"Windemere wasn't sitting still."
Christobelle sighed. "He'd already been at it for over two hours. Now shut up and do what I tell you."
Her right leg snaked around him in a yogic move that brought her heel to rest against the small of his lower back. Using pressure from her foot, she eased him closer to her.
" Now put your leg over mine in the same way."
Gibson smiled and shook his head. "I don't think that I can. I've been living a life of indolence and sin, and I'm not as limber as I used to be."
Her hand was on his knee, gently guiding him. It was far easier than he'd imagined. A couple of muscles initially protested, but he found that he had his leg around her waist and the seemingly impossible had been achieved with only minor effort. The room was thick with the pungent jungle-rot smell, and Gibson was once again in the cloying grip of euphoric drift.
"Use your own leg to draw me closer."
Gibson gently flexed his calf. Their bodies were now very close; she twisted her torso in a slow, languorous undulation and her breasts brushed against his chest.
"Now the other leg. I'll put my hands on your shoulders and we'll do it together."
Once again the impossible was achieved with comparative ease. They were now in a strange double-lotus position; their upright bodies were pressed closely together, and he could feel her contours along the length of his chest. The nearness of her was quickly arousing him, and as his erection grew it eased inside her as though by osmosis, with no conscious effort on his part. She whispered hypnotically in his ear.
"Slowly.., slowly… you are very, very, slow… slow as the movement of mountains."
They were like one multilimbed being, a Hindu god, a child of Shiva. Christobelle's fingers performed the lightest of dances up and down his back. They felt like moths fluttering against his spine. Tiny shudders of pleasure ran up his body.
"Slowly… slowly. You need do nothing… you need to feel nothing. You are the world and you have all of time. Take nothing for yourself and all will be yours."
He was just starting to drift in the direction of oneness with the sensual universe when, completely uninvited and in some far-off part of his mind where logic and self-preservation still wearily held the line, a realization dawned.
"We're doing the same thing that they were doing in the basement."
Christobelle's whisper was no longer hypnotic. "Of course we are."
Alarm eased out euphoria. "So what's all this, then? A little backup ritual? "
"Something like that. Is it a problem?"
"I've got to think about this."
She leaned away from him slightly. "What's the matter? Did you think that I went to all this trouble because you were so damned irresistible? "
"It's a little cold-blooded for my taste."
"You have something against fucking for a higher purpose than simple personal gratification?"
"I thought you were enjoying this, and now I find that you're just going through the prescribed moves."
Christobelle's voice took on an angry edge, "For your information, Joe Gibson, I enjoy it very much. I was enjoying this very much until you felt the need to inject your note of crude morality. I can only believe that if I can generate energy over and above my own pleasure, it can only be for the greater good. Fun and a bonus, too. It's like gift stamps. It's also the philosophy of the Earth Goddess and that's why I've made it my calling."
"Fucking for victory?"
" It makes a great deal more sense than killing for it."
"I've really got to think about this."
He tried to disentangle himself from her, but they were too complicatedly entwined. Her legs tightened around him as if she was trying to calm his fears with her physical presence. Her voice again took on the hypnotic quality.
She crooned in his ear. "Don't think, Joe Gibson, just be. You are safe here for tonight. Don't think, just be. You are safe in my arms."
The scent was closing in on him and he did feel safe in her arms. He was also growing inside her again. Again she crooned to him.
"Let it go, Joe. Slowly let it go. You're safe. Nothing can hurt you. Slowly let it go."
Joe was letting it go. His mind was floating away, and his body was at long last taking over. The little spasms of pleasure started again.
"Go with it, Joe. Just let it happen."
Her breath was hot against his ear. His legs were so firm around her that he seemed to be melting into her.
"Slowly, Joe. So slowly. Soooo slowly."
The whisper was deep in her throat.
"So good, Joe. Sooo gooood!"
Her pelvis had started to gradually rotate.
"Slowly, Joe. Sooo slowly."
Now he could feel it. He could feel himself growing and expanding. He could feel the power flowing around him.
"That feels so good."
"Slowly."
"That feels so right."
"So slowly."
They seemed to be rising together.
"Oh, God, that feels good."
"Sooo slowly."
Neither of them was moving a muscle, and yet there was sweat running between their bodies.
"Oh, God, that feels good."
"Soooo slowly!"
The smell of them was combining with the jungle reek.
"Oh, God, that feels so good."
"Sooo…"
"Oh, God!"
Their sighs and whispers blended together, breath mingling.
"Slowly!"
"Feels good."
"So good!"
"Too good!"
"Slow!"
Somehow, he could feel the two other bodies in the pyramid downstairs. He could feel them also joining.
"Oh, God!"
"Oh!"
"God!"
"Oh!"
"God!"
"OH!"
"Slow!"
"Oooohl"
"OOOOOOOOH!"
And, at that moment, deep inside the house and deep in the real world from which they were trying so hard to detach themselves, there was a fearful pounding on the front door.
The White Room
"IT'S ALL A matter of playing their game." Joe Gibson regarded the man blearily. "Game? What game?" The drugs made it so goddamn hard to focus on anything. He knew that the man's name was John West.
"You have to let them believe that they're curing you, that's the only way you'll ever get out of here."
A new innovation had occurred in the very expensive private clinic. It had come after Gibson had been there for, as far as he could calculate, about three weeks, although the drugs that they were feeding him made it almost impossible to keep track of time. He'd tried for a while to keep a record by marking each day on a secret slip of paper, but they'd found that and taken it away. The innovation was known as "patient interaction." Boiled down, this meant that every day, right after Love Connection, he was taken from his room and his private TV and wheeled by an orderly down to a large, white, sterile common room with too much light where he and a dozen or so other doped-up individuals sat in chrome wheelchairs, in varying states of vegetation, and lethargically watched a communal television. This so-called interaction was timed so that he always seemed to end up watching Gitligan's Island, Which was weird in its own way since, back in what he was increasingly thinking of as his old world, there had been an almost identical show except it had been known as Finnegan's Island. On the screen, the castaways were trying to use a misdirected NASA Mars probe to get themselves rescued. Beside rum, John West seemed to have a theory to expound. "Of course, it depends on who put you here in the first place and who's picking up the tab. There are some of us in here who aren't ever going to get out. Too much of an embarrassment to either families or the people that they used to work for. I've heard that there are agency people who've wound up in here just because they knew too much."