Image of the Beast / Blown

by Philip José Farmer

  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 arrange-

  ment. 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 ac-

  tivities. 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 en-

  emies, 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 Eng-

  lish that burned me, you know."

  "No, I didn't know," he said. "Who were you? Any-

  body I might know?"

  "I think so," she said. "I was Joan of Arc. And the

  being in my womb was Gilles de Rais."

  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 witch-

  craft?"

  "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 in-

  vade 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 sav-

  agely 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 sod-

  omy, 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 fuddyduddy."

  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.

  "Why?"

  "Because I want to make love to you. Is that surpris-

  ing?"

  "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-shaped 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 be-

  tween 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 glans, 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<
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  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 en-

  dearing 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 un-

  conscious. 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 be-

  came 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 over-

  whelmed 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 mat-

  ter 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.

  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

  soiree 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 satis-

  factory 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. Appar-

  ently, 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