Image of the Beast / Blown

by Philip José Farmer

  complete, or nearly complete, when he came.

  The room started to rotate. The naked bodies of the

  men and women seemed to be skating on the edge of a

  spinning disc. They slid here and there, catching each

  other, going down, tonguing cocks and cunts, ramming

  cunts, mouths, and assholes.

  And there was Vivienne. And there was a tall man

  with a black beard, and burning eyes. His face had

  much more distinct features, of course, but the resem-

  blance was close enough for Childe to identify him as

  Gilles de Rais. He had materialized in his original body,

  and he was sticking his dong into the spread buttocks

  of a slim blond man who was sucking off Vivienne.

  Then Vivienne and de Rais and everybody receded

  on the edge of the whirling plate that had been the big

  ballroom. Lightning was flashing from the Grail, white

  strokes, scarlet flashes, emerald zigzags, yellow streaks,

  purple swords with jagged edges. The flashes spurted

  upwards from the Grail, bounced off the ceiling, spiraled

  down, caromed off the naked writhing bodies of the men

  and women, fell to the floor like colored and shattered

  stalactites.

  Childe felt the gray fluid in him thrusting upward.

  But when he looked down, he saw only the red lips

  of Dolores, like an unattached cunt, squeezing around his

  cock. He could see into his own body, and the gray fluid

  was red as mercury in a thermometer and rising as if the

  thermometer had been thrust into a furnace. The red

  thread sped upward and then leaped out between the

  disconnected red lips and spurted like scarlet gunpowder

  exploding.

  The Grail blew up soundlessly with a crimson-and-

  yellow cloud expanding outwards and pieces of whitely

  glowing metal flying through the cloud.

  45

  Until the last moment, Forry could not make up his mind.

  He had been repulsed at first by the orgy. Seeing such

  things in stag films was one thing, but seeing them in the

  flesh was very uncomfortable and even sickening. After a

  while, the aura of reeking sexuality, of uninhibited or-

  gasms, of penises and vaginas and anuses and mouths,

  began to excite him. He even got jealous when he saw

  Alys Merrie sucking on the red-skinned cock of a big

  Amerindian, and he felt an impulse to get off the chair

  and dive into the welter, that raging sea, of hair and flesh.

  But he was, in the end (I always pun, even here, he

  thought), too inhibited.

  Nevertheless, the vibrations were getting to him, and

  he hoped the ceremony would not last too long. Other-

  wise, he might abandon his restraints and join in the fun.

  A few seconds later, he got his first view of what was

  taking place in the mind of Childe. He did not know

  that it was Childe's mind that was broadcasting, but he

  surmised that it was. There was no doubt that Childe and

  the Grail, hooked together in some psychosexoneural

  manner, formed the focus and the distributor of the

  strange power emanating throughout the hall.

  The glimpses of the alien worlds were like seeing the

  paintings of Bonestell, Paul, Sime, Finlay, St. John, Bok,

  Freas, Emshwiller, and other greats of science-fiction

  become three dimensional and then become alive. Paint-

  ing turned into reality.

  The worlds were only slices; it was as if Childe was

  cutting the cosmic pie into slim pieces and hurling them

  at him.

  He jumped up from the chair and unsteadily made

  his way towards the complicated shifting structure of

  flesh. It was only a few feet from him but it seemed to

  have sped towards the horizon. Between him and the

  bodies writhing in the glory of the power from the Grail

  was a vast distance.

  He had to hurry. The Childe—Child?—was coming.

  If he did not get within that blaze, he would be left

  behind. He would be standing alone, naked and erect and

  weeping in the big American Legion hall. This was the

  only chance he would ever get. He, Forry Ackerman,

  the only human to get a ticket to intergalactic space, to

  alien and weirdly wonderful worlds in a foreign galaxy.

  His childhood dreams come true in a universe where he

  had no right to expect that any dreams would ever be

  reality. Where he had built a house to embody dreams

  with only half-reasonable facsimiles. Where the pseudo-

  worlds had seemed to be real in the shadow world of his

  home but real for split-seconds only. Where stars like

  giant jewels, and crimson landscapes, and trees with

  tentacles, and balloon-chested Martians with elephant

  trunks and six fingers, and huge-eyed feathered nymphs,

  and long-toothed red-lipped vampires dwelt in startling

  fixity forever.

  Now he could go voyaging.

  He ran towards the dwindling figures while the Grail

  sent up a mushroom cloud of red, green, yellow, purple,

  and white shoots. He ran towards them, and they shot

  away as if on skates.

  "Wait for me!" he cried. "I'm going, too!"

  The horizon, so distant, suddenly reversed its direction

  and charged him and was on him before he could stop

  running. Like a locomotive appearing out of a tunnel,

  it ran over him with flashing emerald, topaz, and ruby

  lights screaming at him, and swiftly rotating puffs of

  brilliant white and deep-space black cutting through him

  instead of iron wheels.

  Whatever the objective length of time, to him it seemed

  instantaneous. He was in the hall and then he was in a

  huge room with gray walls, floor, and ceiling. It had no

  furniture and no doors or windows. The only light was

  that escaping in waves from the Grail.

  Childe and the others were with him. They were all

  looking at each other dazedly. Some of them had not yet

  uncoupled.

  The Grail and its pedestal stood before Childe.

  Hindarf strode to the wall and spoke one word. A

  large section of the wall became transparent, and they

  were looking out over the bleakest landscape that he had

  ever seen. There was only naked twisted rock. There was

  no vegetation or water. Yet the sky was as blue as Earth's,

  indicating that there was an atmosphere outside.

  Childe said, "Come here, Forry. Take my hand."

  "Why?" Forry said, but he obeyed.

  Hindarf activated another window on the opposite wall.

  This showed more windswept rock, but far away, near

  the horizon, was a spot of green and what looked like the

  tops of tall trees.

  "This isn't our world or the Ogs' either!" Hindarf

  shouted. He pointed into the sky and Forry could barely

  see the pale moon there. It looked as large as Earth's, but

  it was darkly mottled in the center and resembled the

  markings on the wings of a death's-head moth.

  Childe beckoned to Dolores del Osorojo, who smiled

  and came to him and stood on his left, holding his hand.

  Childe said something in Spanish to he
r, and she smiled

  and nodded.

  "That about uses up my knowledge of Spanish,"

  Childe said. "But she prefers to stay with me. And I

  want her to be with me."

  "That is the moon of Gruthrath!" Hindarf shouted.

  He wheeled upon Childe. "Captain! You have brought

  us to the desert world of Gruthrath!"

  Childe said, "It's a desert, but it can support you and

  the Ogs quite comfortably, if you get out and dig, right?"

  Hindarf turned pale. Weakly, he said, "Yes, but surely

  you are not thinking of … ?"

  "My ancestral memory or genetic memory or what-

  ever you call it has been opened," Childe said. "I know

  that there is very little chance that either you Tocs or

  Ogs would let me go once I made the first landing on

  either planet. You have Captains greater than I who

  could neutralize my powers long enough for your people

  to physically capture me. You'd have to, because I am

  partly an Earthman, and you could never trust me. And

  whichever planet I got us to first, the home of the Toc

  or the Og, the people there would catch me. And they

  would take captive the enemy peoples, too.'

  "That isn't true!" Hindarf and Igescu yelled.

  "I know," Childe said. "You two were taking a chance

  in a cosmic lottery, as it were. You did not know which

  planet I would pick out to land on first, and you couldn't

  even ask me, because I would not know which one until

  I was presented with a choice. Also, if you tried too hard

  to sway me, I might get suspicious. So you took a chance.

  And both of you lost."

  "You can't do this!"

  The Tocs and the Ogs rushed towards Childe.

  Forry almost let loose of Childe because it looked as

  if the three of them were going to be torn to bits.

  Childe gripped Forry's hand so hard that the bones

  cracked.

  He shouted, "Fuck you!" and they were off.

  There was a thin triangle of nothing wheeling by Forry,

  a gush of soundless purple flame around his feet, and the

  familiar walls of the American Legion were all around

  him and the familiar floor was under his feet.

  Forry did not say anything for a moment. Then, slowly,

  he spoke. "Where's the Grail?"

  "I left it behind. I can do that, you know, although it

  means that the Grail is now forever out of my reach.

  Unless another Captain brings one here."

  "That's all?" Forry said. "You mean the trip's over?"

  "You didn't get killed," Childe said.

  "I made a better trip when I saw the movie

  Barbarella," Forry said.

  Childe laughed and said, "You'd gripe if you were

  hung with a new rope."

  They got dressed and prepared to leave the hall.

  Childe said, "I wouldn't tell anybody about this, if I

  were you. And I think we'd better not see each other

  again."

  Forry looked at Dolores. She was dressed in a white-

  peek-a-boo blouse and tight orange slacks that one of the

  Toc women had left behind.

  "What about her?"

  Childe squeezed the dark-haired woman and said, "I'll

  take care of her. She may have been one of them, but

  she was one of the good ones."

  "I hope so," Forry said. He stuck out his hand. "Well,

  good luck. Adiau, as we Esperantists say."

  "Don't take any wooden grails," Childe said.

  Forry watched him walk away with his arm around the

  slender waist of Dolores, his hand resting on the curve of

  her ass. How could the fellow so easily give up that

  power, that chance to go star-voyaging?

  But he felt good again when he came out into the

  familiar world of Los Angeles. The rains had stopped,

  the sky night was clear and full of stars, car horns

  were blaring, water was splashing onto the pedestrians

  as reckless drivers roared through pools, a radio was

  screeching rock, an ambulance siren was wailing some-

  where.

  A half hour later, he entered his house. He stopped

  and gasped. The Stoker painting was missing again!

  Renzo Dummock came down the steps then, scratch-

  ing his hairy chest and swollen paunch. He said, "Hi,

  Forry. Say, could you loan me a coupla bucks for

  ciggies and a beer? I'm really down in the dumps, I …"

  "That painting!" Forry said, pointing his finger at the

  blank space on the wall.

  Renzo stopped and gaped. Then he said, "Oh, yeah,

  I was going to tell you. That guy, what's his name,

  Woolston Heepish? He showed up about an hour ago and

  said you had told him he could have the Stoker. So I let

  him. Wasn't it all right?"

  Forry charged into his office and dialed Heepish's num-

  ber. His heart chunked when he heard the smooth soft

  voice again.

  "Why didn't you go with the others?" Forry said.

  "Why, Forry! You're back! I thought sure you'd be

  gone forever! That's why I stayed behind. I like this

  life, and I couldn't pass up the chance to add your col-

  lection to mine!"

  Forry was silent for a moment and then he said,

  "Hold on! I thought you were buried in that landslide?"

  Heepish chuckled. "Not me! I slid out as nice as pie

  and took off. I had enough of Childe and the Tocs and

  the Ogs, even if the Ogs are my people."

  "I want my painting back!"

  "Would you consider trading it for a rare Bok?"

  Forry wondered if the fellow had slipped some LSD

  into his coffee. Perhaps everything that had happened

  was only a lysergic acid fantasy?

  Heepish's voice, fluttering like the wings of a bat in the

  night, said, "Maybe we could get together soon? Have a

  nice talk?"

  "You can keep the painting if you'll promise never to

  cross my path again!" Forry said.

  Heepish chuckled. "Could Dr. Jekyll get rid of Mr.

  Hyde?"