Image of the Beast / Blown

by Philip José Farmer

  This excited Childe, who wanted the next woman kiss-

  ing his cock to continue. But she backed away, murmur-

  ing, "Thank you, Captain," and went away with her squat

  Indian partner and his thick stubby penis.

  The couples came quickly, the men laying their dongs

  in his hands and the women kissing or licking his cock.

  There were exceptions, however. Some of the men also

  got down and kissed or even sucked briefly on him, and

  some of the women took his hand and placed it on their

  cunts.

  Childe had been slightly repulsed by some of this at

  the beginning. But as more couples approached him, as

  more couples began fucking or sucking, he accepted it as

  something natural to him. He began thinking of it as his

  due, and then as something old and familiar. The

  flashes of the exotic and extraterrestrial landscapes oc-

  curred more frequently, each time coincident with the

  placing of a dong in his hand or the slide of lips over the

  head and shaft of his cock.

  The goblet had increased its illumination during this

  ceremony. As each couple passed, it shone a trifle more

  brightly. And the white glow in his skull was exceeded

  only by the hot whiteness in his penis. It was so strong a

  sensation, he was disappointed when he looked down and

  did not see glans and shaft radiating with a white light.

  Pao, he noticed, had no steady partner. He wandered

  around, and when he found a vacant cunt or empty

  mouth, he filled it. He did not seem to care whether or not

  the other was male or female. He came each time he

  rammed his partner with a few strokes, and then he would

  withdraw his dripping but still rigid dick and go on to the

  next person.

  The only one missing, he suddenly noticed, was Plug-

  ger. He had shown up early in the line and given Childe a

  slight shock when he closed Childe's hand around his

  warty cock. Childe had felt an increase in the ecstasy

  building up in him but that was all. He had the feeling

  that Plugger was withholding, that he had, somehow,

  turned down his bioelectricity to a minimum. And then

  Plugger, after briefly fucking his partner but leaving her

  passed out, had disappeared.

  Childe considered this for a second. He had an image

  of Plugger walking down the hall towards Sybil's room.

  Was the bastard going to her? And then he forgot about

  him when the next woman ran her tongue over the head of

  his penis.

  Although the line had been sedate enough, considering

  the actions of the couples, the people became wild once

  they had left him. They talked loudly, swore, smacked

  loudly when kissing or sucking each other off, and filled

  the room with the slap-slap of wet cocks driving against

  wet cunts or into wet assholes. They groaned and moaned

  or screamed with the ecstasy of orgasm oncoming or occur-

  ring. And the air was heavy and musky with the odors of

  sweating bodies, lubricating fluid, and sperm.

  The fantastically beautiful Vivienne, although denied

  touching him, was taking advantage of her liberty with

  her fellows. She was standing bent over, sucking on a big

  black's cock while Pao thrust his dick into her anus and

  the snake-thing looped under Pao's balls and slid back

  and forth into his anus. They all seemed to come at once,

  judging from their writhings and shakings. The black's

  cock dwindled to a half-erection and came out of the

  mouth of Vivienne, who swallowed the jism. Pao's dick

  withdrew and was at half-mast, dripping. The snake-thing

  left Pao's ass reluctantly with its mouth still vomiting

  spermatic fluid and coiling and uncoiling in the final

  spasms of orgasm.

  At that moment, the last woman in line quit tickling his

  glans with her tongue. Pao, his cock beginning to rise

  again but still expelling the gray fluid, walked across the

  room to him. Childe looked at him with a mute appeal.

  He was close to coming, and his peter was throbbing in

  the air. In one corner of his mind, he noted the goblet had

  begun to pulse. The whiteness flared and dimmed, flared

  and dimmed.

  Just before Pao reached him, he made the connection

  with full awareness. The goblet was emitting pulses of

  light in phase with the throbbings of his dong.

  Pao took Childe's hand and lifted it. His dick rose so

  high it almost touch his navel. Childe's own organ seemed

  to lurch, and its head touched his belly. The throbbings

  increased, the warm gray tide in his testicles and ducts

  rose more swiftly, and the glory in him threatened to

  shoot out.

  "Come on!" he said fiercely to Pao.

  Pao waved his hand, and Childe understood that he

  was to take his pick.

  Childe looked quickly around. He had a superb choice,

  because there were very few women in the room who

  were not extraordinarily beautiful.

  Childe said, "Vivienne!"

  Pao was startled and opened his mouth, apparently

  intending to protest. But he closed it and crooked a finger

  at Vivienne.

  Vivienne was startled, too. She pointed a finger at her-

  self and mouthed, "Me?"

  Pao nodded and gestured for her to come a-running.

  She did so with the snake thing flopping between her legs,

  banging into her knees and protesting against the treat-

  ment. When Vivienne got to Childe, she dropped on her

  knees and said, "Forgive me, my Captain."

  Then she started to suck on the end of his cock. The

  ecstasy came in slow waves, and from the inside of his

  navel to his knees he became ice.

  He managed to gasp at Pao, "Jerk that thing out!"

  "What?" Pao said.

  "Pull that thing out of her cunt! Quick!"

  Pao got down behind Childe and reached through his

  legs and grabbed the snake-thing, which was trying to

  wrap itself around Childe's thigh. Apparently it intended

  to climb up and into Childe's asshole, although it was

  doubtful that it was long enough to reach its goal. But Pao

  grabbed it behind its head and gave a savage yank.

  Vivienne fell apart.

  Childe stood with her head between his hands and his

  penis in her mouth. The eyes stared up at him with a

  violet fire, and the lips and tongue kept on sucking and

  thrusting. The other parts of her body, having gotten onto

  their legs, began to scuttle around the room. The big

  black who had been sucked off by Vivienne picked up the

  many-legged cunt and stuck it on the end of his cock and

  began sliding it back and forth. The cunt's legs kicked as

  if it were having an orgasm.

  The goblet's pulses came faster and faster. Childe held

  the head by the ears and rammed his prick faster and

  faster between the lips. Its head drove down her throat,

  backed out until it almost left those beautiful lips, and

  then rammed in until the hairs around his cock were

  crushed against her lips.

  Faster and faster
. Brighter and brighter. Pulse and ec-

  stasy.

  The ice turned to fire. He spurted with a scream and a

  writhing that was so violent he almost dropped the head.

  His pubis was against her nose and his dong was far

  down her throat. He came and came, and the goblet

  glowed as if it were in the heart of the sun.

  Pao got down underneath the head and swallowed the

  jism that fell down her throat and out the open neck.

  The others scrambled to catch the drops that Pao had

  missed. They rolled him away, and stuck their heads un-

  der Vivienne's, and then they were pushed away. Those

  who could not get any directly ran their fingers over the

  lips or down the mouths of those who had been lucky and

  got the stuff second-hand. Some tasted it and then

  rubbed the residue over their cunts or pricks.

  Childe quit shaking and spurting. The goblet's light

  waned swiftly, and soon it had only a faint glow.

  He pulled Vivienne's head off his peter and threw it to

  Pao, saying, "Now you can put her together again. I had

  my revenge."

  He sat down and stared dully at the goblet. He felt very

  tired.

  The people crowded around and spoke in awed tones.

  At first, he did not understand what they were talking

  about. When he heard a woman say, "It did grow, just a

  little, but it grew!" he saw what they were marveling at.

  The incomplete side of the cup of the goblet had grown

  more of the metal.

  "You are indeed the Captain and The Childe," Pao

  said, holding Childe's limp cock in his hand. "But you

  are no longer a child."

  Childe understood what he was saying, although he did

  not know the details. During that last explosion of orgasm,

  he had seen many things on the screen of his mind. Some-

  how, this experience had tapped a racial memory. No, not

  racial. That was not the correct term. A genetic memory

  was closer to an exact definition.

  37

  Forry Ackerman jumped when the poundings came on his

  door. He opened the door without checking on the identity

  of the visitor, a lack of precaution indicating his upset

  condition.

  A tall good-looking man with yellow hair and dark blue

  eyes stood there. Two other men were with him.

  He said, "I'm Hindarf. This is Bellow and this is

  Grunder. We're friends, old friends, of Alys Merrie. We'd

  like to come in."

  "No smoking," Forry said and then remembered that

  Alys was puffing on one cigarette after another.

  He let them in and closed the door. Two sat down

  without asking his permission; Hindarf stood in the middle

  of the room as if he intended to dominate it. And he did.

  "I'm here to carry out the rest of our plan," he said.

  "What plan?" Forry said.

  He looked around the room. It had always seemed the

  center of the universe, this room. It contained illustra-

  tions from all over the cosmos by men who had never left

  planet Earth in the flesh. Memos from Mars. To others, it

  appeared weird, but to him it was home.

  Now it was shifting from reality, slipping its moorings.

  The very intrusion of genuine alienness rendered this

  place alien. The aliens were the real people, and the prod-

  ucts of imagination were fake. Contrary to what he had al-

  ways maintained, reality was more real than fantasy.

  "You must be wondering why you've been chosen,"

  Hindarf said. "Why should we ring in an Earthling in our

  battle against the Ogs? Why do we need you in our ef-

  fort to recapture the Captain?"

  Forry bent his head and looked at them from under

  raised eyebrows. He drawled, "Yes. I had been wondering

  about that. Many are called but Fu are Cho-sen, as the

  Korean said."

  Hindarf did not smile, but he did not look puzzled

  either. He said, "There are some Earthlings who have

  what we call resonance. Through the chance of genetics,

  they are born with a psychic affinity, or a psychophysical

  complex, which generates what, for want of a better term,

  we call white noise. This vibration is quite in phase with

  those radiated by the Tocs. It makes the Earthling im-

  mediately sympathetic and empathic with the Tocs, and,

  conversely, it generates disturbance and confusion in the

  minds of the Ogs. But it exists, and its effect is to blank

  out the vibrations radiated by the Tocs. In other words,

  we Tocs and Ogs know when we're near each other. We

  sense it just as a lion downwind from an antelope smells

  it. But when one of the resonant white-noise generator

  Earthlings is around, the Ogs can't sense us."

  Forry put his fingertips together to form a church stee-

  ple. He said, "I've never been one to make everything

  black or white. There is much more gray in this uni-

  verse than black or white."

  "Did you ever have a good word to say for the Nazis?"

  Hindarf said.

  "Well, they did get rockets launched and that led to the

  first men on the Moon."

  Alys Merrie guffawed and said, "Well, kiss my ass and

  call me Hitler!"

  "Woolston Heepish is a member of the Ogs," Hindarf

  said. "He has not only set himself up as a rival of yours,

  he has become a caricature of you, and he has stolen from

  you. Do you think he's more gray than black?"

  "Black as the devil's hindbrain," Forry said. "Why, just

  last night ... !"

  Hindarf waved his hand impatiently and said, "I know.

  The question is, will you help us? It will be dangerous.

  But it will be less dangerous for us if you accompany us.

  We intend to rescue Childe. He is a prisoner of the Ogs.

  And the emanations from the house today indicate that

  he's participating in a grail-growing ceremony. He prob-

  ably doesn't know what he's doing, but that makes no

  difference. He is doing what they want him to do."

  "Aren't there any other Earthlings you know who could

  go with you?" Forry said. He remembered some of his

  youthful fantasies in which he had been the focus of at-

  tention from the secret bands of Martians and Venusians

  operating in an underground struggle for control of

  Earth. Generally, in his fantasies, he had been on the

  side of the Martians. There was something sinister, damp,

  toadstooly, and creepycrawly about the Venusians. All

  that rain … Now that he thought about it, the deluge of

  the past seven days had turned Los Angeles into a Venus

  such as the sci-fi writers had projected back in the good

  old days of Science Wonder Stories and Astounding.

  "No," Hindarf said. "There are none available in this

  area, and none anywhere who can generate white noise to

  compare with yours."

  "This may seem irrelevant to you at this moment,"

  Forry said, "but why does Heepish steal from me?"

  "Because he wants your stuff for the collection he in-

  tends to take to the planet of the Ogs. He's a greedy and

  short-sighted person, and that is why he's s
tolen a few

  things from you instead of waiting to take the whole col-

  lection just before he leaves."

  "What?" Forry said shrilly. "The whole collection?"

  "Oh, yes," Alys Merrie said, blowing smoke at him.

  "He has planned on emptying your house and your ga-

  rage. He can do it in a few minutes, you know, if he can

  get a Captain to do it for him. The collection would be

  moved to a huge room in a barn behind the present head-

  quarters of the Ogs. Then, when the Captain moves all

  the Ogs to their home planet, he will also take the collec-

  tion. Which, by the way, will consist of many of Earth's

  art treasures in addition to artifacts and books and so

  forth, for the Og museums."

  "You can visit our planet, if you wish," Hindarf said.

  "And you might as well have Heepish's collection, too. It

  won't do him any good after he's dead."

  "Dead?"

  Hindarf nodded and said, "Of course. We plan to kill

  every Og."

  Forry did not like the idea of killing, even if Heepish

  did deserve it. But the thought of going to an alien

  planet, one so far away that it was not even in this gal-

  axy! He alone, of all men, would voyage to another

  world! He had wanted to be the first man on the Moon

  and the first man on Mars when he was a child and then

  that dream had glimmered away. He wouldn't even be

  able to go to those places as a tourist. And now, he was

  offered a free ticket to a planet far more alien and weird

  than the Moon or Mars could ever be. Under a strange

  sun on an unimaginably exotic world!

  "I can come back any time I wish?" he said. "I

  wouldn't want to leave Los Angeles forever, you know. I

  have my collection and all my wonderful friends."

  "No trouble," Hindarf said.

  "I must warn you, if it involves anything strenuous, I'll

  be handicapped," Forry said. "My heart ..."

  "Alys has told us all about that," Hindarf said.

  Forry's eyes widened. "Everything?"

  "Just the medical aspects," Hindarf said ambiguously.

  "All right then," Forry said. "I'll help you. But just

  as a white noise generator. You can't ask me to take part

  in any killing."

  The three men and Alys smiled.

  Forry smiled, too, but he was not sure that he was not