Clive Bedford - Mistress of torment

Impelled by a force beyond his control or understanding, Gerry Glasner dropped to his knees on the carpet. His hands went to the glossy black boot, and he shivered as they made contact with the smooth leather. He bowed down and began to kiss the toe of the boot, and as he did so he seemed to lose all sense of reality. His lips moved along the foot, planting an ardent kiss at every inch, and his hands moved up the leg of the boot, encircling the tight-laced calf.

"Turn over and lie down on your back!"

Like a man in a dream, Gerry obeyed. "Sonia" stood over him, looking as high as a building as he stared up at her. She extended her right boot, resting it with the toe on his forehead.

"Open your mouth," she ordered, and Gerry obeyed. The heel pressed into his mouth, against his tongue, as he closed his lips around it. For several minutes she stood motionless while Gerry cherished the heel of her boot with lips and tongue, and as he did so, to his amazement he felt his penis grow hard for the fourth time inside a couple of hours. At last she withdrew the heel from his mouth, and he felt the toe of the boot being dragged down his chest, along the length of his belly until the sole rested square over his throbbing penis. The heel pressed against his scrotum.

"If I leaned forward now, with all my weight, I could ruin you for life!" said the woman, and Gerry was surprised to find that he did not care what happened to him. The pressure on his genitals increased as a spasm of pain shot through his loins. It was a tight, tense moment. Then the woman lifted her foot and replaced it on the floor. The moment passed.

"Go and take a bath now," said Sonia. She seemed to have lost all interest in Gerry for the time being. "I have to go down to the foyer to make a purchase. I'll be about fifteen minutes. You'd better lock the door while I'm gone – and leave the key in the lock. Otherwise the chamber maid may decide to come in to clear up the room for the evening. Don't bother to dress. Put on a robe. You'll find one of mine somewhere."

She walked out without another word. Gerry went to the door and locked it. For a moment he leaned against the door, regaining his composure.

"Better find the robe first," he said to himself. But a quick search of the bedroom drew a blank. There was nothing even resembling a robe in any of the drawers or closets. He remembered seeing the walk-in closet in the sitting room. Be tried the door, but it was locked.

"It can be useful, being a copper," he thought. From a secret pocket of his jacket he took a small leather wallet. Opening the wallet, Gerry selected a thin tool and inserted it in the simple lock of the closet. He jiggled it around carefully and, after a few seconds was rewarded by the sound of the tumblers falling. He turned the handle and opened the door wide – and at what he saw there he almost collapsed with surprise.

The false "Sonia" returned to her suite at the Westland and paused outside the door with her finger poised over the buzzer-button. From inside the door she could hear the sound of two voices, one strongly masculine; the other softer, feminine and weak. At once she realized what had happened. She bit her lip momentarily in anger, then turned back to the elevator. This was no time for heroics. She descended again to the foyer, walked through the revolving doors and signaled to the man in grey uniform to call her a cab. He put a silver whistle to his lips and blew, then opened the cab door as it came alongside the sidewalk. He repeated the woman's instructions to the driver.

"Lancaster Gate, north side," he said. The cab moved south on Hyde Park down to Hyde Park Corner, edging to the right as it fought for a space to make a right turn around the busy circus. But before it made the turn, the woman leaned forward and called through the open window, "Take me to Victoria Station please."

With a resigned shrug the driver pulled back to the left again, to make the left turn into Grosvenor Place. Just over an hour later the woman got out of the electric train at Hayward's Heath Station and began to walk with long, purposeful strides toward the edge of the town. Soon, despite the high heels on her boots that looked so dangerously unsafe to any watcher, she was on the edge of the heath. She took a narrow path slightly uphill, until she reached the brow of the declivity. There she sat down on a bench and took a small black instrument from a pocket. She pulled out a short antenna, not more than six inches long, and pressed a button on the side of the box. Then, as a small red light came on, she pushed back the antenna and replaced the box in her pocket. She leaned back comfortably on the seat, one glossy black leg crossed negligently over the other, and waited.

There was no sound of a "rushing, mighty wind"; no flaring of rocket motors, no roaring of atomic-powered machinery to give warning of the approach of the craft. That sort of accompaniment had been inevitable until about two-thousand Earth years ago, but today was no longer needed. About ten minutes after her arrival, the woman stood up. Ahead of her and lower down, out of sight of the main road, there was a kind of phosphorescent glimmer on the heather; then, as she walked toward it the craft slowly materialized, taking about two minutes to become completely visible. It was a huge thing, nearly a thousand feet long and cigar-shaped with a maximum diameter of some two-hundred feet. No openings along the sides gave out gleams of light to betray it. It rested, about six feet above the ground, silent, inert. As the woman came near, a square door opened in its side and a ladder was let down. She ascended, and as soon as she reached the doorway, the ladder silently retracted and the door closed.

The craft did not roar away at twice the speed of sound. It just – dematerialized! One moment it was there, plain to see. The next, it was not. During the few minutes it had sat in full view, it could have been photographed, would have shown as a solid blip on a radar screen. Now it was invisible, both to a sensitive film and to the questing electronic eyes that had been searching so greedily for something of this kind for the past five years.

Only, where it had rested just above the surface of the heather, it left a tell-tale phosphorescent glow and a slight darkening of the foliage. And it was late the following night that a pilot on reconnaissance noticed that glow and pinpointed it. As dawn broke a group of Air Force and Army officers, accompanied by photographers and experts inspected the area. Apart from the unaccountable darkening of the foliage, and a few marks of sharp toes and stiletto heels in a soft, marshy area, there was nothing to help them…

The woman… and now we may give her the English equivalent of her real name… the woman Gulda came into the craft by way of a small room in which she removed every article of clothing she wore. She stepped into a cubicle where she was showered and disinfected, and passed out into another room where she dressed again in the black shiny plastic cat-suit that was her habitual clothing. Her hair was concealed beneath the close-fitting hood that encircled her face. Her hands were covered by gloves to match the suit, and on her feet were boots with high stiletto heels. She walked, with that purposeful stride, along grey metal corridors to press a button outside a door.

A voice told her to enter. She opened the door, closed it carefully behind her, then turned and held her left hand vertically beside her head in salute.

"Gulda 9734106 reporting back," she said.

Seated at a desk in the center of the room was another woman, older-looking than Gulda, but so much like her in appearance that she might have been Gulda's mother.

"Sit down, Gulda. Tell me what happened."

Gulda sat down, but this time her legs were not crossed. She sat, thighs and knees demurely together, back straight, hands clasped and resting on her knees, very alert and very respectful.