And this time he could not help but be emphatically glad of it. He looked down at his body. It bore a dozen or more red weals where the pod’s stings had touched him, but he could no longer feel them. He brushed his chest and belly with his hand. He was numb.
Much longer, and he would no doubt have been completely paralysed.
So Erspia-2 wasn’t a complete paradise after all, he thought dully. Predatory mimicry. A motile predator plant that used sexual enticement to trap its victims. What an apt variation on the orchid theme! And the pod had looked so perfectly like a woman!
Probably there were man-mimicking plants too. How did the biology of it work, he wondered? Plants generally did not collect enough energy to work a muscular system, but that did not necessarily apply to predator plants, of course. The disguised pod could gain enough energy from a human body to enable it to walk about for a while. Probably there were fat reservoirs where the energy was stored.
Then why hadn’t these fat reserves flamed up in the heat of the gun’s beam? Because, he reasoned, they were nearly exhausted. It had been time for the pod to claim another victim.
But why hadn’t the Erspians warned him and Histrina about these predators? Perhaps they didn’t even know about them. Perhaps they were just too simple-minded to draw the obvious conclusion when people went missing and skeletons were then found in the flower forest… if the pods left skeletons. Like animals that had lived long periods in safe environments, they had had all sense of danger bred out of them.
He wondered if the predators had been created along with the garden planetoid, or if they had evolved subsequently. The process of natural evolution might have been accelerated; a hangover of whatever process had been used to produce the orchids…
Still in a state of semi-shock, he came out of his ponderings to find Histrina now pointing the muzzle of the gun at him. Her eyes gleamed. She was revelling in the power she had over him—a power legitimised by the fact that she had saved his life.
“I ought to do the same to you!” she said shrilly. “You were going to go with her—with that!” She gestured hurriedly with the gun. “You’re unfaithful to me!”
“But, Histrina,” he said wearily. “What about you? You go with… anyone.”
His voice fell to a mumble. What was the use? Wasn’t it always the same? The thief was just as upset and indignant as anyone else if he was robbed. The thug and bully demanded that others respect his person.
Histrina had been brought up to regard sexuality in the strictly possessive sense. She delighted in breaking this moral rule herself, but she jealously demanded its strict observance in him, even though they were not formally married and, therefore, were in a state of damnation by her creed.
“You’ve been doing it with others, too!” she accused. “But I’ve fixed them! Come on, I’ll show you!”
She let her gun hand fall and walked back the way she had come. Passively, Laedo followed.
She didn’t go in the direction of the projector station, but somewhat to the left. She walked unfalteringly.
Histrina had a good sense of direction.
After a few minutes she glanced about her, cast him a mischievous grin, and stopped by the stem of an orchid whose colour was a gorgeous apricot. “I’ll show you later what I did,” she said coyly. “There’s something else I want you to see first. This orchid’s different from the others.”
Its bulb, or bell, was rather like a vast, nearly closed-up, apricot-hued tulip. The entrance was a circular portal through which one could crawl without having to push it apart any further. She went in on her hands and knees. While her fleshy buttocks were still in view her voice floated back to him. “I found it yesterday. Come and see.”
Resignedly he obeyed. Once through the portal he rolled to the floor of the orchid and, as so often in recent days, found himself in an entrancing interior.
The very air glowed a warm apricot. The orchid’s pheromones, however, seemed very weak. He felt little arousal at all. He decided, on reflection, that it was probably him who was at fault. He was still in a state of shock after his experience, or—more likely—the numbing effect of the pod’s stings overrode the orchid’s chemical sexual stimulation.
The floor of the orchid was uneven. From it, on mounds, there rose four fleshy stalks, ranging in height from one foot to two feet.
They were perfect-seeming replicas, if a trifle over-large, of the human phallus.
Histrina was on her knees caressing one of them, rubbing it up and down, holding it against her cheek.
The glans was uncovered, and purple.
“It’s wonderful, ” she announced, leering up at him. “Come and feel.”
He was reluctant, but she reached forward to seize his hand and drew him close, placing his fingers against the staff of the vegetable penis. It was less cool than he had expected. It was not as hot as an erect human penis could be, either. But it was warm. And somehow thrilling.
She let him take his hand away. He retreated and relaxed on his haunches to watch her play with the thing. She had it in both hands and was becoming more engrossed, her lips puckered as if she were murmuring and cooing to it.
Then her mouth went down on the purple knob, taking it all in, her head working up and down while her hands continued to perform similar motions down the shaft. He could hear her breath snorting through her nostrils.
Suddenly she convulsed, as if struck a physical blow. After a moment or two she removed her mouth and turned away from the penis, releasing it. She knelt there, eyes half closed. From her sullen, parted lips a golden syrup dripped. She let it run down her chin and drip to her breasts. Then she gathered it up and transferred it back to her mouth in gobs, rolling it round and round, swallowing it, licking her fingers and finally her smeared lips.
“Oh, it’s delicious,” she sighed.
She hadn’t finished yet. She stood up and straddled the phallus, then lowered herself into a half-squatting position, jockeying herself over the purple glans. At first she seemed to have difficulty getting it in.
“It’s big,” she said breathlessly. “Aaaaaaahh!”
Once the phallus entered, Laedo was fascinated to see how deeply she could take the round purple knob into herself. Her eyes rolled up. Using the strength of her legs, she began to bounce up and down with increasing speed and eagerness. Her arms were waving in the air. She had retrieved the gun from where she had lain it when playing with the phallus and was holding it in her right hand. Laedo was nervous that she might start shooting wildly in her delirium.
“Aaaaahh,” she breathed. “Aaaaaahh, aaaahh, aaaarrghh!”
The orchid chamber shook as if experiencing orgasm. Her chest heaved. Raising herself, she stood with eyes closed, as if reciting a mental prayer. The same golden syrup as before seeped from her and ran down her legs, so copiously that at first he thought she was thoughtlessly urinating.
She opened her eyes, as though suddenly recovering her senses, and looked at him. “There’s one for you too,” she said calmly. “Look.”
Directing his attention to the apricot wall, she showed him a bulge and a cleft in the petal stuff, at about the height of a urinal tube in a men’s room. Prising aside fleshy lips, she revealed an orifice.
“It does things,” she said. She inserted a finger, then all four fingers, and seemed to be experiencing something interesting.
“Go on, you do it,” she suggested, removing her fingers.
He put in his own fingers. The orifice was warm, warmer than the phallus had been, and moist. He felt a sucking, toying motion. Quickly he withdrew his hand.
“Go on, then,” she urged impatiently, seeing him just stand there. “Stick it in!” She grabbed his penis and tried to tug it towards the cleft, but he stepped back and shook his head.