Flesh Read online

  “Why, last night a man stabbed you in the back with a knife. Yet it didn’t slow you down much, and the wound seems to be almost healed. Of course, the knife didn’t go in more than an inch. You’ve got some pretty solid muscles.”

  “I have a vague memory of that,” Stagg said. He winced. “And what happened to the man afterwards?”

  “The women tore him apart.”

  “But why did he stab me?”

  “It seems he was mentally unbalanced. He resented your intense interest in his wife, and he stuck a knife into you. Of course, he was committing a horrible blasphemy. The women used tooth and nail to punish him.”

  “Why do you say he was mentally unbalanced?”

  “Because he was—at least, from this culture’s viewpoint. Nobody in his right mind would object to his wife cohabiting with a Sunhero. In fact, it was a great honor, because Sunheroes usually devote their time to nobody but virgins. However, last night you made an exception... of the whole city. Or tried to, anyway.”

  Stagg sighed and said, “Last night was the worst ever. Weren’t there more than the usual number mangled?”

  “You can hardly blame the Baltimoreans for that. You started things off on a grand scale when you trampled those priestesses. By the way, whatever inspired that move?”

  “I don’t know. It just seemed a good idea at the time. But I think it might have been my unconscious directing me to get revenge on the people responsible for these.”

  He touched his antlers. Then he fixed a stare on Calthorp.

  “You Judas! Why have you been holding out on me?”

  “Who told you? That girl?”

  “Yes. That doesn’t matter. Come on, Doc, spill it. If it hurts, spill it, anyway. I won’t harm you. My antlers are an index of whether I’m in my right mind or not. You can see how floppy they are.”

  “I began to suspect the true pattern of events as soon as I started understanding the language,” Calthorp said. “I wasn’t sure, however, until they grafted those antlers on you. But I didn’t want to tell you until I could figure out some way of escape. I thought you might try to make a break and would get shot down. I soon began seeing that even if you ran away in the morning, you’d be back by evening—if not sooner. That biological mechanism on your forehead gives you more than an almost inexhaustible ability to scatter your seed; it also gives you an irresistible compulsion to do so. Takes you over completely—possesses you. You’re the biggest case of satyriasis known to history.”

  “I know how it affects me,” Stagg said, impatiently. “I want to know just what kind of a role I am playing? Toward what goal? And why is all this Sunhero routine necessary?”

  “Wouldn’t you like a drink first?”

  “No! I’m not going to drown my sorrow in liquor. I’m going to accomplish something today. I would like a big cold drink of water. And I’m dying to take a bath, get all this sweat and crud off me. But that can wait. Your story, please. And make it damn quick!”

  “I haven’t time now to go into the myth and history of Deecee,” Calthorp said. “We can do that tomorrow. But I can elucidate fairly well what position of dubious honor you hold.

  “Briefly, you combine several religious roles, that of the Sunhero and that of the Stag-King. The Sunhero is a man who is chosen every year to enact the passage of the Sun around the Earth in symbolic form. Yes, I know the Earth goes around the Sun, and so do the priestesses of Deecee, and so does the unlettered mass, But for all practical purposes, the Sun circles the Earth, and that is how even the scientist thinks of it when he is not thinking scientifically.

  “So, the Sunhero is chosen, and he is symbolically born during a ceremony which takes place around December 21. Why then? Because that is the date of the winter solstice. When the Sun is weakest and has reached the most southerly station.

  “That is why you went through the birth scene.

  “And that is why you are taking the northern route now. You are destined to travel as the Sun travels after the winter solstice, northward. And like the Sun, you will get stronger and stronger. You have noticed how the antlers’ effect has been getting more powerful; proof of that is the crazy stunt you pulled when you subdued that stag and rode down the priestesses.”

  “And what happens when I reach the most northerly station?” Stagg said. His voice was quiet and well controlled, but the skin under the deep brown tan had turned pale.

  “That will be the city we used to know as Albany, New York. It is now the northernmost limit of the country of Deecee, And it is also where Alba, the Sow-Goddess, lives. Alba is Columbia in her aspect of the Goddess of Death. The pig is sacred to her because, like Death, it is omnivorous. Alba is also the White Moon Goddess, another symbol of death.”

  Calthorp stopped. He looked as if he could not bear to continue the conversation; his eyes were moist.

  “Go on,” Stagg said. “I can take it.”

  Calthorp took a deep breath and said, “The north, according to Deecee myth, is the place where the Moon Goddess imprisons the Sunhero. A circuitous way of saying that he...”

  “Dies,” Stagg finished for him.

  Calthorp gulped. “Yes. The Sunhero is scheduled to complete the Great Route at the time of the summer solstice— about June 22.”

  “What about the Great Stag aspect, the Horned King?”

  “The Deecee are nothing if not economical. They combine the role of Sunhero with that of the Stag-King. He is a symbol of man. He is born as a weak and helpless infant, he grows to become a lusty, virile male, lover, and father. But he, too, completes the Great Route and must, willy-nilly, face Death. By the time he meets her, he is blind, bald, weak, sexless. And... he fights for his last breath, but... Alba relentlessly chokes it out of him.”

  “Don’t use symbolic language, Doc,” Stagg said. “Give me the facts, in plain English.”

  “There will be one tremendous ceremony at Albany, the final. There you will take, not the tender young virgins, but the white-haired sag-breasted old priestesses of the Sow-Goddess. And your natural distaste for the old women will be overcome by keeping you restrained in a cage until you are at such a point of lust that you will take any woman, even a hundred-year-old great-grandmother. Afterwards...”

  “Afterwards?”

  “Afterwards, you will be blinded, scalped, castrated, and then hung. There will be a week of national mourning for you. Then you will be buried in the position of a foetus beneath a dolmen, an archway of great slabs of stone. And prayers will be said to you and stags will be sacrificed over your tomb.”

  “That’s quite a consolation,” Stagg said. “Tell me, Doc, why was I picked for this role? Isn’t it true that the Sunheroes are usually volunteers?”

  “Men strive for the honor, just as the virgins strive to become the Bride of the Stag. The man who is chosen is the strongest, most handsome, most virile youth in the nation. It was your misfortune to be not only that, but the captain of men who had actually ascended to the heavens on a fiery steed and then returned. They’ve a myth about a Sunhero who did that. I think that the government of Deecee decided that if they got rid of you they’d disorganize all of the crew. And so diminish any danger of us bringing back the old and abominated science.

  “I see Mary Casey waving at you. I think she wants to speak to you.”

  9

  Peter Stagg said, “Why do you look to one side when you talk to me?”

  “Because,” Mary Casey said, “it’s hard for me to keep you two separated.”

  “What two?”

  “The Peter I know in the morning, and the Peter I know at night. I’m sorry, but I can’t help it. I shut my eyes at night and try to think of something else, but I can’t shut my ears. And even though I know you can’t help what you do, I loathe you. I’m sorry. I just can’t help it.”

  “Then why did you call me over to talk to me?”

  “Because I know that I am not acting charitably. Because I know that you would like to get out of your cage
of flesh as much as I want to get out of this cage of iron. Because I hope we can think of some way to escape.”

  “Calthorp and I have worked out several plans for getting away, but we don’t know how to keep me from running back. As soon as the horns began affecting me, I’d come running back to the women.”

  “Can’t you use your will power?”

  “A saint wouldn’t be able to resist the horns.”

  “Then it’s hopeless,” she said dully.

  “Not entirely. I don’t intend to go all the way to Albany, you know. Somewhere between Manhattan and Albany, I’m taking off for the wilderness. Better to die trying than going like an ox to the slaughterhouse.

  “Let’s change the subject. Tell me about yourself and your people. One thing that’s handicapping me is my ignorance. I just don’t know enough to figure a way out.”

  Mary Casey said, “I’ll be glad to. I need somebody to talk to, even if it’s... I’m sorry.”

  During the next hour, while Stagg stood outside her cage and she kept her eyes on the floor, she told him of herself and Caseyland. He broke in now and then with questions, because she had a tendency to take knowledge of fundamental matters for granted.

  Caseyland occupied the area once known as New England. It was not as thickly populated as Deecee or as rich. Its people were engaged in rebuilding the soil, but they depended largely on the raising of pigs and deer and on the sea for their food. Even though at war with the Deecee to the southwest, the Karelians to the north, and the Iroquois to the northwest, they traded with their enemies. They had a peculiar institution known as Treaty War. This limited, by mutual agreement, the number of warriors to be sent across the borders on raids in a year’s time, and also regulated the rules of warfare. The Deecee and the Iroquois abided by the rules, but every once in a while the Karelians broke them.

  “How can either side expect to win?” Stagg said in amazement.

  “Neither side does. I think that the Treaty War was adopted by our ancestors for one reason. To allow an outlet for the energies of belligerent men while keeping the majority of the population busy in rebuilding the Earth. I think that when the population of any country gets too large, you will see wholesale warfare without any rules at all. But in the meantime, no nation feels powerful enough to start a treatyless war. The Karelians break the treaties because they are a people who live by a wartime economy.”

  She continued with a brief résumé of her nation’s origins. There were two myths concerning the reason why Caseyland had been so named. One proposed that, after the Desolation, an organization known as the Knights of Columbus had succeeded in founding a city-state near Boston. This, like the original small city of Rome, had expanded to absorb its neighbors. The city-state was called K.C., and over a period of time the initials had somehow been converted into the name of an eponymous and mythical ancestor, Casey.

  The other story was that there actually was a Casey family which had founded a town, named after him. And they had originated the present clan system whereby everybody in their country was named Casey.

  There was a third version, not widely accepted, that the truth was a combination of the first two myths. A man named Casey had been the leader of the Knights of Columbus.

  “Perhaps none of those myths are true,” Stagg said.

  Mary did not seem pleased at this suggestion, but she was essentially fair-minded. She said that it was possible.

  “What about the claim of the Deecee?” he said. “They say you worship a father-god named Columbus and you got the name from their goddess Columbia. You masculinized both the goddess and her name. Isn’t it true that your god has two names, Jehovah and/or Columbus?”

  “That is not so!” she said angrily. “The Deecee have confused the name of our god with that of St. Columbus. It is true that we pray quite often to St. Columbus for intercession with Jehovah. But we do not worship him.”

  “And who was St. Columbus?”

  “Why, everybody knows that he came from the east, from over the ocean, and landed in Caseyland. It was he who converted the citizens of the father-city of Casey to the true religion and founded the Knights of Columbus. If it weren’t for St. Columbus, we would all be heathens.”

  Stagg was beginning to get restless, but he managed to ask her one more question before he left.

  “I know that mascot is the word used for virgin. Do you have any idea how mascot came to be used in its present sense?”

  “It has always been used so,” she replied, looking directly at him for the first time. “A mascot brings good luck with her, you know. Perhaps you’ve observed how the Deecee touch the hair of a pubescent mascot when they get a chance. That is because the good luck sometimes rubs off on the toucher. And, of course, a raiding party of men always takes along a mascot for good luck. I was with a war expedition against Poughkeepsie when I was captured. That sign lies when it says I was captured on a raid by the Deecee into Caseyland. It was the other way around. But, of course, you can’t expect the truth from people who worship the Mother of Lies.”

  Stagg decided that the Caseylanders were as mixed up and mistaken as the Deecee. It would be useless to argue or try to entangle myth from history.

  The great arteries at the base of his antlers were beginning to pulse strongly, and the antlers themselves were stiffening.

  “I have to go now,” he said. “See you tomorrow.”

  He turned and walked swiftly away. It was only by an effort of will that he kept from running.

  So the days and the nights passed. Mornings filled with weakness and discussion of plans to escape. Afternoons of eating, drinking, and wild and sometimes savage horseplay. Nights... the nights were visions of screaming white flesh, of being one great pulse that throbbed in unison with the buried heart of earth itself, of transformation from an individual man into a force of nature. Mindless ecstasy, body obeying the will of a Principle. He was an agent who had no choice but to obey that which possessed him.

  The Great Route led from Washington to Columbia Pike, once U.S. Route 1, through Baltimore, where it switched to what had once been U.S. Route 40 but was now known as Mary’s Way. It turned from Mary’s Way outside of Wimlin (Wilmington, Delaware) to follow the former New Jersey Turnpike. This road was also named after one of Columbia’s daughters, Njuhzhi.

  Stagg stayed a week in Kaept (Camden) and noticed the large number of soldiers in the city. He was told that this was because Philadelphia, across the Dway (Delaware) River, was the capital city of the hostile nation of Pants-Elf (eastern Pennsylvania).

  The soldiers accompanied Stagg out of Camden on the former U.S. Route 30 until he was deep enough inland to be safe. There they left him, and he and his entourage continued to the town of Berlin.

  After the pageant and the orgies that followed, Stagg continued on ex-U.S. 30 to Talant (Atlantic City).

  Atlantic City kept Stagg for two weeks. It was a metropolis of thirty thousand, whose population quintupled when the country people poured in to attend the Sunhero rites. From there Stagg followed the former Garden State Parkway until he turned off at what had been State Highway 72. It led to 70 and 70 led to ex-U.S. Route 206. Stagg took this road to Trint (Trenton), where he was again met by a large bodyguard.

  When he left Trenton, he was once more on Columbia Pike, the ex-U.S. Route 1. After making the usual progress through the relatively large cities of Elizabeth, Newark, and Jersey City, he took a ferry to Manhattan Island. He made his most extended stay in the Greater New York area, because Manhattan held fifty thousand people and the surrounding cities were almost as large.

  Moreover, this was the beginning of the Great Series.

  Stagg not only had to throw the first baseball of the season, he had to attend every game. For the first time, he became aware of how much the game had changed. Now it was conducted in such a fashion that it was an unusual match in which both teams did not suffer numerous injuries and several fatalities.

  The first part of the Great Serie
s was taken up by games between the champions of the various state leagues. The final game for national championship was between the Manhattan Big Ones and the Washington Sentahs. The Big Ones won, but they lost so many men they were forced to use half of the Sentahs for their reserves in the international games that followed.

  The international half of the Great Series was between the national champions of Deecee, Pants-Elf, Caseyland, the Iroquois League, the Karelian pirates, Florida, and Buffalo. The last-mentioned nation occupied a territory stretching out from the city of Buffalo to include a part of the coastal sections of Lake Ontario and Lake Erie.

  The final game of the Great Series was a bloody struggle between the Deecee team and the Caseylanders. The Caseylanders wore red leggings as part of their uniform, but by the end of the game the players were red from head to foot. Feelings were very bitter, not only among the players but among the rooters. The Caseylanders had a section of the stadium reserved for them and enclosed from the other sections by a tall fence of barbed wire. Moreover, the Manhattan Police Force had men stationed nearby to protect them if feelings ran too high.

  Unfortunately, the umpire—a Karelian who was supposed to be neutral because he hated both sides equally—made a decision disastrous in its effects.

  It was the ninth inning, and the score was 7-7. The Big Ones were batting. One man was on third base and, though he had a gash in his neck, he was strong enough to run for home if he got a chance. Two men were out—literally. One, covered by a sheet, lay where he had been struck down between second and third. The other was sitting in the dugout and groaning, while a doctor glued up the cuts on his scalp.

  The man at bat was the greatest hitter of Deecee, and he faced the greatest pitcher of Caseyland. He wore a uniform that had not changed much since the nineteenth century, and his cheek was swelled with a big quid of tobacco. He swung his bat back and forth. The sunlight glittered on its metal sides, for the upper half of the bat was covered with thin vertical strips of brass. He waited for the umpire to call Play Ball! and when he heard the cry, he did not step up to the plate at once.