“Can I see it?”
“Well. … Sure.”
Lazorg took out the object and handed it to Crutchsump.
The ideation retained, presumably by artist’s choice, the primal color of the nacre. It depicted two monsters—aliens of Lazorg’s species—locked in some kind of struggle, their bare limbs intertwined, their groins butting against each other, so as to conceal that bizarre excrescence sported by Lazorg down there, and, in all likelihood, by the other monster as well.
As the shay got underway once more, Crutchsump pondered the aberrant ideation intently. The obscenity of the uncovered faces of the protagonists in the static eternal tussle was alleviated slightly by the fact that they lacked introciptors. But still, the overall impression conveyed by the little “sculpture” was one of transgression against some ineffable set of proprieties.
Crutchsump sought to remember Lazorg’s features from that long-gone day when she had rescued him from the Mudflats, taken him home, cleansed the mud from his face.
Yes, yes, the features of the large figure were the same!
“One of these figures is you.”
“True.”
“And this other, with the deformed chest?”
“My old lover, Velina.”
Crutchsump remained silent, restraining any inquiry as to why they wrestled thus.
Lazorg seemed to radiate a measure of guilt. “She’s dead now.”
Crutchsump shoved the ideation toward Lazorg. “It doesn’t matter to me.”
Lazorg took back the ideation and repocketed it. He paused, then spoke with feeling.
“Standard Series Six! What a bore! I can stamp those predictable archetypes with a little of my personal flair. But the subjects are identical to what every other artist is attempting. How will my work ever stand out? I have to be recognized as unique! As a master! And quickly! The only way to do that is to shock!”
“What do you plan to do?”
“Arbogast wouldn’t let me display this non-standard piece when we were setting up the show. But when he’s not looking tonight, I’ll set it out in an empty niche.”
“Surely he knows best. You risk everything!”
“Risk, yes—for a bigger reward!”
“I—I can’t object. It’s your show.”
“Our show, Crutchsump! Without your support, I never could have attained this moment!”
This acknowledgement of her contributions melted Crutchsump’s resistance. “All right, take your chances.”
They arrived at the Jutesuitor gallery with half an hour to spare before the opening time. The tasteful display windows hosted Arbogast creations against velvet backdrops. The gilded, leaded-glass door had to be unlocked for them personally by the gallery’s owner, a slim and elegant fellow named Gaddis.
Gaddis ignored Crutchsump, but embraced Lazorg fulsomely. “Ah, my newest discovery! I predict a wonderful career for you, my friend! Your interpretation of a dwindle bush is beyond compare! I can practically smell the peppery sap! We both stand to make a handsome profit tonight, I’m certain!”
“Is Arbogast here yet?”
“No, but he always shows up late for these affairs—even his own. Don’t worry, your mentor won’t desert you. Meanwhile, please indulge in some punch and brochettes and comfits.”
Gaddis led them to a long table covered with a damask cloth, atop which the refreshments sat. Besides the punch, there were shashliks, mushroom tartlets, cubeb pasties and candied ants.
“You’ll excuse me,” Gaddis said, “but I’ve got to attend to a dozen last-minute matters.”
Left alone, Lazorg ignored the refreshments. Fearing to appear greedy or uncultured, Crutchsump followed his lead, although the smells of the spread were enticing. She did take a cup of heavily spiked punch, though, to soothe her nerves.
From her empty stomach the liquor spread throughout her limbs and gut brain, rendering the scene about her even more dreamlike than it had been upon sober arrival.
Soon the doors were thrown open for those with invitations, and a parade of smartly dressed connoisseurs entered, babbling happily of trivialities and gossip.
Crutchsump conjured up a counterbalancing mental image for her own amusement: the whole lot of privileged wastrels digging for shifflets, their fine clothes smeared with mud. She had to suppress giggles.
Watching Lazorg, Crutchsump hung apart, her back against a pillar.
Although this was his first show in Sidetrack City, Lazorg had no problem knowing how to act, how to meet and greet the wealthy patrons, put them at their ease, flatter their opinions, modestly accept compliments. He gave an impressive performance, which seemed to please Gaddis.
For the first time, the reality of Lazorg’s past life struck Crutchsump. Any lingering conceptions of him as a naïve foundling, a helpless unworldly immigrant, dissipated.
She wondered how much longer he would deign to associate with her.
Arbogast showed up an hour or so into the reception, greeting his pupil heartily, and boosting the level of excitement in the gallery.
Finally, after the buffet had been decimated by the patrons, Crutchsump gathered together a few tidbits for herself.
As she was munching, she witnessed Lazorg sneakily insert his rogue ideation into an empty niche. No one else saw.
Lazorg noted Crutchsump’s attention, and winked broadly at her.
Unwitting of the insertion of a new item, Gaddis approached Lazorg and spoke softly into the artist’s encauled ear. Nonetheless, Crutchsump overheard.
“We’ve had a few tentative feints, but no one’s committed yet to a purchase. No reflection on your art, Lazorg. It’s just the way these affairs build from a slow start. I’m sure that in a few weeks, sales will take off —”
And then a commotion at the door drew everyone’s gaze.
A tall, regal figure clad in a fur-trimmed gown had appeared. Her understated yet stylish caul was fashioned from fabric sporting expensive metallic threading, gold and silver. Her introciptor was so large, almost freakishly so, that in all imaginable couplings, she must necessarily play the engulfing female.
The newcomer’s name circulated sibilantly among the crowd like wildfire.
“Serrapane, Serrapane, Serrapane …”
One of the gallery’s employees hastened to bring Serrapane a drink. She unknotted her caul and lifted the veil above her lips with a slow and calculated sensuality that thrilled along the nerves of every person present. She sipped, lowered her drink, then let the hem of her caul fall down, remaining loosely unsecured in an alluring manner.
Gaddis greeted Serrapane, but she ignored him. Crutchsump approved of the fact that Lazorg hung back, and did not thrust himself obsequiously upon the obviously influential collector.
Serrapane began to circulate among the offered ideations, examining each one with expert appraisal. She exhibited no outward signs of interest.
But then she came upon the rogue item.
Serrapane deposited her drink carelessly on the edge of the niche, and it fell to the floor. Paralyzed by the concentrated deliberateness of Serrapane’s motions, no servitor moved to pick it up. She reached out and grasped the “sculpture” of Lazorg and Velina wrestling.
Across the room Arbogast assumed a startled stance, his attention focusing for the first time on the novelty item.
Serrapane revolved the vaguely obscene oddity a dozen ways, held it afar and up close, ran a fingertip along all its surfaces and curves, cupped it in both hands so as to nearly conceal it. Then she returned it to its niche.
“Gaddis.”
The gallery owner was instantly by Serrapane’s side. “Yes, Serrapane?”
“Whatever the cost, this one is mine. Now, introduce me to the creator.”
Gaddis brought Serrapane and Lazorg together. The woman loomed nearly as tall as Lazorg. She offered her hand, and he took it. But Crutchsump was unable to overhear whatever words they exchanged,
since an immense hubbub arose, as all the other collectors besieged Gaddis with bids for the remaining ideations of the Standard Series Six.
Long after midnight, the shay discharged Lazorg and Crutchsump outside their cellar apartment, which looked at once both homey and more dismal than ever, after the splendors of Passacantado. With the shay sounding a hoofbeat retreat, the whole night assumed a phantasmal semblance in Crutchsump’s tired brains. Were it not for the fancy clothes she wore, she could have mistaken this moment for the end of a long commonplace workday of luring volvox to their doom.
Maintaining the pleasant tired silence shared during their trip back, the two descended the stairs somewhat wobblily and entered the small quarters. The dividing curtain remained in its daytime configuration, bunched against the wall, secured with a makeshift cord.
Pirkle, registering their return, readjusted himself drowsily upon Lazorg’s bed, then went back to sleep.
Lazorg swept his arm in a grandiose gesture to encompass the whole space.
“Take a good look around you, Crutchsump. Fix this dingy place in your memory. Oh, not that it hasn’t served us well enough. But in a short while, you and I will be ensconced in much grander quarters!”
“What—? But how—?”
Lazorg began unbuttoning his jacket. “Serrapane has commissioned an extensive series of sculptures from me—so long as they’re all as unique as the one she bought tonight! Even Arbogast finally had to concede the rightness of my gamble. We’re rich, Crutchsump! Rich, even with Gaddis’s outrageous agent fees! And this is just the start!”
“I don’t—I don’t know what to think. …”
Lazorg threw his jacket atop Pirkle, who didn’t even stir. He hugged Crutchsump to his chest.
“Don’t think! Just be glad!”
“Oh, I am! I am!”
Lazorg released her, and moved to the curtain, speaking as he fussed with its fastenings. “Well, it’s been a long day. Time for rest.”
All the while, Crutchsump, obeying impulses she could not have put into words, was mirroring Lazorg’s actions with the curtain fastenings by undoing the knotted string of her caul. Her breath came fast and seemed to burn her throat.
She had her caul fully off when Lazorg turned, pulling the curtain after himself, the pouch for her introciptor having inverted like a sock during the hasty removal.
He stopped dead. She eyed him boldly, face-naked before him at last, feeling the rings of muscles banding her introciptor clenching and releasing, clenching and releasing. The long organ throbbed and juddered. The delicate palps surrounding the opening at the end flexed and spread wider, assuming the female configuration that invited entrance, not the cone-like formation of a male that preceded penetration.
Lazorg did not utter a word. But he dropped the curtain and came to her. He removed his own caul, and Crutchsump discovered that his uncanny features no longer inspired the unease they had upon that long-ago day, but only affection.
“Oh, Lazorg, I know you’re crippled, and that we can never mate! I hope seeing me this way isn’t too painful. But despite that sadness, I want to be all yours! And this is how I can show it!”
Very gently and tentatively, Lazorg reached up to Crutchsump’s face to grip her generative organ. He squeezed it, ran his curled hand up and down its length. The familiar foreplay evoked a moan from her.
“It’s—it’s beautiful. So soft and warm and velvety—but strong. And these little fingers at the tip—like what I saw once on a star-nosed mole—”
Crutchsump’s introciptor dripped clear liquid on Lazorg’s palm. Inquiringly, he put a finger inside. The outer palps caressed his digit.
Crutchsump moaned again. “Oh, that’s so pleasant, so nice! But you—you’re getting nothing in return.”
Lazorg removed his finger and licked it. “It’s honey.” Then he started to remove his trousers. Crutchsump undressed as well, and soon they were both completely naked.
Lazorg cupped the weird growth at his crotch. “Crutchsump, look close. This is my sex.”
Crutchsump kneeled down and peered at the alien organ. It bore a superficial resemblance to an introciptor, but one permanently in the male configuration. And as she watched, it lengthened and stiffened and jutted out from Lazorg’s loins.
Lazorg said nothing, made no demands. He held his organ in one hand, rubbed it once, twice—
Her face at his groin, Crutchsump brought the tip of her larger female introciptor up against the head of his sex. The palps embraced it, drew it into the wet tunnel.
Now Lazorg groaned. He cupped the back of Crutchsump’s head and slowly delivered his whole length into her. They rested a moment, with locked gazes, one up, one down, then Lazorg made to withdraw, as if for some inexplicable reason to repeat the process of insertion. But Crutchsump gripped his sex implacably, so that to withdraw would require jarring effort.
“No, you do nothing now. Let me.”
Complex waves of peristalsis traversed Crutchsump’s introciptor, annular muscles milking Lazorg’s sex without gross exterior movements. He gripped the sides of her face, covering her olfactory pits, so that all she could smell was his skin. She clamped her hands on his backside, so as never to let him go.
Lazorg began to rock on his heels, his pelvis pumping in a short arc, as much as she allowed.
Crutchsump felt filled, replete. Milking the strange organ within her was bringing her to climax.
Lazorg bellowed, and flooded the upper reaches of her uterine tract with his spend. Crutchsump climaxed as well, slicking his loins with the female’s exudation.
Lazorg collapsed to the floor, drawing Crutchsump semi-awkwardly down as well. His breath came ragged, as did hers. They said nothing for a time. Lazorg gradually shrunk free of her.
When they moved to Lazorg’s pallet, Pirkle grudgingly made room.
7. Mansion in the Clouds
DURING THE YEAR SINCE LAZORG’S spectacular and triumphant debut into the rarefied art world, Crutchsump had discovered that she excelled at maintaining a home: particularly, at cooking. She had a positive talent for transforming raw ingredients into sophisticated meals. All her former life, an existence now removed into half-painful, half-nostalgic insubstantiality, she had subsisted on the cheapest of foodstuffs. Oftentimes livewater had been all she could afford. She had never possessed enough money to lay in and continually replenish a rich larder, full of choice meats, fresh vegetables, beans and tubers and grains, spices and dried roots and herbs. A nicely equipped kitchen, with a self-regulating sea-coal stove and plenty of cookware, had also been absent. And time, or lack of same, had played its role as well. Often, while out scavenging during the day or finally at home, weary to her last blood cell at night, she had defaulted to the cheap prepared food from vendors.
But no longer. Now, she was mistress of a fine, well-stocked galley and pantry that funneled its delicious creations into a large dining room that was often filled with guests—guests who praised Crutchsump inordinately.
But praise for her culinary creations, or because she was the mate of an ideation maker whose works they coveted at bargain prices?
No matter, and nothing she could do about the impulses behind the flattery. Despite any doubtful praise, this discovery of her innate skills gave her immense pleasure. Meal preparation was her sole way these days of contributing to the household economy—of sustaining Lazorg in his work.
Well, perhaps not the sole way—
Crutchsump reddened now beneath her caul, and momentarily froze while reaching into her wallet. The delivery boy from Knollypop’s Provender asked, “Is anything the matter? Old Knollypop added up the total twice. See?”
The boy took out a handful of colorful enumerative tokens, each with a different mathematical figure in bas-relief on its face.
“One hundred-and-twenty-six scintilla. It’s right there.”
Recovering her aplomb, Crutchsump fetched out the requisite amount of money
from her wallet, the smallest part of its contents, and handed it over. “No, no, everything’s fine. I was just taken by a passing fancy.”
The small boy grew a little nervous. He made the sign of the Cosmocopia, bunching all his fingertips together and aiming them at the floor. “Not a passing ghost, I hope.”
“Not at all. All our ghost-catchers are in fine shape. Thank you for running this order over at the last minute. An unexpected dinner tonight. And please ask Knollypop if he’ll have any soutines in stock next week.”
Crutchsump added in a generous tip.
“Sure thing!”
The boy left, and Crutchsump began unpacking the hinge-topped wooden boxes he had left behind, each bearing a raised tradesman’s seal indicating their origin with Knollypop, and their expected return. She shelved pots and crocks and boxes, net bags of onions and tarbix, a carton of the brand of looby flakes that Lazorg liked best for his morning porridge….
By the time she was done arranging things to her satisfaction, the hour was nearly noon. She’d have to begin working on the dinner preparations soon. When Lazorg had ordained tonight’s banquet, over their breakfast table this very morning, he had been insistent on its importance to his career, and Crutchsump intended to outdo herself.
But first, given that there was still plenty of time until guests arrived at eight, she’d treat herself to a visit with Lazorg himself. He should be in his studio.
There might even be time for a quick, exciting coupling. Crutchsump felt her introciptor tingling; her gut brain conjured up quick vivid flashes of past sexual storms. She hoped that such a spontaneous emotional and physical union might occur today. Lazorg had been working so hard of late, that they hadn’t had sex for nearly two weeks. Crutchsump missed the closeness, felt such a sensual drought could not be good for Lazorg either.
She pulled a bell to summon one of the servants. Flumareen showed up, a very smart and obedient girl from the Telerpeton district, whom Crutchsump had known since Flumareen was an orphaned child.
“Thank you for taking that order to Knollypop’s, Fluma. Now I need you to fire up the stove and get some of the basic sauces simmering.”
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