Pornucopia (11 page)

Six of them began that grim trek toward disaster and disillusion. The Kid had started it, his adolescent chatter like a match that touched the right tinder after sputtering futilely for half a lifetime. Miles Long was his name, and Prior could see the scars on his psyche. The Kid must have learned to fight at the age of three and how to sneer at four. Prior, with a scar of his own where it didn't always show, would have felt more sympathy if the brat wasn't so good at both.

Miles (the Kid) Long had won twelfth prize in an Earthside Snapplepop contest by making daily collections from every other kid in the ward for boxtops. He had amassed about twelve hundred entries, and given in return a hundred and fourteen split lips, seventeen damaged teeth, forty-eight black eyes and two hundred and ninety-one substantive threats. When he won, he had opted for the tour: one week at Mt. Icecream. Naturally he had been bored crazy after the first day. So he thought he'd gain the fame he craved by climbing to the top, and the old fool Yale Payton had agreed with him, and the next thing there were five suckers clamoring for equipment. With Prior Gross the guide.

Prior had lacked the wherewithall to finance a jaunt through the Pass, so had had to make the best deal he could. Mt. Icecream Resort was perennially short on mundane personnel, so he'd signed on for a six-month hitch as caretaker-guide in return for a moderate stipend plus transportation to and from. He'd started duty three weeks ago—and like the Kid, he'd been bored stiff (without erection) after about twenty-four hours.

This was no piece of cake. It was a dish of ice cream.

Snow swirled bleakly ahead of them, the particles swooping up to cling messily to their nylafur outfits. It had a yellowish cast and sickly-sweet smell; that meant it was vanilla, or had been before the wind chipped it into crystals. The sugar tended to coat all warm surfaces, becoming more and more grimy as time passed. Human beings carried with them the bacteria of decay and the calories of body-warmth, and that meant perpetual trouble here. Eventually, with this rampant tourism, the entire area would be infected, and Mt. Icecream would become Mt. Rancidsludge, but no one seemed to care. Certainly Prior didn't. What was a little more pollution in the galaxy, after all? He'd had his fill, and not just figuratively. He'd had to eat a quart of ice cream every day, per the Resort policy of demonstrating that the surroundings were, indeed, good enough to eat. Yech!

He turned his head to check the party. Behind him was Stedman Awk, a fat, wealthy slob of a man who'd made his fortune in hamburgers (despite thirteen injunctions over the years against cutting the meat with chickenneck, fishheads, horsemeat and plain old—very old—stale bread) and now he wanted to see how the other half functioned. The dessert-racket half, specifically. And he had caught the adventure fever from the Kid. He would learn about a lot more than rancid ice cream before he got home!

Third was the lone female, Chloe Samuels, who claimed to be a specialist in something or other. It could have been interesting, having a woman along in a necessarily tight formation like this, but it wasn't. For one thing, she was dumpy; for another, even a beauty would have been unapproachable in this cold and grime.

Next was the old man, Yale Payton, followed by the Kid.

At the end was Ambert Black: a huge Negro with too much muscle and an unpleasant militancy. There might have been trouble between him and the Kid, but the Kid was just smart enough to know he was outclassed. Black was no amateur trouble-maker; he was a pro. He had figured to make the climb on his own, but Resort regulations specified a party of at least three, one of these being a guide, for any overnight excursion from the base. Black would have tried it anyway, but knew that the robot snowsleds would have cut him off. He hated meddling robots even worse than meddling people.

A motley crew, Prior thought, without a doubt. An old man, a fat man, an adolescent, a bitter Black and a dumpy doll. All come to see the fabulous mountain of ice cream—and finding it as motley as themselves.

Prior peered ahead again, but the yellow haze cut visibility and hid the peak. Just as well; its beauty was ironic.

They reached the Stage One campsite in midafternoon. The days were about twenty hours long here and the gravity about nine-tenths of a gee, both of which fouled up visitors in subtle but determined fashion. Disorientation, irritation, even outright illness—Mt. Icecream was good for an hour's visit or a six-month tour (but not
very
good for either), but a week was too long for patience and too short for metabolism. As these characters would find out soon.

Prior knew the party wouldn't make it to the top. No party ever did. Probably this one wouldn't get beyond the Stage Two campsite. The old man would give out first, then the fat one, then the woman. Prior had been briefed on such dynamics, and was already an old hand. The Kid would stick it out longer, trying to prove himself. He would think it was manhood and courage he was demonstrating, but actually it was perversity and idiocy. The Negro—now, he was tough. Black wouldn't quit—but after Stage Three the party would be down to two, Black and Prior, and that was below the minimum. The robots would converge, frustrating human ambition in the name of human safety. So it would come to nothing, as it always did.

Unlike these slobs, Prior had reason to scale the mountain. Somewhere up there was the Cherry Tree—his lone hope for sexual salvation. Somewhere beyond Stage Four, reaching for the summit. He had never been to the top—
no
one had, as far as he knew—and his present prospects were bleak. The outside treks were better than the station boredom, at least, but their approach to the summit was illusory. To really do it he would need a sturdy and reliable party, and no such was to be formed from routine tourist ilk. If only a bunch of interstellar marines were to take their liberty here, or central European mountain climbers... but instead there were only old, fat, flighty, fighty or female vacationers, the products of pampered or deprived society.

So here he was, playing out the charade again, letting the paying customers dream of saccharin glory, and grow tired, and quit, having shown themselves up for the feebly ambitious slobs they were. He, as guide, had to pretend that there really was a chance for them to scale the candy pinnacle despite their drastic limitations.

Stage One was large, built to accommodate the many parties that did make it this far. To a considerable extent it was an extension of the main camp; it had electric power and a furnace and half a dozen private cubicles. Usually one or two couples would take the hike as a pretext to spend the night alone: "Hey! Know what we did? We made love halfway up Mt. Icecream! Match
that
, Jones!" The guide filled in for the rule of three, and for the price of a generous tip made himself inconspicuous when that became crowded. Prior had already escorted several of these liaisons, and knew that the anticipated adulterous pleasures too often became guilty quarrels, victim in part to the planetary forces of weight and cycle. Nothing like lack of sleep or a queasy stomach to heighten discord. Maybe sometime he would get to guide a pair of young women; that could be worthwhile, if they weren't lesbians.

But there was none of that this time. No coupling—not with Chloe as unattractive as she was, and no fairies among the men. There wasn't even much bickering, to his surprise. This ramshackle group actually seemed to be unified by a common purpose. He was sure it wouldn't last.

Tonight they talked. Chloe—Klo, she insisted on being called—was a better conversationalist than were most women, perhaps because she was physically unattractive. She didn't seem to be on the make for a man. Her hair, in the nightlight, was red—the too-sharp red of dye, but colorful all the same. She was fast on the uptake, with a snappy rejoinder for any remark tossed her way. The big Negro, Ambert Black, seemed to take half a shine to her, and that was funny too, because he was a true believer in racial purity.
Black
purity; none of that lily-white dilution of the stock. And the old man and the Kid continued to hit it off.

Prior thought about Oubliette and her peristaltic vagina, and daydreamed of shoving the twelve-incher into that orifice, foot by foot. God! What was he doing here on this sickenly edible mountain, when the real eating was back on Earth and between her legs!

"Sure, I know how you feel," the oldster was saying to the Kid. "My moniker isn't much better. Yale—how many times do you suppose I've been told to 'lock it up' or 'take it to college'? Actually my name means 'payer'; it's just coincidence there are other things called that. But every schnook thinks it's so terribly original to—you know."

Yes, the Kid had found a friend in the least likely place, and Prior knew Miles Long's impetus to climb the mountain had abated. The Kid thought he wanted to prove himself to all mankind, but one person sufficed. How many aggressive causes were just that way, sublimations for ordinary satisfactions denied? Prior revised his estimate: the old man would drop out first, but the Kid would join him, the fat man making up the trio.

Now he thought back to Tantamount, twin sister of Oubliette. Too bad she was scientist first, woman second; she had the body to give a man a real lift. Had Prior known then what he knew now, he would have thrown her down on that lab table and cooled his erection in her body before she even had the chance to get the loaded tampon out, and bugged out of there forever!

But when he slept, it was of the succubus he dreamed, there at the beach. She was neither man nor woman, that demon; but when she assumed the female form she was one hell of a fuck!

He woke as his penis-socket spewed into the blanket. He'd had a wet dream, but he wasn't even wearing an organ. Depth of ignominy.

Next day was a harder trek. The sun was out and the surface of the ice cream melted, mucking up their boots and becoming disgustingly slippery. Fat Stedman took a heavy spill about midday, soaking his bottom in liquid strawberry, and that was it. Yale and Miles decided to sacrifice their ambition in order to see him back, generously. Of course there didn't have to be a trio going back, because the alert robots would zero in on any lesser group and take it back anyway. But it was Prior's job not to mention such details. After all, these were paying tourists, and their pride would be salved by making it back on their own.

Now they were three, and the next dropout would terminate the project. That would be Klo. Prior could see she was already tired. She had been tempted to go back, obviously, but probably had realized that she had waited too long, and now the onus for termination of the excursion would be on her. For what that was worth.

Ahead of them Mt. Icecream towered in all its sugary splendor: the pinnacle a mile above the base camp in elevation, many miles on the slant, and many leagues by foot. Red, green, blue and brown overlaid its yellow underbase, with black and gray streaks coursing down like lava from a volcano. The red would be strawberry or cherry, the green pistachio or lime, the blue blueberry, the brown chocolate, and the streaks syrups of assorted flavors. All genuine and of excellent quality, up here where it was uncontaminated by the germs of man. The substance of Mt. Icecream would have carried a snobbish price tag in any store on Earth. Very little was exported, however, because the expense of shipping was greater than that of manufacturing an equivalent grade locally. A few super-snobs made a point of serving it on special occasions, but that came under the heading of conspicuous consumption. Every so often, these past three weeks, Prior had gone out with the shovel and scooped up some particular flavor on order for Earth shipment. But this was a standing joke among personnel and tourists alike: after all, it was only ice cream.

Klo saw him looking, and came up beside him. "It is beautiful, in its grisly way," she remarked. "What do you think made it?"

"God made it," he said. It was the standard ploy, straight from the guide manual. The fact was, no one knew who had made it or who maintained it. It did seem to be beyond coincidence for the flavors and constituents to match Earthly standards so precisely, yet there was no possible connection. It was just here, and had to be accepted on that basis.

Ambert Black came up too, as ornery as ever. "Big benign whiteass God with a long whiteass beard," he said sarcastically. "Got nothing better to do than make a mountain of upperclass ice cream. Probably shits it in His off-moments. Why worry about unimportant little things like war and poverty and disease?"

"Maybe God's tired," Klo said, unoffended. "Time for a change in administrations."

Black was silent a moment, uncertain whether she was agreeing with him or ridiculing him. Prior wasn't sure either, but did appreciate how neatly she had thrown the big Negro off balance.

"Maybe God ain't just tired," Black said at last. "Maybe He's dead. And his last Will & Testament was to be buried under an everlasting pile of ice cream. Maybe it's every man for himself, now."

"Makes sense," she agreed amicably.

Black shut up, still not sure which side she was on. Maybe he felt a dawning kinship with her—and maybe he was afraid of that, Prior thought. In many ways, the plain white women of the species had it as bad as the strong black men.

They continued climbing. As elevation increased, temperature decreased, despite what people said about warm air rising. The greater labors required in the steepening ascent kept them all sweating inside their wrappings, however. Klo was red-faced, and neither from the light of the waning sun nor from any embarrassment; her breath fogged out in a noisy bellows-rush. But she wouldn't give up.

They made Stage Two. Even Black admitted his fatigue. He stripped without ceremony and plunged into the warm shower. He had enormous muscles, stout haunches, numerous scars, and a massive hanging ebony penis.

Klo just lay flat for ten minutes, getting her wind, and in that position she didn't look bad at all. Her stomach slimmed down, her breasts stood out on her heaving chest, and her facial features softened. Then she sat up and began peeling off the layers.

Prior was breaking out the staples, for the guide on such parties was also necessarily the cook and chief handyman. He watched, frankly curious to see what a dumpy woman looked like in the nude.

"Not as bad as I thought," he said as she got there. "You are overweight, but there's muscle in your legs where it counts, and your breasts are even handsome."

He thought she'd blush or get mad—he hardly cared which—but she just shrugged and got up to find the shower. "Get out, you scorchskinned phony," she yelled in to Black. "You can't hog the only facility forever. My turn coming up."

"I'll get out when I'm ready, you whiteassed whore!" the man yelled back jovially.

Klo pushed through the curtain and stepped into the shower with him. "Get out when you're ready, then, black woodpecker."

Prior paused again in his preparations. Either he'd have to fetch the first-aid kit in a hurry, or this acquaintance was ripening faster than anticipated!

"Say, I must be hard up when long pig starts looking good!" Black muttered, sounding surprised rather than angry. "Long fat
white
pig, yet."

Prior relaxed. There would be no race riot for the nonce. Black had a weakness for stout women....

The water splashed. "Gimme that soap, Derby," she said, and the curtain bowed as she wrestled around him for it, not waiting for him to tell her to get it herself, whiteass.

"Get your boob off my tube!"

"If that's God, he ain't dead," she said.

"I
said
I was hard up! So it's hard and it's up. What's it to you?"

"Let me feel that." More splashing and curtain-bowing. "You're half-right. It's fairly hard and up."

"
Fairly
hard!" Black cried indignantly. "That's pure polished ebony ivory horn. You couldn't soften that black bastard with a white sledgehammer!"

"My white socket-wrench could screw it down, though."

Prior's interest in sex had diminished after the workout the statues had given him, but three weeks in the candy snows had cranked up his scrotum and put blood-pressure behind his pet-cock, as his last night's imaginings had demonstrated. This trek had hardly promised an outlet.

Ah, well. It showed that such things were unpredictable. He stripped efficiently, plugged in Monster, and parted the bustling shower curtain.

They did not notice. Klo was hard at work softening the ebony ivory with her socket, and Black was plumbing the depths of the long fat white pig in the vertical position, front face, while the steamy water plunged down over both.

Prior considered the openings, then retired temporarily from the field. He was stuck with a twelve-inch erection and no place to cool it. But he was merely daunted, not defeated. He had had experience with grouped statues, after all.

He braced himself, then stepped naked out into the blizzard landscape of Mt. Icecream. The vanilla sleet cut into his skin and frosted his fingers and toes, but melted instantly from the heated organ. He scooped up a double handful and rubbed it over his mighty penis, and gradually the monster diminished into a midget. He dived back into the warmth of Stage Two.

With cold-stiffened fingers he unplugged the now-empty phallus and set it aside. He unlimbered a unit he had never had occasion to employ before: the bifurcate double-lengther. He locked it on and returned to the shower, forked member perking expectantly.