Flesh
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PREHISTORY
Time’s Last Gift
Hadon of Ancient Opar
SECRETS OF THE NINE: PARALLEL UNIVERSE
A Feast Unknown
Lord of the Trees
The Mad Goblin
GRANDMASTER SERIES
Lord Tyger
The Wind Whales of Ishmael
Venus on the Half-Shell
(coming soon)
JOSÉ
FARMER
FLESH
TITAN BOOKS
Print edition ISBN: 9781781163016
E-book edition ISBN: 9781781163030
Published by Titan Books
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144 Southwark Street, London SE1 0UP
First edition: August 2013
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental. The publisher does not have any control over and does not assume any responsibility for author or third-party websites or their content.
Copyright © 1974, 2013 by the Philip J. Farmer Family Trust. All rights reserved.
Afterword copyright © 2013 by Dennis E. Power.
Afterword copyright © 2013 by Michael A. Baron.
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For Bette, Courageous and Loving Wife
FLESHPRELUDEThe crowd in front of the White House talked, shouted, and laughed. Women shrilled; men boomed. The high-pitched cut of children’s voices was missing. They were home and being cared for by their older but prepubescent brothers and sisters or cousins. It was not fitting that children should see what would happen tonight. They would not understand the rites, one of the most holy in honor of the Great White Mother.
It also would not be safe for the children to be present. Centuries before the present date (2860 Old Style), when the rites were first held, children had been allowed to attend. Many had been killed, literally ripped apart, during the frenzies.
Tonight was dangerous enough for the adults. Always, a number of women were badly mauled or killed. Always, a number of men were overpowered by long-nailed, sharp-toothed women who ripped off by the roots that which made men men and who ran screaming down the streets with the trophies held high in the air or clenched between their teeth before placing them on the altar of the Great White Mother in the Temple of Dark Earth.
The following week, on Friday Sabbath, the white-robed Speakers for the Mother, priests and priestesses, would reprimand the survivors for carrying their zeal just a little too far. However, harsh words were the worst that those preached to could expect, and not always these were hurled at them. A man or woman truly possessed by the Goddess, and who was not then, could not be blamed. Besides, what else did the Speakers expect? Did not this happen every night a Sunhero or Stag-king was born? Oh, well, the Speakers felt that it was necessary to quiet the worshipers down so that they could resume a normal life. Listen, pray, and forget. And look forward to the next ceremony.
Besides, the victims had nothing to complain about. They would be buried in a shrine, prayers said over them, and deer sacrificed over them. The ghosts of the slain would drink the blood and be thrice-glorified and sustained.
The bloody sun slid down past the horizon; night rushed in with cool dark whispering wings. The crowd became quieter while the representatives of the great frats lined up on Pennsylvania Avenue. There was a violent argument between the chief of the Moose frat and the chief of the Elks. Each claimed that his frat should lead the parade. Were they not both antlered men? Was not the Sunhero antler-bearing this year?
John Barleycorn, green from head to foot in his ritual costume, scarlet in face, staggering, tried to settle the dispute. As usual, he was too far gone by nightfall to speak clearly or to care much whether or not he spoke at all. His few discernible words only succeeded in making both chiefs angry. They were likely to be easily angered since both were more than a little drunk. They even went so far as to grip their knife handles, though it would have taken far greater provocation for them to unsheathe the knives at this time.
A detachment of the White House Honor Guard left their posts to straighten matters out. The tall girls marched from the porch, their high conical helmets shining in the torchlight, long hair hanging down their backs, their white robes gleaming. They carried their bows in one hand and an arrow in the other. Unlike the rest of the virgins in the city of Washington, they exposed only one breast, the left. The robe concealed the other—or, rather, the lack of the other. Traditionally, a White House archer gladly allowed her breast to be removed so it would not interfere with her handling of the bow. The lack was no disadvantage in getting a husband when she retired. Tonight, after the Sunhero planted the seed of divinity in them, they could have their choice of men to marry. A man whose wife had been a one-breasted Honor Guard was a proud man.
The captain of the Honor Guard sternly asked about the disturbance. After hearing both chiefs out, she said, “This is the first time matters have ever been so badly arranged. Perhaps we need a new John Barleycorn!”
She pointed the arrow in her hand at the chief of the Elk frat.
“You will take the lead in the parade. And you and your brothers will have the honor of bringing out the Sunhero.”
The chief of the Moose frat was either a brave man or a foolish man. He protested. “I was out drinking with the Barleycorn last night, and he told me the Moose would have the honor! I demand to know why the Elks have been chosen instead of us!”
The captain stared coldly at him, and then fitted the nock of her arrow to the string of her bow. But she was too well trained in politics to shoot one of the powerful Moose frat.
“The Barleycorn must have been possessed with spirits other than those the Goddess gives him,” she said. “It has been planned for some time that the Elks would escort the Sunhero to the Capitol. Is not the Sunhero a stag? Isn’t he Stagg? You know that a male Elk is a stag, but a male Moose is a bull!”
“That is true,” said the chief Moose, pale from the moment the arrow had been fitted. “I should not have listened to John Barleycorn. But it normally would have been the turn of the Moose. Last year it was the Lions, and the year before it was the Lambs. We should have been next.”
“And so you would have been—except for that.”
She pointed behind him down Pennsylvania Avenue.
He turned to look. The street ran straight for six blocks from the White House and then ended suddenly in a towering baseball stadium. Rising even over it was the shining needle shape of a craft that had not been seen for seven hundred and sixty years. Not until a month ago, when it had come thundering and flaming out of the late November skies and settled in the center of the ball park.
“You are right,” said the chief Moose. “Never before has the Sunhero descended to us from the skies, sent by the Great White Mother Herself. And, certainly, She made it clear what frat he honors by being its brother when She named him Stagg.”
He marched away at the head of his men and just in time.
There was a scream from the Capitol, now only six blocks away from the White House. The scream silenced the crowd; it paralyzed them and made the men turn pale. The women in the crowd became wide-eyed, eager, and expectant. Several fell on the ground, writhing and moaning. There came another scream, and now it could be seen that the terrible sound was from the throats of many young girls running down the steps of Congress.