Image of the Beast and Blown (48 page)

disconnected red lips and spurted like scarlet gunpowder
exploding.

The Grail blew up soundlessly with a crimson-and-
yellow cloud expanding outwards and pieces of whitely
glowing metal flying through the cloud.

45

Until the last moment, Forry could not make up his mind.

He had been repulsed at first by the orgy. Seeing such
things in stag films was one thing, but seeing them in the
flesh was very uncomfortable and even sickening. After a
while, the aura of reeking sexuality, of uninhibited or-
gasms, of penises and vaginas and anuses and mouths,
began to excite him. He even got jealous when he saw
Alys Merrie sucking on the red-skinned cock of a big
Amerindian, and he felt an impulse to get off the chair
and dive into the welter, that raging sea, of hair and flesh.

But he was, in the end (I always pun, even here, he
thought), too inhibited.

Nevertheless, the vibrations were getting to him, and
he hoped the ceremony would not last too long. Other-
wise, he might abandon his restraints and join in the fun.

A few seconds later, he got his first view of what was
taking place in the mind of Childe. He did not know
that it was Childe's mind that was broadcasting, but he
surmised that it was. There was no doubt that Childe and
the Grail, hooked together in some psychosexoneural
manner, formed the focus and the distributor of the
strange power emanating throughout the hall.

The glimpses of the alien worlds were like seeing the
paintings of Bonestell, Paul, Sime, Finlay, St. John, Bok,
Freas, Emshwiller, and other greats of science-fiction
become three dimensional and then become alive. Paint-
ing turned into reality.

The worlds were only slices; it was as if Childe was
cutting the cosmic pie into slim pieces and hurling them
at him.

He jumped up from the chair and unsteadily made
his way towards the complicated shifting structure of
flesh. It was only a few feet from him but it seemed to
have sped towards the horizon. Between him and the
bodies writhing in the glory of the power from the Grail
was a vast distance.

He had to hurry. The Childe—Child?—was coming.

If he did not get within that blaze, he would be left
behind. He would be standing alone, naked and erect and
weeping in the big American Legion hall. This was the
only chance he would ever get. He, Forry Ackerman,
the only human to get a ticket to intergalactic space, to
alien and weirdly wonderful worlds in a foreign galaxy.
His childhood dreams come true in a universe where he
had no right to expect that any dreams would ever be
reality. Where he had built a house to embody dreams
with only half-reasonable facsimiles. Where the pseudo-
worlds had seemed to be real in the shadow world of his
home but real for split-seconds only. Where stars like
giant jewels, and crimson landscapes, and trees with
tentacles, and balloon-chested Martians with elephant
trunks and six fingers, and huge-eyed feathered nymphs,
and long-toothed red-lipped vampires dwelt in startling
fixity forever.

Now he could go voyaging.

He ran towards the dwindling figures while the Grail
sent up a mushroom cloud of red, green, yellow, purple,
and white shoots. He ran towards them, and they shot
away as if on skates.

"Wait for me!" he cried. "I'm going, too!"

The horizon, so distant, suddenly reversed its direction
and charged him and was on him before he could stop
running. Like a locomotive appearing out of a tunnel,
it ran over him with flashing emerald, topaz, and ruby
lights screaming at him, and swiftly rotating puffs of
brilliant white and deep-space black cutting through him
instead of iron wheels.

Whatever the objective length of time, to him it seemed
instantaneous. He was in the hall and then he was in a
huge room with gray walls, floor, and ceiling. It had no
furniture and no doors or windows. The only light was
that escaping in waves from the Grail.

Childe and the others were with him. They were all
looking at each other dazedly. Some of them had not yet
uncoupled.

The Grail and its pedestal stood before Childe.

Hindarf strode to the wall and spoke one word. A
large section of the wall became transparent, and they
were looking out over the bleakest landscape that he had

ever seen. There was only naked twisted rock. There was
no vegetation or water. Yet the sky was as blue as Earth's,
indicating that there was an atmosphere outside.

Childe said, "Come here, Forry. Take my hand."

"Why?" Forry said, but he obeyed.

Hindarf activated another window on the opposite wall.
This showed more windswept rock, but far away, near
the horizon, was a spot of green and what looked like the
tops of tall trees.

"This isn't our world or the Ogs' either!" Hindarf
shouted. He pointed into the sky and Forry could barely
see the pale moon there. It looked as large as Earth's, but
it was darkly mottled in the center and resembled the
markings on the wings of a death's-head moth.

Childe beckoned to Dolores del Osorojo, who smiled
and came to him and stood on his left, holding his hand.
Childe said something in Spanish to her, and she smiled
and nodded.

"That about uses up my knowledge of Spanish,"
Childe said. "But she prefers to stay with me. And I
want her to be with me."

"That is the moon of Gruthrath!" Hindarf shouted.

He wheeled upon Childe. "Captain! You have brought
us to the desert world of Gruthrath!"

Childe said, "It's a desert, but it can support you and
the Ogs quite comfortably, if you get out and dig, right?"

Hindarf turned pale. Weakly, he said, "Yes, but surely
you are not thinking of … ?"

"My ancestral memory or genetic memory or what-
ever you call it has been opened," Childe said. "I know
that there is very little chance that either you Tocs or
Ogs would let me go once I made the first landing on
either planet. You have Captains greater than I who
could neutralize my powers long enough for your people
to physically capture me. You'd have to, because I am
partly an Earthman, and you could never trust me. And
whichever planet I got us to first, the home of the Toc
or the Og, the people there would catch me. And they
would take captive the enemy peoples, too.'

"That isn't true!" Hindarf and Igescu yelled.

"I know," Childe said. "You two were taking a chance
in a cosmic lottery, as it were. You did not know which

planet I would pick out to land on first, and you couldn't
even ask me, because I would not know which one until
I was presented with a choice. Also, if you tried too hard
to sway me, I might get suspicious. So you took a chance.
And both of you lost."

"You can't do this!"

The Tocs and the Ogs rushed towards Childe.

Forry almost let loose of Childe because it looked as
if the three of them were going to be torn to bits.

Childe gripped Forry's hand so hard that the bones
cracked.

He shouted, "Fuck you!" and they were off.

There was a thin triangle of nothing wheeling by Forry,
a gush of soundless purple flame around his feet, and the
familiar walls of the American Legion were all around
him and the familiar floor was under his feet.

Forry did not say anything for a moment. Then, slowly,
he spoke. "Where's the Grail?"

"I left it behind. I can do that, you know, although it
means that the Grail is now forever out of my reach.
Unless another Captain brings one here."

"That's all?" Forry said. "You mean the trip's
over?"

"You didn't get
killed,"
Childe said.

"I made a better trip when I saw the movie
Barbarella,"
Forry said.

Childe laughed and said, "You'd gripe if you were
hung with a new rope."

They got dressed and prepared to leave the hall.
Childe said, "I wouldn't tell anybody about this, if I
were you. And I think we'd better not see each other
again."

Forry looked at Dolores. She was dressed in a white-
peek-a-boo blouse and tight orange slacks that one of the
Toc women had left behind.

"What about her?"

Childe squeezed the dark-haired woman and said, "I'll
take care of her. She may have been one of
them,
but
she was one of the good ones."

"I hope so," Forry said. He stuck out his hand. "Well,
good luck.
Adiau,
as we Esperantists say."

"Don't take any wooden grails," Childe said.

Forry watched him walk away with his arm around the

slender waist of Dolores, his hand resting on the curve of
her ass. How could the fellow so easily give up that
power, that chance to go star-voyaging?

But he felt good again when he came out into the
familiar world of Los Angeles. The rains had stopped,
the sky night was clear and full of stars, car horns
were blaring, water was splashing onto the pedestrians
as reckless drivers roared through pools, a radio was
screeching rock, an ambulance siren was wailing some-
where.

A half hour later, he entered his house. He stopped
and gasped. The Stoker painting was missing again!

Renzo Dummock came down the steps then, scratch-
ing his hairy chest and swollen paunch. He said, "Hi,
Forry. Say, could you loan me a coupla bucks for
ciggies and a beer? I'm really down in the dumps, I …"

"That painting!" Forry said, pointing his finger at the
blank space on the wall.

Renzo stopped and gaped. Then he said, "Oh, yeah,
I was going to tell you. That guy, what's his name,
Woolston Heepish? He showed up about an hour ago and
said you had told him he could have the Stoker. So I let
him. Wasn't it all right?"

Forry charged into his office and dialed Heepish's num-
ber. His heart chunked when he heard the smooth soft
voice again.

"Why didn't you go with the others?" Forry said.

"Why, Forry! You're back! I thought sure you'd be
gone forever! That's why I stayed behind. I like this
life, and I couldn't pass up the chance to add your col-
lection to mine!"

Forry was silent for a moment and then he said,
"Hold on! I thought you were buried in that landslide?"

Heepish chuckled. "Not me! I slid out as nice as pie
and took off. I had enough of Childe and the Tocs and
the Ogs, even if the Ogs are my people."

"I want my painting back!"

"Would you consider trading it for a rare Bok?"

Forry wondered if the fellow had slipped some LSD
into his coffee. Perhaps everything that had happened
was only a lysergic acid fantasy?

Heepish's voice, fluttering like the wings of a bat in the

night, said, "Maybe we could get together soon? Have a
nice talk?"

"You can keep the painting if you'll promise never to
cross my path again!" Forry said.

Heepish chuckled. "Could Dr. Jekyll get rid of Mr.
Hyde?"