He saw her in a square in the middle of the crowd. She wassmiling at him, and her hips were rotating as if she were relishing the memory oftheir times together.
The air warmed up, and the wind ceased.
The hall was filled with many voices. The living and the recentlydead were chattering, yelling, laughing.
Tish waited for five minutes and then shouted for silence.
It came slowly and reluctantly, because the Tocs and the Ogs werehuman in that they had to express their emotions.
"Now for the voyaging!" Tish shouted.
They all faced him expectantly. Childe noted, out of the cornerof his eye, Forry sitting on his chair. His eyes were bulging out, and he wascovered with sweat. Childe did not know whether this reaction was caused by theceremony hehad just seen or the thought of the trip.
It was up to him whether or not he went along. If he decided to go, he justhad to move from the side of the hall to the middle of the floor, andhe would be taken along automatically.
Tish had not liked the idea that Forry was not participating inthe ceremony, but he admitted that his noninvolvement would reduce theeffect of the Grail by only a negligible amount.
Tish indicated that a woman should bring up a bowl with a darkliquid in it. She took a position by Childe after kissing his penis and the secondceremonybegan immediately. She sprinkled his genitals with a few drops of thedark liquid before each person kissed his peter. Tish stood on the otherside and every third person dipped his finger into the bowl and passed it overChilde's lips. The stuff tasted like honey with a trace of rancid cottagecheese. When the bowl was empty, Tish signaled for it to be refilled, and theceremony wenton.
The Grail kept on pulsing brightly. Its white light was beginningto affect Childe. He did not become blind or any less able to see what wasgoing on aroundhim. But he was receiving flashes of strange scenes. Usually thesewere seen as if he was standing on the surface of a planet, but several times hewhizzed by astar burning redly, greenly, or amberly. He seemed to be no more thana hundred thousand miles from the great luminaries. Despite the brightness andnearness, he felt no heat, only a bone-crystallizing cold.
Tish began to chant in the foreign language. Childe beckoned toDolores, whoran gladly towards him, her big shapely breasts bouncing with theimpact of herfeet. She got down on her knees and buried her face in his crotch andwept. Thenshe took the end of his half-limp organ and began to suck on it. Itrose as if she were blowing air into it, became hard and throbbing, and gave himthat first warming under his belly button.
The Grail pulsed faster, and the flickers of alien topographiesand brilliantly colored stars increased in number and variety.
Dolores sucked harder and moved her head back and forth. Igescucame upbehind her then and lifted her up so that she was standing up butwith her knees bent. He rammed his dick into her asshole and began pumping. Pluggergot down onhis knees behind Igescu's lean buttocks, spread them, and thrust histongue upIgescu's asshole. His body rocked back and forth as he rode thevampire's asswith his face.
Even through the woman and the man, Childe could feel the shockof Plugger's tongue. He hoped that the others would form the daisy chain quickly, because if they didn't they were going to get caught short. He was going to comesoon. This would require starting the voyage ceremony over again, because thechain had to be complete, or nearly complete, when he came.
The room started to rotate. The naked bodies of the men and women seemed to be skating on the edge of a spinning disc. They slid here and there, catchingeach other, going down, tonguing cocks and cunts, ramming cunts, mouths, andassholes.
And there was Vivienne. And there was a tall man with a black beard and burning eyes. His face had much more distinct features, of course, but the resemblance was close enough for Childe to identify him as Gilles deRais. He had materialized in his original body, and he was sticking his donginto the spread buttocks of a slim blond man who was sucking off Vivienne.
Then Vivienne and de Rais and everybody receded on the edge ofthe whirlingplate that had been the big ballroom. Lightning was flashing from theGrail, white strokes, scarlet flashes, emerald zigzags, yellow streaks, purple swordswith jagged edges. The flashes spurted upwards from the Grail, bounced off the ceiling, spiraled down, caromed off the naked writhing bodies of themen and women, fell to the floor like colored and shattered stalactites.
Childe felt the gray fluid in him thrusting upward. But when helooked down, he saw only the red lips of Dolores, like an unattached cunt, squeezing aroundhis cock. He could see into his own body, and the gray fluid was redas mercuryin a thermometer and rising as if the thermometer had been thrustinto a furnace. The red thread sped upward and then leaped out between thedisconnected red lips and spurted like scarlet gunpowder exploding.
The Grail blew up soundlessly with a crimson-and-yellow cloudexpandingoutwards and pieces of whitely glowing metal flying through thecloud.
CHAPTER 45
Until the last moment, Forry could not make up his mind. He hadbeen repulsed at first by the orgy. Seeing such things in stag films wasone thing, but seeing them in the flesh was very uncomfortable and evensickening. After awhile, the aura of reeking sexuality, of uninhibited orgasms, ofpenises andvaginas and anuses and mouths, began to excite him. He even got jealous when hesaw Alys Merrie sucking on the red-skinned cock of a big Amerindian, and he felt an impulse to get off the chair and dive into the welter, that ragingsea, ofhair and flesh.
But he was, in the end (I always pun, even here, he thought), tooinhibited.
Nevertheless, the vibrations were getting to him, and he hopedthe ceremonywould not last too long. Otherwise, he might abandon his restraintsand join inthe fun.
A few seconds later, he got his first view of what was takingplace in themind of Childe. He did not know that it was Childe's mind that was broadcasting, but he surmised that it was. There was no doubt that Childe and the Grail, hooked together in some psychosexoneural manner, formed the focus andthe distributor of the strange power emanating throughout the hall.
The glimpses of the alien worlds were like seeing the paintingsof Bonestell, Paul, Sime, Finlay, St. John, Bok, Freas, Emshwiller, andother greats of science-fiction become three dimensional and then becamealive. Painting turned into reality.
The worlds were only slices; it was as if Childe was cutting thecosmic pieinto slim pieces and hurling them at him.
He jumped up from the chair and unsteadily made his way towardsthe complicated shifting structure of flesh. It was only a few feet fromhim but it seemed to have sped towards the horizon. Between him and the bodieswrithing inthe glory of the power from the Grail was a vast distance.
He had to hurry. The Childe--Child?--was coming.
If he did not get within that blaze, he would be left behind. Hewould be standing alone, naked and erect and weeping in the big AmericanLegion hall. This was the only chance he would ever get. He, Forry Ackerman, theonly humanto get a ticket to intergalactic space, to alien and weirdlywonderful worlds in a foreign galaxy. His childhood dreams come true in a universe wherehe had no right to expect that any dreams would ever be reality. Where he hadbuilt a house to embody dreams with only half-reasonable facsimiles. Wherethe pseudo-worlds had seemed to be real in the shadow world of his homebut real for split-seconds only. Where stars like giant jewels, and crimsonlandscapes, andtrees with tentacles, and balloon-chested Martians with elephanttrunks and six fingers, and huge-eyed feathered nymphs, and long-toothed red-lippedvampiresdwelt in startling fixity forever.