Edmund Cooper - Kronk

“Discourteous,” pronounced the Rommel cap.

“Brothers, brothers!” said the solar helmet. “Let us not be uncharitable. Perhaps the young gentleman does not clearly understand the rules of hospitality.” He turned to Gabriel. “We offered you a trifling gift, which it was your pleasure to reject. Surely — nay, reasonably, even -

it is fitting that you should offer us something in return.”

Gabriel walked into the trap. “But I have nothing you could want.”

“He is too modest,” said the solar helmet, glancing significantly at Camilla.

“Thoughtless, even,” added a hitherto silent man, wearing a Mao tunic.

“Unchivalrous, withal,” decided Rommel cap.

Camilla sighed. “It’s no use, Gabriel. They are going to have their fun whatever you say or do… Just don’t get yourself hurt, that’s all.”

“Ah, the practicality of the feminine mind,” enthused the Lederhosen. He smiled benignly at Gabriel. “You see, brother, there really is something you have that we need. As a Christian gentleman, it behoves you to share your good fortune.”

Gabriel prayed for the goddam chopper to move in. It didn’t. It hung in the sky as if suspended from a wire.

“Eeeny meeny miny mo, catch a coloured person by his toe,” remarked the solar helmet. “I think we may interpret our young friend’s silence as shy acceptance of the situation. Now, which of us should enjoy the damosel’s tender attentions first? As your unworthy leader, I believe I claim precedence. But there is an additional qualification. I was a dropout in experimental biology… Many moons ago, of course.”

There was nothing to do, thought Gabriel dully. But, hell and Shakespeare, one could not just do nothing. He made the mistake of doing something. He flung himself bodily at the bearded man in the solar helmet.

He never reached target. Somebody grabbed an arm. Somebody dived at his legs. He went down with a bump on his face, with two students sitting heavily on his back. With an effort he raised his head. He could just see Camilla’s legs. And those of the bearded student. Close.

There was no sound for a few dreadful moments. Then there was the sound of tearing.

Camilla’s shift fell round her ankles. The bra came next. Then she was pushed bodily down to the grass.

The bearded student did not bother to remove her tights. He merely tore them in the appropriate place. Then he took off his solar helmet, hitched up his caftan and proceeded to rape her.

Camilla was frightened, and the grass was uncomfortable, and the student was heavy and energetic and smelt of garlic. But the experience, she was interested to discover, was not altogether terrifying nor unbearably repulsive. She had got off to a cold and slightly painful start. But soon she was amazed to find that her body, at least, was beginning to respond with restrained enthusiasm.

She could not see Gabriel. She could only see close-ups of hairy face and intermittent patches of sky. But she knew Gabriel was being forced to watch. She felt dreadfully sorry for him — in an oddly maternal sort of way.

But her capacity for independent thought began to cloud over as the student got into top gear. He was no great shakes as a lover, but he knew what to do to a woman’s body to achieve a modicum of efficient sexuality… If you can’t resist ’em, join ’em and get it over with.

Camilla’s tongue popped out and her eyes rolled, and she even forgot to wish she wasn’t in the prommy phase.

“Struggle a bit,” whispered the student into her ear. “Blast your sweet buttocks, struggle a bit.”

“I can’t,” she panted, “you’re too damn heavy.”

“I’ll take some of the weight off,” he panted, “but — if — if you don’t — put on a decent show -

I — I’ll — start biting.”

But he didn’t have time to start biting, because a blank look came over his face and his body tensed and throbbed, tensed and throbbed for obvious biological reasons.

Greatly to her surprise, Camilla arrived at the same time. She thought obscurely that it was just like two strangers bumping into each other in a fog.

The sudent collected his wits, removed himself and picked up his solar helmet. He didn’t seem inclined to say anything more. Perhaps there was nothing more to say.

Camilla did not attempt to get up. Clearly, there was little point in making the effort. But in the few seconds it took for the man with the Rommel cap to loosen his Salvation Army gear, she managed to roll over so that she could see Gabriel and give him an encouraging smile.

“Don’t take it to heart, love,” she gasped, making the effort to smile. “I was introduced to this sort of thing before I was sixteen.”

Gabriel had stopped struggling. It wasn’t getting him anywhere. There was an agonized expression on his face that was oddly comical. Camilla thought that he looked as if he had tooth-ache. He was trying to say something; but the students on his back bounced about a little, and the only sound that emerged was a painful wheeze.

“I believe,” said rapist number two, removing his Rommel cap with a flourish, “that the next dance is mine.”

He looked down at Camilla almost benignly for a moment, then he flung himself upon her.

He was, if anything, more energetic than the man with the solar helmet. Camilla was tired and depressed and more unhappy for Gabriel than for herself; but her body did not seem to care about such matters. The million-year programming was more potent than fatigue or unhappiness, more potent even than prejudice or conceptual thought. Its frenzied response took her personality once more into a cloud of unbeing. Her breasts and thighs strained, her eyes widened, becoming briefly vacant, and she was aware that, a long way away, somebody was saying something to her. Something about struggling. But it didn’t matter because she was struggling. She was struggling to avoid drowning. And then, again, there was the mindless crisis, the locked jerky movements of automata. And then the tension went, the hardness dissolved, the weight lifted and it was all over.

She didn’t want to look at Gabriel this time. She didn’t want to do anything but lie there, legs and arms spread out, listening to her heart-beats, feeling the sweat roll down her face, getting her breath.

She didn’t even bother to look who the next one was. It didn’t seem to matter. All that mattered was that, incredibly, her body seemed willing to participate in the big bad joke all over again.

Democratically, as the students took turn to rape Camilla, they also took turns to sit heavily on Gabriel. He, too, was feeling the strain.

While the last student indulged himself, Camilla blissfully went to sleep or fainted. Or both. He slapped her face briskly until she opened her eyes. Clearly he was not at all enchanted with the notion of going it alone. She knew when he had finished by the fact that a bouncing hundred-kilo weight had been removed from her body, that her legs, breasts, arms, lips could ache without compulsion or interference, that she could try to breathe normally once more and listen with detached interest to the drumming in her head.

There was also a roaring, a strange powerful roaring, and a delicious tornado that seemed to blow life into her. Unhappily, the roaring stopped.

The chopper had landed.

As Camilla realized she was no longer being ravished, Gabriel discovered that he was no longer being sat on. He heard the chopper coming down and tried to stand up; but there was no strength left in his limbs, and he fell down again, cursing and gasping and feeling needles of pain in his muscles.

Presently, he was aware of someone turning him over and helping him to sit up. It was a beautiful girl wearing a short white chemise. She gave him something to drink. He drank greedily. And pain dissolved, and fire and energy surged through his limbs. Camilla also was sitting up, being given something to drink by a girl in a white chemise.