The Virgin of Zesh & the Tower of Zanid Read Free

He replied with a slap, which threw her back into the chair. Purple-faced, he stormed down at her, “So, that’s how you treat your husband, eh? Well, I show you I’m no spineless American, to let my woman walk on me! I, Afanasi Gorchakov, could have any woman in Novorecife, but when I actual marry you, you don’t appreciate honor! You don’t want Russian love, so you get a taste of Russian hate!”
    Gorchakov hauled Althea to her feet and dragged her to the bureau. With his free hand, he rummaged through the disorderly drawers until he came upon a whip, which he tossed on the bed.
    “Now, little one,” he continued, “you learn how to be right kind of wife.”
    He fumbled one-handed with the buttons and ties that held Althea’s black mission dress together. Then, growing impatient, he slipped his thick fingers inside the prim collar. With a terrific yank and a ripping of cloth, he tore the garment loose. Althea’s undergarments followed—rip, rip—until she stood in her shoes.
    Her missionary training had not prepared Althea for this contingency. She struggled and screamed, but no help came. By this time, Althea Merrick was in such a state of terror that nothing seemed to matter. One part of her mind stood aside and objectively wondered whether Gorchakov was going to beat her to death. It seemed more likely that he would merely beat her half to death and give her a good raping—or what would be a good raping if he were not her husband. (She was conscious of such distinctions because she was a lawyer’s daughter.) What life would be like thereafter she did not, in her confusion and terror, try to imagine.
    All this time, the iron grip on her wrist never relaxed. Although no weakling herself, Althea realized that Gorchakov could easily break her arm with a simple wrench.
    Gorchakov picked up the whip. The detached part of Althea’s mind registered a little surprise, not unmixed with pique, that the sight of her in her present state had not deflected his intentions into a more erotic channel. But then, this sub-personality told itself, no doubt he was used to the sight of naked women; or her greyhound figure did not allure him; or as a sadist he got more sexual pleasure from his whip than from more normal approaches.
    The whip whistled, and a streak of fire ran down Althea’s back. With the crack of the whip came Gorchakov’s deep “Ha!” and Althea’s scream of pain. The girl leaped convulsively and wrenched her arm loose.
    Whether Gorchakov had slackened his grip or whether the pain had lent her extra strength, Althea did not stop to ponder. Before Gorchakov could raise the whip again, her long legs carried her in a leap across the room.
    Althea fetched up against the bureau, whose top drawer lay open to reveal a chaos of personal effects. She looked frantically for a weapon. The likeliest object was the atomic-powered alarm clock on the dresser. Such clocks were made heavy by their shielding. In the course of a tomboy girlhood, Althea had once been noted among her peers as a pretty good softball pitcher.
    As Gorchakov lumbered across the room, whip raised and clutching hand outstretched, his own alarm clock struck his skull with a short, sharp thud. Gorchakov stumbled and fell forward, the whip dropping from his hand, and sprawled at Althea’s feet. His limbs twitched, like those of a beheaded reptile. The clock lay near his head, its second hand revolving serenely.
    Althea turned to the nearer window, beside the bureau. She wrenched it open, unlatched and opened the screen, and looked out.
    She was staring down from the second story into the courtyard of one of Novorecife’s several compounds. These were sturdy, graceless structures, designed primarily to repel assault. All were of hollow, rectangular form, with the outside windows small and high, like loopholes.
    The court was lit by one of Krishna’s three moons—big Karrim, the illumination several times that shed by Earth’s Luna at full. Nobody