"Long live filth! Long live dirty! Long live fun! Long live the king!" With each thrust of his burning penis, Harold Cubbings shouted a new phrase of the revolution.
Without a doubt in the world, Lenny thought to herself later, there could have been no better preparation for the evening's performance than the briefing with Horatio and Harold that afternoon.
It was, of course, quite late in the afternoon, or she wouldn't have done it at all. Nice ladies never do anything like that until at least seven.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
That evening the Xylotropic Lounge was bathed in a cold blue light. This done under the orders of none other than Masters McClain himself. The effect, he said fervently, was to be one of complete technical sensuality – everything was to suggest the beauty of the clicking, whirring machine.
The customers, or perhaps we should say – potential customers – were gathered by eight-thirty. That, as was the custom with McClain's affairs, was the time stated on the embossed invitations.
No one was admitted after quarter of nine.
Everyone was forced to wait in hard-backed chairs until eleven-thirty.
Lenny was understandably nervous, for she had never appeared in the Xylotropic Lounge before. It was her debut, so to speak. She had taken the precaution of calling Boss Carl from a pay phone in the ladies' room. He and Lenora had ample time to load the menagerie into a truck and sneak into the wings of the club.
Masters McClain was under the delusion that none of his people were bribable. In point of fact, practically every one of them could be touched by the simple promise of sexual intercourse with one of the harem girls. This simplified the Carl Industries scheme greatly. The animals were silently hustled into the wings of the Xylotropic Lounge in soundproof cages on fiberglass casters.
When needed, these elaborate cages could be pushed onto the stage by a mere girl.
Lenny spent most of her time in the dressing rooms, scrounging around for make-up, adjusting her skimpy negligee so that it hid absolutely nothing of importance, etc.
At eleven o'clock, Masters McClain came into the dressing room and tried to cheer up his nervous starlet.
"Baby," he boomed from his dwarfish physique, "everything is going to go just great!"
Lenny looked at the eunuchoidal little man shrugged her shoulders. "I don't know, Mr. McClain, I sure hope I don't let you down…"
"Let me down!" he squeaked charmingly, "why that's ridiculous. Don't even think about it at all – just remember this: the machine will do everything – you are just a bit of tinsel on the package!"
With that parting shot, the technology magnate slapped her heartily on the knee and walked from the room with a bounce in his tiny step.
A few minutes later a small bell rang over her dressing room mirror and thundering electrical bleeps began to assail her ears from hidden speakers in various positions along the wall.
"It must," she said grimly to herself, "be time to go on."
A squeaky voice piped up over the intercom next. It was the voice of the Xylotropic computer. "My dear Miss Morgan," it whined formally, "house is full and the lights are going down – I am programmed to tell you at this point that you must report to the stage at once."
"Thanks," she snapped back coldly.
"Break a leg, baby…" the mad computer squealed in reply.
Lenny threw a bottle of cold cream at the speaker and walked slowly to the wings. She was met there by a heavy-set figure in a trenchcoat with bare feet. Even in the darkness she could tell that it was Boss Carl.
"Screw 'em up, slash," he growled.
She nodded grimly and walked out onto the stage. The still somewhat haggard Cubbings was at the control panel of the Xylotrope. He began to twiddle with the dials. The machine which sat in a spotlight at center-stage, began to whir and grind ominously.
The audience, all of them in formal evening dress and wearing small masks that made them look like embarrassed Lone Rangers, became completely silent. The hush made every noise stand out, in her paranoiac nervousness Lenny thought she heard a muffled snort from Droopy, the giant sloth, who was supposed to be secreted in the wings.
She stood for a moment in the shadows directly behind the spotlighted Xylotrope. Then she raised her hand for the orchestra to begin.
As might have been expected, Masters McClain had arranged to have electronic music supplied by the Xylotropic computer. It lacked something in the way of beat.
Lenny swallowed hard and began to dance, making the best of the weird music.
Somewhere in the back rows she heard a distinctively polite snigger.
In order to squelch the Doubting Thomases, Lenny began to work at her filmy negligee. McClain had had his engineers equip it with an invisible zipper that was programmed to fly apart when the electronic music struck a certain note.
Disdaining that convention, Lenny began to grind and twist her full, lovely hips. The motion caused the negligee to fly up and bare her thighs and bottom. As the energy of her dance increased, her extraordinary breasts flopped free of all visual interference.
With a sudden animal-like screech – Lenny ripped her costume to threads – scattering the pieces like wild oats over the front-row audience. In his exclusive box, Masters McClain wiggled uncomfortably. He bent to whisper to a client, "What the hell did she do that for? I mean it's not clean. It's – it's crude and untechnological!"
The client, who happened to be the famous star of the silver screen, Lyle Montagne, turned to McClain and stuck out his tongue allowing a trickle of saliva to dribble down onto the polished aluminum floor.
Meanwhile, Lenny had approached the Xylotrope. She held it tenderly in her hands. She caressed the pulsating plunger. Finally she put the device into her mouth and rotated it wildly, passionately.
Masters McClain relaxed slightly in his box and commented to the actor beside him, "Well, that's better, I mean, that is real sex!"
Montagne turned to him with a sneer and chided, "Yeah, how come you never taught the fucking thing to curse?"
"What?"
"I'm telling you, ya dumb scientific bastard," Montagne went on, "I could do a better job than that thing any day."
McClain simply sniffed disdainfully and turned his attention back to the show.
"Say," Montagne whispered a little too loudly, "I sure would like to trade places with that machine!"
McClain squirmed uncomfortably in his aluminum seat. "Boy," he whined in a metallic voice, "you really are a perverted sonofabitch, Montagne!"
At this juncture, Lenny had already inserted the pulsating, whiffing, maple-syrup-secreting Xylotrope into her vagina. She felt its many surfaces stirring her to the very vortex of desire. She was playing it straight now – her face flushed with urgent need – her brow broke in diamonds of perspiration.
The audience was becoming truly excited; men and women were beginning to move in their seats restlessly. Hands searched and groped through evening clothes for telltale bulges and soft, damp yearnings.
Lenny ground her smooth hips down over the driving plunger of the Xylotrope. She was actually trying to come on the machine now; it had really excited her.
"Yummmmy!" she crooned, "Ummmmm! Hurry! Hurry!"
The audience was now on the edge of its collective seat. All eyes were riveted on her gorgeous, trembling body. They knew they were about to see the first public, Xylotropic orgasm.
But it didn't come.
And she didn't come.
"Make me come!" Lenny screamed out in sincere urgency. "Please make me come little machine! Please!"
But she could not get from it the little extra push she needed to send her flying over the brink of thundering climax. Her face began to contort in anger and frustration.