A Feast Unknown (20 page)

I was disappointed. I would have liked to have seen him disgrace himself by vomiting.

The next person summoned was a beautiful mulatto. Her hair was black and kinky,
au naturel,
and her skin was as dark as a wild hare’s eye. The eyes were a startling light blue. She was the wife of the Speaker and had disappeared with him when the explosion blew up the yacht. I recognized her because she had attended the ceremonies when I did. I had bedded her not infrequently and had, of course, tongued her all over.

I think Anana knew this. She seemed to know everything
about us as if she were God and we were Her sparrows. Thus she knew I would have no objections to performing the ceremony with her. Caliban, however, was a white American born in 1903 and so more than probably had the usual conditioned reflexes of his “class.” This may be why Anana designated Myra to go to him. If he did have any objections, he did not reveal them by expression.

He extended a hand to help her get up on the table, picked her up as if she were a hollow dummy and placed her on her back. She put her legs over his shoulders, and he spent some time with his face buried against the thick stiff hairs I knew so well and the slit dripping with honey-thick lubricating fluid.

Myra made an attempt to respond. She writhed and moaned a little, but I doubted that she was doing anything except acting. She must have been too tense to relax. The only woman whom I thought could in reality let loose and have an orgasm during this ceremony was the Danish giantess. I’m sure that the final act hurt her just as much as any of the women, but she could live for the moment as few can.

Finally, Caliban bit down. The woman stiffened, her fists driving the nails into the skin. (I saw the blood on the tips and palms when she got up.) Her feet bent and turned inward and her toes clenched. Her jaw clamped shut to keep the scream inside, although the Nine had not forbidden screaming.

Caliban lifted her up. He had some blood on his juice-smeared lips and chin, and he was chewing the clitoris. The Speaker, his face set, smeared some ointment on her wound. Myra, gray beneath the brown skin, walked across the table unsteadily and climbed painfully off the table and down the logs of the structure.

This was the first time that I had seen a husband and wife in the caverns at the same time. I thought that it must be rather hard on him to watch her with Caliban; I do not think that I could control my jealousy if Clio were doing this in front of me with him. I would have tried to kill him—perhaps. I knew that Clio was doing what the other women were doing. A man or a woman cannot keep their youth and vitality forever without wanting some variety, and I did not expect her to be a saint. But I also did not want to know what she was doing, even hear about it, let alone see it.

It may be that the Nine were punishing him for some reason. Or perhaps they were testing him.

I was given the honor of eating the next woman, a beauty from the Punjab. My experience in biting off clitorises was nil, but I succeeded quickly. The clitoris, aside from the delicious scent and taste of the moisture and fluid of a healthy womans vagina, tasted like the man’s testicle.

After her, a man was called up. His testicle was cut out and sliced and the pieces passed around. This time, each of us took only a small bite and then threw the remainder on the floor behind us. It was evident that we could not eat all the flesh of forty-seven people. The Nine had pets in their private chambers who would eat what we could not.

The third person called was Clara, and Anana licked at her until she came and then bit off the clitoris.

After that, the ceremony went swiftly with no foreplay for the women. There were too many to spend time dawdling.

At the end, the forty-seven men and women were sitting or standing on the slope across the waters. A few groaned. Several had passed out after making it back, but all regained consciousness and walked out, unaided, when the Speaker dismissed them. They were free to leave. Most would not hear from the Nine until the summons came for the yearly payment of flesh or their turn to be the Speaker.

Aside from these normal duties, I had heard from the Nine only seven times in forty-eight years. I was required to carry out assignments in Thailand, Rhodesia, Brazil, Czechoslovakia, the States, Jerusalem, and Berlin. One occupied me a year, during which I did not see my beloved Clio. I performed all missions to the full satisfaction of the Nine, although I came close to being killed several dozen times. Each assignment would have made a splendid book for my biographer. He never heard of them, of course, and he would have been forced to heavily censor them if he had. And he would have been horrified at the manner in which I did some things.

After the cavern was cleared of all but those on the oaken island, there was silence. The only sound was the sputtering of torches and an occasional licking of blood from lips and chins. The odor of blood and saliva and sweat and clitorises and testicles was strong. Caliban was gazing malignantly at me. I stared at him for a moment and then looked away, since I did not want to indulge in a childish I-can-outstare-you contest.

Finally, Anana rustled her robes and said, “You two have experienced some very disturbing, highly abnormal reactions lately, haven’t you?”

Simultaneously, we said, “Yes.”

“Caliban,” she said.
“Doctor
Caliban. What is your explanation?”

His slight smile showed that he had caught the sarcasm. He said, “I have no answer, except …”

“Continue.”

“The elixir may have something to do with it.”

He pointed at the stone cups and the stone pitcher with which the Speaker refilled the cups. That gesture meant that he believed that the elixir was in the mead-tasting liquid. He did not know that it was. None of the servants knew. We supposed that it was because we were given nothing else special to drink. The Nine referred to the elixir without telling us when we were getting it.

“I can’t believe that any psychobiological mechanism could suddenly start operating after all these years unless it were released by the long-term action of the elixir. Of course, the mechanism must have been deeply buried in me, although I had not the slightest inkling that it existed. Grandrith also seems to be suffering from a similar aberration. Since he has been taking the elixir, too, it offers the only element common to us.

“I admit that I don’t understand what this mechanism is or why he should have one also. I use the term mechanism, but I could just as well say trauma or engram.”

That beautiful voice was so hypnotic that I almost nodded into sleep. For a moment, it lulled my hatred of him. When Anana spoke, she startled me.

“Grandrith.
Doctor
Grandrith. What is your explanation?”

Caliban’s eyes, opened just a trifle. I don’t think he had known that I was an M.D.

“Unlike Caliban, I am not the greatest doctor in the world, or even in Kenya. But I can think, and that’s doing more than
most doctors I have known. I agree with Caliban that the elixir must be responsible for bringing an already-existing aberration to the surface. I seem to be incapable of getting an erection while loving a woman, unless I am inflicting pain on her. Perhaps you noticed that I had a slight erection while I was biting off that womans clitoris. It was the idea of the pain she was having, which I was giving, not the sexual aspect that excited me. If I had thought I was going to kill her, I would have had a big hard-on.

“I am very disturbed. I have, however, been so busy keeping alive that I haven’t had much time to think about it.

“If you know the answer, please tell me.”

My petition indicated my desperation. Nobody asked the Nine, especially Anana, for anything without placing himself in peril.

She did not reply. I said, “It is possible that the elixir may have nothing to do with it. My aberration came with a shock, the explosions of the shells. Caliban may have suffered a shock, too. But it is strange that we suffer from much the same thing.”

I was thinking of the news of his cousin’s rape and death.

“The beautiful Patricia Wilde,” Anana said. “So I will see her no more. Like flowers they … never mind. It’s an old old story. We are not concerned with what our servants do to each other, as long as they are not disobeying us or interfering with our plans. But at the moment, Caliban, you have sent off a man to kidnap Grandrith’s wife, in revenge for what you think he did to your cousin. This is not at all like you, who have combated evil all your life and traveled the world over doing good.”

The sarcasm was so light in tone that I almost missed it.

“It seems the only right thing to do,” Caliban said. “Grandrith must pay for the hideous evil he’s done.”

“Through more evil?”

“I don’t consider it to be evil!” he said with the most heat in his voice I had yet heard.

“You admitted you have a psychic aberration.”

“The aberration,” Caliban said, “consists of this. And nothing else. I can’t get an erection unless I inflict pain or death or am thinking about it.”

He was one up on me. If I could just work up a hard-on while loving by thinking about murdering someone … but what kind of loving would that be? Responsive on the surface and inside totally removed from my Clio. Imaging forth terror and pain and death, while she thought I was melting into her with love.

Anana said nothing for a while. The others sat as if they were sleeping. The torches were beginning to burn out, and the blackness from the ceiling was sinking towards us. The blackness was gaining substance and, hence, weight. The air even seemed to be compressed beneath it. Instead of getting warmer, the denser air became colder.

Anana cleared her throat and said, “Grandrith, you had two uncles. One died in Africa, as you well know. The other went at an early age to America because he had assaulted and nearly killed one of his teachers. Your family never heard of him again. He took the name of Wilde and became a doctor.”

Caliban could be startled. He jerked his head around to stare at Anana, and his eyes had become large.

“You know who your father was, Grandrith,” Anana said. “Your uncle did not know what had happened to him; he left
your father hiding somewhere in Whitechapel. The world knew of your father but it never knew his real name nor what became of him after the murders ceased. We knew, however, because he was one of us. He went to the States, too, and there he became a doctor. This was after the madness passed from him. He became a doctor, like his younger brother, and, indeed, some years afterwards accidentally found him. The youngest brother had a daughter, and your father had a son in America.”

She paused. My heart was clenching with the excitement and the anticipation. I also felt a little sick, because I knew what she was going to say.

“All were exceedingly strong men with tendencies to madnesses. All were doctors, too, as if the knife were your totem, your desire, your bliss. All lovers of violence.”

She stopped speaking again. The silence was like that between the beats of a dying heart.

Then, from Caliban, softly, a weird rising-falling whistle, and, even more softly, “Incredible!”

“You two have the same father.”

27

In less than a minute after Anana had made that statement, we two were blindfolded and led out through the trapdoor in the platform. A hypodermic knocked me out, and I regained consciousness in a single-motored plane. A short time later, the plane landed, and I was led out and the blindfold removed. The landing strip was at the bottom of a deep valley. The green-shielded mountains were everywhere around.

The pilot gave me brief instructions and flew away, leaving me naked and armed only with my hunting knife, which was still bent.

Caliban, I was told, had been taken to a place near the valley of Ophir and released. His instructions were the same as mine. One of us was to return within a month with the other’s head and genitals. The victor would then take the seat left empty by XauXaz.

I knew my approximate location. If I stopped only to hunt when absolutely necessary and got only three hours of sleep at
night, I could get through the mountains in five days to a strip used by a Ugandan mining company A plane might not be available for some time, however.