Child of Fortune (43 page)

As for the Bloomenkinder tribes of which the tales told, these were nowhere in evidence, for nowhere did we encounter more than three or four humans in attendance at any bloom, and by the tattered rags still clinging to their bodies, it was evident that these were all folk who originated in civilized realms, rather than being the mythical offspring of generations of indigenous savages, noble or otherwise.

For the most part, they were no more verbal, and sometimes less, than the first group we had encountered, though the nature of their devotions varied with the flowers they chose to attend, or more aptly put perhaps, with the variety of flower that had captured their spirits.

As well as three more examples of the yellow flower with black stamens, we encountered acolytes of a certain puffy black bloom who exhibited a mild form of territorial behavior, locking hands to form a circle around the object of their affection at our approach, and devotees of a certain species of brilliant pinkish flower who, by pantomimed gestures, invited us to join them in the energetic if inartistic orgiastic figures which they seemed capable of sustaining indefinitely under the influence of this bloom of animal lust.

Not even Guy was tempted to personal experimentation with the psychotropics offered up by the flowers we encountered in those two days, for it seemed all too clear that these revertees had fallen under the thrall of molecules originally evolved to evoke the rude mammalian drives of the native fauna, so that the states of consciousness induced thereby could hardly be said to be elevated above the human norm.

Nor might any of these psychotropics be said to be marketable, save perhaps as less than subtle remedies for anorexia, sexual ennui, insomnia, or worse, as agents of unscrupulous behavioral control.

On the afternoon of the third day, however, we happened on a new variety of flower which tempted us sorely indeed.

Making our way via a series of short shallow leaps, we rounded a hillock of a tree crown to find ourselves directly confronted with an overhanging bell-shaped bloom whose pale and translucent violet petals cast an all-but-ultraviolet glow over the mossy green pollen bed beneath it. Upon which two human figures were languorously copulating side by side in a slow, steady rhythm.

Indeed, to call this copulation would seem to be unjust, for the gaunt rag-clad man and the equally gaunt woman, while anything but appetizing in our eyes, were manifestly perfect each to the other in their own. For in the face of their beatific smiles, their tender gazes, and the very rhythms they offered up to each other's delight, one would have had to have been an utter churl to deny that, beneath the violet canopy and under the pheromonic influence thereof, they were truly making love.

Vraiment, Guy and I found ourselves holding hands and speaking in hushed whispers as we stood before this somehow charming, not to say arousing, tantric figure.

"We can hardly intrude upon such dyadic bliss ..."

"Indeed, let us wait until they have reached their final cusps, ne ..."

As it turned out, the latter stratagem proved as fruitless as the former politesse proved superfluous, for their passage d'amour went on interminably, which is to say that the rhythm thereof seemed designed to prolong the tantric exercise into infinity by the eschewing of any climactic cusp.

At length, Guy's mounting impatience overcame his gallantry. "This could go on forever," he whispered, securing a vacuum vial from his pack. "I must have a sample of this psychotropic!"

So saying, and against my hushed protestations to the contrary, he stole close upon them, vial in hand.

Hola, it was as if he did not exist! Their passage d'amour continued unabated and untrammeled as he crawled around the flower gathering vapors, nor did they pay him any heed when, seeing this, he experimentally exposed himself to their full vision. Indeed, not even when I strode boldly up to Guy and tugged him away by the sleeve did our presence have any discernible effect.

Vraiment, not even when we forgot to hush our speech in our excitement did our existence intrude upon the perfect dyadic consciousness of the lovers on the flower.

"We must try this, you and I, ne!" Guy exclaimed.

"I long to experience such bliss as well," I agreed tremulously. "But if we do, will we not be lost?"

"To all save each other, mayhap ..." he said dreamily.

"We must think on this before we lose all capacity for same," I told him sharply. "Though certainement it would appear we have found a hint of floral paradise out of which poetry and romantic legend might justly arise ..."

Eschewing other objects of exploration, we discovered three more of the violet blooms d'amour during that afternoon and the next morning, and on each we found dyadic figures similarly enraptured in perfect tantric bliss, indeed a bliss which seemed quite indefatigable, for we had yet to encounter such lovers engaged in eating, repose, or any other activity save endless love.

Guy, for his part, grew more and more displeased with my refusal to unmask with him and share such preternatural pleasures, while I demurred under the guise of unwillingness to eject lovers from their flower by main force. In truth, however, while like any natural woman my spirit, not to say my flesh, grew more and more desirous of knowing such erotic ecstasies, my mind rang bells of warning, for if such was the puissance of this flower's pheromone of passion that in its thrall lovers eschewed all nutriment or rest, how long before such tantric demons expired in blissful famishment in each other's arms?

Inevitably, we finally discovered such a bloom unoccupied, a vacant boudoir bathed in violet light, awaiting only two wandering creatures such as we.

"A sign, nicht wahr?" Guy insisted. "A clear signal from destiny, ne?"

"Mayhap from fate ..."

"Pah! When imbibing wine, do you stop short of intoxication? When engaged in sexual congress, do you take care to avoid orgasm?"

"To quote the same source, I am a mystic libertine, not an imbecile."

Guy regarded me with an expression somewhere between contemptuous anger and a sullen thwarted pout.

"Very well then," I declared. "I invoke our pact. Which is to say that one of us must at all times play ground control to the psychonaut. Therefore, let us repair to the flower of your desires, one of us unmasked, and when that personage has fully experienced the naked joys thereof, the functions shall be reversed."

"This is the meanness of spirit in which you propose to conduct a passage of transcendent amour?"

"No meanness of spirit is intended," I told him crossly, in token of which, and in the absence of any masculine gallantry to the contrary, you may have the honor of removing your mask first."

To this open-hearted gesture, Guy could hardly make any further demur, and so he nodded in silent agreement and began to doff his clothes. I did likewise, and in not much more time than it takes to tell, we stood naked before each other, or rather adorned only by the filter masks covering our noses and mouths, a spectacle inducive of a good deal more mirth than lust.

But no sooner had Guy removed his mask than the ironic grin which this bizarre vision had smeared across his face vanished, to be replaced by a beatific smile of priapic though not untender lust, unmistakably counterpointed, as it were, by the all-but-instant erection of his insistent lingam.

In truth more bemused than aroused, I allowed him to seize my hand and lead me forthwith into the shaft of violet light beneath the translucent canopy of the flower. In this venue I thought not to activate my ring of Touch, for while Guy had never voiced wonder at my preternatural erotic puissance, putting it down, no doubt, to his own preternatural capacity for the enjoyment of pleasure, it seemed to me that chemical enhancement would be more than sufficient without resorting to the electronic.

From my point of view, there is little to report of this opening movement of our two-part duet save the seeming endlessness thereof, the mighty duration of Guy's phallic prowess, and the ironic fact that it was Sunshine, the ground control, who experienced cusp after cusp via the ministrations of her pheromonically enhanced psychonaut. For once, it was Guy who was given over to the granting of pleasure without thought or rhythm designed to bring about his own orgasmic completion, and I who surrendered sweetly to the abundance of my own ecstasies.

Vraiment, to the superabundance thereof, for Guy went on and on and on in the same even rhythm, long after sweet ecstasies had given way to a surfeit of pleasure and delight had given way to fatigue, and even fatigue had given way to a boredom of orgasms, if such can be imagined.

When I could tolerate this tender and loving selfless performance no longer, I at last activated the Touch and seizing him by the very root of his lingam, brought him to a moaning, shuddering, piercing conclusion, which I felt sure would leave the mightiest of lovers incapable of proceeding further.

But no, quelle chose, no sooner had he brought his ragged panting under some semblance of control, than his still triumphant phallus was at it again, determined to fill me with yet more unwanted pleasure.

There seemed to be only one thing for it, even though I was certain that no power in the worlds of men or elsewhere could now provoke me to further desire. I tore the filter mask from my face and affixed it over Guy's by main force.

How wrong I was!

No sooner had I taken my first unmasked breath than a pungent, sweet, musky aroma went straight from my nostrils to the very back reaches of my brain, from which it flowed like a living serpent of fire down my spine to ignite a veritable kundalinic explosion in my lower chakras. Vraiment, a rosy, languid explosion which billowed upward, outward, and inward from the base of my spine to fill my loins, and my limbs, and indeed my cerebrum, with roiling clouds of sensuous pink smoke, which in less time than it takes to tell had completely consumed all other aspects of my being.

It seemed to me, or at any rate to the extent that there remained a "me," that my body had become an ecstatic outline of passionate fire, like the fabled burning bush, aflame yet unconsumed.

I seized Guy in my arms, rolled over upon him, and impaled the quick of him in the rosy translucence of my flesh. Ah, oh, he was beautiful! The flesh of his body had the warm sleekness of silk before a bonfire. Each ecstatic tremor of his flesh sent crystal fragments of achingly tender joy down my nerve trunks, the sounds of his pleasures ignited sparkles in my heart, and his face was that of a veritable deity, a mask of tantric perfection auraed by the glow of his marvelous spirit.

There was nothing in the universe but the exquisite texture of satiny flesh and silken sighs, nought existed but the rose-colored breath of his flesh against mine.

How long this persisted, memory would not bind. There were cries, and moans, and tremors, and wordless shouts, and then a thin and agonized voice crying "Stop! Stop! Stop!"

Then the mindless creature of fire that I had become found itself being borne through the air like a weightless cloud, something vile and rubbery was forced onto my face ...

And ...

And the sentient human that I had been found herself seated on a leaf gazing wildly at Guy. Both of us were masked, both of us were panting with exhaustion, and both of us were redolent with passionate effluvia and sweat.

We stared at each other, blinking, for a long while before either of us managed to speak.

"Vraiment, you were right, unmasked together, we would have been lost forever," Guy finally breathed.

"It would almost have been worth it ..." I sighed.

***

But not even Guy Vlad Boca was ready to suggest that we repeat this experiment mutually unmasked, nor did the notion of enjoying such dangerous ecstasies again as alternating psychonauts and ground controls much appeal to either of us. For while in a certain sense it could be said that the ground control drew as much erotic benefit from the psychonaut's chemically augmented tantric puissance as he did, the sexual disjunction cut both ways as well. For under the influence of the flower, the masked lover would always be pleasured to the point of boredom or pain, while the lover in thrall to the flower quite literally could never be sated.

Clearly this flower was only for lovers to whom mutual erotic seppuku was an acceptable ultimate consummation, and expiration via terminal fatigue or famishment was an acceptable price to pay. For such samurai romantics, the perfume of the violet flower might be a great boon, and indeed, under controlled conditions it might be a sovereign remedy for impotence, libidinal ennui, and even conjugal fecklessness, or so Guy believed.

Certainement, here was a product that Interstellar Master Traders should have no trouble marketing at a considerable profit. As for the morality of such an enterprise, Guy declared, the nature of the psychotropic's effect should be forthrightly delineated to the purchaser, whose destiny thereby would be placed entirely in his own hands.