Philip Jose Farmer
Image of the Beast
CHAPTER 1
Green milk curdled.
Smoke rose to the light, and smoke and light fused to becomegreen milk. Themilk fissioned to become smoke and darkness above. As below.
Smog was outside, and smog was inside. Green and sour. The green and sour odor and taste came not only from the smog,
which had forced its tendrils into the air-conditioned building, nor from thetobacco plumes in the room. It came from memory of what he had seen thatmorning andanticipation of what he would see within the next few minutes.
The film room of the Los Angeles Police Department was darkerthan Herald Childe had ever seen it. The beam of light from the projection boothusuallytended to make gray what otherwise would have been black. But thecigar andcigarette smoke, the smog, and the mood of the viewers, blackenedeverything. Even the silver light from the screen seemed to pull light in insteadof castingit back at the viewers.
Where the beam overhead struck the tobacco fumes, green milkformed and curdled and soured. So thought Herald Childe. The image was unforced. The worst smog in history was smothering Los Angeles and Orange counties. Not amouse of a wind had stirred for a day and a night and a day and a night. On thethird day, it seemed that this condition might go on and on.
The smog. He could now forget the smog.
Spread-eagled on the screen was his partner (possibly ex- partner). Thewine-red draperies behind him glowed, and Matthew Colben's face, normally as redas Chianti half-diluted with water, was now the color of atransparent plasticbag bulging with wine.
The camera swung away to show the rest of his body and some ofthe room. He was flat on his back and nude. His arms were strapped down beside himand his legs, also strapped down, formed a V. His penis lolled across hisleft thighlike a fat drunken worm.
The table must have been made for just this purpose of tying downmen with their legs separated so others could walk in between the legs.
There was only the Y-shaped wooden table, the thick wine-red carpet, and thewine-red draperies. The camera swept around to show the circle ofdraperies andthen turned back and swooped up to show the full form of MatthewColben as seen by a fly on the ceiling. Colben's head was on a dark pillow. Helooked straightup at the camera and smiled sillily. He did not seem to care that hewas bound and helpless.
The previous scenes had shown why he did not care and haddemonstrated how Colben had progressed, through conditioning, from impotent fear torigidanticipation.
Childe, having seen the complete film once, felt his entrailsslip abouteach other and knot each other and, their tails coiled around hisbackbone, pulluntil they were choking each other.
Colben grinned, and Childe murmured, "You fool! You poor fuckingfool!" The man in the seat on Childe's right shifted and said, "What'd
you say?" "Nothing, Commissioner." But his penis felt as if it were being sucked back up into his
belly and drawing his testicles after it.
The draperies opened, and the camera moved in to show a hugeblack-rimmed, long-lashed, dark-blue eye. Then it moved down along a straightnarrow nose and broad, full, and bright red lips. A pink-red tongue slipped outbetween unnaturally white and even teeth, shot back and forth a few times, dropped abead of saliva on the chin, and then disappeared.
The camera moved back, the draperies were thrust open, and awoman entered. Her black glossy hair was combed straight back and fell to her waist. Her face was garish with beauty patches, rouge, powder, green and red andblack and azure paint around the eyes and a curl of powder-blue down her cheeks, artificial eyelashes, and a tiny golden nose-ring. A green robe, tied at herneck and waist, was so thin that she might as well have been naked. Despitewhich, sheuntied the cords about the neck and waist and slid the robe off and showed that she could be even more naked.
The camera moved downward and closer. The hollow at the base of the neck was deep and the bones beneath hinted at exquisiteness. The breasts werefull but not large, slightly conical and up-tilted, with narrow and long, almost sharp, nipples. The breasts were hung upon a large rib cage. The belly sankinward; shewas skinny about the hips, the bones stuck out just a little. Thecamera went round, and she pivoted--Childe could not tell which because thecamera was so close to her and he had no reference point. Her buttocks were likehugeunshelled soft-boiled eggs.
The camera traveled around her, showing the narrow waist andovoid hips andthen turned so that it was looking up toward the ceiling--which wascovered with a drape-like material the color of a broken blood-vessel in adrunkard's eye. The camera glanced up her white thigh; light was cast into the hollowbetween the legs--she must have spread her legs then--and there was thelittle brown eyeof the anus and the edge of the mouth of her vagina. The hairs wereyellow, which meant that the woman had either dyed her head hairs or herpubic hairs.
The camera, still pointing upward, passed between her legs--whichlooked like the colossal limbs of a statue now--and then traveled slowlyupward. Itstraightened out as it rose and was looking directly at her pubes. These were partly covered by a triangular cloth which was taped on. Childe didnot know why. Modesty certainly was not the reason.
He had seen this shot before, but he braced himself. The firsttime, he--incommon with the others in the room--had jumped and some had sworn andone had yelled.
The cloth was tight against the genitals, and a shift in angle oflightingsuddenly revealed that the cloth was semitransparent. The hairsformed a dark triangle, and the slit took in the cloth enough to show that thecloth was tightagainst the slit.
Abruptly, and Childe jumped again even though he knew what wascoming, thecloth sank in more deeply, as if something inside the vagina hadspread the lipsopen.
Then something bulged against the cloth, something that couldonly have comefrom within the woman. It thrust the cloth up; the cloth shook as ifa tiny fistor head were beating against it, and then the bulge sank back, andthe cloth was quiet again.
The Commissioner, two seats away from Childe, said, "What thebell could that be?" He blew out cigar smoke and then began coughing. Childecoughed, too.
"It could be something mechanical up her cunt," Childe said. "Orit could be..." He let the words, and his thoughts, hang. No hermaphrodite, asfar as he knew, had a penis within the vaginal canal. Anyway, that wasn't apenis slidingout; that looked like an independent entity--gave the feeling of one, rather--and certainly the thing had beat against the cloth at morethan one place.
Now the camera swung around at a level a few inches above Colbenand several feet in front of him. It showed the feet, seemingly enormous at thisnarrow distance, the thickly muscled and hairy calves and thighs spread outon the Y-shaped table, the big testicles, the fat worm of the penis, nolonger lollingagainst the thigh but beginning to get fatter and to lift its swollenred head. Colben could not have seen the woman enter, but he had evidently beenconditioned so that he knew she would come in within a certain time after he was strapped to the table. The penis was coming to life as if its ears-buried within the flesh like a snake's--had heard her or as if the slit in its head were a detector of body heat--like an adder's nose pits--and it knewthat she was in the room.
The camera moved to one side so that it could start with the profile ofMatthew Colben's head. The thick curly gray-and-black hair, the bigred ears, the smooth forehead, the big curved nose, the thin lips, massivejawbone, chinthick and heavy as the head of a sledge, big fat chest, the outcurveof a paunchgrown with much stuffing of steak and beer, the down-curve to thepenis, nowfully up and swollen and hard. The camera moved in for a close shot; the veins were ropes run into the lanyard of lust (Childe could not helpthinking in suchimages; he fingered concepts with a Midas touch). The head, fullyexposed, glistened with lubricating fluid.