Страница 80 из 81
The room started to rotate. The naked bodies of the men and women seemed to be skating on the edge of a spi
And there was Vivie
Then Vivie
Childe felt the gray fluid in him thrusting upward. But when helooked down, he saw only the red lips of Dolores, like an unattached cunt, squeezing aroundhis cock. He could see into his own body, and the gray fluid was redas mercuryin a thermometer and rising as if the thermometer had been thrustinto a furnace. The red thread sped upward and then leaped out between thedisco
The Grail blew up soundlessly with a crimson-and-yellow cloudexpandingoutwards and pieces of whitely glowing metal flying through thecloud.
CHAPTER 45
Until the last moment, Forry could not make up his mind. He hadbeen repulsed at first by the orgy. Seeing such things in stag films wasone thing, but seeing them in the flesh was very uncomfortable and evensickening. After awhile, the aura of reeking sexuality, of uninhibited orgasms, ofpenises andvaginas and anuses and mouths, began to excite him. He even got jealous when hesaw Alys Merrie sucking on the red-ski
But he was, in the end (I always pun, even here, he thought), tooinhibited.
Nevertheless, the vibrations were getting to him, and he hopedthe ceremonywould not last too long. Otherwise, he might abandon his restraintsand join inthe fun.
A few seconds later, he got his first view of what was takingplace in themind 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 ma
The glimpses of the alien worlds were like seeing the paintingsof Bonestell, Paul, Sime, Finlay, St. John, Bok, Freas, Emshwiller, andother greats of science-fiction become three dimensional and then becamealive. Painting turned into reality.
The worlds were only slices; it was as if Childe was cutting thecosmic pieinto slim pieces and hurling them at him.
He jumped up from the chair and unsteadily made his way towardsthe complicated shifting structure of flesh. It was only a few feet fromhim but it seemed to have sped towards the horizon. Between him and the bodieswrithing inthe 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. Hewould be standing alone, naked and erect and weeping in the big AmericanLegion hall. This was the only chance he would ever get. He, Forry Ackerman, theonly humanto get a ticket to intergalactic space, to alien and weirdlywonderful worlds in a foreign galaxy. His childhood dreams come true in a universe wherehe had no right to expect that any dreams would ever be reality. Where he hadbuilt a house to embody dreams with only half-reasonable facsimiles. Wherethe pseudo-worlds had seemed to be real in the shadow world of his homebut real for split-seconds only. Where stars like giant jewels, and crimsonlandscapes, andtrees with tentacles, and balloon-chested Martians with elephanttrunks and six fingers, and huge-eyed feathered nymphs, and long-toothed red-lippedvampiresdwelt in startling fixity forever.
Now he could go voyaging.
He ran towards the dwindling figures while the Grail sent up amushroom cloud of red, green, yellow, purple, and white shoots. He ran towardsthem, andthey shot away as if on skates.
"Wait for me!" he cried. "I'm going, too!"
The horizon, so distant, suddenly reversed its direction andcharged him andwas on him before he could stop ru
Whatever the objective length of time, to him it seemedinstantaneous. He was in the hall and then he was in a huge room with gray walls, floor, andceiling. It had no furniture and no doors or windows. The only lightwas that escaping in waves from the Grail.
Childe and the others were with him. They were all looking ateach 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 sectionof the wall became transparent, and they were looking out over the bleakestlandscape thathe had ever seen. There was only naked twisted rock. There was novegetation orwater. Yet the sky was as blue as Earth's, indicating that there wasan 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 greenand what looked like the tops of tall trees.
"This isn't our world or the Ogs' either!" Hindarf shouted. Hepointed intothe sky and Forry could barely see the pale moon there. It looked aslarge asEarth's, but it was darkly mottled in the center and resembled themarkings onthe wings of a death's-head moth.
Childe beckoned to Dolores del Osorojo, who smiled and came tohim and stood on his left, holding his hand. Childe said something in Spanish toher, and shesmiled and nodded.
"That about uses up my knowledge of Spanish," Childe said. "Butshe prefersto 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 thedesert world of Gruthrath!"
Childe said, "It's a desert, but it can support you and the Ogsquitecomfortably, 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 whatever you call ithas been opened," Childe said. "I know that there is very little chance thateither youTocs or Ogs would let me go once I made the first landing on eitherplanet. Youhave Captains greater than I who could neutralize my powers longenough for yourpeople to physically capture me. You'd have to, because I am partlyan 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 wouldtake 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 cosmiclottery, asit were. You did not know which planet I would pick out to land onfirst, andyou couldn't even ask me, because I would not know which one until Iwas presented with a choice. Also, if you tried too hard to sway me, Imight getsuspicious. So you took a chance. And both of you lost."