A Feast Unknown

“We have learned a number of things about you recently. We suspect that you have also been researching with the idea of independently producing the elixir. So far, you have not succeeded. And we have good reason to think that you will never succeed. But this does not displease us. We have not forbidden our servants to try to make their own elixir. And if you had not tried, you would not have come up to our expectations of you.

“However, that is not my main point. I point out to you that your investigation showed that

Grandrith was, in many respects, like you. You are undoubtedly the two greatest athletes that the world has produced for several thousand years. Which is the greatest remains to be tested. You two even resemble each other facially, though your different coloring tends to conceal it.”

This was a long speech in public for one of the Nine. I wondered what she was getting at—or to—but did not say anything, of course.

She leaned forward and stretched out her ski

She said, “Come closer.”

We, knowing what was expected, moved until our thighs pressed against the table edge and our testicles rested on the surface. My flesh had wa

I did not flinch. I had never flinched when she had done this, even though I knew what she would soon be doing.

Then I saw that this procedure might be different. Certainly, she could not use a sharp flint knife on me with the other hand since it was holding Caliban’s testicles.

She lifted the sacs as if she were estimating the weight and worth of meat in grocery bags. She said,

“They are noble indeed. And warm with life. How many ...?”

Her voice trailed off. She looked up and smiled. Her teeth were black. Not from rotte

“Today,” she said, “you will not have to give up part of your flesh to the knife. You will eat with us in preparation for your contest. The next time we meet here to eat, only one of you will be at this table. Or at any table.”

Apparently, there was to be no more discussion of our grievances or any arbitration of our case. They did not care who was wrong or wronged. They probably did not even acknowledge that wrong existed except in human minds. I say human because I do not think that they thought of themselves as human.

Though they could die, they must have considered themselves as gods. No human could live that long and have such power and not think himself divine.

Would I, if I became one of the Nine, come to think as they?

Severed though I am from most human attitudes, or I should say, loosely co

Folk, never numerous, had become nothing.

“It has been two thousand years since this preseating ceremony was held,” she said.

She gestured at the lean, dark-bearded, scimitar-nosed man with the ram’s head. I had heard him speak of Caesar Augustus, Tiberius, and Herod Antipas when I was Speaker.

“At that time, Grandrith, your ancestral island was inhabited by the tattooed British and Picts and your English ancestors still lived in what was to be later called Denmark. And as for America, Doctor

Caliban, no one knew of it—except the Nine and their servants. We kept the Phoenicians and the Romans and the Saracens from following up their discovery of the Americas, and we aborted the Norse colonization. We were thinking for a while about establishing an Iroquois-Cherokee empire. The first

Europeans would have found a united people armed with fire arms and riding horses. But the final decision was to let things happen as they would.

“The point is that when the last vacancy occurred, when Thrithjaz died ...”

That would be Primitive Germanic for third, I thought.

“... neither the English nor the Americans existed as such. But times change, even for us, and we have seen many nations and tongues born and die.”

She lifted a finger at the Speaker. He directed me to stand at the far right, by the wrinkled, squat

Negro with the hyena headpiece and Caliban at the far left, by the man with the ram headpiece. The

Speaker then thudded the butt of the staff and began calling out names.

The ceremony was like those I had attended at one of the “eaten” and directed when I was Speaker.

There were differences, however. Before, Anana had always fed first. Now, Caliban and I were treated as guests of honor. Anana took the testicles of a big moustachioed man with her left hand and cut the scrotum on one side with a long-bladed flint knife. The man looked down and did not look away even when the pinkish egg-shaped gland rolled out on the table. His dark skin did become pale and then gray; sweat rolled down his body; he gripped the table edge as if he were trying to leave his fingerprints in the wood.

As the Speaker, I had seen him go through this before and did not expect him to faint and fall off the structure into the cold black waters. I have seen some men faint. No one helps them. Usually, the water shocks them back into consciousness and most climb back up, however painful the ascent. Several could not, or would not, climb again. The guards took these away, and I never saw them again.

The ceremony must have been originated in the Old Stone Age, perhaps 300,000 years ago or more.

It was probably old when Anana was born.

Anana picked up the testicle and placed it on the table before her after smelling it. The Speaker had stepped over the table; he now came around and smeared ointment from a jar onto the wound. While he did this, he chanted a few lines in an unknown language. The bleeding, which was not great, stopped altogether. Anana handed her stone cup to the Speaker, who gave the man a mouthful of the liquid. This tastes like mead to me, but I do not think it is. The pain would be gone within five minutes. Inside a month, provided the man got the proper food and rest, the testicles would be regrown. Not only did the elixir provide a prolonged youth and freedom from disease, it gave regenerative powers.

Anana sliced the gland into twelve more or less equal slices. She sent one to me via the Speaker and one to Caliban. One piece was thrown into the water and one was placed before the empty chair. Each of the Nine took a slice and ate it raw. I chewed and swallowed mine with gusto, because the testicle is one of the few pieces of human meat worth eating.

The moustachioed man, dismissed by the Speaker, climbed down slowly and painfully. The second person called was on top of the structure before the first had waded out through the waters.