“Wait a minute, buddy, we got a couple of questions!”
“Oh, oh,” Churchill said out of the side of his mouth. “Get ready to run. These guys are poor losers.”
“You didn’t cheat, did you?” Sarvant said nervously.
“Of course not! You ought to know me better than that. Besides, I wouldn’t take a chance in that rough bunch.”
“Listen, buddy,” the one-eyed man said. “You talk kinda funny. Where you come from? Albany?”
“Manitowoc, Wisconsin,” Churchill said.
“Never heard of that place. What is it, some small burg up north?”
“North by west. Why do you want to know?”
“We don’t like strangers that can’t even talk Deecee straight. Strangers got queer tricks, especially when they are shooting craps. Only a week ago we caught a tar from Norfolk who was using magic to control the dice. We knocked his teeth out and threw him off the dock with a weight around his neck. Never saw him again.”
“If you thought I was cheating, you should have said something while we were playing.”
The one-eyed sailor ignored Churchill’s remark and said, “I don’t notice no frat mark on you. What frat you belong to?”
“Lambda Chi Alpha,” Churchill said. He put his hand on his knife-blade.
“What kind of lingo is that? You mean the Lamb frat?”
Churchill could see that he and Sarvant would be considered lambs for the slaughter unless they could prove they were under the protection of some powerful frat. He didn’t mind telling a lie in a situation like this if it got him out of it. But a resentment that had been building up for the past six weeks broke into a sudden fury.
“I belong to the human race!” he shouted. “And that’s more than you can say for yourself!”
The one-eyed sailor turned red. He growled, “By the breasts of Columbia, I’ll cut your heart out! No stinking foreigner can talk that way to me!”
“Come on, you thieves!” Churchill snarled. He pulled his knife from its sheath and at the same time shouted at Sarvant, “Run like hell!”
The one-eyed sailor had also pulled his knife and came at Churchill with the blade. Churchill threw the handful of silver coins in the man’s eyes and at the same time stepped forward. The palm of his left hand struck outwards against the wrist of the other man’s knife-hand. The knife fell, and Churchill sank his blade into the bulging paunch of the sailor.
He withdrew the knife and stepped back, crouching, to face the others. But they knew dirty fighting as well as any sailor. One of them picked up a loose brick from a pile of rubble and threw it at Churchill’s head. The world grew dim, and he was vaguely aware that blood was streaming over his eyes from a cut on his forehead. By the time he regained his senses, he found his knife taken away and his arms gripped by two strong sailors.
A third, a short skinny fellow with a broken-toothed snarl, stepped up and shoved his blade straight at Churchill’s belly.
5
Peter Stagg awoke. He was flat on his back, lying on something soft, with the branches of a large oak tree above him. Through the branches he could see a bright, cloudless sky. There were birds on the branches, a sparrow, a catbird—and a huge jay which sat on its rear and dangled bare and human legs.
The legs were brown and slim and nicely curved. The rest of the body was disguised in the costume of a giant jaybird. Shortly after Stagg opened his eyes, the jay took off its mask and revealed the pretty face of a dark, big-eyed girl. She reached behind her and pulled a bugle that had been hanging from a cord from over her shoulder. Before Stagg could stop her, she blew a long wavering call.
Immediately, a hubbub arose from somewhere behind him.
Stagg sat up and turned around to face the source of the noise. It came from a mob of people standing on the other side of the road. The road was a broad cement highway running past farm fields. Stagg was sitting a few feet from its edge on a thick pile of blankets which someone had thoughtfully placed beneath him.
He had no idea of when or how he had gotten to this spot. Or where it was. He remembered only too vividly events up to shortly before dawn; after that, all was blank. The height of the sun indicated that the time was about eleven in the morning.
The jay-girl lowered herself from the branch, hung for a moment, then dropped the five feet to the ground. She picked herself up and said, “Good morning, Noble Stag. How do you feel?”
Stagg groaned and said, “I’m stiff and sore in every muscle. And I’ve an awful headache.”
“You’ll be all right after you have breakfast. And may I say that you were magnificent last night? I’ve never seen a Sunhero who could come up to you. Well, I must go now. Your friend, Calthorp, said that when you woke you’d want to be alone with him for a while.”
“Calthorp!” Stagg said. He groaned again. “He’s the last man I want to see.” But the girl had run off across the road and joined the group of people.
Calthorp’s white head appeared from behind a tree. He approached with a large covered tray in his hands. He was smiling, but it was obvious he was desperately trying to cover up his concern.
“How do you feel?” he shouted.
Stagg told him. “Where are we?”
“I’d say we’re on what used to be U.S. 1 but is now called Mary’s Pike. We’re about ten miles out of the present limits of Washington. Two miles down the road is a little farming town called Fair Grace. Its normal population is two thousand, but just now it’s about fifteen thousand. The farmers and the farmers’ daughters from miles around have gathered here. Everyone in Fair Grace is eagerly awaiting you. But you are not at their beck and call. You are the Sunhero, so you may rest and take your ease. That is, until sundown. Then you must perform as you did last night.”
Stagg looked down and for the first time became aware that he was still nude.
“You saw me last night?” He looked up pleadingly at the old man.
It was Calthorp’s turn to stare at the ground. He said, “Ringside seat—for a while, anyway. I sneaked around the edge of the crowd and went into a building. There I watched the orgy from a balcony.”
“Don’t you have any decency?” Stagg said angrily. “It’s bad enough that I couldn’t help myself. It’s worse that you’d witness my humiliation.”
“Some humiliation! Yes, I saw you. I’m an anthropologist. This was the first time I’d ever had a chance to see a fertility rite at close range. Also, as your friend, I was worried about you. But I needn’t have; you took care of yourself. Others, too.”
Stagg glared. “Are you making fun of me?”
“God forbid! No. I wasn’t expressing humor, just amazement. Perhaps envy. Of course, it’s the antlers that gave you the drive and the ability. Wonder if they’d give me just a little shot of the stuff those antlers produce.”
Calthorp placed the tray in front of Stagg and removed the cloth over it. “Here’s a breakfast such as you never had.”
Stagg turned his head to one side. “Take it away. I’m sick. Sick to my stomach and sick to my soul with what I did last night.”
“You seemed to be enjoying yourself.” Stagg growled with sheer fury, and Calthorp put out a reassuring hand. “No, I meant no offense. It’s just that I saw you, and I can’t get over it. Come on, lad, eat. Look what we have for you! Fresh baked bread. Fresh butter. And jam. Honey. Eggs, bacon, ham, trout, venison— and a pitcher of cool ale. And you can have second helpings of anything you want.”
“I told you, I’m sick! I couldn’t eat a thing.” Stagg sat silent for a few minutes, staring across the road at the brightly colored tents and the people clustered around them. Calthorp sat down by him and lit up a large green cigar.
Suddenly, Stagg picked up the pitcher and drank deeply of the ale. He put the pitcher down, wiped the foam off his lips with the back of his hand, belched, and picked up a fork and knife.
He began eating as if this were the first meal in his life—or the last.
“I have
to eat,” he apologized between bites. “I’m weak as a new-born kitten. Look how my hand’s shaking.”
“You’ll have to eat enough for a hundred men,” Calthorp said. “After all, you did the work of a hundred—two hundred!”
Stagg reached up with one hand and felt his antlers. “Still there. Hey! They’re not standing up straight and stiff like they did last night. They’re limp! Maybe they are going to shrink up and dry away.”
Calthorp shook his head. “No. When you get your strength back, and your blood pressure rises, they’ll become erect again. They’re not true antlers. Those of deer consist of bony outgrowth with no covering of keratin. Yours seem to have a bony base, but the upper part is mainly cartilage surrounded by skin and blood vessels.
“It’s no wonder they’re deflated. And it’s a wonder that you didn’t rupture a blood vessel. Or something.”
“Whatever it is the horns pump into me,” Stagg said, “it must be gone. Except for being weak and sore, I feel normal. If only I could get rid of these horns! Doc, could you cut them off?”
Sadly, Calthorp shook his head.
Stagg turned pale. “Then I have to go through that again?”
“I’m afraid so, my boy.”
“Tonight, at Fair Grace? And the next night at another town? And so on until... when?”
“Peter, I’m sorry, I have no way of knowing how long.”
Calthorp cried out with pain as a huge hand bent his wrist bones towards each other.
Stagg loosened his grip. “Sorry, Doc. I got excited.”
“Well, now,” Calthorp said, rubbing his wrist tenderly, “there’s one possibility. It seems to me that, if all this business started at the winter solstice, it should end at the summer solstice. That is, about June 21 or 22. You are the symbol of the sun. In fact, these people probably regard you as being literally the sun himself—especially since you came down in a flaming iron steed out of the sky.”
Stagg put his head in his hands. Tears welled out from between his fingers, and his naked shoulders shook. Calthorp patted his golden head, while tears ran from his own eyes. He knew how terribly grieved his captain must be, if he could weep through the armors of his inhibitions.
Finally, Stagg rose and began walking across the fields toward a nearby creek. “Have to take a bath,” he muttered. “I’m filthy. If I have to be a Sunhero, I’m going to be a clean one.”
“Here they come,” Calthorp said, pointing to the crowd of people who had been waiting about fifty yards away. “Your devout worshipers and bodyguards.”
Stagg grimaced. “Just now I loathe myself. But last night I enjoyed what I was doing. I had no inhibitions. I was living the secret dream of every man—unlimited opportunity and inexhaustible ability. I was a god!”
He stopped and seized Calthorp’s wrist again.
“Go back to the ship! Get a gun, if you have to sneak it past the guards. Come back and shoot me in the head—so I won’t have to go through this again!”
“I’m sorry. In the first place, I wouldn’t know where to get the gun. Tom Tobacco told me that all weapons have been taken from the ship and locked in a secret room. In the second place, I can’t kill you. While there’s life, there’s hope. We’ll get out of this mess.”
“Tell me how,” Stagg said.
He didn’t have time to continue the conversation. The mob had come across the field and surrounded them. Continuity of talk was difficult to maintain when bugles and drums were roaring in your ears, Panpipes shrilling, men and women chattering away at the tops of their voices, and a group of beautiful girls was insisting on bathing you and afterward toweling you down and perfuming you. In a short time the pressure of the crowd forced the two apart.
Stagg began to feel better.
Under the skillful hands of the girls, his soreness was massaged away, and, as the sun climbed toward the zenith, Stagg’s strength rose. By two o’clock he was brimming over with vitality. He wanted to be up and doing.
Unfortunately, this was siesta hour. The crowd dispersed to seek shade under which to lie down.
A few faithful stood around Stagg. From their sleepy expression Stagg decided that they, too, would like to lie down. They couldn’t; they were his guards, lean hard men armed with spears and knives. A few yards away stood several bowmen. These carried strange arrows. The shafts were tipped with long needles instead of the broad, sharp steel heads. Undoubtedly, the tips were smeared with a drug that would temporarily paralyze any Sunheroes who might dare to run away.
Stagg thought that it was foolish of them to post a guard. Now that he felt better, he didn’t care one bit about escaping. Indeed, he wondered why he could have contemplated such a stupid move.
Why should he want to run and take a chance of being killed—when there was so much living to be done?
He walked back across the field, his guards trailing along at a respectful distance. There were about forty tents pitched on a meadow and three times that many people stretched out sleeping. Stagg was not at the moment interested in them.
He wanted to talk to the girl in the cage.
Ever since he had been moved into the White House, he had wondered who she was and why she was kept prisoner. His questions had invariably been answered with the infuriating What will be will be. He remembered seeing her as he approached Virginia, the Chief Priestess. The memory brought back a pang of the shame he had felt a little while ago, but it quickly faded.
The wheeled cage was under the shadow of a plane tree, the deer that drew it browsing nearby. There were no guards within earshot.
The girl was sitting on a built-in cucking stool at one end of the cage. Near her stood a peasant smoking a cigar while he waited for her to finish. When she was through, he would remove the chamber pot from the recess underneath the stool and carry it off to his fields to enrich the soil.
She wore the long-billed jockey cap, gray shirt, and calf-length pants that all mascots wore, though the pants were now down around her ankles. Her head was bowed, but Stagg did not think it was because she was ashamed to be performing this need in public view. He had seen too much of the casual, animal-natural—to him—attitude of these people. They could feel shame and inhibition about many things but public excretion was not one of them.
A hammock was pulled tight against the ceiling. A broom stood in the corner and in the opposite corner a cabinet was bolted to the floor. Probably it contained toilet articles, since a rack on the side of the cabinet contained a washbasin and towels.
He looked again at the sign rising from the top of her cage like a shark’s fin. “Mascot, captured in a raid on Caseyland.” What did it mean?
He understood that “mascot” was the word the Deecees used for human virgins. The term “virgin” was reserved for maiden goddesses. But there was much he did not understand.
“Hello,” he said.
The girl started as if she had been dozing. She raised her head to look at him. She had large dark eyes and petite features. Her skin was white, and it went even whiter when she saw him, and she turned her head away.
“Hello, I said. Can’t you speak? I won’t hurt you.”
“I don’t want to talk to you, you beast,” she replied in a shaky voice. “Go away.”
He had taken a step toward the cage, but now he stopped.
Of course, she had had to witness last night. Even if she kept her head turned and eyes shut, she couldn’t have stopped up her ears. And curiosity would have forced her to open her eyes. At least for brief periods.
“I couldn’t help what happened,” he said. “It’s these that did it, not me.” He touched the antlers. “They do something to me. I’m not myself.”
“Go away,” she said. “I won’t talk to you. You’re a pagan devil.”
“Is it because I’m not clothed?” he said. “I’ll put a kilt on.”
“Go away!”
One of the guards walked up to him. “Great Stag, do you want this girl? You may have her, eventually, but
not now. Not until the end of the journey. Then the Great White Mother will give her to you.”
“I just want to talk to her.”
The guard smiled. “A little fire applied to her cute little ass might get her to talking. Unfortunately we’re not allowed to torture her—yet.”
Stagg turned away. “I’ll find some way to make her talk. But later. Just now, I want some more cold ale.”
“At once, sire.”
The guard, not caring that he was waking most of the camp, blew shrilly on his whistle. A girl ran from around the corner of a tent.
“Cold ale!” the guard cried.
The girl ran toward the tent and quickly returned with a tray on which stood a copper pitcher, its sides beaded with sweat.
Stagg took the pitcher without thanking the girl and held it to his mouth. He did not lower it until it was empty.
“That was good,” he said loudly. “But ale bloats you. Do you have any lightning on ice?”
“Of course, sire.”
She returned from the tent with a silver pitcher full of chunks of ice and another pitcher brimming with clear whiskey. She poured the lightning into the pitcher of ice and then handed it to Stagg.
He drank half of the pitcher before he set it back on the tray.
The guard became alarmed. “Great Stag, if you continue at this rate, we’ll have to carry you into Fair Grace!”
“A Sunhero can drink as many as ten men,” said the girl, “and he will still tumble a hundred mascots in one night.”
Stagg laughed like a trumpet blaring. “Of course, mortal, don’t you know that? Besides, what’s the use of being the Great Stag if I can’t do exactly what I want to do?”
“Forgive me, sire,” the guard said. “It’s just that I know how anxious the people of Fair Grace are to greet you. Last year, you know, when the Sunhero was a Lion, he took the other road out of Washington. The people of Fair Grace could not attend the ceremonies. So they would feel very bad if you did not show up.”
“Don’t be a fool,” the girl said. “You shouldn’t talk this way to the Sunhero. What if he got mad and decided to kill you? That’s happened, you know.”
Flesh Page 6
