Дэймон Найт - Orbit 13

It leaned down and emptied the bag carefully onto the floor, its heart speeding in anticipation. It ran its hands once over the surface of the bag, lifted it, and then cursed the pygmy architects for a band of ulcerrridden ignorants, as its head banged against the six-meter ceiling. Stooping again, walking slowly to prolong the pleasure, holding back an urge to begin salivating even before entry, Lofduns took the bag to the bathroom and carefully washed it. Air slipped through its windhole in rapid spurts, as it set the bag down and unhooked the straps of the muzzle from around its waist.

Now completely naked beside the tub, its soft brown plumage hanging loose about its golden shoulders, Lofduns put its hand over its windhole—an unconscious gesture of shame—and looked down at its mouth, a thin cross of two creases in the flesh below its belly. Below that, all but invisible, were the brief slits of the sperm and ovum-holes. But it was the mouth that dominated its attention, its primary lips twitching as the muscles began to relax for opening and insertion.

As it lifted the bag and placed it against its lips, it perversely pictured its Teacher scowling with indignant shock at the sight of its ward “abusing its body,” as it would say. But it smiled at its own reluctance to forget the past, with its pablum people and pablum morality, and eased the bag in, through its wide primaries, between the tight secondary lips, and deep into its expanding mouth, where soft tentacles held it close, and began rubbing its morst-hide surface with a slow, rolling motion.

All pablum thoughts were gone, as Lofduns’ mind filled with bright, joyous images of hidden cellar rooms, stocked with fresh cuts of meat, huge violet melons, sharp tanya leaves, colmya stalks sprinkled lavishly with contraband rock salt. Its eyes rolled toward the ceiling, its hands hung loose at its sides, and its saliva flowed unchecked around the bag, as it imagined that the mild, musty taste of morst was, instead, the sweet and delicate inner meat of a pantofs melon, raised under the sun and open sky on secret farms in the West, smuggled across the Strait, and bought from an anonymous grocer in some dingy corner by the River. Strong muscles, strengthened by ten circuits of clandestine chewing, rubbing, piercing, and mashing, hugged the bag until its two indented sides nearly met.

Burning air coursed in forceful gulps through Lofduns’ open windhole, as it held back an urge to go on to the second digestive stage. It had no idea what the juices would do to the morst-hide bag. But it couldn’t control itself, or else it wouldn’t control itself, and before it could reason out the foolishness of the act the secretions had surrounded the bag and filled its mouth with the tingling, tickling illusion of eating, of food, of hard, living matter giving way under its attack and joining the rhythm of its body, uniting itself to it in a union of strength and wonderful physical warmth.

After it had carefully washed the bag and examined it for damage, Lofduns refilled it, rinsed out its mouth in the tub, and lay down on the mattress to quiet its tense muscles. Its first thought was to assess the damage to the bag’s surface and to try to find a reasonable excuse for it, should anybody ask. Then, as often happened at these times, its mind turned to self-recrimination.

Now Lofduns was an enlightened and liberal person, and it knew there was nothing shameful or immoral in what it did. It had learned long ago that the morbid guilt it had once felt over sucking its fingers or holding back its second stage to make the pablum last was only a result of learned reactions from its childhood, and had no basis in science. Notwithstanding, it often felt depressed and uneasy after the act. This had not been the time for it. It would be night soon, and it must save its muscles for the new and alien adventure of this place. Wasn’t that, in fact, why Lofduns, considered a person of high moral character by its pablum-spined colleagues, had applied for transfer to a colony in the Terran sphere of influence? And now it was tiring itself a few hours before the first real attempt.

And besides, though the damage to the bag was minimal, it had known it shouldn’t go on to second stage, but it had gone on anyway. If such a thing were to happen tonight, it would be unspeakably dangerous and cost Lofduns its pleasure, perhaps even its entire career or its life.

But tonight would be different. Tonight would be more relaxed, more easy, more meaningful, and more joyous than all the bags, spices, steaks, and melons of the last ten circuits.

The times were changing, but they were changing slowly. The most optimistic claimed limited legalization would come within five circuits. The most pessimistic said it would never come, and some even enjoyed the thought, finding the pleasure of the act heightened by its extreme danger. And then there were the millions who held back progress with their own fear of the body, who dreaded their bi-weekly trips to the pantry to fill themselves with tasteless pablum, who still spoke of the pablum-man as “the runner” and of eating as “going away.”

Such a one had been Lofduns’ Teacher, and during the early years of its life in the Ansrals villa it had lived in constant dread and prayed to the God that some way could be found to keep it alive without ever having to go “down there” to fill its ugly belly.

Lofduns whistled through its windhole in disgust, and stepped faster along the dark, pygmy street. It would never raise the young assigned to it that way. They would know from the start that the God had meant for them to enjoy eating as naturally as making sperm and ova or any other pleasure of life. The times were changing, but they were changing slowly.

There had been only light foot traffic on the streets, most of it pygmy. But as soon as Lofduns reached the edge of the park it was aware of feverish activity, despite the complete silence of the night. Among the trees, for several meters ahead, it could see brief shadows, both large and small, moving slowly back and forth, in a hypnotic and monotonous dance. They were all out for a walk in the park at night, tracing random but determined paths among the trees. Some were natives of this colony, some had sought it out because of its reputation; some were new like Lofduns, frightened by the tired shades that strolled past them; others were performing an automatic nightly ritual. Some were shy, some bold, some cheerful, some detached, some ready to cry out in pain. Each of them walked alone.

Lofduns knew the Terran language reasonably well, having worked with pygmies in its business, even having become quite close to some of them on a social level. It knew the two types, their faces, their moods, their movements. But as it stepped into the park and let itself be absorbed in the dark dance, it suddenly felt panic at being surrounded by totally alien and unfathomable creatures. Even those of its own race were strangers out of some sick poet’s bad dream. They glanced at it quickly, like Wolgons warning an intruder in their fields. It felt sick. It walked on.

Ahead of it was a woman. It could tell she was a woman by the flared cut of her pants, the way her body moved and, when she came closer, by the features of her face. She saw it, stopped, and looked casually in another direction. Lofduns stopped and looked down at her, scarcely seven meters away, an attractive woman, but no real beauty (for Terran standards of physical beauty were not so different from its own). But the light was not good, it was not certain, and besides, she was a woman. Women, the ovum-producing sexual type, were more difficult for a novice, it had been told. And perhaps it had mistaken her intentions. Perhaps she was simply out for a walk and had happened to stop at this particular point and wasn’t even aware of its presence. Perhaps it should go on, look for another. Perhaps it should go home and forget this mad idea. Perhaps it should give up the whole business and rejoin the pablum-eating society of its Teacher. But it just stood there, watching her.