Mission: Earth "The Enemy Within" by Ron L. Hubbard Read Free Book Online Page B

sitting posture, kicking out her silvered toes in rhythm, banging the flashing tray, she sailed around the room humming some savage tune! She actually seemed to float above the floor!
    From one end of the room to the other she went, back and forth. Now at the end of each passage, she leaped up, came down on her heels, extended and cried, "Heigh!" And then each time, her bracelets rattled against the tray. Barbaric!
    She was going in wide circles now. It was a Russian dance! She went faster. The tray crashed louder as she banged it.
    My body began to jump with the rhythm of it. I was following her with my eyes but my body also began to twist to the left and to the right.
    The circles were getting smaller. She was closer and closer to the center of the room.
    And then she was back in the center. She was humming more intensely. She was on her knees. She was swinging the tray above her head, the flat side facing me, left and right and left and right, banging it with her hand each time.
    I found my body twitching in response to the rhythm. My eyes followed the tray.
    The yellow-orange flame flashed and flashed. I found myself panting in rhythm.
    Her hips were grinding now. She ripped the veil from her face. Her eyes were on me like hot coals.
    My body was jerking, all of its own accord, back and forth, back and forth.
    Suddenly she sank on her heels. She put down the tray. She seized her cura irizva.
    With the same tune she had been humming, she began to strike chords.
    Her eyes were scorching me. She began to sing:
    Unspent kisses clog my throat, Unspent smiles lurk
    Behind my lips.
    Unspent passion dams my breath
    And sucks back in
    The unspent tongue!
    My hands
    That ache
    With unspent caress
    Tremble
    When I think
    Of pouring out upon you
    All my flood Of UNSPENT LOVE!
    It was unbearable! I cried out, "Oh, my darling!" I flung out my hands to her.
    The cry, the gesture, startled her. She cowered away. And before I could protest, she abandoned her instruments and fled from the room!
    Before I could reach her door, the iron bolt was in place.
    I tried to plead. I begged. But my voice must not have been able to penetrate the door. It remained locked.
    After a long time I went and got five hundred thousand lira and pushed them, one by one, through the crack under the door. The last one simply stayed there, its tip still showing. I looked at it for the rest of the night.
    The next day I got bold enough to creep along the wall of the inner garden but, alas, the hole I had found was now plugged up.
    I thought I heard voices in the garden once. I could not be sure. I spent a miserable, aching day.
    I did not really have too much hope. But around eight, a small boy came to me. He said, "Utanc told me to say you should take a bath and get your turban on and go into the salon."
    Oh, never was a bath taken so fast.
    Almost in no time, I was in the salon.
    I waited.
    At long, long last, the door crept open.
    Softly and quietly she slipped in. She was wearing a tight jacket that left her arms and belly bare. It was of gold embroidery. She wore baggy pantaloons of gold. She had a gold band with flowers around her black hair. She was veiled in a golden veil. As she sat, I saw that her fingernails and toenails were painted gold. She was carrying a flashing sword and her cura irizva.
    But she sat with her eyes downcast, her head bowed. From time to time, she sighed.
    "Why are you sighing?" I said at last, very softly so as not to frighten her.
    "O Master," she said with downcast eyes, "I cannot tolerate the thought of not being able to call Istanbul, Paris and New York to order, C.O.D., the small and vital things a poor woman has to have to preserve her beauty in her master's eyes. I need a telephone in my room with a WATS line and an unlisted number."
    Well, naturally a wild and shy desert girl from the primitive and uncultured wastes of the Kara Kum desert wouldn't want to have her phone number listed.
    "It is yours," I said in a lordly