“Hurry up! Hurry up!” Randolph P. Austin greeted me. I’d had the pilot radio our ETA ahead to him. Now he grabbed me by the aim with one hand and Karen with the other and led us across the airstrip at a trot toward a waiting copter.
“What’s the hurry. We’ve lost,” I protested.
“Lost? Lost? What do you mean, lost?” He pushed us aboard the chopper and was still pulling the hatch door shut as it started to rise.
“I mean it’s too late. New Year’s Eve has come and gone.”
“The hell it has!” Austin glanced at his watch.
I aped his gesture and looked at my watch. “It’s five-thirty in the ayem, January first,” I told him.
“It’s eleven-thirty p.m., December thirty-first,” he told me. “You must still be on Copenhagen time. Nassau is six hours behind. We’ve still got a half-hour to deliver the last girl.”
“Happy New Year!” I yelled. “HAPPY NEW YEAR!” I grabbed Karen and kissed her. “HA-A-A-APY NEWWWW YE-E-E-EAR!”
“It won’t be so damn happy if that pilot doesn’t move this crate. We’ve still got to make the delivery before midnight.” Austin was nervous.
He had reason to be. Even after the whirlybird landed, we had to trek across the grounds of the Sheikh’s Paradise Island estate to the main house before we could deliver Karen to one of his representatives. We made it with only seconds to spare. Just as our final candidate was acknowledged, a siren went off, horns were tooted and strains of “Auld Lang Syne” were heard ushering in the new year.
“Phew!” That’s how Austin greeted it. “We just made it.”
“What happens now?” I asked.
“In one hour we’re all to meet in the main ballroom downstairs. All of the toilet manufacturers and their representatives will be there, as well as all of the girls submitted for the Sheikh’s harem. The final judgment will take place then and the results will be announced.”
“That’ll just give me time to freshen up,” I told Austin. “I’ll see you later.” I left him and went up to my room.
As soon as I stepped into the shower, the telephone rang. Cause and effect! I dripped my way into the bedroom and answered it.
“Mr. Victor, I have some messages here for you.” It was one of the Sheikh’s staff. “Over the past two days there are eight messages for you to call Operator Nineteen, Miami, as soon as you come in. It’s urgent.”
My mother! Was she ill? My stomach tied itself into a Portnoy knot. “Will you get me Operator Nineteen right away?” I requested.
“In a moment, sir. There is also a ninth message.”
“Never mind that! Get me Operator Nineteen!” A heart attack, maybe? An accident? And I’d always neglected her! I was filled with guilt.
“But the ninth message is to ignore the first eight messages, sir. It’s from your mother.
“Oh! What did she say?”
“She says not to call Operator Nineteen, Miami. She says she’s been in touch with your doctor in Africa—that man really knows his business, why are you so foolish?—and found out you didn’t have the macka lanced. She says if that’s how you don’t take care of yourself, what else can a mother do but come herself and look after her son even if he doesn’t care about her. She says she’s on her way to Paradise Island, you should stay put, only for you would she set foot in the house of some Arab, he must be an anti-Semite, they all are. . . . That’s the message as close as I could get it all down, sir.”
“All right,” I said. “Thanks.” I hung up the phone and dripped my way back to the shower.
I was still brooding over my needless panic at Mama’s “urgent” phone calls when I went downstairs and joined the others in the main ballroom. They were all there: Rustwater and Cass Nova, John Rank Privy and Archibald Snoopleigh, Venugotago Ugotago and Hauksho, Krapinadytch and Natasha Jambonski, Senhor Di Arrea and Nina Procura, who had just arrived with fire in her eyes. Also present were all the hippie chicks, French skin-diving wives, Pygmy princesses, sabras, and Danish virgins gathered by the competition and myself. A few moments passed and then Sheikh Ali Khat arrived.
He had his entourage with him. Four of these gentlemen in turbans flanked him when he sat down at a long table on a dais at the front of the ballroom. He didn’t have to rap for order. With his appearance, there was immediate silence. It was a silence fraught with anticipation. The Sheikh introduced the four men at the table as the “preliminary judges” in the contest. He held up a sheaf of papers which he identified as their reports and added that he was now ready to come to a final judgment. “If you are all agreeable, we will proceed,” he informed us.
“Excuse me, Your Highness.” The speaker was Senhor Di Arrea. “Is this the proper time to file a claim asking for a rival’s disqualification on grounds of unethical procedure.”
“I suppose so. We might as well get all such claims out of the way now.” The Sheikh spoke patiently.
“Will you hear my agent, Senhorita Nina Procura?” the Brazilian asked politely.
“Very well.”
Nina was quivering when she stood up. Her arm was quivering as it stretched out. The finger pointing accusingly at me was quivering. “Senor Victor stole my virgin!” she snarled in a loud, shrill and— naturally—quivering voice.
“So what? The Aussies stole my French countess!” I retorted.
"‘And the Russians stole my sabra!” Archibald Snoopleigh protested.
“The Japanese kidnapped our American hippie!” Krapinadytch yelled.
“And the Brazilians made off with my Parisian noblewoman!” Cass Nova joined in.
“Wait.” Ali Khat held up his hand, and silence immediately replaced the accusations and counteraccusations. “There is nothing in the rules which says that one contestant could not appropriate another contestant’s candidate for the harem. Only final delivery counts. Whatever chicanery took place among you is no concern of mine. All such actions fall within the rules.” he decided.
There was some grumbling, most of it from Di Arrea and Nina, but for the most part the decision was accepted easily. I guessed that nobody’s hands were really clean. I watched as Di Arrea approached the Sheikh and they spoke in low voices. Finally Ali Khat shook his head firmly, and Di Arrea, looking defeated, left the room with Nina trailing after him.
“Since Senhor Di Arrea is the only one who did not complete the assigned tasks, he has been ruled out of the competition,” the Sheikh announced.
That left five of us. The Sheikh studied the reports of the preliminary judges a moment, and then asked that the Pygmy princesses line up for his appraisal. He strolled back and forth in front of them, and then told the one supplied by Cass Nova via Central Casting to step aside. A moment later he waved the New Guinea Pygmy and the Japanese candidate from the Philippines off the platform. Since all of Di Arrea’s candidates had followed him out, that left only Aleka and her sister--the Russian entry—up there.
Ali Khat took his time surveying both girls. Finally he told Aleka to step down. My heart sank. It seemed obvious that he preferred Aleka’s sister to Aleka and that this preference gave the Russians an edge.
“Wait!” Little Aleka stood defiantly in front of Ali Khat and addressed “Don’t take my sister. Take me!”
“I’m sorry,” the Sheikh told her. “But on points-—-”
“Points? What about us? Don’t we count?” Aleka demanded indignantly. “Have you considered the possible psychological harm you might inflict on a young girl by forcing her to participate in the sex life of a harem?”
“Forcing?” Ali Khat asked. “Who is forcing her? It is my understanding that she is here of her own free will.”
“That is not so. She was kidnapped. I am here of my own free will. My sister was brought here by force!”