Dr. Nyet

CHAPTER ONE

It started in London. It started in darkness. It started in bed.

It started in Gladys – almost.

But not quite.

Gladys?

She was a pre-Pygmalion Eliza Doolittle with more frontage than the fair ladies of stage, screen, and video combined. She was a 'eavenly 'arlot with 'ot 'ips and 'eathenish 'aunches. And 'igh 'opes of cadging a sheaf of shillings from the American tourist she'd picked up at a bar in Piccadilly.

The American tourist was me. Steve Victor. The man from O.R.G.Y.

O.R.G.Y.? The official name is "Organization for the Rational Guidance of Youth." Actually, it's strictly a one-man organization dedicated to providing food, shelter, clothing, and a few life-spicing luxuries for me. But don't get the wrong idea. O.R.G.Y. is on the up-and-up. Spurred on by assignments backed up by grants from various interested foundations, I conduct Kinsey-type sex surveys all over the world. And I do my job honestly and enthusiastically.

But I wasn't working the night I met Gladys. I was just out on the town for my own pleasure, barhopping the part of town known for London britches falling down. Sort of a bust-man's holiday, you might say.

So this bust marked Gladys cruised along right on schedule and made what I took to be its nightly stop at this Piccadilly pub. The doors swung open with a crooked blonde smile, and I boarded with the offer of a drink. Half an hour later we were jogging into her home depot, a three-room flat – not lavish, not cheap – in Soho.

The fair lady never mentioned the fare. She might drop her aitches and her panties, but not her pride. Gladys was only a sort of a semi-'ore, consorting only with those she judged toffs and relying on their generosity, rather than on the tawdriness of a pre-set price.

"'Ow habout a drink?" she asked when we were alone in her apartment.

"Hi'll 'ave an 'arf-an'-'arf," I replied.

"Hit's not very nice to make fun of the hway ha person talks," she pouted. "Hi can't 'elp hit, you know."

I restrained my Rex Harrison-ish impulses and shelved the Professor Higgins role. "I'm sorry," I apologized. "I really think the way you speak is charming, and I didn't mean to hurt your feelings. Let's kiss and make up."

"Righto, Yank." She came into my arms easily and fastened her lips over mine.

(Note: The osculatory technique of English girls varies slightly from that of their American sisters. The temperature of the lips upon first buss is generally higher – an overcompensation, doubtless, for the chill fog of the London climate. The lips themselves seem softer, more pliable – probably because the juices have not been dried up by overcosmeticizing, as is so frequently the case on the lipstickier side of the Atlantic. The teeth and tongues of British girls move more freely and both take and provide more joy during osculatory activity – this, indubitably, the result of the simpler English diet which has not jaded the taste buds to oral sensations as the more spicily varied American foods have. Finally, the English girls are less peevish about having their hair mussed during a kiss, not being easily disturbed about having their over-teased tresses or permanent waves rumpled the way U.S. girls so frequently are.)

It was a helluva passionate kiss. I slid out of it and right into her brassiere – with my hand, that is. It was more than a handful, but I palmed as much as I could.

"Oh, you Yanks are so heager," Gladys complained. "That's the third bra-strap's been broken this week."

"I'm sorry."

"Don't talk with your mouth full, love."

I came up for air and took a good look at the bosom I'd bared. It was magnificent. I've seen a lot of mammaries in my business, but very few that could measure up to Gladys's. They were impressively large, perfectly round, and as firm as warmed- over basketballs. They were cloud-white with wide pink roseates so delicately defined as to be almost invisible. From their centres, blood-red nipples stood out like rocket-shaped maraschino cherries.

"Wow! I'll bet you have to go to a tent-maker for your bras," I observed, my awe negating my usual savoir-faire.

"Thank you." She giggled at the compliment. "But I really honly tike a size forty- two, C-cup."

"Only!" I dived back in with the exclamation point. I burrowed my face into the deep cleavage and warm, panting breast-flesh enveloped my cheeks. Her hands clasped over the back of my neck, urging my tongue deeper into the cleft. My own hands were on her hips now, and they ripped rhythmically under my touch.

I think it was just after that that Gladys slid her hand under the waistband of my pants and down my bare belly. Not too far down, the way things were positioned. "Coo!" she exclaimed. "Yankee Doodle's come to London, an' fair impatient 'e his, too!"

Not to be outdone, I trailed my fingers up her burning thighs. "Thumbs up for Britain!" I quipped.

"Well, we don't need all these clothes naow, do we?" She stood up and quickly undressed.

One look at her in the nude and I undressed even more quickly. Then I pulled her into the darkened bedroom, down on the bed beside me, and kissed her again. It was a busy kiss. She had both fists around me like a sports car enthusiast going gaga over a new stick-shift. And I was strumming her little passion switch like a banjo player mad with palsy.

"Are you ready, Yank?" she panted. "Do 'urry!" Her thighs clenched and unclenched demandingly. "Hi want hit naow!"

"The Yanks are coming," I assured her. I scrambled over her, and she jackknifed to meet me, wrapping her legs around my neck and raising her lower body off the mattress so that all her weight was on her shoulders and mine. "The Yanks are coming," I repeated, poised to fill the twitching cup of her femininity.

But the Yanks didn't come. Not that night, anyway. Just as I uttered the words, there came an aggressive knocking at the door and Gladys reacted with panic that she turned a somersault right out of bed. "'Oo-'Oo his hit?" she called in a trembly voice from the floor.

"Scotland Yard!" The voice was even more nastily aggressive than the knocking. "Open up!"

"What d'you want?"

"You'll find out soon enough! Now, are you going to open, or do we break the door down?"

"Just ha minute, I 'ave no clothes hon."

"That figures. Hurry up."

"Hi ham 'urrying." Gladys scrambled to the closet, threw on a robe, and hastened to open the door.

Two walrus types in plain clothes, both beefy, both red-faced, and both sporting identically ale-stained moustaches, muscled into the room. "Scotland Yard." They repeated it in unison like a pair of well-trained Anglicized parrots.

"Hwat does Scotland Yard want with me?" Gladys asked in a quavery voice.

"You've got a man in here!" one of the detectives rumbled.

"Me? Why, Hi never -" Gladys's voice rose and strained for high C. "Perish forbid!" she added, outraged.

"Oh? Then what do you call that?" The detective pointed through the half- opened door to the bedroom. Either by accident or design, his outstretched finger leveled directly at my exposed groin.

"That's me brother," Gladys said primly.

"Incest!" the detective crowed.

"Yes, Hi do hinsist," Gladys replied. "It's me brother."

"Me eye!" the detective growled. "Come out here, you!" he added, calling to me.

"I like it better where I am," I answered, modestly tugging at the blankets to cover myself.

"Move it, Yank!" the John Bull snarled.

"I don't want to," I told him. "It's nice and cozy here," I added, snuggling under the blankets. "And it looks like a cold world out there – not to mention hostile."

"Are you getting out of that bed voluntarily? Or are we going to go in and pluck you out?" He made an obscene gesture to demonstrate just how I might be "plucked."

"Since you put it so graphically," I sighed, "I'm coming out." I wrapped a sheet around me toga-style and went out to confront Scotland Yard. "You'll have to pardon me," I greeted them haughtily, "but I didn't have time to put on my laurel wreath."

"Are you Steve Victor?" one of them demanded.

"In the flesh," I answered accurately.

"Put on your clothes and come with us."

"Why should I? I haven't done anything."

"Oh? Then I suppose you have a wedding license to prove that you and this lady are married," he observed sarcastically.

"Damn!" I snapped my fingers. "I knew there was something that must have slipped my mind. Gladys -" I turned to her – "why didn't you remind me? We forgot to get married."

"That's one 'ell of ha proposal," she said wistfully, "but Hi haccept."

"It's too late for that now." Scotland Yard crooned a duet. "Get dressed, Mr. Victor," one of them added.

I got dressed.

"Now come along with us." They fell in on either side of me, each grabbing an arm.

"You can't be serious," I protested. "Since when does Scotland Yard bother with this sort of thing?"

"We have many varied duties when it comes to keeping the peace."

"Just as I thought," I wisecracked. "You want Gladys for yourself."

"Come along now."

"Wait a minute." I pulled loose and pointed. "What about her? Since when do you arrest the customer and let the hustler go?"

"Coo!" Gladys said bitterly. "Hand Hi thought you was ha blinkin' gentleman."

"We know where to find her when we want her," one of them said.

"Chicago was never like this," I told them. But I went along peacefully. I figured that whatever I'd done couldn't be too serious and I'd manage to talk myself out of trouble sooner or later. Still, I was curious about just exactly what it was they were arresting me for. When I was in the back of their car and it began moving through the Soho streets, I raised the question. "Just what is the charge against me?" I asked.

"Well, it could be carnal knowledge out of wedlock," one of them told me.

"Are you kidding? You'd have to arrest half of London. Besides, there was no actual carnal knowledge. Just a little mutual carnal investigation. Your arrival forestalled any real in-depth carnal knowledge."

"My apologies for the pre-coitus interruptus" one of them Latined at me, chortling.

"This is ridiculous!" I was silent after that, brooding. And feeling guilty, too. Hell, I hadn't even kissed Gladys goodbye. If I'd behaved like such a boor, it was no wonder the American image abroad was so tarnished. Still, with this kind of European hospitality, who could blame an American for turning ugly?

The car pulled up at a gate. The driver presented some identification, and it was opened. We drove up a long driveway to the side of an imposing-looking mansion. "Where are you taking me?" I asked as the car pulled to a halt. "This isn't Scotland Yard."

"You'll see in a moment, Mr. Victor."

I was prodded out of the car. Just as I was being hustled into the building, I glanced up and saw an American flag flying from a pole on top of it. What the hell?

I was ushered into a nice-sized room. Mahogany paneling, quiet, expensive drapes, a couple of leather armchairs and a leather sofa, a desk out of Thackeray which glistened with prestige, a Sixteenth Century bas relief on the wall, a shield and pike that looked Crusades-y, a hand-loomed Persian carpet – it all added up to quiet elegance and tacit tradition. The bulls left me alone in the room. I waited a moment, then eased the door open. The figure in front of it swiveled around like a robot and barred my way with a rifle. It was eight-foot-ten – give or take a few inches – of U.S. Marine. "Semper Fidelis." I smiled weakly into his stony face and shut the door.

A few minutes later it opened again. The man who entered was dressed impeccably, ultra-conservatively. The only thing that was out of style was the face sticking out over his diplomat-blue suit. It was the face of a third-rate wrestler. The ears looked like they'd been run through a meat grinder manufactured by the Marquis de Sade. The nose was a purple lump left over from some ancient volcanic eruption. The eyes were shrewd and blue, but buried in scar tissue. The hair was gray, but bristly like steel wool dipped in a sugar bowl. And the body under the Bond Street suit was a muscle-bulging bulldozer primed for action.

I took a long look at this incongruity and cursed under my breath. "I might have known," I added aloud.

"It is pleasant to see you again, Mr. Victor," he said, the icicles dripping off his tongue detracting from the sincerity of the words.

"I'm sorry I can't say the same." I glowered at him familiarly. I knew him all right. It was Charles Putnam.

That wasn't his real name. I don't think he has a real name. Just a number, like some government issue weapon. Maybe not even that, since no government department was about to officially acknowledge his existence.

Charles Putnam was the invisible man, the man who never was, the lost statistic on the government payroll – if he was on the payroll at all. I reminded myself that I'd have to ask him about that some time. It would probably annoy him, which was reason enough to raise the question.

Anyway, this hulky human cipher held one of those indefinable positions in the nether world which lies between espionage and diplomacy. He had something to do with the State Department – something they'd never admit. And he had something to do with the CIA – something they buried quickly before the smell was detected. He'd played footsie with the Russians and held hands with the Chinese, but his loyalty to the U.S. was unquestionable. So too was his function and authority.

Because of my connection with O.R.G.Y., Putnam had found my services useful in the past. Now I was remembering the last time he'd called on those services. It had been in Tokyo and, like tonight, he'd had me hauled away from a warm bed and a willing woman so that I might be brought to him. That was only one of the reasons I didn't like him, but I brought it up now anyway.

"Mr. Putnam," I asked him, "how do you always manage to time these summonses for such maximum frustration?"

"My apologies, Mr. Victor. But this can't wait. The young lady, I am sure, can."

"But will she?"

"Surely you underrate yourself, Mr. Victor."

"Perhaps. But now I'll never know. Will I?"

"Ships that pass in the night." He shrugged.

"You certainly can turn a phrase, Mr. Putnam," I told him sarcastically.

He shrugged that off, too. "This is important, mr. Victor. Important to your country and mine."

"Doesn't your arm get tired waving that flag all the time?" Before he could answer, I raised another question. "Just what is this place, anyway?" I asked him. "It's not the American embassy. I've seen that. But there's an American flag on it. What is it?"

"You're mistaken. It is the American embassy." He allowed himself a rare smile, just the faintest trace of a crack in the iceberg. "That is, it will appear as the American embassy to millions of people all over the world."

"Come again? You lost me going around that last innuendo."

"You don't mean innuendo; you mean hint. But let me explain. This house has been decorated as a facsimile of the American embassy for use in a film. All sorts of odd people come in and out without attracting any notice."

"You mean like Scotland Yard men and such?"

"Exactly. Anybody seeing them would simply think they were extras and that their official car was a prop. So you can see why this meeting place is ideal for purposes of secrecy. Where everything and everybody is out of the ordinary, nothing attracts attention."

"So it's a movie set." I shook my head in admiration. "You don't miss a trick, do you?"

"Not if I can help it, Mr. Victor. But let's get down to cases. Your country needs your help again. Your patriotism is as staunch as ever, I trust?"

"You keep interfering with my sex life and it won't be," I told him. "But yeah. I'm still a patsy when it comes to Uncle Sammy. What's up?"

"Have you ever heard of smut?"

"Which kind? The kind you step in, or the kind you read?"

"Neither. I'm referring to the organization. S.M.U.T. The Society for Moral Uplift Today. Have you heard of them?"

"Oh, yeah. Vaguely. That bunch of bluenoses back in the States who want to cover Bardot's dimples. I'm afraid I don't know much about them."

"Then let me fill you in, Mr. Victor. They are interested in much more than covering Miss Bardot's dimples, or other portions of the female anatomy. They started in the New York City area as an organization dedicated to stamping out what they considered to be pornographic literature and photographs and movies. However, today their activities encompass much more than that. Today it is their announced intention to stamp out all so-called illicit sexuality. And their concept of what is illicit includes everything from bra ads to ballet costumes. They have struck out against such things as men wearing Bermuda shorts, urinals which are not fenced off from one another, comedians who tell slightly off-color jokes, the display of Botticelli nudes in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Washington Monument which they claim is phallic, sightseeing expeditions to the Grand Canyon because they think it's blatantly ovarian, automotive designs which include headlights which they consider mammarian, and many other things. They have conducted a campaign to edit all the world's great books so that words with double meanings might be censored out."

"That's quite an undertaking," I interrupted.

"That it is. But they have already published some suggestions. For instance, they would change the famous Shakespearean line to read 'If you nick me, do I not bleed?' And they want to change one of his titles to The Assault of Lucretia. But they're not just limiting it to literature. They want butcher shops to sell 'chest of chicken,' and hardware stores to be enjoined from peddling nuts and screws, and fairy tales to be changed to 'gremlin stories,' and for the Department of Agriculture to force chicken farmers to call male fowl 'roosters' and cease and desist all mention of 'laying' eggs. They're even objecting to recruiting posters calling for men to enlist and 'do their duty.' And they want the phrase 'tit for tat' stricken from the shelves of the public libraries."

"Sounds like a real fun-loving group," I observed.

"Nor is language their major concern," Putnam continued. "They're also calling for legislation making it mandatory to use a method they've devised for changing babies' diapers so that the baby is never exposed. And they've stolen a leaf from that

S.I.N.A. group and now they're insisting that animals must be clothed. Only they go further than S.I.N.A. ever did. They even want birds to wear panties. Even insects! Bees in particular! And they want a law passed against the public pollination of flowers. That will give you some idea of what kind of an outfit S.M.U.T. is."

"But what has all this got to do with me?"

"I'm coming to that. As I said before, S.M.U.T. started in the New York area. That was about three years ago, and they started small. But in those three years, they've grown unbelievably. They've not only spread throughout the U.S., but also in many other countries around the globe. They're truly an international organization now, and their power and influence is considerable. Still, it's only recently that the government has taken any notice of their activities. But once that notice was taken, we investigated – quietly, but extensively. And we learned two alarming things about S.M.U.T. But we learned them too late."

"What do you mean?"

"First of all, we found that S.M.U.T. is much more than it seems to be. As extensive as their operations are, those operations are only a front – albeit a useful one for their purposes. But behind that front, S.M.U.T. is ambitious, insidious, and dangerous. They seem to have unlimited funds to back them up. We're still trying to trace the sources of those funds. So far all we know is that they come from banks all over the world, banks which themselves are innocent of any involvement in S.M.U.T.'s activities or purposes."

"Just what are those purposes?" I asked.

"Summed up, they add to one thing," Putnam told me gravely. "They want to conquer the world."

"Who doesn't?"

"It's no joking matter, Mr. Victor. They are out for nothing less than that – world conquest. We've learned that they've been around much longer than their public image would suggest. There are certain neo-Nazi – or perhaps not so neo – ties that we haven't been able to fully trace. But we do know that their activities are as concentrated on the Communist world as on the West. And they are as much of a threat to them as to us. I'll come to the specifics of that in a moment. But first, you look like you want to ask something?"

"Yes. Will you tell me just how a group can conquer the world with an anti- pornography crusade?"

"It's much more than that, Mr. Victor. When we realized the scope of their activities, we knew that. It's not just an anti-pornography campaign. It's anti-sexual. It's anti anything that might even vaguely be construed as sexual. And we are only just beginning to appreciate the reason behind this."

"What reason?"

"Their true purpose, Mr. Victor, is to remove every available form of sexual sublimation from the human race so that there will be no substitute outlet for the sex act itself. What do you think will happen if they succeed in accomplishing that purpose, Mr. Victor?"

"The pediatrics business will boom."

"Exactly. And that's what they want. They want a worldwide population explosion. They want people to breed so profusely that they will by virtue of their numbers become as sheep. And then they want to control those sheep, breed them, enslave them."

"But I don't get it. How could they enslave them? How could they feed them and house them? How could they keep the sheep from crowding the masters right off the face of the Earth?"

"You've got me there, Mr. Victor. It's scientifically conceivable that they might succeed in herding them into the undeveloped areas of the Earth. But we don't know how they would feed them. Our government is working on that. But we do know that overpopulation is their aim."

"How do you know that?"

"By S.M.U.T.'s other actions which tie in with their attempting to remove all sex sublimation stimulation from the human environment. We have learned that they are conducting a campaign to undermine both the U.S. and the U.N. birth control programs. Are you familiar with the role your country plays in worldwide birth control, Mr. Victor?"

"Only in a general way."

"Then allow me to point out a few facts which are public knowledge, although the public seems to ignore them. First of all, the birth-control program now constitutes a major part of U.S. foreign aid. In the next three years the U.S. will be spending one hundred million dollars a year to fight the population explosion in underdeveloped countries. Right now in most of these countries in Asia, Africa and Latin America, the populations are increasing at a rate of about two-point-five percent a year. This means that in twenty-eight years these populations will double. But the average rate of increase in food production is only about one percent a year. People are starving in most of these places today. Can you imagine what it will be like in a quarter of a century?"

"You remind me of when I was a kid," I grimaced. "With my mother telling me to finish every scrap on my plate and not waste food because I should remember the starving children in India."

"The point is, Mr. Victor, that our government, very quietly, has taken a strong pro-birth-control stand and backed it up in countries beyond its borders. But in these same countries S.M.U.T. has been waging a propaganda offensive against birth control. The strength of this offensive is what convinced us that S.M.U.T.'s anti-sex activities are really a screen to both aid and conceal their real objective: a catastrophic population increase. Now, at first, we thought they might be fronting for the Commies. But then we found that they've been active behind the Iron Curtain and not just in spots where the Reds might consider starvation and birthrate increase a prod to revolution. And most recently there has been a development which forces us to cooperate with the Commies – yes, even the Red Chinese – in the fight against S.M.U.T."

"What is this development?"

"The defection of Dr. Nyet to S.M.U.T.," Putnam announced dramatically.

"Why don't you try blowing your nose?" I asked delicately.

"I beg your pardon?"

"It's all right. Don't be self-conscious. Go ahead and give a good blow."

"Mr. Victor," Putnam said with some asperity, "my nasal passages are quite clear. Now can we please get back to the matter at hand? As I was saying, with the defection of Dr. Nyet to S.M.U.T., it has become necessary for us to join forces with the Reds in an effort to get her back."

"Her who?"

"Who? Ha! Her! Dr. Nyet, of course."

"And just who is Dr. Nyet?" I wanted to know.

"That's part of the problem," Putnam explained. "We're not really sure who she is. And the Russians won't tell us."

"Then how can they expect us to help them get her back from S.M.U.T.?"

"Their idea was that we should help return her to Russia without really knowing who or what we were returning. It's an involved business. Let me try to piece it together for you in sequence. When Dr. Nyet defected, the Russians quite naturally thought she had defected to us. And so they made certain very complex and very secret diplomatic overtures to us to arrange an exchange. The bait they dangled was very high since the first overtures they made were through the British. Do you remember the two prominent British atomic scientists who defected to Moscow a few years back?"

"Yes." I knew who he meant, although I couldn't recall their names at the moment.

"Well, they offered to swap them for Dr. Nyet. It was the magnanimity of that offer that really aroused our suspicions. We knew that this Dr. Nyet must be pretty hot potatoes indeed if they were willing to give up two top atomic scientists for her. The Russians should have been shrewder. By showing how eager they were to get her back, they aroused our interest. They thought we had her and we didn't. But we let them go right on thinking so while we tried to find out just who and what Dr. Nyet was, and why she was so important to them."

"What did you learn?"

"Not so very much, Mr. Victor. We're still working on it, and right now our information is limited. But if you will be good enough to listen, I will tell you everything we do know."

"Shoot."

"Very well then. First the physical description. Dr. Nyet is a 24-year-old Russian female. She is described as slender but voluptuous, with a large bosom, a small waist and ample hips. Her legs are said to be very good. She has been called beautiful, although that may be an exaggeration. Her hair is long and black and she was in the habit of wearing it very simply – loose and parted in the middle. High cheekbones, an oval face, small straight nose and deep-set blue eyes."

"Sounds very attractive," I observed.

"Yes. So they say. To continue, she was born in Stalingrad, and her family moved to Moscow when she was six years old. She grew up there and received her education there. Her father was a government statistician, her mother a minor mucky-muck in the party. From her earliest childhood Dr. Nyet displayed a brilliance well beyond either of them. By the time she was twenty-one, she received her doctorate in biochemistry. At twenty-three the government provided her with a research laboratory of her own, complete with staff and the latest equipment. A year later she had made an important discovery. Before this was transmitted to the Russian government, however, she disappeared. The N.K.V.D. found she had been consorting with certain American tourists. They took it for granted that she had defected to us. However, we have since learned that these people work for S.M.U.T. And we are reasonably sure that she has joined forces with them."

"How come if you know so much about her," I queried, "you haven't been able to find out her real name?"

"You can blame that on the Russian psychology. It thrives on intrigue, you know. With typical double-think, the government refuses to tell us her name. And our own source of information about her transmitted all this data as his final act of service to us. The N.K.V.D. must have picked him up. In any case, his last dispatch was incomplete. Our guess is that he was trying to be dramatic and left her real name as the last thing to be divulged. But he was caught – or so we guess – before he could finish the message and reveal her name."

"But why do you call her Dr. Nyet?"

"Two reasons. First of all, part of the information transmitted to us concerned her personal life. Her beauty attracted many men, but she had a reputation for leading them on and then, when the chips were down, for turning up her nose and saying 'Nyet!', which in Russian means -"

"No. I know," I interrupted. "So she's a virgin, is that it?"

"Well, we can't be absolutely sure, of course, but it does seem likely. This anti- sex attitude of hers was probably what attracted her to S.M.U.T. in the first place, and it's pretty consistent with what she discovered in her research, which brings us to the second reason we dubbed her Dr. Nyet."

"What did she discover?"

"An anti-birth-control pill."

"What?"

"That's right," Putnam nodded. "Now do you see why she's so important to the Russians, to S.M.U.T., and to us? She invented a substance which neutralizes birth- control pills. And it has certain side effects she was working to overcome which have even more important implications when S.M.U.T.'s aim of overpopulation is considered."

"What side effects?"

"The bio-chemical substance she originated is also strongly aphrodisiac. It's a sex stimulant which works so instantaneously as to make the victim incapable of taking the time to consider any means of contraception. Obviously, in the hands of S.M.U.T., such a substance is a threat to the entire world. The very idea has had an unparalleled impact on current diplomacy."

"What sort of impact?"

"Well, for one thing," Putnam told me, "there have been a series of highly secret meetings between the Russians, the Red Chinese, the French, the English and ourselves to evolve a cooperative effort to stamp out S.M.U.T. Of course the Reds are playing it very cagey. Ostensibly they're cooperating with us fully in an effort to get Dr. Nyet away from S.M.U.T. But in actuality there's a three-way race between us and the Russians and the Chinese to get her. Just the fact of getting her right name from the Russians, for instance. Every time the subject comes up, their translator develops a sudden inability to get the question over. It's like Alice in Wonderland, some of the dialogue that goes on at those meetings. 'What is the real name of Dr. Nyet?' our man asks. 'The Berlin wall stays up; this is not a topic for discussion at these meetings.' That's the answer that comes back. 'We're not talking about the Berlin wall, we just want to know who Dr. Nyet is,' we try again. Da, we might consider enlarging the cultural exchange program,' and both the Russian and the translator sit there grinning. It would be infuriating if it weren't for the fact that the Chinese are even more infuriated than we are. No Oriental inscrutability for them; they show it. See, they're convinced that we're making some sort of deal in code, a deal aimed at ganging up on them. So they're determined to get Dr. Nyet before we do. And so are the Russians."

"Then why bother with these conferences at all?" I wanted to know.

"Because in other respects they have been useful. Apart from the Dr. Nyet aspect, both the Russians and the Chinese have been of some limited use in gathering information on S.M.U.T. And, for their own purposes it's true, they may cooperate with us in wiping S.M.U.T. out. Even if it doesn't work out, it's worth keeping the lines of communication open."

"I see. But what about me? Where do I come into all this?"

"You're the one man best qualified to help us find Dr. Nyet. You see, there's a strong lead indicating that she may be in New York. That's still the headquarters of S.M.U.T. – on the surface, at least. As the man from O.R.G.Y., you have something of a reputation. We want you to offer your services as a sex expert to them. You'll have to convince them of your sincere belief in their cause – the one they admit to, I mean, the anti-pornography crusade. You can tell them that your investigations have really impressed on you that pornography is an evil. If you handle it right, they'll appreciate that you can be of great value to them publicity-wise and in other respects, and they should jump at the chance to have you join them."

"I see. I'm to infiltrate them and find Dr. Nyet. But how will I know her when I do find her? It's a pretty thin description you've given me."

"I'm afraid, Mr. Victor, that that will be your problem. I've told you everything I know. The rest is up to you. Will you do it?"

"Yes. I'll leave for New York immediately."

"Good. I was sure we could count on you." He started to lead me to the door, but we never got there because -

Because suddenly all hell broke loose!

A brick shattered the window, and a roar like that of stampeding animals followed it. There was the sound of police sirens in the distance, but the roar grew louder and drowned them out even as they drew closer. More objects crashed through the window, and Putnam and I dived for the floor together.

After a moment, we cautiously raised our heads, crawled over to the window, and dared to peep through the drapes. The scene outside was chaos. There must have been at least a thousand people milling around. Some of them carried banners, but they were too far away to be seen. Still, even at that distance, their violence could be felt. It's been said that a mob is an enraged animal gone berserk, and looking at this mob I could well believe it.

"What is it?" I asked Putnam.

"I don't know. Perhaps it's the American flag on the building and the way it's done up. Maybe they think this is really the American embassy and they're staging some sort of protest. I can't imagine what they'd be protesting, though."

"You can't? I can. There's Viet Nam, the Dominican Republic, unpunished murder in our very own Southland – oh, if they think this is the American embassy, there's no end to the things they might be protesting against."

"I suppose you're right," Putnam granted. "Still, the English are usually such a law-abiding, unexcitable sort of people. It's not like them to get this violent. They look like they're about to storm the building."

Putnam was proven right. The mob surged toward the locked gate, and it went down under their weight. They rushed across the grounds and up to the front door of the house itself. A moment later they were inside, howling through the hallways. And then Putnam and I were face to face with their faceless faces.

It was like looking into a blazing red smokecloud of sheer violent emotions. But what did their violence stem from? What did they want? What had fired them up to this pitch?

As they made for us, I seriously wondered if we'd live long enough to find out the answers!