Coven

with many other things. Sometimes he wondered if there even was a Supremate. The huge loving voice that sometimes filled his head seemed phony, an overdone charade.

Besser’s disapproval drew crevices into his bulging moonface. “This better not break before we leave. Who knows what the Supremate will do?”

The premise was not a pleasant one. Tom remembered the chasms he’d seen. He remembered the squat factories whose winding winze belts hauled slabs of black meat.

“I don’t want any problems with your next task,” Besser said. “The Supremate needs a holotype. Winnie and I have agreed; it shall be Wade St. John. This should please you.”

“It does, sir.” You ain’t kidding it does!

“We only have a few more days; I want Wade secured in the unit hold well beforehand. He works at the sciences center at nine A.M. Bring him in today.”

“Yes, sir.”

“And let me emphasize that the quality of your future within the family may depend on the success of your remaining procurements.”

“I understand that, sir. You can count on me.”

Besser dismissed him, the moonface disappearing into the egress. Tom followed the dimensionless servicepass to the acclimationprepchamber. He didn’t need directions; the labyrinth had its own sort of telepathic directory called mindsigns. Ahead, one such sign read EMWGUIDANCETRACKINGPOINT. Besser had explained it wasn’t really a power plant but just a simple stabilization mechanism, like a keel on a sailboat. The Supremate controlled it, along with everything else, by instinct.

The next mindsign glowed in nonexistence: GERMINATIONWARREN. Tom used the key around his neck and prolapsed through the egress. This was some security system they had here; no one without a key could escape the labyrinth’s solid walls, nor could entry be gained by any outsider. The labyrinth was, fully and ultimately, impenetrable.

Within the acclimationprepchamber, the Erblings lay stretched on the levitationslats. Before antirejectorybifertilization could be initiated, certain biological changes had to be made. Tom knew the Erblings were conscious despite complete paralysis. He grabbed two infusers containing optimized doses of calciumdecimationliquefactor. All fissionizationvessels needed proper softening before they could safely disbirth their interspecielmetis units. Tom had wandered around the biomaintenancegrowthaccelerationvaults once or twice, and some of the things he’d seen down there were as big as sunfish! The Erblings both jerked once when he activated the infusers against their throats. The injection attacked only fossilized CaCo compounds. Besser and Winnifred had taken blood samples from Lois Hartley and Penelope, to ascertain the most effective serum absorbability levels for humans. The Erblings would be pudding in an hour.

Liddy’s fingers and toes twitched, and Stella was blinking. The sister’s neurohemolyticpyrrolizicvenom was wearing off. Tom pushed the levslats through the next extromitter. Besser had told him that the slats had an unlimited load capacity. Theoretically you could push an aircraft carrier around on one of these things. You could push worlds.

But no worlds today. Just a pair of naked coeds. Tom could feel the warmth of the sensorpost behind him. They were everywhere in one way or another—hybridized into the sisters’ eyes, in the sensor rings that Besser and Winnie wore, even in Tom’s transceptionrod. Through such sensor circuits, the Supremate saw and heard everything. The sensorpost was merely a black rod above the keypass. It reminded Tom of the Orwell novel.

He flipped the Erblings off their slats onto the carbonized floorwall. “If you think Do Horse was hot stuff,” he joked, “wait’ll you see what’s waiting for you in the next room. You’ll be the only gals in town with boyfriends from another planet!” Tom laughed. “I’ll be right back, and in the meantime, you’ll be trying on some new genes, and I don’t mean Levi’s.”

He extromitted to the pointaccess of the xyholotypehold. The exposed unit read #1003WADEST.JOHN. The hold was empty, but not for long. In sisterspeak the hold was called a carbonmassrepulsiondiodedeflectiveenergybarriersecuritynodule. In Tomspeak, it was called a fuckin’ jail. It reminded him of the brig on Star Trek. Nothing could penetrate its repulsion screen. A TOW missile wouldn’t dent it. A sixteen inch naval shell would bounce off its transparent face like a tennis ball.

Tom touched the scrollmode on the revolutionactivator, thinking of the proper stockcodes #765NRLDYL and #6500: .::. . Instantly the first appeared, something reminiscent of a giant gray chicken gizzard, which rose joint by joint on segmented legs. “Come on, Valentino,” Tom said. “Time to make some bacon.” Nrldyl had haired antennae in place of eyes and ears, and at the end of its single arm was not a hand but a rubberish shovel like thing. Tom understood that this particular genus had intercourse by means of manual seminal congestion: It took its semen out of itself with the scoop and stuffed it into its mate. True passion, Tom thought.

#6500: .::. . appeared next. “Ah, Blob Man,” Tom commented, noticing the bucket. It was nice to know that earth was not the only sphere in the universe that used buckets. He carried it down the pass, as Nrldyl dumbly followed. Tom didn’t have to worry about the holotypes getting rowdy; the ganglionstaticreflexpulsemodificationdischargenodes implanted into their nervous systems would zap them a nutcracker at the faintest negative thought. That way they couldn’t rough up the female surrogates.

Tom decayed the radiophaseshifttriionizer, which paved the way for successful antirejectorybifertilization. He took the two holotypes into the warren. “Girls!” he announced. “I’m back! With your new dream dates!”

Stella began to visibly jerk. Liddy managed a muffled whine from deep in her chest.

“Go to it, fellas.” Tom set the bucket between Liddy’s feet and nudged Nrldyl toward Stella. “If you guys need a godfather, let me know. I could be available.”

Nrldyl was hopping up and down in pure alien excitement. Clumps of its semen were already visible within the slit of its spermonic duct. The grotesque thing then knelt between Stella’s legs and began to tenderly transfer the globs of its off-blue semen, via the scoop hand, into Stella’s vaginal vault. The scoop packed it in nice and tight, leaving poor Stella bloated like a blueberry turnover with too much filling. What a way to fuck, Tom thought. Nrldyl chortled. Stella vomited a yard into the air while at the same time convulsing in multiple orgasms.

Meanwhile the thing in the bucket had already dumped itself out. The brown blob spurtled, groaning, surging upward as if against tremendous gravity. After several strenuous attempts, it managed to stand upright, sporting a dripping, long erection that looked sort of like a giant chewed Tootsie Roll. Liddy screamed through her paralysis when the thing climbed between her legs.

Tom plugged his key into the extromitter. But before he left, he turned and offered a final commiseration. “Have no fear, girls. You’ll live forever. You’ll be cosmic mothers of miracles—forever.”

But where did that leave him? As he fed the thought “Student Shop” into the extromitter, he wondered. They said he would live forever too. But how could that be, when already shreds of his own flesh were beginning to peel off?

—

CHAPTER 20

“Museums? No,” Professor Fredrick said. “None within hundreds of miles, I’m afraid.”

Lydia had come to Fredrick at 9 A.M. sharp. Fredrick was Exham’s chairman of the archaeology department. She’d wanted to know where a three hundred year old cutting tool could be found near the campus. And he’d told her. Nowhere.

“May I see those photographs?” Professor Fredrick asked. The shots were microphotos she’d taken of the impactations at the stables.

Fredrick lit a pipe with a face on it. “There’s no scale here,” he remarked. “How long would you say this strike mark is?”

“A little over ten inches.”

“That’s a long blade for an ax. It’s perfectly flat too. But the angle width of the cutting bezel interests me more.”

“Sir?”

Fredrick pointed to the grainy shot with his pipe end. “I mean the angle at which this tool was honed” —he