I'll need a new name, she mused, something to separate me from the old life I'm leaving behind. No more am I a creature of the Institute. Who shall I be? I want to blend in. Jiang . . . Jana! That's it! Dr. Jana Li Hu, Chinese-Canadian asterologist . . .
No, a faint voice whispered. You have a name. Your real name is a good enough label . . . Hua
-hung.
She changed her mind.
No! I am Jana! I've been Jana for half of my life! She sobbed in her eternal darkness and, for just a moment, swore that she could feel the slow crawl of tears worming their way across the ruined landscape of her frozen face. What was it?
Impossible.
Li-jiang was a hundred years old. She lay on a silken divan surrounded by a diffuse gauze of sea-green mosquito netting somewhere in the tropics. She was immortal and the endless life served her well. She was gifted by eternal youth and had become completely given over to the pleasures of the flesh that had tried to claim her since childhood.
The advances of surgery had changed her, augmenting her beauty until it was an unearthly thing. Between her legs there was a great iridescent flower of flesh. She had become a perfect androgyne , able to take enjoyment wherever she would. The flower would open to accept men or compress for the swift penetration of compliant women. She used them by the dozen, reeling her ancient way through a thousand and more orgasms in a single day.
They fed her, bathed her, and she never had to stir from the airy, gently swaying bed that was her home. The great people, the famous ones, came to enjoy her uniqueness from all over the inhabited universe. In the distances a great hard squid lurked, waiting its turn. She sought the discharge of its anchorelleswith breathless anticipation. She used her experiences at a prodigious rate, secure in the knowledge that the universe was truly infinite, that all the newnesses could never be exhausted. In the hot confines of her darkness Jana cried, pleading for death to end the torture, for the world to turn her loose and let her fall end over end down into the vast night of nonbeing.
She awoke.
Through the thin skin of her closed eyelids the world was a sea of light. She felt her lips curve in an unfamiliar smile. She sighed, and the resonances of her breath sounded strange. Her chest felt light, somehow tighter, as if the negligible weight of her small breasts was gone, amputated. Maybe they have been. The extremities would have taken the most damage, she thought.
She stirred, and felt that her limbs were still there, all her fingers and toes accounted for, still willing to wiggle. They felt strange and angular, longer and thinner than they had been. Prostheses? Am I back on Earth? No. She felt the lightness of Ocypete's hold.
Her hips felt wrong. Narrow. The legs seemed connected at the wrong angle, far too acute. She seemed bony. She sighed again, listening to the hoarse rasp. Might as well face it now, she thought. I wonder what this lump between my legs could be? Probably a catheter. I must be pretty sick. . . . She opened her eyes and Brendan Sealock's dead face swam into view, smiling at her. Oh! She lurched upward, off balance, and clutched him to her nonexistent bosom in a fierce hug. Strong emotion, unfamiliar emotion, washed over her. To see him once again! She felt a powerful desire to pull him down on her, to feel the swift penetration of his burgeoning manhood, to submit herself to his will. She buried her face in his chest and said, "I knew you'd come in time, beloved!" in a voice far too deep.
Jana's screams seemed to echo for hours in the cold spaces of the CM. Her horror on awakening to find herself bothdead and changed was uncontrollable, a raving madness of whirling motion that brought them down on her in moments. Her wild, glaring rage out of Demogorgon's lost eyes took them away from her, transformed her to a thing, and seemed to make them all impersonal and remote. It transferred them all into the past for a brief time.
Lightly sedated, she went to sleep for a time, dreamless, and awoke, as always, alone within herself. She lay there in her bed, hunkered down in the warm, drowsing comfort that fills in the chasms of a slow awakening. I had the strangest dream, she whispered to herself, a slight smile marking the lines of her face. How bizarre I can be at times, how artistic! One of her hands drifted across the expanse of soft sheets warmed by body heat and touched a soft flank, her own. She rubbed her fingers across the gentle flesh and her smile broadened. Now, she thought. . . . The hand lifted upward of its own accord and descended on her abdomen. It drifted across a delicate expanse, headed for her groin, intent on the soft pleasures of sleepy masturbation. The fingers glided through a dense tangle of crisp, curling hair, feeling for the sensitive skin of swelling labia, for the moistness of engorging tissues and . . . Her eyes snapped open to stare hard at the ceiling rimmed with stark whiteness, and her breathing quickened, expressing itself in short gasps of renewed terror. No dream. She felt herself again and shuddered. The unexpected organ was there, a stiff temple of flesh growing like some alien symbiote from her body, pulsating with a ready eagerness that defied logic. Her fingers jerked away, her hand clawed in upon itself, then slowly, inexorably, went back to its exploration. Long, thick, knob-ended, a heartbeat exposed to public view. Ridged on the upper surface, pulpy and softer below, vanishing into folded flesh as she progressed. It hardened still more under her touch, as men always did, souls out of control, and she felt a strong sense of pleasure that made her feel sick. Her breath rasped! in her throat and grew deeper.
The madness wanted to close in again, but something, some indefinable factor from deep within, was holding it at bay. The fingers of her right hand continued in their course,following the well-marked route of an old, familiar trail. She stroked slowly, gently, feeling the little ridge that marked the beginning of the bulbous end, touched the little hole gently, and backed away from an unexpected tenderness. She squeezed hard and moved more quickly, felt the skin of her face tighten, then grow slack. The forces from within made her gasp against her will, uncontrollable. How odd, how odd... Muscles deep within her body suddenly clenched, nausea closing in. Oh, she gasped, wondering if she'd somehow injured herself. The thing tightened and tightened ... it pulsed and she felt a strong surge of warmth rush away from the center of her body, reaching out to her extremities in a fraction of a second. Another pulse followed on the heels of the first and she felt a sensation a little like urination. The warmth increased, making her flush. The pulses went in rapid waves, tearing her mind apart, and she felt puddles of hot wetness forming on her stomach.
Her mind came back with a sickening rush, bringing with it a feeling of tiredness, of collapse. She felt like a suddenly punctured balloon. It was over, almost as if it had never happened. She felt strange, horrid. She lay there, staring at the ceiling, her thoughts fragmented and unreal. Who am I, where am I, and why? It was all too terrible for rational contemplation. Do I deserve to think?
She sat up and looked around. Oh, God . . . for some reason they had put her in Demogorgon's room. His effects surrounded her on every side. She looked at all his things and felt warm, comfortable. Somehow, they made her feel calm. She got up and began to walk around aimlessly, and after a while her wet stomach began to feel cold.
She stood in front of his full-length antique mirror and looked at herself, at the alien reflection in the mirror.