unique. And I am recent. I was rematerialized in 1562.
I had died in 1431 A.D., by present reckoning. The thing
in my womb died in 1440 A.D. He was my very good
friend then in our public human life and in our private
Og life."
"That thing was human?"
"Yes. You see, when we succeeded in rematerializing
in 1562, we constructed ourself in our present arrange-
ment. We can do that within certain limits, you know.
We have to conform to biological laws, but if you have
great knowledge you can do things with matter that you
humans would think impossible.
"We had talked about just such a symbiosis as this,
where we could double the intensity of our sexual ac-
tivities. So we materialized with this structure. Only we
made a mistake. I did, rather. I had an idea that if I
could be separated into various parts, and these parts
could also have a sexual life, orgasm, that is, and the
parts could communicate each other's orgasms … well
it didn't work out that way."
Childe wondered if he was being told the truth. It
seemed too fantastic. Would anybody deliberately build
herself like this? Wasn't it more likely that her en-
emies, the Tocs, had caught her as she and the thing
were rematerializing and shaped her like this? He did not
know why they would do it, but it was more probable
that someone would do this to another for a sadistic joke
than that anyone would purposefully do it to herself.
"Both of us had very traumatic experiences in our
fifteenth-century lives," she was saying. "He was hanged
and burned at the same time, and I was burned at the
stake."
"You were a witch?" Childe said. "Then all the
witches burned were not innocent?"
"Oh, no! I wasn't innocent, but I was not a witch in
the sense that my executioners thought. It was the Eng-
lish that burned me, you know."
"No, I didn't know," he said. "Who were you? Any-
body I might know?"
"I think so," she said. "I was Joan of Arc. And the
being in my womb was Gilles de Rais."
39
After the two Ogs had left, Childe lay down on the bed.
Sybil had heard only the last five minutes, so he went
over the entire conversation with her. She said, "I always
thought Joan of Arc was unjustly burned by the English,
that she had been proved innocent of the charge of witch-
craft?"
"She was condemned by the Church, but it was the
Church that later removed the charge and then canonized
her. I think that that happened because she was too big
a hero to the French."
"I don't understand," Sybil said. "What was Vivienne
or Joan, or whatever she was, doing? Why would an Og
try to save France from the English?"
"Maybe for herself. Who knows what she intended
to do after she had saved the nation for the French
ruler? It's possible that she meant to take over from
him or perhaps to control France through him. She may
even have intended to drive the English out and then in-
vade England and bring both nations under one ruler
again. I didn't ask her what she and de Rais meant to do.
But I'll have a chance later on. Just now, I'm too
stunned."
"Who was Gilles de Rais?"
"He was a Grand Marshal of France, one of the best
warriors and generals the French had. He was also sav-
agely sadistic, a psychotic homosexual who abducted,
tortured, mutilated, and sacrificed hundreds of little boys.
Little girls, too, I think. A member of the royalty or the
nobility could get away with a lot in those days, but he
went too far. He was charged with witchcraft, ritual
murder, and a number of other things, including sod-
omy, I think. He was executed and quite properly, too.
Few people have ever been so bestial. He made Jack
the Ripper look like a gentle old fuddyduddy."
Sybil shuddered but did not say anything. He got off
the bed and undressed while she looked wide-eyed at
"Take your clothes off," he said.
"Why?"
"Because I want to make love to you. Is that surpris-
ing?"
"Yes, it is, after last night," she said.
She started to unbutton her blouse and then stopped.
"Aren't you supposed to save yourself for tonight?"
"Here, I'll help you undress," he said.
He began to unbutton her.
"Yes, I am. But what they want and what I want do
not necessarily coincide. Besides, if I'm dry, what can
they do about it?"
"Oh, no! You shouldn't do that!"
"Whose side are you on?"
"Well, yours, of course! But I don't want them to get
mad at you, Herald. Or at me."
"You can always tell them I made you," he said,
grinning. "In more sense than one."
"I really shouldn't," she said, staring at his slightly
swelled cock.
"Go ahead. Touch it."
"I'm not an Og," Sybil replied. "But if you say so."
He stripped her blouse and unhooked her bra and
took it off. She had full well-shaped breasts that had not
yet begun to sag. He kissed the nipples and saw them
swell and then he sucked on both, one after the other.
She stood against him, her back slightly arched, and
moaned. She reached down and tenderly fondled the
shaft of his cock, which was expanding with his kissing
and her caressing. He kissed her breasts all over and
then backed her towards the bed, where he eased her
down. He removed her skirt and her panties, and moved
in between her legs. The thick black fleece of her cunt
was beginning to run; she had always overlubricated. He
licked along the slit, putting the tip of his tongue in be-
tween the lips and running it up and down. Then he
pressed the tip against the clitoris, ran it back and
forth, and inserted two fingers into her slit and moved
them slowly back and forth and then more swiftly. She
came finally with a fierce deep groan and pulled on the
hairs of his head.
After this, he came up from between her legs and slid
on up by her. He pushed her head down towards his penis,
which was sticking up straight and hard and swollen.
The head was purple, glistening, and the skin was
stretched so tight it seemed about ready to burst. The
blue veins stood out like unmined mineral under the
reddish skin.
Sybil sucked on his testicles a while, one after the
other, while she ran a finger partway up his anus. He
moaned with the delight of the mouth and tongue and
the finger. Then she ran her tongue lightly along the shaft
of his peter, wet his pubic hairs with her tongue, and
took the big head into her lips. Her tongue trembled
on the slit of the glans, and her lips moved noisily with
their sucking. The edges of her teeth brushed against
the tight tender skin.
He blew into her mouth with a writhing of belly
muscles and hips and a feeling of flying apart.
Sybil continued to suck, having swallowed the fluid.
She worked at him, occasionally stopping to murmur en-
dearing words. His dong began to rise again, and when it
was fully rigid, he told her to lie down. He got down
on top of her and eased his prick into the slit until their
pubic hairs were crushing each other. He lay there for
some time, luxuriating in the warmth and the moisture
and the tenderness. Her sphincter muscle squeezed on
his cock, gently working it.
"I'm no superman, you know, Sybil," he said. "Once
or twice a night, and I'm done for, usually. But when I
was at Igescu's that hog of a woman, Grasatchow, put a
suppository up my rectum that acted as an aphrodisiac
and an energy source. And last night they gave me a
drink that had the same effect. Maybe some of that
effect is still with me, which is why I could get a hard-on
so quickly after coming. Or maybe it's just because
I've been so long without you, and you're my aphrodisiac.
Anyway, I love you, and I intend to fuck all day."
"I love you, too," Sybil panted. "Do you want to move
now, Herald?"
He began to thrust, slowly at first and then more
swiftly as he felt the tide in him increasing its forward
swings. He came with a moan at the same time that she
screamed with ecstasy. Tears rolled down her face onto
the pillow.
His speculation that the drug he had taken was still
affecting him was probably true. He lost some rigidity
after the shooting out of his sperm, but he kept his peter
in her, and within a minute or two it was rigid and
apparently ready to tap on new reserves.
However, this time, the gray liquid in him would not
rise so soon. He hammered her for what seemed like
fifteen minutes and though the ecstasy built up, he could
not come. Sybil was having one orgasm after another. Her
eyes were open and her hands were flung out and she
was rolling her head back and forth and groaning and
weeping.
Suddenly, she gave a scream and seemed to fall un-
conscious. He was not worried, since she had behaved
like this frequently. When she had an especially exquisite
orgasm, she would faint.
But the white body beneath him became reddish. The
smooth but wet-slippery skin was covered with hairs as
red as an Irish setter's and as wet as if it had just climbed
out of the water. The face became elongated and snouted,
the long head hairs shrank to a bristle, the eyes shifted
towards the side of the head, the small and delicate ears
became large hairy pointed organs.
The long-fingered well-manicured hands became paws
with blunt hooked nails. The legs on his shoulders be-
came hairy, and a big hard penis was against his body.
It was spurting jism over his belly and down onto his
own cock, which was buried to the hairs in the hairy
anus of the creature.
It was too late for him to stop. He had been just on
the verge of ejaculating as the metamorphosis took place.
Moreover, he had suspected that this thing was not Sybil.
She had been too blasé about the change of shape of
Plugger, too calm about what was happening, and too
eager to fuck him. Sybil might have wanted to fuck him,
but she would have been too afraid of emptying him and
so making their captors angry. This thing should have
been afraid of that, too, and probably had been, but it
could not resist the temptation to get the power and the
glory of the Captain's cock all to herself.
That had been the thing's undoing. It had become over-
whelmed and had lost control. Apparently, it still was not
aware of this.
He exploded inside the red-haired ass of the creature.
The intensity of the orgasm was such that, afterwards, he
felt almost forgiving. Almost but not quite.
Panting, he lay for a while on top of the wet and hairy
body.
Then he got off the bed and seized its neck between his
hands. It was as tall and almost as heavy as he, but it
was terrified. Its brown eyes bulged out as its air was
squeezed off, and its paws flailed.
Childe turned, swinging it off its feet, and then dragged
it by its ears to the door. He shouted until the door was
opened and then he shoved the thing out with a kick just
under its long bushy tail. The three who received it looked
shocked.
"That'll be the last trick you play on me!" he shouted.
"Where is my wife? You had better produce Sybil, and
quick, or you'll get nothing out of me anymore! No mat-
ter what you do!"
The thing got off the floor, rubbing its spine with a paw,
and, whined. It said something, but the shape of the
mouth was not appropriate for human speech.
"Kill it!" Childe shouted. "Kill it and prove to me
that you did! And then bring me Sybil, my wife, alive
and well!"
The door was swung inwards and locked. He raged
around the room for a while. Finally, he burst into tears
and wept for a long time. Then he got up and took a
shower and dressed again. Pao and the big Swedish-type
blond, O'Brien, entered.
40
At nine that evening, Forry Ackerman and four Tocs,
including Alys Merrie, set out for their rendezvous. Forry
had had to exercise his imagination to the rupture point
to explain to Wendy why he wasn't going to the monthly
soiree with her and to the host and hostess why he
couldn't make it. He didn't think he satisfied anybody
with his excuses, but certainly they were far more satis-
factory than the truth.
The rain had stopped for several hours after five
o'clock, and some of the clouds overhead thinned out.
Then darkness and lightning had moved back in and
thunder had come. A half hour later, it began raining
savagely.
Every TV channel was filled with news of the damage
done by the floods and the lives lost. The radio seemed
to talk of little else between bursts of rock music. Over
two thousand homes had had to be abandoned. At least
that number were in danger of sliding down a hill or
being floated away. Most of the canyons were closed
even to those who lived in them. The rivulets and brooks
roaring down from the hills had become small rivers and
frightening tidewaters. The Basin and the San Fernando
Valley were sometimes knee-deep in water. Business was
at a standstill; most of the bus lines had quit running.
The governor had finally declared the three counties a
disaster area. Citizens were screaming about flood control,
and an insurance man was gunned down by an enraged
citizen who' had lost his home under an avalanche of mud.
The grocery stores were beginning to run short of
supplies. There was water contamination and a backing
up of the sewers. Despite the almost continuous rains,
fires were numerous, and one fire truck, answering the
twentieth call that day, dropped into a tremendous hole
created by the torrents slamming down from the hills.
No one was drowned, but the truck was lost.
Just before he left, Forry received a call from Wendy.
The party had been called off, even though most of the
guests lived within a few miles of the house where the
monthly party of science-fiction people and normals was
being held. It should have been canceled days before,
but the hostess was unusually stubborn.
He sighed with relief. Telling the lies had burdened
him down, and at the same time he resented the burden.
Why should he worry about breaking an engagement for
a party when the fate of the world depended on what
he and the Tocs did tonight? Nevertheless, he did worry.
Hindarf drove a pickup truck which was several times
in water higher than the wheels. At Sunset and Beverly
Drive, he pulled to the curb. A semi with a big van
came along five minutes later and stopped with a hissing
of air brakes. They got down out of the pickup and
waded through water halfway up their thighs to the van.
They had to hold on to each other to keep from being
swept off their feet by the current. A piece of timber,
which looked as if it had been a post for a billboard,
swept by them. If it had struck a leg, it would have
cracked the bone.
There were twenty others in the van. The back doors
were closed, and the truck pulled away. With its high
body and its power, it should get through water which
would drown out an automobile.
On the way, Hindarf gave them instructions. Appar-
ently, everybody except Forry had heard these before,
but he was making sure that they understood them. The
instructions took about fifteen minutes, and the putting
on of the diving suits, flippers, tanks and goggles about
ten. Forry objected that he had never been scuba diving
but was told that he would be underwater for only a
minute. The main reason they were wearing the suits
was to keep from getting cold while they went through
the water.
The truck stopped on a steep slope. The doors were