"We junked the cars and had them melted in a yard by a man whomwe paidwell. We strained out the grail metal, as it were, and used the tinybits as a detector for those other cars that contained the metal. When one bit of grail isbrought close to the other, both glow. We no longer had to leave carsin front of your house, because we knew exactly what group of cars containedthe metal. We had to do some more bribing of authorities to get the owners'names, and itwas 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 exhauststhose who take part in the ceremony. But it has to be done."
Childe did not completely understand. He asked that Pao explaineverythingto him. This took an hour and a half with several questions still tobe asked.
Nor did he accept Pao's word that the Tocs were the evil ones andthe Ogsthe good. The Tocs could be evil, but if they were, they werecertainly matchedby the Ogs.
However, what the Ogs wanted of him was not something that he hadto refuse for the good of Earth. Far from it. If he took the Ogs to their homeworld, hewould be doing his world a vast service. He would never be rewardedby humansfor his heroism. In fact, if he were to bring his deeds to theirattention, hewould be put into an insane asylum.
There were several disturbing things about being a Captain. Onewas that he could return to Earth and there arrange to transport the Tocs totheir home planet, too. If the Ogs could scrap cars and make a grail, the Tocscould do the same. There were plenty of cars left for that purpose.
The Ogs must have thought of this possibility. What did theyintend doingabout it? He hated to ask them, because he was afraid of both thetruth and the lies. If they meant to kill him or hold him prisoner on their world, they wouldnot, of course, tell him so. And if he asked them about its, theywould know that he would have to be killed or imprisoned. Either way, he wouldlose.
"It will be glorious," Vivienne was saying. "When the Grail iscomplete, then you, my Captain, can materialize all the Ogs who are wanderingthe face of this planet as energy complexes."
Childe was startled, and he had thought he was beyond beingsurprisedanymore.
"You mean that I am expected to give all your, uh, dead, newbodies?" he said.
"You will enable them to give themselves their material bodies," she said.
"It will be a resurrection day for us," Pao said. His slantingvulpine eyesglowed. The light from the lamp was reflected redly in them.
"And just where will this resurrection, or rematerializing, orwhatever youcall it, take place?" Childe said.
"They will, materialize in the barn behind this house," Viviennesaid. "There is more than enough room, even with all the goods stackedthere."
"Approximately nine hundred of them," Pao said. "They won't bebrought intomatter all at once. You can control that, Captain. Ten or twenty orso at a time, and these will be conducted out of the place into this house orinto rooms in the barn."
Theologistics of resurrection day, he thought. And am I really asort 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, whowould not be materialized. And Pao must be trying to guess whatChilde was contemplating- How could he avoid the conclusion that the Tocs mightbe the goodones, if his own father was a Toc?
"Byron was a very talented but a very evil man," Pao said slowly. "Historydoes not reveal how evil, though there are hints. The world neverknew the storybehind the story, of course. If it had, it would have executed him. Iam sorryto say that about your father, but it has to be said. Fortunately foryou, wesaved you from the Tocs."
The implication was that they had also saved him from followingthe evil ways of his father.
"I have a lot of thinking to do," Childe said, "so I'd like to bealone. What are your plans for me today, if any?"
Pao spoke in an apologetic tone. "The Tocs will be gathering foran attack on this house. Time is more essential than ever because of this. We were hopingthat you would be quite rested by evening and ready for anotherGrailing."
"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. Sheturned to go, but Childe said, "One moment, Vivienne. Last night. Youknow what happened? I mean, are you conscious when you, uh, come apart?"
She said, "I must be dimly conscious. When I came to, all puttogether, Iremembered vaguely what went on. It was like a poorly remembereddream."
"Can you have an orgasm when you're disconnected?"
"Not that I remember. If you were getting revenge, you got a paleshade of it, just as I probably got a pale shade of orgasm."
Childe said, "I can understand even the weirdness of the others, since theyare known in folklore and superstition. But I have never heard ofyour type. Wasyour kind ever known among humans?"
Vivienne said, "If you're referring to my structure, to the thingin me, tomy discreteness, as I call it, no. I am unique. And I am recent. Iwas rematerialized in 1562. I had died in 1431 A.D., by presentreckoning. The thingin my womb died in 1440 A.D. He was my very good friend then in ourpublic humanlife and in our private Og life."
"That thing was human?" "Yes. You see, when we succeeded in rematerializing in 1562, weconstructed ourself in our present arrangement. We can do that within certainlimits, youknow. We have to conform to biological laws, but if you have greatknowledge youcan do things with matter that you humans would think impossible.
"We had talked about just such a symbiosis as this, where wecould double the intensity of our sexual activities. So we materialized with thisstructure. Only we made a mistake. I did, rather. I had an idea that if I couldbe separated into various parts, and these parts could also have asexual life, orgasm, that is, and the parts could communicate each other'sorgasms...well itdidn't work out that way."
Childe wondered if he was being told the truth. It seemed toofantastic. Would anybody deliberately build herself like this? Wasn't it morelikely thather enemies, the Tocs, had caught her as she and the thing wererematerializingand shaped her like this? He did not know why they would do it, butit was more probable that someone would do this to another for a sadistic jokethan that anyone would purposefully do it to herself.
"Both of us had very traumatic experiences in our fifteenth- century lives," she was saying. "He was hanged and burned at the same time, and I wasburned at the stake."
"You were a witch?" Childe said. "Then all the witches burned were not innocent?"
"Oh, no! I wasn't innocent, but I was not a witch in the sensethat myexecutioners thought. It was the English that burned me, you know."
"No, I didn't know," he said. "Who were you? Anybody I mightknow?"
"I think so." she said. "I was Joan of Arc. And the being in mywomb was Gilles de Rais."
CHAPTER 39
After the two Ogs had left, Childe lay down on the bed. Sybil hadheard onlythe last five minutes, so he went over the entire conversation withher. She said, "I always thought Joan of Arc was unjustly burned by theEnglish, that shehad been proved innocent of the charge of witchcraft?"