Part 16 (1/2)

”No man can get along on a continual diet of abstinence. A man must be permitted normal s.e.xual expression, as G.o.d intended. He must express his natural urges, of whatever type, or wither away.”

”Still,” Brother Paul said uncertainly. He had his beliefs, but they were being sorely besieged by this logic and the woman in his arms.

The priestess knelt before him, as though in supplication, her b.r.e.a.s.t.s sliding excruciatingly down the length of his torso. ”I adore thee, I A O!” she repeated.

”Hey, that's not I A O!” Brother Paul protested. But then he realized that perhaps it was; she wors.h.i.+ped a serpent-legged G.o.d, so she sought the serpent in man.

Under her ma.s.sage, that serpent rose and swelled like the forepart of a cobra.

The skin of the head peeled back, releasing the faint scent generated in that special pocket-the scent that the knife denied to most Christians and all Moslems and Jews, in the guise of ”health.”

But Brother Paul had never been subjected to that unkindest cut. His member was whole, and it functioned as G.o.d had designed it to. The scent of arousal wafted out. She inhaled that aroma. A beatific smile spread across her face. ”I A O!”

she breathed ecstatically, her breath caressing the organ.

”Love is the law,” Therion intoned. ”Love under will.”

”Enough of this!” Brother Paul cried, drawing her hands and face away from his anatomy. He lifted her up, but she spun away and sprawled half across the couch.

(Couch? Where was the cup? Oh-they were the same.) He pursued her, caught her with both his hands about her waist as she pushed herself up on the support, and brought his groin to her swelling posterior. Her hands, dislodged as her bottom was raised up, slid off the rim; the upper section of her body fell down inside the cup. Now she was bent forward at a right angle, her b.r.e.a.s.t.s flattening against the inner surface of the cup, her elbows braced at its depth, her face invisible within its shadow. But he didn't need her b.r.e.a.s.t.s or arms or face. He guided his member by hand, found the place, and thrust.

He had imagined easy penetration of her exposed v.a.g.i.n.a, but it was not easy.

There was some pain for him as he forced entry past constricted muscles, without sufficient lubrication. But the drug spurred him on; he was, after all, the Conqueror!

The climax was explosive: a nuclear detonation in a subterranean vault. The recoil flung him backward, breaking the connection. Simultaneously his heroin high collapsed; he felt tired and sick, pumped out, without ambition, irritable, and disgusted. The priestess had fallen out of the cup to the floor, outstretched, supine. Therion was squatting beside her, almost over her head.

Maybe she was hurt; it had been quite a blast. Brother Paul didn't care. He just wanted another sniff of H.

He staggered toward Therion. ”Give it to me,” he rasped.

”I'm busy!” Therion snapped, still squatting. ”I have to give her-”

Brother Paul's nose was running and his stomach was cramping. Withdrawal symptoms, he knew. ”Give me the stuff.”

Therion ignored him, concentrating on the girl.

”I want more smack, more junk,” Brother Paul insisted. ”What do you call it these days? Horse? Snow? Where is it?”

Still Therion did not respond; he was still squatting.

Sudden rage engulfed Brother Paul. ”You're paying more attention to her than to me! You're supposed to guide me!”

”s.h.i.+t,” Therion said.

Brother Paul remembered; that was another name for heroin. ”Then give me s.h.i.+t!”

he cried.

A cup appeared before him, but it contained no white powder. Angrily he swung his fist at it, knocking it over. A green snake fell out, hissing. A foot of the G.o.d Abraxas? No, this was merely the symbol of Jealousy.

He was getting nowhere. His hot flash was converting into a chill. What had he gotten into? ”Why should you be so self-a.s.sured,” Brother Paul demanded, ”when I am so confused and sick! It isn't fair!”

Therion looked up. 'I am content because I comprehend my own essential nature,”

he said. ”I know what I am, and who I serve. I am at peace with myself. No victory, wealth, or woman can match that. Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the law.”

”Then show me how to comprehend my essential nature!” Brother Paul cried. ”There is the key to ultimate power!”

”You must seek it within yourself, extricating yourself from the prison of the senses,” Therion said. ”Meditation, such as is sponsored by yoga-”

”No! I can't wait for that. I want it now!”

”Then take the shortcut.” Therion held up a small capsule. ”LSD.”

Brother Paul s.n.a.t.c.hed it and gulped it down.

It was like a headlong rush into a maelstrom. Sensations were coming at him from all directions, and seeming to go out from him similarly. Sights, sounds, smells, tastes, and touches. He saw the room. The girl was still lying on the floor, her mouth open. Therion was still squatting over her. He saw all the furniture. The patch of sunlight from the window. He heard the wheezing of wind around the parapet, the baying of some distant animal, the ticking of an unseen clock. He smelled the leather couch, and the bra.s.s of the inside of the big cup, and dust from the floor, and the faint, sweet scent of a flower outside, somewhere. He tasted the remains of the capsule. He felt the cool stone floor under his feet, the caress of a trifling breeze on his bare body. All distractions, to be dispensed with!

He focused his awareness, shutting all external stimuli out. Now he saw light behind his eyelids, for they were not thick enough to make total darkness. He heard the sound of his own breathing, and of his heartbeat. He smelled his own breath, a touch of whiskey still on it. Whiskey? Oh-from that first drink, back at Temptation. His tongue tasted slightly bitter. He felt the tension of his muscles as they tightened to keep him balanced.

Actually there were many more than five senses, but most of the unnamed ones could be lumped under touch: feeling of discomfort, muscle tension, orientation.

Distractions.

He sat down on the floor, a.s.suming the crosslegged yoga position favored for meditation, and consciously relaxed. Gradually his bodily tensions melted away, releasing his mind.

It was like flying low over a landscape toward the sunrise. His half-random thoughts zoomed past like technicolor clouds, some formless, some beautiful, some menacing. Below was the castle, with the priestess lying like Sleeping Beauty within it, awaiting the kiss to restore her to consciousness, except that that was an expurgation. It was really the s.e.xual act that would rouse her, making the life within her quicken, only they couldn't tell children that (and why the h.e.l.l not?) and in this case that act had put her to sleep instead.

Priestess of Abraxas? What was such temple wors.h.i.+p except ritualized prost.i.tution? Prost.i.tution, the oldest profession of woman. It would exist as long as men had the money and the urge and women had neither. How ironic that it should be combined with religion! Yet religion had about as great an affinity for the vices of man as any other inst.i.tution.

The drug enhanced everything, providing a phenomenal visual, aural, and tactile experience. The Dragon of Temptation charged him, but was inflated like a hydrogen balloon until it exploded into harmless flame. Therion would say it had farted itself to death. The priestess of I A O again, opening her lovely body to him, crying, ”I adore thee, I A O!” but he was no longer aroused. The suits of the Tarot, symbols flying up around him like the cards in Alice in Wonderland, male wands and swords thrusting through female cups and disks. Swiftly, in mere seconds, he abolished all these interfering thoughts. Gradually he oriented on his target: his own ultimate essence.

Now, in the distance, he saw the first glow of it- the effulgence of the Grail.

Like the breaking of the dawn, that miraculous light expanded as he arrowed toward it. The disruptive presence of his superficial thoughts diminished, s.h.i.+ning in pastel hues in the face of that solar brilliance; he coursed past them, unveiling the way to Nirvana.

At last the gleaming rim of it emerged, more splendid than any vision he had heretofore imagined. Onward he flew, bringing more into view: the magnificent curvature of the Holy Grail, hanging perfectly in the sky.

Now he saw that though the Cup itself glowed, as it had when it had floated past the astonished knights of King Arthur's Round Table, this was a faint glimmering compared to its princ.i.p.al illumination. This brilliance was by virtue of its content-that deeply veiled shape whose light spilled out between canopy and rim.. The shape of his Essence!

Eagerly he moved toward it, certain now that he would perceive the glory that was his soul. What form would it take, that divine revelation? A giant, precious, bright crystal with myriad facets, a myriad-squared reflections? A G.o.dlike brilliance, gently blinding the mortal eye? An intangible aura of sheer wonder?

He came up to the monstrous chalice, that goblet of Jesus, the quintessence of ambition, and peeked under the glorious cover. There was an odor, awful and out of place, but he ignored it. Here at last was Truth, was Soul!

It was a huge, half-coiled, half-broken, steaming human t.u.r.d.