Image of the Beast and Blown (40 page)

35

At noon, the ringing of the doorbell awakened Childe. He
staggered out into the front room, past Sybil, who was
still sleeping, and threw open the door. A gust of rain wet
him and covered the three men standing on his porch. He
realized immediately that he should have been more
cautious, but by then it was too late. The first man
stepped inside, holding a spray can. Childe held his breath
and ran towards his bedroom, where he kept a gun. He
stopped when the man called, "Childe! Your wife!"

The second man was by Sybil with a knife at her
throat. The third, Fred Pao or his twin, held an air gun.

The first man sprayed a gas over Sybil just as she
opened her eyes and said, "Wha … ?"

She fell back asleep, and Pao said, "It won't hurt her.
Now your turn, Mr. Childe."

He could still run for the bedroom, he thought. But
these men would cut Sybil's throat if they thought they
had anything to gain by it. Of course, he might be able to
kill all three of them with his gun, but what good would
that do Sybil? On the other hand, if he surrendered,
wouldn't he and Sybil be as good as dead?

He did not know. That was the paralyzing factor. He
did not know. And from what had passed between
Vivienne and Hindarf he surmised that he was regarded
as something special.

"All right," he said. "I surrender."

The man with the spray can approached him and shot
the vapor in his face. He wanted to hold his breath, but it
was foolish putting off the inevitable. After glancing at his
wristwatch, he breathed in.

It was thirty minutes later when he awoke. He was
lying on a comfortable bed and looking up at a canopy.
He turned his head and saw Sybil beside him. She was
still unconscious. He got out of bed with some effort,
noting that he had a slight headache and a brassy tongue
and gums. His teeth felt enlarged.

Their prison was a single bedroom and a bathroom.
There was one door for entrance.

Sybil woke up. She lay there for a while and then got
out of bed. She went to him, and he put his arm around
her and said, "I'm sorry about this. If I had made you
leave, you wouldn't be in this mess."

"That can't be helped," she said. "Do you think that
we'll ever get out of this? I wish I knew what these people
wanted."

"We should find out sooner or later," he said. He re-
leased her and prowled around the room. There was a
large mirror fixed in the wall above the dresser and an-
other wall-high mirror on the opposite side of the room.
He supposed that these were one-way windows.

An hour passed. Sybil had quit trying to talk and had
started to read, of all things, a mystery novel she found
in a bookcase. He investigated again with the idea of
using something to help them get out. He observed that
the door was heavy steel and was set tightly against the
wall. It swung outward.

An hour and a half after awakening, the door was
opened. Pao and two men entered. Sybil spoke to one.
"Plugger!"

Plugger was a tall, well-built, dark-skinned man. His
hands were long and narrow with long tapering fingers.
These were covered with small protuberances, a feature
Sybil had not described.

"Our enemies—and yours—were moving in fast," Pao
said. "That is why we had to take you two away. I am
sorry; we're all sorry. But it had to be done. Otherwise,
you would have fallen into the hands of the Tocs."

"Tocs?" Childe said.

"Everything will be explained," Pao said. "Very
quickly. Meanwhile, we require your presence else-
where."

"And Sybil?"

"She will have to stay here. But she won't be harmed."

Childe kissed Sybil and said, "I'll be back. I don't
think they intend us any evil. Not now, anyway."

He watched Plugger shut the door. There was a button
in its middle; when this was pressed, an unlocking mech-
anism was activated. Childe reached out and pressed the
button, and the door swung out swiftly.

Pao said, "What are you doing?" and pressed the but-
ton to shut the door.

"I just wanted to see how it worked," Childe said.

They started down the hall, which was wide and lux-
uriously carpeted and furnished. He stopped after a few
steps. He had been right. The mirror was a one-way
device. He could see Sybil still standing in the middle of
the room, her hands clenched by her side.

He decided to see how valuable he was to them.

"I'd like that mirror turned off," he said. "I don't like
being spied on."

Pao hesitated and then said, "Very well."

He pressed a button on the side of the mirror and it
darkened.

"I'd like the other mirror turned off, too," Childe said.

"I'll see it's done," Pao said. "Come along now."

Childe followed him with the other two men behind
him. At the end of the hall, they turned left into another
hall and halfway down that turned right into a very large
room. This looked like the salon of a millionaire's house
as constructed for a movie set. There was a magnificent
concert piano at the far end and very expensive furniture,
perhaps genuine Louis XV pieces, around the room. A
peculiar feature, however, was the glass or transparent
metal cube set in the middle of the room. Inside this was
a slender-legged dark-red wooden table on top of which
was a silvery goblet. Or half a goblet. One side seemed to
be complete, but the other was missing. It was as if a
shears had cut through the cup part of the goblet at a
forty-five degree angle.

Pao led Childe to the transparent cube and motioned to
a man to bring a chair. Childe looked around. There
were six exits, some of them broad enough for three men
to go through abreast. There were also about fifty men
and women in the room, a large number of them between
him and the exits. All were dressed in tails and gowns.
Pao and his two men were the only ones in business
clothes. He recognized Panchita Pocyotl and Vivienne
Mabcrough. Vivienne wore a scarlet floor-length formal
with a deep V almost to her navel. Her pale skin and
auburn hair contrasted savagely with the flaming gown.
She was holding a big ostrich fan. Seeing his eyes on her,
she smiled.

The crowd had been talking when he entered but the
conversation softened as he was brought before the cube.

Now Pao held up his hand, and the voices died away. A
man brought a chair with three legs, a heavy wooden
thing with a symbol carved into the back. The symbol was
a delta with one end stuck into the open mouth of a
rampant fish.

"Please sit down," Pao said.

Childe sat down in the chair and leaned against its
back. He could feel the alto-relief of the carved symbol
pressing into his back. At the same time, the dull silver
of the goblet inside the cube became bright and shimmery.
The brightness increased until it glowed as if it were
about to melt.

A murmur of what sounded to him like awe ran
through the people.

Pao smiled and said, "We would appreciate it if you
would concentrate on the goblet, Herald Childe."

"Concentrate how?" Childe said.

"Just look at it. Examine it thoroughly. Let it fill your
mind. You will know what I mean."

Childe shrugged. Why not? The procedure and the
goblet had aroused his curiosity, and their intentions did
not seem sinister. Certainly, he was being treated far
better than when he had been a prisoner in Igescu's.

He sat in the chair and stared at the shining goblet. It
had a broad base with small raised figures the outlines of
which were fuzzy. After a while, as he studied them, they
became clear. They were men and women, naked, and
animals engaged in a sexual orgy. Set here and there
among them were goblets like that at which he looked,
except that these were complete. There was a curious
scene in which a tiny woman was halfway into a large
goblet while a creature that looked like the Werewolf of
London, as played by Henry Hull, rammed a long dick
into her asshole. At one side of the base, almost out of
view, was a man emerging from a goblet. His legs were
still within the cup, but his stiff dong was out and was
being squeezed by the tentacle of a creature that seemed
to be a six-legged octopus with human hermaphroditic
organs. While it was jacking-off the man in the goblet, it
was also fucking itself.

Childe did not know what the scene represented, but it
seemed to him that it had something to do with fecundity.

Not with fecundity in the sense of begetting children but
of …

He almost grasped the sense of the figures and their
play, but it danced away.

The goblet stem was slender. A snake-like thing of
silver coiled around it, its head flattening out to become
the underpart of the cup. Its two eyes, distorted, were
the only dark spots on the bright silver of the goblet.

The outside of the cup, except for the serpent's head,
was bare. But the inside bore some raised geometrical
figures that shifted as he looked at them. Sometimes he
could pin them down for a half a second and the figures
began to make sense, even if they were totally unfamiliar.

The goblet shone even more brilliantly. The room
became quieter, and then, suddenly, he could hear the
breathing of everyone in the room, except for himself,
and, far away, the impact of rain on the roof and the
walls of the house and, even more distantly, the roar of
the waters down the street outside.

There was a hissing he could not at first identify. It was
so weak, so remote. And then he knew. He did not have
to turn his head to look, and it would have done no good
if he had. The thing was hidden under Vivienne's dress. It
had slid out and was dangling between her legs. Its little
bearded mouth was open, the tongue flickering out, and it
was hissing with rage or lust. Or, perhaps, some other
emotion. Awe?

The fight from the goblet became more intense. Sur-
prisingly, he could look at it without pain. Its whiteness
seemed to drill into his eyes and flood his brain. The
interior of his skull was white; his brain was a glowing
jewel.

There was a collective intake of breath, and the light
went out. The darkness that followed was painful. He felt
as if something very much beloved had died. His life was
empty; he had no reason to live.

He wept.

36

When he was finished sobbing—and he still did not know
why he had felt so bereaved—he looked up. The people
were not talking, but they were making some noise as they
shifted around. Also, several were passing through the
crowd and serving a liquid in small goblets. The people
drank it with one swallow and then put their goblets back
onto the large silver trays.

Pao appeared from behind him with a tray on which
stood a goblet filled with a dark liquid and several sand-
wiches. The bread was coarse and black.

"Drink and then eat," Pao said.

"And if I don't?"

Pao looked stricken, but he shrugged his shoulders and
said, "This is one thing that we can't compel you to do.
But I swear by my mother planet that the food and drink
will not harm you."

Childe looked at the goblet again. It was not quite as
dull as it had been a moment ago. It flickered when he
looked at it. When he looked away, but could still see it
out of the corner of his eye, it became dull once more.

"When will I find out what all this means?" Childe said.

"Perhaps during the ceremony. It is better that you …
remember."

"Remember?"

Pao did not offer to explain. Childe smelled the liquid.
Its odor was winey, but there was an unfamiliar under-
odor (was there such a word?) to it. The underodor
evoked a flashing image of infinite black space with stars
here and there and then another image of a night sky with
sheets of white fire and giant red, blue, yellow, garnet,
emerald, and purple stars filling the sky. And there was a
fleeting landscape of red rock with mushroom-shaped
buildings of white and red stone, trees that looked in-
verted, with their branches on the ground and their roots
feeding on the air, and a thin band with scarlet, pale
green, and white threads, something like a Saturn's ring,
arcing across the sky near the horizon.

He drained the tiny goblet with one gulp and, feeling

hungry immediately afterward, ate the sandwiches. The
meat tasted like beef with blue cheese.

When the goblets had been passed around, and every-
body was standing as if waiting for something to happen
—which they were, Childe supposed—Pao raised his
hands. He spoke in a loud voice: "The Childe must
have power!"

That was a funny way to refer to him, Childe thought
The
Childe?

The crowd answered in a loud chorus, "The Childe
must have power!"

Pao said, "There is but one way in which The Childe
may gain this power!"

The people echoed, "There is but one way in which
The Childe may gain this power!"

"And grow!

"And grow!"

"And become a man!"

"And become a man!"

"And become our Captain!"

"And become our Captain!"

"And lead us to our long lost home!"

"And lead us to our long lost home!"

"And permit us to triumph over our enemies, the
Tocs!"

"And permit us to triumph over our enemies, the
Tocs!"

"Through the nothingness and the utter cold he will
lead us!"

There was more, none of which made any sense
to Childe except for the reference to their enemies, the
Tocs. These must be the people of whom he had so far
met only three. The three who had rescued him from
Vivienne and reproached her for breaking the truce.

The liquor was making him feel very heady by then.
And the food had infused him with strength. He looked at
the goblet, which glowed as if his gaze beamed radium at
it.

Pao finally finished his chanting. Immediately, the
crowd became noisy. They started talking and laughing.
And they were also stripping off their clothes. Panchita
Pocyotl shed her gown, revealing that she wore nothing
under it except long stockings held up by huge scarlet