“You lie!” he screamed.
His penis rose so swiftly it looked as if it were being hauled up on a string. It swelled like a cobra, the blue veins pulsed, and the great red glans glistened.
I knew then that there was no talking him out of it. The fight was inevitable. I knew this deep down, and, perhaps, I had hoped deep down that it would take place. Whatever my true hopes, my penis rose also, though more slowly, and when fully erect, it looked pale and small against his.
He watched the organ swell and then he said, “I’m going to tear your balls and cock off, big brother!”
He sprang forward, swiftly as a tiger, and lashed out with one hand at my testicles. The other went up to catch whichever hand I extended for defense.
41
I intercepted the hand and without flinching, which he had hoped I would do so he could throw me off balance if he missed my genitals. He came up swiftly then, though I almost threw him over, because he was crouched to one side and so off-balance.
We were again in the stance we had had when on the bridge. He glared down at me, six foot seven against my six foot three and his 300 pounds against my 240. I am a big wide man, thick-boned as a Cro-
Magnon, as I have said, and greatly muscled, but my proportions are such that I do not look like a shotputter.
Alone, with no other humans by me for comparison, I look more like the Apollo Belvedere, although somewhat more broad-shouldered and deep-chested.
Caliban’s proportions were also such that he did not look so massively constructed if he stood alone.
But next to me, he seemed to be muscled with pythons. And I’m sure that we looked to Trish like a male
African lion straining against an American mountain lion.
For what seemed minutes, we strained against each other. Both of us were bleeding from a dozen wounds and profusely from several. We had become weakened by the loss of blood and the energy expended. Our breathing was labored.
We strove. And then, slowly, oh, so slowly, but steadily, his arms were pushed back. His eyes widened slightly, and he breathed more harshly. The muscles of neck, shoulders, chest, and arms ridged.
Blue veins pushed up the sweating bronze skin on his temples.
He bent forward and caught my nose in his teeth and bit. I jerked it out of his teeth, but it cost me a pain that seemed to run through my nose and split my brain. It shot down through the pit of my belly and down my legs, as if it were a streak of lightning. Part of it was torn off, and blood spurted.
Somehow, he jerked one hand loose and grabbed my testicles. It was done quickly, as savagely and powerfully as the swipe of a tiger’s paw. Another sear of pain struck, like a spear head, between my legs. I screamed then, and I reacted half-unconsciously. We both were standing there with each other’s rippedoff testicles in our hands.
Blood spurted from the torn skin and veins and arteries between his legs. I felt a warmth shooting down my leg but did not look down because that would have been fatal. There was not much time left before I became weak with shock and pain, and loss of blood.
I cast his testicles in his face and leaped. He dropped mine and tried to grab both my hands again, but this time I caught one of his hands and with the other made my own swipe. The penis, amazingly, was still huge and hard, though it was deflating. It twisted like a spigot in my grip; he screamed; I yanked with all my strength; the flesh tore like a piece of silk; the member, spurting blood at one end and jism at the other, was in my hand and before his face.
I dropped it; he stepped forward as if to pick it up. Then I was on his back and had a full-Nelson on him. He fell forward and crashed upon his face. The wind went out of him. Despite this, he still had enough vitality to resist my pressure. His neck muscles became as hard as wood. I could feel my own strength flapping away, like a sick bat into the night.
Yet, my penis was still hard and throbbing. It was up against his buttocks, which also felt as hard as oak.
I applied pressure with my hands against the back of his neck in a surge, knowing that if he could withstand that, he might yet win. Blackness was closing in on the edges of my consciousness.
His skin began to gray, even as the bones of his neck creaked like a ship’s mast against the force of the wind.
I heard, faintly, a cry of protest from Trish. Caliban grunted once as if he were trying to force something out from him. His neck bent, and then the bones snapped.
I spurted over him with only a vague awareness of it. The black rushed in as the fluid rushed out, and shortly thereafter I cared as little as Caliban about the world.
42
The awakening was partial and blurred. I felt some pain, though it was everywhere, but so little that I realized—later—that I was drugged. The lights overhead were high and hexagonal. Dimly, I knew I was in bed in the atom-bomb shelter.
“Clio,” I said but could not hear myself say it.
A head, framed in a bronze halo, blacked out the lights. It was smiling and weeping at the same time.
“Trish,” I said. “Where’s Clio?”
Another head, haloed in gold, appeared beside the bronze.
It leaned down and kissed me.
“Go back to sleep, dear.”
I obeyed.
When I awoke again, I was still drugged. The pain had increased, however. It was wired throughout my body but centered from beneath my penis.
I turned my head. I was in the shelter. It was 80 feet wide, 60 long, and 30 high. Portable screens divided it into rooms, with the exception of a cement-block cube which housed the fuel cells and the converters. The air system was based on that used in manned space craft. There were supplies enough to last us six months. I had been against building it because we were so seldom in England. Clio had insisted that we construct it, and now I was glad that she was so stubborn.
I had many questions, but I asked first, in a weak voice, if she was all right. She told me to keep quiet and eat. She spoon fed me, and then I felt strong enough to put some questions to her. She began a lengthy account, during which, despite my intense curiosity, I fell asleep again.
On awakening the third time, I found Clio gone and Trish taking care of me. She said my wife had left the shelter to talk to the contractors about rebuilding Catstarn Hall.
I said, “I’m sorry, Trish. I tried to talk some sense into him. You heard me.”
“I heard,” she said. She shuddered. “I hope I never have to go through anything like that again if I live to ten thousand.”
“Have you been contacted by the Nine yet?” I said.
She started and then said, slowly, “Yes. In the first place, we would have had worldwide publicity about this if the Nine hadn’t pulled the strings of some highly placed puppets in the government. They clamped down on all reporters and police investigations, claimed security demanded it, and that was that.
Oh, yes, the servants were told to be quiet, and threatened with severe penalties if they talked.”
“The bodies?”
“We took care of ... you ... set up the intravenous and the blood. I didn’t know Clio had had some medical training. Without her I’d have been lost. Then I drove like hell to Keswick and got Doctor
Hengist, who is one of us. He’d already phoned to Whitehall before I got there. I’d phoned him I was coming. There were soldiers up here on the heels of the people from Cloamby and Greystoke.”
“All those bodies,” I said.
“The three of us worked like mules. We dragged every one of the bodies, except for those in the hall, of course, every one of the bodies outside and in here into a room in the castle and shut it up. That included dear old Jocko and Porky, too, but we’ll give them a decent burial later, out on the hill by that big boulder. They’d like that.”