Child of Fortune

by Norman Spinrad

  “Come, come, if an old mystic libertine like me can bound freely through the treetops, you youngsters should master the art in a twinkling!”

  Guy and I exchanged glances, shrugged, grinned at each other, adjusted our floatbelts, and soon enough discovered that it was so. It was something like bouncing on a trampoline and something like zero gravity ballet. A great leap took virtually no effort at all at this low gravity setting, nor was a landing at all jarring to ankles or knees, and the stately interval of glide between seemed the esthetic equivalent of birdlike flight itself. It was not long before we were cutting aerobatic capers for the sheer delight of it, turning cartwheels and somersaults, executing abrupt changes of direction on the bounce, landing on our hands and vaulting backwards through the air to alight on our feet.

  “I grow weary just watching two such natural Bloomenkinder,” Omar called out at length. “Shall we proceed with the guided tour?”

  And so we did for the next several hours, accustoming ourselves to the sights and sounds and feels of the Bloomenveldt, becoming one with the wonderland of the treetops under the aegis of our mystic libertine guide.

  On the one hand, anyone part of the Bloomenveldt seemed much like any other, but on the other hand no two venues thereon were quite the same. Here on this magical land built on air, there were no landmarks or geographical features, only an endless, rolling, tossing veldt of boughs and branches, as formless and fluid as the waves of a sea. That was the seamless sameness of the Bloomenveldt.

  But this sea of green was afloat with an abundance of flowers, of which the only sameness was that of immensity of scale, for they seemed to grow in a bewildering variety of shapes and hues. Great yellow blooms the size of a banquet table with spikey black stamens like so many cast-iron spears. Bunches of violet bells, each the size of a man, depending from a central stem. Carmine cups filled with fluid and large enough to serve us as baths. A greater variety of huge blooms within sight of each moment’s vision than memory will hold. Fruits there were as well in an equally bewildering variety, hidden under flowers, hanging between them from stems, or nestled in the crotches where leaf stems met twigs.

  “How is it possible for such a profusion of different flowers to grow on trees which by their leaves would appear to be all of the same species?” I asked Omar at length.

  “I am a poet, not a genetic botanist,” he told me, “But as I have been given to understand, each tree, being immensely long-lived by our standards, produces flowers which are genetically heterogeneous, cross-pollinating itself in an onanistic manner, as it were, in order to keep pace with the more rapidly evolving fauna of the Bloomenveldt. Like certain terrestrial coelenterates, the trees of the Bloomenveldt are colonial organisms, at least in a genetic sense.” He shrugged. “Alas, that is the extent of my knowledge of such esoteric lore.”

  As for the fauna of the Bloomenveldt, these creatures fled at our less than stealthy approach, and we were able to glimpse them only from afar or as quick flurries of motion fleeing from our disturbance.

  I saw troupes of the tawny-furred bipeds I had seen in the holo clustered around blood-red blooms streaked with black. Small black-furred creatures scattered like a flock of birds on membranous gliding wings when we stumbled upon them as they sucked nectar from the depths of pale orange flowers with long tubular tongues. Legless serpentine mammals with fur diamond-patterned in brown and green slithered away into the foliage as we approached a cluster of huge red puffballs.

  There seemed to be some profusion of animal species, all of them mammalian, or at least mammalian-seeming, all of them quite shy of our approach, and all of them seeming to frequent no more than two or three different varieties of flower.

  “Vraiment, each type of flower exudes pheromonic essences specific to its own choice of pollinator, and laces its nectars and fruits with alkaloids evolved to please the palates of same,” Omar told us. “Though at different seasons or different stages of rut, the same animal may be attracted to different flowers, even as we may be seized by pheromonic attractions to different sorts of mates depending upon our ages, state of intoxication, or even the phase of whatever moon there might be, for even in the chemical realm, variety is the spice of amorous life, nē.”

  “Speaking of which,” said Guy, “now that we have mastered the art of perambulation in the treetops and visually acquainted ourselves with the flora and fauna thereof, is it not time we shed these filter masks and sampled the arcane perfumes for which the Bloomenveldt is famed?”

  “Quelle chose!” Omar said with a grin. “You mean to say you intend to ignore the sober and prudent advice of science in favor of the reckless abandon of the mystic libertine?”

  “When imbibing wine, Guy Vlad Boca is not known to stop short of intoxication,” Guy informed him.

  “And you, my lady fair?”

  “When enjoying sexual congress, Sunshine Shasta Leonardo takes not care to avoid orgasm,” I replied gamely, not to be outdone, though not without a certain trepidation either.

  “Well spoken, my true Children of Fortune!” Omar declared. “And as a token of the esteem in which I hold such spirit, I will remain masked in order to serve as your ground control, as it were, for at least at first, it takes a bit of getting used to.”

  And so Guy and I doffed our masks, stowed them in our pockets, and, at the direction of Omar, the three of us leapt off the leaf on which we stood, and came down in the vecino of a bloom consisting of a wide circular veranda of velvety purple petals surrounding a tall tubular column coated with the most delicious crumbly pink pollen.

  Delicious? Vraiment, utterly delectable, for my nose, indeed my backbrain, was filled, sotted, indeed transformed into a locus of pure desire by the most wondrous aroma—compounded of the crust of roasted meat, and the savor of rich brown chocolate, and a dozen more subtle undertones of gustatory lust—which informed my mouth with absolute chemical certainty that the grandest production of the premiere chef maestro in all the worlds of men was as fressen compared to this perfect pink ambrosia.

  I had only to bury my face in the pollen mass, embrace it, shovel great handfuls into my gaping maw, and my tastebuds would explode in a veritable orgasm of gustatory ecstasy—

  “Emphatically not recommended!” Omar shouted, restraining me by main force as I attempted to bury my face in the pollen, and yanking Guy away from a similar attempt with his other hand. “Jump, kinder, jump!” he commanded, and actually delivered a kick to my backside.

  This was enough, vraiment, only this would have been enough, to make me leap off the petals of this wonderful flower, and as I did so, I observed Guy subject to similar prodding.

  No sooner had I soared beyond the olfactory aura of the flower than what the moment before had seemed the most perfect, innocent, and natural desire in all the worlds was at once revealed as the most bizarre and ghastly of gustatory perversions.

  The three of us came to rest on a leaf a prim and decent distance away from any of the surrounding flowers. Guy and I regarded each other in blushing embarrassment, as if each had caught the other in a sexual act too loathsome to contemplate.

  “Take care to maintain a certain psychic distance from your chemical desires,” Omar told us. “With a bit of practice, it is possible to enjoy the effects without succumbing entirely to the tropisms thereof. Perhaps we should next try something a bit more soporific…”

  Our next flower was a yellow bloom like a great carpet of downy moss overhung by tassels dripping a fine black powder. The aroma thereof was like a luxuriant tropical wind speaking to me of the passive pleasures of sweet and languid repose. I wanted nothing more than to lay myself down on its soft surface and stare mindlessly up into the azure depths of the sky. This I proceeded to do with Guy by my side. No sooner had my body contacted the yellow petals than I was showered by a dust-fine rain of black pollen which seemed to sparkle in the sunlight and caress my skin like a lover’s soothing touch.

  Minutes, hours, or an eternity of mindless perfec
tion later, my nostrils were assailed by a stench the fecal fetor of which would have made the stink of rotten meat seem like jasmine, the soft down of the petals beneath my back all at once became a bed of itchy prickles, and I leapt unbidden into the air to come down, trembling and writhing, on a leaf beside Omar. A moment later, Guy arrived, brushing pollen off his body as if it were flecks of burning ash.

  “As I warned you,” Omar said, “it takes a bit of getting used to at first. But once you have become wise to the wiles of the various flowers, you may learn to use the effects to serve your own pleasures rather than the single-minded purposes thereof.”

  He pointed out a cluster of brilliant pink blooms perhaps a leap of thirty meters away, “Now those you should sample on your own,” he said. “See if you don’t find the effects thereof entirely pleasurable.”

  Not without a certain trepidation at least on my part, Guy and I bounded over to a leafy pink apron overhung by translucent canopies of petals through which sunlight streamed to envelop us in a lambent rosy glow.

  Indeed this rosy ambiance extended beyond the visual realm to encompass smell, and taste, and touch, and senses previously beyond my ken, for no sooner had I entered the seductive sphere of this floral boudoir than my entire being became suffused by a veritable synesthesia of rosy fire. My eyes saw through rosy sheets of light, my nose was filled with rosy musk, my very ears were filled with an ethereal music which somehow hummed a rosy mantra, rose was the taste of the very tongue in my mouth, Guy’s skin beneath my touch assumed a rosy aspect to my fingertips, and the sum total of all my senses was a burning rosy lust.

  And so we coupled there in the rosy twilight, with the quick and smoky passion of mindless innocent animals, without art, without restraint, without mindfulness of Omar, without in truth even conscious awareness of the act itself.

  After we had reached our mutual cusps, the spell seemed to vanish into the wind, leaving only a heavy rosy torpor out of which we smiled contentedly at each other before taking to the air once more to rejoin Omar, who had observed the proceedings from a discreet distance.

  “Lust, hunger, torpor, thirst, und so weiter,” he said. “It would seem that from the floral viewpoint, these simple tropisms are quite sufficient to comprise the only meaningful motivations of we mammalians who fancy ourselves the crown of creation. Which is to say that if one is a flower, one need only secrete substances sufficient to incite them, and one may lead such creatures by the backbrain to serve the single purpose for which they were quite obviously designed, to wit the distribution and consequent cross-fertilization of one’s pollen.”

  He laughed. “However, if one is a mystic libertine, this simple floral reasoning may be made to serve entirely mammalian purposes.”

  Omar smiled at us indulgently. “So now that you have done your best for floral evolution, meine kinder, let us conclude our lesson by revisiting the very same blooms forewarned and therefore in full possession of that sapient critical consciousness which distinguishes us from the natural fauna of the Bloomenveldt.”

  And so, at his insistence, we did. We returned to the bloom of gustatory passion and reveled in the marvelous aroma of cuisinary nirvana but were able to resist the unseemly lust to gobble. Upon revisiting the yellow flower whose perfume urged languid repose, we stood before it inhaling the most wonderful peace and serenity of the spirit while resisting the urge to lie on its petals. As for our pink passion flower, once we were standing beneath its rosy canopy in full consciousness of the effects of its pheromonic suasions, and, moreover, erotically sated by our recent exercise, we were able to enjoy its aphrodisia of the senses from a more abstract connoisseur’s perspective.

  At length, the sun began to go down over the Bloomenveldt, Casting deep green shadows over the brighter hues of the treetops, and we replaced our filter masks and proceeded in soaring bounds toward the deepening blue of the sea on the eastern horizon.

  “Aha!” cried Omar as the three of us poised on a leaf for the next leap. “A wandering spirit approaches!”

  Away to the north, where his pointing finger directed our gaze, I saw a dark shape which at first I took for one of the animals of the Bloomenveldt bounding over the treetops more or less in our direction. Then I realized that its leaps were far too grand to be achieved without the aid of a floatbelt and perceived it as an approaching human.

  “Let us tarry a moment and seek to engage him in discourse,” Omar suggested. “If this proves possible, it may be of interest. If not, it will at least provide an object lesson.”

  A few minutes later, a rather bizarre figure alighted on a neighboring leaf: a tall, plumpish, dark-skinned man with a ragged mane of long blond hair, whose body seemed to be bursting out of a tattered tunic several sizes too small for him. Vraiment, he wore a floatbelt, but no filter mask was anywhere in evidence, nor did he carry any sort of pack. His eyes, though clear and healthy-looking from a physiological perspective, seemed not quite focused on quotidian reality.

  “Greetings, wanderer,” Omar called out. “I am Omar Ki Benjamin, and my companions are Sunshine Shasta Leonardo and Guy Vlad Boca…”

  The man stood there staring at us vapidly and blinking, as if trying to remember the import of such niceties of introduction.

  “Come, come, whom do I have the honor of addressing?”

  In response, the fellow’s blinking only grew more rapid.

  “Have you been on the Bloomenveldt long?” I essayed, though by the look of him, the question seemed entirely rhetorical.

  “The rising of the sun…awakening…the summons of the flowers…eating…the setting of the sun…sleep…” the fellow said haltingly, as if this were some cosmic revelation. “The cycle repeats itself…the great wheel turns…”

  “Indeed,” said Omar, “I have observed the same myself. But from whence do you come and whither do you go?”

  “The great wheel turns…the spirit follows its karma along the trail of the wind…”

  “No doubt,” said Guy. “But might you be so good as to point out from where the trail of the wind has brought you…?”

  The wanderer seemed to make a great effort at inward contemplation. At length, he pointed to the west, then hesitantly swung his finger in an arc from west, to northwest, to more or less due north up the coast.

  “If I may essay a translation…?” offered Omar. “You have come from a research dome somewhere up the coast, and you have swung inland on your journey?”

  The fellow nodded with some enthusiasm and then spoke as if through veils of mental fog which had at least begun to clear somewhat. “Research dome…oui…several weeks ago…psychoanthropologist yo…Meade Ariel Kozuma…is that not my name…?”

  “You are a psychoanthropologist named Meade Ariel Kozuma,” I said firmly, getting the hang of the technique. “You left a research dome up the coast a few weeks ago…on a field trip? To study…those who wander the Bloomenveldt?”

  He shook his head. “Nein…not wanderers…tribes…” He pointed westward with some excitement.

  “There are tribes of humans living in the interior of the Bloomenveldt?” I exclaimed.

  He nodded. “Noble flowers…higher forms…tribes…go unmasked…one with the flowers…principle of subjective research…”

  “Alors!” exclaimed Omar. “Just how far west did you go, man?”

  Meade Ariel Kozuma managed a quite human shrug. “Where flowers are one with man…evolutionary symbiosis…not like here…”

  “Merde!” exclaimed Omar. “Next will you claim to have visited the Perfumed Garden of the Bloomenkinder?”

  The former psychoanthropologist summoned up the ghost of what had once no doubt been a characteristic moue of professional skepticism. “Legend,” he said. “Entirely anecdotal.”

  The sun was beginning to set in earnest now, the shadows were deepening, and a cool offshore wind had begun to rock the crowns of the great trees. “We had best be getting back to the dome now,” Omar told us. He turned to regard Meade Ariel Koz
uma. “Will you not let us escort you back to the worlds of men?” he offered.

  The psychoanthropologist shook his head with some vigor. “The great wheel turns…” he chanted. “The summons of the flowers…the sun sets…” Then with a sudden bound, he sprang off the leaf, and disappeared in great long slow leaps across the Bloomenveldt toward the sunset like a stone thrown by a skilled giant skipping across the surface of some unthinkably immense pond.

  “Most of them are like that,” Omar said conversationally. “Some a bit more coherent, some less.”

  “There are many such wandering the Bloomenveldt?” I asked.

  Omar shrugged. “One encounters them from time to time.”

  Guy was staring westward at the sunset with a rather peculiar abstracted air. “Tribes in the interior…” he muttered softly. “Higher forms…? Bloomenkinder…? The Perfumed Garden…?” He turned to Omar and spoke more sharply. “Do such things truly exist?”

  “Some of it no doubt may be true, the rest volkchose,” Omar replied. “Humans have been visiting the Bloomenveldt for centuries, nē, and some, no doubt, like our bemused friend, wander off never to be seen again. Given sufficient chance and time, one can credit that some survive to produce progeny, tribes of ersatz natives, as it were, Bloomenveldt born. One hears such reports from time to time, but you have observed how unreliable the bearers thereof become.”

  “These tribes, then, are the so-called Bloomenkinder?”

  Omar laughed. “Nein,” he said. “The Bloomenkinder are creatures of legend, and the legend thereof is related by the hypothetical tribes to bemused wanderers, who in turn babble to such as we. Mythical beings thrice removed, as it were. Denizens of the Perfumed Garden, a Xanadu deep in the interior where Enlightened Ones dwell in nirvanic perfection with the flowers.”