Kenneth Bulmer - Demons' World

So that when Belle, Delia’s friend from the radio laboratories, danced up, cheeks flushed, eyes aglow, holding out a goblet of wine, with an invitation to the dance, Stead decided—without daring to look at Delia—to accept. Delia said, “Be careful, Belle.”

“Of course, dear. I always ami” And she giggled to herself as though an enormous joke had been made.

Dancing off into the laughing throng, forming a line, swaying to the music, Stead’s first impulse to slip away and think over this Demon talk faded. Something happened to him. He looked at Belle. She wore a black dress with narrow cords over the shoulders, thigh length skirt of thin material that, if he hadn’t thought the idea un-Controllerlike, he would have sworn showed the sheen of flesh. She danced with her head tilted back, her mouth open, a pink tongue showing, laughing, laughing, laughing.

Stead let himself go. The music thumped a maddening rhythm in time with the best of his blood. For the first time the presence of a woman did not disconcert him. The feel of Belle’s waist under his fingers as they danced to and fro brought sensations wholly unrecognizable and wild, frightening and yet stimulating. At one and the same time he wanted to go on dancing, go on holding Belle, and to plunge off and away and cower in his cubicle, safe in the pages of a book.

“Enjoying yourself, Stead?”

“Very much. And you?”

“MMMmmm. I thought you said you couldn’t— whoops-dance?” I can t.

“Well, you’re doing very nicely, thank you…”

They gyrated out of one line into another. On the next pas-sade Belle expertly eluded the man’s waiting grasp and, towing Stead, floated away on lightly tapping feet. Magnetically drawn, Stead followed. A single, flashing glimpse of Delia, standing with her red curls agleam over the bobbing head, almost stayed him. But that taut, inward look lay over Delia’s beautiful face… and suddenly, to Stead, Belle’s viviacious brown skin meant life and gaiety and all the unknown joys and dark desires he had dreamed existed—knew existed—and had never tasted. Whatever happened—he was going to learn something new.

Borne on a buffet of expiring music they tumbled laughing through a narrow doorway. Here the electrics had been shaded by rose colored glasses; a deep luster lay on the small room and the cushion-scattered divan. The room smelt scented and secret and… hungry.

“I need a drink,” Belle said. She picked up a glass from a low table and, copying her, Stead took the second goblet. Drinking, he felt the wine course through his body like fire. Belle stared at him, her brown eyes seeming in that rosy light to grow larger. Stead had thought her skimpy black dress a drab clothing beside Delia’s glorious white costume, but now he realized anew and with a stunning impact that women’s shapes were different from men’s.

A knife-like pain took him in the small of the back.

Belle pouted. “Don’t you like me, then, Stead?”

“Like you? Of course! Why shouldn’t I?”

She laughed, a short throaty catching of her breath.

“Well, you don’t show it.”

Stead felt dismay. “But… but—” he stammered. “How can I? I mean, I haven’t done anything to displease you?”

“True, lover boy, too true. You’ve done nothing.”

She walked toward him, a gliding, swaying dance rather than a walk, both her hands outstretched, the glass spilling wine unheeded. She came close to him. She put her arms around him, clamping in a sudden and shocking vice-like grip across his back. Her body, soft and quite unmanlike, pressed against him.

For a timeless instant Stead stood rigid. Something was happening. He was changing. A feeling soaked through his body; his blood pounded. He knew he must do… do what? Put his hands so, and so…

Belle sighed. She lifted her head and her lips, red and ripe and, somehow quite illogically, inviting pouted up at him.

“Aren’t you going to kiss me, Stead?”

“Kiss? What’s that, Belle?”

She reached up on tip toe. He felt her against him. She reached her hands up, caught the back of his neck, his head. She pressed his head down.

“This.”

A number of things happened simultaneously.

Of those, three struck him with the greatest impact. And of the three his bodily change seemed less important than the blinding vision that crashed across his eyes.

And then Delia’s hands wrenched Belle away, a fist cracked across her chin, and knocked her sprawling; Delia’s face swam before him, the mouth open, the eyes blazing, the whole expression blistering contempt.

“You fool!” Delia said, her voice like the spitting of a cat. “You imbecile, Belle! I could have you sent to the workers for this!”

Belle, her black dress ripped down from one cord, groveled on the floor. Looking down on her white flesh, all rosy tinted in the light, Stead felt a feeling for the girl flowing from him; she looked crushed, beaten, stamped on like that rat out there.

“Delia… I wanted to— I’m sorry. But… he’s so masculine—”

“I know what you wanted. You’re a radioman, not a psychologist. Don’t you know you’re playing with fire, with gunpowder, with Stead? Now I’ll have to—” Delia suddenly realized that Stead was there, his ears wide open, drinking all this into the naked and palpitating cells of his brain, learning.

“I’ll see you later, Belle. Stead, come with me. And forget this. Forget it, do you hear!” Delia’s movements were controlled, almost precise.

Incredibly, from the floor, disheveled and panting, Belle cried, “You just want him for yourself, Delia! Don’t think I don’t know what’s going on—Psychology! A fine psychology that uses a bed for a laboratory bench!”

Delia gasped. Stead noted with surprise how her upper body—that disturbing region so different from a man’s— rose and fell in a tumult. She turned wrathfully, body strained, hands lifting with fingers clawed, then she relaxed. She took a deep breath.

“Think what little thoughts you like, Belle. I feel sorry for you. But you’re wrong in that dirty little mind of yours. Now, Stead.” She grasped his arm in a grip that, he felt with a wry understanding, was no different from a man’s. “You’re coming home!”

Forager Controller Wilkins pursed his full lips, his slender hands still on the papers before him on the wide desk. Wilkins was a small, dapper man, neat with dark slicked hair, wearing dull green slacks and shirt. Wilkins owned his own Foraging Corporation and was these days never likely to venture Outside. A gaudy yellow and scarlet scarf loosely knotted around his slender white throat was a scornful reminder of his position.

Stead stood before him, uneasy, trying to realize that this man was a Controller, and therefore of the class into which Stead had been reborn, but finding the task difficult and clouded by the irrational learning he had absorbed during his quarter’s training as a Forager.

The training period had been strenuous, but in it Stead had come to realize that his body had been retrained into a state of fighting fitness well-accustomed to it. In his previous life he had been a tough and powerful athlete and he had the muscles still to prove it.

Forager Leader Thorbum stood at Stead’s side.

Thorburn had stared with genuine surprise when Stead had reported in. Stead, of course, had no memory of meeting this massive-headed, grave, intense Forager, but an immediate liking for him had warmed his greeting, firmed his handclasp. Thorburn immediately forgot his notions of proprietorship, of patronage for this man and responded with a deep and joyful acceptance of friendship.

Now Wilkins tapped the papers. “I’ve agreed to take you on, Stead, through friendship for Simon—uh, Controller Bonaventura—but I warn you that if you do not act within the framework of a Forager’s duties, I shall have no hesitation in discharging you.”