Flesh (9 page)

Sadly, Calthorp shook his head.

Stagg turned pale. “Then I have to go through that
again
?”

“I’m afraid so, my boy.”

“Tonight, at Fair Grace? And the next night at another town? And so on until... when?”

“Peter, I’m sorry, I have no way of knowing how long.”

Calthorp cried out with pain as a huge hand bent his wrist bones towards each other.

Stagg loosened his grip. “Sorry, Doc. I got excited.”

“Well, now,” Calthorp said, rubbing his wrist tenderly, “there’s one possibility. It seems to me that, if all this business started at the winter solstice, it should end at the summer solstice. That is, about June 21 or 22. You are the symbol of the sun. In fact, these people probably regard you as being literally the sun himself—especially since you came down in a flaming iron steed out of the sky.”

Stagg put his head in his hands. Tears welled out from between his fingers, and his naked shoulders shook. Calthorp patted his golden head, while tears ran from his own eyes. He knew how terribly grieved his captain must be, if he could weep through the armors of his inhibitions.

Finally, Stagg rose and began walking across the fields toward a nearby creek. “Have to take a bath,” he muttered. “I’m filthy. If I have to be a Sunhero, I’m going to be a clean one.”

“Here they come,” Calthorp said, pointing to the crowd of people who had been waiting about fifty yards away. “Your devout worshipers and bodyguards.”

Stagg grimaced. “Just now I loathe myself. But last night I enjoyed what I was doing. I had no inhibitions. I was living the secret dream of every man—unlimited opportunity and inexhaustible ability. I was a
god!”

He stopped and seized Calthorp’s wrist again.

“Go back to the ship! Get a gun, if you have to sneak it past the guards. Come back and shoot me in the head—so I won’t have to go through this again!”

“I’m sorry. In the first place, I wouldn’t know where to get the gun. Tom Tobacco told me that all weapons have been taken from the ship and locked in a secret room. In the second place, I can’t kill you. While there’s life, there’s hope. We’ll get out of this mess.”

“Tell me how,” Stagg said.

He didn’t have time to continue the conversation. The mob had come across the field and surrounded them. Continuity of talk was difficult to maintain when bugles and drums were roaring in your ears, Panpipes shrilling, men and women chattering away at the tops of their voices, and a group of beautiful girls was insisting on bathing you and afterward toweling you down and perfuming you. In a short time the pressure of the crowd forced the two apart.

Stagg began to feel better.

Under the skillful hands of the girls, his soreness was massaged away, and, as the sun climbed toward the zenith, Stagg’s strength rose. By two o’clock he was brimming over with vitality. He wanted to be up and doing.

Unfortunately, this was siesta hour. The crowd dispersed to seek shade under which to lie down.

A few faithful stood around Stagg. From their sleepy expression Stagg decided that they, too, would like to lie down. They couldn’t; they were his guards, lean hard men armed with spears and knives. A few yards away stood several bowmen. These carried strange arrows. The shafts were tipped with long needles instead of the broad, sharp steel heads. Undoubtedly, the tips were smeared with a drug that would temporarily paralyze any Sunheroes who might dare to run away.

Stagg thought that it was foolish of them to post a guard. Now that he felt better, he didn’t care one bit about escaping. Indeed, he wondered why he could have contemplated such a stupid move.

Why should he want to run and take a chance of being killed—when there was so much living to be done?

He walked back across the field, his guards trailing along at a respectful distance. There were about forty tents pitched on a meadow and three times that many people stretched out sleeping. Stagg was not at the moment interested in them.

He wanted to talk to the girl in the cage.

Ever since he had been moved into the White House, he had wondered who she was and why she was kept prisoner. His questions had invariably been answered with the infuriating
What will be will be.
He remembered seeing her as he approached Virginia, the Chief Priestess. The memory brought back a pang of the shame he had felt a little while ago, but it quickly faded.

The wheeled cage was under the shadow of a plane tree, the deer that drew it browsing nearby. There were no guards within earshot.

The girl was sitting on a built-in cucking stool at one end of the cage. Near her stood a peasant smoking a cigar while he waited for her to finish. When she was through, he would remove the chamber pot from the recess underneath the stool and carry it off to his fields to enrich the soil.

She wore the long-billed jockey cap, gray shirt, and calf-length pants that all mascots wore, though the pants were now down around her ankles. Her head was bowed, but Stagg did not think it was because she was ashamed to be performing this need in public view. He had seen too much of the casual, animal-natural—to him—attitude of these people. They could feel shame and inhibition about many things but public excretion was not one of them.

A hammock was pulled tight against the ceiling. A broom stood in the corner and in the opposite corner a cabinet was bolted to the floor. Probably it contained toilet articles, since a rack on the side of the cabinet contained a washbasin and towels.

He looked again at the sign rising from the top of her cage like a shark’s fin. “Mascot, captured in a raid on Caseyland.” What did it mean?

He understood that “mascot” was the word the Deecees used for human virgins. The term “virgin” was reserved for maiden goddesses. But there was much he did not understand.

“Hello,” he said.

The girl started as if she had been dozing. She raised her head to look at him. She had large dark eyes and petite features. Her skin was white, and it went even whiter when she saw him, and she turned her head away.

“Hello, I said. Can’t you speak? I won’t hurt you.”

“I don’t want to talk to you, you beast,” she replied in a shaky voice. “Go away.”

He had taken a step toward the cage, but now he stopped.

Of course, she had had to witness last night. Even if she kept her head turned and eyes shut, she couldn’t have stopped up her ears. And curiosity would have forced her to open her eyes. At least for brief periods.

“I couldn’t help what happened,” he said. “It’s these that did it, not me.” He touched the antlers. “They do something to me. I’m not myself.”

“Go away,” she said. “I won’t talk to you. You’re a pagan devil.”

“Is it because I’m not clothed?” he said. “I’ll put a kilt on.”

“Go away!”

One of the guards walked up to him. “Great Stag, do you want this girl? You may have her, eventually, but not now. Not until the end of the journey. Then the Great White Mother will give her to you.”

“I just want to talk to her.”

The guard smiled. “A little fire applied to her cute little ass might get her to talking. Unfortunately we’re not allowed to torture her—yet.”

Stagg turned away. “I’ll find some way to make her talk. But later. Just now, I want some more cold ale.”

“At once, sire.”

The guard, not caring that he was waking most of the camp, blew shrilly on his whistle. A girl ran from around the corner of a tent.

“Cold ale!” the guard cried.

The girl ran toward the tent and quickly returned with a tray on which stood a copper pitcher, its sides beaded with sweat.

Stagg took the pitcher without thanking the girl and held it to his mouth. He did not lower it until it was empty.

“That was good,” he said loudly. “But ale bloats you. Do you have any lightning on ice?”

“Of course, sire.”

She returned from the tent with a silver pitcher full of chunks of ice and another pitcher brimming with clear whiskey. She poured the lightning into the pitcher of ice and then handed it to Stagg.

He drank half of the pitcher before he set it back on the tray.

The guard became alarmed. “Great Stag, if you continue at this rate, we’ll have to carry you into Fair Grace!”

“A Sunhero can drink as many as ten men,” said the girl, “and he will still tumble a hundred mascots in one night.”

Stagg laughed like a trumpet blaring. “Of course, mortal, don’t you know that? Besides, what’s the use of being the Great Stag if I can’t do exactly what I want to do?”

“Forgive me, sire,” the guard said. “It’s just that I know how anxious the people of Fair Grace are to greet you. Last year, you know, when the Sunhero was a Lion, he took the other road out of Washington. The people of Fair Grace could not attend the ceremonies. So they would feel very bad if you did not show up.”

“Don’t be a fool,” the girl said. “You shouldn’t talk this way to the Sunhero. What if he got mad and decided to kill you? That’s happened, you know.”

The guard blanched. “With your permission, sire, I’ll join my friends.”

“Do that!” Stagg said, laughing.

The guard trotted away to a group standing about fifty yards off.

“I’m hungry again,” Stagg said. “Get me some food. Lots of meat.”

“Yes, sire.”

Stagg began to prowl around the camp. When he came across a gray-haired fat man snoring away in a hammock stretched between two tripods, he turned the hammock over and dumped the fat man on the ground. Roaring with laughter, he strode around the camp and began shouting in the ear of every sleeper he came across. They sat up, their eyes wide and their hearts beating with shock. He laughed and moved on and seized the leg of a girl and began tickling her on the sole of her foot. She shrieked with laughter and wept and begged him to let her go. A young man, her fiancé, stood by but made no move to free her. His fists were clenched, but it would have been blasphemy to interfere with the Sunhero.

Stagg looked up and saw him. He frowned, released the girl, and rose to his feet. At that moment the girl whom he’d sent for food came with a tray. There were two pitchers of ale on it. Stagg took one and calmly poured it over the head of the young man. Both girls laughed, and that seemed to be a signal to the whole camp. Everybody howled.

The girl with the tray took the other pitcher of ale and poured it over the fat man who had been dumped out of the hammock. The cold liquid brought him sputtering to his feet. He ran into his tent and came out with a small keg of beer. Holding it upside down, he drenched the girl with its contents.

A beer-throwing party exploded across the camp. There wasn’t a person on the meadow who wasn’t dripping with ale and beer and whiskey, except for the girl in the cage. Even the Sunhero was showered. He laughed when he felt the cool liquid and ran for more to throw back. But on the way he got a new idea. He began pushing the tents over so they would imprison the occupants. Howls of anguish rose from the interiors of the collapsed tents. The others began imitating Stagg’s actions, and shortly there was hardly a tent standing on the meadow.

Stagg seized the girl who had served him and the girl whose foot he’d tickled. “You two must be mascots,” he said. “Otherwise you’d not be half-naked. How did I happen to miss you last night?”

“We weren’t beautiful enough for the first night.”

“The judges must be blind,” Stagg roared. “Why, you’re two of the most beautiful and desirable girls I’ve ever seen!”

“We thank you. It’s not just beauty that enables you to be chosen as the bride of the Sunhero, sire, though I hesitate to say it for fear of what might happen if a priestess overheard me. But it’s true that if your father happens to have wealth and connections, you stand a much better chance of being picked.”

“Then why were you two chosen to be in my entourage?”

“We were second-place winners in the Miss America contests, sire. Being in your entourage isn’t as great an honor as having one’s debut in Washington. But it is still a great honor. And we are hoping that tonight at Fair Grace...”

Both were looking at him with wide eyes. Their lips and nipples were swelling, they were breathing heavily.

“Why wait until tonight?” he bellowed.

“It’s not customary to do anything until the rites begin, sire. Anyway, most Sunheroes don’t recover from the previous night until evening...”

Stagg downed another drink. He drew the empty pitcher as high in the air as he could and laughed.

“I’m a Sunhero like you’ve never had! I’m the genuine Stagg!”

He picked up the two girls by their waists, one in each arm, and carried them into the tent.

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