Climbing up the oak logs to the top of the structure did not thaw me much. The ascent was not easy because of the partial paralysis and because the logs were slimy. I don’t know what was the ultimate fate of anyone who slipped back into the water and then could not make the climb.
Caliban and I got to the top at the same time. At the low-voiced direction of the Speaker, we stood side by side and faced Anana across the table. She looked even more wrinkled than I remembered her, as if Time had folded up her face like a bag and then, changing his mind, had unfolded it to give her a chance to live longer. The dark blue eyes in that face like a fist were bright, however. And deep. The many thousands of years had drilled far into the region behind the eyes. There was something ineffably sphinx-like about her, and, at the same time, something unidentifiable. That nameless quality was frightening. She, and three others of the Nine, are the only human beings that ever made me feel touched with fear. These four may not be human. When a man lives past a thousand years, he may become more—or less—than human.
Anana’s voice was a whisper. She spoke in English with echoes of a tongue that perished long before bronze was invented.
“What is your quarrel with him, Grandrith?”
I believed that she knew very well what my quarrel was. She probably knew far more than I, since she would also have the facts about Caliban. Also, I was beginning to wonder if she was not, in part at least, responsible for the state in which Caliban and I were enmeshed.
The Speaker bellowed out her question. The words flew back from the distant walls like invisible bats.
I said, “Caliban attacked me without provocation.”
Out of the corner of my eye, I saw the bronze figure shudder a little.
“Did you, Caliban?”
The Speaker shouted her words.
“No. He lies.”
The Speaker repeated in a voice like a bull’s, “No. He lies!”
I was beginning to get irritated by the thunderish repetitions and the bat-like echoes, which seemed to jeer. Ordinarily, such things do not bother me. The unusualness of the ceremony, its unknown and possibly sinister development, the irrational motives for Caliban’s hatred, my desire to kill him and get him out of the way, and my nervousness to get to England to protect Clio combined to make me abnormally sensitive.
Anana said, “Why did you attack Grandrith?”
“He raped and murdered my cousin, Trish Wilde.”
“You know this to be a fact?”
“She was with a botanical expedition near the Uganda-Kenya border. A naked man ran into the camp at night, knocked Trish out, and carried her off. Some of the natives identified the man as Grandrith. They tried to follow but lost the trail. They did run across two natives who had seen Grandrith raping my cousin.”
He paused, and a sound like a suppressed sob came from him.
“They interrupted him; he took off with Trish over his shoulder, running like an antelope. She’s a big woman, weighs 150 pounds. Who else could carry her off like that? And then Trish’s colleagues found her two days later . . . what was left . . . the hyenas and the vultures . . .”
He drew in a deep breath, but his face was expressionless.
“There must have been enough to identify her.”
“Only bones. Her skull was missing. But the bones were those of a Caucasian female of her age, that is, twenty-five, in appearance. Actually, she’s sixty.”
“The skull was never found?”
“No. It’s presumed a hyena or perhaps a leopard carried it off.”
“Do you know anything of Grandrith?” Anana said.
“Until 1948, I had thought he was a writer’s creation, a character in a series of fantastic novels,” Caliban said. “Not until then did I find out, by accident, that there was a factual basis to the fictions. I was curious and did some investigating through agents. I learned some things about him, not much, but enough to make me suspect that he was one of us. I did not follow up the investigation because I became occupied with other matters.”
“Your brain transplant experiments,” Anana whispered. She smiled a terrible smile, and she extended two fingers of her left hand. This was a sign to the Speaker not to repeat her words.
“We have learned a number of things about you recently. We suspect that you have also been researching with the idea of independently producing the elixir. So far, you have not succeeded. And we have good reason to think that you will never succeed. But this does not displease us. We have not forbidden our servants to try to make their own elixir. And if you had not tried, you would not have come up to our expectations of you.
“However, that is not my main point. I point out to you that your investigation showed that Grandrith was, in many respects, like you. You are undoubtedly the two greatest athletes that the world has produced for several thousand years. Which is the greatest remains to be tested. You two even resemble each other facially, though your different coloring tends to conceal it.”
This was a long speech in public for one of the Nine. I wondered what she was getting at—or to—but did not say anything, of course.
She leaned forward and stretched out her skinny arms with the great veins like asphyxiated snakes. She said, “Come closer.”
We, knowing what was expected, moved until our thighs pressed against the table edge and our testicles rested on the surface. My flesh had wanned up, but when Anana’s hand cupped my testicles, they felt cold indeed. It seemed to me that anyone whose blood flowed that slowly could not have long to live.
I did not flinch. I had never flinched when she had done this, even though I knew what she would soon be doing.
Then I saw that this procedure might be different. Certainly, she could not use a sharp flint knife on me with the other hand since it was holding Caliban’s testicles.
She lifted the sacs as if she were estimating the weight and worth of meat in grocery bags. She said, “They are noble indeed. And warm with life. How many . . .?”
Her voice trailed off. She looked up and smiled. Her teeth were black. Not from rottenness but from something she chewed. It was not betel; its odor was unidentifiable. I suspected that once all her people chewed this plant and that the plant had become extinct except in some garden in some very private well-guarded house somewhere.
“Today,” she said, “you will not have to give up part of your flesh to the knife. You will eat with us in preparation for your contest. The next time we meet here to eat, only one of you will be at this table. Or at any table.”
Apparently, there was to be no more discussion of our grievances or any arbitration of our case. They did not care who was wrong or wronged. They probably did not even acknowledge that wrong existed except in human minds. I say human because I do not think that they thought of themselves as human. Though they could die, they must have considered themselves as gods. No human could live that long and have such power and not think himself divine.
Would I, if I became one of the Nine, come to think as they?
Severed though I am from most human attitudes, or I should say, loosely connected, I still fully share some. The infrahuman has not entirely eaten out the human in me. I feel a certain—or uncertain—amount of sympathy and empathy for humans, for some humans. I would not wish to become even more alienated. I knew how it felt to see those with whom I most identified die away. As far as I knew, The Folk, never numerous, had become nothing.
“It has been two thousand years since this preseating ceremony was held,” she said.
She gestured at the lean, dark-bearded, scimitar-nosed man with the ram’s head. I had heard him speak of Caesar Augustus, Tiberius, and Herod Antipas when I was Speaker.
“At that time, Grandrith, your ancestral island was inhabited by the tattooed British and Picts and your English ancestors still lived in what was to be later called Denmark. And as for America, Doctor Caliban, no one knew of it—except the Nine and their servants. We kept the Phoenicians and the Romans and the Saracens fro
m following up their discovery of the Americas, and we aborted the Norse colonization. We were thinking for a while about establishing an Iroquois-Cherokee empire. The first Europeans would have found a united people armed with fire arms and riding horses. But the final decision was to let things happen as they would.
“The point is that when the last vacancy occurred, when Thrithjaz died . . .”
That would be Primitive Germanic for third, I thought.
“. . . neither the English nor the Americans existed as such. But times change, even for us, and we have seen many nations and tongues born and die.”
She lifted a finger at the Speaker. He directed me to stand at the far right, by the wrinkled, squat Negro with the hyena headpiece and Caliban at the far left, by the man with the ram headpiece. The Speaker then thudded the butt of the staff and began calling out names.
The ceremony was like those I had attended at one of the “eaten” and directed when I was Speaker. There were differences, however. Before, Anana had always fed first. Now, Caliban and I were treated as guests of honor. Anana took the testicles of a big moustachioed man with her left hand and cut the scrotum on one side with a long-bladed flint knife. The man looked down and did not look away even when the pinkish egg-shaped gland rolled out on the table. His dark skin did become pale and then gray; sweat rolled down his body; he gripped the table edge as if he were trying to leave his fingerprints in the wood.
As the Speaker, I had seen him go through this before and did not expect him to faint and fall off the structure into the cold black waters. I have seen some men faint. No one helps them. Usually, the water shocks them back into consciousness and most climb back up, however painful the ascent. Several could not, or would not, climb again. The guards took these away, and I never saw them again.
The ceremony must have been originated in the Old Stone Age, perhaps 300,000 years ago or more. It was probably old when Anana was born.
Anana picked up the testicle and placed it on the table before her after smelling it. The Speaker had stepped over the table; he now came around and smeared ointment from a jar onto the wound. While he did this, he chanted a few lines in an unknown language. The bleeding, which was not great, stopped altogether. Anana handed her stone cup to the Speaker, who gave the man a mouthful of the liquid. This tastes like mead to me, but I do not think it is. The pain would be gone within five minutes. Inside a month, provided the man got the proper food and rest, the testicles would be regrown. Not only did the elixir provide a prolonged youth and freedom from disease, it gave regenerative powers.
Anana sliced the gland into twelve more or less equal slices. She sent one to me via the Speaker and one to Caliban. One piece was thrown into the water and one was placed before the empty chair. Each of the Nine took a slice and ate it raw. I chewed and swallowed mine with gusto, because the testicle is one of the few pieces of human meat worth eating.
The moustachioed man, dismissed by the Speaker, climbed down slowly and painfully. The second person called was on top of the structure before the first had waded out through the waters.
26
I had only to turn my head to see Caliban because the table was curved and we sat, as it were, at the ends of opposite horns of a crescent moon. His face was expressionless; it did not show the repulsion I would have expected from a civilized man. Either he was in strong control of his emotions, which would agree with what his two colleagues said, or he was genuinely indifferent to, or perhaps even enjoying, the meat.
I was disappointed. I would have liked to have seen his disgrace himself by vomiting.
The next person summoned was a beautiful mulatto. Her hair was black and kinky, au naturel, and her skin was as dark as a wild hare’s eye. The eyes were a startling light blue. She was the wife of the Speaker and had disappeared with him when the explosion blew up the yacht. I recognized her because she had attended the ceremonies when I did. I had bedded her not infrequently and had, of course, tongued her all over.
I think Anana knew this. She seemed to know everything about us as if she were God and we were Her sparrows. Thus she knew I would have no objections to performing the ceremony with her. Caliban, however, was a white American born in 1903 and so more than probably had the usual conditioned reflexes of his “class.” This may be why Anana designated Myra to go to him. If he did have any objections, he did not reveal them by expression.
He extended a hand to help her get up on the table, picked her up as if she were a hollow dummy and placed her on her back. She put her legs over his shoulders, and he spent some time with his face buried against the thick stiff hairs I knew so well and the slit dripping with honey-thick lubricating fluid.
Myra made an attempt to respond. She writhed and moaned a little, but I doubted that she was doing anything except acting. She must have been too tense to relax. The only woman whom I thought could in reality let loose and have an orgasm during this ceremony was the Danish giantess. I’m sure that the final act hurt her just as much as any of the women, but she could live for the moment as few can.
Finally, Caliban bit down. The woman stiffened, her fists driving the nails into the skin. (I saw the blood on the tips and palms when she got up.) Her feet bent and turned inward and her toes clenched. Her jaw clamped shut to keep the scream inside, although the Nine had not forbidden screaming.
Caliban lifted her up. He had some blood on his juice-smeared lips and chin, and he was chewing the clitoris. The Speaker, his face set, smeared some ointment on her wound. Myra, gray beneath the brown skin, walked across the table unsteadily and climbed painfully off the table and down the logs of the structure.
This was the first time that I had seen a husband and wife in the caverns at the same time. I thought that it must be rather hard on him to watch her with Caliban; I do not think that I could control my jealousy if Clio were doing this in front of me with him. I would have tried to kill him—perhaps. I knew that Clio was doing what the other women were doing. A man or a woman cannot keep their youth and vitality forever without wanting some variety, and I did not expect her to be a saint. But I also did not want to know what she was doing, even hear about it, let alone see it.
It may be that the Nine were punishing him for some reason. Or perhaps they were testing him.
I was given the honor of eating the next woman, a beauty from the Punjab. My experience in biting off clitorises was nil, but I succeeded quickly. The clitoris, aside from the delicious scent and taste of the moisture and fluid of a healthy woman’s vagina, tasted like the man’s testicle.
After her, a man was called up. His testicle was cut out and sliced and the pieces passed around. This time, each of us took only a small bite and then threw the remainder on the floor behind us. It was evident that we could not eat all the flesh of 47 people. The Nine had pets in their private chambers who would eat what we could not.
The third person called was Clara, and Anana licked at her until she came and then bit off the clitoris.
After that, the ceremony went swiftly with no foreplay for the women. There were too many to spend time dawdling.
At the end, the 47 men and women were sitting or standing on the slope across the waters. A few groaned. Several had passed out after making it back, but all regained consciousness and walked out, unaided, when the Speaker dismissed them. They were free to leave. Most would not hear from the Nine until the summons came for the yearly payment of flesh or their turn to be the Speaker.
Aside from these normal duties, I had heard from the Nine only seven times in 48 years. I was required to carry out assignments in Thailand, Rhodesia, Brazil, Czechoslovakia, the States, Jerusalem, and Berlin. One occupied me a year, during which I did not see my beloved Clio. I performed all missions to the full satisfaction of the Nine, although I came close to being killed several dozen times. Each assignment would have made a splendid book for my biographer. He never heard of them, of course, and he would have been forced to heavily censor them if he had. And he would have been hor
rified at the manner in which I did some things.
After the cavern was cleared of all but those on the oaken island, there was silence. The only sound was the sputtering of torches and an occasional licking of blood from lips and chins. The odor of blood and saliva and sweat and clitorises and testicles was strong. Caliban was gazing malignantly at me. I stared at him for a moment and then looked away, since I did not want to indulge in a childish I-can-outstare-you contest.
Finally, Anana rustled her robes and said, “You two have experienced some very disturbing, highly abnormal reactions lately, haven’t you?”
Simultaneously, we said, “Yes.”
“Caliban,” she said. “Doctor Caliban. What is your explanation?”
His slight smile showed that he had caught the sarcasm. He said, “I have no answer, except . . .”
“Continue.”
“The elixir may have something to do with it.”
He pointed at the stone cups and the stone pitcher with which the Speaker refilled the cups. That gesture meant that he believed that the elixir was in the mead-tasting liquid. He did not know that it was. None of the servants knew. We supposed that it was because we were given nothing else special to drink. The Nine referred to the elixir without telling us when we were getting it.
“I can’t believe that any psychobiological mechanism could suddenly start operating after all these years unless it were released by the long-term action of the elixir. Of course, the mechanism must have been deeply buried in me, although I had not the slightest inkling that it existed. Grandrith also seems to be suffering from a similar aberration. Since he has been taking the elixir, too, it offers the only element common to us.