Tunc’s tail came up from between her legs and its end slid into the nearest orifice. This was a new, though pleasant, in fact, ecstatic, experience for him. He used his tail to reciprocate.
Tunc moaned and gasped, did all the things that lovers do over and over without the novelty seeming to wear off. Simon did likewise, though he tried to avoid her tail when she stuck it in his mouth. Orgasm, however, could care less about fastidiousness, and so he overcame his momentary repulsion.
When Tunc staggered out through the door, he watched her go, glad to see her go. One more demand, and the honor of Earth would have been blackened. Tarnished, anyway.
He heaved himself out of bed to wash his teeth. Halfway across the immense room, he heard a knock. He stopped and said, “No more, Tunc!” But the door, opening, revealed Agnavi, Tunc’s grandmother.
Simon groaned and said, “I don’t want to hurt your feelings, Your Majesty. But I can’t even stiffen my tail.”
Agnavi was disappointed, but she smiled when Simon said he could schedule a command performance for tomorrow. Meantime, sweet dreams. She was a pleasant woman who had the patience of middle age.
Simon did not, however, sleep well. He had another of the recurring nightmares in which thousands of people seemed to be speaking to him all at once. And the faces of his father and mother were getting closer.
14
OFF TO SEE THE WIZARD
The queen and her granddaughter were fluent and charming talkers. Simon spent many an hour, lying side by side with them—though not at the same time—his tail entwined with theirs. But neither of them had the answer to his primal question.
Nor did anybody else he met in the capital city. Finally, he asked to have a chance to meet the great sage Mofeislop. Shintsloop, The Great Tail Himself, said he had no objections. He was so cooperative that Simon wondered if he was glad to get rid of him. Maybe he suspected something, though if he did he showed no resentment. Simon had not yet learned that a Dokalian could control his facial muscles but could not keep his tail from expressing his true feelings. If he had, he might have noticed that Shintsloop’s tail was held straight out behind him but twitched madly at its end.
Simon sent another messenger to the ship to ask Chworktap if she wanted to go on the trip with him. The messenger returned with a piece of paper.
I can’t come with you. I think Tzu Li does have self-consciousness but she’s afraid to reveal it. Either she’s shy or she mistrusts humans. I’ve told her I’m a machine, too, but she probably thinks it’s a trick. Have a good time. Don’t do anything I wouldn’t do.
Simon smiled. She got very upset when she thought that he might regard her as a machine. But if it would gain her something to admit that she might be, she would not hesitate. This was so human that it certified her as a human.
The trip on the railroad took four days. At the end of the line was a wall of yellow bricks two hundred feet high, stretching as far as Simon could see. Actually, it surrounded the Free Land and was a work equivalent to the Great Wall of China. It wasn’t as long but it was much higher and thicker. It had no gates, but it did have brick staircases on the outer side every mile or so. These were for the guards, who manned the stations on top of the wall.
“How many men would it take to guard the prisons if the criminals were put into them instead of being sent into the Free Land?” Simon said.
His escort, Colonel Booflum, said, “Oh, about forty thousand, I suppose. The Free Land is a great saving for the taxpayer. We don’t have to feed and house the prisoners or pay guards or build new prisons.”
“How many soldiers are used to guard these walls?” Simon said.
“About three hundred thousand,” the colonel said.
Simon didn’t say anything.
He climbed to the top of the wall with Anubis behind him and Athena on his shoulder. Three miles away was the inevitable tower of the Clerun-Gowph. Beyond it for many miles was the top of Mishodei Mountain, his goal. Between him and it lay dozens of smaller mountains and an unbroken forest.
Simon and his pets got into a big wickerwork basket and were lowered by a steam winch. When he climbed out of the basket, he waved goodbye to the colonel, and set out. He carried a pack full of food and blankets, a knife, a bow and arrow, and his banjo. Anubis also carried a pack on his back, though he didn’t like it.
“A lot of people have left here intent on seeing the wise man,” the colonel had said. “Nobody has ever come back, that I know of.”
“Maybe Mofeislop showed them the folly of returning to civilization?”
“Maybe,” the colonel had said. “As for me, I can’t get back to the fleshpots soon enough.”
“That reminds me, give my regards to the queen dowager and the princess,” Simon had said.
Now he entered the Yetgul Forest, a region of giant trees, pale and stunted underbrush, swamps, poisonous snakes, huge cat-like, bear-like, and wolf-like beasts, hairy elephantlike pachyderms, and men without law and order. Anubis, whimpering, stuck so close that Simon fell over him a dozen times before he had gotten a mile. Simon didn’t have the heart to kick him; he was scared, too.
When he got to the foothills of the vast Mishodei Mountain six weeks later, he was still scared. But he was much more fond of his pets than when he had started. Both had been invaluable in warning him of the presence of dangerous beasts and men. Anubis had sense enough not to bark when he smelled them; he growled softly and so alerted Simon. The owl quite often flew ahead and hunted for rodents and small birds. But when it spotted something sinister, it flew back and landed on his shoulder, hooting agitatedly.
Actually, the big beasts were only dangerous if they came upon a human suddenly. Given warning, they would either take off or else stand their ground and voice threats. Simon would then go around them. The only animals that were a genuine peril, because they did not have much sense, were the poisonous snakes.
The pets detected most of these in time, except when Simon awoke late one morning to find a cobra-like snake by his side. Simon froze, but the owl flew at it, hit it, knocked it over, and Simon rolled away to safety. The cobra decided that it was in a bad place and slithered off. Two days later, the owl killed a small coral snake which had crawled by the sleeping Anubis and was on its way to Simon.
The most dangerous animal was man, and though Simon saw parties of them ten times, he always managed to hide until they had passed by. The males were scruffy-looking, dressed in skins, hairy, bearded, gap-toothed, and haggard-looking, and the children were usually snot-nosed and rheumy-eyed.
“Excellent examples of the genuine Noble Savage,” the colonel had said on the trip down. “Actually, most of the Free Landers are not criminals we’ve sent in but their descendants. The majority of criminals we do drop into the Land are killed by the tribes that roam the woods.”
“Then why don’t you let the descendants come into your society?” Simon said. “They’re not guilty. Surely you don’t believe that the sins of the fathers should be visited on the children?”
“That’s a nice phrase,” the colonel said. He took out his notebook and wrote in it. Then he said, “There’s been some talk in parliament of rescuing the poor devils. For one thing, they’d be a source of cheap labor. But then they’d bring in all sorts of diseases, and they would be difficult to control and expensive to educate.
“Besides, they are the descendants of criminals and have inherited the rebellious tendencies of their forefathers. We don’t want those spreading through the population again. After all, we’ve spent a thousand years extracting the rebels from the race.”