Nikki scrunched down into her seat and tried not to look.
The limo pulled around the side entrance of the eighteen story stadium, avoiding the long line of people waiting to purchase tickets. Lincoln gave me his evil grin, “There’s your energy dollars at work. Biggest stadium in the world.”
I could believe it. “Also the most hideous.”
As we stepped from the car, a group of bag ladies formed up around us; I lost Nikki among the look-a-likes. Sweat popped out all over me and it wasn’t because of the hot, humid climate.
This is it, I thought, time for the show down.
We marched into a small elevator which only could accommodate Lincoln, me, and two bag ladies. Had Nikki made it in? There was no way of telling since all of those who’d met us carried shotguns just like Nikki had. I toyed with the idea of heading back down the elevator and just sending our message from some safe place—like Antarctica.
We reached the top and headed down a long, rose walkway. Pink had never been my favorite color; now it was loosing more ground, quickly falling into last place behind the color of vomit.
Our military parade advanced through the pink and violet archway and paraded through a large room where four bag ladies sat playing an electronic game built into the table between them. The surface whirred and flashed as they quickly hit colored squares in its top.
Lincoln ignored them and walked to the compu-door and whispered a few words into the small speaker at its side. Apparently he said the right thing; the door whipped open so quickly that it seemed to simply disappear.
Lincoln, the two bag ladies, and I stepped in and the door zipped shut behind us. I decided to be sure I wasn’t standing too close to it next time it closed; it looked like it would be easy to discover bits of yourself standing on either side of it.
The interior of the chamber was giant, hideous, nearly continuous wall, floor, and ceiling salmon-colored mirror with tiny veins running through it. It was like standing inside a gargantuan stomach. The pinkish nightmare was broken only by three doorways and the back of the room which was all glass. Beyond the glass was a panoramic view of the sports field and the mammoth screen on the opposite side of the stadium which allowed those in the stands to see close ups of the field.
Upholstered swivel chairs were arranged in front of the glass with small tables between them.
Each table was piled high with trays of fruit. All the chairs were empty except for the largest in which, looking down on the playing field far below us, was the mass of fat and flesh that comprised Sammy Dobrynin. I knew from the news-Ds he was overweight, but his pictures did him a disservice. His whalish figure was at least twice as great as he appeared to in his pictures.
He was dressed in a rose-colored toga with a garland of leaves encircling his greasy hair. Just your typical, everyday Nero get-up.
He turned a blubbery face toward us, “Just in time for the game, Mr. Lincoln,” his high feminine-sounding voice purred. The flesh under his chin bounced about long after he’d quit talking. He rotated his chair around to face us. “Nothing like a good game of football to get the blood boiling.” He looked at me, “And how about you? Did you come to see the game?”
“I lost interest in it when they substituted clone giants for the robots,” I said.
“Oh, come on!” he said, rolling his eyes with a hog-like grunt. “When the defenders use their bats… All that blood is so exciting.” He held up a hand that looked like a chunk of meat with sausages attached to it, and an androgynous youngster came running forward from a corner of the room with a large platter of food. The child had his skin dyed—you guessed it—pink and was dressed only in a loin cloth; rose sequins were glued over each of his nipples and around his eyes.
Dobrynin’s oily fingers grubbed through the food on the tray and extracted half a chicken from the pile. “Excuse me, but we boys have to keep up our youthful figures,” he droned around a mouthful of food.
In an age of no-cal foods and anti-fat pills, Dobrynin could give obesity a bad name, I thought. He patted his servant on the behind as the servant cautiously moved to take up his station at the wall. After slurping down a chunk of greasy chicken and spitting a bone on the floor, Dobrynin spoke, his high voice now having a sing-song rhythm, “Mr. Lincolnnnnn— You haven’t introduuuuuuced us.” He batted his eyes at me.
“Excuse me,” Lincoln half bowed. “This is Phil Hunter, the man that invented the anti-gravity rods.”
“Ohhhh. So you’re the naughty boy that’s been giving us so much trouble.”
Before I could speak or throw up, the buzzer on the field blared and Dobrynin’s attention turned toward the field. “Ohhhh. Here come the teams. Sit down, you two,” he motioned us to the seats beside him. Lincoln sat down, I remained up so I could beat a hasty retreat if I needed to.
The last thing I wanted was to be within Dobrynin’s greasy reach.
Miami’s ball games are just as sadistic as you hear. The giant screen across from us allowed the fans—who had packed the stadium—to see close-ups taken from cameras located all around the stadium, the game starting out with the usual animal sacrifices to the players and ending with the immolation of the head cheer leader. She might have been an android, and certainly seemed to have approached the long-blades of the killer bot without coercion, but the blood and writhing looked pretty real on the screen from which I turned in revulsion. Even though I averted my eyes, it was impossible not to listen to her amplified screams and the revolting roar of the fans. Finally, the preliminary sacrifices and fanfare were over and the ten-foot-tall players in their chrome armor came tromping onto the field. After the playing of the World Anthem, the game began.
And I’d already seen more of the game than I cared to.
I “casually” strolled about the room and get some idea what we were up against before I made my move. Assuming that Nikki had made it in and was the one of the two bag ladies ( was that a safe assumption), we only had one guard to contend with in the room. And the three servant boys stood about waiting for signals from Dobrynin; were they dangerous? Could be, even though they look harmless, I decided. There didn’t seem to be any sort of monitoring equipment. And the room seemed to be thoroughly sound proofed; the four bag ladies’ noisy game in the front room couldn’t be heard in Dobrynin’s room and the sounds of the sports going on outside seemed to be piped in through a speaker.
In addition to the entrance which had a bag lady on either side of it (one of which I prayed was Nikki), there were doors on either side of the room. One was open and I could see the wall-to-wall pink fur bed that filled the room. No way I would go in there. The other door was closed. I fooled with a piece of pear that I picked off a platter of food for a moment, then casually sneaked toward the door as I munched on the juicy morsel. Dobrynin did have good food, if you could keep the surroundings from turning your stomach.
As I neared the door, one of the boys quickly skipped over to block my way. “Sorry,” his almost masculine voice said.
“Uh… I’m looking for a rest room,” I whispered to him.
“That’s the communications room in there,” he whispered back and put a too-friendly hand on my shoulder. “Dobrynin has us use that urn in the corner. He thinks it’s a good joke. I’m sure you’d really make a hit if you just went over there and—”
“That’s OK. I can wait.” Disgusting bunch of maggots, I thought. Time to get the ball rolling.