Image of the Beast / Blown

  making a pact with the devil. It seemed that the Ogs

  really were evil, but then the Tocs might not be so good,

  either. It could be one band of devils fighting another.

  38

  Childe awoke with a feeling of emptiness and of shame.

  He looked at Sybil, who was sleeping by his side, and

  then he stared upward for a long time. Something had

  happened to him last night, or he presumed it was last

  night, since he did not know what time it was. His

  wristwatch was gone.

  As if a key had been turned in him, unlocking a mem-

  ory or releasing a programmed tape, he had gone

  through that ceremony without a false step or being told,

  really, what to do next.

  When he had evoked that pulsing light, he had felt an

  ecstasy that was superior, in some undefinable way, to

  that of sexual orgasm. It was difficult to untangle the sex-

  ual from the photonic, but a part of the glory had been

  from that goblet.

  That final incident, the one with Vivienne's unattached

  head, had seemed at the moment to be fully justified and

  exquisitely delightful. But this morning it looked ugly

  and perverted. He could not understand what had pos-

  sessed him.

  The hell of it was, he thought, that the next time he

  was seated before that goblet, he was likely to do the same

  thing or something equally uninhibited. He did not fool

  himself about that.

  The worst thing about this was that he was cooperat-

  ing with people—beings, rather—who were evil.

  But when he had been placed before that goblet, he

  had been unable to refuse to act. In a sense, the goblet

  had activated him more than he had activated it.

  What was supposed to be the final result of this cere-

  mony and of others that would undoubtedly follow it?

  He decided that he would refuse to do anything more

  unless everything was fully explained.

  He thought of Sybil. Would she be tortured if he re-

  fused to carry out the Ogs' desires? Knowing what he did

  of them, he could not doubt that they would do whatever

  they thought was required. And so Sybil would be ... He

  shuddered.

  Somebody knocked on the door. It was faint because

  the door was of such thick metal, but he was aware of it.

  His sense of hearing seemed to be sharper after last

  night's experiences. He rose, noting that he was naked and

  not caring, and went to the door. He rapped on it, and the

  door swung outward. Vivienne was standing there with

  Pao behind her.

  "You people are so technologically advanced, you

  could find some easier way to get my attention," he said.

  "You indicated you wanted privacy in your room,"

  Vivienne said. "So we polarized the one-way windows

  and turned off the TV monitor and the intercom."

  "That's nice of you," he said, thinking that they were

  really trying to sell him on how extremely nice they were.

  "Show me where this intercom is, and I'll contact you

  when I want you. And be sure to keep the other devices

  off."

  "What the Captain wishes ..." Pao murmured.

  "What I wish now, after a good breakfast, are answers

  to my questions."

  Pao said, "Of course," as if he was amazed that Childe

  could have any reason to think otherwise.

  "I'll see you in ten minutes," he said. "You'd better tell

  me where the breakfast room is. And leave the door un-

  locked."

  Pao looked embarrassed. He said, "I'm sorry indeed,

  my Captain, but you'll have to stay in here. It's for your

  own safety. There are evil people who want to hurt you.

  You cannot leave this room. Except for the Grailing, of

  course."

  "The Grailing?"

  "Growing that goblet. The Grail."

  "There is to be more of that?"

  "There is."

  "Very well then," Childe said. "I'm a prisoner."

  Pao bowed slightly and said, "A ward, Captain. For

  your own protection."

  Childe closed the door in their faces and woke up Sybil.

  She did not want to get out of bed, but he told her he

  wanted her to hear everything that would be said. He

  started towards the bathroom but stopped when he saw

  a hairy pointed head sticking out from under the bed. It

  looked vaguely like a sleeping black dog about the size

  of a Great Dane. He rapped it on its wet doggy nose,

  and it opened its eyes wide.

  "What the hell are you and what the hell are you doing

  under my bed?" he said.

  The eyes were a dark brown and looked familiar. But

  the animal that crawled out from under the bed was un-

  familiar. Its front part resembled a giant water spaniel,

  and the back part was monkeylike. It stood up on its

  semi-human feet and staggered over to a chair and sat

  down. It leaned its shaggy floppy-eared head on its two

  paws. The monkey part was hairy but not so hairy it en-

  tirely concealed a pair of human testicles and a warty pe-

  nis.

  "I was hungry," Childe said aloud. "But seeing you,

  whatever you are ..."

  He felt repulsed but not scared. The thing did not look

  dangerous, not, at least, at the moment. Its weariness and

  its big wet gentle eyes added up to harmlessness.

  One thing its presence did for him. It reaffirmed the

  sense of alienness, of unhumanity, about these people.

  Sybil did not seem frightened; he would have expected

  her to be screaming with hysteria.

  He said, "Was this your bed partner last night, Sybil?"

  "Part of the time," she said.

  "There was more than one?"

  The only one missing from the ceremony, as far as he

  knew, was Plugger.

  "I don't think so," she said. "He seemed to have

  changed into this about a half hour before we quit."

  He did not have to ask her what they had quit doing.

  "He said he was almost emptied," Sybil said. "He had

  been to the three Toc prisoners before he came to me. I

  suppose he buggered them, I mean, he applied his limp

  prick to their anuses and shocked them with the only

  pleasant shock that I know of. Then he came to me."

  Childe did not feel that he was in a position to rebuke

  her. What good would it do, anyway? She took sex

  where she found it and enjoyed it. And all the time pro-

  fessing that he was her only true love. The truth was, sex

  was her only true love. Impersonal sex.

  The unbelievable element in this was not so much the

  metamorphosis of Plugger into this dog-monkey thing as it

  was her calm acceptance of the metamorphosis. She

  should have been in a deep state of psychic shock.

  "Why did Plugger feel it necessary to stimulate the pris-

  oners?" he said.

  "He told me that everybody in the house had to be

  hooked into the Grading and that only if the prisoners

  and I had sex with an Og could this be done."

  A voice spoke from a jade statuette on a table against

  the wall near the bed: "Captain, is there anything you


  want?"

  "Yes!" he said, facing the statuette. "Get this thing out

  of here! Plugger is making me sick!"

  A moment later, the door swung out, and the blond

  man who had been first in the line entered. Behind him

  came two women holding trays. The man took one of

  Plugger's paws and led him out while the women served

  the food. The coffee was excellent, and the bacon and eggs

  and toast and cantaloupe were delicious.

  While he ate, he looked steadily at Sybil. She chattered

  on as if unaware of his scrutiny. She had certainly ac-

  quired a set of stainless steel nerves during her long im-

  prisonment.

  After breakfast, she went into the bathroom to fix her-

  self up for the day, as she put it. Pao and Vivienne en-

  tered. The first thing she did was to get onto her knees

  before him, murmuring, "Your permission, Captain!" She

  kissed the head of his penis.

  He did not object. When in Rome, and so on. The cus-

  tom certainly beat that of kissing the hand of royalty.

  Pao touched his penis with one finger, also murmuring,

  "Your permission, Captain."

  That was where the power and the glory were stored,

  Childe thought. No wonder that Igescu and Grasatchow

  and Dolores del Osorojo and Magda Holyani had been

  unable to resist using him sexually. The Ogs were sup-

  posed to have left him alone to develop into something,

  according to what he had garnered from the brief conver-

  sation between Vivienne and the leader of the three who

  had rescued him from her.

  He wondered if the two werewolves had intended to

  kill him, as he had thought when they attacked. Maybe

  they had only meant to herd him back to his prison. And

  when he had been jumped by that wereleopard while he

  was killing Igescu in his oak-log coffin, she may have just

  been trying to drive him away.

  It was obvious now that he was supposed to develop

  into a Captain. But there were a number of questions to

  which he required answers. For one thing, what about

  those abandoned cars in front of his house?

  Vivienne said, "Several years ago, we had about half

  of a grail in our possession. It was the result of several

  thousands of years collecting the materials needed to

  make the metal. Then the Tocs stole it. We pursued

  them and cornered the one with the grail after killing his

  two companions. He had run into a railroad yard to get

  away from us, and when he saw he could not escape,

  he threw the grail into a gondola full of junk. At that

  time, we did not know that. Later, we got the informa-

  tion from him."

  "I can imagine," said Childe, closing his eyes and

  shuddering.

  "By then, the grail and the junk had gone into a steel

  mill furnace. We had to do some very intense detective

  work, very expensive, too, and we found that that par-

  ticular load had ended up as metal in a certain num-

  ber of cars of a certain make and model. So ..."

  "But you did not know which cars exactly?" Childe

  said. He was beginning to understand.

  "Luckily, they were cars which were transported to

  this area. We had narrowed the number to about three

  hundred. And so we started to steal them and leave

  them in front of your house. We were lucky, very lucky.

  Three of the cars contained traces of the metal in the

  grail. They activated when you went near them, but you

  couldn't see that because the paint hid the glow, which

  was extremely feeble, anyway.

  "We junked the cars and had them melted in a yard

  by a man whom we paid well. We strained out the grail

  metal, as it were, and used the tiny bits as a detector for

  those other cars that contained the metal. When one bit

  of grail is brought close to the other, both glow. We no

  longer had to leave cars in front of your house, because

  we knew exactly what group of cars contained the metal.

  We had to do some more bribing of authorities to get

  the owners' names, and it was impossible to steal all the

  cars.

  "But we got enough to act as a seed for the growth of

  more metal. It is a procedure that is terribly tiring for

  the Captain. And it exhausts those who take part in the

  ceremony. But it has to be done."

  Childe did not completely understand. He asked that

  Pao explain everything to him. This took an hour and a

  half with several questions still to be asked.

  Nor did he accept Pao's word that the Tocs were the

  evil ones and the Ogs the good. The Tocs could be evil,

  but if they were, they were certainly matched by the Ogs.

  However, what the Ogs wanted of him was not some-

  thing that he had to refuse for the good of Earth. Far

  from it. If he took the Ogs to their home world, he would

  be doing his world a vast service. He would never be

  rewarded by humans for his heroism. In fact, if he

  were to bring his deeds to then attention, he would be

  put into an insane asylum.

  There were several disturbing things about being a

  Captain. One was that he could return to Earth and

  there arrange to transport the Tocs to their home planet,

  too. If the Ogs could scrap cars and make a grail, the

  Tocs could do the same. There were plenty of cars left

  for that purpose.

  The Ogs must have thought of this possibility. What

  did they intend doing about it? He hated to ask them,

  because he was afraid of both the truth and the lies.

  If they meant to kill him or hold him prisoner on their

  world, they would not, of course, tell him so. And if he

  asked them about it, they would know that he would

  have to be killed or imprisoned. Either way, he would

  lose.

  "It will be glorious," Vivienne was saying. "When the

  Grail is complete, then you, my Captain, can materi-

  alize all the Ogs who are wandering the face of this

  planet as energy complexes."

  Childe was startled, and he had thought he was beyond

  being surprised anymore.

  "You mean that I am expected to give all your, uh,

  dead, new bodies?" he said.

  "You will enable them to give themselves their ma-

  terial bodies," she said.

  "It will be a resurrection day for us," Pao said. His

  slanting vulpine eyes glowed. The light from the lamp

  was reflected redly in them.

  "And just where will this resurrection, or rematerial-

  izing, or whatever you call it, take place?" Childe said.

  "They will materialize in the barn behind this house,"

  Vivienne said. "There is more than enough room, even

  with all the goods stacked there."

  "Approximately nine hundred of them," Pao said.

  'They won't be brought into matter all at once. You can

  control that, Captain. Ten or twenty or so at a time, and

  these will be conducted out of the place into this house

  or into rooms in the barn."

  Theologistics of resurrection day, he thought. And am

  I really a sor
t of god?

  "Will Lord Byron, my real father, be among them?"

  he said.

  Pao said, "Oh, no. You forget that …"

  He did not want to continue. No wonder. Byron would

  be among the Tocs, who would not be materialized. And

  Pao must be trying to guess what Childe was contem-

  plating. How could he avoid the conclusion that the

  Tocs might be the good ones, if his own father was a

  Toc?

  "Byron was a very talented but a very evil man,"

  Pao said slowly. "History does not reveal how evil,

  though there are hints. The world never knew the story

  behind the story, of course. If it had, it would have ex-

  ecuted him. I am sorry to say that about your father, but

  it has to be said. Fortunately for you, we saved you from

  the Tocs."

  The implication was that they had also saved him from

  following the evil ways of his father.

  "I have a lot of thinking to do," Childe said, "so I'd

  like to be alone. What are your plans for me today, if

  any?"

  Pao spoke in an apologetic tone. "The Tocs will be

  gathering for an attack on this house. Time is more

  essential than ever because of this. We were hoping that

  you would be quite rested by evening and ready for

  another Grailing."

  "See me after dinner," he said.

  Pao bowed and Vivienne started to suck his cock

  again, but he stopped her.

  "I'll save my power."

  Pao looked pleased at this, but the woman frowned

  and bit her lip. She turned to go, but Childe said, "One

  moment, Vivienne. Last night. You know what hap-

  pened? I mean, are you conscious when you, uh, come

  apart?"

  She said, "I must be dimly conscious. When I came to,

  all put together, I remembered vaguely what went on.

  It was like a poorly remembered dream."

  "Can you have an orgasm when you're disconnected?"

  "Not that I remember. If you were getting revenge,

  you got a pale shade of it, just as I probably got a pale

  shade of orgasm."

  Childe said, "I can understand even the weirdness of

  the others, since they are known in folklore and super-

  stition. But I have never heard of your type. Was your

  kind ever known among humans?"

  Vivienne said, "If you're referring to my structure, to

  the thing in me, to my discreteness, as I call it, no. I am