Kronk

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

Gabriel and Camilla did not have to search for an apartment for long. They were lucky enough to find one in an excellent state of repair, furnished and only recently vacated; its previous tenant, a NaTel bit player, having leaped to his death after being written out of the ever-popular Carnation Street, the first NaTel serial to have reached its golden jubilee.

The apartment was on the twenty-fifth storey in Margot Fonteyn House, Shepherd’s Bush; and the fact that the previous tenant had taken the quick way down only five days before did not unduly disturb either Camilla or Gabriel. They had weighty problems to consider -

problems relating to strategy, obscurity and sheer survival.

Margot Fonteyn House was an unpretentious, respectably anonymous hive in an unpretentious, respectably anonymous district; and presumably occupied by unpretentious, respectably anonymous people. The nameplates on their neighbours’ apartments reinforced Gabriel in his conviction that the hive was as good a place as any in which to be discreetly lost. The neighbour on the left was Señor Manuel Labore, chargé d’affaires to the Republic of Tierra del Fuego, recently recognized by U.N. The neighbour on the right was simply a Dr. D.

Slink.

In the interests of security and convenience Camilla and Gabriel decided to be married on a one-year contract. Camilla had her hair coloured deep red, Gabriel had his pigmentation darkened to Anglo-Indian, then they went to the nearest contract office and emerged ten minutes later with a non-indemnity agreement whose main value was that, in the event of a sad encounter with the law, neither could be compelled to give evidence against the other.

Dr. Slink noted that her new neighbours were a nice young married couple, Gabriel and Camilla Crome. It was so refreshing. Hardly anybody bothered to get married these days unless they wanted to gain control of their children. But Mr. and Mrs. Crome did not seem to have any children and so they must truly love each other. Perhaps they were on a life contract — till death us do spare parts. It would be so romantic. She resolved to ask them to take tea with her as soon as possible. Then she would find out.

Meanwhile, the newlyweds settled in their new home, rested for a day or two — if frequent love-making could be so described — and worked out their strategy. Gabriel made a trip to Soho and contacted an InSex pusher. After some prolonged negotiation in a bar, he managed to buy the pusher’s entire current stock, one hundred and fifty tiny, tasteless, soluble tablets, for only one thousand pounds.

It was a great stroke of luck. Neither Gabriel nor Camilla needed InSex; but it was probable that some of their targets would. Camilla, with some relish, preferred to think of the men she intended to infect as victims. Gabriel preferred to class their common prey as targets. It was, he said, more clinical.

One problem in the campaign to spread P 939 would be the time factor. Though some people would always be ready to go to bed with strangers at short notice, there were many quaint enough to need talking down, or a meal or a bath or a theatre or time to get drunk or time to get sober first. With such cases, the InSex tablets would dramatically increase productivity.

Instant Sex, the most potent known aphrodisiac, until recently and for reasons best known to the biochemists could only be derived from the urine of pregnant mares. Further, it took distillation and centrifugal fractimation from the urine of two hundred pregnant mares to provide one good InSex shot. Difficulty was added by the discovery that only mares grazing in the foothills of the Andes yielded InSex that was effective for all people of all ages — not excluding prepubes — in all seasons.

Until recently, the taking or giving of InSex had been a privilege of the wealthy, occasioning much interest, drollery and even satisfaction in fashionable circles. There was the memorable occasion when Cardinal Archbishop Cyril Cantuar had been slipped a shot before the Romaprot annual general meeting in the Vatican, and had attempted to ravish a Dutch cardinal (female) during a show of hands.

But the discovery by the Nobel prizewinner Jawaharlal Schmidt that the InSex steroids could be derived from the Tibetan yak and the Indian ox with or without pregnancy and whether grazing in the Hindu Kush or Regent’s Park knocked a zero off the price of InSex and brought it within reach of urbies, prollies, students and all manner of riff-raff.

Which, according to the Lords, Commons, Romaprot executives and practically all the upper income bracket crowd, was bad. As indeed, it might be. So the God Machines uttered, the Government legislated and InSex became illegal.

The trouble was that the Instant Sex tablet normally produced an intense sexual desire within four minutes of ingestion. Which was fun for the upper classes, but full of grave consequences as far as lesser mortals were concerned. An upper echelon NaTel InSex orgy was, by definition, harmless; but with the reduction in cost any nasty little prolly could surreptitiously lace an upper girl’s drink and make her fight to get herself ravished.

Would you want you daughter to want to want it with a student?

No.

Therefore, the charge for illegal possession of InSex by male or female automatically became attempted rape if discovered before and simple rape if discovered after.

Gabriel proudly carried back to Margot Fonteyn House one hundred and fifty potential charges of rape. He was not without apprehension, since a slip-up or a proc raid would probably put him and Camilla into the Bad House for life plus ten. But, for better or worse, Eustace Greylaw had handed on the torch; and somebody had to spread the conflagration. hordes.”