Coitus Nervosa
Nature tore for millennia at the Appalachian Mountains. Humans blasted into them with dynamite and thousands of gnarled hands extracted their rich deposits until eventually their resources--at least the ones Man prized--began to appear quite limited. At a time when those who hoarded came into direct conflict with those who needed, new "mountains" were added to the Appalachians: underground shelters.
These hidden shelters were stocked with enough supplies and grow lights to accommodate an average American family for generations. Or so it was hoped. An advanced telecommunication network linked these Appalachian homes to others around the country, and coded plans of restoration were locked within their safes, all in preparation for a war that never happened.
What did happen was one day a message was received, a jet was readied, and a father and son exchanged goodbyes.
"...And be sure to close the mountain after I leave," Jim Billings said to his son.
"Dad? Why can't I go?" It was the first peep or sign of discontent from the fifteen-year-old.
"I can't give you all the reasons, Todd... One thing though: I do need you by the computer. If something happens to me, you'll have to relay my last coordinates to the network."
"Dad, I wanna go! This time, not next time! Besides, if this trip is so dangerous, you could use my help."
All of his thirty-nine years showed in Billings' frown. He shook his head and clasped his son's right ear with gloved fingers. "No. I can't. I don't think you'd wannna go if you knew what I had to do."
Todd Billings looked into his father's eyes without blinking. Secrets, he thought. You've always got secrets, Dad.
Billings tugged his son's ear and winked. Then he turned around in the control booth, checked the pressure gauge of the sterilization chamber and said, "I'm off."
"Dad...?" Todd called. Dad, don't go.
"See ya," Billings said. He passed through the chamber and became visible to his son again when he climbed into the Viking jet. After pulling down the glass windshield, he looked back at his pouting son in the control booth. He flicked on the intercom. "Hey."
"What?" Todd asked, his cheek against the glass of the booth, eyes closed.
"C'mon now, son. I'll be home before you know it. Give me those atmospheric readings. What am I facing out there?"
Todd scanned the instrumentation in front of him. "Looks pretty green, Dad," he said dryly. "You've got a forty-two on the niner scope and your EZ-one is fluctuating."
"Let's blast," the father said. A deafening roar echoed out of the mountainside hangar. The craft moved forward and then stopped again. Billings craned his neck in the cockpit, eyeing his son. "Maybe I'll bring you back a new mother."
The young man appeared puzzled as the jet took off. A new mother? he thought.
The supersonic Viking was eleven miles away when the last of the hangar's artificial bushes and trees flipped back into place, the mountain a gigantic revolving dome of camouflage. A tiny rabbit hopped back to the edge of where the hangar's dome had blended in with the surroundings and sniffed, unafraid, at where its mate had vanished minutes before.
The jet soared along. Billings and his son communicated final notes of preparation, their separate images glowing on their respective vidscreens. Soon, the jet was almost out of reach of its origin. Todd wished his pop good luck, and then they were quiet.
Over the Caribbean, Billings scrolled to the message he had received two days before. Decoded, it read:
--April 30--
Disturbance near Rio de Janeiro. Viking
pilot 307, Val Porter, failed to report
after entering area. Request assistance.
Advise caution.....
The rest of the message was a series of status conditions, each followed by the code word "White." Which means I can radiate one-fourth of Brazil if I deem it necessary, Billings thought. Hmm. Disturbance? That could mean anything. We haven't lost a Viking in six years. Porter knew the area best. It was his sector. His playland. How could he crash? Did he crash?
Ah, this must be Venezuela, Billings surmised as his jet approached the South American continent. His fuel gauge had just crept away from "F." The sky was azure and hesitant clouds billowed on the fringes of the pilot's periphery. Way, way, far away up ahead, so far away he had to squint, and then so distant he had to blink to focus and re-focus, Billings could see his wife holding their baby, Todd, and rocking him. "You can't expect so much from him, dear," she was saying: "he's only a baby." But, Ann, he's got to grow up quickly. Oh, Ann! Why did you have to be so stubborn? Relax, relax, that's all you ever said. Look what your faith in Man got you. All your relaxation, meditation... counter culture! That's what you were! A throwback to the days of peace and love and. "Easy dear, you'll wake little Todzy," she whispered. Mmm. You were a sweet person, Ann. The jet continued.
Meanwhile, Todd Billings ripped through the mountainside in his Mole Buggy. At the same time that he created new storage areas and escape tunnels, he slightly weakened the strength of the mountain. He grew tired of driving and stopped. He emerged from the tunneling vehicle and pushed at the freshly dug earth with his feet and hands. Suddenly, the Mole Buggy's vidscreen flashed an incoming message. It read:
--May 1--
Mass surface-dweller movement near
Amazon. Strike. Survey. Porter 307
sighted--failed to respond. Direction
of surface-dwellers matching direction
of Porter. Possible defection. White.
Extreme caution. Repeat: white....
He couldn't decipher all of the note, but in what he could understand he immediately sensed a grave danger. He started the MB and sped home. His mind a jumble, he thought of sending a message to the nearest Central Control station or of bouncing a highly forbidden Spacegram to his father off the local satellite. The latter was too risky, as their shelter's scrambler was on the mend, and the former would probably result in a demotion for his father. Shoot, he thought; what would Dad do? Son, there's comes a time when you have to clean up after yourself. Dad! Why didn't you let me come with you?
The young man wandered around the underground shelter, his pulse spastic, until he found himself in front of a food cabinet. He jerked open its doors and grabbed a Twinkie. He wolfed it down and freed another from its cellophane wrapper. Always fresh, he thought, laughing a spongy laugh. His father said: "Your mother wouldn't have wanted you to eat too many of those... Take care of your own dirty laundry! Think for yourself, Boy!"
He grabbed another Twinkie.
Presently, the sight of eight guilty wrappers at his feet caused him to start dumping Twinkies and Hohos and other necessities into a flight bag. "It's a screwing revolt," he said aloud, his mouth still full, "and Dad needs my help."
The jet engine warmed up while the domed hangar opened to a raging sun. Todd looked into the control booth and then around the cockpit of the family's second Viking jet, checking his rations and flight gear. A laser gun was there too. He undressed another Twinkie. One for the sky, he thought. But Dad, won't these Twinkies get old? "Don't worry, Todd; they've got a fourteen-year shelf-life. But remember: when they're gone, they're gone. Ain't no more Twinkie factories out there, son."
Something shuffled in the jet and Todd jumped and twisted around to see what it was. It was a rabbit. "Whoosh!" he exclaimed. "You better get out now," Todd urged as he gently dropped the bunny over the side of the cockpit. "Hey! Don't go in there! Whoa, li'l hopper!" he called out after the rabbit as it scurried away and into a cranny of the hangar. Well, that's better than South America, he thought. The jet edged forward. No one was there to make sure the mountain shut after he left.
Twenty-five miles north of the Amazon river, Jim Billings saw a blip on his radar that would be forty miles away. Before he could determine what it was and how fast it was going, another blip appeared near the first--blipping like crazy. "Missile!" Billings shouted. He fired a heat-seeking missile at this second blip. Then he knew it was Porter. He flicked on the ship-to-ship radio. "Porter! What are you doing?"
Nothing. He tried again. No response. The trained warrior knew what to do. He quickly typed the instructions to his ship's computer. Then he strapped a survival pack and a gun to his person. He pushed buttons releasing more missiles and then the eject button. As he floated down to the jungle, Billings watched his jet fly off to its computer-assisted joust.
Billings landed in the lush, green vegetation and shed his parachute. The squawking, throbbing, tropical noises seemed to grow louder as he checked his gear. He liquefied a nearby colanut tree with a single squeeze on the trigger of his laser. "Good," he said. A glance at his wrist compass provided the direction of the nearest substation, and he trudged off through the syrupy remains of the colanut, the gnats and mosquitoes clouding his path.
Shortly, Billings heard something buzz by and he cursed the flying bugs and wished them away with a swat. He heard a crackling in the bush fifty yards to his right and then saw the fire. Scrambling behind a gowbung tree, he released the safety of his weapon. He crawled back a few feet from the gowbung, and it immediately splintered in an explosion. He jumped up and ran a diagonal in relation to where the shots were coming from, firing his laser continuously. He dove into a smattering of silky ferns and other green things and proceeded to cover himself up with fronds and the like. He listened and waited. Sporadic shots flitted through a thick grove of cassias that he would have found refuge in had he continued running. All about, he heard commotion and estimated his enemies about fifteen to twenty. The snotty vegetation oozed about him as he planned his next move. He readied a tranquilizer grenade. When his opposition seemed far enough away, Billings peeked out of his shallow, dripping foxhole. Surface-dwellers, he thought. And they're somewhat organized. Those look like arms we sold to the Peruvian Breakfast Flakes, oh... twelve years ago. If I could just make out one of their... Oh my God, he's got a phone! Well, it's now or never.
Billings slipped out of the mush and jogged toward the man with the communicator who was accompanied by half a dozen others. When they noticed him, Billings tossed his grenade and hid behind a rock. From his left spat a Widowmaker, and a piece of the rock pounded into his shoulder. Well, that's that, he thought. Billings put on his gas mask and sent off a Cloudburst directly overhead. Funny floating granules made them all laugh and forget their anger. Ten minutes later, Billings walked among the twitching dead in search of reasons for their hostility. He could find only one clue: nine of them had the tell-tale features of a sect of eunuchs from Columbia.
And then a voice emanating from their phone set him off. Billings ran now toward the Amazon and not the substation. Getting out of the area by boat--or any flotation device--had now become very important to him. As he ran to the water, the wound on his shoulder opened up. When he reached the Amazon, he tended to his injury. He took off his gas mask and breathed in the freshness of the wild river. He scanned its north shore to get his bearings. Nothing. A plastic or metallic reflection shimmering about forty yards away caught his eye. He jogged toward the reflection and heard a congregated rustling in the vegetation surrounding him. Immediately, he was in the presence of two hundred or so giant women. They were big and they had designs on him.
It was all a shock to the warrior: so many women, who were just there, so quietly and so suddenly. Billings looked back at the place along the river where he had taken off his survival pack--which included his arsenal--and saw about thirty women rummaging through his stuff. He looked again at the reflection and ran to it, amid the murmurings of his advancing audience. He tripped in one of their snares and fell in front of the plastic Master Spacecard. He push-buttoned in his sector and requested a deadly neutron wave. A voice spoke out of the Spacecard. He interrupted: "Get me a neutron wave! Hurry!"
"I'm sorry," the voice said. "I don't know any 'neutron' or whatever, but can I interest you in any Gucci swimwear?"
"What?!" Billings shouted. "I want a neutron wave, here, now!"
"Now?" she asked.
"Now!"
"I'm sorry," she said. "We have Guccis and Fawntangs and a few others, but no 'neutron waves,' as you call them..."
The voice continued but Billings wasn't listening--he was staring in disbelief at the approaching mob. Many of the giant women held little plastic Master Spacecards; they were frantically pressing their little buttons, giggling, and tossing them in the air and in the rushing river.
"Ugh, ghia naub," she moaned. Her lips streaked up and down Billings' neck. He nibbled and sucked on the giantess' ear. Another had undertaken the chore of putting her oil-soaked nipple in between his toes. A third jabbed at him with a wind-up Fur Knob that was supposed to bring pleasure. Billings had received enough pleasure in the last few days to last a while. A good long while. In fact, he was sore. And there was a fourth waiting outside the hut.
They came in shifts, some with devices and some without. Billings at first enjoyed their collective naivety, but then even this grew tiresome. So he just followed their commands and "ugged."
After a while, they let him walk around the village and he even learned a few of their names. He was eating right and lost track of time. Surface dwelling is OK, he thought.
Long into the night, many shifts later, a particularly sensitive woman had kept Billings up way past his bedtime. She pointed out the intricacies of her body and the hut and gave each a name. "Ugg, dobops, and spliffs" abounded in her vocabulary, and soon these objects and functions became familiar, in her tongue, to Billings. Yes, you will be my translator, he thought, as he caressed her and her alone that night.
Just then the hut flap flew open and there stood Todd Billings, smoking laser in his hand and a surprised look on his face. "Dad? Are you ok?"
