Pornucopia

Chapter One

The early afternoon sun beat down, warming his bathing trunks, heating his crotch. The restless tide retreated slowly, as though the ocean water were evaporating, and the shock of the breaking waves was muted—crash, splash, like the breaking of a vigorous orgasm against a taut diaphragm. Prior Gross reclined on the burning sand, squirming until it shaped to his feet, palms and buttocks. He kept his knees elevated in an awkward effort to conceal the unprovoked erection that had been trapped at half mast beneath the unyielding cloth.

There was really no reason for it, but the tumescence refused to subside. Girl-watching here was fair-to-poor. Prior's field of vision embraced grandmothers and children with scarce nubility between, and that critically flawed by obesity, sag and blemish. He was disappointed and bored—yet his member strained valiantly against the fabric, pushing it out throb by throb, and no matter how covertly he shifted about it only aspired higher. It felt as though the glans had been caught in the crotch-netting and was too stupid to realize that it could never clear the hurdle without first slacking down a little.

A fat-bellied sun-skinned executive type ambled by, glancing at Prior. Had the busybody seen? Prior's trunks bowed out marginally farther while he fought to keep a flush from his face. He could not stand up, of course, and the proximity of a hawkeyed matron prevented him from unhooking the obstruction by hand. He suffered a mental picture of the matron lumbering across the sand to the nearest lifeguard, screaming about the indecent act that man was performing, while a crowd gathered around to look and police sirens drew nigh. No, he couldn't lay a finger on his crotch!

His eyes wandered desperately about the beach, as though he could prevent others from watching him by watching them first. But nobody was paying him any attention, yet. He saw two toddlers playing near the water's margin, using a toy shovel and fingers to shape a crumbly sand castle. The little boy was burying his legs at the same time, scooping gouts from the wet castle wall to his sister's frustration.

Full-blown, the solution came to Prior. He could bury his legs in sand, right up past the crotch! It might seem to be a childish game, but it was not entirely out of place for any age. That would hide the pulsing bulge until the situation abated. Maybe by then it would be late enough to find some action in town, to reduce his member to a lower level of chronic readiness and spare him further embarrassments.

Prior began sweeping sand in over his feet, piling it up under his lifted knees. The surface grains were hot, but those below were cool, and the sensation on his thighs goaded his penis to even more strenuous effort. It took a lot of sand to cover him, and he quickly encountered rougher gravel below. The job promised to be tedious, particularly since there were numerous sharp shell fragments embedded in the solidly-packed understratum. This was not child's-play after all! He would have slashed fingers if he didn't watch it. He tensed his jaw muscles and kept working, using the task as a mental distraction.

A shadow crossed him with a sudden soft coolness. Prior looked up to spy a phenomenal pair of legs slanting into an opaque knee-length skirt. Above that the blazing sun made vision difficult, but the silhouette was strikingly feminine.

Prior's member had been showing signs of retirement, but now it tugged frantically at its anchor. There was hardly any chance the woman could overlook it.

"Building a castle?" she inquired, her voice low and sultry.

"Um," he agreed, edging his knees together. The laboriously mounded sand collapsed defiantly, uncovering the castle's main tower further.

"Let me see," she said, squatting before him and prying his knees gently apart with her cool hands.

The cloth covering his crotch rose up eagerly to stand inspection. Prior could see between her handsome, well-fleshed thighs now, inside the skirt that had slid over her knees. That firm and rounded vista was obscured only at the deepest cleft by an annoying wash of shadow.

"You don't have enough sand," she pointed out. He still couldn't make out her face because of the sun, but his eyes had adjusted enough to penetrate the shadow beneath her skirt. He saw now that her posterior was innocent of panties or other defense. Open to the breeze.

"Give me time," he said, scratching feebly for more sand. Time? Sand? He could see something else he wanted! If only this weren't happening in mid-afternoon on a public beach.

"I'll bury you," she said suggestively, and a muscle rippled inside one thigh. What legs she had! She began hauling in sand from a wider semicircle, those thighs flexing as her balance shifted, and piling the sand about his trunks. "Lie down." She patted sand about his crotch.

Lie down? It was about to launch toward the moon!

Oh—she meant him. Prior lay back, feeling the tension between his legs increase to the point of pain. She spilled cool sand entirely over him, patting it solicitously in key places. "You don't lie very well," she murmured. "What's your name?"

On that score he could accommodate her. "Prior Gross."

She laughed, her bosom bouncing. She had an excellent upper torso; the lower distraction had prevented him from noticing it before. "For Priapus, god of sex! You are a find! No wonder I was drawn to you. I thought it was only your condition."

What did she mean by that? That she sniffed out men with erections? "How did you know? Uh, about my name." He tried to make it sound bantering, but he was curious too. She had traced his name correctly. Most people knew almost nothing of mythology, and she hardly seemed the scholarly type.

"I'm a succubus," she said matter-of-factly. "We all worship Priapus."

Prior forced a laugh of his own, though it jogged the knot in his trunks and caused the packed sand there to crack as though a miniature earthquake had passed. "A succubus! A female demon?"

"Who visits sleeping men and harvests their seed," she said. "It's all quite straightforward. When I have a good load, I transform into an incubus and go in search of female companionship. If I find a sleeping girl soon enough, I can even get her pregnant—and the man I had first is the biological father. That can lead to some interesting situations, in this age of blood typing and semen analysis."

"Artificial insemination with a vengeance!" Prior said, not believing any of it but intrigued by her pose. She was obviously on the make, and he would be well satisfied to get made. "So that's why some men claimed they've been framed even when blood tests and such give them the lie. They've fornicated by proxy!"

She had a fair mound of sand around him now. "I can see you don't really believe me, so I'll demonstrate. I'll knock up a girl by you, right here on the beach, right now." She moved forward to sit on his crotch, spreading her dark skirt out over the mound. Prior's member, stimulated by this suggestive pressure, was almost ready to spurt spontaneously.

"You do that," he said. What a line, and by a woman, yet! And she was structured like a center-fold. She could have her will of any man she wanted, just by showing him what she had shown Prior.

Which was suspicious. Prior was no bronzed beach bum. He generally had to pay for what he wanted—and a dish like this was way out of his price range.

"You have to be asleep," she said, touching his eyelids. "That's the law."

"What law?" He had half-expected her to demand a hundred and fifty dollars in advance.

"The demonic law. Succubi only visit sleeping men. That's our nature."

"Why are you here, then?" he demanded. Her fidgeting was really working him up. She certainly knew that part of her trade! Did she want his eyes closed so he couldn't see her take his wallet? No chance; his wallet was locked safely in his car.

She didn't answer right away. She put a hand inside her own waistband and worked it down under her skirt until her fingers touched him. She began to scrape the sand from between her legs. A neat maneuver, and somehow everything looked ordinary from outside. No one could see what her hidden hand was doing. "Things get dull in daylight."

Now her hand was finished, and he felt her touch on his tight trunks, stroking the zipper fly. He had thought he was at the peak of excitation, but this elevated it another level.

"So you thought you'd drum up a little after-hours business," he said. "But I'm not asleep." Why was he arguing? If she deserted him now, he might never abate his erection! Priapism, it was called: the perpetual rigidity. He understood that could get very uncomfortable.

"That's what I said. But if you'll just close your eyes and breathe evenly, it'll be the same. No one will know."

What the hell, he thought. They had made no agreement. She would have tough luck collecting her money after the performance. He closed his eyes.

"That's good." Her hidden hand worked down the zipper, opening his fly with expertise, sliding the webbing across. His penis sprang out, hurting again as the kink was finally released, but wasting no time about swelling to its full proportion.

Prior cracked open an eye apprehensively, but all was concealed beneath her skirt, which now seemed voluminous. Quite a piece of apparel, that could not stretch past her knees at one time, and covered everything at another time. But of course a succubus was magic, and her skirt would be magic too. It looked as though he remained buried in sand, with the girl innocently straddling the ridge: a game people played. Some game!

"Closed," she reminded him gently, her fingers massaging his member, squeezing it for the final bit of growth. "Never can tell when the supervisor's watching."

Some supervisor! Was it an invisible satyr, calibrating indexes of performance on an abacus? But Prior obliged. Actually, there was nothing to see; even her full breasts were chaste from this angle.

There was something to feel, though. Deprived of sight, his awareness magnified the inputs of touch. Her muscular thighs shifted, her cushiony buttocks adjusted—and warm damp flesh contacted his angled shaft. That living cleft he had glimpsed as she squatted was coming to embrace his own flesh!

But the angle was wrong. Those slick vagina lips were squeezing the sidewise length rather than absorbing the business end. He was on the verge of squirting into space—or at least into her skirt—and he couldn't use his hand to correct the contact!

But her fingers were there, lifting his pulsing rod, cupping the glans. The angle changed, the head brushed up against the lubricated channel and nudged delightedly into the hot cavity.

"When are you going to have your erection?" she inquired, piqued. "Don't you like women?"

The organ sank into the hole, or more correctly rose into it. Prior felt the lubricated closure pass the knob and encompass the shaft. Her flesh tightened about his own, rhythmically. "That's it!" he gasped.

"But that's hardly four inches! I like at least six, and can take eight. Nine in an emergency."

"Three point nine seven inches!" he whispered. "Erect."

"You mean all those emanations I picked up, all that worry about your hard-on showing, like a tower standing out for miles around... four inches?"

"I have an ambitious imagination," he admitted.

"Ambitious! That's fraud!" she said crossly. "Here I thought I'd get my bore properly reamed...." She manipulated her buttocks to bring him in further. "I assumed that anyone named after Priapus—"

"That was my old man's wishful thinking." He had been through this before. "But my dong ended up just like his. Potent, but small."

She sighed, clenching him internally. "Well, too late to cry over spilt milk—not that I ever do spill any. Let's have it."

As she spoke, the muscles of her vulva contracted with singular authority, milking him compellingly. His orgasm ripped through his body like a fire through dry timbers. He climaxed at once, his hips thrusting up convulsively as his juice let fly. If he had done that in air, he could have knocked a seagull out of the sky!

The fire burned out as quickly as it had spread, leaving him breathlessly limp and warm. "Well, at least you had a fair quantity," she observed as he shuddered to a halt. "Good things sometimes do come in small packages." Her vagina still clasped him tightly, squeezing out the dregs and holding them as his spent penis slowly shrank. "Good to the last drop. But you really should wash your miniature more often."

"It itches when I wash it," he protested, embarrassed. Then "How can you tell?"

"Sex is my business, you know. I can taste and measure everything that enters that vestibule. Your seed is potent enough, but your tool is small and uncircumcised, and frankly it's pretty cheesy too."

"Smegma is a natural secretion," he said. But he was chagrined. It did collect when he wasn't careful, and he hadn't been careful the past few days. Maybe that was the cause of his erection. Had he known what would happen on the beach....

His diminished penis finally slurped out of her vagina, which sealed up after the exodus as tightly as any anus after evacuation. She had not been fooling about salvaging the seed!

Chapter Two

"Which girl do you want to have it?" she asked seriously as she lifted off him.

For a moment his organ was open to the sky. Prior sat up hurriedly, packed in his apparatus together with an inadvertent handful of sand, and zipped up his fly. "Have what?"

"Your donation. I have to do it within half an hour, usually, or too many sperm cells die and it can't take. I don't have refrigeration capacity the way my northern cousins do. Of course their whole bodies are icy cold, which makes collection difficult except in the case of the most determined dreaming sinners, the kind who would shoot off into icebergs if they had the right sized holes in them. And her period has to be right, too. The supervisor's very finicky about such details."

"You mean you're serious about this succubus-incubus bit? It's not just a come-on?"

"Of course it's a come-on. You came; I got on," she said, making a moue. Her lips were very expressive; she probably knew how to use them in her profession, too. "Hurry up. Make a choice. Someone sleeping, of course."

He tried to call her bluff. "Don't you have to—to convert? To incubus?"

"Just watch me carefully. I can't be too obvious, obviously. People would stare, and we aren't supposed to attract attention to ourselves. Not in a business connection, anyway. A demon can get herself burned, that way. Are you going to choose?"

Prior looked about. Time had passed, and either some of the girlchildren had blossomed into nubility or the beach fauna had benefited from some turnover. But in his present sated state he found this interesting primarily in an intellectual way. He had no particular urge to impregnate any of the pregnable. In fact, the notion was a trifle disgusting.

Not that it would come to that. Succubi were creatures of folklore. This doll had had her fun and spun him a fairytale while he, no fairy, had spun into her tail, and now he would play the game out until she broke, and maybe she never would remember what she had intended to charge him for the occasion.

"Her," he said, gesturing to the adjacent matron, now blissfully snoring as the sun cooked her flesh.

"She's too old. And ineligible. Hysterectomy. I can tell from here."

"She should be eager for it, then. And I want to see how you do it." And see what she did, and if she did, too.

"But the supervisor—"

"Your, ah, load isn't legitimate anyway, because I wasn't really asleep. So you might as well ditch it before you get in trouble for carrying contraband."

She looked angry, then shrugged. "All right, skeptic. You lie down on your side facing her and pretend to close your eyes, so no one knows you're watching. I'll set it up so you can see, but no one else can."

Prior nodded. Despite his cynicism, life stirred slightly in his loin again. He had called her bluff and she wasn't backing down; what sort of show would she put on now?

She walked away as he lay down. With each step she took she seemed to change. Her lovely broad hips became narrow, her hair shorter, her chest flatter. She paused to adjust her dress—and it was a pair of culottes or even Bermuda shorts, as much out of place on this beach as her skirt had been, but still unremarkable. Lots of people wore inappropriate clothing at the beach, and some walked the shoreline in full dress clothing.

Were there incubi among them, unsuspected? By the time she reached the supine matron, she was male. Prior had trouble believing this, but his eyes were quite positive about it.

The incubus kneeled beside the woman as though asking her a question. No one on the beach paid attention except Prior. The incubus then moved over casually until he was astride the woman, and still no one noticed and she did not wake. He must have put a small sleep-spell on her; no doubt incubi (and succubi, of course) had dependable ways to keep their subjects passive (except sexually) for the operation. Assuming such magical creatures really existed. Assuming that this was one such. Prior was still alert for some deception, though his disbelief was somewhat shaken. If what he had seen was a trick, it was one hell of an illusion!

Then the incubus brought out a tiny knife—or maybe it was merely a sharp fingernail—and sliced away a portion of her bathing suit, exposing the pudendum. He placed his body so that only Prior could see what was happening. Still, it could be an act, a farce, and the sleight-of-hand could not proceed much farther.

In due course the incubus opened his own apparel and brought out a massive phallic instrument. This was no trick; Prior saw it come erect while the incubus kept hands off. Had he not watched the creature every moment and been certain that no substitution had been made, Prior would not have believed this. Now he was convinced: the hungry female genitals that had sucked in his protoplasm were now aggressive male genitals eager to spew it forth again!

The incubus lowered this boom and brought it to bear on the fatty crevice between the matron's legs. It looked far too big to fit, but slowly he eased it in, pushing, stroking, sliding, jogging. The woman moaned, stirred—but the incubus touched her eyelids with one hand and she did not awaken. In fact, she was smiling. Prior wondered what dreams she might be having, half as phenomenal as the reality!

The tremendous penis hove to like a slow diesel into a tunnel, burying half its column in the tight aperture, then three quarters. Hoo!, Prior thought—that female would be sore tomorrow!

After that he couldn't see the detail because the incubus's thing blocked the view. But the motions of the merging bodies suggested that the rest of the shaft was finding or making its lodging. The woman's heavy torso shook with the impact of full penetration, and she writhed with something resembling ecstasy. Her knees came up and spread farther apart; her hands groped for the point of contact. She had probably never had so much meat inside her at one time before.

Ejaculation! The incubus plunged, withdrew, plunged again. The woman groaned aloud as the piston retreated, then she made a muffled scream as the spasm distended her. Prior was sure this orgasm dwarfed her previous experience—if, indeed, she had experienced orgasm before. That kind usually thought pleasure in sex was unpatriotic.

Meanwhile, beach activity continued. No one wondered what the strange man was doing to the sleeping woman; or maybe they just didn't care. Two girls walked by, glanced across, saw, and went on; it was none of their business. Prior realized that almost anything could happen on a public beach, including screaming rape, and nobody would react.

He glanced down at his own trunks, wherein his scant four inches throbbed with second wind. Certainly he was not one to bring a woman to life like that. There was no way four inches could match eight, except perhaps in endurance.

The incubus let it soak for a moment while an elderly couple walked by, then drew out the gross member. The fit was still so tight that Prior could see flesh stretching. Then the organ snapped out with a pop! that caused a passing child to glance curiously, hoping for bubble-gum. No such luck. The incubus stood up, shook off his flaccid extremity, fed it back into the shorts, and ambled away.

The matron remained as she was—legs spread wide, suit slit open at the crack, hands touching the greased labia. No one noticed except the child, who didn't care. And Prior, who had mixed emotions.

By the time the incubus reached Prior, he was female again. "The bitch had gonorrhea!" the succubus exclaimed, outraged. "Do you want to do it again?"

Prior's renovated erection abruptly died. This creature, by her own admission, was now teeming with activated venereal disease!

"I need another load, since that one was wasted on an ineligible receiver," she said. "You're handiest, since you put me up to it, though it's bound to be anemic so soon after my last collection. Now I don't mind how I get it—cunt, mouth, hand or whatever—or which form I take it in—male, female, neuter—"

"You mean you can get it as an incubus, too?" Prior was repelled and fascinated, the one feeding the force of the other. "And you have a neuter state?"

"Oh yes. Oral collection is invariably effective, and of course there's anal. Some men prefer neuters—they're like undeveloped young girls or castrates. Tastes vary. Sometimes we have to bugger the donor to get him to put out. I can show you—"

"I guess I'll donate in the normal fashion," Prior said quickly. He wasn't anxious to have that eight-inch member stirring up his twitching colon. He was dead set against buggery, anyway.

"I could suck you off," she said helpfully. "That little marvel of yours makes it easy."

"You'll take it in the pussy or not at all!" he informed her defensively. He didn't normally use lowbrow terms like that, but her condescending attitude was getting to him. "And not here. Come to my car."

She made another moue and followed him over the sand and across the weedy fringe to the parking lot. His dime had run out and there was a ticket on his windshield. He had tarried on the beach longer than originally intended. This ticket was particularly embarrassing, because he was professionally connected to the parking industry and this would look very bad on on his record. Like a dentist having a rotten tooth, or a grocery manager confusing the price of beans with that of caviar—though the latter was not hard to do these days, with the prices rising so fast that beans now went for caviar prices. "Shit!" he said, employing the basest expletive he knew, wondering if the succubus would be shocked.

"We supernaturals don't have to eat," she said equably, "so we seldom have to defecate. But if that sort of thing stimulates you—"

"I meant the meter. It stuck a ticket on my car. That's a dollar fine."

"Oh, I can fix that. We fuck up machines all the time. Let me get my ass on it, here—"

"I'll pay the fine!" he cried as she hoisted her skirt and lifted one shapely leg. There were whistles from a neighboring car. "Leave it alone!"

She shrugged. "It's your dough."

"Just get in the car, why don't you!" Prior was anxious to get away before more of a crowd collected.

He drove her to a private park, certain by this time that he didn't want her at his apartment. She climbed onto the back seat, got on hands and knees, let her breasts dangle low, bared her bottom, and he mounted her from behind and jetted somewhat feebly into her upraised aperture. She was still a luscious hunk of distaff flesh, but he had seen what he had seen, there on the beach, and knew what he knew, and it shook him up quite apart from the VD threat.

Luscious hunk? As his shrinking penis sucked loose, he realized that she had assumed the neuter form: breastless, narrow-hipped, hairless. He felt like a pederast. He didn't like pederasty. "Now you're done; get out," he said shortly.

Chapter Three

After he was rid of her he drove home and took a long morose shower, scrubbing his limp penis thoroughly. Then he dried under the air-blast and spilled wine-scented shaving lotion on it from glans to scrotum, hoping the alcohol would burn off any remaining contamination. It stung like hell, but it didn't ease his mind much.

He dialed the number of the city VD clinic and asked for a printout on gonorrhea. He read it completely. This didn't ease his mind, either.

He had to take three happy-pills to get to sleep. And he dreamed... not happily.

He dreamed that five days had passed and the tip of his penis became inflamed. It was red and tender, at first causing irregular erections, then actual pain. When he urinated there was such intense smarting that he could not tolerate more than a few drops at a time—but there seemed to be gallons in his bladder, and they had to pour out. Then pus choked the conduit, popping out in grisly lumps when the frothing urine finally blasted its way through. The agony was hellish. There was brown blood in it now.

The pus lasted for three months, causing him to stand at the toilet for half an hour at a time without performing, then soiling his pants when he walked away with bursting bladder. He wet his bed at night, hardly noticing because of the other agony, and his constantly soaked buttocks and scrotum began to feel raw, too. He couldn't eat, couldn't sleep, couldn't work because of the viper's nest of pain in his groin. Then the inflammation began to spread.

It covered his bladder and his kidneys and his rectum, making every facet of elimination a continual torture. It invaded his prostate, his testes, his epididymis, rendering him sterile several times over, the hard way. Then it advanced to his mouth, interfering with eating, and his bones and joints, giving him arthritis. It infiltrated the lining of his body cavity and the valves of his heart. It poisoned his blood. It infected his eyes, making him painfully blind. Finally it penetrated to the membranes lining his spinal cord and the brain itself, and he knew he felt the onset of paralysis and insanity.

About then he woke up in sweat so copious he could not be certain it wasn't urine, and remembered that gonorrhea was not the worst of the venereal diseases.

It was Monday, the beginning of his four-day working week. Prior was a parking lot surveyor—the reason he had been so put out about being ticketed himself. He used a laser theodolite to resurvey parking lots and make sure their dimensions were within tolerance. Unscrupulous operators—and that meant all of them—tried to shave the size of individual spaces and the access lanes, and could get ugly when called to account. The worse the offense, the uglier they got. Some threatened him, not realizing that one of the spare lenses he carried was in fact a laser pistol. Some offered him money, not realizing that his theodolite was irrevocably bugged; they were soon out of business, and he was permitted to keep the money as a gratuity for his cooperation. He liked getting bribed, except when they used counterfeit bills. Others sent attractive young sexy parking attendants to reason with him in some remarkably convenient bedroom-like office—not realizing that his penis was less than four inches long, erect, and he was sensitive about exposing it before strangers. As his bastard boss well knew; that was why Prior had been hired over more qualified applicants for the position. Some liabilities tended to make men honest...

All week, as he measured and noted and punched out deficiency reports and accepted bribes and fended off solicitous sex-pots, his mind was on his penis. It probably required the deficiency report, and no bribe could add two inches to its length, but it was the only one he had. Every time he took a leak he watched for pus and fancied he felt the beginning irritation. And there was irritation—but only because he washed it six times a day now and the tissues were being bleached. In the middle of some intricate measurement the little soldier would stand up, stiff as a metal spike despite its brevity, and he would wonder whether this were the first gonhorrheal priapism while he tried to conceal the bulge behind his theodolite.

But nothing happened.

Two weeks later a woman brought her car in to a reserved lot while he was surveying it. He was angry, because the peripheral emanations from the atomic motor interfered with his laser. But before he could formulate some suitably cutting remark, she stepped out. He recognized her: the matron the incubus had serviced on the beach. The gonorrhea trap.

Prior said nothing to her, and she never noticed him. Instead he noted the tag number of her car. When he got home he phoned the registry department and got her name and residence. Then he located her medical file. The information was supposedly confidential, but as a state employee he knew which computer buttons to press.

What he was after, of course, was the truth about her gonorrhea. Had the succubus been trying to scare him out of sheer perversity? She was, after all, a demon, and he had dismissed her impolitely. DOES SUBJECT HAVE VENEREAL DISEASE? he typed into the appropriate line.

NO, the answer came immediately.

Relief and anger fought for supremacy. The succubus had been lying—if in fact she was a succubus, and not just an idle woman with some devilish tricks up her skirt—and he had fallen for it. There was his anger. But he had no risk of contracting gonorrhea. There was his relief.

But computers were demons in their own fashion, and liked to torpedo unwary querists with partial truths. The files only provided the specific information requested. It was always necessary to countercheck. HAS SUBJECT EVER HAD GONORRHEA?

YES.

Oh-oh. PROVIDE DETAIL ON CASE HISTORY, LAYMAN'S TERMINOLOGY.

It turned out that the woman had had a trial marriage a decade ago (only a decade? She must be younger than she looked!) and had contracted the disease then. She had avoided treatment because of the stigma attached, so the illness had become entrenched. She had thought the hysterectomy would clean it up, but it hadn't, and she remained a carrier.

This was the bitch the incubus had tackled. Prior had then had a second contact with the succubus. He had been exposed, all right.

But the most recent note on the case history said simply: SPONTANEOUS CURE, COMPLETE.

Prior read and reread that note, checking its veracity and date. She had had VD—but somehow in the last two weeks the disease of a decade had aborted without treatment. Why? And since she had still had it when he ran afoul of her, why hadn't he come down with it?

If he hadn't. Maybe his case was taking three weeks to develop the first overt symptom.

Suddenly he had the courage to go to the VD clinic himself for a checkup. The notion that he might not have gonorrhea seemed more compelling reason to go than the notion that he had it—because of that potential stigma. And other factors.

That got him off on a familiarly unpleasant chain of imagination. He would walk into the clinic, where a bunch of big, hairy, full-crotched men would stare at his member and banter their remarks back and forth while Prior stood in the center like the victim of a keep-away game. "Hey, Joe—get a load of this! Less'n four inches and clapped!" "That so? I thought the clap didn't touch anything under the legal limit!" "Mister, you better cut this sort of thing out—" (brandishing a scalpel dangerously near his defenseless penis) "It'll stunt your growth!" "Bring in the mouse you fucked; we'll have to cure it too!" But Prior knew he was as foolish as the matron in this respect. Clinic people didn't really make such crude remarks; they only thought them.

He nerved himself and went in. Everything was quiet and private and clean and deadly serious, to his considerable relief. The clinic tested him and cleared him promptly. The medical attendant didn't even snicker at the size of his penis. Prior was not now, nor had he ever been, a victim of gonorrhea.

So he had lucked out. Ridiculous to have thought himself infected!

But he stayed well dear of the beach.

Chapter Four

Though Prior Gross spent many of his days on the dull job, and his nights either dreaming of sexual exploits (his penis was always double length in dreamland) or worrying about their consequences (suppose one of those dreamland dolls had the syph?), his most persistent remaining concern was inventing. At home he had a device converted from a broken-down laser theodolite and a built-up computer-guided atomic-motor fuel-injection transformer. It was supposed to be a cigarette dispenser—one that would check the approaching mouth, analyze it for taste preference and general capacity, insert an appropriate brand, and light it. When the weed had burned out, the machine would remove the butt, rinse the orifice with a sweet jet of aseptic mouthwash, and insert a new cylinder. In such fashion a person would be able to chain-smoke around the clock without ever being aware of it.

He had been tinkering with the device in spare time for three years, and mechanically it seemed perfect. He would have had it ready in half the time, had the Cancer Clinic approved his application for a research grant. But the execs at Cancer had been very obtuse about the benefits of the invention. The Heart Clinic had been even worse. One of its execs had even had to call on the services of the Tranquilizer Clinic, before Prior completed his presentation. Strange folk, these Clinic officials. It almost seemed as though they had something against smoking.

Now his device was ready, at least in prototype. But it seemed that hardly anybody smoked anymore. They preferred to absorb their drugs in more convenient ways, such as incense spiked with nicotine, caffeine, speed and pot. Since Prior did not smoke himself—he had a domineering doctor—he had no way to test the machine in the field.

He had built the better mousetrap after the barn door had robbed Peter to—well, however it went, he was out of luck. That was the story of his life.

One night as he pored over his creation, trying to think of a use for it, the succubus came again. She was every bit as shapely as before, but this time was garbed in a slitskirt super decolletage evening special that put her charms into forceful focus. No wonder she got no arguments from the sleeping men she visited on her collection rounds! But Prior wanted no part of her—particularly not the part she offered.

"How did you find out where I live?" he demanded.

"I took down your tag number, of course. I knew your address before you ever got home that night. But this was the first open date I had. There've been a lot of horny men around here recently, and right now the demon ranks are spread pretty thin, so—"

"Well, reopen it. I don't—"

"It's open, lover. Just waiting for your entry." She hoisted her skirt delicately to show him.

Prior gulped, strongly tempted in spite of himself. "I meant the date. I'm busy."

"You must be. You're hardly horny at all tonight. But at the moment I'm long on female clients and short on males. Just give me a quick fix for the gal in polka-dot who lives down the block, and I'll be on my way." She hauled up her skirt again and draped herself spread-legged on his bed.

"The girl in polka-dot?" he asked, recognizing the description. "She takes an incubus?"

"She will tonight." The succubus elevated her knees, causing her cleft to open wider.

"I haven't washed in a week. I'm cheesy and under four inches erect," he pointed out. "You like six and can take eight."

"Or even nine, in a bind," she agreed. She sighed, her breasts almost flowing out of her dress, which was fashioned for support, not enclosure. "Harvesting you is something of a handicap, but there's something about your produce. I had a load from an advanced syphilitic later that night, and the spirochetes all shriveled up and died." She shook her head, and her chin almost banged a breast, "Just like that, they expired—but the sperm cells stayed fresh. There's something unnatural about that."

A succubus talking about the unnatural? Yet despite his aversion to her, Prior found his curiosity piqued. "How did you know about them dying?"

"I tasted them, of course."

He remembered. Her remarkable demonic vagina could taste and measure. "So you're VD resistant. What's that to me?" Then: "Say! That's why I never caught the clap!"

"But I'm not resistant! I pass along whatever I receive, diseases and all. That's the beauty of it. I have no curative properties. I'm only a run-of-the-furnace sex demon, after all. So it must have been your fault. Nothing like that ever happened to me before, and not since."

"My fault!"

"Some residue from you must have acted on the next load, changing it. So I thought I'd try you again, after the effect wore off, and see if the same thing happened." She shrugged out of her dress with a maneuver Prior couldn't follow, and lifted her legs up toward the ceiling. She had a fine looking aperture, and Prior's penis responded manfully—until he remembered again what he had seen on the beach. She might not have VD right now, but the idea of that hole forming into a phallus caused his own phallus to shrink in dismay.

"Put it right here, lover," she invited, twitching the muscles of her buttocks so that her vulva winked at him.

Prior knew how persistent she could be. She would keep after him until she got her crevice properly stuffed. How could he get rid of her without a scene that would bring the nosey landlord galumphing down the hall?

His eye fell on the cigarette dispenser. Something clicked snidely in his mind. The succubus was lying with her head away from him, tilted so that she could not see him below the general region of his waist.

"Let's have ol Lingam right up Yoni," she murmured, doing a brisk bicycle-pedaling exercise that was something to behold from this angle.

He picked up the machine and turned it on, holding it low.

"Coming, lover," he said.

He tilted the business end appropriately and set the box against her half-creased buttocks.

The sensor-filament poked out and tickled her crack. "Oooh, you've been practicing!" she whispered, wriggling with delight.

The machine hummed. Prior hummed too, to conceal the noise. "You sound happy," she said. "Glad you changed your mind. Fucking can be fun, you know."

Then a slender cigar popped out and nudged into her vulva. "You don't have a full erection, though," she complained. "That's not even a four inch penetration. Come on, get it hard!"

Obligingly, the machine poked the cigar in farther. "Now you taste like tobacco! What have you been doing to that little prick?"

The machine lit the projecting end. Smoke curled aromatically up between her legs. "You're really getting hot now," she said, smiling blissfully.

"You don't know the half of it," he told her. And waited. The cigar would ordinarily have taken much longer to burn, but its deep placement brought the lighted end much closer to the nether lips that held it.

"Aren't you going to squeeze me a little?" she asked. "Not that I care, as long as your meat is fired up like this, but it is an odd technique."

Prior mumbled something reassuring, his eye on the advancing glow. He began to experience apprehension. How did demons react to hotfoots in their cracks? By and by she hit the ceiling, almost literally. "Hot box," Prior remarked as she bounced down. Was that a set of footprints in the plaster up there?

The cigar shot out of her cleft and threw sparks against the rug as it bounced and rolled. The succubus took a moment to assess what had happened, rubbing her crotch vigorously. "You shithead pekkernosed pimpsucker," she said. Then she worked up to some ugly language.

By the time she got her first impressions out of her demonic spleen, she had converted to the male form. The incubus advanced on Prior, his monstrous penis projecting like a cannon. "I'm going to fuck your asshole right into your gizzard!"

"You can't," Prior said, backing away nervously. She was certainly overreacting, but the threat put an unholy fear into him. She? He. It was overreacting. "I'm not asleep, so your supervisor would object."

"It's supe's night off. He's fucking herself blind on sperm whale oil, so I can do what I want."

So an incubus/succubus could fuck himself! That would have been intriguing to contemplate, at another time. "Well, you don't have a load on yet."

"There's some stale stuff left over from last night. What did you think you were doing, ramming a lighted weed up my cunt?"

Prior eyed the menacing phallus with increasing apprehension. He had hoped she would go away mad. She was mad, but not going away. He had miscalculated.

"It's an invention. A—" Here he had a flash of sheer genius. "A tampon machine!"

"You shrimpcocked idiot! I'm a demon! A supernatural creature. I don't have periods. I never have the rag on." But the incubus paused. "What was it doing with a cigar?"

"I ran out of tampons."

The incubus pondered. His ferocious erection drooped slightly. "Oh, all right. We'll call it a nicotine dildo with a live fuse and forget it. Just don't do it again. Now let's finish our business."

Prior watched as the massive member shrank into itself and the flat male breasts swelled. It was a though the substance was being siphoned from the lower torso to the upper. Finally the penis was a mere button, no larger than a clitoris. In fact, it was the clitoris. Meanwhile the scrotum sucked up and became an empty sac, a flap, a wrinkle of skin, and finally a concavity. Prior was now looking at the lips of the vagina, and knew that the deep aperture was forming between them.

How convenient! The succubus received the semen in her inverted scrotum. When she changed into the incubus, it was right there. Probably her ovaries became his testicles—if the demon had need of either.

Somehow Prior's own genital remained quiescent. He had no slightest urge to entrust his precious penis to that demonic grinder again, or to let this spook retail his ejaculate. Not even to the polka-dot girl, who was a fetching number.

"Come on, come on!" the succubus said impatiently. "And I do mean 'come.' You aren't the only cock of the morn."

"I'm rather busy with my tamponer," he said. "Research and development, you know." Would the Hygiene Clinic be interested enough to bestow a grant?

"Well, I'm busy with my researches too," she countered. "I want to know whether your jism cures VD or not." She backed against the bed and sat down.

On the now-upright machine.

Water squirted as the after-smoke rinse started. "Mouthwash!" she screamed indignantly. "It fucked me with mouthwash!"

Prior grabbed her in time to prevent her from smashing the tamponer. She immediately exerted her sex-appeal on him, trying for a sneak collection, while he tried to escape.

In this moment of crisis he suffered his second consecutive flash of genius. "We can test them both out—box and juice—on the slots!"

She considered. "Very well. For now. The night is yet young."

Chapter Five

She dressed, her dress magically flowing to her and enfolding her. He changed, and they both adjourned to a drugstore for a box of tampons and thence to the corner coin bordello. Here there were half-stalls in a row, each with its fleshy display and listed price. The most elegant cost six tokens; the cheapest was one token.

Prior brought out his credit voucher and bought a dozen tokens. This set him back, at present exchange rates, about sixty dollars. Not a major expense, but not chickenfeed either, for one experimental session.

"That won't go far," the succubus remarked.

"Far enough on the one-per slots," he pointed out. "Those are the VD slurps, after all. From two-tokens up they're inspected, and the fives and sixes are guaranteed germfree."

"That so? I never patronized a coinery before. Not in my line."

"You might consider it. Those are real whores in the booths, you know, mostly. Apart from the animals and machines, I mean. Figure it out. In the first place, it's completely anonymous; nothing but the business end ever shows. In the second place, it's concentrated action. A girl can get serviced maybe ten times an hour with normal traffic, ten hours a day. Even an average three-take ass can make three or four hundred dollars a shift. That's not bad pay at all."

"What use have I for money?" she asked disdainfully.

"But she gets a load each time, too. You could store up a week's worth, just like that."

"No go. I have to pass it along as I get it, or it loses its potency. One shot at a time."

"Maybe you could have two booths. Then when you get one load, you shift to a male-booth and dole it out at another couple tokens per squirt. You could go through your whole evening's business in less than an hour. If you don't want the money, give it to me. I'm natural, not supernatural; I have to eat to live."

"I'll think about it," she said, intrigued. They walked by the higher-priced models of the female section. Each booth contained a pair of buttocks projecting from the wall, the distaff genitalia plainly visible. About half were occupied: men stood against them, flies open, organs pumping. The more expensive stands had arm-holes, so that the customer could reach through and fondle or abuse the breasts and torso while thrusting, and the six-toke booths were partially transparent when activated so that the prosperous client could even see what he was doing.

Prior stopped by the first of the cheapies. The buttocks were plump—grossly so. The cleft was hardly visible, being buried beneath overlapping avoirdupois even in this flexed position. There were pimples, and the crevice was creasy. Perhaps it was only sweat—but there was a good chance that it was the flow from venereal sores.

Prior reached out gingerly and tried to spread the fleshy masses to verify this. They resisted. They were surprisingly hard, as though glazed. A sign lit, above: ONE TOKEN.

He drew out a token and pressed it edgewise between those mounds. There was a click as it entered the slot set in the anus; the disk vanished, something gulped, and the buttocks relaxed. Another sign came on. YOU HAVE THREE MINUTES.

"Well, shove it in!" the succubus said. "A four minute fuck is too long; you see the sign."

Prior did not want to admit that he still had no erection, and was unlikely to get one at this stop. This fat ass was repulsive. "But I'm not sure it's infected! If I shoot my wad and there's no VD to begin with—"

"I'll check it for you," she said impatiently. She poked a finger into the cleavage and slid it along the blubbery labia until it entered the sunken hole.

"Don't play with it!" a muffled voice cried from behind the wall. "Fuck it! That's what it's there for!" It was the owner of the ponderous denier.

The succubus ignored this intemperate outburst. She swished her long-nailed finger inside and brought it out dripping. She touched her tongue to it. "Neatsfoot oil," she announced.

"What?"

"Neatsfoot oil. Old standby to soften saddles and shoe leather."

"Saddle soap?" Prior gaped but saw she was serious. "It figures. A one-toke slot gets a lot of rough action. Probably has to be lathered up right or it hardens and cracks."

"Fuck it, eunuch!" the muffled voice pleaded.

"All in good time, ass," the succubus snapped, slapping a buttock.

"But does it have VD?" Prior demanded.

"No."

"Then we'd better try the tamponer," he said with relief.

"That's right! I forgot."

YOU HAVE THIRTY SECONDS TO COMPLETE YOUR BUSINESS, the sign warned.

"What happens if you don't finish in time?" the succubus asked, curious.

"It freezes up, and anything in there is stuck. Then you have to pay again, or have the fairy janitor pry you loose."

"Clever!" She shoved the box against the buttocks.

The filament came out and performed its exploration. "Stop that!" the muffled voice cried angrily. "Quit tickling and fuck it, you fuckin' impotent!"

A cigarette emerged and found loose lodging. "You forgot to stock it with those tampons you bought!" the succubus exclaimed, smiling. She evidently found humor in the situation, now that she was not the victim.

VIOLATION, the sign said, and a red flag popped up. The labia and buttocks closed around the cigarette and stiffened as though instant rigor mortis had set in. Any dawdling penis would have been in sorry straits.

"Serves you right, slowpoke!" the muffled voice chortled, thinking it was a pinioned penis.

Undismayed, the machine lit the cigarette, doused its light, and closed up shop. "Let's get out of here," Prior said, seeing the weed glow slowly down toward the oiled flesh. "Does neatsfoot oil burn? There could be an explosion. The management might not approve."

"Serves her right," the succubus said smugly.

They moved on to the next unoccupied booth. This offering was sunny side up, the spread thighs disappearing at an angle into the wall above. Prior found the coinslot and pressed in a token.

"Doesn't it stretch those twats?" the succubus inquired.

"No more than a turd does. The tokens aren't that big, and the mechanism is self-contained and shaped to the bowel. The same unit injects the flesh-stiffener and its antidote. A very efficient setup."

"I'd still call it dirty money," she muttered. "The management must have a ball collecting and counting it."

The vagina came alive. The succubus inserted her finger again and sampled it. "Jackpot! Syphilis!"

Prior's member acted as though he were turning into a succubus himself. He didn't like the sound of this. "Are you sure my—that it works on syph, too?"

"Of course I'm not sure! That's why we're here! If you die of syphilis I'll be generous enough to admit my theory was wrong."

Prior couldn't debate that reasoning, though somehow he was not reassured. He brought out his penis, and it tried to elude his grasp and hide. He hauled it out again, and it dangled like a decapitated snake. He massaged it, trying to work it into a suitable erection. The organ inflated only to half-mast, then began to subside.

"Hurry it up!" the succubus said. "Time is money."

"I thought you didn't care about money."

"I don't; you do. Get your midget pekker into the soup!"

But it shriveled like an embarrassed worm until it was largely absent. The VIOLATION sign came on.

"Oh for pity's sake!" she said. "Here—I'll take care of it. Come on over to the arcade section."

She led him to the sexview stalls, his fly still open and his little penis peeping out pitifully. No one noticed. The succubus seemed pretty knowledgeable for a creature who had never patronized a place like this.

Here, for a token, men and women could assimilate three-dimensional stereophonic odoriphorous semitactile eroticism.

Each item was rated on a sliding scale: guaranteed to bring a person to spontaneous climax within a specified period. If it failed to do so, his token was refunded. Of course he had to submit his genitals to a quick machine inspection to verify that his gun had not been fired within the past half hour, and the offer was void if certain suppressant drugs were employed. Men had been known to try to beat the machine by injecting Novocain into their erectile tissue to deaden all sensation. (It didn't work; the climactic stimulus acted on the brain, not the meat.)

Of course it was rumored that a sensitizing drug was injected by the arcade machine during its check for desensitizing drugs—but hardly anybody worried about that. An orgasm was an orgasm, after all, and a sexview orgasm was mighty good regardless.

Prior rammed in his token with more authority than his penis evinced, and passed inspection. He donned the helmet, settling the binoculars over his open eyes, the headphones over his ears, the nosecone over his nose, and the tactile band over his forehead and the back of his neck. The tape came on and the timer started.

The succubus watched his penis climb rapidly and achieve full turgidity. It quivered and thrust toward the collection basin, on the verge of detonation, while Prior's open mouth gasped and drooled. There was obviously quite a show going on in his head! Fifteen seconds had passed; five to go. (The price rose exponentially for emissions within twelve seconds, or for males under thirteen, or for frigid women.)

As the fit came over him, she hoisted her skirt, turned her torso about, and jammed her thirsty cavity onto the short pole, receiving the full ejaculation. It was a large one—a dozen jets—showing that he hadn't been tapped in some time. She smiled with satisfaction as she eased off the perch.

Prior removed the helmet. "Whew! That was so real it felt real!" Then he noted her position and remembered what they had come for. "You—did you—"

"Next time I incubate," she said as she straightened out, "I'm going to try one of those shows. This one sure lifted your counterweight."

"Incubate?" He was still groggy from the sexview presentation. Whoever had authored the script for the sequence he had just experienced must have had a hot jock and a sick mind. It was potent stuff!

"I'm succubating at the moment."

"Oh." Obviously. Apparently she didn't have to change sexes the moment she got her load on; she could do it at her convenience.

She set off for the slot section, metamorphosing in full stride. Still dazed, he followed her... him. Incubating, yes.

The incubus took a token and shoved it into the slot they had visited before. His gesture in doing so was obscene. As the buttocks loosened and the crack opened he plunged his eight-incher into the hole with a loud slurp. As he delivered Prior's load, he pinched the buttock with fingernails that resembled an old-time can-opener.

"Stop that!" screamed the owner's voice. "Go to the pervert department, you sadist!"

"I have just put my brand on this hair-pie," the incubus said matter-of-factly, withdrawing his spent tool. Even flaccid, it remained large. Prior stifled a siege of envy. "Or this harpy; maybe that version is better. So we'll know whether remission occurs."

Sure enough, a mystic symbol was now evident on the reddened skin. There would be no problem identifying this exhibit! Meanwhile, he agreed: hairpie equated nicely with harpy.

"Now I'll just go test out the sexviewer," the incubus said. "Take care of your box." He handed the tamponer back and walked away.

"You can't use it right after you've spurted—the guarantee's void!" Prior called. But the incubus was already out of hearing. Well, maybe he'd succubate, then try the show. Or maybe he had ways to fuck up this type of machine, too, just as she had been ready to do for the parking meter at the beach.

Prior's attention was attracted downward by the passing snicker of a ten year old girl. His spent penis was still hanging out, and the box's filament was nuzzling it.

He whipped his organ out of the way. He had no hankering to have a tampon rammed up it. Or a lighted cigarette.

Chapter Six

Two weeks later the demon was back. Prior had almost succeeded in putting her/him out of his mind, and he had long since had himself checked out again at the VD clinic and pronounced clean. (He hadn't actually had contact with the infected slot, but you couldn't be too careful about a thing like that.) He had not washed his penis in five days, and was feeling much more comfortable in the mundane world. He had perfected his tamponer by eliminating the cigarette-lighting feature—tampons did not burn evenly anyway—and modifying the filament and rinse. He expected to make his fortune momentarily.

"It didn't work," the succubus said. "That slot still has the clap."

"She never had the clap," he pointed out. "That means gonorrhea, not syphilis."

"Details," she muttered. "You jism didn't jizz, regardless. She's as VD'd as ever."

"So? You were the one who made the claim. I never thought my produce was premium grade. I'm just glad I never dunked my own tender flesh in that slot-cesspool."

"There's still something. Maybe you radiate curative rays or something. Come on—I'm taking your pint-sized pekker to a specialist."

"Pint-sized? That's sixteen ounces—a full pound!"

"Pint it right this way, then," she said, bringing him to the door.

"What the—?" he cried. But she was already hauling him outside and around to his car. He didn't even have a chance to set down the tamponer.

"Drive," she said. "I'll tell you where and when."

"I'm being hijacked by a demon," he muttered. But he engaged the atomics and drove. Any time this creature wasn't interested in sex, something serious was up.

It was a party. Costumed people drifted in and out of the multiple rooms sipping glasses of wine, beer, scotch, cucumber juice, urine, and kerosene, by the smell of it. "They aren't all human," the succubus warned him privately, "so watch your language. Don't take the names of any supernatural beings in vain, or step inside any pentagrams or eat any apples or stroke any lamps. I'll see if I can find Tantamount."

"Tantamount to what?" But she was gone.

Prior drifted among strangers, nibbling a raw horseradish and sipping a horn of strong mead, alternately perching on top of the turned-off tamponer, which he didn't want to leave just anywhere. He quickly discovered that it was not exactly a costume ball. The costumes were genuine. A toothy vampire was not merely playing when he moved from woman to woman and deep-kissed each fair throat. The twin punctures remained above the jugular, though they did not seem to bother the wearers. A satyr made similar rounds, conducting the tittering victims to a separate chamber for an instant nuptial. Prior assumed at first that the vampire and satyr were fakers, but he spied blood welling out of some of those punctures and watched surreptitiously through an imperfectly closed door and discovered that the penile act was equally realistic.

He turned after that to find the vampire at his throat. "Hey!"

"Don't do that!" the creature said, annoyed. "You almost made me hit the carotid."

"What difference does that make? I don't want my blood sucked!"

"What difference!. The jugular is placid, unoxygenated blood that I can keep under control. The carotid has fresh arterial blood under pulsing pressure. When my teeth dip into that, I have to seal it over hard to stop the spurt, and the toxin is carried into your system before I can recover it."

"The toxin! What are you talking about?"

"The vampire toxin, naturally. Anyone who absorbs too much of that becomes a vampire himself. Didn't you know?"

Prior backed away, holding the tamponer up as a defensive shield. "No thanks!"

"It isn't that I care about your sentiments, you understand. I just don't like the competition. Too many vamps spoil the blood."

"Just leave me alone!"

The vampire shrugged and zeroed in on another victim. The tamponer was now a liability. Somewhere along the way he had jammed into the on/off switch so that the machine was now locked on, its filament looking for an orifice to analyze. Prior set the unit on a vacant chair where he could keep an eye on it and fetched himself another drink. This one looked like rum, tasted like prunejuice, and had a kick like a shot of morphine. It would do.

"I found Tantamount," the succubus said beside him. "She'll be along in a minute."

"Who's Tantamount?" he asked again. He was watching a whiskered man going from woman to woman and snapping their bras. It looked like fun, especially when he snapped a low-cut bra-less outfit. An excellent way of testing the firmness of the bosom, not to mention its authenticity.

"The hostess. Tantamount Emdee. I want her to have a look at you."

"MD? She's a doctor?"

"She's a penologist. An internist in penises. Uh, I wouldn't imbibe too much of that particular brew, if you're not used to it."

"Seems OK to me. In fact I'm beginning to feel real hairy. What is it?"

"Werewolf elixir."

Prior paused to consider this. "Does this mean what I'm afraid it means?"

"That depends—"

She was interrupted by a scream. The satyr was attacking a stout woman, right in the center of the crowd. But she hadn't cried out; he had. The party had reached the stage where all women were willing but not all men able. She was tittering, enjoying the attention. Prior craned to get a better view.

The woman had been backed up against a wall and the hooved demon was having at her. His member was monstrous—a good foot long, about four inches thick at the base and tapering hornlike to a narrow apex. Prior imagined that such an instrument should be able to puncture panties readily and shoehorn its way into the tightest vulva—but he could not imagine any woman absorbing the whole of it.

Nevertheless, the satyr was the one in trouble. Frustrated by some obstruction, he had yanked up the woman's dress and underdress and petticoats and slip, and yanked down her heavy-duty panties, and was driving vainly at her corset. The thing was stoutly ribbed and cross-hatched with ivory stays and reinforced with layers of canvas. Prior fancied that a cross-section of that fabric would resemble the plies of a top-grade metal-braced nylon racing tire. Stout garters and straps depended from it, serving no purpose Prior could fathom since they did not hitch to stockings, but they did effectively wall off the crotch. No wonder the satyr had been balked! The armor-like undergarment made a dandy chastity belt.

"Good evening."

Prior turned to find an absolutely beautiful woman adjacent. Her hair was a lustrous green fading to purple at the extremities. She wore an intriguing furry halter that offered tantalizing glimpses of the truly shapely breasts within. Prior studied the halter, fascinated. He was tempted to perform the bra-snap test, but there was no strap. The halter seemed to merge into her tresses without any demarcation. In fact—

In fact, her hair was the halter. It looped back from her head, parted behind, and passed forward under her arms to embrace her luscious bosom. When she nodded her head, her breasts lifted and quivered invitingly. Prior was obtaining more erectile action from those living, breathing mammaries than he had had from anything short of the slot arcade. But the sex of the slots was fundamentally dirty; this beauty was fundamentally clean.

Then he remembered the satyr. This was no sight for a lovely lady of such quality! "Let me take you away from all this," he began.

She smiled benignly. "I am Tantamount." The very consonants of the name sent charming ripples through her superstructure.

"I am incipient," he said, shifting his posture to relieve sudden and pre-emptive pressure. "Uh, Prior. Gross Prior—that is, Prior Gross."

She laughed, and her breasts did a rippling dance that nearly climaxed him involuntarily. "So I understand. Let's have a look at the subject."

"The subject?" Did she mean the satyr's frenzied attempts to get through that fortress-girdle?

Tantamount knelt before him and opened his straining fly. His penis sprang out, taut and turgid, before he quite realized what she was doing. Here in the middle of a formal party, yet! But he didn't know how to get out of this without calling even more embarrassing attention to himself. So far, most eyes remained on the Satyrical action, center-stage, fortunately.

"How large is it when erect?" she inquired, tugging at the foreskin. "Oops, beg pardon! It is erect, isn't it!"

Prior didn't comment. He was far too conscious of his days without a bath. The cheese would be strong, if she peeled back that prepuce any farther. He tried to back away, but he stood against a wall and could not retreat.

"The question is whether your ejaculate has particular non-reproductive properties," she said. "I had better take a sample now for laboratory analysis."

She massaged his throbbing organ. Conversation around them ceased, and people glanced curiously at what was happening. Prior would have felt more embarrassed if he had not already seen worse than this, openly performed here, and if Tantamount's touch were not so professional. Maybe the werewolf elixir had dulled his inhibitions.

She brought out a bell-necked test-tube and capped his glans with it just as he spurted. The thick white ejaculate splashed against the glass, urge after urge, until the container was a quarter full. There was a smattering of applause. Apparently the audience had expected less from so small a cock. But it was possible for a small cock to attach to a large keg.

"Very good," Tantamount said, bending to lick off a laggard smear. The touch was so exciting to his sensitized glans that he almost urinated in her mouth. "A quite respectable quantity. Now let's check the smegma."

Prior was too bemused to stop her as she drew back the foreskin to reveal the whole purple glans. There was a coating of yellow, and the smell spread out powerfully. He stood helplessly, feeling the heat mount to his neck and face as the bystanders sniffed the air audibly.

"Excellent," Tantamount said. "I see the succubus told you not to wash it, so that a suitable specimen deposit could form." Prior was immensely relieved. It was all right! As his erection inexorably diminished, she took a plastic slide and scraped off a rich smear of cheese. "I'm so glad to see an uncircumcised organ," she remarked. "So many today are mutilated." Several of the men around who had begun to snicker now looked chastened. Evidently they had been mutilated, and were unable to manufacture decent samples of cheese.

"I'm convinced that smegma," Tantamount continued blithely, "despite certain charges against it, serves a necessary function. It is of course an olfactory stimulant that arouses some women." Indeed it did; most of the women in the room were breathing deeply and edging closer to Prior. "And to me the natural, complete organ is a thing of beauty—genuine masculine appeal. The esthetics are so much more important than the measurements. The male organ really should not be cut, any more than a person's tongue or nose should be cut."

"Butchery," Prior agreed. With this encouragement, both ego and penis were rallying. It was true; he did have an unmutilated member. For the first time in his life, people were contemplating his diminutive phallus with respect.

Tantamount held the cheese-encrusted slide in one hand and the test tube of ejaculate in the other. She stood up without support, lost her balance, and had to aim her pert derriere at the nearest chair, her microskirt flouncing out prettily.

Prior cried an incoherent warning, but too late. She came down firmly on the tamponer.

For a moment she perched on it, her skirt concealing the action. An indecipherable expression crossed her face, but she did not spill her samples or make an outcry. There was a click.

Then she stood up carefully and marched sedately from the room with the undisturbed specimens.

Prior put away his penis and checked the box. The counter indicated one tampon expended. He peered after Tantamount and shook his head. That was a woman worth knowing!

Chapter Seven

Action elsewhere drew his attention again. The satyr had finally gotten past the barricade and into the nether bifurcation of the corseted woman. He was servicing her with the abandon of long-denial-now-abated while the onlookers clapped in unison with the thrusts. Otherwise, things were routine, considering the company.

"Did you meet Tantamount?" the succubus inquired, coming up beside him.

"I certainly did. She—took specimens."

"Of course. She's a doctor. She's probably in the laboratory right now, analyzing them. She'll get to the truth of this."

"She's quite a woman."

"That's nothing. You should see her sister, Oubliette."

"I can imagine."

"I doubt that."

The satyr finished with the corset and looked around for new romance. "Come on, banana-cock," the succubus said as she broke away from Prior. "You'll never make it with these mortal dames. Their cunts are just flesh. I'll show you how to fuck so you'll stay fucked!"

The satyr turned to meet her with a snort. "Is that so, suck-buss? You bisexuals think you know it all! You're just amateurs. Let's see you absorb this motherfucker!" And he brandished his impressive weapon, tall and strong despite its recent workout. A satyr was, by definition, insatiable; his member never lost its potency.

"You call that a motherfucker?" she inquired derisively. "Just call me 'Mom'!"

They went at it standing up, with the spectators gathering into a large circle. Prior watched amazed as the towerlike penis plunged into the wide-open cleft—six, eight, ten inches. She had said she could take nine in a pinch; evidently she had understated the case. "That deep enough, sister?" the satyr grunted. "I struck bottom two inches ago...."

"I don't know, brother. When are you going to put it in?"

With an outraged snort the satyr rammed home another inch, though the going was obviously difficult. The base of his member distended her cleft, seeming almost as thick as a third leg, but she didn't seem to notice. It had to be an act; she must be hurting inside, her demonic gut wrenched three inches out of line. Maybe her flesh was more elastic than mortal tissue.

"Cut out this preliminary diddle and start screwing, Granddad!" she said bravely.

The satyr battered at the connection, hammering himself in by short hard blows to his own short-tailed rear. Gradually the remainder of the ponderous member got inside. They waltzed around the floor, two figures with but a single crotch, and every spectator marveled at the authority of the connection.

The satyr started thrusting in a business way, now. Slowly the slick horn came out an inch, slowly it squeezed in again. Out in, out in—faster, now, and with a longer stroke. Prior saw the succubus' hips swell with each full insertion, spread by the mass of that trunklike base. Fluid dripped to the floor—not semen but lubricant. The tempo accelerated; the succubus' feet began to leave the floor at the height of each thrust, and her breasts were shining with sweat where they bulged out of her costume, their nipples swelling like miniature penises. "Put it to me, Goaty!" she gasped.

Then he came. He rammed so hard that she rose into the air and stayed there, hung on his phallus. She wrapped her legs around his narrow hips and hooked her feet together, riding there while he bucked his torso ferociously. Prior fancied he could see the bulge of the liquid bolus forming within the satyr, pressuring its way through an aperture that seemed all too narrow at this stage.

There was a sound like escaping steam. The succubus leaned back and threw her arms wide, so that she projected from the satyr's torso like a woman-breasted phallus. His belly appeared to collapse, hers to swell, as the bolus transferred in a series of grotesque heaves. What an emission!

Finally she leaned all the way down toward the floor, backward, her belly distended with the mass of ejaculate, and slurped off his pole. That incredible member was still hard; it sprang up again as her weight left it, glistening.

She was changing already, her breasts and hips flattening but her abdomen still bulging. "Bend over, uncle!" the incubus cried, his own penis telescoping where the hole had been.

"Here's shit in your eye!" the satyr said, presenting his hairy posterior.

The incubus wedged his instrument against the tight anus, clasping the other about the middle to gain leverage. Prior was appalled, but could not take his eyes from the show. The member would not go in. "Get your turdhole open, cousin!"

"Get your pisser hard!" the satyr replied. But slowly the orifice yielded and the eyeless head entered the first inch or two. The audience applauded.

After that initial breakthrough, the anal sphincter gave up and the rest of the incubus's well-oiled organ slammed in to its full length and depth. Properly embedded, the demon started pumping. Again the piston-strokes made the floor shudder as their velocity increased. Again the orgasm gathered itself deep in the fundament, shaped itself into a missile, built up with fire-hydrant force. The bolus tore its way back into the body of its originator, doubling the diameter of penis and anus as it charged through. Now the satyr's belly bulged as it filled. Someone made a sound, half scream and half sigh, transfixed by the sheer magnitude of this fornication, and Prior could not tell whether it was satyr, incubus or audience.

One complete round was done. But the contest was not over. Prior continued to watch with avid horror, though his shorts were sodden with his own spontaneity.

The incubus began to change without withdrawing. The transformation took care of that: in a moment the succubus stood with her vagina plastered against the satyr's anus.

He farted.

"Touche!" the vampire yelled.

Then they commenced the second round. Prior knew this one would be worse than the last, for the bolus had grown. Someone's tubing was sure to burst!

Chapter Eight

Tantamount tapped Prior on the shoulder. "Come with me," she murmured. She was excited. One look at her heaving, hair-bound bosom was all the persuasion he required. He had had a couple of emissions recently, but his suffering penis pointed the way. He could come again—with her.

She brought him to her laboratory, to his disappointment, not to her bedroom. "The ejaculate is normal," she said, "but the smegma is extraordinary! I tried the sample on two VD cultures, and it destroyed them both. Mr. Gross, I believe you have the specific antidote to all venereal disease!"

"In my cheese?" he asked, astounded.

"Please don't be uncouth. Your smegma is phenomenal, if that tiny sample is typical. I shall have to set up a foundation to study it, to isolate the active elements, to make confirmatory analysis, to distribute worldwide—"

"My cheese?!" he repeated.

"Your smegma. This is a great moment for civilization! My name will be known wherever venereal disease abounds."

Her animation was contagious. "That's great! And I guess it explains why the cures were irregular. When I washed my penis—"

"Precisely. No penis should be washed too often, but yours especially must remain in its natural state. So I'm sure you'll want to cooperate. The last great barrier to completely satisfactory sexual intercourse shall come down, thanks to your contribution."

"Sure," he agreed, not certain what she meant. "But I can only produce so much ch—er, smegma. I can't keep trotting in here to—" Though if, by any chance, she were part of the deal....

"Oh, I'll analyze it and duplicate the essential ingredients in the lab and patent the formula," she said confidently. "All I need is a sufficient initial sample. Half a pound or so should do it."

"Half a pound! That would take me years!"

"Perhaps less time, if you are properly stimulated," she said. "Shall we begin?" She shrugged out of her microskirt and began to unbind her marvelous hair.

Prior could hardly believe his fortune. "You mean sexual activity speeds it up?"

"Not exactly. But what I have in mind should accomplish a similar objective." Her two fine, vibrant, heaving breasts emerged like torpedoes from the liquidly swirling green hair. "Sign here, please."

Dazed by the living splendors before him, Prior scribbled his name on the form she presented. He would have signed a pact with the devil, at this moment of dazzlement. Presumably doctors had certain formalities to honor before letting go. Had to do with the doctor-patient relationship, no doubt. Who was he to quibble? He had never before had access to such beauty, and her compliments about his unmutilated, world-saving penis didn't detract significantly from his ardor either. How could he even have desired the succubus, who was only a demonic facsimile of what was real in Tantamount?

She cleared retorts and burners and slide specimens off a laboratory table, found a thin air mattress, inflated it from a pressure cylinder no bigger than his erect member, and settled it aboard the table. "Lie down, please," she said.

"Me?"

"You, of course."

He had somehow supposed she would do the lying. Ah, well. He climbed onto the elevated mattress. It seemed more reasonable when he saw her gaze concentrate on his midsection. She probably wanted to play with it first. Anyway, it was impossible to say no to a shape like hers.

Tantamount put her hand on his standing penis and caressed it fondly. "You are going to make my fortune," she said, and it was almost as though she were addressing the member instead of the man. "You little beauty! Trim rather than fleshy, tidy rather than ponderous. Far more efficient than some of these elephantine slabs of meat some men display." Her touch sent fabulous ripples of pleasure through him, as did her words.

"But small," he said modestly, loving it.

"Petite, but no less masculine. Good things often come in small packages, as this handsome member demonstrates." She circled the head of it with thumb and forefinger and began a gentle up and down motion. "You are just perfect, you darling! You are certainly more noteworthy than the partial members hanging from so many men." Her eyes fixed on it as though hypnotized.

"Uncircumcised," Prior agreed. He was not inclined to argue.

"Who?" she asked as though startled to find Prior still present. "Oh, yes, of course." She stroked the penis again, and it practically purred.

After a while she put her face down and lipped the tip. "Oh, I love you!" she breathed around it. Had Prior not been tapped so recently, he would have spouted right then. As it was, he felt a slow, delicious upsurge of pleasure.

"Delightful smegma," Tantamount said, running her tongue caressingly between glans and foreskin. The warm enjoyment extended down through the entire shaft and spread outward into his body. The world was tongue and penis and rapture.

She eased off before an orgasm became unavoidable, and Prior knew that she was fully aware of his state and had it under control. Doctors had some impressive talents! Then she climbed onto the table herself and bestrode him, her resilient rounded breasts hanging near his face, her parted thighs embracing his hips. But she did not settle her luscious cleft on his ready member as he anticipated. She leapfrogged gracefully up over his stomach and chest until her dainty vagina hovered over his face. It was as appealing as the rest of her. Her labia were cleanly shaved, and looked as smooth and innocent as the genitals of a gradeschool girl. Her vulva smelled of disinfectant.

"That device of yours, on the chair," she began sternly.

Uh-oh! "I can explain," he said, speaking almost into the sanitary crack. He could see her cute clitoris wiggle as his breath brushed it, and he was most anxious to have no misunderstanding develop at this point. "I was testing this machine of mine, that—well, it—I just set it on the chair after the vampire—it's called the tamponer."

"Interesting," she said coolly. "You may retrieve your tampon now."

He saw the small string of the tampon dangling like a firecracker fuse from her crevice, and was unreasonably jealous to think that it had penetrated her body before he could. He brought one hand up to grasp the cord.

She balked him with a twitch of one thigh, the play of muscles shifting one buttock and making her inner labia slide against each other momentarily. "No hands."

Oh. Well, it was a fun game. Prior hoisted his head and reached up with his teeth to clamp on the fuse. His nose nudged her clitoris and it jumped, and moisture appeared along the entire channel from clit to vulva. He finally got hold of the string and pulled down. The tampon slid out smoothly, moist but not bloody. It fell across his chin, a damp length of pseudo-cotton.

"Consume it," she said firmly. He knew she meant it because her tight little anus puckered as she spoke.

So this was her revenge for that mishap. If he wanted to get into it with more than just cotton, he would have to oblige. And he did want in—desperately. His penis would only stand for so much, before firing a warning salvo. So he tongued the soggy, half-collapsed cylinder into his mouth and began to chew. Actually, it had a certain flavor, as though mentholated.

Tantamount nodded affirmatively, then slid down his torso to lie against him, her stomach crushing his penis flat against his own belly, her luxuriant breasts pressing down warmly.

"I have been certain for years that smegma has been calamitously maligned," she said, her breath tickling his shoulder. "Nature never produces a secretion aimlessly. Like the tonsils, like the appendix, every part of the body either has or has had its function, perhaps before civilization removed us from our divine intimacy with nature."

Prior grunted amenably, his mouth still full of the sodden mass. The tampon was infernally chewy, and this discussion did not mean much to him at the moment. Not with his poor penis wedged between his breathing body and hers, on the very verge of lubricating both tummies with wriggling sperm.

"The practice of circumcision is an abomination," she continued, squirming around just enough to keep his member at tortuously rigid attention despite its confinement. "Truly, it has been defined as 'the unkindest cut'! It was conceived as a ritual mutilation, from the notion that the young man must suffer before being admitted to adult society and status. He had to pay a price in pain and blood, before indulging in the lascivious joys of fornication. Punishment before the crime! Often the same was true of the young woman—her clitoris would be amputated at puberty, in an attempt to ensure that she never received any pleasure from the reproductive act. In Judeo-Christian times the pagan ritual was continued with the claim that 'God' had decreed the act, and finally it was suggested that it was even beneficial to human health."

Prior crammed the cotton into one cheek so that he could speak. "I've heard that, but—"

She slid up, almost milking his penis by the motion, and jammed a classic pink nipple into his mouth so that he was silenced again. "True—circumcised men do have a lower incidence of cancer of the penis. But by the same token women with their breasts amputated have less cancer of the breast. You could eliminate cancer of the brain by amputating the head of every citizen."

"Mmmph!" he agreed as she thrust her breast against his face by way of emphasis.

"And some claim—falsely—that the wives of uncircumcised men have a higher incidence of cancer of the cervix, and the smegma produced by the prepuce has been charged with the crime. The fact is, it is the frequency and nature of sexual intercourse that affects the cervix-cancer rate, not the circumcision. But even were the charge true, amputation of the foreskin would be no more valid a solution than complete castration would be to prevent unwanted pregnancies. If you attempt to solve all problems by butchery, it would be reasonable to abolish all human illness and evil by decimating the species. Genocide would certainly solve—"

"Okay, okay," Prior muttered around the delightful but slightly suffocating flesh. "I'm an unmutilated male, remember. I'm on your side, and I'd like to be inside your—"

"But now I have the key to set the record straight," she continued, giving him a firm turn at the other breast and pressing down so that it was all he could do to breathe, let alone talk. "I shall prove that smegma—and therefore the foreskin that secretes it—has an important and continuing purpose, quite apart from olfactory stimulation. No wonder venereal disease is rampant today, when so many males are either circumcised or unconscionably clean! This will go down in the medical annals! A specific cure for the malady of our times, virtually unknown in prehistoric societies before soap and the knife rendered man's innate defense impotent."

"But how do you know," Prior gasped, almost gagging on her turgid nipple, "if VD was prehistoric, or wasn't? Maybe lots of men had it and didn't talk about it. And what about all the other unwashed uncircumcised men that have—"

She slid back down and planted a smothering kiss on him. Then, putting her hand over his mouth and stirring up the cotton inside with one finger, she said: "The twin fetishes of cleanliness and mutilation over the centuries have eliminated smegma as a viable venereal disease prevention and made its effective properties irrelevant to survival, just as modern man's propensity for shaving his face has eliminated the beard as a survival aid. Any human capability that goes unused too many generations becomes obviated. Thus it is hardly surprising that few penises retain their ancient defenses. Yours may be a unique throwback; that's why it's invaluable."

"It's valuable to me!" he mumbled between her fingers. Doctors had some very frustrating propensities! When was she ever going to quit talking and get down to business? He was, oddly, becoming sleepy.

Tantamount jockeyed about until her satiny cleft caressed his much-discussed foreskin, sending more waves of titillation rippling out. "And of course we have yet to come to the primary purpose of the prepuce itself. Sensitivity! The greatest concentration of nerve endings is there."

Amen! he thought, as those same nerves deluged his brain with thrust-and-spurt messages. Ready or not, here he came—any moment now. She was teasing his poor member as it had never been teased before. No wonder she was called Tantamount!

"That is why so many conservative prudes favor circumcision," she said. "Their real reason, not their spurious meanderings and maunderings about health and esthetics and religion and manhood. Imagine proclaiming official manhood by unmanning the masculine member! Circumcision cuts down on the sheer, rightful pleasure of the sexual act. It—"

It seemed to him she was beginning to repeat herself. "Speaking of which—" he gasped, spitting out the masticated tampon as his member went into its climactic effort despite the strange lassitude of the rest of his body.

"Oh very well," she snapped crossly. "Have your sinful pleasure. You men are all alike."

She positioned her crotch above his own and used her hand to angle his organ in, barely in time. The first spurt smashed into the hot chamber like water from a sluice opened at flood-stage.

Prior fought to remain awake, but somehow, frustratingly, his consciousness departed along with his seminal fluid. One impulse, two, three... it was a countdown to oblivion. "Instead of coming, I went!" he thought with despair.

And thought no more.

Chapter Nine

He woke in his own apartment, his penis itching furiously. He reached down automatically to rub it, trying to remember how the past evening had finished—and found a bandage.

A bandage! Had he come down with VD after all?

He sat up groggily, yanking at the dressing. It came away with a flash of gruesome pain. For a moment he stared at his crotch uncomprehendingly.

He did not have VD. The reality was much worse.

His penis was gone—all 3.97 inches erect.

It had been amputated.

Dazed, he sat on the bed. How could such a thing have happened? He still had his testicles—but what good were they without the delivery system?

He thought back to the party. He had seen the satyr making out with the succubus. Then Tantamount had summoned him, and—

"Why, that thieving bitch!" he exclaimed, and the effort made his nonexistent penis hurt again. She hadn't been attracted to him at all, but to his penis! So she had drugged him somehow and stolen his masculine member. For the smegma she so worshipped. She had talked so long before coming to the point in order to distract him and keep him quiet until the drug put him down; only when she had been assured she had him, had she allowed him to have her.

But he had taken no drug—not since the werewolf elixir, and that was not exactly a sleeping potion. He had put nothing in his mouth except Tantamount's lovely nipples....

No! He had chewed on that tampon!

He saw it now, with an awful, betrayed clarity. She had removed the tampon after his machine had raped her with it. She must have dosed it with something, then reinserted it. That was why it had a menthol flavor. What fiendish female cunning! He had supposed it was a ritual punishment, but it had been far more sinister.

And the paper he had signed during his bemusement as she bobbled her fine breasts, her matched and matchless breasts under his nose—that document was surely a release for his penis. He must have unwittingly—but legally—donated it to the cause of venereal research. Brother!

And what was he going to do now? Storm back to Tantamount's house and cry "Look here, Miss Emdee, I demand my penis back!"? And she would show him the signed release and that would be that. When someone donated a kidney for transplant, he could not storm back after the surgery and demand it back. How could it be otherwise with a penis?

But was he to go through the rest of his life with an effeminate hole where his meat should be? What would that do to his love-life? He was no succubus, to convert that hole to an impressive mansized member at will!

Prior dressed and drove to Tantamount's house. He didn't know what he was going to do, and knew it wouldn't work, but he had to try.

She opened the door promptly. "Why hello there, Mr. Gross! So nice to see you again."

This set him back. She was absolutely ravishing despite the mundane dress and conventionally bound hair. Now her tresses were ordinary brown—had the color been a trick of the night lighting?—and her bosom was demurely de-emphasized under a laboratory smock, and her fair face was innocent of any sign of any thought touching on anatomical matters between the shoulders and the knees. Yet he felt his absent penis stiffening, hoist by its own imagination, and he could think of nothing appropriate to say.

"Do come in," she said, as though he were an old friend. And when he was in: "Are you in pain? Let me check the dressing."

She kneeled before him, opened his fly and ran her slender fingers over his smarting crotch. "Oh, you removed the bandage. That won't do. This will heal nicely, but it has to be protected for the first few days. The operation was a success."

Sure, he thought laconically. The operation was a success, but the penis died. "I—"

"You were so generous, contributing to science and health this way. Let me show you."

She took him to a small office where she rebandaged him, leaving a pipette for urination, then led him back to the laboratory.

His penis was ensconced within a maze of glass tubing. Colored fluids traveled to its base, and there was the steady hum of a pump. A plaque set in the base of the display said: DONATED IN THE INTEREST OF THE WELFARE OF MAN—PRIAPUS GROSS.

Good god! What kind of a monster would he seem if he took it back now? Yet—

"You see, we have it transplanted into a compatible environment. Other organs have been kept living and functioning for years in the laboratory, such as chicken hearts, but this must be the first time it has been done with a penis. Isn't it a beauty?"

"But it's my—"

"And this way it will produce smegma under controlled conditions. We shall surely unlock the secret of its chemistry. Venereal disease will become a hobgoblin of the past. Between this and the Pill, there will be a new era of sexual freedom." She paused, then added with less enthusiasm: "For those who really want that sort of thing. To me it is more of a technological challenge."

Remembering the night past, he appreciated her limited candor. She was much stronger on clinical sex and lecturing than on actual man-woman performance with human feeling. She probably would not have played up to him at all if she had not wanted his penis so badly.

"But what about me?" Prior cried at last. "I need it too. And not just for the cheese!"

This time she didn't even flinch at his use of the vernacular. "Oh, didn't I tell you? My sister Oubliette specializes in the practical aspect. She's a bit liberal for my taste, but quite competent. She will provide you with a prosthetic free of charge, because of your service to Science. You will be very well off, by your definitions—her members are world-famous. In fact," she added with a frown, "you will be able to perform as never before."

"I perform perfectly well with my own prick, when not drugged!" he protested.

"Here is her address. She'll be expecting you." Tantamount presented him with a card.

"But I don't want a fake pe—"

He was already outside again, and the door was closing. She had managed him as readily as if he were a rebellious child. Perhaps he was, compared with her cynical subtlety.

But her sister Oubliette was too liberal for her taste.

Well, why not? He could stop over this evening, after work.

Prior looked at the card. The address was about two thousand miles away.