"Here," he said after a moment. "Take my left lapel in your right hand, like this, and my right sleeve in your left. Right. Now go ahead and try a throw."

  Smarting under my embarrassment of ignorance, I turned into the o-goshi hip throw Vonnie had taught me.

  Paul just stood there, unmoved. "Get down lower," he advised. "Pull on my sleeve."

  I bent my knees—I had forgotten that detail—pulled—and fell over backwards. Paul merely shook his head sadly.

  I got up and tried it again. I grabbed his lapel, pulled—and he made a little motion with one foot, tapped me on the shoulder, and I crashed down on my back again.

  "You need to keep your balance," Paul said mildly, making a little bow of dismissal.

  Balance. Yes.

  It seemed I still had a way to go for my 6 Dan dream.

  Chapter 2

  Strange Conquests

  I leaned back comfortably, my belly full of the crude but delicious native repast. The monkey stew had been good, and the roasted termites very tasty. The fermented-corn beer was weak, but there was plenty of it, and of course it was safer to drink than the water.

  Dulce had given up cautioning me about indulging; she was fed up in more than one sense and I was half-hypnotized by the flickering fire and the relief of finding help after isolation in the deep jungle.

  The small, grizzled Chief spoke a few words in his native language. I turned to Dulce, who had to interpret for me. "He says the tribe wishes to honor the White God," she explained.

  "Not by cutting off my head!" I protested, moderately alarmed. "These are headhunters, remember."

  "Reformed headhunters," she reminded me. Dizzy as I was, I noted again what a voluptuous woman she was, and how pretty her face was when she spoke. There were worse fates than being lost in the jungle with such a companion. And she had taken good care of me in my illness, too. I owed her a lot. "Anyway," she continued, "they don't decapitate friends. Only enemies. It should be safe for a White God like you." She smiled with momentary malice. "See that you behave like a god, not a devil."

  "What sort of honor is it?"

  "I don't know. Probably something they just cooked up, an instant ceremony to suit the occasion. They were quite impressed by your combat performance, you know."

  The Chief spoke again, smiling. "He says for you to go with him," Dulce said.

  I eased to my feet. "Okay, we'll come."

  But the Chief barred Dulce. "It seems this is a stag party," she said, just a bit nettled. "Go ahead, Jason; I'm sure it's safe. I'll relax here." And she settled back with a determined complacency.

  Stag party? My alcohol-fogged interest quickened. What would these hospitable primitives have, a dancing native girl bursting out of a nut-flour cake?

  I accompanied the Chief, and a dozen warriors fell in behind us. I was certainly glad the natives were friendly.

  We came to a large hut on the outskirt of the village, that I had not seen before. Its floor inside was covered by soft brush and dry moss, making a bouncy, fragrant mattress from wall to wall. And on this huge bed were five naked girls.

  The Chief spoke, augmenting his words by a pantomime of such suggestive nature that I could not fail to catch his meaning. He made motions of grasping, hugging, kissing, stroking and spreading, and he bucked his groin forward violently several times. It seemed I was being invited to patronize the royal harem.

  "Well, thanks, Chief," I said. "But I'm not really in the mood, and Dulce would be jealous, So if it's all the same to you—"

  The Chief grunted firmly, pointing at the nearest girl. The torchlight was not good, but she was evidently the pick of the tribe, maybe fifteen years old with heavy black hair, fine full breasts, nice little buttocks and good legs. Small—she could not have weighed more than a hundred pounds—but all the tribespeople were small. They lacked the advantage of civilized nutrition; in fact they probably went hungry often when the hunting was bad. Regardless, this girl was very comely.

  I looked around, squinting to see better in the irregular illumination of the interior brands. "Well, if it's really that important to you—" I did not regard myself as a promiscuous man, but sometimes protocol requires special activities. "But not in front of a crowd; we Caucasians prefer privacy."

  It seemed they understood a bit of English, or at least my tone, because the warriors shook their heads negatively and crowded closer. They intended to stay. And from their attitude I got the impression that this honor was not exactly voluntary; like the eating of bread together as a sign of friendship, it was a necessary formality. I had to perform in their presence, sharing my hero's seed with their tribe, in this manner becoming part of them.

  Well, there was nothing for it but to humor them. It was an honor: they thought enough of me to wish to perpetuate me within their tribe. And the girl was alluring, and I suspected something aphrodisiac had been added to the food, because I felt its effect. Or maybe it was the aroma of the scented torch. Supposedly primitive peoples can be remarkably sophisticated about matters of the flesh.

  Okay, if I had to do it, I'd do it right. I'd give them a show to remember. I might have felt otherwise if I had been sober, which is why I normally don't drink. Alcohol has a very liberating effect on me, to put it politely, perhaps because I am not used to it. But this was a unique situation.

  I stripped. After all, I entered judo matches in public; this wasn't that different. I focused on the girl's nether bifurcation, tantalizing in the flickering half-light, the shadows as suggestive as the visible portions, and felt my member swelling in response. There was a murmur of satisfaction among the men, then of awe; my member was in proportion to my size, but I was substantially larger than they were. Soon I was turgid as a blocked garden hose.

  I almost leaped on that poor girl. No finesse at all; I got down on her, thrusting between her widely spaced legs, holding her shoulders to keep her from sliding out from under. My member found the place and rammed home as her legs clasped about my waist, her ankles crossing and locking behind me. It was well that I wasted no time, for I came explosively the instant I touched bottom, pumping spurt after spurt deep into her body, my hips smacking into her thighs and buttocks with every urge.

  There was something very like applause from the watching warriors, as if I'd just performed a beautiful judo technique and won the match with an ippon. Well, that was close enough. I'd shown them what the White God could do, all right!

  I relaxed, but the girl did not. She must have been hurting inside from the sheer velocity and distention of my production, but she clutched me to her. She hauled my chest down to her breasts, flexing her thighs against me. And you know, my member, that had partially softened after the climax, began to engorge again. Maybe I was an exhibitionist at heart; ordinarily once was enough. But think what an impression I could make if I fired off two rounds in rapid order!

  Something shoved against my shoulder, knocking me over to the side. My contact with the girl was broken, and I fell on my back with my tumescent member projecting up. One of the other girls had done it, forcefully intervening.

  Now that girl plumped down on my crotch, pausing only to grasp my member and stuff it into her aperture. She was a solid girl, almost fat, with big soft buttocks and bulging tummy but still fairly good looking. She bounced on me, her big breasts slapping audibly with every jerk.

  I just lay there on my back, amazed, while she rode me like a horse. The spectators began clapping in unison with her motion—whomp, whomp, WHOMP! She rose so high and came down so hard I was afraid my member would slip out and get crushed under her pile-driving mass. I had a vision of it snapping in half, like a stepped-on stick. In self defense I had to follow her motions, bridging as she rose, keeping my lodging secure.

  And slowly I peaked again, my organ filling with liquid, swelling to huge proportion. The climax was not as sharp as before, but overall it was as powerful: like a locomotive steaming into a station, instead of a sport-car squealing to a stop.

&n
bsp; So the second girl was satisfied, and I was limp. I nudged her off, and she went.

  And a third girl came, short but well endowed. She got down to embrace me, her breasts dangling above my chin.

  Now ordinarily such a position would be most stimulating. I'm one of those males who regard naked breasts as natural playthings. But these had arrived on the scene just too late. "Hey, wait!" I protested. "I'm spent!"

  But she protested, grabbing hold of my exhausted member as though to knead it back to health and vigor. And the standing warriors raised their spears and made performance-motions.

  "Now hold on!" I said, forgetting that the girl was doing that already. "You can't expect me to—"

  They persisted. They expected. They had the spears. I was supposed to run the line of all five girls. Some honor! It seemed that when the White God honored this tribe, he was expected to do the whole job. Or else.

  What happened to gods who didn't make the cut? That was no difficult conjecture: obviously they were no longer considered to be gods. A fallen god become a devil, an enemy—and these people were headhunters.

  If I failed, it would not be from lack of initiative by the girl. She really wanted that White-God elixir; she was just about pulling the spigot out by the root.

  The Chief stepped forward, scowling. He didn't like suffering the embarrassment of presenting a fake god. He raised his hand in an incipient signal of negation. I was in trouble.

  Then I felt something strange but wonderful. It was a filling and hardening, something intangible flowing from my hara, the seat of my being in my belly, to my external member, suffusing it with new strength and substance and confidence.

  It was the ki, that mysterious force that imbued me with superhuman power at my greatest need. I had no real control over it, and had never anticipated its manifestation in this situation. Nevertheless, it was here, and suddenly I was formidable. My member swelled to such proportion and rigidity that it sprang out of the girl's hands, startling her. She gave a little shriek, as of one surprised by a striking snake, though that snake merely looked her in the eye.

  I rolled to my knees, caught her about the waist, and bore her back. She fell, her two legs going straight up in the air, and I pressed in from below, skewering her with my hugeness. The fit was tight, in this position, and her legs pressed against my chest and shoulders, pushing me back. But I thrust right on through, reaming out the channel and pumping it full of fluid.

  Ippon! Now the applause was deafening.

  I didn't wait for the fourth woman; I whipped out of the third one, letting her collapse like a punctured balloon, and dived for the next. Caught by surprise, she was on her stomach. No matter; I grabbed her by a buttock, heaved her up until she bent forward at the waist, and took her from the rear. My ki kept me charged; in moments I had filled her up, like a car getting gasoline. And the spectators were staring, awed.

  The last girl was the smallest, younger than the rest. In fact she was barely nubile, her breasts very slight and pointed, but her body was clean and firm. She looked about eleven, but that was in terms of my culture, where girls are well fed and mature early; she was surely several years older. I sat down, my legs spread straight out as in a preliminary judo exercise. I picked her up by the elbows, and set her down on me, dead center.

  This one, unlike the others, was virginal; I tried to be gentle, but my imperative would not be denied. I let her own weight impale her slowly on the stake, and when the resistance of her condition made her wince, I lifted her up again. I tried a second time, forcing a way into that constricted aperture, and again had to lift her up, while the warriors gaped. They'd never seen it done this way, and my supercharged member was simply too big for this child-sized girl.

  Then she wriggled and my left hand slipped, depriving her suddenly of support. She dropped hard, with a little scream, and the impalement was complete. I climaxed again, almost fearing that the force of my jets would shoot her through the roof, but of course nothing of the kind happened. I waited until the orgasm had spent its fury, all the greater for its confinement in that tight channel, then gently lifted her off me. My member was still hard. The tribesmen were exclaiming and slapping each other on the backs. I knew they had never seen anything like this. I stood up, my erection paramount. "Where's the rest of your women?" I demanded.

  "Jason!"

  It was Dulce, who had forced her way through the throng, alerted by the commotion. Shocked, she stared at me, seeing it all. It wasn't that she was squeamish about sex; she certainly wasn't. But she hated to see me make a complete fool of myself, and she was concerned about my health. With good reason, on both counts.

  Suddenly the ki drained out of me. My whole body went limp. I felt as if a gallon of blood had been sucked from me, and maybe it had. What had I been filling those five containers with? I looked at the girls, and was appalled. One was picking lice out of her long black hair and eating them; another had a set of toothmarks on one breast—mine, I was sure!—and a third smiled at me with her teeth filed to points. A piranha-mouth! Had I kissed her? She was not mature, she was old! The fat one was consumptive, hacking up phlegm. And the child-sized one was bleeding profusely from the genital injury I had dealt her. The room looked like a battlefield, complete with fat flies settling on the bodies. I felt sick, and not merely in the body. I had an awful premonition that I was about to suffer another gallstone attack. Dulce didn't even have to say "I told you so."

  I woke, sweating. This time I was glad to see the dull familiarity of my bachelor room. If this episode had been sheer imagination, I needed to find better things to think about. If it was a memory from my past life, I might have good reason for my amnesia. Running a line of willing women in front of a cheering crowd of headhunters? Impaling a childlike girl? It better be a dream!

  Yet somehow I suspected that it wasn't, even though it had gone like a parody of my prior dream about making the sixth degree black belt. That woman Dulce, for example—it was as though I actually knew her. And the jungle—almost it came back. I had been there, somewhere...

  No, impossible! Time to return to the real world, like Walter Mitty.

  The start of the second judo class was not so bad, as I now had some notion how to do the breakfalls and knew better than to attempt the forward roll. My shoulder still hurt, but I was able to function. I had made the plunge and invested in a gi; it was huge and stiff and baggy on me, and I felt like a walking sandwich-billboard.

  "Don't worry, it'll shrink," Steve assured me. I hoped so; it was hard to convince myself that the whole class was not staring at my clown-like aspect. On top of that, it chafed.

  "Back to back with your partner," Steve cried after the initial exercises were done.

  Huh? This was something new!

  People paired off and sat on the mat, leaning back against each other the way kids do at a picnic. Again I lacked a partner, and wasn't really too eager to find one. Suddenly my shoulder seemed to hurt worse; it had gradually intensified as the hours passed, last time; nothing seemed to be broken, but I didn't want to aggravate it.

  But again I was approached by a girl—not Vonnie, but a well-constructed black-haired lass. She wore no gi; instead she had jeans and a sweatshirt. She looked about twenty-two. Her name, it developed, was Terry, and she had not been to very many classes herself. That gave us a kind of camaraderie; we were both beginners.

  With so many teen-age green and brown belts sliding so easily through impossible contortions, it was a comfort to know that other beginners existed.

  We sat down back to back. "But what do we do?" I asked over my shoulder, my nose banging into her loose long hair. When I started out to learn judo, all of three days ago, the last thing I had anticipated was to find myself sitting in clothing like starched pajamas on a thirty-foot square mattress, leaning into an attractive young woman. This was martial art?

  "It's matwork," she explained. "Like wrestling. You try to get a hold-down."

  "Wrestling?" I thought I'd m
isheard. But indeed, now all the other couples were going at it vigorously, getting into all manner of tangles, clutching heads to chests, throwing thighs over faces, tearing jackets open, wedging forearms through crotches and lifting, sending belts flying loose, crushing each other to the mat, panting and groaning with effort.

  I looked at Terry.

  I just couldn't do it! First, and least important, I didn't know any hold-downs. Second, how could I wrestle with a girl? Anywhere I grabbed her...

  Maybe something similar occurred to her. "Okay," she said. "I'll hold you down and you try to get out of it."

  That suited me. Of course she would not be able to hold me down, but at least I could find out what the hold was like. I lay down on my back, and she put the kuzure yoko shiho gatame, or variation of the side four quarter hold on me. No, I didn't master its name until much later. All it was, basically, was her kneeling beside me, leaning over my chest, and wrapping her two arms around my far arm. There was very little weight on me; I was conscious of her two breasts pressing into my torso, but they were hardly burdensome.

  Then I tried to break the hold. It was the strangest thing: she had no real weight on me, but I couldn't get off my back. I don't care what others may think, I really was trying. No matter how I squirmed and struggled, she was right there, her hair flying across my face. I had no leverage, no way to sit up or turn over. I thrashed around for about two minutes, wearing myself out, before I finally got a hand against her knee, pushed it away, and twisted out from under.

  Later I learned that if a judo hold is maintained for thirty seconds, it's an ippon or victory for the holder. So I had really lost four times over.

  Suddenly I had a whole lot of respect for that hold.

  Next we practiced turning over a prone opponent. I still working with Terry. Steve demonstrated several ways to lever someone over, and it really wasn't complicated; anybody could do it.