A Feast Unknown (16 page)

I was now close enough to see the color of those peculiar eyes. They were whirlpools of gold-flecked bronze, and they did not look quite human.

“You monster!” he shouted. “Don’t you care? Doesn’t it disturb you at all?”

It was no use telling him I was innocent, and I knew that he had put his weapons aside for the same reason that I would have. I was the only great challenge he had ever met among men.

I stopped, pulled in my arms from the side, and extended them before me. He stepped forward, halted, and put out his hands. I moved forward another step, and we gripped each other’s hands. I exerted pressure to throw him off balance; he did the same to me.

This was not to be a long drawn out battle. There would be no kicking, gouging, kneeing, hitting with the fists or the edge of the palm. Our positions were far too precarious for those. Moreover, both of us, I believe, wanted to demonstrate his superior strength in a simple and undeniable manner.

I had never met so powerful a man. He was not as strong as a gorilla, but then neither am I. He was not quite as powerful as the strongest of the males among The Folk. But then neither am I.

We strained to throw the other to one side and so send him through the space between the mountains to the river three thousand feet below. Our muscles cracked; our bones creaked. Sweat oozed like our departing strength from our skin, stung our eyes, and ran coldly down our ribs and our crotches.

We swayed back and forth in this footless dance. He glared down at me, and I up at him. I don’t know what he saw in the gray of mine, but I suspect that it was the same lust to kill that was in his gold-spotted bronze. We came closer and closer. Our arms were forced outwards by the pressure we applied and forced backwards, and we neared each other until our chests and noses were almost touching. His breath was hot on my wet face.

Then we came together. Our chests rubbed. Our bellies touched. And I felt that elephant trunk of a penis against mine.

I think that he was upset then. At least, his face changed from snarling hatred to an unreadable expression.

He looked as if he wanted to look down to verify what his other senses told him. He did not dare to do so, of course. He, no more than I, dared to change his attitude. The least unbalancing or weakening in one direction, and the other would upset him.

Eventually, one would weaken, and the end would be swift then.

Until that clasping of hands a few minutes before, I would not have believed that any human could withstand me so long. Now I knew that it was possible that I had met my match. More than my match.

I knew it, but I did not really believe it. If I had, I think I might have weakened just a trifle with the doubt and the surprise. And that would have been enough for him.

I was hoping that a similar doubt would corrode his strength just enough for my purposes. But there was nothing in the expression on his savagely handsome face or in those peculiar eyes or in the gracefully massive muscles to indicate that doubt was turning his bronze into lead.

By then, our peters were crossed like swords.

And I was beginning to feel the slow up-build of an orgasm.

My aberrant condition was going to betray me. Kill me.

No matter how I fought it, I would be subject to a certain amount of transport and involuntary contraction of muscle and loss of force.

Caliban did not know what was happening, but he knew that something was occurring in me. He smiled thinly and said, “I am stronger than you, you filthy ape!”

I could feel the slight tremors in his belly and a slight jerking in his penis.

His eyes widened, and he said, “What the hell!”

He was beginning to feel the same sensations as I!

It was a question of who would ejaculate first, and I thought that it would be me.

I was about to release him, if possible, and throw myself backward and away. If I did it quickly enough, and he was seized in an orgasm, I might be able to keep away from him until we were both over the spurtings, and we could then resume the fight on equal terms.

He bit his lip and said, “God! What’s going on?”

I tensed for my effort to break that metalled grip.

A voice bellowed in English, “Stop! In the name of the Nine!”

22

The granite slab covering the entrance to the caverns had slid into a recess. Nine people stood on the apron of rock near the other end of the bridge. Eight were of the Nine. The tall long-bearded old man with the black patch over one eye was missing. The ninth person was a tall Negro dressed in the blue Roman toga-like robes of the Speaker for the Nine. He held a wooden staff, nine feet high, on top of which was carved a crux ansata. A third of the length down was a carved representation of the symbol which the Finns call
hannunvaakuna.

He shouted at us again so loudly that the mountain returned an echo. “No more fighting! Come to me, and I will give you the order of the day!”

Caliban backed away from me until I could not reach him. He would not turn away until I said, “It’s over. For now.”

His penis was beginning to shrink and to drop. Mine stayed erect for a much longer time. In fact, for a minute, I thought I was going to have the orgasm.

The eight of the Nine were dressed in differently colored robes with hoods. Their faces were hidden, and they turned away and were gone before I reached the ledge. This was the first time I had ever seen more than three at a time. During the many years I had served the Nine, I had seen all of them. But it had always been three one year, another trio the next year, a third trio the following year, and then, the fourth year, the cycle began anew.

I could not imagine why the old man whom we addressed as
XauXaz
was not present. I did not ask. The Nine discouraged questions.

The Negro in blue was the majordomo, the Speaker for the Nine. He would serve for three months of the year and then go. I had been Speaker several years ago and my wife two years after that.

He said, “Peace between you two until the Nine say war. Follow me.”

We halted in the first cave, where he went through the ritual of getting us through the guards. These were five men and five women, naked as everybody except the Nine and the Speaker, but armed with automatic rifles. Behind them were heavy-caliber machine guns, flame-throwers, a whippet tank, and a Bofors cannon. They were serving their four-hour duty, as did everyone who came through this entrance.

A woman took a sample of blood from our thumbs and disappeared into a wooden booth. She came out a moment later and handed two small cards to the Speaker. From a pocket in his robe he took two cards and matched them with the others. Then he handed all four to her and said, “Follow me!”

The next cavern, unlike the first, was not lit with batteries
of lamps on the walls and overhead fluorescent cylinders. It was dark, and we progressed through it by placing our hands on the shoulders of the man before us. Since I had been the Speaker, I knew that he was following a narrow beam of sound transmitted through a small device in one ear. If he strayed to one side or the other, the sound would die out. I did not doubt that all sorts of scanning devices were studying us.

In the next cavern, which was empty, and was really a trap for any invader who got this far—the ceiling would fall on them and then the floor would drop out—I studied the Speaker. He was a tall, well-built, handsome Negro with a light-brown skin. He looked as if he were thirty.

Suddenly, I knew why he seemed so familiar. He was a New Yorker, a millionaire who had recently disappeared after the explosion of his yacht in Long Island Sound. Several people had been brought in for questioning, but no one had been arrested. The newspaper articles said he was sixty years old but looked remarkably younger. He was supposed by the more superstitious in New York City to be using voodoo to prolong his youth. The black militants had accused him of being an Uncle Tom and of refusing to use any of his fortune to help his people. Furthermore, a million dollars was missing from his bank account.

It was easy to understand the explosion and the disappearance, now I had seen him here. He was getting to the age when questioning and astonishment about his youthful looks would increase geometrically in proportion with the passage of time. He could use makeup to seem older, but that had its annoyances and limitations. The Nine had ordered that he “die.” He could start a new identity elsewhere after he had served his three months as the Speaker.

I wondered if the Nine were thinking of the same thing for me. I could not go on forever with my present identity. Only the fact that I spent so much of my time away from civilization, and my passion for obscurity, had prevented an order from the Nine. Even so, when I went to England or elsewhere, I whitened my black hair and wrinkled my face.

I suspected that Caliban was in my position. Rivers and Simmons had mentioned briefly that “Doc” had not been able to entirely hide his name and qualities from the world. A writer of pulps had somehow learned something of his strange rearing and training, his extraordinary, perhaps unique, qualities and abilities, and something of the hidden place where he rehabilitated criminals. The writer had used Caliban as the basis for a character, under another name, of course, in a series of wild science-fictional adventures, most of which were the result of his imagination. But there had been some fact in them. Apparently, the two old men had figured prominently in these adventures but also under different names.

23

The fourth cavern was enormous. It contained a village of prefabricated huts with bright lights on the end of tall stone pillars illuminating the lower part of the cave. The huts were provided with lighting, heaters, hot and cold running water, liquor, tobacco, and furniture.

Although I had learned much when I was the Speaker and had been in twenty caverns, I did not know where the supplies came from or where the water was pumped or the electrical generators were housed. Nor did I know what entrance the Nine used.

Caliban and I were marched into the central square of the village and dismissed. He went into the house marked with a card bearing his name: I went into the house prepared for me. Here I shaved, showered, and then ate a meal cooked by a famous Parisian chef. I wanted to gorge myself but I ate relatively little. I did not care to have a heavy bloated stomach when I went through the ceremony in the Council Cave of the Nine.