"Forry?" he said. The mud-covered lips parted to show mud-covered teeth. "Yeees?" "You're alive!" Childe said. And then, "How in bell did you get
here? What's
been going on?" "Help me up," Forry said. Childe hauled him up, but Forry got down on his knees and started
gropingaround. The headlights of the car came up over the top of the roadbelow them, and Childe could see much better. But he could see nothing that Forrymight begroping for.
"I had it! I had it!" Forry groaned. "What?" "The Grail! The Grail!" "You had it? How? Forry, tell me, what's going on?" Forry, feeling into the mud and uttering curses which were
completely out of character for him, told him.
Childe pulled him to his feet. "Listen, you'll never find it inthis mess. We better go into the house, if we can get into that mess, and lookfor our friends. If they are our friends."
Forry raised his head sharply. "What do you mean, if they are ourfriends?"
"How much do you and I really know about the Tocs?" Childe said. "They'vebeen nice to us, but then they have a reason to be so. Even the Ogsbecame better after they had a reason to get my cooperation. So..."
"I have to find that Grail," Forry said. "I want to go to theplanet of theTocs. It'll be the only chance I'll ever have!"
"All right, Forry," Childe said. "We'll get it somehow. I'd liketo have it, too, so I could settle this thing once and for all! But we'd bettersee who we can save. After all, Toc or Og, human or not, they feel pain, andthey're goingto need help."
The car had approached as closely as its driver dared. Fourpeople got outand walked through the mud to them. It took a few minutes ofquestioning by bothparties before it was established that the newcomers were Tocs. Theyhad been summoned from the other side of the world and had just managed to gethere.
"I wouldn't worry about finding it, Captain," the leader, Tish, said. "You can concentrate on it, and it will glow. The glow will come up eventhrough tonsof mud."
CHAPTER 44
The Tocs and the Ogs bad hired a hall.
Over two-thirds of the big dance floor of the American Legionpost had beenmarked off in squares. The remaining third was given over to thehundred or so surviving members of both groups. And to Childe, the Captain, theGrail and its pedestal. And to Forry Ackerman, who sat on one side to observe. Hewould participate in the ceremony but only as one caught in the sidewash ofradiation. When the time came for the voyaging, he would move into the directinfluence of the power and, if all went well, travel with the others to the stars.
Childe sat in a chair before the Grail. Beyond him the Tocs andOgs stood inranks of twelve abreast. They were naked. Everybody in the hall wasnaked.
They were here because Childe had ordered it. He had told themthat if both groups did not declare, and keep, a truce, he would destroy the Grailand would refuse to act as their Captain. If they agreed to keep the peace andto participate together, he would transport both groups to their homeplanets.
They did not take long in reaching an agreement.
Childe was still dubious about his ability to move them acrossintergalacticspaces and pinpoint the exact world for each. But he hoped that itwould work. It meant ridding the Earth of a number of monsters and potentialmonsters. He wished that he could also do this with others than the Tocs and the Ogs.
Hindarf and Pao had died under some heavy timbers and severaltons of mud. Tish had been elected master of ceremonies. It was he who had arranged that theauthorities did not investigate the ruins. With the spending of much money, hehad kept the police and others out of the area, and the Tocs and theOgs whosurvived had secretly buried the dead.
Now Tish called up the couples, one by one, to begin theceremony. Thesewere male and female with each couple composed of a Toc and an Og. There were about four females left over, and these were also to couple in thebeginning.
Male and female, they approached Childe and knelt before him. They touchedhis genitals and kissed his penis and then rose. He stared at theGrail while his cock became bigger with each kiss until it had reached its utmostrigidity. The Grail began to glow and to pulse. Its glow waxed and waned as thethrobbingsof his dong built up.
One by one they knelt and kissed or sucked his cock. Then theyreturned to their stations to wait, hand in band, or hand on cock or cunt, forthe last couple to return.
The light from the Grail grew brighter and brighter until itcould not be looked at directly by anybody but Childe. The light filled his eyesand his skull, but he could still see the Grail and the people beyond.
Finally. Tish approached Childe and knelt and stroked his ballsand cock and then kissed the glistening glands. Childe's body from behind hisnaval to his knees had turned to ice, and the peter was giving little jerks whilethe fluid moved more swiftly towards its exit. He beckoned to an exquisite Thaiwoman, aToc, and she ran to him and bent over to take his cock into hermouth. Immediately, the man who had been her partner came up behind her, gotdown between her legs, and buried his face in her cunt. Another woman gotdown on all fours and began sucking his dong; a man went down on her; a womancrawled between his legs and sucked on his peter; a man thrust his tongue upher slit; awoman got under him and started to work on the head of his penis withher mouth; and so forth. The result was a daisy chain with the woman on the endlying onher back blowing a man and nobody on her cunt.
Tish walked down the line of the grunting, moaning, smacking, writhing menand women. He straddled the last woman and let himself down, not tooeasily, into her slit.
But even while he was pumping away, Tish called out in a strangelanguage. He chanted, and Childe understood the words, though he was not ablelater to translate them.
Childe sat still and let the woman mouth his glands and run hertongue over his prick while the ecstasy mounted and mounted and mounted. Suddenly, he gave a little scream and spurted. The Grail seemed to burn; it shot out a pulsing light that drove away every shadow in the hall. Tish continued to chant. Apparently, he had not come yet. And then, as Childe's peter gave its final jerk and spurt, Tish cried out.
The air over the squares darkened. Little clouds formed. The airbecame verycold, chilling the hot and sweating bodies. There was a wind, as ifthe air was moving towards the clots of duskiness over each square. At first, theair moved gently, but within a minute it was whistling from every corner of thehall and rattling the windows. Dust from the floor rose up and whirled insmall cyclones.
The Grail continued to pulse dazzlingly, though Childe had ceasedto ejaculate. It did not obliterate the shadows above the squares; itseemed to make them darker.
The first one that Childe recognized was Igescu, the Toc whom hehad killed in his oak-log coffin by thrusting a sword through his heart. Afterwards, thebody had been burned to ashes in the fire of the great house.
Childe had never expected to see that long lean face with thehigh forehead, thick eyebrows, high cheekbones, and large eyes, nor the very longand skinnydick.
And there was Magda Holyani, the beautiful blonde weresnake. And there was Hindarf and beside him was Pao. They were all naked and all in their human form. And where was Dolores del Osorojo, the beautiful California-
Spanish "ghost" who had literally fucked herself back into a materialization of flesh and blood and bone, only to be killed and skinned by the Ogs?