A Feast Unknown

She saw me looking at her and smiled slightly. I did not know what the smile was supposed to mean.

“If you’re going to try to rape me,” she said, “I hope you’re not as inept as the last two. And let me rest first and eat something. I’m tired, sore, hungry, and shaken up. I’ve been abducted and mauled and chewed on and repeatedly splashed on the belly with the premature ejaculations of that demented creature. Or do you know whom I’m talking about?”

“He’s dead,” I said. “The ape killed him.”

She said, “Oh!” and then, “That’s no ape. It’s a subhuman if ever I saw one, and I haven’t, except in anthropology books. I didn’t know that these things really existed, I’d always thought they were native myths. But it certainly isn’t built for raping a female homo sapiens. Not that it tickled me so I felt like laughing.”

I had to admire her. Most women would have been hysterical, nor would I have blamed them.

“That monster—the human one—thought he was you, you know. So did I. You are he, aren’t you?

Could we eat? There’s plenty of food in the tree-house. Ca

I said, “Be at ease. I have no intention of raping you. I couldn’t if I wanted to.”

“Every male I run into is ejaculating all over the place,” she said.

Then she said something that startled me.

“It’s almost as big as Doc’s. And just about as useless, I’ll bet.”

She was very cool and very strange, though I suppose she must have thought me rather weird, too. I let her precede me to the house. She was a woman, but she had shown herself to be uncommonly dangerous. I did not want her behind me until I knew I could trust her.

The tree house was about fifty feet up and situated on a platform which ran entirely around the trunk and was supported by four huge branches radiating towards the cardinal points of the compass. It was built of bamboo and thatched with elephant’s ear leaves and grasses. It had three rooms. The ascent to it had to be made by stainless steel rungs which I had hammered into the trunk. Wooden rungs would have rotted in a year or two.

Trish Wilde (she had not introduced herself yet) got a fire going in the stone fireplace and wrapped herself in a blanket before it.

The house was a mess. The floors were littered with opened cans, scraps of food covered by insects, and even a pile of excrement in one corner. If the crazy man had been imitating me, he must have thought

I had the sanitary habits of a slum dweller. One of the bamboo and grass couches looked as if it had been taking punishment. One leg was broken off and the bottom was sagging.

The woman said, “Oh, by the way, I’m Trish Wilde, and I was assistant botanist to Doctor Everfields, a world-famous botanist, and we were searching for exotic plants when I was carried off. If the crazy man hadn’t surprised me so, I would have kicked his kneecap loose and then smashed his balls and that would have been that.

“Once he got me up here, he hammered at me until he broke the couch. He never did get his thing into me. He kept coming on my belly. But he almost bit my nipples off.”

“I can see that,” I said.

“He stank, and he had a big belly, and he slobbered all over me. I think he wanted to stick his cock in my mouth, but he knew I’d bite it off if he did.”

She was well educated but she talked like a wharf-dock whore. Certainly, she must moderate her talk in other situations. I did not know why she felt she could speak so uninhibitedly with me. Perhaps it was because she thought, and quite rightly, that my infrahuman rearing had left me without emotional reactions to the so-called “tabu” words.

“How tired are you?” I said.

“I have some energy left. Why?”

It was necessary to tell her part of my story if I were to get her to come with me voluntarily. I knew she was a member of the Nine’s organization, so I would not be revealing secrets. I told her what had happened since the dawn the Kenyan’s attacked, but I left out all reference to her cousin. I also made it appear that Noli had escaped from me but had sworn to go to England and take revenge on Clio.

“Have you had this year’s elixir?” I said.

“No,” she said. “I’m not due for the caverns until next month.”

Clio was also scheduled to go then. I did not tell her that. She would know that as soon as she saw

Clio, who, presumably, had made the pilgrimage with her many times.

“I am leaving within the hour,” I said. “I’ll be traveling as swiftly as I can and sleeping little. If you want to come with me, you’re welcome. It is easy for a stranger to get lost in these mountains, and I would not like to see you try to go it alone. Nevertheless, if you can’t keep up with me, I will leave you behind.”

“I could use a good night’s sleep,” she said. “But I don’t want to wander around these mountains until I die or get picked up by some horny natives. I’ll go with you.”

I was glad that she said that, because I had made up my mind that she was coming with me no matter what she said. She could be a trade off if Caliban succeeded in getting hold of Clio.

We ate and drank and then made up a bundle for each. This consisted of a rainhat, poncho, blanket, a breakdown .22 rifle and cartridges, matches, and cans of food. Immediately after, we set off.

Despite our pace, which was rapid for the thick heavy growth of the rain forest, she had breath enough to chatter on and on. She told me of her childhood, her high school and college days, of meeting

Doc, of the mysterious deaths of her father and her uncle. She had gone off with Doc and his five colleagues on several adventures. She owned a nation-wide chain of clothing shops and much property.

She had a master’s degree in psychology but had returned to school, after many years, and gotten a Ph.D. in botany.

I strongly suspected that this was at Doc’s request. He was undoubtedly attempting to find the elixir, and he would have wanted her to help him. The ingredients for the elixir might be in plants unknown or little known.

She said, “I might still be tied up in the tree house if I hadn’t talked him into letting me come down so I could walk around. After he let me lope around the clearing, like a dog on a leash, he tied me to the bush and tried to rape me again. Then he just happened to see the subhumans through a break in the vegetation; they’d been watching us all the while. He chased them, calling the male ‘Brother!’ and demanding that he stop and talk to him. Apparently, he winded the ape-man, or else the female couldn’t go any more. So the big male must have turned and fought and killed him, and then he returned to the clearing. He saw that crazy man trying to fuck me, and it must have put ideas in his head.

“That weirdo really thought he was you. And that he was king of the jungle and all that.”

“He wasn’t the first,” I said.

A number of questions directed my attention from her monologue. Even if the man were one of those poor devils who had brooded so long about me they had become me in their minds, how had he found my tree-house? And what about the body of the young Caucasian female which the others in the expedition had thought was Trish’s? What about the story of the natives who said they had witnessed the naked man’s raping and carrying off of Trish? And why had I been let loose by the Nine so near the house?

For the first time in this business, I began to consider seriously that I was being manipulated—or steered, at least—by the Nine.

Also, this sudden and compelling equation of killing with sexual intercourse could be a side effect of the elixir, and one expected by the Nine. Caliban had something similar and our father had been affected but in a different ma