Beetle Juice

by Piers Anthony

  He was sure adults were monitoring him telepathically; sometimes he felt the faint traces of their presence, just as Willa had told him. Immediately he thought about chocolate cake. He knew it was all right as long as he was not thinking about the adventure of the night. He trained himself to think of other things. He wasn’t sure why, since the adults knew all about the visit to the haunted house, but concluded that if he didn’t want to be abruptly disappeared the way Willa had, this was his best course.

  However, whatever he managed not to think of, he made sure to stay out of mischief. Maybe he was on probation, and the next offense would get him wiped out. It occurred to him that this could be a very efficient way to make an unruly child behave. Maybe other children had transgressed, and been similarly cautioned, and so no one else knew. It was certainly effective. He was now a good child, perfectly behaved, and he would stay that way.

  Then he felt the first touch of telepathy. Not the feather touch of an adult checking his mind; this was his own precocious awareness of the minds of those around him. Their likes and dislikes, their prides and shames, their hopes and fears. All of them very like his own, but not his own.

  Wetzel froze, mentally. He could not afford this! Discovery would surely banish him, as it had Willa. But what could he do?

  He could hide, as he had been doing. Only now he had to make it more effective mentally. Chocolate cake would not be enough; that was merely a noise cover. He needed a place to hide illicit information. He needed his mind to be as innocent and well behaved as his body. But where?

  Maybe the haunted house. He was now satisfied that it wasn’t haunted, indeed that there were no supernatural spooks, as Willa had believed. But it was forbidden, for good reason: the were-mice lurked there. He would never dare go there again. So it was an ideal hiding place, not physically, but mentally. A place of fear where his thoughts should not go.

  He worked on it as quickly as he could, picturing the decrepit house, the dust, the stone cellar, the were-mice, evoking the fear. Here was his storage place for whatever he could not afford to have known. Only he could enter here; fear was a barrier to all others.

  Well, not exactly. The adults were not afraid of the were-mice; they could handle them. It was children who were in danger. But if an adult checked Wetzel’s mind and felt the fear there, that person would know that this was a memory Wetzel was trying to hide from himself, and would not explore it further. If Wetzel had figured it out correctly.

  He worked on his mental refuge, shoring up the fear. Then he did a mental exercise he would never even have thought of before this need arose: he dragged his secrets there. He stacked them in the stone cellar to be guarded by the poisonous snakes. Who would ever find them there?

  The biggest secret was hard to drag. That was his dawning telepathy. He couldn’t stop it from happening, but he could bury it, keeping it out of his conscious awareness. Then when he went to hide in the cellar himself, he could review what had come in.

  The most immediate things were the impressions other children had of him. One boy thought he was too goody-goody. Well, he was, now, deliberately, so the assessment didn’t bother him. And there was a vital key: it was not so much the information, but how he felt about it that counted. If he did not react emotionally it was largely invisible.

  A girl thought he was cute. That would have been interesting, except that Willa had liked him and almost shown him her secret place, and been severely punished. That made him extremely wary of girls who might have anything similar in mind. So it was easy not to react, which was what counted.

  Mostly, the other children found him indifferent, nothing special. Just like themselves. That was exactly how he wanted to be viewed. It was a form of anonymity.

  Day by day he perfected his hiding place. The advantage of having it mental was that he could access it at any time, and feed new secrets into it before an adult could snoop. It became almost automatic. On the surface he was the same as he had been. Only down inside the scary cellar of the haunted house was his new status displayed. That was his storm shelter, his one safe place.

  It helped that no one was really trying to spy on him. The feather touches were routine, checking him as one of many children, satisfied to find what they expected: a boy who really liked chocolate cake and had little ambition for anything else. His official identity.

  Meanwhile the schooling was rigorous. They had to learn every nuance of the language, and master the written form too. They studied the history of their species, which was like none other known: telepathic weres with divergent forms. Wetzel’s favorite teacher, Weava, was a were-deer, quite pretty in both her forms. “When you come of age, each of you will discover your own alternate form,” she explained. “No one knows ahead of time what it may be, and we don’t know what determines it. So we try to educate you about all types of animals, large and small, so that when it happens you will at least know something about your kind. Questions?”

  Wetzel had one. “What about were-animals? How are they different from us?” Because he had encountered the were-mice, even if he never spoke of them.

  “That is an excellent question, Wetzel,” Weava said. Her spot favor made him feel good. “The were ability extends widely, and many animals do have it too. But they are more limited. For example, were-mice can transform to snakes, nothing else. Humans can transform into virtually any kind of animal, and retain human intelligence in those other forms.”

  “What do snakes transform to?” a girl asked.

  “Birds. And birds transform to other reptiles.”

  It was an interesting lesson. Wetzel, like the other children, wondered what his alternate form would be. A tiger? An eagle? A crocodile? He hoped it wouldn’t be a mouse.

  Part of education turned out to be the arts. The children were encouraged to draw, paint, sculpt, sing, dance, or act. Different ones had different talents. Wetzel’s turned out to be drama: he could play a role convincingly, once he learned it. He enjoyed being in plays.

  Two years later another boy developed precocious telepathy. Wetzel could tell, because the child was reveling in it, peeking into girls’ minds to see their secrets, trying to see what they saw in the mirror when they undressed and washed. He discovered that he could make them focus on such things when he spoke of them: “What’s in your panties?” They told him to go wash out his mouth with soap, but their minds showed their naked bodies. He also cheated at guessing games by reading the answers in the other minds.

  It was becoming clear to Wetzel why the adults did not want children to have telepathy. It was too easy to abuse, when most lacked it. Wetzel had not abused it, mainly because he had been too busy hiding it.

  Within a day that boy was gone. No one spoke of him thereafter.

  They grew and learned, until it seemed there was nothing more to learn. But there was, as they were drilled in discipline. They had to fathom right and wrong, and do what was right, regardless of their preferences. It was one big bore, but they had no choice. No one protested, because no one wanted to disappear.

  At last their group reached the magic age of eighteen, the official age of maturity. They knew there would be drastic changes, because they were about to become adults. Already their bodies were developing, especially the girls, who formed breasts and wider hips.

  Now they were addressed in a special class, apart from the younger ones. “Soon you will be achieving the art of telepathy,” Weava the were-deer said. “It normally happens at the time of puberty. Then a year or so after puberty comes your first transformation. That is when you will discover your alternate form.”

  This was interesting, though familiar. It got more so.

  “You, the class of you, have been suppressed, so that none of these changes occurs prematurely. Now that suppression has been released, and you will be discovering the formidable assets and liabilities of the adult state. This month we will guide you to the realization of your inherent telepathic ability.”

  It was true. Gui
ded by the teacher, they smoothed out their minds and let the awareness come. It was familiar to Wetzel, but novel for the others. He played along, of course. It was surprising how readily the others picked up on it. It was a natural ability, so they were not learning it so much as discovering it, now that the suppression was gone. In a way it was like finding a new house and entering it for the first time. Soon the wonder faded, but the constant awareness of other minds did not. It was a new dimension of experience.

  Then came the second aspect of the adult triad. “At this time you will be initiated into sexual expression,” Weava announced. “We will now demonstrate exactly what happens during sex.”

  Could that be true? Wetzel was as bemused as the others in the class. How could they suddenly demonstrate what had been so carefully hidden before, throughout?

  They did. An adult man and an adult woman stripped to show their full nude bodies. They stroked each other and the man’s penis got stiff. “The purpose of the man’s erection is to make it feasible for him to penetrate the woman and ejaculate his semen into her body,” the teacher continued. “Left to nature, this could impregnate her, and she would in due course bear a baby. However, all of you have been dosed in your food with contraceptive agents that will prevent conception. We do not want any girl conceiving until her adult transformation is complete, and she understands the full ramifications of the act. For these few months your only purpose in having sex is to enjoy it and learn how to do it properly. Only then will you have the background to make mature decisions about life relationships.”

  The students exchanged glances. This was amazing! Suddenly everything that had been withheld from them was being explained and encouraged. Including the mystery of why they had had little or no interest in sex before, merely curiosity about what was hidden. That, like the telepathy, had been suppressed.

  “First the physical component,” Weava continued as if unaware of the phenomenal impact this lesson was having on the students. The girls were blushing, and every boy had an erection, one of the embarrassing phenomena of sexual maturity. The teacher seemed not to notice. This was, it seemed, routine for her.

  The demonstrators proceeded to perform the act, each stage described by the teacher. The woman lay on the bed while the man mounted her, set his hard penis at her cleft, and slowly pushed it into her body. Then he withdrew it part way, and thrust deeper. After several times he grunted with fulfillment and relaxed. When he got off the woman his penis was going limp, and dripping. He had, as Weava described, ejaculated into her vagina.

  The students watched it all, fascinated and repelled. They were supposed to learn how to do this? Erections were one thing, but doing that with them?

  “There are many variations,” the teacher said, “but this is the essence. We will in the next few days acquaint you with those variations of position, and with the types of manual and oral sexual expression. But today you must learn the mental side of it. Because, you see, both partners are telepathic. They can and do feel each other’s climaxes. This lends a phenomenal extra dimension to the experience. You need to be thoroughly familiar with this aspect before you first have sex.”

  “But the demonstrators just did it,” a girl protested. “We didn’t feel any—any climax.”

  “That aspect was suppressed,” Weava explained. “So as not to distract you from the observation of the mechanics. The next demonstration will be complete with the experience of the orgasm.” She smiled. “You will not forget that.”

  Indeed, another couple demonstrated, and this time the entire class experienced the man’s orgasm. It certainly would have been a distraction.

  “The man gets the—the feeling,” a boy said. “Not the woman?”

  “Not as readily,” the teacher said. “But she can, especially when the man is attentive to her needs and responses. Both parties can share that too. That will be demonstrated another day.”

  Weava went on to explain that in other cultures women were sometimes raped. That was when the man was so eager for sex that he forced it on an unwilling woman. “But in our culture, rape is impossible.” And she explained why: if the woman did not want sex, her mental aversion spread to the man and he lost his erection and thus his ability to perform penetration. In fact she could so focus her thoughts as to make him lose it even if she was not averse to it. “The man has physical control, but the woman has mental control,” the teacher explained. “Of the two, the latter is more powerful. No girl will graduate from this class until she demonstrates the power to render a man impotent.”

  Then she smiled. “This, too, we will now demonstrate. A volunteer, please.” She glanced at Wetzel. “You.”

  He was floored. “Me?”

  “Step to the front of the class and strip off your clothing.”

  He was appalled. “But—but I have a—”

  “Precisely.” With her telepathy Weava knew his state. She had been aware of the reactions of the boys and girls throughout. “Now.”

  He had to obey. In that moment he realized that she knew about his own premature telepathy. That was why she had chosen him. The others were still uncertain in their mind readings, but he knew how from long experience. In moments he was naked before the class, his erection manifest.

  “Like this,” the teacher said, approaching him. She was actually an attractive adult; several boys had had crushes on her before this. Wetzel might have, but had quickly buried the feeling in the emotional storm cellar of his haunted house. What was she going to do with him? He half dreaded, half relished the thought. To put his stiff member into a woman like her…

  Weava looked at him.

  Something changed in his mind. Not only did he lose interest in sex, he detested the very thought of it. His erection faded. His penis descended and shrank.

  There was a titter in the class. His performance was humiliating. The one thing worse than having his erection exposed in public was losing it in public. Without sex.

  “Every girl will have this ability,” the teacher said. She clapped her hands. “Class dismissed.”

  Chaos erupted as the students compared notes and impressions. Wetzel was left standing in his shame.

  Weava turned to him. “I selected you because I fathomed your telepathy, Wetzel,” she said. “You have had it for some time, but since you did not abuse it, we let you be. That makes you vulnerable to this suppression. Without sufficient telepathy you would not have been able to read my suppressive thought. It was not my purpose to embarrass you, though of course I did. I had to make it quite clear to all of you what the girls will be learning. Now I will make it worth your while, knowing that you like me. Dress and come to my house.”

  What could he do? He dressed and meekly followed her.

  She led him to her house and brought him inside. “Now you may have your first tangible heterosexual experience. This time I will not suppress your erection.” She undressed, had him undress, and joined him on the bed. His erection was back, as hard as before. “Show me how well you learned today’s lessen.”

  And in minutes he did. Guided by her quiet words, he got on her and in her. He did not climax as fast as the demonstrator man had, but after many thrusts, encouraged by the teacher, he succeeded getting his first orgasm. It was enhanced by his realization that she could have aborted it at any time, but had not. Did she actually like him back, maybe a little?

  She kissed him as he concluded. “Was it worth it?”

  “Oh, yes!” he gasped.

  “I always liked you, Wetzel,” she said, answering his thought. “You’re smart, you behave well, and there’s something appealing about you. In due course you will practice sex with the girls of other villages, as they mature. In the interim, I will be at your service.” She smiled again. “And yes, you may talk about this incident, and I will confirm it. You have technically become a man.”

  His suppressed crush on her burgeoned. Fully aware, she held him and kissed him again before dismissing him.

  So it was. He
did talk about it; indeed he could not avoid it, because others had seen the teacher take him to her house, and asked him. He had become the teacher’s pet, a mark of favor. The adults, of course, already knew. He suspected they had read his mind as he penetrated her, getting a vicarious first experience. Weava had known exactly what she was doing. At any rate, his embarrassment had been wholly erased. He was now the envy of the other boys.

  The girls were drilled in the suppressive technique, while the boys were instructed in sexual manners. Virginity, they were assured, was unimportant; what counted was the mutuality of the experience. If a girl foiled a boy’s erection, he was still at liberty to attempt to persuade her to allow the completion of the act. Success was its own reward. The students were not sexually or romantically interested in each other; they had associated too closely, too long. But the class was taken to visit the next village, whose teens had been similarly educated, and soon boys and girls were paring off to practice. The couples were assigned by the teachers; it was not romantic.

  “Here is the rule,” Weava said. “You will all strip nude. Each boy will attempt to penetrate his ad-hoc girlfriend. She will attempt to foil him, not physically, but by mentally stunting his erection. If she does not succeed, she will accommodate him gracefully. If she does, he will compliment her on her proficiency.”

  Wetzel’s partner was Weena. She was a sultry brunette, and her breasts were not large but firm and well defined; she was more woman than girl. “Try it, big boy,” she murmured. “I’ll even let you take hold of me first.”

  She had confidence. Was it warranted? He put his arms about her, his member rampant.

  And stood there as it sank into oblivion. Damn!

  She smiled, picking up his thought.

  “Congratulations,” he said, uncertain whether he was frustrated or relieved.