The intimate words pouring out of her as she writhed drove me wild. Her nails raking my neck drew blood. Her thighs were like steel bands, conduits for the eruption of volcanic love-lava building inside her.
My hands squeezed her bursting breasts. My lips drew in the rigid nipples, each in turn. I pummeled her burning bottom. I sank my teeth into her neck. I smashed to the opening of her womb and stayed there!
First one tremor shook her, and then another. Stronger. My own hot juices demanded release. Her third mind-blowing orgasm carried me along and provided it. The prairie spun dizzily around us for a long moment. This time, simultaneously, we burst the bounds of passion.
“WOW!” I summed up.
Randy fell back, exhausted. I fell forward, atop her. We stayed that way for a while. Finally Randy spoke.
“You’re heavy,” she said. “Do you mind getting off me?”
I shifted my weight. I started to withdraw. I couldn’t.
“What’s the matter?” she asked.
I didn’t know how to say it. Intimate as we had just been, I was embarrassed. How could I tell Randy I couldn’t pull out because . . .
I was stuck in the tar!
CHAPTER EIGHT
“You’re what?” Randy Beaver’s voice climbed the scale.
“Stuck in the tar.”
“What are we going to do?” she wailed.
“I don’t know.” I thought about it. “It’s a sticky situation,” I decided.
“Goddammit! That’s not funny!”
“You’re getting testy.”
“Do something!”
I moved.
“Not that!” she snarled. “You’ll get us both all excited again!”
“If I don’t move around, how can I work it loose?”
“If you can’t pull free limp, how can you if you get aroused? Then you’ll be wedged even tighter.”
“Well, it’s sort of hard to just stay still,” I pointed out. “I mean, considering our position and all. . . .”
“How can you be horny in a situation like this? How can you?”
How could I not be? “What do you suggest?” I asked Randy.
“Relax. If you can just relax, maybe it’ll soften up enough for you to pull out. Stop thinking about sex. Concentrate on something else.”
Such as? What was the most anti-erotic topic I could think about? I pondered the problem.
Something technical! That was it! Something so mechanical that sex wouldn’t intrude. . . . Like what?
Easy! It clicked into place. “You’ll have to familiarize yourself with the technology involved,” Charles Putnam had told me back on Paradise Island when he first brought up the subject of phone phreaks. And during the time I’d spent tracking down Randy Beaver in New York, I’d done just that.
I’d looked up an electronics engineer I knew. He was very knowledgeable about telephone-company technology. Complicated as it was, he made it understandable to me by explaining it slowly, step by step. Now, tar-lodged atop naked, sensual Randy Beaver, I made a determined effort to distract myself from lust by going over those steps in my mind. . . .
Some twenty years ago, A.T.&T.4 , at a cost of billions of dollars, automated its entire long-distance operation. The result is a system today which is based on a dozen paired combinations of six electronic tones. The way it works is that each digit dialed on a telephone triggers a device in an area substation which emits two beeps concurrently. For instance, when the digit “5” is dialed, a sound is produced which consists of a single frequency tone of 1,300 cycles per second combined with a single frequency tone of 900 cycles per second. As all the digits of the number are dialed, the series of dual sounds is transmitted to a computer which has been programmed to investigate which lines in the vast phone company complex are available, and to activate them, thereby routing the call.
When the call has been routed, and the connection is made, the computer registers which lines are in use and notes the time. When the call is completed, and the connection severed, the computer notes that the lines have been cleared and are once again available. Again the time is recorded; overtime charges are figured; an ongoing record is kept. Thus Ma Bell5 keeps track of what’s happening. . . .
So did Randy Beaver! “You’re not relaxing!” J’accuse6 !
She was right. “Well, I’m trying,” I mumbled defensively.
“No you’re not! I can feel you. You’re making things worse!”
Maybe it was a bum rap. The thought occurred to me. “Have you ever been examined by a gynecologist?” I asked delicately.
“Of course!”
“Did he happen to mention that you might have a problem? Like being too small or something?”
“Why, you lousy male chauvinist pig! You’re trying to put the blame on me! If you weren’t such a horny bas-—”
“Calm down. Look, I apologize. I just thought your doctor might have mentioned something pertinent.”
“Well, he didn’t! It never came up! And I wish I could say the same for you!” she added nastily.
“I’ll let the crack pass,” I decided.
“I Wish you’d done that before, too!”
“Now who’s sexualizing the conversation?”
Snag! She’d been caught out, and she was angry. “Look,” she snarled, “let’s just not talk!” She closed her eyes. “I’m simply going to pretend you’re not here!”
Considering our forced intimacy, it was a helluva comment on my masculinity. I decided not to brood on it. Screw her!
Damn! That idea wouldn’t help! I forced myself back to thinking about the workings of long-distance tandems. . . .
A telephone company substation wires from all the telephones in the local area lead into it; long-lines connecting up to trunk lines going all over the world lead out of it. The wire which connects a local line with a long-line is called a tandem.
On the computer’s say-so, the tandem can be activated from either end. An incoming long-distance call is routed through it to the proper local number. When an outgoing long-distance call is made, the computer activates the connection between the local wire and the tandem. Then the tandem is programmed into the available long-distance lines needed to complete the call.
When a tandem is not in use, it emits a constant whistling sound of 2,600 cycles per second in both directions. This tells the computer it is available to transmit long-distance calls from the local exchange. It also tells the long-distance trunk lines that it is available to receive out-of-area calls.
However, if a long-distance number is dialed, the computer connects the dialer with the tandem, and the tandem stops whistling 2,600 cycles per second. The lack of sound now tells both the local exchange and the long-distance trunk lines that the tandem is in use. As long as the local exchange hears no whistle, the computer will assume the tandem is unavailable; as long as the long-lines hear no whistle, they will not transmit out-of-town calls to the tandem.
In other words, when the tandem is plugged in, it’s silent. . . .
Like Randy. That’s what I thought. But now, still plugged in, she was nevertheless pressured to reestablish communications.
“You should go on a diet,” she said nastily. “You’re so heavy my legs are all pins and needles.”
I contrived to get into a sitting position, pulling her along with me. Now our combined weight was on my rear end. Randy, still impaled, was straddling my lap, facing me. “That better?” I asked her.
“Mmmm.” She wriggled.
I couldn’t help responding. My jack-in-the-box jumped up. “Sorry,” I apologized. “But if you’re going to squirm like that . . .”
“Now we’re stuck even worse!” Nasty, but accurate.
“But I can get at you better in this position,” I realized. “Maybe if I can scrape some of the tar away down there . . .”