Pornucopia (14 page)

The haul to Stage Five was something else. Glassy sheets of sherbet led up to a bloody strawberry glacier with treacherous mint-filled crevices. Prior had never been this far before, and he was daunted by the savagery of the unfamiliar terrain. Twice Klo lost her footing and tumbled into yawning sugar-crystal pits, nearly yanking both men in after her as the rope lost its slack. Once Prior himself missed a piton and skidded toward a noxious rum-raisin cavity, saved only by a lucky grab at a protruding stratum of frozen fudge.

The worst of it was that the climb was not straightforward. The mountain curved around and about, and was bulged with impassable boulders of icemilk and carved into deadly slanting valleys and jagged channels and shifting cracks and riddled with slippery fossae and ridges and thinly iced sink-holes. The wind was intermittent and spiced with cinnamon; now quiescent, now firing missiles of peach or walnut or chocolate at the weary mountaineers.

Toward noon the maple-flavor snow grew tacky. At first Prior thought it was the marginal heat of the lime-ringed sun; then he realized it was worse. They were coming upon a hot-fudge spring.

There was no reasonable way around it. They had inadvertently entered the canyon formed by the melting snow below the bubbling aperture, and the walls on either side were too sheer to climb, too fragile to trust. It would take half a day to descend and remount another icy face—which might be no better. His map was no good; up here the contours and flavors of the mountain could change with every storm. He should have been warned when he saw that fudge stratum—obviously left over from an earlier flood condition. Now all they could do was plow—or slog—grimly ahead, and hope that this wouldn't turn out to be as bad as it almost certainly was.

Of course, if the slope became impassable, then he would have an excellent excuse to give up his quest. No dishonor in accepting the inevitable.

Prior's boots sank into the chocolate overlay—first half an inch, then two inches, then six. He glanced back at Klo and saw she had taken another spill; her complexion was now a rich Negroid brown. As, perhaps, was his own. Thus did Mt. Icecream seek to equalize them all!

The mud continued to heat and thin. They squished through a level swamp of it, with the canyon walls overhanging threateningly some fifty feet above. They turned a murky corner and found the spring itself.

The chocolate burbled in the center of a pool twenty feet in diameter. At the fringes assorted objects floated—massed fruit-slices, nuts, candy, and solidified chocolate. Overhead the flavored icewater sides arched up into an almost perfect dome. Impossible to scale.

It was warm—seventy or eighty degrees Fahrenheit, here at the dribbling overflow. It might be boiling in the center. They would have to swim around the edge—if there was any viable exit above the spring. There didn't seem to be. The ringwall appeared to have only one aperture—the exit they had entered.

"I swallowed too much chocolate getting in here," Klo said. "I have to use the ladies' room."

"You mean you gotta shit," Black said. "So shit, sister. It'll come out healthy brown. But wait'll I get upcurrent from you."

"He's right," Prior said. "Nothing will show under all this chocolate, and the stream will carry anything on down the mountain."

She looked dubious, but also in dire need. She began squirming about as though loosening her clothing under the surface.

Prior consulted with Black. "Do you have any magic to get us out of this?"

"I'm strictly a summoner," Black said. "Pentagram, chanting, et cetera. I'm no magician. I can't do anything much here."

"Summon a fireman's ladder, then," Klo murmured, wiping brown out of her eyes. Prior wondered whether she had finished her nether business or was still in progress.

"Can't. Has to be a supernatural creature. They're the only ones subject to supernatural summons. And I wouldn't dare let any of them out of the pentagram—even if I could make a decent diagram here on this liquid shit, which I can't. Got your turd put out yet, or do you need help?"

She ignored his last remark. "We could make a pentagram on the surface, you know. Look—this white stuff is marshmallow. String this out between the five points—"

Black fished out an object. "Say, there
is
a lot of shit floating around here." He squinted, then sniffed. "Shit? This looks just like—"

"I think there's a sidewise eddy," Klo said. "I didn't know it would float."

Black looked disgusted. He hurled the object far downstream and wiped his hand off on his sodden shirt. "Livin' breathin' fecal matter shit!" he exclaimed.

"Healthy brown," she agreed.

Prior was too weary to laugh. At least they knew Klo had finished. "But the current would break up the pentagram lines," he pointed out. "Then the demon would escape—and here we are, chocolate covered."

Black scratched his fuzzy head, smearing more chocolate or similar healthy brown on his scalp. "No—I could keep it tight for the duration with a small subsidiary spell. But it still wouldn't solve the problem. How could a demon
in
the penalty box do anything for us
outside
?"

"It could drink up the fudge," Klo said.

"Say, you ain't half stupid, for a whiteass sow," Black said admiringly. "Even if your shit does stink of chocolate. But that still won't get us out of here—we'd just be at the bottom of the lakebed."

"Reverse it, then. Have the demon fill up the place with fudge, and we'll float out the top."

"And get carried down the mountain on a waterfall of boiling chocolate?" Prior demanded. "Too dangerous, and the wrong direction. And if a demon could do that, he'd use it to harm us outside the pentagram, and I'll bet that's forbidden by demonic law. Otherwise every demon ever summoned would circumvent the safeguards and abolish—"

"It ain't that simple, whiteprick," Black said. "Depends on the type of pentagram. Some summoners do get reamed, but I'm more careful. But mainly, some demons are brighter than others. Get a dumb one and the simplest diagram will hold him, depending on his strength. Now a mephistopheles is so clever it don't even need the pentagram to haul your ass into hell; it'll
talk
you there, and—"

"Maybe we need a demon animal, then," Prior suggested. "One
we
can talk into—"

"I've got it!" Black cried. "I'll summon a hellephant! Always wanted to conjure one of those."

Klo looked at him. "An elephant? What good would that do? Anyway, you said you couldn't summon a natural creature."

"You and him just form up the diagram while I work up the spell," Black said excitedly. "This'll exhaust my magic, but man, it'll be an experience!"

Klo shrugged, chocolate dripping from her shoulders. "Let's mark off five points around the pool here, and work in opposite directions." She scooped up an armful of floating marshmallow and began spreading a string of it across the gooey crust. Prior did the same, shaping the stuff into suitable lengths. He discovered to his surprise that Black's subsidiary holding spell was already in effect; the lines remained in place as they were laid down, despite the slow current.

It took almost an hour to do the job, but they finally finished with a pentagram twenty feet in diameter, anchored at the corners by icebergs of thick whipped cream. It swayed with the brown eddies, but did not disintegrate and always drew back into place.

"Jism spread on shit," Black said, shaking his head with admiring wonder. "What a pentagram! Should get the award for novelty, even if I don't have power to bring the beast."

He got out his magic powder and candle. He lit the wick, stuck the candle in a floating crust of fruitcake, and sent it drifting into the pentagram. He began to chant:

FII FEE FOO FELL, LET'S GET RELEVANT!

GET THEE TO HELL, FETCH BACK HELLEPHANT!

And he wafted a cloud of powder toward the flame.

As he completed the ritual, a monster materialized. It resembled an elephant as Mr. Hyde resembled Dr. Jekyll.

"Who in the name of Heaven are you?" the hellephant trumpeted, stomping angrily in the muddy fudge and almost dousing the floating candle. "I just cleaned my feet, and look!" It held up a dripping brown extremity.

"All yours," Black said to Prior.

"All
mine?
But what do I do?" He certainly wasn't going to enter into any fornication contest with this thing!

"Make a deal to get us out of here. That was the idea, wasn't it?"

"But—"

"Oh, for pity's sake!" Klo exclaimed. "You timid men will never get anything done." She addressed the hellephant. "We want to get out of here. Can you help us?"

The hellephant peered down its enormous snout at her. "That depends on where you want to go, madam."

"To the Cherry Tree. Safely."

"There is no safe conduct there for mortals. The guardian demons fornicate—if you'll excuse the uncouth expression—any intruder out of existence."

"We know. We've met a couple. But you can get us
to
it, whatever else happens?"

"I could bore you a tunnel to the fringe of the Cherry Orchard, as it is not far from here. The tunnel itself will be secure. Will that be satisfactory?"

"See?" Klo said to the men. "Nothing to it." And to the demon again: "That'll be fine. How soon?"

"The construction will require about fifteen minutes. Usual terms?"

"Don't answer that!" Black warned her.

She ignored him. "What are the usual terms?"

The hellephant made a gesture Prior didn't catch. Klo blushed—and so did the demon, strangely. "Oh," she said. "Well, I'm not sure—"

"COD, of course," the hellephant said anxiously.

"We don't need no usual terms for no fifteen minute job!" Black yelled. "Fuck your COD! Make another offer."

But Klo had already come to her decision. "Yes, then. Usual terms. COD."

The hellephant made a motion like a bow. "Very good. Observe."

They observed. The creature faced about, stretched forth its trunk, harrumphed a few times, and began squirting hot liquid fudge against a section of the icewall. It was like the jet from a rusty fire hydrant. Brown fluid splashed away, but soon the heat and force of it ate a hole in the ice, and the hole grew steadily wider and deeper.

"I could have used that technique on the second branch," Prior murmured appreciatively. "But when does he suck it up? I never saw him inhale."

"Keep watching," Black said smugly. "The hellephant ain't no genius, but he's a good, honest craftsman."

The hole broke through the first rim, and the fudge disappeared down it, draining elsewhere inside that makeshift vagina. But the hellephant continued to blast it forth, still never taking a breath. Gradually the level of the pool subsided, revealing more of the elephantine body. The creature was squatting on the bottom, its hind end lowermost. It wore a G-string with a tiny patch in front. There was a turbulence around the base.

Finally the chocolate level dropped below the demon's torso, stranding the floating candle on a bar of brown ice. There was a horrendous sucking sound, as of three hundred bathtubs draining simultaneously: gunk, gunk, GUNK! Now Prior saw what was happening. The hellephant was sucking fudge into its rectum and spewing it from its trunk! No wonder the thing never took a breath! But the supply of hot liquid had been exhausted. There was only a bubbling puddle where the original hot spring operated, but it would take many days for it to fill the pool again.

The brown jet sputtered to a halt. The hellephant sucked wind, choked, then farted bellicosely from both ends, clearing its tubes. Caked chocolate shot out, the refuse from its filters, and plopped down like so many bushels of diarrhea. Clouds of chocolate-flavored mist enveloped demon and people. Prior gagged, knowing where it had come from, but he still had to inhale the stuff or suffocate directly.

"I believe the connection is complete," the hellephant said politely. "Do you wish to verify it before making payment?"

"We'll take your word," Klo said. She turned to the two men. "Well, I guess I won't be seeing you...."

"What do you mean?" Prior asked. "We have to stay together, or the robots will come and stop our mission."

"The robots'll never get past the hellephant," Black said. "The demon gets very fussy about interruptions, once it starts."

"Once
what
starts?"

"She agreed to the usual terms, despite my advice," Black said. "COD."

"Cash on Delivery," Prior agreed. "Sure. I'm not stupid. And I'll pay her back what it costs."

"You can't," Klo said.

"Not C.O.D., turd," Black explained. "COD. As in cod-piece. He's the cod, she's the piece. Only more so, in the case of the hellephant. Much more so."

"Precisely," agreed the demon, removing the eyepatch from its crotch. Underneath was a tiny penis, proportionately—no more than eight or nine inches.

"COD—Cunt on Delivery," Klo said. "Everyone knows that." She splashed into the pentagram, removing her chocolate caked clothing.

"The hellephant only fucks once a century," Black explained. "But he makes that one count. He prefers human females, because they're comfortable, they don't have frigid cycles, and they live a fair spell. Most animals only get hot every so often, and are pretty uptight when not in heat."

"Yeah, I saw two dogs stuck together once," Prior said. "If that's what you mean by uptight. So the hellephant's fornication kills them? With a trunk like that, I'm not surprised."

"Of course not. He doesn't use his
trunk
for that. The hellephant is always polite and gentle—that's why most female demons won't touch him."

"Makes sense," Prior admitted, remembering what bitches the female demons he had encountered were. But he still wasn't clear on the nature of the deal Klo had made.

Klo reached the creature and lifted her chocolate arms. The hellephant curled its trunk carefully around her body and brought her in close. She scissored open her legs, and the demon's little member pushed up and in, not stopping until it was completely embedded. There was no panting, no preliminary byplay; just that matter-of-fact coupling, lubricated by liquid chocolate.

"Well, let's move on before the pool fills up again and covers our tunnel," Black said.

"Right now? In a moment that intercourse will be over. He's already all the way into her."

Black laughed. "It'll be a
long
moment, whiteass. Why do you think I tried to warn her off? The hellephant fucks for life—and she could live to seventy or eighty."

Prior gasped. "You mean—they won't
stop?
Until she dies of old age?"

"That's what I was hinting at, pale-prick. She'll eat, sleep and shit right there—and that cock will never pull out." He watched a moment more, then shrugged, accepting it. "She made the deal. She didn't have to, so she must have wanted it that way. Actually, I hear it's a mighty comfortable living, for those who like COD. Cock onto Death, some call it. A pretty fair burial, too—the hellephant only comes when there's nothing left worth waiting for, when the fuck is falling apart, maybe two months after death. Then he creams up a storm and buries the bones in it. That's what I call a real sendoff—to be buried in your lover's cream."

"Yes indeed," Prior agreed, shaking his head.

They left the lovers to their stasis as the fudge spring bubbled up around them, starting the tedious business of refilling the pool.