Robert Silverberg - The Face of the Waters

He tossed restlessly, drifting toward wakefulness but always subsiding again into sleep, which brought new flurries of fevered sensuality. Clouds of women surrounded his bunk, their eyes slitted and wanton, their nostrils flaring, their bodies bare. Now there were faces to go with the bodies, the faces of the Sorve women he had known and loved and all but forgotten, a legion of them, all the escapades of his busy youth recalled to life and surrounding him now, the unformed faces of adolescent girls, the leering faces of older women who were dallying with a boy half their age, the tense, sharp-eyed faces of women stricken with a love that they knew was futile. One by one they passed within Lawler’s reach, let him touch them, allowed him to pull them close, and then faded into smoke, to be replaced almost at once by another. Sundira—Anya Braun—Boda Thalheim, not yet Sister Boda—Mariam Sawtelle—Mireyl—Sundira again—Meela—Moira—Sundira—Sundira—Anya—Mireyl—Sundira—

Lawler felt all the torment that desire can bring, and no hope of relief from it. His penis was huge, aching, a log. His testicles were iron weights. A hot musky woman-smell, maddening and irresistible, covered his nose and mouth like a smothering blanket, choking him, seeping down deep into his throat and filling his lungs until they were fiery with discomfort.

And beneath the images, beneath the fantasies, beneath the aching sense of distress and frustration, was something else: a strange vibration, perhaps a sound or perhaps not, in any event a steady widening beam of strong sensory input that came stabbing up through his body from his loins to his skull. He could feel it entering him like an icy spear just behind his testicles and rising through all the steaming intricacies of his guts, through his diaphragm, his heart, piercing his throat, stabbing upward into his brain. He was skewered on it and turning slowly like a fish grilling on a spit; and as he turned the intensity of the erotic sensations grew and grew and grew until there seemed to Lawler that nothing else existed in the universe but the need to find a partner and couple with her at once.

He rose from his narrow bed, not sure whether he was awake or still dreaming, and went out into the passageway. Up the ladder, through the hatch, out on deck.

The night was mild and moonless. The Cross trailed across the lower sky like a cluster of jewels that someone had carelessly tossed aside. The sea was calm, with little rounded rippling swells glittering by starlight. There was an easy breeze. The sails were set and full.

Figures were moving about: sleepwalkers, dreamers.

They were as vague and ghostly to Lawler as the figures of his dreams. He understood that he knew them, but that was all. They had no names just now. They had no selves. He saw a short thick-bodied man and another with a bony, angular body and a tiny, emaciated one with wattles at his throat. Men were not what he was looking for, though. Far down by the stern there was a tall, slender dark-haired woman. He headed for her. But before he could reach for her another man appeared, a tall strapping one with big glowing eyes, who came gliding out of the shadows and caught her by the wrist. They sank down together on the deck.

Lawler turned. There were other women on this ship. He would find one. He had to.

The throbbing ache between his legs was unendurable. That strange vibratory sensation still spitted him, rising the whole length of his torso, past his gullet and into his skull. It had the cold burning force of an icicle, and an icicle’s knife-like insistence.

He stepped over one couple grappling on the deck: a greying older man with a compact, solid-looking body and a big hefty woman with dark skin and golden hair. Lawler thought vaguely that he might have known them once; but, as before, no names came. Beyond them a small bright-eyed man flitted by alone, and then there was another couple locked in a close embrace, the man huge and muscular, the woman lithe, youthful, vigorous.

“You!” came a voice from the shadows. “Here!”

She was sprawled below the bridge, beckoning to him, a sturdy broad-bodied woman with a flat-featured face, orange hair, a sprinkling of reddish freckles on her face and breasts. She was shiny with sweat, breathing hard. Lawler knelt by her and she drew him down and gripped him between her thighs.

“Give it to me! Give it to me!”

He slipped easily inside her. She was warm and lathered and soft. Her arms enfolded him. She crushed him down against her heavy breasts. His hips moved in urgent thrusts. It was quick, wild, fierce, a hard grunting moment of rut. Almost as soon as he began to move, Lawler felt the walls of her hot moist passage quivering and tightening on him in deep, steady spasms. He could feel the impulses of pleasure running along her nerve-channels. That was confusing, that he should be feeling what she was feeling. An instant later came his spurting response, and he could feel that in a double way too, not only his sensations but hers as she received his fluid. That too was very strange. It was difficult to tell where his consciousness left off and hers began.

He rolled away from her. She reached for him, trying to pull him back, but no, no, he was on his way. He wanted another partner now. That single throbbing moment hadn’t been nearly enough to ease the need that drove him. It might be that nothing could. But perhaps he could find the tall slender one next, or else that robust young sleek-limbed one who seemed to be overflowing with vital energies. Or even the big dark-skinned one with the golden hair. It made no difference which one. He was insatiable, inexhaustible.

There was the slender one, by herself once more. Lawler started toward her. Too late! The hairy thick-bodied man with fleshy breasts like a woman’s seized her and claimed her. Off they went into the darkness.

Well, the big one, then—Or the young one—

“Lawler!” a man’s voice said.

“Who’s that?”

“Quillan! Here! Here!”

It was the angular man, the man who seemed to have no flesh. He came out from behind the place where the water-strider was stowed and took hold of Lawler’s arm. Lawler shook him off. “No, not you—it’s not a man that I’m after—”

“Neither am I. Nor a woman, either. Good lord, Lawler! Have you all gone crazy?”

“What?”

“Stand here with me and watch what’s going on. This lunatic orgy.”

Lawler shook his head muzzily. “What? What? Orgy?”

“You see Sundira Thane and Delagard going at it over there? Kinverson and Pilya? And look, look, there’s Neyana, moaning for it like a madwoman. You’ve just finished with her yourself, haven’t you? And already you want more. I’ve never seen anything like this.”

Lawler clutched his loins. “I feel—pain—here—”

“It’s something out of the sea that’s doing it to us. Affecting our minds. I feel it too. But I’m able to control myself. Whereas you—the whole crazed lot of you—”

Lawler had great difficulty understanding what the bony man was telling him. He began to move away. Now he saw the big golden-haired woman wandering the deck, looking for her next partner.

“Lawler, come back!”

“Wait—later—we can talk later—”

As he shambled toward the woman a slender dark male figure moved past him, calling out, “Father-sir! Doctor-sir! I see it! Over here, over the side!”

“What do you see, Gharkid?” the angular one called Quillan asked.

“A big limpet, Father-sir. Attached to the hull. It must be sending out some chemical—some drug—”

“Lawler! Come look at what Gharkid’s found!”

“Later—later—”

But they were merciless. They went toward him and took him by the arms, one gripping him on each side, and marched him toward the rail. Lawler peered over. Here the sensations were far more intense than anywhere else on board: Lawler felt a deep rhythmic thrumming along his backbone, a stupefying pounding in his groin. His balls tolled like bells. His rigid penis trembled and jerked upright, pointing at the stars.