Image of the Beast

by Philip José Farmer

  "It will be glorious," Vivienne was saying. "When the Grail is complete, then you, my Captain, can materialize all the Ogs who are wandering the face of this planet as energy complexes."

  Childe was startled, and he had thought he was beyond being surprised anymore.

  "You mean that I am expected to give all your, uh, dead, new bodies?" he said.

  "You will enable them to give themselves their material bodies," she said.

  "It will be a resurrection day for us," Pao said. His slanting vulpine eyes glowed. The light from the lamp was reflected redly in them.

  "And just where will this resurrection, or rematerializing, or whatever you call it, take place?" Childe said.

  "They will, materialize in the barn behind this house," Vivienne said. "There is more than enough room, even with all the goods stacked there."

  "Approximately nine hundred of them," Pao said. "They won't be brought into matter all at once. You can control that, Captain. Ten or twenty or so at a time, and these will be conducted out of the place into this house or into rooms in the barn."

  Theologistics of resurrection day, he thought. And am I really a sort of god?

  "Will Lord Byron, my real father, be among them?" he said.

  Pao said, "Oh, no. You forget that..."

  He did not want to continue. No wonder. Byron would be among the Tocs, who would not be materialized. And Pao must be trying to guess what Childe was contemplating- How could he avoid the conclusion that the Tocs might be the good ones, if his own father was a Toc?

  "Byron was a very talented but a very evil man," Pao said slowly. "History does not reveal how evil, though there are hints. The world never knew the story behind the story, of course. If it had, it would have executed him. I am sorry to say that about your father, but it has to be said. Fortunately for you, we saved you from the Tocs."

  The implication was that they had also saved him from following the evil ways of his father.

  "I have a lot of thinking to do," Childe said, "so I'd like to be alone. What are your plans for me today, if any?"

  Pao spoke in an apologetic tone. "The Tocs will be gathering for an attack on this house. Time is more essential than ever because of this. We were hoping that you would be quite rested by evening and ready for another Grailing."

  "See me after dinner," he said.

  Pao bowed and Vivienne started to suck his cock again, but he stopped her.

  "I'll save my power."

  Pao looked pleased at this, but the woman frowned and bit her lip. She turned to go, but Childe said, "One moment, Vivienne. Last night. You know what happened? I mean, are you conscious when you, uh, come apart?"

  She said, "I must be dimly conscious. When I came to, all put together, I remembered vaguely what went on. It was like a poorly remembered dream."

  "Can you have an orgasm when you're disconnected?"

  "Not that I remember. If you were getting revenge, you got a pale shade of it, just as I probably got a pale shade of orgasm."

  Childe said, "I can understand even the weirdness of the others, since they are known in folklore and superstition. But I have never heard of your type. Was your kind ever known among humans?"

  Vivienne said, "If you're referring to my structure, to the thing in me, to my discreteness, as I call it, no. I am unique. And I am recent. I was rematerialized in 1562. I had died in 1431 A.D., by present reckoning. The thing in my womb died in 1440 A.D. He was my very good friend then in our public human life and in our private Og life."

  "That thing was human?"

  "Yes. You see, when we succeeded in rematerializing in 1562, we constructed ourself in our present arrangement. We can do that within certain limits, you know. We have to conform to biological laws, but if you have great knowledge you can do things with matter that you humans would think impossible.

  "We had talked about just such a symbiosis as this, where we could double the intensity of our sexual activities. So we materialized with this structure. Only we made a mistake. I did, rather. I had an idea that if I could be separated into various parts, and these parts could also have a sexual life, orgasm, that is, and the parts could communicate each other's orgasms...well it didn't work out that way."

  Childe wondered if he was being told the truth. It seemed too fantastic. Would anybody deliberately build herself like this? Wasn't it more likely that her enemies, the Tocs, had caught her as she and the thing were rematerializing and shaped her like this? He did not know why they would do it, but it was more probable that someone would do this to another for a sadistic joke than that anyone would purposefully do it to herself.

  "Both of us had very traumatic experiences in our fifteenth-century lives," she was saying. "He was hanged and burned at the same time, and I was burned at the stake."

  "You were a witch?" Childe said. "Then all the witches burned were not innocent?"

  "Oh, no! I wasn't innocent, but I was not a witch in the sense that my executioners thought. It was the English that burned me, you know."

  "No, I didn't know," he said. "Who were you? Anybody I might know?"

  "I think so." she said. "I was Joan of Arc. And the being in my womb was Gilles de Rais."

  * * *

  CHAPTER 39

  After the two Ogs had left, Childe lay down on the bed. Sybil had heard only the last five minutes, so he went over the entire conversation with her. She said, "I always thought Joan of Arc was unjustly burned by the English, that she had been proved innocent of the charge of witchcraft?"

  "She was condemned by the Church, but it was the Church that later removed the charge and then canonized her. I think that that happened because she was too big a hero to the French."

  "I don't understand," Sybil said. "What was Vivienne or Joan, or whatever she was, doing? Why would an Og try to save France from the English?"

  "Maybe for herself. Who knows what she intended to do after she had saved the nation for the French ruler? It's possible that she meant to take over from him or perhaps to control France through him. She may even have intended to drive the English out and then invade England and bring both nations under one ruler again. I didn't ask her what she and de Rais meant to do. But I'll have a chance later on. Just now, I'm too stunned."

  "Who was Gilles de Rais?"

  "He was a Grand Marshal of France, one of the best warriors and generals the French had. He was also savagely sadistic, a psychotic homosexual who abducted, tortured, mutilated, and sacrificed hundreds of little boys. Little girls, too, I think. A member of the royalty or the nobility could get away with a lot in those days, but he went too far. He was charged with witchcraft, ritual murder, and a number of other things, including sodomy, I think. He was executed and quite properly, too. Few people have ever been so bestial. He made Jack the Ripper look like a gentle old fuddy-duddy."

  Sybil shuddered but did not say anything. He got off the bed and undressed while she looked wide-eyed at him.

  "Take your clothes off," he said.

  "Because I want to make love to you. Is that surprising?"

  "Yes, it is, after last night," she said.

  She started to unbutton her blouse and then stopped.

  "Aren't you supposed to save yourself for tonight?"

  "Here, I'll help you undress," he said.

  He began to unbutton her.

  "Yes, I am. But what they want and what I want do not necessarily coincide. Besides, if I'm dry, what can they do about it?"

  "Oh, no! You shouldn't do that!"

  "Whose side are you on?"

  "Well, yours, of course! But I don't want them to get mad at you, Herald. Or at me."

  "You can always tell them I made you," he said, grinning. "In more sense than one."

  "I really shouldn't," she said, staring at his slightly swelled cock.

  "Go ahead. Touch it."

  "I'm not an Og," Sybil replied. "But if you say so."

  He stripped her blouse and unhooked her bra and took it off. She had full well-sh
aped breasts that had not yet begun to sag. He kissed the nipples and saw them swell and then he sucked on both, one after the other. She stood against him, her back slightly arched, and moaned. She reached down and tenderly fondled the shaft of his cock, which was expanding with his kissing and her caressing. He kissed her breasts all over and then backed her towards the bed, where he eased her down. He removed her skirt and her panties, and moved in between her legs. The thick black fleece of her cunt was beginning to run; she had always overlubricated. He licked along the slit, putting the tip of his tongue in between the lips and running it up and down. Then he pressed the tip against the clitoris, ran it back and forth, and inserted two fingers into her slit and moved them slowly back and forth and then more swiftly. She came finally with a fierce deep groan and pulled on the hairs of his head.

  After this, he came up from between her legs and slid on up by her. He pushed her head down towards his penis, which was sticking up straight and hard and swollen.

  The head, was purple, glistening, and the skin was stretched so tight it seemed about ready to burst. The blue veins stood out like unmined mineral under the reddish skin.

  Sybil sucked on his testicles a while, one after the other, while she ran a finger partway up his anus. He moaned with the delight of the mouth and tongue and the finger. Then she ran her tongue lightly along the shaft of his peter, wet his pubic hairs with her tongue, and took the big head into her lips. Her tongue trembled on the slit of the glands, and her lips moved noisily with their sucking. The edges of her teeth brushed against the tight tender skin.

  He blew into her mouth with a writhing of belly muscles and hips and a feeling of flying apart.

  Sybil continued to suck, having swallowed the fluid. She worked at him, occasionally stopping to murmur endearing words. His dong began to rise again, and when it was fully rigid, he told her to lie down. He got down on top of her and eased his prick into the slit until their pubic hairs were crushing each other. He lay there for some time, luxuriating in the warmth and the moisture and the tenderness. Her sphincter muscle squeezed on his cock, gently working it.

  "I'm no superman, you know, Sybil," he said. "Once or twice a night, and I'm done for, usually. But when I was at Igescu's that hog of a woman, Grasatchow, put a suppository up my rectum that acted as an aphrodisiac and an energy source. And last night they gave me a drink that had the same effect. Maybe some of that effect is still with me, which is why I could get a hard-on so quickly after coming. Or maybe it's just because I've been so long without you, and you're my aphrodisiac. Anyway, I love you, and I intend to fuck all day."

  "I love you, too," Sybil panted. "Do you want to move now, Herald?"

  He began to thrust, slowly at first and then more swiftly as he felt the tide in him increasing its forward swings. He came with a moan at the same time that she screamed with ecstasy. Tears rolled down her face onto the pillow.

  His speculation that the drug he had taken was still affecting him was probably true. He lost some rigidity after the shooting out of his sperm, but he kept his peter in her, and within a minute or two it was rigid and apparently ready to tap on new reserves.

  However, this time, the gray liquid in him would not rise so soon. He hammered her for what seemed like fifteen minutes and though the ecstasy built up, he could not come. Sybil was having one orgasm after another. Her eyes were open and her hands were flung out and she was rolling her head back and forth and groaning and weeping.

  Suddenly, she gave a scream and seemed to fall unconscious. He was not worried, since she had behaved like this frequently. When she had an especially exquisite orgasm, she would faint.

  But the white body beneath him became reddish. The smooth but wet-slippery skin was covered with hairs as red as an Irish setter's and as wet as if it had just climbed out of the water. The face became elongated and snouted, the long head hairs shrank to a bristle, the eyes shifted towards the side of the head, the small and delicate ears became large hairy pointed organs.

  The long-fingered well-manicured hands became paws with blunt hooked nails. The legs on his shoulders became hairy, and a big hard penis was against his body. It was spurting jism over his belly and down onto his own cock, which was buried to the hairs in the hairy anus of the creature.

  It was too late for him to stop. He had been just on the verge of ejaculating as the metamorphosis took place. Moreover, he had suspected that this thing was not Sybil. She had been too blasé about the change of shape of Plugger, too calm about what was happening, and too eager to fuck him. Sybil might have wanted to fuck him, but she would have been too afraid of emptying him and so making their captors angry. This thing should have been afraid of that, too, and probably had been, but it could not resist the temptation to get the power and the glory of the Captain's cock all to herself.

  That had been the thing's undoing. It had become overwhelmed and had lost control. Apparently, it still was not aware of this.

  He exploded inside the red-haired ass of the creature.

  The intensity of the orgasm was such that, afterwards, he felt almost forgiving. Almost but not quite.

  Panting, he lay for a while on top of the wet and hairy body.

  Then he got off the bed and seized its neck between his hands. It was as tall and almost as heavy as he, but it was terrified. Its brown eyes bulged out as its air was squeezed off, and its paws flailed.

  Childe turned, swinging it off its feet, and then dragged it by its ears to the door. He shouted until the door was opened and then he shoved the thing out with a kick just under its long bushy tail. The three who received it looked shocked.

  "That'll be the last trick you play on me!" he shouted. "Where is my wife? You had better produce Sybil, and quick, or you'll get nothing out of me anymore! No matter what you do!"

  The thing got off the floor, rubbing its spine with a paw, and whined. It said something, but the shape of the mouth was not appropriate for human speech.

  "Kill it!" Childe shouted. "Kill it and prove to me that you did! And then bring me Sybil, my wife, alive and well!"

  The door was swung inwards and locked. He raged around the room for a while. Finally, he burst into tears and wept for a long time. Then he got up and took a shower and dressed again. Pao and the big Swedish-type blond, O'Brien, entered.

  * * *

  CHAPTER 40

  At nine that evening, Forry Ackerman and four Tocs, including Alys Merrie, set out for their rendezvous. Forry had had to exercise his imagination to the rupture point to explain to Wendy why he wasn't going to the monthly soirée with her and to the host and hostess why he couldn't make it. He didn't think he satisfied anybody with his excuses, but certainly they were far more satisfactory than the truth.

  The rain had stopped for several hours after five o'clock, and some of the clouds overhead thinned out. Then darkness and lightning had moved back in and thunder had come. A half hour later, it began raining savagely.

  Every TV channel was filled with news of the damage done by the floods and the lives lost. The radio seemed to talk of little else between bursts of rock music. Over two thousand homes had had to be abandoned. At least that number were in danger of sliding down a hill or being floated away. Most of the canyons were closed even to those who lived in them. The rivulets and brooks roaring down from the hills had become small rivers and frightening tidewaters. The Basin and the San Fernando Valley were sometimes knee-deep in water. Business was at a standstill; most of the bus lines had quit running. The governor had finally declared the three counties a disaster area. Citizens were screaming about flood control, and an insurance man was gunned down by an enraged citizen who had lost his home under an avalanche of mud.

  The grocery stores were beginning to run short of supplies. There was water contamination and a backing up of the sewers. Despite the almost continuous rains, fires were numerous, and one fire truck, answering the twentieth call that day, dropped into a tremendous hole created by the torrents slamming down from the hills
. No one was drowned, but the truck was lost.

  Just before he left, Forry received a call from Wendy. The party had been called off, even though most of the guests lived within a few miles of the house where the monthly party of science-fiction people and normals was being held. It should have been canceled days before, but the hostess was unusually stubborn.

  He sighed with relief. Telling the lies had burdened him down, and at the same time he resented the burden. Why should he worry about breaking an engagement for a party when the fate of the world depended on what he and the Tocs did tonight? Nevertheless, he did worry.

  Hindarf drove a pickup truck which was several times in water higher than the wheels. At Sunset and Beverly Drive, he pulled to the curb. A semi with a big van came along five minutes later and stopped with a hissing of air brakes. They got down out of the pickup and waded through water halfway up their thighs to the van. They had to hold on to each other to keep from being swept off their feet by the current. A piece of timber, which looked as if it had been a post for a billboard, swept by them. If it had struck a leg, it would have cracked the bone.

  There were twenty others in the van. The back doors were closed, and the truck pulled away. With its high body and its power, it should get through water which would drown out an automobile.

  On the way, Hindarf gave them instructions. Apparently, everybody except Forry had heard these before, but he was making sure that they understood them. The instructions took about fifteen minutes, and the putting on of the diving suits, flippers, tanks and goggles about ten. Forry objected that he had never been scuba diving but was told that he would be underwater for only a minute. The main reason they were wearing the suits was to keep from getting cold while they went through the water.

  The truck stopped on a steep slope. The doors were opened and a small ladder let down for Forry while the others leaped out onto the road. They were parked on Topanga Canyon just outside the entrance to the road that ran up to the house of the Ogs. The brown flood running off it joined the deep current coming down Topanga. Forry was glad that he wore flippers and a suit and that the tank gave him more weight to resist the current. But he did not think that he could carry it up the hill.