"B-la-de master?" An echoing sigh on the breeze. Perhaps only a trick of the breeze and he was hearing what he expected, and wanted, to hear.
But it came again. "Blade master. I am sorry. Ooma is sorry. I wish to come back to the fires."
Blade turned over and yawned loudly. "Come back? Why? I thought you liked it out there in the forest all alone."
"I do not like it."
He patted a yawn to conceal a smile. "But I thought you were afraid of me?"
Silence. Then, "I am. But I am more afraid out here by myself. Let me return. I, I will let you do anything you wish. To me."
Blade pillowed his head on his arms and emitted a mock snore. "I do not wish to do anything to you, Ooma. Not now. I have found that we are not friends and I cannot trust you. Goodnight."
Long silence. He could hear her moving in the thick bushes.
"I beg you, Blade master. I beg. I am cold and frightened. I want to come by the fires."
"Then come," he snapped, "but do not bother me. I wish to sleep."
Feigning sleep, he watched her through slitted eyes. She came slowly out of the forest and crouched by the largest of the fires. As she warmed herself she watched him intently. Blade made no sign or sound. She began to search her sleek young body, carefully removing burrs and bits of twig and matted leaf. She smoothed and rubbed her body with her hands, cleaning it as thoroughly as possible. Blade felt his loins begin a renewed stirring. Could it be?
Ooma went to the pile of wood Blade had collected and began to search through it. He was about to warn her against using up too much wood, but kept his silence. She was not tending the fires. He watched with growing interest as she broke off a branch into a short length, stripped it of tendrils and began to use it as a comb. Squatting on her heels and casting an occasional glance in his direction, Ooma began to pull the makeshift comb again and again through her tangled dark hair with a coa.r.s.e rasping sound. She grimaced and shook her head as the rude comb encountered an especially hopeless tangle.
By now Blade was in an acute state of readiness and had the control not to do anything about it. He thought he now understood what was going to happen. Let her come to him.
Ooma left off combing and began to squeeze and caress her plump little b.r.e.a.s.t.s. When her nipples were erect she wet a finger in her mouth and moistened them again and again until they glowed dark pink in the dim firelight. She then combed out her pubic hair with her fingers, very carefully, and toyed briefly with herself there. Then she came toward Blade. He still feigned sleep, but a sardonic part of his mind was putting himself in the place of Lord L, when that old man made his notes: Jedd females indulge in extensive foreplay to ready themselves for coitus. At times this foreplay is carried so far as nearly to const.i.tute autoeroticism. Yes, his Lordship would put it all down in his tight, spa.r.s.e handwriting, with no hint of lubricity. He was an old man. He was also a scientist.
Blade was neither.
Ooma nestled close to him from behind, slipping in until their bodies, his huge one and her small one, fitted like two spoons. He felt her b.r.e.a.s.t.s velvety and firm against his back, the nipples rigid and like warm little needles boring into his flesh. She breathed in his ear.
"Blade master? Do you sleep, Blade master?"
He grunted. "I do not sleep. As you well know. How could I sleep at a time like this? But I do not understand, you have changed your mind about many things, it would appear. Why is this, Ooma?"
She laughed softly and sank her fine small teeth gently into his ear. "I have been thinking. All the time I was frightened out there in the forest I was thinking. You were right and I was wrong. We will be friends and I will trust you."
"And," said Blade with some malice, "there was that cry. That sound in the forest. Or perhaps you did not hear it, Ooma?"
He felt a tremor run through the body pressed so close to his. "I heard it, Blade master. It was the cry of the Api. They hunt at night and it is rare for them to come this far from their own land, but when food is scarce they will. But I would not speak of the Api. They are far away and no danger to us tonight. Tonight, at this moment, it is something else that I want."
Her hand came slyly around and found him and he heard her gasp. "Blade master! You are a giant there. There is none in Jedd, no Jedd male, who has anything like this." Ooma gave this a tug and a rapid manipulation. Blade stifled a groan of pleasure. Already he was having difficulty with his breathing, his heart was trying to pound out of his chest, and he fought back the urge to consummate then and there. Go warily. He did not, in possessing her body, want to lose her allegiance and friendship. What was now transpiring, about to happen, was sheer, brute s.e.x, animal l.u.s.t on both their parts. It would die as the fires would die, leaving ashes, and there would still be tomorrow to face. He needed Ooma. For far more than s.e.xual relief.
Ooma had none of Blade"s reservations. The more she caressed him the more her ardor grew. Her voice went high-pitched and her breath sobbed and whistled in her throat. She licked his body with her moist tongue and murmured words he did not understand. She stroked his swollen t.e.s.t.i.c.l.es with her fingers, performed a brief, but avid, f.e.l.l.a.t.i.o, and then dug her hands into his hair and pulled him down atop her. She guided him into the sleek, wet, tight and rough-walled grotto. Blade was huge and Ooma small and the fricative sum was an unbearable agony of pleasure. It seemed to Blade, trying to prolong the blissful pain, that Ooma spent incessantly without ever losing her grip on him. Her muscular control was beyond anything he had ever experienced; she squeezed him and milked him and, when he could struggle no longer, she took the final gush of his sperm with a high-ringing cry of pleasure that skewered the forest night.
Blade lay on top of her, sweating and panting, still twitching and mindless, fighting his way back from the little death. It had been s.e.x such as few men were privileged to know, barbaric and primitive s.e.x with a unity, a wholeness, a lack of inhibition that even Richard Blade did not often come by. He was grateful. He was also wrung out, depleted, wasted and weary. His ma.s.sive body was a coc.o.o.n nurturing an ennui and death-longing beyond all measure or telling. The past was blotted out, the present did not exist, the future would never be. The great lie of living was over. He could rest now. Sleep now, rest now, die now, He knew his danger and fought back. He rolled off Ooma, who was already sleeping. So simple, so easy to do it like that. s.e.x, satisfaction and sleep. The three sses.
He jabbed himself with the stone knife to keep awake and bring him back to reality. He made a tour of the camp, halting long in shadow to listen and peer, and saw no danger. Finally, sleep overpowering him, he bedded down in the shadows away from the fading fires. Thus an intruder would be apt to attack Ooma first, so giving Blade a chance at him from behind.
Chapter Ten.
Ooma turned out to be a chatterbox. When she was not using her tongue for his, and her, s.e.xual gratification, every night after dinner and before sleep, she talked incessantly. Blade fell into the habit of listening in silence. Now and again he would grunt in a.s.sent, or snarl in dissent, and on the latter occasions she would fall silent for a time. Never for long. Blade learned a great deal in those four days, but there were times when he almost wished the beastmen overseers had caught her.
He spent much of his time in deep thought, pondering, trying to fully grasp a concept slowly building in his mind. It came slowly, with much painful groping, for Blade was no scholar, no intellectual and certainly not a scientist. He was a highly intelligent man of action, gifted with a fine brain and a superb body, but he was uneasy with the novel precept slowly burgeoning within him. Lord Leighton would have welcomed the challenge; Blade was baffled and unsure.
He had, of course, read Lamarck and Darwin at Oxford. After the computer experiments began he, at Lord L"s behest, did some refresher reading. It was this that enabled him to spot the salient difference in the present X-Dimension, the thing that set it apart from those he had visited before, and also made it so akin to Home Dimension and yet so vastly different.
Blade was witnessing the evolutionary process in microcosm.
First he had been struck by the symbolism, the way the terrain kept rising. He had come out of the swamps, scaled the cliffs and had been climbing ever since. Flora and fauna were changing. The lake people were a cut above the cave people and the girl, Ooma, of the mountain-dwelling Jedds, far superior to both.
Blade had walked through vast stages of time, as reckoned by H-Dimension standards, in a few days. Less than a week. Evolution was encapsulated. It was like wandering through a cross-section of an evolutionary model. In this dimension cultures and civilizations, true men and submen, reptiles and mammals, were developed not along parallel lines, far separated in time and s.p.a.ce, but in contiguity. Jam-packed together. Impinging on each other, yet not merging, each with a sharply etched phylogeny of its own.
But if the slant of the terrain was always upward, the ontological line was not. Ooma was proof of that. Her remote ancestors, about whom she was somewhat vague, had built the mammoth idol in which Blade spent the night and from which he had spied on the lake people and seen Ooma escape.
They were bathing together in a limpid pool, warmed by hot springs merging with a slow-trickling cold brook. They scrubbed each other with brushes made of leaves and twigs, and she showed him how to scour his body with fine white sand. Blade watched with some amazement as Ooma cleansed herself and a new girl appeared. He had known she was beautiful. Until now he had not suspected how beautiful.
Blade"s libido, as always of late, blame it on the computer and brain restructuring, was enormous and unmanageable. He was not an easy man to embarra.s.s, and in this strange Eden there was no false modesty, yet for once he found himself feeling sheepish. As he watched Ooma make her careful toilet he began to achieve an enormous erection. Helpless, he watched his flesh dilate, grow and grow until it jutted as hard and firm as a steelyard. Ooma saw it, her eyes widened and she began to laugh. Blade managed a faint grin.
Ooma shook her head. "This is not a time for love, Blade master. In darkness, and after food, is better. Can you not control your monster?"
Blade admitted that he couldn"t.
"Then let me try." Ooma giggled and flashed her white teeth. "It frightens me."
She scooped cold water on Blade. No result. She found a twig and whipped him with it. Gibraltar stood firm. Ooma frowned down at the offender.
"It persists. I do not know what more I can do, Blade master."
"I do," said Blade.
She shook her head again. "No. I do not really want to now. And it is written in the Books of Birkbegn that s.e.x is only sanctified after the sun has set."
The Books of Birkbegn! Blade remembered the rotting vellum in the idol chamber. And pushed it from his mind. Later. At the moment he was not interested in Birkbegn, whoever or whatever he, or she, had been. Very slowly, with a tenderness he thought he had forgotten, he pulled Ooma into his arms. He kissed her softly and stroked her dark hair. With his lips against hers he murmured, "I do not command now, Ooma. I ask."
She pulled away a little, craning to stare up into his eyes. In her green eyes was a flicker of something he had not seen there before, though he had seen it often enough in the eyes of other women. Many times he had seen it, in various dimensions and in Home Dimension. Love. Devotion. Submission. Ooma had changed. For her, s.e.x now had a new meaning, new values. Ooma was in love with him.
Blade put the thought away for consideration at a more convenient time. Just now he itched with desire. And knew that it was more than desire.
Still she demurred, though she stroked his face with her fingers. "I am clean at last, Blade master. If we lie in the gra.s.s or on the earth I will be dirty again. And there are the Books of Birkbegn. I, "
He could wait no longer. He was being consumed. He pulled her closer, kissed her avidly and muttered, "We will do it here, standing in our bath. The flowing water will carry away the sin and Birkbegn will forgive us. I must, Ooma, I must. Do not make me order you."
She clung to him, limp and phocine, her wet hide gleaming, her damp b.r.e.a.s.t.s squashed flat against Blade"s ma.s.sive chest. She let her knees sag, spread herself for him, then gave a little upward leap and locked her legs behind his back. Blade plunged and she emitted a groan of mingled pain and pleasure.
It was short and incredibly sweet, and when Blade collapsed he took her beneath the water with him, down to where the springs were nearly boiling hot. When they surfaced, sputtering and laughing, both realized, with no words spoken, that things had changed between them.
That night they camped near the Api country. Ooma spoke not of the Api, for she had already warned him of what might befall them, but of the great idol and the Books of Birkbegn.
"I will tell you," she confided, "as it was told to me by my father, and my grandfather, and his father and grandfather, and by all the old men who have lived since the beginning of time and life. Since the egg was hatched."
"The egg?"
She poked him with a stick she held. This night they had no fire and had eaten cold meat. Blade fashioned a cunningly contrived lean-to that blended in with the forest They spoke in whispers. This was Api country.
Ooma poked him again and leaned close. "Do not interrupt me, Blade, or I will never get it told."
He, in his new softness for her, a thing he did not quite understand as yet, had decreed that she no longer need call him master. And, though he hastily pointed out that it did not mean they were equals, the girl did not seem to care either way.
She whispered: "I will tell it in the exact words I had from my father, for I know no others. And I may forget some of it, for my memory is not good." Here she gave him an impish smile. "But you will not know the difference."
Blade grinned and pulled her head onto his big shoulder. "No. I will not know the difference/And I will not hear it, either, unless you get on with it. I am sleepy. You are much like the women in the world I come from, you talk all around the point and seldom get to it."
She nuzzled against him and said, a bit pettishly, "I do not want to hear about the women in your world. I will tell you of mine: "In the beginning there was only the Occ, the great bird of the Universe that filled all creation. The Occ dwelt alone in all s.p.a.ce, or so it thought, for it did not know that there was s.p.a.ce beyond s.p.a.ce. Then one day, suddenly out of the s.p.a.ce beyond s.p.a.ce, there came another bird. It had no name. It was very tiny and it built a nest on the back of the huge Occ. The Occ did not object, or kill it, because the Occ was lonely in forever time and forever s.p.a.ce. The tiny bird and the Occ became friends and the Occ was not lonely any more.
"One day the little bird told Occ something that made the big bird very sad. The smaller bird was going to die. The Occ wept and there was water in the world. The little bird laughed at this and the Occ was dismayed until the bird explained that now its task was lighter, one fourth of its task was accomplished. The poor Occ did not understand and continued to weep and weep until there was too much water in the world. To stop the Occ from weeping the little bird decided that it was time to die, though it had not wished to die so soon, and it explained to the Occ what would happen and what the Occ must do."
It was a weird cosmogony, the sleepy Blade thought, but at the same time it had a quasifamiliar strain. He held her closer and fought off sleep. When he came to the land of the Jedds all this might come in handy.
"When the tiny bird died, it explained to the sorrowing Occ, the large bird was to tear it into three parts and eat it. It was to have been four parts, but now that the Occ had wept and brought forth water there was need for only three.
"At this sad news the Occ began to weep again and the little bird, fearful that even s.p.a.ce beyond s.p.a.ce would be flooded away, died at once. Each part had a voice of its own and issued commands to the Occ.
" "I am fire," said the first part. "Eat me." And the Occ obeyed.
" "I am earth," said the second part. "Eat me." And the Occ did so.
" "I am air," said the third part. "Eat me." And the Occ ate the third and last part of what had been the tiny bird.
"At once the Occ became very sick. It flapped and fluttered and groaned in great pain. This went on and on and the Occ thought it was dying. It could not vomit and could not void; nothing, it seemed, would ever rid the great bird of its agony.
"Then in one great convulsion it gave birth to an egg called the World. But the egg was fouled, vile, dirty with the excreta and voidings of the Occ. The Occ wept again in memory of its little friend and the egg of the World was cleansed. And for a little time the Occ nested atop the egg it had hatched and was content, until a voice from the s.p.a.ce beyond s.p.a.ce called to it and gave commands. The Occ was to leave the egg and fly into the s.p.a.ce beyond s.p.a.ce and there, after a long journey, it would find a vast fire. It was to fly into the fire and be destroyed. And this the Occ did, leaving behind it the egg."
Ooma poked Blade with the stick. "Are you asleep, then?"
He kissed her. "No. I was listening. It was all very interesting. But what of the Books of Birkbegn?"
Ooma pouted a bit. "All I have told you was written in the Books of Birkbegn. Birkbegn was the first man, he who evolved from the egg, the father of all the Jedd tribe. All this way written in the Books, by Birkbegn and his sons, and once it was read. But now it must be told, because the writing has faded and been forgotten. No Jedd can read the Books now. The tale is told at night around the fires, along with the stories, all true, of how great the Jedds were and of how they alone ruled the egg of the World."
Blade yawned. "What happened?"
Ooma stroked his face as she prepared for sleep. "Who can know all the answers, except that the Jedds did not live by the Books of Birkbegn and suffered, were punished for their evil ways. More than that I do not know for, to tell the truth, I did not always listen closely when the old men spoke. I had other and more interesting things to do and I did them. I would creep away from the fire and do them."
"I"ll bet," murmured Blade. Jedd females, he thought, must come to p.u.b.erty very young by HD standards. Possibly nine or ten years old.
Ooma wormed her tongue into his ear. "I have decided that I do not wish to sleep right now. First we will, "
"You are insatiable," said Blade. "In fact, I am beginning to think you are a nympho."
She crashed her mouth against his and began to stroke his more sensitive parts. As dead beat as he was, Blade responded instantly. She squealed softly in delight and began the usual oral foreplay, talking all the while.
"This," said she, "is a proper time and place. It is dark and we have eaten and soon we will sleep."
"I hope," he said feebly. "And I also hope you leave me some strength to fight the Api, if I must fight them."
"Tomorrow we will worry about the Api," said the practical Ooma. "For now it is no sin and I will have it. Be still. Do not move. I, Ooma, will do everything."
Which she did.
In the morning, after a plunge in the brook and breakfast, they continued on their way. Blade, as he listened to Ooma"s chatter, grew somber and looked to his weapons. He did not like what she told him of the Api.
For one thing, he did not know just how much credence to place in her reporting, for Ooma was a f.e.c.kless little creature. This he had to acknowledge despite his growing fondness for her. So, as they finally left the forest behind and plunged into a narrow falling and winding defile, once again descending, the significance of which did not escape Blade, he listened and made mental notes and took nothing for granted. He became aware of a coldness along his spine. The Api sounded formidable in the extreme, Blade might very well reach the end of his trek long before he reached the mountains and the Jedds. But then death was always a possibility in any Dimension X.
If Ooma was frightened she did not show it. She was matter-of-fact.
"If the Api slay you," she explained, "they will take me captive and use me as a common woman for all of them. Unless you kill me first, or I can kill myself."
He shot her a glance. "Do you want to die? Are the Api so bad that death would be better than being taken and used by them?"
For a moment she pondered this, frowning. "I do not really know. I am very young and the Jedds live long. I am fond of life and all it offers, and now that you have come to me, Blade, it will be even harder to die. But the Api! They are hairy monsters, though very intelligent, and their ways are not those of the Jedds. I suppose I would be better off dead."
Surely a strange child. Blade eyed her. "But you are not really sure?"
Again a fatalistic little shrug. "It does not really make much difference, Blade. If you lose and if I am taken prisoner and used by them, I will not live long anyway. They are brutes, much too large for a Jedd woman , which is exactly why they take so much pleasure in Jedd women, and I would be ripped apart after a little time. I would not like to die that way, no, Blade, I think that if I see you are losing I will manage to kill myself. If you would give me your little stone knife it would be easier. It is hard to kill yourself without a weapon."
Blade gave her the stone knife, thinking that in any case it would be of little use against the Api. Ooma fashioned a sheath of bark and bound it to her thigh with vines. At Blade"s suggestion that she make a kilt and a bra of the same material, he thinking that if her b.r.e.a.s.t.s and pubic area were covered the Api might not be so aroused, she only stared at him and said with disdain that out here clothing was of no importance. Only in the land of the Jedds, her own people, did covering oneself matter. Among the primitives, beastmen and the Api, clothes had no significance.
Blade let it go.
The defile ended and widened onto a plain. Far across the plain, shining in the sun, reared the serrate tips of a vast mountain range. The wind sweeping toward them over the plain bore the chill tang of ice and snow.
Ooma gave a little cry of joyous recognition. She pointed toward the far-off mountains. "That is where my people dwell. Once past the first mountains there is a valley where they have lived all the years since being driven from this land in the time before knowing. Oh, Blade, you must win today! I want to see my home again."
He hardly heard her. He was examining a large stone hut that stood on the plain some three hundred yards from the mouth of the ravine. It was flat-topped, with a mortared wall around all four sides that he guessed had been built to catch and hold rain. Water must be scarce on this plain.
At the moment Blade was more interested in the lookout on the roof. It was his first view of an Api and he did not like it. He let out his breath in a slow whistle of dismay. The thing was about eight feet tall and appeared to be a cross between a gorilla and a baboon. The face was snouty, dog-like, and the body a ma.s.sive and hairy block of bulging muscle. Blade blinked and stared again. The lookout was wearing a horned helmet and a swordbelt, nothing else. And it was peering over the plain at Blade, studying him under a raised forepaw. Just as intently as Blade was studying it.
The Api vanished suddenly through a trap in the roof. The stone hut brooded on the plain. Blade looked at the girl.
"So that is an Api?" He kept his voice calm and steady, making no outward sign of the trepidation he felt. What a brute! And he with only a spear and makeshift bow and arrows. He was on the verge of asking for his knife back, then decided against it. Ooma might very well need the knife to kill herself.
A coil of dark, greasy smoke was rising from the hut now. Ooma pointed to it.