A Feast Unknown

“He raised you to devote your life to good. You were trained to become a superman of good. You were taught to hate evil and to fight it. But you were to love the evil-doer, not hate him. Hate the sin, not the si

“You took a super-Boy Scout oath. You were reared by our father to be a physical and mental

Ubermensch, though the development would not have been so successful if you had not been genetically superior. You have the bones and muscle of an Old Stone Age man because your grandfather was an Old

Stone Age man.

“I suspect that our family is rather inbred, or at least has had more than a number of Paleolithic fathers and mothers. How do we know how many times Grandfather XauXaz, or his brothers, dropped in to resupply the archaic genes? Castle Grandrith may have been the Three’s breeding farm.

“And you, Doc, like me and a number of others, were approached by the Nine. And you sold your soul, as we all did, for immortality.”

“What soul?” Caliban said. The sneer was in his voice; his face had adopted its customary expressionlessness. But his green, gold-flecked eyes looked peculiar. I could not tell whether they were doubtful or murderous.

“A ma

“You really think, then, that our grandfather, who may also be our great-great-grand-father and greatgreat-

great-ancestor a number of times over, was the man-god known to the primitive Germanics as

Wothenjaz and to later Germanics as Woden or Othi

“Yes,” I said. “And I believe that the Nine are keeping the seat of our dead grandfather in the family.

They made sure we would be trained to be what we are. Perhaps, I am their Wild Man of the Jungle candidate and you are their Man of the Metropolis candidate. It pleases them to pit us against each other.

Perhaps, in the Old Stone Age, it was brother against brother in the ceremonial battle to the death for the chieftainship. Who knows? But they don’t care who gets killed.”

“I think you’re trying to talk me to death,” Caliban said.

Trish called, “Doc! Listen to him! He makes sense!”

“Not to me he doesn’t,” Caliban said in a low voice. “And even if he did, one of us has to die.”

“I’m not fighting for a seat at the table of the Nine,” I said.

He gri

“I’ve eaten their shit long enough,” I said. “I think our father decided that, too, and they killed him.”

“I tracked down his murderers,” Caliban said. The green-and-gold eyes seemed to pulse. “I did not kill them but I turned their traps for me against them, and they died. If I had to do it again today, I would kill them with my bare hands.”

“How do you know they weren’t agents of the Nine?” I said.

He had been inching forward now. He halted, and he shuddered. His bronze face, where it wasn’t splashed with blood, had darkened with fury. His face twisted as if it were metal under great heat.

“You lie!” he screamed.

His penis rose so swiftly it looked as if it were being hauled up on a string. It swelled like a cobra, the blue veins pulsed, and the great red glans glistened.

I knew then that there was no talking him out of it. The fight was inevitable. I knew this deep down, and, perhaps, I had hoped deep down that it would take place. Whatever my true hopes, my penis rose also, though more slowly, and when fully erect, it looked pale and small against his.

He watched the organ swell and then he said, “I’m going to tear your balls and cock off, big brother!”

He sprang forward, swiftly as a tiger, and lashed out with one hand at my testicles. The other went up to catch whichever hand I extended for defense.

41

I intercepted the hand and without flinching, which he had hoped I would do so he could throw me off balance if he missed my genitals. He came up swiftly then, though I almost threw him over, because he was crouched to one side and so off-balance.

We were again in the stance we had had when on the bridge. He glared down at me, six foot seven against my six foot three and his 300 pounds against my 240. I am a big wide man, thick-boned as a Cro-

Magnon, as I have said, and greatly muscled, but my proportions are such that I do not look like a shotputter.

Alone, with no other humans by me for comparison, I look more like the Apollo Belvedere, although somewhat more broad-shouldered and deep-chested.

Caliban’s proportions were also such that he did not look so massively constructed if he stood alone.

But next to me, he seemed to be muscled with pythons. And I’m sure that we looked to Trish like a male

African lion straining against an American mountain lion.

For what seemed minutes, we strained against each other. Both of us were bleeding from a dozen wounds and profusely from several. We had become weakened by the loss of blood and the energy expended. Our breathing was labored.

We strove. And then, slowly, oh, so slowly, but steadily, his arms were pushed back. His eyes widened slightly, and he breathed more harshly. The muscles of neck, shoulders, chest, and arms ridged.

Blue veins pushed up the sweating bronze skin on his temples.

He bent forward and caught my nose in his teeth and bit. I jerked it out of his teeth, but it cost me a pain that seemed to run through my nose and split my brain. It shot down through the pit of my belly and down my legs, as if it were a streak of lightning. Part of it was torn off, and blood spurted.

Somehow, he jerked one hand loose and grabbed my testicles. It was done quickly, as savagely and powerfully as the swipe of a tiger’s paw. Another sear of pain struck, like a spear head, between my legs. I screamed then, and I reacted half-unconsciously. We both were standing there with each other’s rippedoff testicles in our hands.

Blood spurted from the torn skin and veins and arteries between his legs. I felt a warmth shooting down my leg but did not look down because that would have been fatal. There was not much time left before I became weak with shock and pain, and loss of blood.

I cast his testicles in his face and leaped. He dropped mine and tried to grab both my hands again, but this time I caught one of his hands and with the other made my own swipe. The penis, amazingly, was still huge and hard, though it was deflating. It twisted like a spigot in my grip; he screamed; I yanked with all my strength; the flesh tore like a piece of silk; the member, spurting blood at one end and jism at the other, was in my hand and before his face.

I dropped it; he stepped forward as if to pick it up. Then I was on his back and had a full-Nelson on him. He fell forward and crashed upon his face. The wind went out of him. Despite this, he still had enough vitality to resist my pressure. His neck muscles became as hard as wood. I could feel my own strength flapping away, like a sick bat into the night.

Yet, my penis was still hard and throbbing. It was up against his buttocks, which also felt as hard as oak.

I applied pressure with my hands against the back of his neck in a surge, knowing that if he could withstand that, he might yet win. Blackness was closing in on the edges of my consciousness.

His skin began to gray, even as the bones of his neck creaked like a ship’s mast against the force of the wind.

I heard, faintly, a cry of protest from Trish. Caliban grunted once as if he were trying to force something out from him. His neck bent, and then the bones snapped.

I spurted over him with only a vague awareness of it. The black rushed in as the fluid rushed out, and shortly thereafter I cared as little as Caliban about the world.