by Mick Farren
It was a definite flash of jealousy. Gibson wouldn't have thought that Christobelle had it in her. It occurred to him that Windemere might actually maintain a real harem here. You never could tell with the very rich and very powerful. He started to unbutton his shirt. Christobelle was visibly working on regaining her composure. Her breasts rose and fell with each measured, regulated breath. He didn't say a word, just went on undressing. When he was naked, he stood up and faced her. She leaned over and lit a thick, yellowish green stick of incense. The smell of the smoke was the same smell that had been coming from the basement. She turned back to him and held out her arms, apparently not noticing his look of suspicion.
"Come here."
Realizing that it was far too late to back out, he crawled across the bed toward her. The fur felt good. He was about to make a playful grab for her when she fended him off.
"Just sit facing me,"
Gibson did as he was told. Whatever she had in mind was almost certainly worth going along with. He crossed his legs and sat upright with a straight back. Their faces were about eight inches apart.
Christobelle smiled. "As with many things, the secret of the tantric arts is that less is more."
Gibson had done his share of the Kama-sutra but he kept quiet and let her go on. "In the jab-yum, the key is to do as little as possible as slowly as possible. All I want you to do is to sit very still."
"Windemere wasn't sitting still."
Christobelle sighed. "He'd already been at it for over two hours. Now shut up and do what I tell you."
Her right leg snaked around him in a yogic move that brought her heel to rest against the small of his lower back. Using pressure from her foot, she eased him closer to her.
" Now put your leg over mine in the same way."
Gibson smiled and shook his head. "I don't think that I can. I've been living a life of indolence and sin, and I'm not as limber as I used to be."
Her hand was on his knee, gently guiding him. It was far easier than he'd imagined. A couple of muscles initially protested, but he found that he had his leg around her waist and the seemingly impossible had been achieved with only minor effort. The room was thick with the pungent jungle-rot smell, and Gibson was once again in the cloying grip of euphoric drift.
"Use your own leg to draw me closer."
Gibson gently flexed his calf. Their bodies were now very close; she twisted her torso in a slow, languorous undulation and her breasts brushed against his chest.
"Now the other leg. I'll put my hands on your shoulders and we'll do it together."
Once again the impossible was achieved with comparative ease. They were now in a strange double-lotus position; their upright bodies were pressed closely together, and he could feel her contours along the length of his chest. The nearness of her was quickly arousing him, and as his erection grew it eased inside her as though by osmosis, with no conscious effort on his part. She whispered hypnotically in his ear.
"Slowly.., slowly… you are very, very, slow… slow as the movement of mountains."
They were like one multilimbed being, a Hindu god, a child of Shiva. Christobelle's fingers performed the lightest of dances up and down his back. They felt like moths fluttering against his spine. Tiny shudders of pleasure ran up his body.
"Slowly… slowly. You need do nothing… you need to feel nothing. You are the world and you have all of time. Take nothing for yourself and all will be yours."
He was just starting to drift in the direction of oneness with the sensual universe when, completely uninvited and in some far-off part of his mind where logic and self-preservation still wearily held the line, a realization dawned.
"We're doing the same thing that they were doing in the basement."
Christobelle's whisper was no longer hypnotic. "Of course we are."
Alarm eased out euphoria. "So what's all this, then? A little backup ritual? "
"Something like that. Is it a problem?"
"I've got to think about this."
She leaned away from him slightly. "What's the matter? Did you think that I went to all this trouble because you were so damned irresistible? "
"It's a little cold-blooded for my taste."
"You have something against fucking for a higher purpose than simple personal gratification?"
"I thought you were enjoying this, and now I find that you're just going through the prescribed moves."
Christobelle's voice took on an angry edge, "For your information, Joe Gibson, I enjoy it very much. I was enjoying this very much until you felt the need to inject your note of crude morality. I can only believe that if I can generate energy over and above my own pleasure, it can only be for the greater good. Fun and a bonus, too. It's like gift stamps. It's also the philosophy of the Earth Goddess and that's why I've made it my calling."
"Fucking for victory?"
" It makes a great deal more sense than killing for it."
"I've really got to think about this."
He tried to disentangle himself from her, but they were too complicatedly entwined. Her legs tightened around him as if she was trying to calm his fears with her physical presence. Her voice again took on the hypnotic quality.
She crooned in his ear. "Don't think, Joe Gibson, just be. You are safe here for tonight. Don't think, just be. You are safe in my arms."
The scent was closing in on him and he did feel safe in her arms. He was also growing inside her again. Again she crooned to him.
"Let it go, Joe. Slowly let it go. You're safe. Nothing can hurt you. Slowly let it go."
Joe was letting it go. His mind was floating away, and his body was at long last taking over. The little spasms of pleasure started again.
"Go with it, Joe. Just let it happen."
Her breath was hot against his ear. His legs were so firm around her that he seemed to be melting into her.
"Slowly, Joe. So slowly. Soooo slowly."
The whisper was deep in her throat.
"So good, Joe. Sooo gooood!"
Her pelvis had started to gradually rotate.
"Slowly, Joe. Sooo slowly."
Now he could feel it. He could feel himself growing and expanding. He could feel the power flowing around him.
"That feels so good."
"Slowly."
"That feels so right."
"So slowly."
They seemed to be rising together.
"Oh, God, that feels good."
"Sooo slowly."
Neither of them was moving a muscle, and yet there was sweat running between their bodies.
"Oh, God, that feels good."
"Soooo slowly!"
The smell of them was combining with the jungle reek.
"Oh, God, that feels so good."
"Sooo…"
"Oh, God!"
Their sighs and whispers blended together, breath mingling.
"Slowly!"
"Feels good."
"So good!"
"Too good!"
"Slow!"
Somehow, he could feel the two other bodies in the pyramid downstairs. He could feel them also joining.
"Oh, God!"
"Oh!"
"God!"
"Oh!"
"God!"
"OH!"
"Slow!"
"Oooohl"
"OOOOOOOOH!"
And, at that moment, deep inside the house and deep in the real world from which they were trying so hard to detach themselves, there was a fearful pounding on the front door.
The White Room
"IT'S ALL A matter of playing their game." Joe Gibson regarded the man blearily. "Game? What game?" The drugs made it so goddamn hard to focus on anything. He knew that the man's name was John West.
"You have to let them believe that they're curing you, that's the only way you'll ever get out of here."
A new innovation had occurred in the very expensive private clinic. It had come after Gibson had been there for, as far as he could calculate, about
three weeks, although the drugs that they were feeding him made it almost impossible to keep track of time. He'd tried for a while to keep a record by marking each day on a secret slip of paper, but they'd found that and taken it away. The innovation was known as "patient interaction." Boiled down, this meant that every day, right after Love Connection, he was taken from his room and his private TV and wheeled by an orderly down to a large, white, sterile common room with too much light where he and a dozen or so other doped-up individuals sat in chrome wheelchairs, in varying states of vegetation, and lethargically watched a communal television. This so-called interaction was timed so that he always seemed to end up watching Gitligan's Island, Which was weird in its own way since, back in what he was increasingly thinking of as his old world, there had been an almost identical show except it had been known as Finnegan's Island. On the screen, the castaways were trying to use a misdirected NASA Mars probe to get themselves rescued. Beside rum, John West seemed to have a theory to expound. "Of course, it depends on who put you here in the first place and who's picking up the tab. There are some of us in here who aren't ever going to get out. Too much of an embarrassment to either families or the people that they used to work for. I've heard that there are agency people who've wound up in here just because they knew too much."
Gibson slowly nodded. The shot that they always gave him just before the patient interaction period made everything seem as if it were taking place underwater. "It sounds like the old-time Soviets."
"Things don't ever change. If you don't fit, you're crazy."
"I think they put me here because I didn't fit." He had been going to the interaction periods for over a week- once again, the calculations were a little uncertain-before John West had spoken to him. When West had wheeled himself over, pointed to the TV and muttered, "This is a fucking silly show for grown men to spend their time watching," it was the very first contact that Gibson had experienced with anyone in the clinic who wasn't staff. After that first observation, West had extended a shaking hand. "The name's West. John West."
Gibson had shaken the hand, glad of any contact that didn't come with a white coat and a professional smile. It was hard to tell what any given patient might have been on the outside. You had to read beyond the slack jaws, the vacant eyes, the hollow cheeks, and the uncoordinated movements. All these were a product of the relentless medication. When reading the faces, Gibson knew that he also had to remember that he was in as bad shape as anyone else. A certain residual strength was detectable in West's face, and, although his muscle tone was long gone, traces of what could have been an athletic physique still remained. Gibson suspected that West might well himself have been one of the ones who'd been incarcerated in the clinic because they either knew too much or thought that they knew too much. In all their conversations, West refused to say anything about his own background, although, from his claimed knowledge of the world, his travels seemed to have been extensive and exotic. They certainly would have fitted the profile for a heavy-hitting executive or a spook who later fell from grace.
He may have been reticent about his own past, but that didn't stop him closely questioning Gibson about his.
"So how do you figure you don't fit? What did you do?"
"It's like I told Kooning: I got involved with Necrom and this whole multidimensional thing, and I kept crossing from one dimension to another until, when I finally managed to get back home again, home wasn't home anymore. A lot of little things had changed. TV shows had different names, there were songs that I'd never heard of that were supposed to be classics, people were still alive who'd died in my world, the world I'd left. The worst part was that I didn't exist at all. All trace of me had vanished. How d'you like that for not fitting in. Kind of absolute, huh?"
Gibson found that the medication allowed him to tell the story with complete detachment. West, who'd been holding a Diet Sprite unnoticed in his left hand for almost all of the period, raised it thoughtfully to his lips and sucked on the straw.
After the first sip, he stopped and regarded the can with the look of one betrayed. "Damn thing's warm."
"You've been holding it for all of the period."
West carefully placed the can on the floor. His face showed a sad amusement, as though at how far he'd managed to fall. Then he straightened up and turned his attention back to Gibson. "And before that, in your world, you were a washed-up rock star?"
"That would be the blunt way of putting it."
"And there's no trace of you."
"Nothing. Me, the band, all erased, no magazine articles, no recordings, zip. That's the worst part. It's not only me that's gone, it's my work, too."
"And what does the good Dr. Kooning say about this?"
"She says that an inability to accept thwarted ambition had caused me to take a powder on reality."
West nodded. "That's a good start."
There were times when Gibson wondered if maybe West wasn't an inmate at all, just a spy for the doctors posing as an inmate. He again stared at him blearily and discovered that he didn't really care. "What do you mean, 'that's a good start'?"
West leaned forward like a man making his point. "It's like I've been trying to tell you. If you want to even have a chance at getting out of here, you have to convince them that they're curing you."
"How do I do that?"
West's face broke into a slack lopsided grin. There was no way that he could be an undercover shrink and took like that. "The trick is to start off acting real crazy, as crazy as you can, and then you gradually ease off. They think that they're doing it and they ease up on you. Easy. You dig?"
Gibson stared at him blankly. "I don't know."
West didn't seem to notice. "Like I said, you're off to a good start. What you have to do now is to start pretending to remember who you really are."
Gibson looked dourly at West. "How the hell am I supposed to do that? I've never been anyone else. I'm me. That's all there is. There isn't any other me to remember."
West wheeled himself backward as though he'd decided that he was wasting his time. "Then you got a problem, pal. A problem that's going to keep you here for a long time."
On the TV, Gilligan/Finnegan had screwed up yet again and prevented the castaways from being rescued.
Chapter Six
WINDEMERE LIT A cigarette. It was the first time that Gibson had seen him smoke tobacco. "This is my home, damn it. You know what they say about Englishmen and their castles."
Abigail Voud regarded him calmly from behind her small square-cut glasses. Although she hadn't actually pounded on the door of Thirteen Ladbroke Grove with her own tiny fists, there wasn't a shadow of doubt that she was the absolute instigator of the nighttime disturbance. Madame Voud was quite as old as Casillas and equally as frail, "Don't get so angry, Gideon. This is not an invasion. We have to assume that we are all working for the common good." Her head turned slightly so the three streamheat were included in her penetrating gaze. "At least, we have to assume that for the moment, until we have information to the contrary." Also in common with Casillas, the eyes behind the wire-rimmed glasses appeared far younger than her apparent age.
Windemere's anger seemed to be the only thing that was keeping him on his feet. Wrapped in a hastily donned bathrobe, he looked haggard and exhausted, as though the rite in the basement had totally drained all his reserves of energy.
"When someone comes beating on my door in the middle of the night, backed up by an assault team of the local dreads, I tend to treat it as an invasion, even when that someone is one of the Nine."
The pair of tall, burly Rastafarians who stood on either side of the chair in which Abigail Voud was seated maintained implacable stone faces that silently cautioned Windemere he could rant and rave all he wanted but if he went any further, he was dead meat. That this seemingly fragile old lady could recruit herself a personal bodyguard from the pubs and shebeens of the Portobello Road said a great deal about her personal power. It was rare that these hardman Rasta
s, heavyweights who ran with the London end of some of the baddest posses out of Trenchtown, would demean themselves to take orders from a woman, particularly a woman who stood little more than four feet tall and was old enough to be their great-great-grandmother. It went against every grain of their intractable Jamaican machismo.
Once again, the entire household had assembled in the drawing room of Number Thirteen Ladbroke Grove, roused from their beds by the beating on the door and the sudden intrusion of Abigail Voud and her hastily assembled entourage.
"I flew from Paris when I heard that Yancey Slide was out of the woodwork. I'm sorry that I couldn't give you warning or arrive at a more genteel hour, but I felt that you had a situation building up here."
"I'm handling the situation."
"The way that you've been powering up this place has set the whole neighborhood in an uproar." Somewhere outside a dog was barking, hysterical and out of control. Abigail Voud slowly shook her head. Gibson marveled at the way that she seemed to be talking to Windemere as if he were some headstrong schoolboy. "Did you really think you could load on that much psionic energy in an area as densely populated as this without anyone noticing?"
The Rasta standing on Abigail Voud's right-a thickset, bearded six-footer in a combat coat and camouflage pants, with his locks tucked into a red, green, and black wool cap, whose name was Montgomery, and who was reputed to control a sizable chunk of the West London wholesale ganja market-nodded in agreement.
"You can't be doing shit like that round here, Windemere. We got enough rasclat troubles without all this nonsense, see?"
The tension in the room was downright dangerous. Cadiz and O'Neal were still holding the weapons that they'd grabbed when the disturbance had first started. Gibson, barefoot and bleary-eyed, in the shirt and pants that he had thrown on when people had begun streaming into the house, felt himself at a distinct disadvantage. Christobelle had removed the Balinese headdress and wrapped herself in a floral-print robe, but the bangles and beads of her odalisque outfit still clanked and jingled on her wrists and ankles. Even Rita stood angrily at the back of the room in a pink housecoat and with her hair in rollers, muttering about no-account rude boys and ready to join in any fray that might develop. Only the streamheat remained pin-neat and apparently unconcerned.