Childe shrugged. Why not? The procedure and the goblet had aroused his curiosity, and their intentions did not seem sinister. Certainly, he was being treated far better than when he had been a prisoner in Igescu's.
He sat in the chair and stared at the shining goblet. It had a broad base with small raised figures the outlines of which were fuzzy. After a while, as he studied them, they became clear. They were men and women, naked, and animals engaged in a sexual orgy. Set here and there among them were goblets like that at which he looked, except that these were complete. There was a curious scene in which a tiny woman was halfway into a large goblet while a creature that looked like the Werewolf of London, as played by Henry Hull, rammed a long dick into her asshole. At one side of the base, almost out of view, was a man emerging from a goblet. His legs were still within the cup, but his stiff dong was out and was being squeezed by the tentacle of a creature that seemed to be a six-legged octopus with human hermaphroditic organs. While it was jacking-off the man in the goblet, it was also fucking itself.
Childe did not know what the scene represented, but it seemed to him that it had something to do with fecundity. Not with fecundity in the sense of begetting children but of...
He almost grasped the sense of the figures and their play, but it danced away.
The goblet stem was slender. A snake-like thing of silver coiled around it, its head flattening out to become the underpart of the cup. Its two eyes, distorted, were the only dark spots on the bright silver of the goblet.
The outside of the cup, except for the serpent's head, was bare. But the inside bore some, raised geometrical figures that shifted as he looked at them. Sometimes he could pin them down for a half a second and the figures began to make sense, even if they were totally unfamiliar.
The goblet shone even more brilliantly. The room became quieter, and then, suddenly, he could hear the breathing of everyone in the room, except for himself, and, far away, the impact of rain on the roof and the walls of the house and, even more distantly, the roar of the waters down the street outside.
There was a hissing he could not at first identify. It was so weak, so remote. And then he knew. He did not have to turn his head to look, and it would have done no good if he had. The thing was hidden under Vivienne's dress. It had slid out and was dangling between her legs. Its little bearded mouth was open, the tongue flickering out, and it was hissing with rage or lust. Or, perhaps, some other emotion. Awe?
The light from the goblet became more intense. Surprisingly, he could look at it without pain. Its whiteness seemed to drill into his eyes and flood his brain. The interior of his skull was white; his brain was a glowing jewel.
There was a collective intake of breath, and the light went out. The darkness that followed was painful. He felt as if something very much beloved had died. His life was empty; he had no reason to live.
He wept.
* * *
CHAPTER 36
When he was finished sobbing--and he still did not know why he had felt so bereaved--he looked up. The people were not talking, but they were making some noise as they shifted around. Also, several were passing through the crowd and serving a liquid in small goblets. The people drank it with one swallow and then put their goblets back onto the large silver trays.
Pao appeared from behind him with a tray on which stood a goblet filled with a dark liquid and several sandwiches. The bread was coarse and black.
"Drink and then eat," Pao said.
"And if I don't?"
Pao looked stricken, but he shrugged his shoulders and said, "This is one thing that we can't compel you to do. But I swear by my mother planet that the food and drink will not harm you."
Childe looked at the goblet again. It was not quite as dull as it had been a moment ago. It flickered when he looked at it. When he looked away, but could still see it out of the corner of his eye, it became dull once more.
"When will I find out what all this means?" Childe said.
"Perhaps during the ceremony. It is better that you...remember."
"Remember?"
Pao did not offer to explain. Childe smelled the liquid. Its odor was winey, but there was an unfamiliar under-odor (was there such a word?) to it. The under odor evoked a flashing image of infinite black space with stars here and there and then another image of a night sky with sheets of white fire and giant red, blue, yellow, garnet, emerald, and purple stars filling the sky. And there was a fleeting landscape of red rock with mushroom-shaped buildings of white and red stone, trees that looked inverted, with their branches on the ground and their roots feeding on the air, and a thin band with scarlet, pale green, and white threads, something like a Saturn's ring, arcing across the sky near the horizon.
He drained the tiny goblet with one gulp and, feeling hungry immediately afterward, ate the, sandwiches. The meat tasted like beef with blue cheese.
When the goblets had been passed around, and everybody was standing as if waiting for something to happen--which they were, Childe supposed--Pao raised his hands. He spoke in a loud voice: "The Childe must have power!"
That was a funny way to refer to him, Childe thought. The Childe?
The crowd answered in a loud chorus, "The Childe must have power!"
Pao said, "There is but one way in which The Childe may gain this power!"
The people echoed, "There is but one way in which The Childe may gain this power!"
"And grow!"
"And grow!"
"And become a man!"
"And become a man!"
"And become our Captain!"
"And become our Captain!"
"And lead us to our long lost home!"
"And lead us to our long lost home!"
"And permit us to triumph over our enemies, the Tocs!"
"And permit us to triumph over our enemies, the Tocs!"
"Through the nothingness and the utter cold he will lead us!"
There was more, none of which made any sense to Childe except for the reference to their enemies, the Tocs. These must be the people of whom he had so far met only three. The three who had rescued him from, Vivienne and reproached her for breaking the truce.
The liquor was making him feel very heady by then. And the food had infused him with strength. He looked at the goblet, which glowed as if his gaze beamed radium at it.
Pao finally finished his chanting. Immediately, the crowd became noisy. They started talking and laughing. And they were also stripping off their clothes. Panchita Pocyotl shed her gown, revealing that she wore nothing under it except long stockings held up by huge scarlet garters. Vivienne was not far behind her; she wore a garter belt and stockings. The snake-thing had withdrawn; her auburn bush looked very attractive.
Pao, naked, his skinny dick dangling halfway down between his thighs, said, "Would you please undress, Captain?"
Childe, feeling dizzy, rose. He said, "Captain?"
"You will know what I mean--I hope," Pao said.
Childe remembered with a pang of dread his treatment at the hands of the enormously fat Mrs. Grasatchow when he was a prisoner in Igescu's house.
He said, "Am I to be abused?"
"No one would think of that now," Pao said. "Vivienne made a very bad mistake, and if we did not need her so much, we might have killed her. But she was overcome by your power, and that is a reasonable excuse for her actions. Nevertheless, she will not be permitted to touch you tonight."
Childe, looking at the naked and superbly shaped woman, felt his penis rising. The liquid seemed to have gone down warmly to the place behind his navel and there caught fire. The blaze spread out, up, and down, but mainly down. The base of his cock was rammed with a boiling and heavy liquid metal; it expanded upwards, filling out his cock, lifting it up, and making it throb.
He said, "All right," and he undressed.
Pao took his clothes and left the room. Childe, standing there, felt foolish, and so he sat down. The others seemed to know what was expected of them; they began em
bracing and caressing each other, standing up, or lying down on the floor, or on the sofas. They were not putting their whole hearts into their lovemaking, however; they were waiting for someone or something.
Pao returned. He walked up to Childe, took his hand, and said, "Your blessing, Captain."
He placed his long slim peter on Childe's upturned palm, and the dead worm came to life. It became red and swollen and rose up off the hand as if launched. Pao backed away and bowed and kissed Childe's hand where his peter had lain.
"I thank you, Captain," he said.
There was a scramble among the couples after that. They arranged themselves in a double line in an order of precedence which they seemed to know well. There was no quarreling or struggling to get ahead of one another.
The first two in line were Panchita Pocyotl and a big blond man with Scandinavian features. They stood before Childe, between him and the goblet in the cube.
The man said, "Your pardon, Captain," and took Childe's hand and closed the fingers around his half-erect dong. At the touch, the big-knobbed dong filled up like a blimp being engorged with gas. It lay hard and throbbing in Childe's hand, and a small drop of fluid oozed out of the slit in the glands. The man stepped back and Panchita got down on her knees and took Childe's penis in one hand and kissed it on the head and the shaft. Then she arose, looked once into his eyes with her large luminous dark-brown eyes, and withdrew with the man.
Childe watched them. They walked to a sofa and lay down on it. Panchita spread her legs out and over his shoulders, and he inserted himself into the thick black glossy bush and began pumping. His red Swedish ass went faster and faster and then, suddenly, both groaned and writhed. After they had come, they lay quiescent and then, a few minutes later, he was fucking her dog fashion.
This excited Childe, who wanted the next woman kissing his cock to continue. But she backed away, murmuring, "Thank you, Captain," and went away with her squat Indian partner and his thick stubby penis.
The couples came quickly, the men laying their dongs in his hands and the women kissing or licking his cock. There were exceptions, however. Some of the men also got down and kissed or even sucked briefly on him, and some of the women took his hand and placed it on their cunts.
Childe had been slightly repulsed by some of this at the beginning. But as more couples approached him, as more couples began fucking or sucking, he accepted it as something natural to him. He began thinking of it as his due, and then as something old and familiar. The flashes of the exotic and extraterrestrial landscapes occurred more frequently, each time coincident with the placing of a dong in his hand or the slide of lips over the head and shaft of his cock.
The goblet had increased its illumination during this ceremony. As each couple passed, it shone a trifle more brightly. And the white glow in his skull was exceeded only by the hot whiteness in his penis. It was so strong a sensation, he was disappointed when he looked down and did not see glands and shaft radiating with a white light.
Pao, he noticed, had no steady partner. He wandered around, and when he found a vacant cunt or empty mouth, he filled it. He did not seem to care whether or not the other was male or female. He came each time he rammed his partner with a few strokes, and then he would withdraw his dripping but still rigid dick and go on to the next person.
The only one missing, he suddenly noticed, was Plugger. He had shown up early in the line and given Childe a slight shock when he closed Childe's hand around his warty cock. Childe had felt an increase in the ecstasy building up in him but that was all. He had the feeling that Plugger was withholding, that he had, somehow, turned down his bioclectricity to a minimum. And then Plugger, after briefly fucking his partner but leaving her passed out, had disappeared.
Childe considered this for a second. He had an image of Plugger walking down the hall towards Sybil's room. Was the bastard going to her? And then he forgot about him when the next woman ran her tongue over the head of his penis.
Although the line had been sedate enough, considering the actions of the couples, the people became wild once they had left him. They talked loudly, swore, smacked loudly when kissing or sucking each other off, and filled the room with the slap-slap of wet cocks driving against wet cunts or into wet assholes. They groaned and moaned or screamed with the ecstasy of orgasm oncoming or occurring. And the air was heavy and musky with the odors of sweating bodies, lubricating fluid, and sperm.
The fantastically beautiful Vivienne, although denied touching him, was taking advantage of her liberty with her fellows. She was standing bent over, sucking on a big black's cock while Pao thrust his dick into her anus and the snake-thing looped under Pao's balls and slid back and forth into his anus. They all seemed to come at once, judging from their writhings and shakings. The black's cock dwindled to a half-erection and came out of the mouth of Vivienne, who swallowed the jism. Pao's dick withdrew and was at half-mast, dripping. The snake-thing left Pao's ass reluctantly with its mouth still vomiting spermatic fluid and coiling and uncoiling in the final spasms of orgasm.
At that moment, the last woman in line quit tickling his glands with her tongue. Pao, his cock beginning to rise again but still expelling the gray fluid, walked across the room to him. Childe looked at him with a mute appeal. He was close to coming, and his peter was throbbing in the air. In one corner of his mind, he noted the goblet had begun to pulse. The whiteness flared and dimmed, flared and dimmed.
Just before Pao reached him, he made the connection with full awareness. The goblet was emitting pulses of light in phase with the throbbings of his dong.
Pao took Childe's hand and lifted it. His dick rose so high it almost touch his navel. Childe's own organ seemed to lurch, and its head touched his belly. The throbbings increased, the warm gray tide in his testicles and ducts rose more swiftly, and the glory in him threatened to shoot out.
"Come on!" he said fiercely to Pao.
Pao waved his hand, and Childe understood that he was to take his pick.
Childe looked quickly around. He had a superb choice, because there were very few women in the room who were not extraordinarily beautiful.
Childe said, "Vivienne!"
Pao was startled and opened his mouth, apparently intending to protest. But he closed it and crooked a finger at Vivienne.
Vivienne was startled, too. She pointed a finger at herself and mouthed, "Me?"
Pao nodded and gestured for her to come a-running. She did so with the snake thing flopping between her legs, banging into her knees and protesting against the treatment. When Vivienne got to Childe, she dropped on her knees and said, "Forgive me, my Captain."
Then she started to suck on the end of his cock. The ecstasy came in slow waves, and from the inside of his navel to his knees he became ice.
He managed to gasp at Pao, "Jerk that thing out!" "What?" Pao said.
"Pull that thing out of her cunt! Quick!"
Pao got down behind Childe and reached through his legs and grabbed the snake-thing, which was trying to wrap itself around Childe's thigh. Apparently it intended to climb up and into Childe's asshole, although it was doubtful that it was long enough to reach its goal. But Pao grabbed it behind its head and gave a savage yank.
Vivienne fell apart.
Childe stood with her head between his hands and his penis in her mouth. The eyes stared up at him with a violet fire, and the lips and tongue kept on sucking and thrusting. The other parts of her body, having gotten onto their legs, began to scuttle around the room. The big black who had been sucked off by Vivienne picked up the many-legged cunt and stuck it on the end of his cock and began sliding it back and forth. The cunt's legs kicked as if it were having an orgasm.
The goblet's pulses came faster and faster. Childe held the head by the ears and rammed his prick faster and faster between the lips. Its head drove down her throat, backed out until it almost left those beautiful lips, and then rammed in until the hairs around his cock were crushed against her lips.
Fast
er and faster. Brighter and brighter. Pulse and ecstasy.
The ice turned to fire. He spurted with a scream and a writhing that was so violent he almost dropped the head. His pubis was against her nose and his dong was far down her throat. He came and came, and the goblet glowed as if it were in the heart of the sun.
Pao got down underneath the head and swallowed the jism that fell down her throat and out the open neck.
The others scrambled to catch the drops that Pao had missed. They rolled him away, and stuck their heads under Vivienne's, and then they were pushed away. Those who could not get any directly ran their fingers over the lips or down the mouths of those who had been lucky and got the stuff second-hand. Some tasted it and then rubbed the residue over their cunts or pricks.
Childe quit shaking and spurting. The goblet's light waned swiftly, and soon it had only a faint glow.
He pulled Vivienne's head off his peter and threw it to Pao, saying, "Now you can put her together again. I had my revenge."
He sat down and stared dully at the goblet. He felt very tired.
The people crowded around and spoke in awed tones. At first, he did not understand what they were talking about. When he heard a woman say; "It did grow, just a little, but it grew?" he saw what they were marveling at.
The incomplete side of the cup of the goblet had grown more of the metal.
"You are indeed the Captain and The Childe," Pao said, holding Childe's limp cock in his hand. "But you are no longer a child."
Childe understood what he was saying, although he did not know the details. During that last explosion of orgasm, he had seen many things on the screen of his mind. Somehow, this experience had tapped a racial memory. No, not racial. That was not the correct term. A genetic memory was closer to an exact definition.
* * *
CHAPTER 37
Forry Ackerman jumped when the poundings, came on his door. He opened the door without checking on the identity of the visitor, a lack of precaution indicating his upset condition.
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