On the Planet of Tasteless Pleasures

by Harry Harrison

  Gilganosh blinked, bewildered. What nonsense was this New-Corpse mouthing? He'd met a Conan once, but that fellow was the character who believed in fairies and wrote those Sherlock Holmes and Professor Challenger stories.

  "Now Bob, settle down," said the lardy one's companion, a tall, pale looking New-Corpse with pasted back hair, fishy eyes and a lantern jaw. "Conan is just a fantasy, a concoction of your stylistically incompetent keyboard."

  Bob nodded. "Sure, I know that, H.P. But cut me some slack. I always was a closet nancy-boy, and now I've got a chance to make it with the biggest, hairiest, most heroic hero these moist Texas eyes have ever been set on."

  The writer swished forward, making kissy-kissy noises with his mouth. "Hey, sailor. Want a date?"

  "Bob, maybe you're right. You are the weirdest!" He turned his attention to the barbarian. "Sorry about my friend, Mister. I'm H.P. Lovecraft, and this is Robert E. Howard. We're ambassadors of King Henry the Eighth, going to perform our duties as diplomatic envoys to the kingdom of Prester John. How's that for some odd and exotic mishmashed historical juxtaposition. Kinda like Farmer's RIVERWORLD, only much more mythic."

  "Look, buddy, knock off the old pulp crapola, you rotten drivers are interfering with my hunting," snarled Gilganosh. "And, P. S. — could you stop this pudgy moron from humping my leg? I do an occasional sheep, but bad pulp writers just don't turn me on. Call him off, or woe unto him for the part-god Gilganosh will tear him limb from horny limb!"

  "Gilganosh!" cried Robert E. Howard. "Gosh and shucks and tarnation! That's even better. Oh take me, Gilgy! Take me!"

  Fortunately for the writer, Gilganosh was distracted by an attacking group of guerrillas, who tended to pop up with annoying regularity down here in Hades. Again Fortune smiled upon the writers; Howard and Lovecraft had sophisticated automatic weapons in their four by four and with the help of Gilganosh's deadly arrows, they finished the guerrillas off in no time at all.

  They all went off to Prester John's, where Gilganosh and Inky-Dinky-Do beat the bejeezus out of each other and then decided to be friends once more. Lovecraft and Howard discovered publishing offices there, quit the Kingdom of Henry the Eighth and started writing sexy short stories for the Hades edition of PLAYBOY-GIRL.

  In general, Bill enjoyed the stories threading through his sinuses like a bad cold, but he did wish they were longer, so he could really get more endless pleasure from the ones he liked the most, like the Goldilocks piece.

  And so the days passed.

  There was only one of the novels he had not read yet, and he was just starting on it, reading only the very first sentence:

  ANOTHER FINE ARCHETYPICAL MYTH

  By

  David Pissoff

  "It was a dark and stormy Nightworld" —

  when suddenly the cell door banged open.

  "Bang!" said the door.

  "Drop your socks and grab your ... — up and out!" shouted the commandant of the party of soldiers who stormed in the cell. "Summer camp is over and your ass is in the sling, Bill or whatever your cruddy name is," inferred the grizzled, scarred warrior, looking every inch a debilitated soldier worthy of DI-hood. "The Lord of this 'ere castle wants an audience with you and your companion! Which means like, instantly or sooner, or I stomp you to death!"

  Bill smiled happily. "You think your Lord is going to let us go?"

  "Let you go?" he howled in apoplectic answer. "Over my dead body — or better yours. Let you go and those two vats of boiling oil we've been stoking all day, sweating and slaving over, will go to waste!"

  Bill managed to glugg down one last half-bowl of fermented swill before the soldiers dragged him out of his cell.

  CHAPTER 14

  THE CRIPPLED KING

  "What did you say?"

  The pitcher and goblet of wine went splashing off the table and crashing to the floor as the wild-haired Monarch of the Isthmus of Impotence dragged himself reluctantly halfway to his feet and glared down savagely with fierce blood-shot eyes at his cowering prisoners who were wrapped in heavy chains and shreds of clothing, bare blue bottoms shivering, in the midst of the audience hall. Then dropped back with a groan.

  Bill licked his lips, and his heart dived with despair at the loss of all that lovely, if noticeably sour-smelling alcohol that was even now dripping onto the floor and swirling down a hair-clogged drain.

  "I said, your Royal Impotence, that we are but honest Questers after the Fountain of Hormones."

  "No, no," screeched the Baron frantically, tugging at his food-spattered robes as though he was about to tear them off with excitement. "Take it back a few sentences. To the man who sent you!"

  Bill and Rick exchanged puzzled glances. It was a fair exchange. "Well, that would be Doctor Delazny, right Bill?" said Rick, seeming noticeably paler and thinner after his forced incarceration in the dank dungeon.

  "Delazny!" screeched the tall sunken eyed man as he tore out handfuls of his lank hair. "Delazny! Him!"

  "Hey, Bill, I got the feeling, somehow, that this guy knows Delazny!"

  Bill shook his head in wonderment, his chains shaking in tinkling, semi-musical accompaniment. "I got the same feeling. Only it is impossible. How could the Baron here even know about Dr. Delazny? He's a human being, sort of, and this guy some sort of archetype. Whatever that is."

  Bill, in true Trooper fashion, had already forgotten most of the details of Dr. Delazny's boring lectures about archetypes. There was no room in his teeny-tiny military-shaped and alcohol-destroyed brain for the concept that the sexual dysfunction of billions of male human beings might create an archetype like this one.

  The Baron moaned. A most pitiful, heart-breaking sound.

  Baron Barren (for that was his name) tried to stand up from his chair but managed only a wobbling crouch. Bent and disfigured, he teetered there, growing red as a beet, tears starting from his eyes as he attempted to rise up into erect state, failing miserably.

  "No, no, I am as human as you. As human as that foul beast Delazny is inhuman." Beneath swarthy, unkempt brows, glowing eyes squinted at them. He teetered there in that crouch, breathing raggedly, struggling with every ounce of his being to just stay in that one, profoundly embarrassing position. "Tell me, Bill," Baron Barren wheezed. "Did that sodding vivisectionist Delazny give you that foot?"

  "Not really. Actually, I got it — well — somewhere else."

  Bill self-consciously tried to put the cloven hoof behind his other leg, as all the repulsive creatures in the room craned their necks and slithered closer to get a better look.

  "Don't be too sure, Bill," snarled Baron Barren, pointing a ragged fingernail. "Delazny may well be at fault! The man is a pernicious fiend! Author of much, maybe all, of the wickedness in the psychosomatic research field of the Empire. They say that it was Doctor Delazny who made the Emperor's eyes strabismic during elective brain surgery to cure his ingrown toenails. If so, it is just one more mistake amidst a career of perfidy, of which we get glimmerings even here on the Isthmus, thanks to my bio-tech mechanisms!"

  "How do you know Doctor Delazny?" asked Rick.

  "Do you think that I have spent all my life in this contorted state? Do you think that I was born here in these fiendish environs? No! Can't you see.... Words fail me. It is so tragic! Nobody really cares. You don't care — you only asked so you can sneer at me! I was the greatest, yes I was. A respected, revered Doctor of Science of the Empire. Even you stupid creatures must have heard of me. Dr. Krankenhaus! The greatest psychosomatic surgeon in history? It was I, while performing a psycho dissection of a young male's brain, who suddenly realized the truth!"

  "Truth?" Bill blinked.

  "Yes!" said Baron Barren, sprays of spittle splattering from his mouth in the excitement of his oratory. "That most males think with their testicles! But no other scientist ever found the actual link! They believed that the gonads only affected the brain through the release of testosterone! But that is only partially true, and I, Dr. Krankenhaus, that fateful d
ay at Hedshrinker U., conclusively proved it! It was my genius that created the Sex-Ray — the specialized wavelength X-Ray device that read radiation-type wave-lengths emanating from glands. I shall never forget when I turned up the power, and was finally able to perceive the connection that I had only theorized before. It was a theretofore invisible energy tube, directly connected from the nether regions to the medulla oblongata! It was quite, quite purple in color. And when I performed a simple bit of castration surgery, a quick whisk of the scalpel, the tube disappeared proving that it emanated not from the brain, but from the other end. Can't you see the importance of that discovery gentlemen?"

  "Castrated?" said Bill, his mouth dry, hands shaking, contemplating the one true fear of the eternal macho male.

  "Oh, I sewed them back on. I was a great surgeon I tell you! And voila! Zap! That tube reappeared again! That tube of psychic energy! Through my further experiments I discovered that the tube also led not only to the brain but had a branch as well through a sort of hyper-dimensional link, a leaking psychic faucet you might call it that dropped into a sea of human energy that was swishing about in a different dimension! The Over-Gland! The very land where we now stand!"

  Baron Barren grew so perturbed he fell over. He did not get up; he simply continued his lecture lying on the floor, squirming spasmodically like a beetle on its back when he reached the exciting bits.

  "I had an assistant. Delazny! He spied on everything I did! He soon knew everything I knew, he learned all about the Over-Gland at almost the same instant that I learned about it. I only wished for greater knowledge, greater understanding of the human race, and maybe the Galactic Nobel Prize and a nice post at Helior University. But Delazny! Little did I realize that Delazny wanted more! Much more!"

  "Yes," said Rick. "He wants to bring peace to humanity, to stop the Chinger war!"

  Baron Barren snorted and writhed with disgust. "Bah! Lies! If he has joined up with the Chingers, then dollars to dung beetles he will betray them just as quickly as he betrayed the human race. For it is power that Delazny wants! Endless power! He wants to tap the cosmic energy of the Over-Gland for his own nefarious purposes! But he cannot do this until he discovers the source of that power...."

  "The Fountain of Hormones!" said Bill, beginning to understand the easy parts.

  "Archetypically speaking, yes. The Fountain of Hormones — the nexus of this particular maelstrom. But alas, no one has ever been able to find it." He cast a wobbly gesture about him, alluding to his sorry companions. "Don't you know, if we could find it, we'd certainly use it. Isn't that right, you conked collection of crunched cripples?"

  There was a general weak moan of agreement and a feeble thrashing amongst the assembled creatures.

  "I don't understand though, Dr. Krankenhaus or Baron Barren or whatever your name is. If you are the true discoverer of the Over-Gland — then what are you doing here, and in such a sorry state!"

  Dr. Krankenhaus snapped his fingers, or at least tried to snap his fingers that only slid greasily over each other, and pointed toward his captives, gurgled orders to his minions. "Let them go! And get them some trousers — I'm getting a chill just looking at their bare bums. They are as much victims as we!" As two gnomes raced forward and attended to the locks with jangling keys, Dr. Krankenhaus managed to struggle back onto his throne where he collapsed, heaving with over-exertion.

  "Thanks," said Bill, pulling on the filthy fur trousers and trying to rub some circulation back onto his arms.

  "You haven't answered the question," said Rick.

  "No. Sorry. It hurts to even think about what happened." Dr. Krankenhaus's hands trembled weakly down his face as though to wash out the recollection, and yet clearly to no avail. "I am sorry to have treated you so shoddily, but it is simply the custom hereabout with potentially dangerous strangers."

  "But how do you not know we aren't spies for Dr. Delazny?" asked Rick.

  Krankenhaus chuckled weakly. "Spies? Hardly. You two are far too stupid for that."

  "Maybe if you tell us your story, you'll feel better," prompted Bill.

  "Ah yes! My story. Has ever a man endured more?"

  DR. KRANKENHAUS'S STORY

  Or

  "Don't Crush that Pixie, Hand Me the Tweezers"

  "It was late at night in the University Psych-Soma lab. I had just spent the entire evening taking readings of the Delta Smegma Hi-Fi fraternity's annual toga party, panty raid and orgy, and I was eager, as you might very well imagine, to feed the results into my computer-monitored apparatus. You see, I was in the midst of creating an energy facsimile of the 'rube tube' — that is, the psychic energy channel that conducts the energy to male brains. If this experiment worked I was certain that I could open a conduit between my machine and the Over-Gland itself. I had already created a hypothesis as to the actual energy manifestations of the Over-Gland, but I needed to actually peer inside and get a visual readout for my experiments to proceed apace.

  "And what a grand experiment! What a marvelous journey it would be! To look into an as yet unfathomed X-factor in the formation of the human mind, micro to macro! I can only begin to tell you how excited I was!

  "Delazny, my assistant, was supposed to have been on vacation. Little did I realize that he had manufactured a device that enabled him to tap my computer and all of my instruments in order to spy on all my activities in the lab.

  "It was very late that night, and as I had not yet come home, my beautiful young daughter, Irma, brought some homebrew and porkuswine sandwiches to me. I asked her to linger for just a little while, to observe the next step in my experiments — the introduction of a small surge of energy, meant to 'prime the pump,' so to speak, to tap all of the sexual energy, which is called orgone, which I'd stored up from the toga party. I did not realize it, but Delazny's observation devices were rigged in a way to monitor these experiments as well, but Delazny, in addition to being a superhuman swine, was also a pretty rotten electrical technician. For apparently, when I pulled the lever to introduce the power surge, a goodly portion of the orgone from the toga party streamed through his wires and zapped him a half-mile away. I did not realize this — I was too absorbed in what was happening with the energy channel that had touched the Over-Gland! There was a fluctuation in the dimension planes that resulted, a warp in space! And the energies that caused it were from the other side of our dimension! What else could it be but the Over-Gland! I was on the verge of success!

  "The next thing I knew, Delazny was tearing into the lab, his hair standing on end, his eyes bugging horribly, smoke streaming from his ears. 'Stand out of the way, you idiot!' he cried, making a grab for my beautiful daughter. 'I will have her! I must have her. Embrace! Crush! Deflower! Hot diggity-doo!'

  "I must admit that I had been so involved in the course of my experiments I had not noticed the growing desire that Delazny had entertained for Irma. I became aware of it now. The charge from the Over-Gland was simply too much for him. He had to possess her there and then!

  "Need I say that I fought him! We rolled around that lab while explosions banged and sparks flew. Irma tried to pull him off me, but I warned her away. Finally, we teetered at the very brink of the gateway between Here and There! I don't know where I got the strength to fight against the madman, but somehow I was able to toss him through the opening! There was a tremendous crack of energy as the hole swallowed him up. I struggled up and wrapped my arms around my precious Irma, certain that the villain was done!

  "But just as I was about to turn off the energy supplying the portal, he emerged! He had clung to the sides of the portal with all the abominable strength of a madman! He climbed out from that gateway even more charged with orgone than he had been when he entered it. He roared with sexual ferocity and headed straight for Irma!

  "My poor, precious daughter! Her only escape was through the portal itself and she jumped into it without a moment's hesitation rather than allow that fiend to work his evil will with her.

  "And I? I was to
tally exhausted. I was totally enervated. Yet, somehow, with a single superhuman effort, I rallied the remaining particles of strength and seized up a chair. With it I smashed the generator and all of the most sensitive pieces of my equipment. And then, with my dear Irma's name on my lips, I fell into the doorway the very instant before it collapsed. My fall, and my total exhaustion, created the injured, useless creature that you can see before you.

  "I awoke here in this Isthmus of Impotence! Ah! How fitting! The creatures in this vile place took me to be a God, and perhaps in some terrible way, I am just that! But I am a God without reason for living, for I never found my dear and precious daughter, my lovely Irma!

  "And now, I am even more forlorn! For apparently Delazny, who had no talents and was a rotten assistant besides, has apparently graduated medical school. Undoubtedly by cheating and using his charge of orgone. He is a Doctor now, and somehow — with the help of my stolen notebooks — he has recreated the Portal to the Over-Gland, sending flunkies out to search for the nexus, the very power source that will give him the wherewithal to rule the Universe! And worse, he will surely find Irma now, and have his vile way with her. Oh woe, woe, woe! Woe is me!"

  Finishing his story, Baron Barren (a.k.a. Doctor Krankenhaus) dissolved into a mass of tears, blubbered sobs and quiverings.

  Bill was moved. Despite years of training to avoid all forms of volunteering, while firmly believing that it was always bowb your buddy week, he stepped forward. He was touched beyond words. He stumbled up to the throne, his hand over his heart, and dropped to his knees. "Fear not, dear Dr. Krankenhaus, for I believe you with all my heart and, yea, every fiber of my being! Destiny has brought me here, has thrust us together upon this cruel shore! For I do love your daughter more than life itself? I met her, you see, when I was first tossed into the formation of the link with Over-Gland! Met her, stood aghast at her beauty, fell incontinently into the azure pools of her eyes, fell instantly, deeply, irrevocably in love with her. And truly, she loves me as, yea, I do love her!"