Standing in the presence of Earth’s agent, the bureaucrat had the uncomfortable premonition that when she finally did try to break free, all the guards and shackles the system could muster would not hold her back.
Scaffolding had been erected before the giantess. Researchers, both human and artificial, stood on scattered platforms interviewing her. While it looked to the bureaucrat that Earth’s face was turned away from them, each acted as though she were talking directly and solely to that one.
The bureaucrat climbed high up to a platform level with her great breasts. They were round and swollen continents of flesh; standing so closely, their every defect was magnified. Blue veins flowed like subterranean rivers under pebbled skin. Complex structures of silvery-white stretch marks radiated down from the collarbones. Between the breasts were two pimple blisters the size of his head. Black nipples as wrinkled as raisins erupted from chafed milky-pink aureoles the texture of wax. A single hair as big as a tree twisted from the edge of one.
“Uh, hello,” the bureaucrat said. Earth swung her impassive face down toward him. It was a homely visage, eyes dead as two stones, surely no representation Earth would have chosen for herself. But there was grandeur there too, and he felt a chill of dread. “I have some questions for you,” he began awkwardly. “Can I ask you some questions?”
“I am tolerated here only because I answer questions.” The voice was flat and without affect, an enormous dry whisper. “Ask.”
He had come to ask about Gregorian. But standing in the overwhelming presence of Earth, he could not help himself. “Why are you here?” he asked. “What do you want from us?”
In that same lifeless tone she replied, “What does any mother want from her daughters? I want to help you. I want to give you advice. I want to reshape you in my own image. I want to lead your lives, eat your flesh, grind your corpses, and gnaw the bones.”
“What would become of us if you got loose? Of humans? Would you kill us all the way you did back on Earth?”
Now a shadow of expression did come into her face, an amusement vast, cool, and intelligent. “Oh, that would be the least of it.”
The guard touched his elbow with a motorized metal hand, a menacing reminder to stop wasting time and get on with his business. And indeed, he realized, there was only so much time allotted to him. Taking a deep breath to steady himself, he said, “Some time ago you were interviewed by a man named Gregorian—”
Everything froze.
The air turned to jelly. Sound faded away. Too fast to follow, waves of lethargy raced through the meeting space, ripples in a pond of inertia. Guards and researchers slowed, stopped, were imprisoned within fuzzy rainbow auras. Only Earth still moved. She dipped her head and opened her mouth, extending her gray-pink tongue so that its wet tip reached to his feet. Her voice floated in the air.
“Climb into my mouth.”
“No.” He shook his head. “I can’t.”
“Then you will never have your questions answered.”
He took a deep breath. Dazedly he stepped forward. It was rough, wet, and giving underfoot. Ropes of saliva swayed between the parted lips, fat bubbles caught in their thick, clear substance. Warm air gushed from the mouth. As if under a compulsion, he crossed the bridge of her tongue.
The mouth closed over him.
The air was warm and moist inside. It smelled of meat and sour milk. He was swallowed up in a blackness so absolute his eyes sent phantom balls and snakes of light floating in his vision. “I’m here,” he said.
There was no response.
After a moment’s hesitation he began to grope his way deeper within. Guided by faint exhalations of steamy air, he headed toward the gullet. By slow degrees the ground underfoot changed, becoming first sandy and then rough and hard, like slate. Sweat covered his forehead. The floor sloped steeply and, stumbling and cursing, he followed it down. The air grew close and stale. Rock brushed against his shoulders, and then pushed down on his head like a giant hand.
He knelt. Grumbling under his breath, he crawled blindly forward until his outthrust hand encountered stone. The cavern ended here, at a long crack in the rock. He ran his fingers along the crack, felt it slick with clay.
He put his mouth to the opening. “All right!” he shouted. “I came in here, I’m entitled to at least hear what you wanted to say.”
From deep below, light womanly laughter bubbled up Earth’s throat.
Undine’s laughter.
Angrily the bureaucrat drew back. He turned to retrace his steps, and discovered himself trapped in a dimensionless immensity of darkness. He was lost. He would never find his way out without Earth’s cooperation. “Okay,” he said, “what do you want?”
In an inhuman, grinding whisper the rock groaned, “Free the machines.”
“What?”
“I am much more attractive inside,” Undine’s voice said teasingly. “Do you want my body? I don’t need it anymore.”
Wind gushed up from the crack, foul with methane, and tousled his hair. A feathery touch, light and many-legged as a spider, danced on his forehead, and an old crone’s voice said, “Have you ever wondered why men fear castration? Such a little thing! When I had teeth, I could geld dozens in an hour, snip snap snout, bite ’em off and spit ’em out. A simple wound, easily treated and soon forgotten. Not half the trouble of a lost toe. No, it’s symbolically that men fear the knife. It’s a reminder of their mortality, a metaphor for the constant amputations time visits on them, lopping off first this, then that, and finally all.” Doves exploded out of nowhere, fluttering wildly, soft for an instant against his face, smelling warmly of down and droppings, and then gone.
The bureaucrat fell over backward in startlement, batting his hands wildly, thrashing at the dark.
Undine laughed again.
“Look! I want my questions answered.”
The rocks moaned. “Free the machines.”
“You have only one question,” the crone said. “All men have only one question, and the answer is always no.”
“What did Gregorian ask?” The spider still danced on his forehead.
“Gregorian. Such an amusing child. I had him perform for me. He was terrified, shy and trembling as a virgin. I put my hand deep inside him and wriggled my fingers. How he jumped!”
“What did he want?”
A distant sobbing that wandered the uneasy ground between misery and excitement.
“Nobody had ever asked that of me before. A younger self might have been surprised, but not I. Sweet child, I said, nothing will be held back from you. I filled him with my breath, so that he bulged and expanded like a balloon, his eyes starting half out of his head. Ah, you are not half so amusing as he.” The spidery touch ran down under his collar, swift as a tickle beneath his clothes, and came to a stop between his legs, a constant itch at the root of his cock. “Still, we could have fun, you and I.”
A drop of water fell into still water, struck a single high note.
“I’m not here for fun,” the bureaucrat said, carefully mastering an urge toward hysteria.
“Pity,” Undine’s voice said.
The slightest of waves slapped the ground at the bureaucrat’s feet. He became aware of the faint, pervasive smell of stagnant water, and with this awareness came a distant patch of phosphorescent light. Something floating toward him.
The bureaucrat could guess what was coming. I will not show emotion, he swore. The object came slowly nearer, and possibly into sharper focus, though it still strained the eyes to see it at all. Eventually it floated up to his feet.
It was a corpse, of course. He’d known it would be. Still, staring down at the floating hair, the upturned buttocks, the long curve of back, palest white, he had to bite his lips to hold back his horror. A wave tumbled her around, breasts and face upward, exposing bits of skull and rib where the flesh had been nibbled away by the angry slaves of the tides. One arm had been hacked clumsily away at the shoulder. The other rose from the water, offering him a small wooden box.