Destroyer 012 - Slave Safari

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2024-12-16 0 0 229.24KB 108 页 5.9玖币
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Slave Safari
[The Destroyer 012]
Richard Sapir & Warren Murphy
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CHAPTER ONE
While Europe was a collection of warring tribes and Rome merely another city-state on
the Tiber and the people of Israel shepherds in the Judean hills, a little girl could
carry a sack of diamonds across the Loni Empire in East Africa and never fear even one
being taken from her. If she suffered an injured eye, here alone in all the world were
men who could repair it. In any village she could receive a parchment for her jewels,
take it to any other village, then collect gems of exactly identical weight and purity.
Waters from the great Busati River were stored in artificial lakes and channeled into
the plains during the dry season, long before the Germanic and Celtic tribes that later
became the Dutch ever heard of dikes or canals. Here alone, in all the world, a man
could set his head on pillow without fear of attack in the night or hunger in the
morning.
Historians do not know when the Loni ceased to care for their canals and dams, but by
the time of the Arab slavers, the Loni were no more than a small tribe, hiding in the
hills to escape mass slaughter. The plains were death dry; the Busati River flooded at
will; and one in ten were blind for life. The land was ruled by the Hausat ribe, whose
only governmental policy was to track down and to kill the remaining Loni.
Some of the Loni could not successfully hide, but instead of being killed, they were
often taken to a spot on the river and traded for food and a drink called rum. Sometimes
the person who took them went the way of his merchandise. Whole villages disappeared in
chains to serve the plantations of the Caribbean Islands, South America and the United
States. The Loni were very valuable indeed because, by this time, it had begun to be
written that the men were strong and the women were beautiful and the race lacked the
courage to resist.
In the year one thousand, nine hundred and fifty two, dated from the birth of a god
worshipped in Europe, the Americas and small parts of Africa and Asia, the colony called
Loniland became independent. In a stronger wave of nationalism in the 1960's the colony
became Busati, and hi a yet stronger wave in the 1970's, it expelled the Asians who had
come with the British to open stores, when the lands along the Busati River had been
called Loniland.
When the Asians fled under the policy called "Busatinization," the last people capable
of mending an eye left the land of the Loni. Little girls dared not venture into the
streets. No one carried valuables for fear of the soldiers. And high in the hills, the
scattered remnants of the Loni Empire hid, waiting for a promised redeemer who would
restore them to the glory that once was theirs.
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CHAPTER TWO
James Forsythe Lippincott yelled for his boy who was somewhere in the Busati Hotel,
which still used towels labeled Victoria Hotel and still had the ornate V's inscribed,
embossed and sewn all over halls, drapes, bus-boys' uniforms and water faucets.
There had been no hot water since the British left, and now with the last planeload of
Asians having taken off from Busati Airport the day before, there was no cold water
either.
"Boy," yelled Lippincott who, back in Baltimore, would not even call a nine-year-old
black child "boy." Here, he was yelling for his porter. According to the new Busati
tradition, published the day before in the last edition of the Busati Times, any
foreigner, most especially a white, who called a Busatian "boy" could be fined up to a
thousand dollars, thrown in jail for ninety days and beaten with sticks.
But if you paid your fine in advance to the Minister of Public Safety and to the great
conquering leader, Dada "Big Daddy" Obode, who that very morning had successfully
defended Busati against an air invasion by America, Britain, Israel, Russia and South
Africa, using-according to Radio Busati-the very latest in atomic planes, you would not
have to pay your fine in court.
This process in Busati was called pre-guilt payment, a revolutionary system of justice.
In Baltimore the same process was called graft.
"Boy, get in here," yelled Lippincott. "There's no water."
"Yes, Bwana," came the voice from the hallway followed by a black, perspiring man in
loose white shirt, loose white pants and a pair of cracked plastic shoes-which made him
one of the richer men of his village ten miles up the Busati. "Walla here to serve you,
Bwana."
"Get me some fucking water, nigger," said Lippincott, snapping a towel in Walla's face.
"Yes, Bwana," said Walla, scurrying from the room.
When Lippincott had come to Busati, he fully intended to respect the proud African
traditions and search for old forgotten ones. But he found quickly that this politeness
earned him only derision, and besides, as the Minister of Public Safety had said:
"Bush niggers need beatings, Mr. Lippincott. Not like you and me. I know it's against
our laws for a white to hit a black nowadays, but between civilized men like you and me,
the only way to treat a bush native is to thrash him. They're not like us Hausa. They're
not even Loni, God help them. Just poor mongrels."
It was then that James Forsythe Lippincott learned of pre-guilt payments and, as he
handed over two hundred-dollar bills to the Minister of Public ^Safety, was promised,
"If any of these boys give you trouble, just let me know their names. You won't see them
around anymore."
In Baltimore, James Forsythe Lippincott was careful to call the maids by their marital
title and last name, and to promote blacks to executive positions in the family company
he ran, but in Busati he did as the Busatians. It was the only way to get things done,
he told himself, and he did not even suspect how much he truly liked this method of
beatings and brutality, in preference to the enlightened Baltimore way where every
problem was solved by holding another seminar in race relations.
This was Busati, and if he did not follow the Busati system of beating bush niggers,
well, then, would that not be a subtle form of racism, thinking his American way was
superior to the Busati way?
James Lippincott examined his stubble of a beard. He had to shave it. Couldn't let it go
another day or he might be mistaken for one of the hippies who regularly never returned
from Busati. In Busati, a man with a clean shave and wearing a suit got some respect.
Those seeking truth, beauty and a communion with man and nature, just never showed up
again.
Walla rushed into the room with a soup tureen of water.
"Why did you bring that in?" asked Lippincott.
"No more pots, Bwana."
"What happened to the pots?"
"Liberated yesterday by the army, bwana. So that imperialist aggressors won't get them.
Atomic planes come to steal our pots, but our great conquering leader destroyed the
attackers."
"Right," said Lippincott. "A great attack by imperialistic nations." He dipped a finger
into the soup tureen of water and became angry.
"This is cold, Walla."
"Yes, Bwana, no more hot water."
"You brought up boiling water from the kitchen yesterday."
"No more gas for the stove, Bwana."
"Well, how about firewood? They can certainly burn firewood. You don't need Asians to
show you how to make a fire, do you?"
"Got to go upriver for wood, Bwana."
"All right," said Lippincott, annoyed. "But for every cut I get from using cold water,
you get two cuts. Understand?"
"Yes, Bwana," said Walla.
Lippincott counted three, cuts on his face when he turned from the mirror and took the
blade out of his safety razor.
"That's six for you, Walla."
"Bwana, I got something better for you than cutting."
"Six cuts," said Lippincott who had intentionally given himself the last two in
anticipation of taking revenge for his discomfort on Walla.
"Bwana, I know where you can get woman. You need woman, Bwana, don't cut poor Walla."
"I don't want some little black ape, Walla. Now you have cuts coming to you and you know
you deserve them."
"Bwana, you look. You want woman. You don't want Walla."
It was then that James Forsythe Lippincott realized his body was indeed calling out for
a woman.
"White women, you do whatever you want. White women, Bwana."
"There are no white women available in Busati, Walla. That will be another cut for
lying."
"White women. Oh, yes. White women. I know."
"Why haven't I heard of them before?"
"Not allowed. Not allowed. Secret. White women at the big house with the iron gate."
"A whorehouse, Walla?"
"Yes, Bwana. White women in the whorehouse. Don't cut Walla. You can do anything to them
you want if you got money. Anything. You can cut white women if you got enough money."
"That's outrageous, Walla. If you're lying, I'll give you twenty cuts. Do you hear me?"
"I hear, Bwana."
When Lippincott drove up to the large white house with the iron gate, he saw to his
delight that the windows held air-conditioning units. Iron bars held the gray units in
place. If he had looked closer, he would have seen that there were bars also on windows
that had no air conditioners. But he did not look closer, nor did he wonder why Walla
did not accompany him, even though the servant knew he would be punished for just
disappearing the way he had.
Lippincott was pleasantly surprised to see that the buzzer button on the gate worked. He
tried it only after he found that the gate did not open to his pushing.
"Identify yourself," came a voice from a black box over the mother-of-pearl button.
"I was told I could find entertainment here."
"Identify yourself."
"I'm James Forsythe Lippincott, a close personal friend of the Minister of Public
Safety."
"Then he sent you?"
If Lippincott had lived a life that exposed him to any sort of danger, he might have
taken cautioned notice of the fact that in a country where brass doorknobs were stolen
regularly, no one had pried loose the little mother-of-pearl buzzer from that front
door. But James Lippincott was discovering himself, and in the excitement of finding
that he truly loved to inflict pain, he neither worried nor cautioned.
"Yes, the Minister of Public Safety sent me and said everything would be okay,"
Lippincott lied. So what? Instead of a pre-guilt payment, there would be an after-guilt
payment.
"All right," said the voice in the hollow raspiness of a speaker system. Lippincott
could not place the accent, but it sounded faintly British.
"The car can't get through the gate," said Lippincott. "Will you send a boy out to watch
it?"
"No one will touch a car in front of this gate," came the voice. The gate clicked open
and such was Lippincott's anticipation that he did not wonder what might protect a car
in front of this house, when ordinarily Busatians stripped a parked car like piranha
working over a crippled cow.
The path to the door of the mansion was inlaid stone and the door handles shiny brass.
The door of oak was polished to a gleam and the bell knob was the crafted head of a
lion;-not African lion but British. Lippincott knocked. The door opened and a man hi
Busati Army whites, with sergeant's stripes on his sleeves, stood in the entrance.
"A bit early, what?" he said in a British accent, that seemed even colder coming from
his anthracite face.
"Yes. Early," said Lippincott, assuming that was what he should say.
The sergeant ushered him into a living room with ornate Victorian furniture, chairs
stuffed to discomfort, bric-a-brac filling crannies, large portraits in gold frames of
African chiefs. It was not British, but almost British. Not the almost-British of
Busati, but the almost-British of another colony. Lippincott could not place it.
The sergeant motioned Lippincott to a seat and clapped his hands.
"A drink?" he said, lowering himself into a stuffed sofa.
"No, no, thank you. We can begin now," he said.
"You must have a drink first and relax," said the sergeant, grinning. An old wizened
black woman came into the room silently.
"We'll have two of your special mint juleps," the sergeant said.
Mint juleps. That was it. This home was furnished the pre-Civil War South, American
South, thought Lippincott. Like a pre-Civil War whorehouse, perhaps in Charleston, South
Carolina.
Lippincott made a show of looking at his watch.
"Don't rush yourself, the girls will wait," said the sergeant. The man was exasperating,
thought Lippincott.
"Tell me, Lippincott, what brings you to Busati?"
Lippincott resented the over-familiar use of the last name, but answered, "I'm an
amateur archaeologist. I'm looking for the causes of the breakdown of the great Loni
Empire and the assumption of power by the Hausa tribe. Look. I'm not really thirsty and
I'd like to get on with, well, with the business at hand."
"I'm sorry for the inconvenience," said the sergeant, "but you are not on the approved
list to use this house, so I'll have to find out more about you before you may begin.
Terribly sorry, old boy."
"All right, what do you want to know?"
"Must you make it seem like an interrogation, old boy?" the sergeant said.
"Interrogations are so crass."
"When crass is faster, crass is nicer."
"All right, if you must be barbaric, who told you of this place?"
"The Minister of Public Safety," lied Lippincott.
"Did he tell you the rules?'
"No."
"The rules are these. You don't ask the girls their names. You tell no one of this
house. No one. And, old boy, you don't just drive up to the gate. You phone in advance.
Make an appointment. Understand?"
"Yeah. Yeah. C'mon. How much?"
"It depends upon what you want to do."
Lippincott did not feel comfortable talking about it. He had never done this before, not
what he wanted to do, and before coming to Busati had never even suspected that he had
such desires. He fumbled with the words, stepping into the area of his longings, then
skirting them, then approaching them from another angle.
"Whips and chains, you mean," said the sergeant.
Lippincott nodded silently.
"That's not so unusual. Two hundred dollars. If you kill her, that's $12,000. Severe
damage is prorated. These girls are valuable."
"All right, all right Where do I go?"
"Cash in advance."
Lippincott paid, and after insolently recounting the money, the sergeant led him
upstairs to a long broad hallway. They stopped in front of a polished steel door. From a
tall chest next to the door, the sergeant took a cardboard box, and handed it to
Lippincott.
"Your whips and chains are in here. Hooks are on the wall. If the girl gives you any
trouble, just ring the buzzer in the room. If she refuses you anything, threaten to ring
the buzzer. She shouldn't be any trouble though. Been here three months. Only the really
new ones give trouble. Haven't been educated, so to speak."
The sergeant took a key from a ring on his belt and unlocked the door. Lippincott
gripped the paper box tightly under his arm and went into the room like a schoolboy
discovering an abandoned pastry shop.
He slammed the door behind him, and in his rush into the room, almost stumbled over a
wide metal cot. On it lay a nude woman, her legs drawn up to her stomach, her arms
shielding her head, her red hair a dirty tangle on the mattress, which was speckled with
dried bloodstains.
The room smelled of camphor and Lippincott assumed it must be from the ointment that
glistened on the girl's flanks over fresh and precisely drawn lash marks. Lippincott
suddenly felt compassion for the creature and was tempted to leave the room, perhaps
even buy her freedom, when she peered from beneath her folded arms and seeing a man with
a box, rose slowly from the cot. When he saw her young breasts flecked with dried blood
as she rose from the cot, a driving rage enveloped him, and when she dutifully walked to
the dirty, blood-spattered wall and raised her hands above her head to an iron ring,
Lippincott was trembling. He fumbled the chains around her wrists, then pounced on the
whip as if someone might snatch it from him.
As he readied himself for the stroke, the girl asked, "Do you want screaming?" She was
American.
"Yes, screaming. Lot of screaming. If you don't scream, I'll whip harder and harder."
Lippincott whipped and the girl screamed with each cutting crack. Back came the whip,
then forward, crack, and the polished snakelike cord glistened with blood, back and
forward, back and forward, faster until the screams and the whip and the cracking became
a single sound of anguish and then it was over. James Forsythe Lippincott was spent and
with the sudden quenching of his strange and sudden thirst, his powers of reasoning
assumed command and he was suddenly afraid.
He realized now the girl had screamed almost as a duty despite the great pain. She was
probably drugged. Her back looked like raw meat.
What if someone had taken pictures of him? He could deny them. It would be his word
against some bush nigger's. What if the Minister of Public Safety found out he used his
name improperly? Well, three, maybe four hundred dollars would take care of that.
What if the girl died? Twelve thousand dollars. He gave more than that each year to the
Brotherhood Union for Human Dignity.
So why be afraid?
"Are you through, Lippy?" the redheaded girl asked dully, her voice heavy with drugs.
"If you are, you're supposed to take the chains off."
"How do you know my name? That's only used in my social circle."
"Lippy, this is Busati. Are you through?"
"Uh, yes," he said, going to the wall to get a better look at her face in the dimly lit
room. She was about twenty five, the fine, lean nose had been broken days before and was
swollen and blue now. There was a gash in the lower lip that had crusted around the
edges.
"Who are you?"
"Don't ask. Just let me die, Lippy. We're all going to be dead."
"I know you, don't I? You're... you're," and he saw the features, now mangled, that had
once graced Chesapeake Bay society, one of the Forsythe girls, a second cousin.
"What are you doing here, Cynthia?" he said, and then, in horror, remembered and said,
"We just buried you in Baltimore."
"Save yourself, Lippy," she groaned.
In his panic, that was just what Lippincott intended to do. He envisioned Cynthia
Forsythe somehow getting back to Baltimore and disclosing his terrible secret.
Lippincott grabbed the end of the whip and wrapped it around the girl's neck.
"You're a fool, Lippy, you always were," she said and James Forsythe Lippincott
tightened the whip and kept pulling the ends until the red swollen face of the girl
disclosed a tongue and the eyes bulged and he kept pulling.
The sergeant downstairs understood why James Forsythe Lippincott did not wish to write
out a personal check, and yes, he would trust him to return to his hotel and make
arrangements with the National Bank of Bu-sati to get cash. "We do not worry," the
sergeant said. "Where would you go?"
Lippincott nodded, although he was not sure what the sergeant meant. He understood only
that he would be allowed to pay for what happened upstairs, and that was all he wanted
to hear.
When Lippincott returned to his hotel, Walla was still missing. He called for him
several times, then vowed that when he saw Walla again, the busboy would get a beating
to carry on his back for the rest of his life.
The vice-president of the bank offered to supply guards to Lippincott because walking
around Busati with $12,000 was not the wisest of courses. "This is not New York City,"
the banker explained, apologetically and inaccurately.
Lippincott refused. He was sorry three blocks later. One of the many military patrols
stopped him and as he reached into his pocket to show his identification and a ten-
dollar bill, he must have disclosed the bulk of his cash, for the officer reached into
his pocket and took out the envelope of one hundred and twenty hundred-dollar bills.
"That belongs to the house with the iron gate," said Lippincott hoping the power the
house seemed to have would extend to the officer. Apparently it didn't, because the
officer simply double-checked Lippincott's identification, asked him again if he were
indeed James Forsythe Lippincott, then shoved him into the Land Rover and personally
drove the vehicle away.
Out of the capital they drove, and along the great Busati River they drove. Darkness
fell over the Busati and still they drove on, alone, the rest of the patrol having been
ordered to stay back in the city. They drove so far that when they stopped Lippincott
swore the stars seemed close, as close and as clear as they must have been when man
first descended from the trees.
The officer told Lippincott to get out.
"Look, I can give you twice that amount of money. You don't have to kill me," said
Lippincott
"Get out," said the officer.
"I'm a personal friend of the Minister of Public Safety," said Lippincott.
"You'll find him over there behind that wide tree," said the officer. "Go."
So Lippincott, finding the Africa night chilly and his heart even chillier, went to the
wide tree that rose like a little prickly mountain from the Busati plain.
"Hello?" he said but no one answered. His elbow brushed up against something on the
tree. He looked around. It .was a boot. A leg was in the boot and on top of the leg was
a body. The dangling hands were black. The body did not move and it smelled of the last
release of the bowels. The body was in an officer's uniform. Lippincott stepped back to
escape the smell and to try for a better look at the face. Suddenly a flashlight
illuminated the body's features. It was the Minister of Public Safety. A large spike
protruded from his head. He had been nailed to the tree.
"Hello, Lippy," said an American voice.
"What?" gasped Lippincott.
"Hello, Lippy. Squat down on your haunches. No, not your butt on the ground. On your
haunches, like a slave waiting for his master. On the haunches. That's right. Now,
Lippy, before you die, if you're very nice, you may ask me a question."
The flashlight had gone off and now the voice came out of the African dark, and try as
he might, Lippincott could not see the speaker.
"Look," he said, "I don't know who you are, but I can make you a rich man.
Congratulations on successfully scaring the crap out of me, Now, how much?"
"I've got what I want, Lippy."
"Who are you?"
"Is that your one question?"
"No, my one question is what do you want?"
"All right, Lippy, I'll answer that. I want to revenge my people. I want to be accepted
in my father's house."
"I'll buy your father's house. How much?"
"Ah, Lippy, Lippy, Lippy. You poor fool."
"Look. I want to live," said Lippincott, straining to keep his backside just off his
raised heels. "I'm humbling myself. Now what can I give you for my life?"
"Nothing. And I don't care about your humbling yourself. I'm not some Harlem shine who
calls himself Abdulla Bulbul Amir. Humbling doesn't do anybody any good."
"You're white? I can't see."
"I'm black, Lippy. African. Does that surprise you?"
"No. Some of the most brilliant men in the world are black."
"If you had any chance at all, you just blew it with that lie," the voice said. "I know
better. I know every one of you Lippincotts and Forsythes. There isn't one of you who
isn't a racist."
"What do you want?" asked Lippincott. "What do you want?" The man was obviously keeping
him alive for something. There was silence. Far off, a hyena howled. There would be no
lions near here, not with vehicles and men having been around the area.
"I can get you recognition from America," said Lippincott. "My family can do that."
摘要：

SlaveSafari[TheDestroyer012]RichardSapir&WarrenMurphy--------------------------------------------------------------------------------CHAPTERONEWhileEuropewasacollectionofwarringtribesandRomemerelyanothercity-stateontheTiberandthepeopleofIsraelshepherdsintheJudeanhills,alittlegirlcouldcarryasackofdia...

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