Geoff Ryman - Lust Or No Harm Done

Thirty years later, Michael sat and sipped his mother's sherry. From nowhere, like a bubble rising up from the floor of the sea came a single word.

Picasso.

Before he had time to ask, the air of his flat welled up in ripples like muddy water.

In Michael's sitting room was the most sexually powerful man of his time.

Picasso was tiny, with a round, demanding face, blunt nose and black eyes that seemed to pop out of his head. He was already balding, which in his case simply confirmed his masculine state. A thick woollen jacket was thrown over both shoulders, and the sleeves were left empty. The effect was curiously feminine.

Picasso ignored Michael. He sauntered in a semi-circle around the sitting room, his face curdling with bored disapproval. He sucked on a cigarette, then blew out the smoke.

'Personne ne vit la,' he said.

Michael dragged out his schoolboy French, kicking and screaming. 'Moi, j'habite ici.'

Picasso turned a shameless gaze towards him. 'Vous? Vous etes une personne?'

You? You are a person?

Michael had the power of creation, however, and was growing used to it. 'Oui Je vous ai cree.'

Picasso looked genuinely bored. 'Moi,' he said and let the word rest a moment. 'Je me suis cree.'

Picasso was still scanning the room. His eyes flickered at Philip's portrait of Michael, as if it gave him an attack of the vapours.

'Mon Dieu,' Picasso murmured. 'Ca a l'air d'avoir etre frit dans de l'huile d'olive.' It looks like it's been fried in olive oil. Like an athletic teenager Picasso spun around and flung himself sprawling onto the sofa. 'Du vin, s'il vous plait', he said, as if to a waiter.

All right, thought Michael. I'm up to this. I'm more than up to this. From nowhere, by magic, he called up a small table with an ashtray, and a glass and a bottle of wine from 60 years ago.

The Angel's mouth made a quick downward turn. Michael had succeeded in giving Pablo Picasso a moment's pause.

Michael told Picasso, 'Please use the ashtray.' Michael pressed his advantage. 'You are a copy of a masterpiece,' he told the Angel. 'I am the student who has copied you.'

Picasso had already recovered. He sniffed and poured himself a glass of wine. He had a private little smile, and his eyes said, be wary, student, I am more than a match for you.

Michael got the preliminaries out of the way. 'Are you willing to make love with a man?'

Picasso flicked ash into the tray. 'I would do so if I wanted to destroy him. Though I am not a destroyer. Unlike you, I am a creator, not a copier. Ultimately, I have no time for destruction.'

'Except perhaps for making sure than no exhibitor would show Gilot's work after she left you?'

Picasso kept smiling undisturbed. 'Is that what she said? Has it occurred to you that she was exhibited only because of me? And perhaps her work is not all that good?'

They were negotiating. 'Might it interest you to find out how I am able to raise the dead?'

Picasso sipped his wine. 'It interests me to be alive again. And relatively young.'

He lowered his gaze at Michael, like a bull lowering his head to charge. He took a contemplative sup from his cigarette, his eyes appraising Michael. Then he ground out the cigarette, stood, walked across the room and grabbed hold of Michael's face. He pushed Michael's lips out of shape, into a parody of a Boucher mouth, and he shook Michael's jaws.

'I fuck you. You never touch me as a woman, ever.'

Picasso relinquished Michael's mouth, but kept a hand hovering as if to slap him.

'That's all the same to me,' said Michael.

The hand was lowered and it unbuttoned the front of Picasso's trousers, and Picasso indicated what he wanted Michael to do. The tiny brown penis was erect, straight up and hard against his belly, as it was almost every time Michael saw it. Michael knelt and swallowed. Picasso kept drinking his wine. The penis was spicy; it reminded Michael of nutmeg, in its colour and scent.

Picasso grew tired of standing. 'It's late, we go to bed now,' said Picasso, patting Michael affectionately on the top of his head.

Picasso claimed Michael's side of the bed and snatched up the newspapers, and began to read, lips moving, eyes burning through them.

'Je ne peux pas lire l'anglais facilement. Traduisez ,' he demanded, pushing the papers at Michael.

So Michael found himself reading laboriously through British politics in bad French.

'So there was a socialist revolution in Britain ?'

'Of a kind. They unelected it thirty-five years later.'

'Tuh. That is why English medicine for warts does not work. They have never had a real revolution. I hate England. The stupidest things about my work are all written in English. My friends translate them for me. I'm tired.'

Without asking, Picasso nipped sideways and turned off the light. Quick as blinking, it was dark, and Picasso had somehow enveloped Michael in his tiny arms, thick short legs. Picasso twisted Michael's head around and kissed him with a passion that bewildered Michael. This was a man who basically preferred women. His breath was heavy and scented with cloves and he sucked in Michael's spittle. Before Michael could quite adjust to being so swept up, he was hoisted onto all fours and found himself, with no preliminaries – cream or tentative, gentle penetration – being fucked.

The penis was the right size. It was so small and comfortable that Michael tightened his arse around it, to hold it, caress it. Suddenly impatient, Picasso unfurled and reared up, balancing on the balls of his feet, and began to thrust himself in and out of Michael's body with a speed Michael had never encountered before or even imagined. Picasso was otherwise silent. He came quite quickly and then collapsed. Michael, bewildered, had by accident come at the same time, into his own hand. Picasso rolled off him and looked at Michael and said, 'If you were a woman I could have really fucked you.'

Then he kissed Michael on his nose. 'You make a funny creator, my friend.'

And, just as instantly, he was asleep.

Picasso snored, loudly and incessantly, as if he had an appetite for it, as if he claimed space by doing it, as if he snored to proclaim his genius.

He grew suddenly affectionate in his sleep, and clamped Michael from behind, and snored like a camel directly into Michael's ear. Michael fought his way free. Picasso snorted and then chuckled. In his sleep he began to laugh, continuously, uproariously.

'Are you awake?' Michael asked, feeling battered.

Picasso grunted and rolled onto Michael again. His dick was hard, and Michael was surprised at his own compliance. His arse wasn't sore, and he made no protest. The penis entered him again, and this time it was gentle. It lapped inside him like waves. Michael was to discover that the only way to stop Picasso snoring was to let himself be screwed. And then together, like a boat untethered, they could drift away together.

Michael woke up and it was still dark, and Picasso was still inside him, and around him. Picasso had been inside him all night.

'Hmm,' said Picasso and began to rock inside him. He nuzzled and then chewed Michael's ear. 'You are life,' he said. 'You give me life. I will give you life in return.'

And this time the fucking, though slow, was hard and slamming. Picasso's flat belly thumped into Michael's backside. The penis went all the way out and all the way back in with one thrust. Michael began to make noises he had never made before: he couldn't stop himself. He groaned and grunted and sighed like a bad actress in a porno movie. Picasso seized hold of his long hair and pulled back hard on it, like reins. Michael came before Picasso did, whinnying like a horse.