The Guru's cock pulsed in hard, driving rhythms. The hum sped up till its softly undulating cadences piled on each other, hissing and steaming, screeching and clattering, like the sound of a steam engine plummetting full-speed toward destruction.
Sean and Andrea were right there. So was everyone else. 982 people were going to get off at the same time, the instant when Baalow Nee…
Joanna's cunt was calling wildly and the Guru's cock was answering eagerly and then a huge thick stream of come erupted up out of him like a geyser. It blasted up into her and shattered and frothed and sprayed against that one point, that perfect spot…
The combined noise of nearly a thousand people getting off shook the entire ship. It was cataclysmic. It was so deafening, so chaotic, yet so mystically harmonious, that it was almost the same as silence. It could have been lost souls screaming in agony in hell or saved souls singing for joy in heaven.
In fact it was a whole lot of people shooting their wads and collecting their dough on a very expensive and not completely ordinary cruise to the Caribbean, but no one at the time was much concerned with facts.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
"Okay," Andrea asked, "what do you say note?"
"Uncle," Sean answered. "I give. There's something going on with that guy. I mean, I can't deny that the old Quotillion last night was the mind fuck of a lifetime. I've never seen anything-I've never heard of anything-like what he did with Joanna. And she says she felt as if she was conscious all the time, having the most fantastic fuck of her life, but she wasn't aware that her cervix went through all the biological changes implied by giving birth. I've got to admit that someone's got his pinky playing around in the laws of nature like they were a bowl of spaghetti."
Joanna and John came in. Joanna was still a little spacey from the experience of the night before but she didn't hurt a bit and she felt great. "Guess what we heard," she offered.
"Nixon had the CIA take films of the InterFuck Quotillion for his private war against his own obscenity."
"No. The Guru's gone into solitary meditation. Indefinitely. That oriential chick-what's her name, Mei Ling?-says that the experience last night has sent him into a state of Oneness with the Cosmos. I guess that means he's got one hell of a hangover."
They all laughed.
But four days later they weren't laughing any more.
As the True Enlightenment sailed irregularly southward and entered the Caribbean bound for Martinique, the Guru Baalow Nee was neither seen nor heard. His sudden and inexplicable absence had an affect on the moral of the ship as devastating as his presence had been exhilarating.
It was sad but true: the Guru was essential to anyone's having a good time. As one young architect from Florida put it, "He's the only one ridiculous enough to set a proper example." And what was more, people hadn't paid their money to get on a ship and potter about in warm climates. They'd come because of the Guru. They liked what they'd seen and they wanted more. They were entitled to it. They had bought it! "Meditation-Schmeditation," they were fond of pronouncing. "He ought to get his ass out here."
Women started wearing blouses again-mostly, of course, to protect themselves from sunburn-and one or two passengers began to worry that word of the doings on the ship would filter back to hometown acquaintances. Could it be that nobody really ever got anything for nothing?
On Wednesday evening, a week and a day after the Guru had plucked Andrea out of Folk City, there was a fight in the audience during one of her sets. The Guru's bodyguards put a quick and gentle end to it, but it somehow seemed that the atmosphere of felicity and trust that had once been the life's breath of the cruise was definitely-perhaps irrevocably-polluted.
After the performance Andrea and Sean sat around rapping with Joanna, John, Joe, Mindy, and Josh. Things had reached such a tow point that everyone was wearing clothes. Andrea didn't feel she'd sung well, Sean was worried about the fact that he hadn't done any work since the beginning of the cruise and was behind schedule on his deadlines, Joanna was wondering whether there'd really be a job waiting for her when she got back to the City… everyone had his own personal problems. But the question was-why were they worrying about them now? And the answer was, because the Guru had to all intents and purposes vanished. And then the question was-what the hell had happened to him?
"Maybe he really is nuts," Sean offered. Tin sure the guy's some sort of genius, but maybe he goes on the fritz now and then."
"Maybe he died," Josh suggested. "And the others don't want us to know about it"
"Ha. I think he's conducting some land of psychological experiment," John guessed. "Makes sense. He wants to see how we do on our own."
"The answer is… not very good," Andrea observed.
There was a knock on the door. Andrea answered and Mei Ling, with a rather serious expression on her face, beckoned her out into the hall. "The Guru would like to see you. You and your friend-the writer. Sean is his name?"
"Yes. The Guru wants to see us?"
"That's right." Mei Ling peered in at the group in the living room of the suite. "Don't tell the others anything but that you don't know how long you'll be." She whispered almost inaudibly; "You are to take a vital part in one of the Guru's most sacred rituals. No outsider has ever been admitted to these rituals before. Once they are performed the Guru will appear again in public and all will be as before. Come quickly." She walked down the hall and waited.
"Hey Sean," Andrea said casually, "we've got a date." She leaned down and confronted him eye-to-eye. "The Guru wants to see us."
The group came alive with curiosity. "What for?" "What's going on?" "Where is he?" "What's he doing?"
Andrea smirked characteristically. "All I'm allowed to say is that we don't know when well be back." She held out her arm and Sean took it ceremoniously. "So don't wait up for us… " They swept out into the hall and followed Mei Ling up toward the Guru's cabin just aft of the bridge.
When they got there two of the wrestler-types were guarding the door. They nodded to Mei Ling and she opened it with a key and ushered Sean and Andrea in.
The cabin was one single room thirty feet wide by seventy long. It was crowded with potted trees and fountains and streams that ran between mossy artificial banks. Wild birds-parrots and peacocks and hummingbirds-squalked and strutted and flitted about. The entire wall of the cabin that faced the sea was glass-one-way glass, Sean could tell, and recessed. He wondered what it looked like from outside.
Mei Ling led them down toward the far end of the indoor jungle where there was a light burning. They heard the low mumble of voices and the tinny sound of what could only be a cheap portable radio. It was playing oldies from the fifties. 'Teen Angel' was on.
The Guru was sitting at a card table with the black woman. He was flipping cards up casually, one at a time, smoking a Lucky Strike and talking to her like a Brooklyn dockworker. "Whatcha say, honey-pot? Wanna get laid? Huh? I got me a six-pack in my convertible. I got me a packa Trojans. Whatsa matter, ya scared or somethin? Scared a yer mommy?" He wore a greasy T-shirt and a pair of worn jeans held up by a thick belt with a heavy buckle-the land small-time hoods had once been fond of whipping off when the word "rumble" was heard. The remainder of his pack of Luckies was rolled up in the sleeve of his T-shirt.