Image of the Beast and Blown (42 page)

complex, which generates what, for want of a better term,
we call
white noise.
This vibration is quite in phase with
those radiated by the Tocs. It makes the Earthling im-
mediately sympathetic and empathic with the Tocs, and,
conversely, it generates disturbance and confusion in the
minds of the Ogs. But it exists, and its effect is to blank
out the vibrations radiated by the Tocs. In other words,
we Tocs and Ogs know when we're near each other. We
sense it just as a lion downwind from an antelope smells
it. But when one of the resonant white-noise generator
Earthlings is around, the Ogs can't sense us."

Forry put his fingertips together to form a church stee-
ple. He said, "I've never been one to make everything
black or white. There is much more gray in this uni-
verse than black or white."

"Did you ever have a good word to say for the Nazis?"
Hindarf said.

"Well, they did get rockets launched and that led to the
first men on the Moon."

Alys Merrie guffawed and said, "Well, kiss my ass and
call me Hitler!"

"Woolston Heepish is a member of the Ogs," Hindarf
said. "He has not only set himself up as a rival of yours,
he has become a caricature of you, and he has stolen from
you. Do you think he's more gray than black?"

"Black as the devil's hindbrain," Forry said. "Why, just
last night ... !"

Hindarf waved his hand impatiently and said, "I know.
The question is, will you help us? It will be dangerous.
But it will be less dangerous for us if you accompany us.
We intend to rescue Childe. He is a prisoner of the Ogs.
And the emanations from the house today indicate that
he's participating in a grail-growing ceremony. He prob-
ably doesn't know what he's doing, but that makes no
difference. He is doing what they want him to do."

"Aren't there any other Earthlings you know who could
go with you?" Forry said. He remembered some of his
youthful fantasies in which he had been the focus of at-
tention from the secret bands of Martians and Venusians
operating in an underground struggle for control of
Earth. Generally, in his fantasies, he had been on the
side of the Martians. There was something sinister, damp,
toadstooly, and creepycrawly about the Venusians. All

that rain … Now that he thought about it, the deluge of
the past seven days had turned Los Angeles into a Venus
such as the sci-fi writers had projected back in the good
old days of
Science Wonder Stories
and
Astounding.

"No," Hindarf said. "There are none available in this
area, and none anywhere who can generate white noise to
compare with yours."

"This may seem irrelevant to you at this moment,"
Forry said, "but why does Heepish steal from me?"

"Because he wants your stuff for the collection he in-
tends to take to the planet of the Ogs. He's a greedy and
short-sighted person, and that is why he's stolen a few
things from you instead of waiting to take the whole col-
lection just before he leaves."

"What?" Forry said shrilly. "The
whole
collection?"

"Oh, yes," Alys Merrie said, blowing smoke at him.
"He has planned on emptying your house and your ga-
rage. He can do it in a few minutes, you know, if he can
get a Captain to do it for him. The collection would be
moved to a huge room in a barn behind the present head-
quarters of the Ogs. Then, when the Captain moves all
the Ogs to their home planet, he will also take the collec-
tion. Which, by the way, will consist of many of Earth's
art treasures in addition to artifacts and books and so
forth, for the Og museums."

"You can visit our planet, if you wish," Hindarf said.
"And you might as well have Heepish's collection, too. It
won't do him any good after he's dead."

"Dead?"

Hindarf nodded and said, "Of course. We plan to kill
every Og."

Forry did not like the idea of killing, even if Heepish
did deserve it. But the thought of going to an alien
planet, one so far away that it was not even in this gal-
axy! He alone, of all men, would voyage to another
world! He had wanted to be the first man on the Moon
and the first man on Mars when he was a child and then
that dream had glimmered away. He wouldn't even be
able to go to those places as a tourist. And now, he was
offered a free ticket to a planet far more alien and weird
than the Moon or Mars could ever be. Under a strange
sun on an unimaginably exotic world!

"I can come back any time I wish?" he said. "I

wouldn't want to leave Los Angeles forever, you know. I
have my collection and all my wonderful friends."

"No trouble," Hindarf said.

"I must warn you, if it involves anything strenuous, I'll
be handicapped," Forry said. "My heart ..."

"Alys has told us all about that," Hindarf said.

Forry's eyes widened. "Everything?"

"Just the medical aspects," Hindarf said ambiguously.

"All right then," Forry said. "I'll help you. But just
as a white noise generator. You can't ask me to take part
in any killing."

The three men and Alys smiled.

Forry smiled, too, but he was not sure that he was not
making a pact with the devil. It seemed that the Ogs
really were evil, but then the Tocs might not be so good,
either. It could be one band of devils fighting another.

38

Childe awoke with a feeling of emptiness and of shame.

He looked at Sybil, who was sleeping by his side, and
then he stared upward for a long time. Something had
happened to him last night, or he presumed it was last
night, since he did not know what time it was. His
wristwatch was gone.

As if a key had been turned in him, unlocking a mem-
ory or releasing a programmed tape, he had gone
through that ceremony without a false step or being told,
really, what to do next.

When he had evoked that pulsing light, he had felt an
ecstasy that was superior, in some undefinable way, to
that of sexual orgasm. It was difficult to untangle the sex-
ual from the photonic, but a part of the glory had been
from that goblet.

That final incident, the one with Vivienne's unattached
head, had seemed at the moment to be fully justified and
exquisitely delightful. But this morning it looked ugly
and perverted. He could not understand what had pos-
sessed him.

The hell of it was, he thought, that the next time he
was seated before that goblet, he was likely to do the same
thing or something equally uninhibited. He did not fool
himself about that.

The worst thing about this was that he was cooperat-
ing with people—beings, rather—who were evil.

But when he had been placed before that goblet, he
had been unable to refuse to act. In a sense, the goblet
had activated him more than he had activated it.

What was supposed to be the final result of this cere-
mony and of others that would undoubtedly follow it?

He decided that he would refuse to do anything more
unless everything was fully explained.

He thought of Sybil. Would she be tortured if he re-
fused to carry out the Ogs' desires? Knowing what he did
of them, he could not doubt that they would do whatever
they thought was required. And so Sybil would be ... He
shuddered.

Somebody knocked on the door. It was faint because
the door was of such thick metal, but he was aware of it.
His sense of hearing seemed to be sharper after last
night's experiences. He rose, noting that he was naked and
not caring, and went to the door. He rapped on it, and the
door swung outward. Vivienne was standing there with
Pao behind her.

"You people are so technologically advanced, you
could find some easier way to get my attention," he said.

"You indicated you wanted privacy in your room,"
Vivienne said. "So we polarized the one-way windows
and turned off the TV monitor and the intercom."

"That's nice of you," he said, thinking that they were
really trying to sell him on how extremely nice they were.
"Show me where this intercom is, and I'll contact you
when I want you. And be sure to keep the other devices
off."

"What the Captain wishes ..." Pao murmured.

"What I wish now, after a good breakfast, are answers
to my questions."

Pao said, "Of course," as if he was amazed that Childe
could have any reason to think otherwise.

"I'll see you in ten minutes," he said. "You'd better tell
me where the breakfast room is. And leave the door un-
locked."

Pao looked embarrassed. He said, "I'm sorry indeed,
my Captain, but you'll have to stay in here. It's for your
own safety. There are evil people who want to hurt you.
You cannot leave this room. Except for the Grailing, of
course."

"The Grailing?"

"Growing that goblet. The Grail."

"There is to be more of that?"

"There is."

"Very well then," Childe said. "I'm a prisoner."

Pao bowed slightly and said, "A ward, Captain. For
your own protection."

Childe closed the door in their faces and woke up Sybil.
She did not want to get out of bed, but he told her he
wanted her to hear everything that would be said. He
started towards the bathroom but stopped when he saw
a hairy pointed head sticking out from under the bed. It
looked vaguely like a sleeping black dog about the size

of a Great Dane. He rapped it on its wet doggy nose,
and it opened its eyes wide.

"What the hell are you and what the hell are you doing
under my bed?" he said.

The eyes were a dark brown and looked familiar. But
the animal that crawled out from under the bed was un-
familiar. Its front part resembled a giant water spaniel,
and the back part was monkeylike. It stood up on its
semi-human feet and staggered over to a chair and sat
down. It leaned its shaggy floppy-eared head on its two
paws. The monkey part was hairy but not so hairy it en-
tirely concealed a pair of human testicles and a warty pe-
nis.

"I was hungry," Childe said aloud. "But seeing you,
whatever you are ..."

He felt repulsed but not scared. The thing did not look
dangerous, not, at least, at the moment. Its weariness and
its big wet gentle eyes added up to harmlessness.

One thing its presence did for him. It reaffirmed the
sense of alienness, of unhumanity, about these people.

Sybil did not seem frightened; he would have expected
her to be screaming with hysteria.

He said, "Was this your bed partner last night, Sybil?"

"Part of the time," she said.

"There was more than one?"

The only one missing from the ceremony, as far as he
knew, was Plugger.

"I don't think so," she said. "He seemed to have
changed into this about a half hour before we quit."

He did not have to ask her what they had quit doing.

"He said he was almost emptied," Sybil said. "He had
been to the three Toc prisoners before he came to me. I
suppose he buggered them, I mean, he applied his limp
prick to their anuses and shocked them with the only
pleasant shock that I know of. Then he came to me."

Childe did not feel that he was in a position to rebuke
her. What good would it do, anyway? She took sex
where she found it and enjoyed it. And all the time pro-
fessing that he was her only true love. The truth was, sex
was her only true love. Impersonal sex.

The unbelievable element in this was not so much the
metamorphosis of Plugger into this dog-monkey thing as it

was her calm acceptance of the metamorphosis. She
should have been in a deep state of psychic shock.

"Why did Plugger feel it necessary to stimulate the pris-
oners?" he said.

"He told me that everybody in the house had to be
hooked into the Grading and that only if the prisoners
and I had sex with an Og could this be done."

A voice spoke from a jade statuette on a table against
the wall near the bed: "Captain, is there anything you
want?"

"Yes!" he said, facing the statuette. "Get this thing out
of here! Plugger is making me sick!"

A moment later, the door swung out, and the blond
man who had been first in the line entered. Behind him
came two women holding trays. The man took one of
Plugger's paws and led him out while the women served
the food. The coffee was excellent, and the bacon and eggs
and toast and cantaloupe were delicious.

While he ate, he looked steadily at Sybil. She chattered
on as if unaware of his scrutiny. She had certainly ac-
quired a set of stainless steel nerves during her long im-
prisonment.

After breakfast, she went into the bathroom to fix her-
self up for the day, as she put it. Pao and Vivienne en-
tered. The first thing she did was to get onto her knees
before him, murmuring, "Your permission, Captain!" She
kissed the head of his penis.

He did not object. When in Rome, and so on. The cus-
tom certainly beat that of kissing the hand of royalty.

Pao touched his penis with one finger, also murmuring,
"Your permission, Captain."

That was where the power and the glory were stored,
Childe thought. No wonder that Igescu and Grasatchow
and Dolores del Osorojo and Magda Holyani had been
unable to resist using him sexually. The Ogs were sup-
posed to have left
him
alone to develop into something,
according to what he had garnered from the brief conver-
sation between Vivienne and the leader of the three who
had rescued him from her.

He wondered if the two werewolves had intended to
kill him, as he had thought when they attacked. Maybe
they had only meant to herd him back to his prison. And
when he had been jumped by that wereleopard while he