Child of Fortune

by Norman Spinrad

  Naturellement, the local greeners could think of little else but gaining entrée to the Gypsy Jokers, and in the matter of recruitment as well, Pater Pan had evolved a method which combined moral justice with financial gain. A Gypsy Joker was required to be a person of pluck, resource, and wit, nē, and what required more of these qualities than the securing of ruegelt by a lone Child of Fortune in a vecino where the competition for same was the Gypsy Jokers themselves? Therefore, anyone might gain membership in the Gypsy Jokers by the simple expedient of appearing before Pater Pan and donating one hundred coins of ruegelt to the tribe as a fee of admission.

  Verdad, the accumulation of such a vast fortune was far easier said than done, and, moreover, the bizarre notion of forking over same to a fellow who clearly felt no pecuniary pain struck me as an outrageous imposition, and one with which I certainly had no intention of trafficking.

  Nevertheless, one aspect of this dastardly ploy fell in quite neatly with my own chosen strategy: Pater Pan made fairly regular appearances at a Public located behind the waterfall, ostensibly for the purpose of bathing his worthy person, but in point of practical fact in order to make himself readily available to the fortunate and foolish few able and willing to cross his palm with ruegelt.

  The Public behind the waterfall proved, naturellement, no different from the many others that I had previously frequented, save that it remained continually crowded with greeners who seemed to throng it for no more practical purpose than to catch a glimpse of the Great One or at least members of his entourage. For in the four days that I lounged therein awaiting his advent with an impatience that stepwise transmuted itself into an entirely unjustified personal pique against him for his tardiness, I encountered no one possessed of any sum remotely approaching the required entrance fee, and, I learned, even as I had surmised, the acceptance of one of our lowly number into the Gypsy Jokers was an event of such rarity that each such occurrence assumed the aura of legend.

  Nevertheless, while patience had never been my dominant virtue, if there was one art in which Nouvelle Orlean had provided me with a useful education it was that of lying in ambush for the masculine prey of my choosing to cross my path, for all he knew at random, and so I persevered in my stalk.

  Eventually, inevitably, my quarry approached the water hole, accompanied, as I was to learn was his custom, by several female members of his pride, accoutred with items of the Cloth of Many Colors and mooning expressions continually cast in his direction.

  This comparatively drab entourage, however, scarcely impinged upon the sphere of my attention, for Pater Pan himself lit up my sky the moment I laid eyes on him, a phenomenon which I was to learn was hardly uncommon to the sisters of my gender, and one which he himself did nothing to discourage.

  Strange to say under the circumstances, it was his garb which first drew my attention, for Pater Pan affected a costume which even on Edoku drew the eye in amazement, and which on a lesser being would have made him a ludicrous figure.

  This was the Traje de Luces of Public Service Station lore, and upon actually seeing it worn by this noble creature, I could understand why no words could describe the effect justly. Pater Pan wore a loose blouson of the Cloth of Many Colors, open like a sleeved cloak over his bare chest, and crowned with a thespic high collar, a garment composed of hundreds of assorted patches of old cloth, yet somehow a royal robe rather than a ragamuffin’s rags when worn by this lordly specimen. Similarly, the tight breeches which seemed expertly tailored to hug every curve and bulge of his lower anatomy were the same random patchwork of colors and textures.

  Naturellement, only a noble and daunting visage could rescue such an apparition from the realm of farce; this Pater Pan possessed, and just as clearly, he knew it. His hair was golden yellow and worn in a carefully groomed shoulder-length mane, and he affected a beard of the same color and style to complete the haloing nimbus. All that was visible of his facial features was an aquiline nose, full sensuous lips, high forehead, noble brow, and piercing yet merry blue eyes; artfully outlined by the golden mane and partially concealed by the beard, this face seemed at once youthful and ancient, in truth quite literally ageless.

  Ah, he was perfect, a persona artfully self-crafted to express a proud perfection of the masculine spirit within, and oh, did every step and gesture declare that this work of art was his own most avid aficionado!

  Indeed it was this very air of utterly self-assured narcissism which both caused my knees to tremble and rescued me from mere paralyzed gaping; he was beautiful, he was king of this particular little world, and I wanted him. On the other hand, he also seemed a paragon of ego, a challenge to every female within range of his charisma, the fellow all-too-obviously knew it, and therefore I must have him as my conquest.

  Only some time later did I learn that the projection of precisely this determination into the spirit of the generality of my gender was his most puissant erotic tactic.

  Be that as it may, while every other female in the Public was foolishly engaged in watching this brilliant cock parade and preen, Moussa Shasta Leonardo retained the wit to consider strategy.

  In this regard, my experience in the Rapide station admirably served to engorge my confidence, for I now had proven by practical application of same that the claims made by my father for the tantric puissance of the ring on my finger owed little to hyperbole; all I had to do was get my hands on him and science would put even such a man as this in my power.

  Pater Pan, so it was said, customarily abluted himself as part of these visitations; this Public being so habitually crowded, the ten shower stalls at the far end of the room were usually well occupied, and queuing was common, though no doubt lesser beings would vacate at the pleasure of the monarch.

  However, fate, or destiny, or mere random chance, once more favored me with a minor smile of patronage. Perusing the bare shanks visible below the doors of the shower stalls, I saw that two of them, side by side, were now empty.

  Seizing this opportunity, I entered the one on the right, doffed all my clothing, hung it on the hooks provided, turned on the overhead shower, took up the bar of soap from its alcove, and waited. If my luck held, and my quarry was not so haughty as to eject a bather from an occupied stall for sake of status when another was empty, Pater Pan would soon be naked in the stall beside me. The partitions between the stalls ended at knee height; it would be a simple matter to drop my soap so that it slithered into the adjacent stall, and then, in the innocent act of groping…

  So it is written, so it was done. Within less than ten minutes, I heard the adjacent shower stall door open, then swing shut, and by perusing the patchwork-clad legs below the partition, I knew that it was he. A moment later I was presented with the sight of trim shanks lightly dusted with golden hair, a delightful sight to my eyes, though the feet depending therefrom were no more objects of esthetic refinement than those of any other male of my previous or future acquaintance.

  I waited for the sounds of his ablutions and was treated as well to the wordless off-key singing so common to the bathing male of our species when he believes no critical ear is at hand. Then I activated the Touch, lathered my bar of soap to the required degree of slickness, reached down below the partition, shouted “Merde!” and shot the soap beneath it and into his stall with a squeeze of my hand.

  Forthwith, I squatted down for sake of clear vision of my target, but began groping about at arm’s length in the manner of someone trying to retrieve the errant soap by blind touch alone.

  While neither the foot nor the calf is exactly an erogenous zone rich in surface connections to the kundalinic neurology, there is a nerve trunk running behind the tendon of the heel up the leg and into the groin, and this I “chanced” to grasp quite firmly in the act of attempting to recover my soap.

  I could feel a tremor ripple up his leg as I did so and heard a grunt of surprise with certain subtle undertones which led me to believe that the stimulus had indeed penetrated to the target area.

  “P
ardon,” I said, not removing my hand, “I was looking for my soap.”

  “That’s no soap, muchacha,” said a rich masculine voice with the considerable savoir faire necessary under the circumstances to affect a certain jocular tone, but not enough to suppress a husky quaver. Nor did he pull his foot from my grasp.

  “Vraiment?” I said archly, running my hand gropingly up the inner surface of his calf, past his knee, and a few inches up his thigh, which was as far as my arm would reach. “I know it’s in there somewhere.”

  At this, he let forth an honest sensual moan, and forthwith contrived to bend his knees, leaning forward and downward into my Touch, so that my hand slid up his thigh to brush against his cojones and lingam.

  “Quelle chose!” I squealed in great mock consternation while feeling the slickly hard object as if to verify my perception. “That’s not a piece of soap either!”

  At this, he fairly shouted in ecstasy, and I released my grip and withdrew my arm, sensing that further such ministrations might bring matters to a premature conclusion.

  There was a long moment of silence as we both stood there separated by the partition with only our calves and feet visible to each other.

  “A saucy wench indeed!” the male voice said in a tone that seemed to convey a somewhat false composure. “Who are you?”

  “Cabeza de caga!” I shouted in equally insincere outrage and wounded innocence. “Who am I? Who are you to take such liberties with a fresh young virgin?”

  From the other side of the partition came a strangled gurgling sound halfway between a cough and a laugh. “You really don’t know the who of the what you just grabbed?” he said somewhat guardedly.

  “Do you imagine me to be possessed of such arcane powers that I can deduce your identity from the sight of your feet and the size of your lingam?”

  “To judge from certain other powers you seem to possess, it wouldn’t surprise me, lady fair…” he mused. “Well, know then that you’ve just had the high honor of giving the goose to Pater Pan, my ah, fresh young virgin!” he added grandly.

  “Who?” I replied, as if the name had not quite registered.

  “Pater Pan!” he replied with some vexation.

  “Bien,” I said diffidently. “And you have been favored however inadvertently with the touch of Moussa Shasta Leonardo.”

  “You speak as if that makes it a fair trade,” he complained.

  “Is it not?”

  “Merde!” he muttered. “I am Pater Pan, girl.”

  “You speak as if that statement bore some cosmic significance.”

  “You put me not on? You really don’t know who I am?” he said, the tone of his voice betraying a mélange of outraged ego and charmed bemusement at such unaccustomed ignorance.

  “Should I?”

  “For sure!” he said much more genially. “But perhaps we should continue this séance face to face and belly to belly…”

  “Porqué no?” I said after some hesitation. “I have no pressing affairs for the next hour or so, and if your company amuses me half so much as it does yourself, the time will be well spent.”

  With that, the discourse temporarily ended, as we toweled ourselves dry, donned our clothing, exited our respective shower stalls, and then met face to face. He looked me up and down appraisingly for a moment and then favored me with a lordly smile of measured approval.

  I for my part ran my eyes up and down his patchwork-clad body while contriving to fix an expression of suppressed mirth on my face. “Drôle,” I finally said dryly.

  “Drôle?” he exclaimed. “Is that all you have to say upon first confrontation with the full magnificence of my being?”

  “Surely you are not unaware of the jocular effect of your…ah, costume!”

  He eyed me narrowly. I regarded him in kind. Then we both laughed and the congruent expressions, while hardly changing in content, became something shared, as if our spirits had touched and at any rate found each other equally outrageous.

  “Perhaps this duet should continue without an audience?” he suggested, discovering via sidelong glances that in fact everyone in the Public, and in particular the feminine entourage with which he had entered, was now regarding this scene with avid, though in the case of the female Gypsy Jokers, not quite amused, attention.

  “Indeed,” I agreed, clasping his hand and causing his eyes to widen in lustful amazement. “I find such shyness in a man not without a certain boyish charm.”

  Thus did we make our exit, hand in hand, and his beginning to grow quite sweaty, to a certain buzz and mutter which I for my part could not refrain from taking as applause for what under the circumstances I considered my own masterly performance.

  The Public was hidden behind the great cataract which tumbled from the lip of the desert butte high above, and close by was a cave in the face of the cliff into which Pater Pan led me. This proved to be the entrance to a lift tube which took us to the top of the butte. The landscape above bore no sane geographical relationship to the appearance of the plateau as seen from below.

  Indeed the top of the butte was not a plateau at all but a great shallow bowl or “natural” amphitheater hidden from below by a ringwall of rock so as not to spoil the effect of a stark desert landscape when viewed from afar. For in fact here was a lush green garden, a landscape of tiny rolling green hills and secluded dimpled little dells, many with small ponds at their bottoms interconnected by a tracery of burbling brooks that flowed in winding paths around the hills and through the valleys. The hillcrests, moreover, were planted with copses of low trees heavy with a profuse variety of colorful and fragrant blooms, so that each little valley was a secluded perfumed boudoir, complete with private bathing pool. What lay underfoot was not so much lawn as something green with more the texture of a deep-pile animal pelt than vegetation, the air was the temperature of the body’s heat, though gentled by breezes, and the gravity gradient was such that we fairly drifted along on the tips of our toes.

  There was no mistaking the nature of the pleasures for which such a garden had been crafted, nor, therefore, was there any mistaking the forthright purpose of the man who had brought me there.

  Nevertheless, I was determined to retain the initiative, and so, as soon as we had secluded ourselves in a dell by one of the crystal pools, I straightaway made my own bold suggestion. “Since our baths were interrupted, let us now continue our ablutions.” And so saying, without waiting for his assent, I removed my clothes and displayed my nakedness for his delectation.

  He stood there fully clothed for a moment as I regarded him with an impatient expression, hands on hips. “Well?” I demanded. “What is it that you see which has turned you to stone?”

  “Yo no se,” he said with a shake of his head, “but somehow I doubt it is any fresh young virgin.”

  So saying, he began to remove his clothing, and then followed me into the pool, into which I had leapt before he could complete his disrobing.

  The water too proved to be heated to hot blood’s temperature, and in this frank and heady brew, there was a minimum of coy thrashing and splashing before we found each other embracing. Once our lips had met in a kiss and our bodies had touched, the niceties of the chase were fairly concluded, and when I searched out his lingam and treated it to an open and electronically enhanced caress of lingering duration, he trembled, and moaned, and writhed in my grasp, and then snatched me up in his arms, carried me out of the water in a headlong stumble, threw me on the spongy ground, and proceeded to essay a mighty proof indeed of his considerable manly virtues.

  Vraiment, he was tender and indefatigable, surely as schooled in the finer points of the tantric arts and the chakras of sensual pleasure as my mother herself, and never before or since have I known such a demon lover.

  Yet even while given over entirely to the pleasures his puissance afforded, I was never transported so far beyond guile as to eschew my determination to display for him the unique ecstasies available to him via the graces of Moussa Shasta Le
onardo and to be found in the arms of no other lover.

  I ran my fingers up and down the cordillera of his spine, flashing tantric lightning from peak to peak. I Touched secret places in the root of him, I felt him lingering on the knife edge of ecstasy as I did so, as if by act of will or the iron control of a perfect master, he might remain there forever. This hubric self-control I allowed him to exercise for a goodly while to my own considerable pleasure, and then, as if to demonstrate who was the mistress of tantric power and who the acolyte, I suddenly thrust my preternaturally puissant finger into the very seat of kundalinic intimacy, and he uttered an orgasmic howl fit to rouse the dead if such might be sleeping in a nearby bower.

  Nor were our exercises then at all concluded, for, aroused to an egoless state of tantric communion on the one hand, and a contest of loverly wills which had everything to do with ego on the other, we proceeded through countless tantric configurations, half a dozen cusps at the least, each determined to master the other via the giving of a surfeit of pleasure, not to say outlasting the rival in a contest of sheer endurance.

  Pater for his part seemed possessed of a stamina and skill far beyond anything I had previously imagined possible to the masculine anatomy, and at length I was fairly trembling with a surfeit of ecstasy and panting with fatigue. Nevertheless, mighty though he was far beyond my fleshly power to outlast, I was possessed of an entirely unsporting advantage which no mother’s son could in the end overmaster; utterly spent physically, I needed move no more than my finger to have him crying out once more.

  And so at length, at great length, vraiment at entirely admirable length, it was the great Pater Pan who rolled over on his back, heaving and puffing, and cried: “Enough! What are you doing to me, girl?”

  “Surrendering my virginity,” I giggled. “Has anything out of the ordinary happened?” I said archly. “I am entirely inexperienced in these matters. Is it not always thus for a virile fellow like yourself with all the lovers you are so obviously accustomed to having throw themselves at your feet?”