New Worlds 4

by Edited By David Garnett

  ‘When did you first notice your navigator was malfunctioning?’

  ‘Right after we got off the sandbank, sir. I can only imagine the bank’s sudden collapse affected it somehow. It will need a complete overhaul before I go out again.’

  ‘Did you carry out all the usual checks and tests before phasing?’

  ‘Yes, naturally, sir,’ I replied, blinking with surprise at such a question, ‘everything tested out fine.’

  If it ever got known to the board that I had deliberately taken a passenger into backspace using a delinquent navigator it would be, ‘Hand over your licence, Tony. Get a job in the junkyard, where your raft is going.’ And of course there was somebody who did know. That blackmailing slut Boy Galilee, he of the waxy backside who, apart from anything else, I now couldn’t pay for four charge rods. He wasn’t around when I first phased in. He came to me in my shack next day, by which time my evidence to the board was all over the port and he knew what the score was.

  I had just taken my customer’s hold-all from the raft’s luggage compartment and was sorting through his effects out of curiosity. He was an antiquities buff, all right. His favourite period seemed to be the mid twenty-first century, which as we all know was itself an age of nostalgia, absorbed in re-creating the fashions of earlier times. I had found some magazines with lurid covers and was studying one. It was a revival of a type of popular magazine they used to have back in the twentieth century, but modified to incorporate the preoccupations of over a hundred years later. The cover picture was striking, presenting what to the artwork of the time would have been a ‘futuristic’ scene. In the background, a soaring metal city; filling nearly all the sky, a gigantic cratered moon, improbably close. In the foreground stood two muscular and godlike male figures in the briefest of costume, just straps and weapons belts holding old-fashioned ray-guns. One of them, I remember, was deep blue in skin tone; he was suggestively manhandling the other, the expressions of both of them coming somewhere between heroic nobleness and exalted desire. The magazine’s title was slashed across the top of the page in slanting script: Thrilling Stories of Sodomy and Science Fiction.

  Boy Galilee peered at the illustration over my shoulder, his usual simpering smile on his face. ‘Tasty. And what a jolly fellow your customer turned out to be. Quite the pioneer of auto-oral-anal-eroticism.’

  I knew what I would have to do to keep him quiet. He’d always been after it, and I’d always held off. Oh Jeez, that awful behind of his, and his back passage as slack as a windsock! It wouldn’t be for the last time, either, with what he had on me. He’d be forever sliding into my shack and reminding me of his ‘favour’. What could I do to make sure it wasn’t too often, I asked myself? In any case I had to find some way of steeling myself to go through with it. So I gave myself a massive jab of phenylethylamine, and spent the whole time thinking of my lovely sweet passenger with the podgy belly and the twentieth-century trousers, gazing now and then at the magazine covers if need be. That way I managed to roger him for a solid six hours, and I’m pleased to report he couldn’t set his bum on a guidance plate for a week. The things you have to do to make a living these days. Shove your head up your arse, Galilee!

  <>

  ~ * ~

  The Last Phallic Symbol

  Elizabeth Sourbut

  ONE

  George slipped off the headset and rubbed his eyes wearily. After fifteen years, he was still upset by the unfocused aggression filling project after project. The boys’ holos were a mish-mash of grotesquely imagined destruction and violent sex, salted with the occasional stark intrusion of memory. The world for these street boys was a dangerous place of gangs and uncertain loyalties, of illegal acid and wire, and frequent, brutal death. The remand school was possibly the only education they’d ever had, and probably the first security.

  He looked out of the window, at the park across the road from his flat. Now, bathed in pale spring sunshine, it was peaceful and quiet, but at night even here in the West End, murders were not uncommon.

  George sighed. After fifty-four years of privilege, with a sheet of bulletproof glass between himself and the world, it was crazy to think he could help these boys.

  He pushed the pile of tapes away, and reached for one of his own, a full-spectrum feelie. It was spring; London was coming back to life after a winter of storms and plummeting temperatures, and he felt his own blood quickening in response. March 12. Anniversary. He adjusted the headset, and Val’s image appeared before him.

  The tape was his own work, made near the beginning of their affair, ten years before. It was sheer masochism to keep coming back to it now, but still he sank into the shell of his previous self, and the scent of her skin filled his nostrils. She smiled into his eyes, her body warm along the length of him. ‘Christ,’ he muttered, breathing heavily. ‘I miss you.’

  Into the memory, he had mingled illicit fantasy. Now Trish, Val’s then seventeen-year-old daughter, joined them. This was his wish-fulfilling version of Trish, and she reached eagerly for his cock.

  He matched his real-world actions with hers, and his erection came hard into his hand, hot and full. He stroked his fingers along it, squeezing gently. Then suddenly an agonizing pain seared into his fantasy world, and the penis came away in his hand.

  He snatched off his headset, and for a moment he and his cock stared at one another. Then the penis shook itself, slipped out of his fingers, and scuttled down his thigh on tiny legs. It jumped on to the floor and made off across the room.

  ‘Hey!’ George yelled, his voice cracking into falsetto. The penis paused and turned back towards him. Its foreskin parted in a withering grin, then it disappeared through the open door.

  ~ * ~

  TWO

  Trish drove slowly down the centre of the street, edging her ancient four-wheel drive through the clear spaces between rotting piles of refuse.

  ‘Fuck, fuck, and fuck!’ she swore. ‘Where is it?’

  Carole, keeping a sharp watch from the passenger window, glanced round and reached out a hand to her. ‘It’s OK,’ she said. ‘It’s the next turning.’

  Trish’s hands slipped on the wheel. She wiped them, one at a time, on her jeans, her eyes darting from the road to the shuttered buildings and back. In her rear-view mirror she glimpsed the gang of boys, still following.

  ‘Here.’ Carole pointed, and Trish turned left into a narrow square of crumbling three-storey terraces. In the gathering dusk, the road faded into a jumble of scrap-iron. Trish slowed, steered into a gap, the off-side wheels crunching over broken glass.

  ‘Oh, shit.’ Trish craned forward, searching for house numbers. ‘Come on, woman, don’t make us wait.’

  Carole had her seat-belt off, door ajar, ready. There was movement amongst the greying undergrowth in the centre of the square. Two men stood upright, staring.

  ‘There!’

  A brief call, and a woman came running out of the shadows leading to a basement flat. She was clutching a toddler to her chest and dragging a suitcase.

  Carole leapt to the ground and flung open the rear door of the van. She grabbed the suitcase, bundled the sobbing woman inside, and heaved the case in after her.

  ‘Go!’ she yelled, and Trish slammed into reverse as her partner jumped back into the seat beside her.

  ‘Hey!’ yelled one of the men. ‘That’s Pete’s missis!’ He ran towards them, and Trish swerved. The rear bumper crunched into a burnt-out car, jerking them all against their seats.

  ‘Oh, fuck.’ She clashed the gears, and revved the van forwards. Their pursuer dived out of the way as she skidded into a reckless turn.

  The woman in the back moaned. ‘He’ll kill us. He’ll kill us.’

  Shapes moved ahead - the gang of boys, strung out across the road. Trish flicked on the lights, full-beam, and the youths recoiled, covering their eyes, scrambling to get out of the way as she drove straight for them. Startled eyes, mouths wide, yelling obscenities.

  ‘Pete! They’
ve got your missis! Pete!’

  The four-wheel drive jolted over bricks and timbers, then the road ahead was clear. Trish accelerated into it, peripheral vision registering a figure running towards them.

  The van shuddered, and a man lay sprawled across the bonnet, one huge hand pressed against the windscreen. He was snarling as his fingers began to slip.

  ‘He’s going to die!’ said Trish. ‘Oh, God, he’s going to die.’

  She took the corner fast and the man screamed as he was flung to the ground. Carole stared back as they roared away up the road.

  ‘I think he got up,’ she said.

  Their passenger began to laugh hysterically. ‘That was Pete. He won’t even be bruised.’ She sat back in the seat and shrieked. The toddler clung to her, crying.

  Carole clambered into the rear of the van with them, and began the long and difficult job of trying to reassure them. Trish kept her eyes on the road. Her hands were shaking on the wheel. She wanted to be reassured too. Instead, she continued to swear, over and over again, as she drove them across town to another crumbling terraced house, wistfully called a refuge.

  ~ * ~

  THREE

  The muggy heat of a Florida night pressed close around them. Electrical storms flickered on the horizon and the air crackled with static charges, raising sparks between their sweating bodies.

  Through the open window, they could see the starship. Floodlights picked out its sleek lines, sweeping up from spherical engines to the controversial globe of the observation deck at its nose. Two hundred and fifty metres of precision engineering thrusting into the night sky.

  Jason nibbled her ear, and whispered: ‘I am the ship. Can you feel me against you, cool and hard?’

  Pat giggled, and stroked her hands along his body. ‘Mmm. The fuel tanks and the engines. Here’s the airlock, and inside, the crew, cold and sleeping. And here,’ she kissed his forehead, ‘the computers and navigation system.’

  He pushed her hand down to his dick, and she stroked it as he sighed and moaned. ‘I’m lying on the launch-pad,’ he said, eyes closed, body taut with pleasure, ‘and this is the ship, the first starship, soaring into the sky, hard and tall and powerful, waiting to surge up to the stars, further than anyone has ever gone before, up on a tail of fire, faster and faster.’

  She straddled him, pushing down, engulfing him in the warm wetness of her. ‘And I am the sky. I’ll take you into me, protect you, guide you as you travel through me.’

  ‘I’ll sow my seed of humanity—’

  ‘On to a virgin planet!’

  They fell against one another, laughing and straining, slipping, thrusting, an image of the starship between them, flesh, steel, woman, sky, starship, man, starburst, death, and new life.

  ‘Aaahhh

  They lay together, panting and shaking, holding one another as tightly as they could, the mingled smells of sweat and sex filling their nostrils.

  ‘I love you,’ Jason murmured. ‘I wish I was taking you to the stars.’

  ‘I felt as though I was the stars,’ she said. ‘I am the universe.’

  ‘And I am the ship.’

  They looked into one another’s eyes and laughed and kissed, rolling over amongst the twisted, sweat-soaked sheets, young and in love.

  ‘Less than a week to go,’ said Jason, staring out of the window at the ship. ‘Can you imagine being one of those people in there, cold and brittle? I could break off your earlobe.’ He tweaked her ear and grinned.

  ‘And when they come back to life,’ she said, ‘they’ll be on a different world, warmed by a different sun. How will it feel?’

  ‘I wish we were going. It’s all our dreams come true. To go to the stars.’ Pat sighed. ‘A new planet. A second chance. Maybe we’ll treat it right this time.’ She turned away from the window, and buried her head in his shoulder. ‘I love you.’

  Jason lay awake for a long time after she slept, staring out of the window, stars reflected in his eyes.

  ~ * ~

  FOUR

  Raymond’s counselling room was warm and well ventilated, and smelt very faintly of cherry blossom. George wryly compared it with his own dark cell at the remand school. These ‘soft’ methods were on the way out, replaced by implanted tranquillizer drips and the revolutionary electro-neural surgery. But he still had a few miraculous successes each year, even though the boys knew he had no real support. Those few successes kept him going.

  He sat down in one of a matching pair of posture-friendly armchairs. Raymond sat in the other, positioned at an angle to George’s chair, leaned forward slightly, and smiled.

  ‘Now then, George, how can I help you?’

  George stared at his hands. ‘I need to make some, some - adjustments to my self-image,’ he said slowly.

  ‘Uh-huh,’ said Raymond. ‘And how do you see yourself at the moment?’

  ‘Powerless.’ He felt the tears gathering once more. ‘Impotent.’

  ‘How long have you felt this way?’

  ‘Two days.’

  Raymond nodded, accepting. ‘Do you know what triggered these feelings of helplessness?’

  George stared at the carpet. He had known Raymond for several years, and trusted the gay man’s commitment to supporting other men, and his confidentiality, but still it took all his courage to answer.

  ‘Two days ago,’ he said very slowly, ‘my penis detached itself from my body and walked out through the door.’

  There was a brief silence. George looked up. Raymond stared directly back at him. ‘Which door was this?’

  ‘My study door. I was in my study marking projects.’

  ‘I’d like you to imagine that you’re in your study now.’

  ‘All right.’ He closed his eyes, and conjured up an image of his study, his desk standing in the large bay window, the shelf of books, the CD player, the feelie deck, all as he had seen them that morning, with spring sunshine pouring in through the window.

  ‘How do you feel?’

  ‘Oh, comfortable, safe, secure.’ He stopped, remembering that moment of excruciating pain, and the shock of loss. ‘Oh, shit.’ He looked away, fighting back the tears.

  ‘And your penis detached itself from your body and walked out of the door, out of your safe, secure study, and... Where do you think it’s gone, George?’

  ‘I don’t know!’ he wailed. ‘I want it back!’ And he burst into tears.

  After a few moments, Raymond leaned forward and laid a hand on George’s knee. ‘It’s all right,’ he said. ‘It’s all right for men to cry.’

  ‘I know it is,’ George snuffled, and fumbled for his handkerchief. ‘But it’s so hard. I’ve spent so many years fighting the stereotypes, the rules that say it isn’t manly to express any emotion except lust or anger. And now I watch generation after generation of young boys growing up with the same old attitudes, out on the streets younger and younger, too scared to admit their fear, frying their brains with wire trips, jacking into God knows what weird space, learning how to kill. When a young thug comes to me, strutting and swearing to show he’s a man, I look into his eyes and sometimes I can see the frightened child, the best part of him, deep inside, desperately needing to be loved. And over and over again I try to reach that child without getting myself killed.

  ‘Sometimes it all gets too much, and then I sit at my study window and watch people walking in the park.’

  ‘Safe and secure in your study,’ said Raymond. ‘Do you need your penis when you’re in your study?’

  Grief, and a sense of great loss overwhelmed him. ‘In theory, no. A man is more than just his cock. But I don’t feel that way. I feel like a discarded shell. Why? Why did it go?’

  Into the silence, Raymond spoke softly. ‘Every day, you struggle with concepts of manhood. The boys who come to you are hardened by their lives on the streets, but you see other potentialities, in them and in yourself. A man is more than just his cock. But now, you have a fantasy of your own penis physically leaving you, and wal
king out through your study door.

  ‘What might your penis want that you’re not giving it, George?’

  George stared at his counsellor, betrayed. ‘It’s not a fantasy,’ he said. ‘It’s real. My penis has gone.’

  Raymond bit his lip. ‘OK,’ he said. ‘It’s really gone. Imagine that you are your penis. Where would you go?’

  ‘Oh, stuff your gestalt shit!’ George yelled. ‘I’ll show you it’s real. Look!’ He leapt to his feet, and tore down his trousers and underpants. ‘Look!’

  Raymond stared. Then he stood up, unfastened his own trousers, and pulled down his shorts to reveal a pair of shrivelling testicles and a patch of pink new skin where his penis should be. ‘Thank God,’ he whispered. ‘I’m not the only one.’