up.

  "Impossibile, Signora Bitter. I can do nothing."

  Sybil knew better than to take no for an answer. She could see a light in an office behind the clerk. Someone in there would help her. "I would like to speak to the manager."

  The night-clerk glanced longingly at the lobby doors. Where was Guido the day-clerk, that lazy pig of a Tuscan? Beppo's lips pursed into a thin line of distaste. Perhaps if he ignored this woman she would go away. Find her husband, indeed. "The manager is not here, signora. Perhaps you should go to the carabinieri in person."

  This was a mistake. Beppo had underestimated Sybil's determination. Now she began to scream.

  "WON'T ANYBODY HELP ME? MY HUSBAND MAY BE DYING! WHAT KIND OF HOTEL IS THIS?"

  At the sound of her angry, frightened voice the children came to her side and stood there, wide-eyed and anxious. Some guests looked up from their breakfasts. A porter came over, glaring at Beppo. And then the manager's door opened.

  "Of course," Beppo began. "Of course I will help." He fumbled at the telephone.

  "WON'T ANYBODY HELP ME FIND MY HUSBAND?" Sybil repeated.

  The manager came out of his office, wiping coffee from his mustache. He had a well-worn look, and kind-looking wrinkles on his forehead.

  "Signora?"

  Sybil drew a breath and gave him a smile. "My name is Sybil Bitter. We are staying in Room 201. Last night my husband went out for a walk, and he has not returned. I am afraid something has happened to him." She fixed the night-clerk with a hard glance. "And this man . . . "

  Beppo gave a hugely insincere smile and handed the telephone to the manager.

  For the next few minutes the manager talked Italian over the phone, frequently asking Sybil or the night-clerk for bits of information: when Alwin had left, how to spell his name, what his passport number was, his physical appearance, what he had been wearing.