Urbis

Tana awoke with a roaring in her ears and a numbness in her right arm where she had been lying on it for hours. She was aching all over. Her head was on Melissa’s stomach, and Greta was slumped across her legs. She felt another body behind her, and twisting her neck painfully she could see Sasha stretched face down across Melissa’s legs. All had their wrists securely bound behind their backs.

She tried to determine her whereabouts. Through the windows there was only sky. Everything around her was hard and alien, and it smelled of unnatural things.

There were two seats in front of her. She could see a man sitting in one of them. He had his back to her. He was wearing some strange headgear that covered his ears. Tana wished for something to protect her own ears from the din.

She shifted uncomfortably. At the sound of her movement the man glanced round.

“Awake, are you, darling?” he leered. “Name’s O’Rourke, and I’m the skipper of this ship. Glad to have you aboard.”

Tana struggled to understand his speech. It was but a distant relative of her own, sounding as if it was spat out like aloes grass, not rolled with pleasure around the mouth like meadowbalm. She could infer much, also, from his expression. That was pure evil.

She began to marshal her thoughts, immediately aware that only by remaining supremely alert could she hope to survive. And survive, she was determined, she would.

“Where...where are we going?” she asked.

“You’ll see,” said O’Rourke. “Just sit tight, we’ll be there soon.”

In another few minutes the other women were awake. They rolled off each other and shuffled on their knees to the windows, only to recoil in total shock at what they saw. They were flying! And, if that were not dreadful enough, nothing could have prepared them for the view.

Gone was all trace of nature: hills, trees, grass, clear fresh rivers and lakes had been replaced by a landscape that was entirely of human making. An endless gathering of meeting houses and - she supposed - living places of vast dimensions stretched to the horizon. A gargantuan conglomeration of buildings sat alongside other things the purpose of which eluded her: freeways, railways, canals, bridges, all interwove in a chaotic mass. Masts of various kinds and huge chimneys rose up, the latter pumping great plumes of smoke into the air. In the distance ahead, the buildings rose progressively higher, graceful spires soared upward, higher, far higher, than the height of the helicopter, glinting as they caught the sunlight, at once terrible and magnificent.

The women stared with a mixture of horror and awe, desperately looking in every direction as yet something more demanded their attention. Trains threaded their way through the morass of concrete, cars streamed on the freeways, other helicopters zoomed by. For the moment they were too awestruck to even consider what their part in all this might be.

A short distance behind them they could see Granby following in the red and blue helicopter with its cargo of ivory. The machine seemed to be wavering in the air, and little by little losing height. Both machines had been flying for hours, and Granby was weakening from his continual battle with the controls.

O’Rourke called him up. “Granby, are you in trouble, man?”

Granby’s voice sounded strained. “The stuff’s just too heavy for the machine. It’s all I can do to keep her steady.”

“Bullshit,” snorted O’Rourke. “You’ve brought her all this way. You can make it the last little bit.”

“I guess so, but...”

Granby never finished his sentence. His helicopter was caught by an air current and its nose tipped forward. A shackle holding the ivory in place was wrenched from the bulkhead. The ivory slid forward, crushing Granby in his seat as the machine spiralled downwards and plunged headlong through the roof of a factory, erupting in a fireball and sending thick black smoke swirling into the sky.

The women stared, biting their lips to stifle screams. Greta buried her face in Melissa’s breast, the others wishing they could do the same.

“Shit!” yelled O’Rourke. “Shit, shit, shiiiit!”

“Is he...dead?” said Tana slowly.

“You’re too right he’s dead, lady!” O’Rourke snarled. “And I am going to be in one heap of trouble. You better bring me a good price. I’m gonna need it to bail me out of this.”

The women looked at each other. Bring me a good price. Was that what the man had said? Were they to be sold like sheep in the marketplace? And to what end? The answer to this lurked unbidden on the fringe of their thoughts, refusing to be banished.

As they looked at the back of his head, their sinking hearts told them there was no hope.

The helicopter moved on, deeper into the city, moved rapidly down the canyons between the towers. The women glimpsed life in offices and apartments, and here and there a terrace restaurant, set at some dizzying height above the ground, with people sitting eating and drinking and watching the world go by. It was evening, and the working day was over. The city was finding many ways to relax. The helicopter passed a rooftop swimming pool and Tana and the other women were amazed to see men and women lounging almost naked, the merest scraps of coloured cloth covering their genitalia.

It seemed to go on and on. But at last there was a change of scenery. The metropolis came to a grinding and clearly reluctant halt along the shore of a vast curving bay of sparkling water, into which the long fingers of countless piers stretched hungrily, as if the city, not content with having consumed an unimaginable area of land, were also laying claim to the sea. Indeed, it appeared that a piece of the city had in fact passed beyond the waterline, for out in the bay was a large island, connected to the mainland by a road running along a bridge, about three kilometres in length. The island appeared to be entirely manufactured, with sheer grey walls rising directly out of the water. It had something of the air of a fortress, but still resembled the office buildings in the rest of the city, as it rose from the sea in a cluster of glittering, elegantly tapering towers.

The women didn’t know where to look.

Suddenly the helicopter banked and turned sharply, dropping towards the roof of one building in particular. A sign near roof level read: Sector Two Security Commission. But written words conveyed no meaning to the women. They gasped as they rushed headlong towards the building and the evident termination of their journey. As one they screwed their eyes shut and crouched together as best they could, waiting for the end.

The helicopter settled gently on the roof, and O’Rourke leapt out, just as two men in olive uniforms identical to his own came hurrying towards him. He opened a door in the side of the helicopter and began pulling the women out onto the bitumen roof.

“Come on, move it!” he growled, as they jumped awkwardly down and stumbled forward. “You guys, get these women into a cell, pronto, no questions asked.”

The two men took up positions either side of the women, and with O’Rourke bringing up the rear, they herded them inside the building and into an elevator.

When the elevator doors opened again, the astonished women were ushered into a large room in which men in the same uniform were milling about. When the women appeared, the men began whooping with joy and surrounded them, cheering, delighted at the prospect of an orgy.

O’Rourke was quick to disabuse them of their assumptions. “Sorry, but this is strictly a cash crop.”

Followed closely by the rest of the men, the women’s three guards shoved then along a corridor and into a cell. The door slid shut behind them, and they retreated into the furthest corner of the cell.

“You two!” O’Rourke barked at his two appointed guards. “See these maniacs don’t get at the women. I got some comm calls to make.” With that he hurried away along the corridor, leaving the rest of his colleagues pressed up against the bars of the cell, reaching out to try to touch the women and shouting obscenities and suggestions at them.

The women sat in a huddle, their backs to the men, their shoulders hunched, their heads bowed. In time the men beyond the bars began to lose interest in them, and gradually drifted away. When the last of them had gone, the two guards sat down on the floor with their backs against the bars. The women gradually shifted their positions.

While the men rolled and lit joints, the women quietly busied themselves undoing each other’s bonds. There seemed little point to a bid for freedom, but they would put up a fight. They fastened the cords and belts around their waists once more, and rubbed their raw wrists.

An hour later, O’Rourke reappeared, scowling and fanning the air with his hand.

“You guys got nothing better to do than get blitzed on duty?” he snarled. “Come on. We’ve got customers waiting in the conference room.”