“You read my mind?” he asked darkly.
“More or less. I didn’t read it. I just knew what you were knowing.”
“Sort of gets in the way of conversation, doesn’t it?” he observed thickly.
“Uh, mostly it works in matters of sex,” she replied, still good-humored. “And other life-or-death matters, also. But we aren’t faced with life-or-death too often, are we. So it comes mostly in a sexual reference. Curt worked up a hypothesis relating libidinal drives to psychism. The sheer weight of empirical data seems to point that way, and uh . . .”
“And uh what?” Honor wanted to know.
“Well ... you ..The girl was beginning to color again, but her eyes remained steady on his. “ ... you seem . . . entirely virile. And ... and our minds have crossed. Which means that you already possess a certain psychic potential, and ...”
“And?” Honor was making her go it alone.
“And . . . well, you wanted to know how Curt controlled the blue car. My development isn’t that great, but.... well, watch your coffee.”
Honor had barely tasted the coffee. It was far too weak for his taste, and he had entirely ignored it. The cup was nearly full. As he watched, a noticeable swirling began at the surface, rapidly forming into a whirlpool, and the liquid began sloshing onto the saucer. In a matter of seconds, the cup was emptied. The saucer was overflowing; tepid coffee was running across the table and dripping to the floor.
Honor was dumbfounded. He stared silently at the dripping coffee, then hastily moved his legs aside as it began to wet his trousers.
“That’s PPS, too,” Barbara stated quietly.
Honor picked up the cup and gazed into it, then poured the contents of the saucer into the cup and turned the saucer over to inspect the underside.
“No tricks,” she assured him. “Just elemental PPS.”
Honor’s mind was tumbling. “I’ve heard of this kind of stuff,” he declared in a near-whisper, “but I always thought of it as hokey-pokey.” He moved his hand aside to allow Barbara to sponge-up the mess from the table. “So!” He smiled faintly. “It is not hokey-pokey. The car? The phantom judo chop? It’s all real stuff?”
“It’s all real,” she assured him. “The phantom judo chop, as you call, it is a cerebellar scrambler. It merely mixes up neuro-muscular reflexes. It can kill, of course, if held too long. The victim will strangle on his own breath.”
“Let’s get back to the sex bit,” Honor suggested. “Are you suggesting that the two of us could cross minds and bodies, and somehow, by that process, gain access to all this phenomenal power?”
She nodded her head, soberly, eyes fixed on his. “Science and aesthetics do not always go hand in hand, Patrick. Let’s call a spade a spade. I have been studying Curt’s notes for the past week. Somehow I knew that something like this was going to happen. I have been prepared for it for quite some time. I believe he knew it, too. He left his notes lying about where I could find them easily. I think—”
“I think you know exactly what happened to Wenssler,” Honor told her. “He didn’t just blow his mind, did he? And he wasn’t babbling insanities when he was asking me about the nines, was he? And I’ve been very carefully set up to come in and take a stooge’s role, haven’t I?”
Her eyes wavered and dropped. “All but the last part, Patrick, yes. There is no place for stooges in this work. We are all masters ... or we are all nothing.” The eyes came back up, blazing in full violet brilliance, “Do you have the courage to venture into the unknown? With me as your guide? We can find Curt, you and me. We can find him and bring him back.”
“Where is he?” Honor asked, his breath curiously constricted.
She shook her head. “I don’t know. But ... where he went, we can go. Safely, though, unitized in libidinal projection.”
“How do you know it’s safe?” he asked. “Just on Wenssler’s say-so?”
She shrugged delicately and showed him the pink tip of her tongue. “If it works at all, then it works safely. If it does not work . . .” She smiled demurely. “... then what have you lost? Other than a bit of sexual energy?”
“I’m not so sure I’m sold,” Honor muttered.
He suddenly became aware of a draft on his chest.
He looked down at himself. The buttons of his shirt were one by one slipping through the buttonholes, unaided.
“This is PPS too,” the girl said softly.
His belt popped loose. The zipper of his fly descended. Honor staggered to his feet, suddenly electrified, holding his trousers together at the waist. Barbara was smiling at him, her hands flat out on the table. Her own blouse began opening, button by button, gleaming flesh appearing in tantalizing display.
“Do you have the courage?” she asked calmly.
“If I don’t, I’ll get it on the way,” he assured her. He reached out and pulled her to her feet. She came into his arms and their mouths joined in a breathless mingling of rapidly building urgencies. Barbara broke the kiss, pressed closer into die embrace, and nuzzled his ear.
“Upstairs,” she whispered.
“I know the place,” he said.
“It doesn’t have to be done with scientific detachment,” she briefed him, rubbing ecstatically against his hips.
“It’d better not be.” He pulled her along in a lockstep. “If we’re going to catch old Curt, we don’t want to lose any time, eh.”
“We’ll find him,” she said, panting up the stairs in his embrace.
“Where?” he asked, not really caring where.
“Out there, and in there, and up there,” she whispered. “Beyond sex!”
5: An Understanding
“Ohhh! Oh my, Patrick, that’s . .. this is . .
“I know what this is. Far better, I’d guess, than you.”
“Old ... oh dear! ... pro, eh?”
“Uh; comparatively. Kinda new for you?”
“Pat! Oh, Pat. Keep my mind. Not . . . entirely . . . new.”
“No scientific ... detachment now, Barb ... God! God, you’re sweet!”
She pulled at him, fingertips raking his back. “No . . . not detached. Phew! Attached, thoroughly! But ... have to ... ohhh!” She moaned and twisted the ample torso in ecstatic abandon. “Remember notes! Yes. Patrick! You feel this! Feel it!”
“Crazy? Sure! I feel it!”
“No! Feel me—I mean . . . what I feel. Know me, Pat, darling, know me! It’s important!”
“I don’t. .. God, Barb!”
“Like the folder. Know!”
Not even understanding, Honor reached out for knowledge, and received it, and was rocked by it, and was flooded by it with cascading waves of strange sensations. He felt both filled and filling, giving and given, stretched, expanded, constricted, pierced and piercing. “God’s sake!” he groaned.
“Ohhh, it’s.. . yes, yes!”
Honor was beginning to understand. He was experiencing his own lovemaking, as subjectified in Barbara.
And yet he was experiencing also her responses, as subjectified in himself.
“Unity!” Barbara cried. “My darling, my darling, this is unity!”
God, didn’t Honor know it. He was descending into a swirling vortex, completely lost in sensate pleasure. He knew the sweet impress of her glowing breasts upon his own flesh, while at the same time experiencing the delighted thrills shrieking out from her sensitized nipples as they were irritated against the hard masculine chest; he knew every touch of himself upon her, and viewed through her touch upon him; he knew the explosive throbbing of his own gallant probe while instantaneously experiencing the convulsive female joy of crushed, pulsing, shuddering, distended and clutching tissues. And he knew that she was right with him in that awareness, that they moved together surely toward the brink of supreme sensation. Then they were flowing over it together, floating in the pleasant weightlessness of zero-gravity, riding high on the crest of a sensate wave that never broke but just continued sweeping across an infinite sea of ecstasy.
His consciousness was assimilating the unitized absorption of each tiny detail of the perfect union, yet experiencing the entire myriad as a subjective whole. Honor was in sexual heaven, and Barbara was there with him. An overwhelming lovingness enshrouded them; he would love her eternally, eternally, this woman he’d known for so few minutes. They were unitized; he was experiencing his joy and hers, at once, as viewed through his own consciousness; also her joy and his at once as viewed through her consciousness; all four qualities together embodied the total unity. Blissful euphoria descended upon them. He could not even stir himself to wonder or to worry as the ecstasy crashed on and on endlessly. And then he was viewing both their bodies in every dimension and from every viewpoint, and all simultaneously.
A thought came, female-colored and authoritatively positive. We have left the bodies! Success!
Another thought, male-tinged, groping and nearly negative: No! This is ecstasy, bliss. We’ve just never had it so good.
Open your third eye and look. Look!
Honor looked and was immediately frightened. The sensation of floating ended abruptly. It seemed that he was alone and standing still in an environment of constant surrealistic motion. Blurred images advanced, swirled past, and receded before he had time to identify them. Even at such fantastic speeds, however, he managed to recognize a few. Faces, mostly. His mother and father, as they’d looked long ago. A third grade teacher. A girl who had climbed an apple tree with him that summer at Uncle John’s farm. And then Honor realized that these objects were at rest; they were not moving; he was moving, on and on across an infinity, in and through it, swirling, and his fear increased.
“Barbara!” he cried out. “What’s happening? Where are you?”
Courage, came a female thought. It was detached from him now, he knew, separated, distant.
Panicky, he yelled, “You’ve abandoned me!”
No, I am the positive pole. I stand at the gate. Relax. Don’t fight.
Honor tried to twist himself about to look behind, searching for some clue to her whereabouts. As he did so, he had the sensation of rising, and abruptly he was above the surrealistic stream, looking down on it. He knew, without knowing how he knew, that he had left Barbara far below. Something moved past him, then returned and hovered over him. He knew an attraction, an impelling need for unification with that something. He raised his arms and reached for it, and then he was enveloped in it, part of it. The fear departed. He knew where he was now, and he was frightened no more. He was home.
“It’s okay, Barbara,” he said, with every sensation of speaking aloud. “I have arrived. It’s okay now.”
A voice, female and melodious, said, “Patrick Honorkir.”
“Honor,” he corrected. “My father was the last Honorkir. I am Patrick Honor.”
He heard amused laughter. A male voice said, “Welcome, Honorkir, to the Ninth Parallax.”
“I can’t see anything,” Honor complained.
More laughter, subdued, then the female voice again: “Form is at the root octave, Honorkir. Do you understand?”
“I... think so,” he replied.
“Then use your understanding. Do you not wish to see me?”
Something jolted Honor’s consciousness. Immediately he perceived gently swirling mists, rapidly receding, and an incredibly lovely human-like form emerging from them. It was a woman, but a woman like Honor had never seen. She was nude, with glowing fleshtones and a figure of divine form and warmth. Her hair was boyishly short, wine-red, tapered to the exquisite head. Eyes of sparkling blue, royal, all-knowing. She raised finely molded arms to him and announced, “I am Octavia.”
“Yes,” I understand,” Honor murmured, and then he was rushing headlong into those arms.
6: Via Infinity
Barbara Thompson had been one of those children for whom “normalcy” just hadn’t seemed to be in the cards. Julia Thompson, Barbara’s mother, had been a self-styled “seer” or clairvoyant. Dr. Charles Thompson, Barbara’s father, had know of this “peculiarity” when he married Julia. She had been, in fact, one of his patients. Dr. Thompson was a psychiatrist. He was 12 years older than Julia. She had consulted him at her parents’ insistence, they had fallen in love, and they had married. Charles had thought that he could “cure” Julia of her “delusions”. Barbara came along in the second year of their marriage, an event which seemed to accentuate Julia’s condition. By the time Barbara was two years old, Julia Thompson had become deeply enmeshed in various occult organizations, or “cults” as Charles called them. She had received ordination in a spiritualist church and was gadding about the country attending spiritualist seminars and “playing with witchcraft”, as Dr. Thompson put it. Upon returning from one such trip, she arrived home to find baby Barbara legally separated from “the mother’s unwholesome influence”, the doors of her own home barred to her entrance, and a process server waiting to hand her legal papers in a divorce action.
Julia Thompson immolated herself, by fire, four months later, on the sidewalk outside her former home. Charles Thompson, shaken by grief and guilt, retired from psychiatric practice and took a job teaching at a nearby university. It was here that he met Curt Wenssler. Prompted and encouraged by Wenssler, Thompson took up the study of metaphysic and occultism in an attempt to understand the earlier conflicts between his dead wife and himself. He became “a believer”, and worked diligently beside Wenssler to increase “an understanding of the mysteries separating man and God.” Meanwhile, young Barbara had begun to have “psychic experiences.” At the age of five, she reported long nighttime conversations “with my mommy.” When she was six, she walked out on her first day at school because of “bad vibrations there”.
Recognizing his daughter’s unusual sensitivity, Charles Thompson provided her with a private tutor; she never again attended a public school until, at the age of sixteen, she was admitted to the university in which Thompson and Wenssler taught. Her social life suffered, because she had so little in common with youngsters of, or even far beyond, her own age. Even during the college years she habitually sought the company of the teachers and professors. She was usually readily accepted in such circles. Her senior year at the university was marred by an unhappy romance with a 40-year-old instructor and, later, by her father’s death. She took residence thereafter with the widowed Professor Curt Wenssler, accompanied him on a year’s sabbatical to India, and had lived in his shadow ever since.
Patrick Honor was by far the most exciting event in Barbara’s young life. Twenty-five and hardly less than a virgin, she had felt a compelling tug toward the masculine beauty and virility of the man. She was even more strongly aware of that tugging in the aftermath of passion. Luxuriating in the mellow contentment of female fulfillment, she moaned softly and ran a hand gently along the relaxed muscles of his back, carefully extricated herself, and moved quietly away from him. She loved him. Yes, she would always love him. After such an experience, how could two people not be in love? She delicately examined her tender tissues, made a wry face, glanced at her lover, and slipped off the bed and staggered into the bathroom. Now she knew. Why women so often made such utter fools of themselves over men. It was because of men like Patrick Honor. She shivered, remembering, and stepped into the shower. How had it happened? She moved beneath the stream of water, shaking her head in mystification. How had they gotten together like that? A gap existed in her memory. She could recall sitting across the table from him, and feeling embarrassed, and he was staring holes through her blouse. Then . . . boom! . . . they were in bed, belly to belly, and she was going out of her mind.
Barbara turned off the shower and toweled herself dry, then draped the terrycloth about her middle and returned to the bedroom. She gazed at his sleeping, naked form for a thoughtful moment, experiencing a revisitation of tingling excitement, then went over to sit beside him at the edge of the bed. She smiled tenderly. His arms were still hooped out, as though he were holding her, and the expression on his face was ... was....
<
br /> She bent closer and examined the face carefully. His eyelids were only half-closed. From above, they had seemed shut. Now, the eyes were half open and he was staring out at her. She thought for a moment that he was playing with her. She slapped his hip and said, “Okay, peekey-boo, I see you too.”
He did not move nor change expression. Her hand moved along the hip and onto the torso, over the heart. A paralyzing fear stabbed at her. She removed the hand and placed an ear to his chest. Thud, ka-thud, ka-thud. Slow, so slow. She seized his wrist, feeling expertly for the pulse, and gently rolled back an eyelid. Blank, staring. Pulse faint . .. steady, but oh so faint. And then the gap in her memory filled in, and she cried, “Ohhh! Patrick! Oh Pat!”
What had she done? Dear God!
Panting with fear and apprehension and with a strength borne of desperation, she rolled and dragged him off the bed and across the floor to the bath. Her towel fell off in the struggle. She kicked it aside, got behind and partially beneath him, and rolled him into the shower stall. She propped him in the corner, turned on the cold water and adjusted it to a stinging spray. Shivering spasmodically, she knelt on the floor beside him, slapping his face, calling his name, and weeping.
His lips had turned blue from the cold when his eyelids fluttered and he mumbled, “Beautiful, beautiful.”
“Patrick,” Barbara cried. “Come back!”
“Back where?” The eyes opened full. He shivered violently and clutched his chest in his arms. “Jesus Christ! Wh-what’s with the c-cold water?”
Barbara sprang to her feet and turned off the water, then helped him to his feet. They staggered arm-in-arm to the bed and fell across it, soaking wet, blue, and shivering, rolled into the covers, and lay in close nose-to-nose embrace. Still twitching occasionally, Honor began chuckling.
“What’s s-so funny?” Barbara gasped.
“I’ve heard of ... dousing dogs ... but . .He erupted in a shivering spasm of laughter, pulled her closer, and said, “What happened ... did we get hung up?”
Don Pendleton's Science Fiction Collection, 3 Books Box Set, (The Guns of Terra 10; The Godmakers; The Olympians) Page 20