Ник Картер - War from the Clouds

He paused again and we were all up on our toes, waiting for him to go on. Even old Botussin was leaning forward so far that I expected to hear the invisible legs of his stool snap like matchsticks. He wouldn’t have much of a fall, his overflowing buttocks were almost touching the ground as it was. Behind me, Elicia had sucked in her breath and was holding it. I wondered if her brown skin would turn blue if the old hermit didn’t continue talking soon.

“Of course,” Pico went on, “the liquid used on my books might destroy this old parchment altogether, or it may not work at all. In my opinion, it is worth a try.”

It was good news, or potentially good news.

“How long will it take?” I asked, still clock-conscious.

Pico shrugged. “Miracles must not be shackled to the schedules of man,” he said. “It will take however long it takes. I will return when the task is done. If it is successful, I will return to help find the entrance to the cave. If it is not, I will return to help defend against the elite corps.”

He got up and started off alone. I knew that the elite corps was already taking up positions in the region, in anticipation of Don Carlos Italla’s flare signal. I also knew that the guerillas guarding the mouths of the seven hollows would still be out searching for those who had killed so many of their number.

“Some of us will go with you, Pico,” I said, stopping the hermit. “Your journey is perhaps the most important ever taken in this country. We can’t have you ambushed and killed on the trail.”

“I will accept an escort to a certain point,” Pico said, grinning again to show that he wasn’t ready yet to let others know of his hidden plateau. “But you must remain here, Senor Carter.”

“Oh, no you...”

“That is a condition,” Pico said curtly. “If you are to lead the climb up the chimney, if we find the cave, you will need all the strength you possess. You have pushed yourself too much already. If you don’t stay and rest, I will not even try to clarify the mysteries of this old map.”

A part of me accepted what he said; that part of me wanted to rest, to let the tensions and the fatigue drain away. Another part, the part that has made me the top Killmaster for AXE, wanted to continue to push, to be in on the action, all the action. The first part won.

I watched from the edge of the square as the giant hermit went down the trail. He was flanked by Antonio and Purano. Behind them went two dozen warriors, spears in hand. I kept my weapons just in case the guerillas from the hollows found their way into the Ninca camp.

Chief Botussin arose from his stool and I was surprised to find that it hadn’t been damaged, that the legs hadn’t been punched into the ground.

“You sleep,” he said, pointing to the council hut. “My servants will clear out the flies and put shades over the windows and door to provide quiet dark for your slumber. Don’t expect the hermit for at least two hours. Sleep well.”

Some order that. If it took Pico two hours to return with the solution, that left only six hours. The climb up the chimney would take four hours, at least, but there was a two-hour journey to the seven hollows. We had no slack time at all. With such troubled thoughts, I lay on the pallet in the darkened council hut to try to sleep. Elicia, I presumed, had gone off to stay with the tribal women until Pico’s return. I hadn’t seen her when I had turned back from watching Pico, Antonio, Purano and the warriors disappear down the trail.

I lay there and felt the hopelessness, the desolation, of our plight settle down over my mind. It was hopeless, and I knew it. That parchment was two hundred years old and the ink used to make those symbols had no relationship whatever to the inks used in Pico’s books. The herbs he found above the plateau wouldn’t have the same effect on the parchment that it had on the books. But I was willing to go along because the experiment spelled hope for these people. If they were to die in a matter of hours — days at the most — let them retain hope as long as possible. The death of hope has always signalled the death of the cause. But hope, I was convinced, was all that we had to go on now.

The good news, I was certain, wasn’t really good news at all. It was a vision in the jungle, an ephemeral presence like an image projected on a wall of fog. With that unhappy thought, I began to drift into sleep.

A soft, pleasant dream was already starting. I was in the George Cinq Hotel dining room in Parts. Across from me was Diane Northrup, a woman I had loved in an earlier time. She was smiling, sipping from a glass of champagne. The orchestra was playing our favorite song. Diane leaned forward to kiss me and I heard a familiar voice, close by, sweet, bell-like and melodic:

Still half asleep, I couldn’t believe that I would mix Diane Northrup and Elicia Cortez in the same dream. I couldn’t imagine Elicia in the dining room of the very proper George Cinq Hotel in Paris, anymore than I could imagine Diane here in this hot hut in the middle of an Indian village in the Caribbean.

Something soft crept up along my chest. Something even softer, and smelling of orange blossoms, pressed against my shoulder. And then naked legs touched mine, slipped up over me and began to move gently back and forth.

I came fully awake, out of a pleasant dream into a far more pleasant reality.

Elicia was beside me on the pallet. She was naked and her hair was still damp from having bathed in the stream below the village. Once again, she had found orange blossoms and had crushed them against her skin, from head to toe.

I gazed into her loving eyes and still couldn’t convince myself that I wasn’t dreaming. She kissed my lips and I found my arm going around her back, caressing the soft, sweet-smelling skin. My hand went down to her gently-rising buttocks and I felt the erection building magnificently at my middle. This was no dream.

“Elicia, do you know what you’re doing?”

She shushed me with a fragrant finger across my lips. “I know,” she said. “No talk. Only love.”

All right, I had tried. Time and again, I had turned away from the pleasures that this girl had offered me. Time and again, I had felt noble about my intentions, about my abstinence. Well, there is a time to put all that jazz behind you. That time was now.

Days of frustration and abstinence and temptation had built up a tremendous drive inside me. My erection was more than an erection. It was a budding, blossoming, flowering instrument of sex and love and lust and frustration. Elicia found the hardness and enclosed it with her hand.

There were no more thoughts about what would happen to Elicia when this caper was over. There were no more thoughts about whether she belonged to me or to Purano. There were no more concerns for whether she was still a virgin by the flesh or by the soul. The future had no place in my mind. Or my body. The needs of the flesh and of the soul were so intense, so ready, for each of us that we shut out past and future and plunged helter-skelter into the present.

I started gently, recalling the brutal rapings this girl had endured for three months from the Cuban Marines. She seemed to like it. I raised up and gazed at those erect, ripe breasts that had tantalized me so often in her loose blouse. I kissed the nipples, tenderly, then with more purpose. I sucked and she arched her back and raised her pubis to me. I lay my hardness along the mound and gently massaged until she let out a moan and bit my ear.

“Enough gentleness,” she said, gasping, chewing on my ear. “Take me now and let me know the pleasure of losing my virginity to one I love. Oh, Nick, love me for now, for now only.”