Flesh Read online

  “Hello, mortals,” she said in a high clear voice.

  She looked at Stagg.

  “Hello, immortal.”

  “Hello, Virginia,” he answered. He felt the blood spurting through his flesh and the ache building up in his chest and loins. Every time he met her, he experienced this almost irrepressible desire for her. He knew that if he were left alone with her, he would take her, no matter what the consequences.

  Virginia gave no sign that she was aware of her effect upon him. She regarded him with the cool unfaltering stare of a lioness.

  Virginia, like all mascots, was clothed in a high-necked and ankle-length garment, but her garment was covered with large pearls. A large triangular opening in the dress exposed her large but upthrusting breasts. The areola of each was rouged and circled by two rings of blue and white paint.

  “Tomorrow, immortal, you will become both Child and Lover of the Mother. Therefore, it is necessary that you prepare yourself.”

  “Just what do I have to do to prepare myself?” Stagg said. “And why should I?”

  He looked at her and ached through his whole body.

  She motioned with one hand. Instantly John Barleycorn, who must have been waiting around the corner, appeared. He now carried two bottles, the white lightning and some dark liquor. A priest-eunuch offered him a cup. He filled it with the dark stuff, and handed it to the priestess.

  “Only you, Father of Your Country, may drink this,” she said, giving the cup to Stagg. “This is the best. Made from the waters of the sticks.”

  Stagg took the cup. He looked at it dubiously, but he tried to be nonchalant. “Real mountain hooch, hey? Well, here goes. Never let anybody say that Peter Stagg couldn’t outdrink the best of them. Aaourrwhoosh!”

  The trumpets blew, the drums beat, the attendants clapped their hands and whooped.

  It was then that he heard Calthorp protesting. “Captain, you misunderstood! She didn’t say sticks. She said Styx. Waters of the S-T-Y-X! Get it?”

  Stagg had gotten it, but there was nothing he could do about it. The room whirled around and around, and darkness rushed in like a great black bat.

  Amid the trumpets and the cheering, he fell headlong toward the floor.

  3

  “What a hangover!” Stagg groaned.

  “I’m afraid they do,” said a voice that Stagg faintly recognized as Calthorp’s.

  Stagg sat up and then yelled from the pain and the shock. He rolled out of bed, fell to his knees from weakness, struggled to his feet, and staggered to the three full-length mirrors set at angles to each other. He was naked. His testicles were painted blue; his penis, red; his buttocks, white. He did not think about that. He could think about nothing except the two things he saw sticking at a 45-degree angle from his forehead for a foot and then branching out into many points.

  “Horns! What’re they doing there? Who put them there? By God, if I get my hands on the practical joker...” and he tried to pull the things from his head. He yelled with pain and let his hands drop to his side while he stared into the mirror. There was a stain of blood at the base of one of the horns.

  “Not horns,” Calthorp said. “Antlers. I like to be specific. Antlers—and not the hard, dead, horny kind, either. They’re fairly soft, warm and velvety, as a matter of fact. If you will put your thumb there, you can feel an artery pulsing, just under the surface. Whether they will later become the hard dead antlers of the mature—pardon the pun—stag, I don’t know.”

  The captain was scared and looking for something at which to get angry.

  “All right, Calthorp!” he roared. “Are you in on this monkey business? Because if you are, I’ll tear you limb from limb!”

  “You not only look like a beast, you’re beginning to act like one,” Calthorp murmured.

  Stagg could have struck the little anthropologist for his ill-timed humor. Then he saw that Calthorp was pale and his hands were shaking. His attitude was a cover-up for his very real fright.

  “All right,” Stagg said, calming down somewhat. “What happened?”

  Voice trembling, Calthorp told him that the priests had carried his unconscious body toward his bedroom. But a mob of priestesses had rushed in and seized him. For a terrible moment Calthorp had feared that Stagg would be torn apart by the two factions. However, the fight was a mock one, a ritual; the priestesses were supposed to win the body.

  Stagg had been carried into the bedroom. Calthorp tried to follow, but he was literally thrown out.

  “I soon got the point. They didn’t want a man in the room— except you. Even the surgeons were women. I tell you, when I saw them enter your room carrying saws and drills and bandages and all sorts of paraphernalia, I about went out of my mind. Especially when I saw that the surgeons were drunk. In fact, all the women were drunk. What a wild bunch! But John Barleycorn made me leave. He told me that at this time the women were likely to tear apart—literally—any man they encountered. He hinted that some of the musicians had not voluntarily qualified for candidacy as priests; they had just not been spry enough to get out of the way of the ladies on the evening of the winter solstice.

  “Barleycorn asked me if I were an Elk. Only the totem brothers of the Great Stag were comparatively safe during this time. I replied that I wasn’t an Elk, but I was a member of the Lions Club—though my dues hadn’t been paid for a long time. He said I would have been safe last year, when the Sunhero was a Lion. But I was in great danger now. And he insisted on my leaving the White House until the Son—by which he meant you—was born. So I did. I came back at dawn and found everyone gone, except you. I stayed by your bedside until you woke up.”

  He shook his head and clucked with sympathy.

  “Do you know,” Stagg said, “some things are coming back to me. It’s vague and mixed up, but I can remember coming to after taking that drink. I was weak and helpless as a baby. There was a great noise around me. Women screaming as if they were in the pain of childbirth...”

  “You were the baby,” Calthorp said.

  “Yes. How did you know?”

  “Things are beginning to shape a not unfamiliar pattern.”

  “Don’t leave me in the dark when you see the light!” Stagg pleaded. “Anyway, I was only half-conscious most of the time. I tried to resist when they put me on a table and then placed a little white lamb on top of me. I didn’t have the slightest idea of what they intended—until they cut its throat. I was drenched in the blood from head to foot.

  “Then it was taken away, and I was being forced through a narrow triangular opening. The opening must have had a skeleton of metal, but it was surrounded by some pinkish spongy stuff. Two priestesses had me by the shoulders and were pulling me through the opening. The others were caterwauling like banshees. Dopey as I was, my blood was chilled. You never heard such God-awful shrieks in your life!”

  “Yes, I did,” Calthorp said. “All Washington heard them. The entire adult population was standing right outside the White House gates.”

  “I was stuck in the opening, and the priestesses were pulling violently at me. My shoulders were jammed. Suddenly, I felt water squirting on my back; somebody must have turned a hose on me. I remember thinking that they must have some sort of pump in the house, for the water had terrific pressure behind it.

  “Then, I had slipped through the opening—but I didn’t fall to the floor. Two priestesses grabbed my legs. I was lifted into the air and held upside down. And I was spanked, spanked hard. I was so surprised I yelled.”

  “Which was what they wanted you to do.”

  “Then I was placed on another table. My nose and mouth and eyes were cleaned out. It’s funny, but up to then I hadn’t noticed that I had a thick mucus-like stuff in my mouth and up my nostrils. I must have had some trouble breathing, but I wasn’t aware of it. Then... then...”

  “Then?”

  Stagg turned red.

  “Then they carried me to this enormously fat priestess, lying propped up on pillows on
my bed. I’d never seen her before.”

  “Maybe she came down from Manhattan,” Calthorp said. “Barleycorn told me the Chief Priestess there is enormously fat.”

  “Enormous is the word for her,” Stagg continued. “That woman was the biggest I’ve ever seen. I’ll bet that if she’d stood up, she’d have been as tall as I am. And she must have weighed over three hundred and fifty pounds. She was powdered all over her body—it must have taken a barrel of powder to cover her. She was huge and round and white. A human Queen Bee, born to do nothing but lay millions of eggs and...”

  “And what?” Calthorp asked after Stagg had been silent for at least a minute.

  “They placed me so my head was on one of her breasts. It’s the hugest in the world, I’ll swear it. It seemed like the curve of Earth itself. Then she took my head and turned it. I tried to fight, but I was so weak, I could not resist. I could do nothing.

  “Suddenly, I did feel like a little baby. I wasn’t a full grown man; I was Peter Stagg, just born. It must have been the effect of that drug. It’s a hypnotic agent, I’ll swear. Anyway, I was... I was...”

  “Hungry?” Calthorp said quietly.

  Stagg nodded his head.

  Then, in an obvious desire to get away from the subject, he put his hand on one of the antlers and said, “Hmmm. The horns are rooted solidly.”

  “Antlers,” Calthorp said. “But you may as well continue misusing the term. I notice the Deecee use the inexact word too. Well, even if they don’t distinguish between antlers and horns in common speech, their scientists are wonderful biologists. Maybe not so hot in physics and electronics, but superb artists in flesh. By the way, those antlers are more than symbolical and ornamental. They function. A thousand to one that they contain glands that are pumping all sorts of hormones into your bloodstream.”

  Stagg winced. “What makes you think that?”

  “For one thing, Barleycorn dropped a few hints that they would. For another, there’s your phenomenally rapid recovery from a major operation. After all, it was necessary to cut two holes in your skull, plant the antlers, tie off blood vessels, connect the bloodstream of the antlers with your bloodstream, and who knows what else?”

  Stagg growled and said, “Somebody’s going to be sorry for this. That Virginia is behind this! I’ll rip her apart the next time I see her. I’m tired of being kicked around.”

  Calthorp had been anxiously watching him. He said, “You feel all right now?”

  Stagg flared his nostrils and thumped his chest. “I didn’t. But now I feel like I could lick the world. Only thing is, I’m hungry as a bear that’s just come out of hibernation. How long have I been out?”

  “About thirty hours. As you can see, it’s getting dark outside.” Calthorp put his hand on Stagg’s forehead. “You have a fever. No wonder. Your body is roaring like a furnace, building new cells right and left, pumping hormones like mad into your blood. You need fuel for the furnace.”

  Stagg crashed his fist on a table top. “I need drink, too! I’m burning up!”

  He rammed his fist into the gong repeatedly, until the notes rang throughout the palace. As if they’d been waiting for the signal, servants exploded through the door. They carried trays with many dishes and goblets.

  Stagg, all politeness forgotten, tore a tray from the hands of a servant and began stuffing the meat, potatoes, gravy, corn, tomatoes, bread, and butter into his rapidly working jaws, only stopping to wash them down with tremendous drafts of beer. The food and beer slopped on his bare chest and legs but, though he’d always been a fastidious eater, he paid no attention.

  Once, after a huge belch that almost knocked over a servant, he roared, “I can outeat, outdrink...” Another giant belch interrupted him, and he fell again to eating like a hog in a trough.

  Sickened not only at the sight but at its implications, Calthorp turned away. Evidently the hormones were washing away his captain’s inhibitions and exposing the purely animal part of the human being. What would come next?

  Finally, his belly sticking out like a bull gorilla’s, Stagg rose. He thumped his chest and howled, “I feel great, great! Hey, Calthorp, you ought to get yourself a pair of horns! Oh, that’s right, I forgot, you got a pair. That’s why you left Earth the first time, wasn’t it? Haw, haw!”

  The little anthropologist, his face flaming and twisted, screeched and ran at Stagg. Stagg laughed and picked him up by his shirt and held him out at arm’s length while Calthorp cursed and swung futilely with his short arms. Suddenly, Calthorp felt the room go by him with a rush. He slammed hard into something behind him. There was a loud clang, and he knew dimly, even as he sat half-unconscious on the floor, that he had been thrown into the gong.

  He became aware that a huge hand had gripped him painfully around his wrist, hauling him to his feet. Frightened that Stagg was going to finish him off, he clenched his fist to strike a brave but futile blow. Then he dropped his fist.

  Tears were running out of Stagg’s eyes.

  “Great God, what’s the matter with me? I must be completely out of my head ever to do anything like that to you, my best friend! What’s wrong? How could I do that?”

  He sobbed and pulled Calthorp close to his great body and squeezed him affectionately. Calthorp shrieked with pain as his ribs threatened to give way. Stagg, looking hurt, released him.

  “Okay, you’re forgiven,” Calthorp said, retreating cautiously. By now he realized that Stagg was not responsible for what he did. He had become a child in some ways. But a child is not absolutely selfish and may often be tenderhearted. Stagg was genuinely sorry and ashamed.

  Calthorp went to the French windows and looked out.

  “The street is alive with people and blazing with torches,” he said. “They must be having another shindig tonight.”

  Even to himself, he sounded false. He knew well enough that the Deecee were assembled for a ceremony which would have his captain as its guest of honor.

  “Skin-dig, you mean,” Stagg said. “These people stop at nothing when they hold a party. Inhibitions are discarded like last year’s snakeskin. And they don’t care who gets hurt.”

  Then he made a statement that surprised Calthorp.

  “I hope they get the party started soon. The sooner the better.”

  “For God’s sake, why?” Calthorp said. “Haven’t you seen enough to scare the living soul right out of your body?”

  “I don’t know. But there’s something in me that wasn’t there before. I can feel an eagerness and a power, a real power I’ve never known before. I feel... I feel... like a god! A god! I’m bursting with the power of all the world! I want to explode! You can’t know how I feel! No mere man could!”

  Outside, the priestesses screamed as they raced down the street.

  The two men stopped talking to listen. They stood like stone statues while they listened to the mock-fight between the priestesses and the Honor Guards. Then, the battle as the Elks beat off the priestesses.

  Then, the rush of feet in the hall outside their apartment, the crash as the Elks hit the doors with their bodies so violently they tore them from their hinges.

  Stagg was lifted on their shoulders and carried out.

  Just for a second, Stagg seemed to be his normal self. He turned and yelled, “Help me, Doc! Help me!”

  Calthorp could do nothing except weep.

  4

  There were eight of them: Churchill, Sarvant, Lin, Yastzhembski, Al-Masyuni, Steinborg, Gbwe-hun, and Chandra.

  These, together with the absent Stagg and Calthorp, were the ten survivors of the original thirty that had left Earth eight hundred years ago. They were congregated in the large recreation room of the building in which they had been kept prisoners for six weeks. They were listening to Tom Tobacco.

  Tom Tobacco was not his birth-name. What that was, none of them knew. They had asked, but Tom Tobacco had replied that he was not to mention it or hear it spoken. As of the day he had become Tom Tobacco, he was no longer a m
an but a dim. Apparently dim was the word for demigod.

  “If affairs had gone normally,” he was saying, “it would not be me talking to you but John Barleycorn. But the Great White Mother saw fit to end his life before Planting Rites. An election was held, and I, as chief of the great Tobacco frat, took his place as ruler of Deecee. And so I will be until I am too old and feeble—and then what will be will be.”

  In the short time that the starship personnel had been in Washington, they had learned the phonology, morphology, syntax, and basic vocabulary of standard Deecee speech. The machines in the laboratory of the Terra enabled them to speak Deecee with fluency although they could not utter the phonemes exactly as a native would, and probably never would. The structure of English had changed much; there were some sounds that had never been in English or even in its Germanic parent speech; there were many words that had come into being from unknown sources; a combination of stress and tone played an important part in meaning.

  Moreover, the lack of knowledge of Deecee culture impeded understanding. To add to the trouble, Tom Tobacco himself could not speak standard Deecee with much ease. He had been born and raised in Norfolk, Virginia, the southernmost city of the nation of Deecee. Nafek, or Norfolkese, differed as much from Wazhdin, of Washingtonese, as Spanish from French, or Swedish from Icelandic.

  Tom Tobacco, like his predecessor John Barleycorn, was a tall, thin man. He wore a brown plug hat, a breastplate made of stiff brown cloth in the shape of tobacco leaves, a brown cloak, a greenish kilt from which hung a two-foot-long cigar, and brown calf-length boots. His long hair was brown, his purely decorative spectacles were brown-tinted, and a big brown cigar was stuck in his tobacco-stained teeth. While he talked, he pulled cigars from a pocket in his kilt and passed them around the group. Everybody except Sarvant accepted them and found them excellent.

  Tom Tobacco blew out a thick cloud of green smoke and said, “You will be released as soon as I leave. Which will be soon. I am a busy man. I have many decisions to make, many papers to sign, many functions to attend. My time is not my own; it belongs to the Great White Mother.”