Now they were three, and the next dropout would terminate the project. That would be Klo. Prior could see she was already tired. She had been tempted to go back, obviously, but probably had realized that she had waited too long, and now the onus for termination of the excursion would be on her. For what that was worth.
Ahead of them Mt. Icecream towered in all its sugary splendor: the pinnacle a mile above the base camp in elevation, many miles on the slant, and many leagues by foot. Red, green, blue and brown overlaid its yellow underbase, with black and gray streaks coursing down like lava from a volcano. The red would be strawberry or cherry, the green pistachio or lime, the blue blueberry, the brown chocolate, and the streaks syrups of assorted flavors. All genuine and of excellent quality, up here where it was uncontaminated by the germs of man. The substance of Mt. Icecream would have carried a snobbish price tag in any store on Earth. Very little was exported, however, because the expense of shipping was greater than that of manufacturing an equivalent grade locally. A few super-snobs made a point of serving it on special occasions, but that came under the heading of conspicuous consumption. Every so often, these past three weeks, Prior had gone out with the shovel and scooped up some particular flavor on order for Earth shipment. But this was a standing joke among personnel and tourists alike: after all, it was only ice cream.
Klo saw him looking, and came up beside him. "It is beautiful, in its grisly way," she remarked. "What do you think made it?"
"God made it," he said. It was the standard ploy, straight from the guide manual. The fact was, no one knew who had made it or who maintained it. It did seem to be beyond coincidence for the flavors and constituents to match Earthly standards so precisely, yet there was no possible connection. It was just here, and had to be accepted on that basis.
Ambert Black came up too, as ornery as ever. "Big benign whiteass God with a long whiteass beard," he said sarcastically. "Got nothing better to do than make a mountain of upperclass ice cream. Probably shits it in His off-moments. Why worry about unimportant little things like war and poverty and disease?"
"Maybe God's tired," Klo said, unoffended. "Time for a change in administrations."
Black was silent a moment, uncertain whether she was agreeing with him or ridiculing him. Prior wasn't sure either, but did appreciate how neatly she had thrown the big Negro off balance.
"Maybe God ain't just tired," Black said at last. "Maybe He's dead. And his last Will & Testament was to be buried under an everlasting pile of ice cream. Maybe it's every man for himself, now."
"Makes sense," she agreed amicably.
Black shut up, still not sure which side she was on. Maybe he felt a dawning kinship with her—and maybe he was afraid of that, Prior thought. In many ways, the plain white women of the species had it as bad as the strong black men.
They continued climbing. As elevation increased, temperature decreased, despite what people said about warm air rising. The greater labors required in the steepening ascent kept them all sweating inside their wrappings, however. Klo was red-faced, and neither from the light of the waning sun nor from any embarrassment; her breath fogged out in a noisy bellows-rush. But she wouldn't give up.
They made Stage Two. Even Black admitted his fatigue. He stripped without ceremony and plunged into the warm shower. He had enormous muscles, stout haunches, numerous scars, and a massive hanging ebony penis.
Klo just lay flat for ten minutes, getting her wind, and in that position she didn't look bad at all. Her stomach slimmed down, her breasts stood out on her heaving chest, and her facial features softened. Then she sat up and began peeling off the layers.
Prior was breaking out the staples, for the guide on such parties was also necessarily the cook and chief handyman. He watched, frankly curious to see what a dumpy woman looked like in the nude.
"Not as bad as I thought," he said as she got there. "You are overweight, but there's muscle in your legs where it counts, and your breasts are even handsome."
He thought she'd blush or get mad—he hardly cared which—but she just shrugged and got up to find the shower. "Get out, you scorchskinned phony," she yelled in to Black. "You can't hog the only facility forever. My turn coming up."
"I'll get out when I'm ready, you whiteassed whore!" the man yelled back jovially.
Klo pushed through the curtain and stepped into the shower with him. "Get out when you're ready, then, black woodpecker."
Prior paused again in his preparations. Either he'd have to fetch the first-aid kit in a hurry, or this acquaintance was ripening faster than anticipated!
"Say, I must be hard up when long pig starts looking good!" Black muttered, sounding surprised rather than angry. "Long fat white pig, yet."
Prior relaxed. There would be no race riot for the nonce. Black had a weakness for stout women....
The water splashed. "Gimme that soap, Derby," she said, and the curtain bowed as she wrestled around him for it, not waiting for him to tell her to get it herself, whiteass.
"Get your boob off my tube!"
"If that's God, he ain't dead," she said.
"I said I was hard up! So it's hard and it's up. What's it to you?"
"Let me feel that." More splashing and curtain-bowing. "You're half-right. It's fairly hard and up."
"Fairly hard!" Black cried indignantly. "That's pure polished ebony ivory horn. You couldn't soften that black bastard with a white sledgehammer!"
"My white socket-wrench could screw it down, though."
Prior's interest in sex had diminished after the workout the statues had given him, but three weeks in the candy snows had cranked up his scrotum and put blood-pressure behind his pet-cock, as his last night's imaginings had demonstrated. This trek had hardly promised an outlet.
Ah, well. It showed that such things were unpredictable. He stripped efficiently, plugged in Monster, and parted the bustling shower curtain.
They did not notice. Klo was hard at work softening the ebony ivory with her socket, and Black was plumbing the depths of the long fat white pig in the vertical position, front face, while the steamy water plunged down over both.
Prior considered the openings, then retired temporarily from the field. He was stuck with a twelve-inch erection and no place to cool it. But he was merely daunted, not defeated. He had had experience with grouped statues, after all.
He braced himself, then stepped naked out into the blizzard landscape of Mt. Icecream. The vanilla sleet cut into his skin and frosted his fingers and toes, but melted instantly from the heated organ. He scooped up a double handful and rubbed it over his mighty penis, and gradually the monster diminished into a midget. He dived back into the warmth of Stage Two.
With cold-stiffened fingers he unplugged the now-empty phallus and set it aside. He unlimbered a unit he had never had occasion to employ before: the bifurcate double-lengther. He locked it on and returned to the shower, forked member perking expectantly.
Chapter Twenty-Two
The tableau remained. The white had not yet softened the black, but was making progress.
Prior limbered his two-headed snake and stepped into the shower with the pair already soaking there. That hot water felt extremely good, now! They didn't notice him, though it was now quite crowded. Their bodies were plastered together, chest to breast, merging at face and crotch, and the hot water coursed down along all available channels. Klo was stretched and Black humped to accommodate those connections, so that the one was not dumpy and the other not tall. It was working very nicely, actually. She stood on tip-toe, and her feet lifted from the floor with every slow thrust Black made, and her buttocks tensed and quivered alternately.