Dave Duncan - West of January

I was sweating. I wiped my forehead. “I’m not… I’m… Misi— what was in that drink you gave me?”

She nodded thoughtfully and patted my leg. “It comes from the jungle. Makes tall tree grow in forest.”

Yes, it certainly did that. A wild shivering seized me, a strange excitement. “Misi…when I’m better…when my knees have healed, then I’d like—”

“Not till then, Knobil?”

“Well… I suppose I could try—yes, now!”

Pulling away from my grasp, she rose and hauled her great tentlike garment over her head, revealing the bulging form that I had only guessed at before. Her belly was as broad as the Andes, and hairier. Her breasts were even more enormous than I had expected or had imagined a human frame could bear. As I reached for them, she stepped away to slam the shutters shut on the third window and to dismantle the bench, hauling those chests across to add to the bed and make it wider. Blood roared in my ears, and my whole body throbbed. I heard my tunic rip, although I had not been aware of trying to remove it. Gasping with eagerness, barely able to speak, I stretched out my arms to her in the gloom. “Now, Misi! Now!”

She straightened, putting her fists on her hips. I could not see the expression on her face, but it was there in her voice—mockery and contempt. “Ready for that kiss, Knobil?”

“Oh yes! Please, Misi! Please…”

THEY CALL IT THE VIRGIN’S WEB.

Long afterward, in the archives in Heaven, I was shown a treatise written nine or ten cycles ago by a man identified only as Saint Issirariss. With a name like that, he was probably a forest dweller himself, and his account was so detailed that he must have had firsthand experience of the web. I was asked to add some notes of my own to the records.

The greatest jungles of Vernier are not found, as one might expect, in the hot areas near to High Summer. Farther east the trees are older, the forest thicker, and the undergrowth denser. Where the topography favors heavy rainfall, the true deep forest is a cool twilight of perpetual damp, and it is there that the darkfolk live. As Kettle was fond of pointing out, heavy pigmentation is an adaptation to jungle life, and while it is possible that the dark races are descended from original black ancestors, more probably their pigmentation has been increased by natural selection. The seemingly sinister name refers only to their color, for of course the darkfolk as a whole are neither worse nor better than any other folk. It is among them that a spinster may arise, but any race can produce a villain when opportunity is present.

The basis of the elixir, Issirariss wrote, is a brew prepared according to a secret recipe, thought to consist of roots, herbs, insect eggs, and spider venom. In that form, he referred to it as nuptial beer and stated that some of the forest tribes use it in their wedding ceremonies. When the dancing and feasting reach a climax, the young bride and groom share a bowl of the concoction and then retire to the marriage chamber, there to find climaxes of their own, no doubt. Nuptial beer is relatively harmless and socially beneficial, or so Issirariss claimed.

He speculated that the drug known as the virgin’s web is prepared from nuptial beer by simple concentration. Long simmering over a slow fire, he thought, might be sufficient. The process cannot be very difficult, because spinsters seem to have no difficulty in obtaining an adequate supply for their evil purposes, yet the secret is jealously kept.

Only very rarely can any outsider obtain the web. Misi’s sample had been handed down from her grandmother or perhaps from some more distant ancestor, but it had not lost its power with time. From the effect it had on me, I suspect that it may even have grown more potent.

The human race has a long history of seeking aphrodisiacs, putting faith in many—all, according to Issirariss, either ineffectual or dangerous. The virgin’s web is certainly not ineffectual. Moreover, it has several properties peculiar to itself, not found in any other.

It acts on persons of either sex, which is rare. Of course, Misi had only pretended to drink, for she would have defeated her purpose had she taken the drug herself. That was fortunate, I suppose, because Misi roused to the same sort of insane fit as I was in would have killed me. It was I who almost killed her.

Poor Misi! She had known by hearsay what effect the web would produce, but she could not have expected the manic strength it induced in me, or the insatiable violence of my reaction, or the long ordeal she would have to endure until the effects wore off. She must have believed that her greater size would let her remain in control, but no one could have resisted my frenzy. In my fruitless striving for release, my frantic quests for variety, my cataclysms of mindless ecstasy, I tossed her around as if she weighed nothing.

Oblivious to pain, I hurt myself also. Early in my madness, I ripped off my splints. Later we found the broken planks and snapped bindings. My knees were not ready for vigorous exercise. The half-healed bones were cracked, the weakened tendons strained, and any chance that I might walk properly again was lost. Yes, I hurt Misi, but fortunately I inflicted no broken bones or permanent injury on her, only innumerable bruises, and probably much terror.

Dear Misi! In spite of that terror, she never cried out or tried to disable or kill me. At least, I do not think she did; I probably would not have noticed if she had. She endured and even cooperated, not that she really had any choice.

According to Issirariss, a second peculiarity of the virgin’s web is that it will not provoke a general orgy. Once I had fixed on Misi as the victim of my lust, then the cab could have been invaded by an army of the world’s most desirable women and I should have ignored all but her. That, he wrote, is a greater danger for a woman who takes the potion, for no normal man can satisfy her need and she will go mad with frustration.

I was not frustrated. Once I started, Misi could not resist me and I was incapable of stopping until the madness wore off. Again and again I struggled to a climax, but the relief was momentary, being succeeded at once by even greater urgency. Driven by my frenzy, I could not have done otherwise than I did, so I feel little guilt, yet I regret most bitterly that I hurt her and frightened her. Eventually the effects waned or my strength gave out. After uncounted orgasms my arousal vanished as suddenly as it had come, and I collapsed into a deep coma-like sleep.

The virgin’s web had a third unique property, one I did not appreciate or comprehend until much later.

My unconsciousness probably did not last very long, for I awakened howling at the pain in my knees, which were black and hugely swollen. I was sprawled naked on the floor of the cab, surrounded by shreds of bedding, lit by a cruel sunlight streaming through a broken shutter, sweat-soaked and shivering in spasms of feverish reaction. Misi, equally bare, was trapped below me, battered and bruised and bloody, half-stunned still by her long ordeal.

After a few moments, I recalled how I had maltreated her. While I had been experiencing unending deliriums of rapture, she had been hurting. Then I forgot my own troubles. I wept. I stroked her cheek. I struggled to move out of the way so that she could rise, for we were crushed together in a very small space, and I was incapable of rising. Meanwhile I apologized a thousand times.

I told her over and over how sorry I was, and how much I loved her.

Oh, my beloved Misi!

For I did truly love her—beyond measure, beyond expression. I cherish her memory still. No other woman ever has, or ever can, mean to me what Misi Nada did and still does.