Pornucopia

Chapter Twenty

Six of them began that grim trek toward disaster and disillusion. The Kid had started it, his adolescent chatter like a match that touched the right tinder after sputtering futilely for half a lifetime. Miles Long was his name, and Prior could see the scars on his psyche. The Kid must have learned to fight at the age of three and how to sneer at four. Prior, with a scar of his own where it didn't always show, would have felt more sympathy if the brat wasn't so good at both.

Miles (the Kid) Long had won twelfth prize in an Earthside Snapplepop contest by making daily collections from every other kid in the ward for boxtops. He had amassed about twelve hundred entries, and given in return a hundred and fourteen split lips, seventeen damaged teeth, forty-eight black eyes and two hundred and ninety-one substantive threats. When he won, he had opted for the tour: one week at Mt. Icecream. Naturally he had been bored crazy after the first day. So he thought he'd gain the fame he craved by climbing to the top, and the old fool Yale Payton had agreed with him, and the next thing there were five suckers clamoring for equipment. With Prior Gross the guide.

Prior had lacked the wherewithall to finance a jaunt through the Pass, so had had to make the best deal he could. Mt. Icecream Resort was perennially short on mundane personnel, so he'd signed on for a six-month hitch as caretaker-guide in return for a moderate stipend plus transportation to and from. He'd started duty three weeks ago—and like the Kid, he'd been bored stiff (without erection) after about twenty-four hours.

This was no piece of cake. It was a dish of ice cream.

Snow swirled bleakly ahead of them, the particles swooping up to cling messily to their nylafur outfits. It had a yellowish cast and sickly-sweet smell; that meant it was vanilla, or had been before the wind chipped it into crystals. The sugar tended to coat all warm surfaces, becoming more and more grimy as time passed. Human beings carried with them the bacteria of decay and the calories of body-warmth, and that meant perpetual trouble here. Eventually, with this rampant tourism, the entire area would be infected, and Mt. Icecream would become Mt. Rancidsludge, but no one seemed to care. Certainly Prior didn't. What was a little more pollution in the galaxy, after all? He'd had his fill, and not just figuratively. He'd had to eat a quart of ice cream every day, per the Resort policy of demonstrating that the surroundings were, indeed, good enough to eat. Yech!

He turned his head to check the party. Behind him was Stedman Awk, a fat, wealthy slob of a man who'd made his fortune in hamburgers (despite thirteen injunctions over the years against cutting the meat with chickenneck, fishheads, horsemeat and plain old—very old—stale bread) and now he wanted to see how the other half functioned. The dessert-racket half, specifically. And he had caught the adventure fever from the Kid. He would learn about a lot more than rancid ice cream before he got home!

Third was the lone female, Chloe Samuels, who claimed to be a specialist in something or other. It could have been interesting, having a woman along in a necessarily tight formation like this, but it wasn't. For one thing, she was dumpy; for another, even a beauty would have been unapproachable in this cold and grime.

Next was the old man, Yale Payton, followed by the Kid.

At the end was Ambert Black: a huge Negro with too much muscle and an unpleasant militancy. There might have been trouble between him and the Kid, but the Kid was just smart enough to know he was outclassed. Black was no amateur trouble-maker; he was a pro. He had figured to make the climb on his own, but Resort regulations specified a party of at least three, one of these being a guide, for any overnight excursion from the base. Black would have tried it anyway, but knew that the robot snowsleds would have cut him off. He hated meddling robots even worse than meddling people.

A motley crew, Prior thought, without a doubt. An old man, a fat man, an adolescent, a bitter Black and a dumpy doll. All come to see the fabulous mountain of ice cream—and finding it as motley as themselves.

Prior peered ahead again, but the yellow haze cut visibility and hid the peak. Just as well; its beauty was ironic.

They reached the Stage One campsite in midafternoon. The days were about twenty hours long here and the gravity about nine-tenths of a gee, both of which fouled up visitors in subtle but determined fashion. Disorientation, irritation, even outright illness—Mt. Icecream was good for an hour's visit or a six-month tour (but not very good for either), but a week was too long for patience and too short for metabolism. As these characters would find out soon.

Prior knew the party wouldn't make it to the top. No party ever did. Probably this one wouldn't get beyond the Stage Two campsite. The old man would give out first, then the fat one, then the woman. Prior had been briefed on such dynamics, and was already an old hand. The Kid would stick it out longer, trying to prove himself. He would think it was manhood and courage he was demonstrating, but actually it was perversity and idiocy. The Negro—now, he was tough. Black wouldn't quit—but after Stage Three the party would be down to two, Black and Prior, and that was below the minimum. The robots would converge, frustrating human ambition in the name of human safety. So it would come to nothing, as it always did.

Unlike these slobs, Prior had reason to scale the mountain. Somewhere up there was the Cherry Tree—his lone hope for sexual salvation. Somewhere beyond Stage Four, reaching for the summit. He had never been to the top—no one had, as far as he knew—and his present prospects were bleak. The outside treks were better than the station boredom, at least, but their approach to the summit was illusory. To really do it he would need a sturdy and reliable party, and no such was to be formed from routine tourist ilk. If only a bunch of interstellar marines were to take their liberty here, or central European mountain climbers... but instead there were only old, fat, flighty, fighty or female vacationers, the products of pampered or deprived society.

So here he was, playing out the charade again, letting the paying customers dream of saccharin glory, and grow tired, and quit, having shown themselves up for the feebly ambitious slobs they were. He, as guide, had to pretend that there really was a chance for them to scale the candy pinnacle despite their drastic limitations.

Stage One was large, built to accommodate the many parties that did make it this far. To a considerable extent it was an extension of the main camp; it had electric power and a furnace and half a dozen private cubicles. Usually one or two couples would take the hike as a pretext to spend the night alone: "Hey! Know what we did? We made love halfway up Mt. Icecream! Match that, Jones!" The guide filled in for the rule of three, and for the price of a generous tip made himself inconspicuous when that became crowded. Prior had already escorted several of these liaisons, and knew that the anticipated adulterous pleasures too often became guilty quarrels, victim in part to the planetary forces of weight and cycle. Nothing like lack of sleep or a queasy stomach to heighten discord. Maybe sometime he would get to guide a pair of young women; that could be worthwhile, if they weren't lesbians.

But there was none of that this time. No coupling—not with Chloe as unattractive as she was, and no fairies among the men. There wasn't even much bickering, to his surprise. This ramshackle group actually seemed to be unified by a common purpose. He was sure it wouldn't last.

Tonight they talked. Chloe—Klo, she insisted on being called—was a better conversationalist than were most women, perhaps because she was physically unattractive. She didn't seem to be on the make for a man. Her hair, in the nightlight, was red—the too-sharp red of dye, but colorful all the same. She was fast on the uptake, with a snappy rejoinder for any remark tossed her way. The big Negro, Ambert Black, seemed to take half a shine to her, and that was funny too, because he was a true believer in racial purity. Black purity; none of that lily-white dilution of the stock. And the old man and the Kid continued to hit it off.

Prior thought about Oubliette and her peristaltic vagina, and daydreamed of shoving the twelve-incher into that orifice, foot by foot. God! What was he doing here on this sickenly edible mountain, when the real eating was back on Earth and between her legs!

"Sure, I know how you feel," the oldster was saying to the Kid. "My moniker isn't much better. Yale—how many times do you suppose I've been told to 'lock it up' or 'take it to college'? Actually my name means 'payer'; it's just coincidence there are other things called that. But every schnook thinks it's so terribly original to—you know."

Yes, the Kid had found a friend in the least likely place, and Prior knew Miles Long's impetus to climb the mountain had abated. The Kid thought he wanted to prove himself to all mankind, but one person sufficed. How many aggressive causes were just that way, sublimations for ordinary satisfactions denied? Prior revised his estimate: the old man would drop out first, but the Kid would join him, the fat man making up the trio.

Now he thought back to Tantamount, twin sister of Oubliette. Too bad she was scientist first, woman second; she had the body to give a man a real lift. Had Prior known then what he knew now, he would have thrown her down on that lab table and cooled his erection in her body before she even had the chance to get the loaded tampon out, and bugged out of there forever!

But when he slept, it was of the succubus he dreamed, there at the beach. She was neither man nor woman, that demon; but when she assumed the female form she was one hell of a fuck!

He woke as his penis-socket spewed into the blanket. He'd had a wet dream, but he wasn't even wearing an organ. Depth of ignominy.

Chapter Twenty-One

Next day was a harder trek. The sun was out and the surface of the ice cream melted, mucking up their boots and becoming disgustingly slippery. Fat Stedman took a heavy spill about midday, soaking his bottom in liquid strawberry, and that was it. Yale and Miles decided to sacrifice their ambition in order to see him back, generously. Of course there didn't have to be a trio going back, because the alert robots would zero in on any lesser group and take it back anyway. But it was Prior's job not to mention such details. After all, these were paying tourists, and their pride would be salved by making it back on their own.

Now they were three, and the next dropout would terminate the project. That would be Klo. Prior could see she was already tired. She had been tempted to go back, obviously, but probably had realized that she had waited too long, and now the onus for termination of the excursion would be on her. For what that was worth.

Ahead of them Mt. Icecream towered in all its sugary splendor: the pinnacle a mile above the base camp in elevation, many miles on the slant, and many leagues by foot. Red, green, blue and brown overlaid its yellow underbase, with black and gray streaks coursing down like lava from a volcano. The red would be strawberry or cherry, the green pistachio or lime, the blue blueberry, the brown chocolate, and the streaks syrups of assorted flavors. All genuine and of excellent quality, up here where it was uncontaminated by the germs of man. The substance of Mt. Icecream would have carried a snobbish price tag in any store on Earth. Very little was exported, however, because the expense of shipping was greater than that of manufacturing an equivalent grade locally. A few super-snobs made a point of serving it on special occasions, but that came under the heading of conspicuous consumption. Every so often, these past three weeks, Prior had gone out with the shovel and scooped up some particular flavor on order for Earth shipment. But this was a standing joke among personnel and tourists alike: after all, it was only ice cream.

Klo saw him looking, and came up beside him. "It is beautiful, in its grisly way," she remarked. "What do you think made it?"

"God made it," he said. It was the standard ploy, straight from the guide manual. The fact was, no one knew who had made it or who maintained it. It did seem to be beyond coincidence for the flavors and constituents to match Earthly standards so precisely, yet there was no possible connection. It was just here, and had to be accepted on that basis.

Ambert Black came up too, as ornery as ever. "Big benign whiteass God with a long whiteass beard," he said sarcastically. "Got nothing better to do than make a mountain of upperclass ice cream. Probably shits it in His off-moments. Why worry about unimportant little things like war and poverty and disease?"

"Maybe God's tired," Klo said, unoffended. "Time for a change in administrations."

Black was silent a moment, uncertain whether she was agreeing with him or ridiculing him. Prior wasn't sure either, but did appreciate how neatly she had thrown the big Negro off balance.

"Maybe God ain't just tired," Black said at last. "Maybe He's dead. And his last Will & Testament was to be buried under an everlasting pile of ice cream. Maybe it's every man for himself, now."

"Makes sense," she agreed amicably.

Black shut up, still not sure which side she was on. Maybe he felt a dawning kinship with her—and maybe he was afraid of that, Prior thought. In many ways, the plain white women of the species had it as bad as the strong black men.

They continued climbing. As elevation increased, temperature decreased, despite what people said about warm air rising. The greater labors required in the steepening ascent kept them all sweating inside their wrappings, however. Klo was red-faced, and neither from the light of the waning sun nor from any embarrassment; her breath fogged out in a noisy bellows-rush. But she wouldn't give up.

They made Stage Two. Even Black admitted his fatigue. He stripped without ceremony and plunged into the warm shower. He had enormous muscles, stout haunches, numerous scars, and a massive hanging ebony penis.

Klo just lay flat for ten minutes, getting her wind, and in that position she didn't look bad at all. Her stomach slimmed down, her breasts stood out on her heaving chest, and her facial features softened. Then she sat up and began peeling off the layers.

Prior was breaking out the staples, for the guide on such parties was also necessarily the cook and chief handyman. He watched, frankly curious to see what a dumpy woman looked like in the nude.

"Not as bad as I thought," he said as she got there. "You are overweight, but there's muscle in your legs where it counts, and your breasts are even handsome."

He thought she'd blush or get mad—he hardly cared which—but she just shrugged and got up to find the shower. "Get out, you scorchskinned phony," she yelled in to Black. "You can't hog the only facility forever. My turn coming up."

"I'll get out when I'm ready, you whiteassed whore!" the man yelled back jovially.

Klo pushed through the curtain and stepped into the shower with him. "Get out when you're ready, then, black woodpecker."

Prior paused again in his preparations. Either he'd have to fetch the first-aid kit in a hurry, or this acquaintance was ripening faster than anticipated!

"Say, I must be hard up when long pig starts looking good!" Black muttered, sounding surprised rather than angry. "Long fat white pig, yet."

Prior relaxed. There would be no race riot for the nonce. Black had a weakness for stout women....

The water splashed. "Gimme that soap, Derby," she said, and the curtain bowed as she wrestled around him for it, not waiting for him to tell her to get it herself, whiteass.

"Get your boob off my tube!"

"If that's God, he ain't dead," she said.

"I said I was hard up! So it's hard and it's up. What's it to you?"

"Let me feel that." More splashing and curtain-bowing. "You're half-right. It's fairly hard and up."

"Fairly hard!" Black cried indignantly. "That's pure polished ebony ivory horn. You couldn't soften that black bastard with a white sledgehammer!"

"My white socket-wrench could screw it down, though."

Prior's interest in sex had diminished after the workout the statues had given him, but three weeks in the candy snows had cranked up his scrotum and put blood-pressure behind his pet-cock, as his last night's imaginings had demonstrated. This trek had hardly promised an outlet.

Ah, well. It showed that such things were unpredictable. He stripped efficiently, plugged in Monster, and parted the bustling shower curtain.

They did not notice. Klo was hard at work softening the ebony ivory with her socket, and Black was plumbing the depths of the long fat white pig in the vertical position, front face, while the steamy water plunged down over both.

Prior considered the openings, then retired temporarily from the field. He was stuck with a twelve-inch erection and no place to cool it. But he was merely daunted, not defeated. He had had experience with grouped statues, after all.

He braced himself, then stepped naked out into the blizzard landscape of Mt. Icecream. The vanilla sleet cut into his skin and frosted his fingers and toes, but melted instantly from the heated organ. He scooped up a double handful and rubbed it over his mighty penis, and gradually the monster diminished into a midget. He dived back into the warmth of Stage Two.

With cold-stiffened fingers he unplugged the now-empty phallus and set it aside. He unlimbered a unit he had never had occasion to employ before: the bifurcate double-lengther. He locked it on and returned to the shower, forked member perking expectantly.

Chapter Twenty-Two

The tableau remained. The white had not yet softened the black, but was making progress.

Prior limbered his two-headed snake and stepped into the shower with the pair already soaking there. That hot water felt extremely good, now! They didn't notice him, though it was now quite crowded. Their bodies were plastered together, chest to breast, merging at face and crotch, and the hot water coursed down along all available channels. Klo was stretched and Black humped to accommodate those connections, so that the one was not dumpy and the other not tall. It was working very nicely, actually. She stood on tip-toe, and her feet lifted from the floor with every slow thrust Black made, and her buttocks tensed and quivered alternately.

"A touching scene," Prior murmured, but neither heard him. "No sense rushing things, I agree."

He separated his dual projections and used his hands to curve them around the two-backed beast. First he concentrated on Klo's flexing posterior, guiding the right fork up into the dark wet cavity between buttocks and thighs. The preferred location was occupied already, of course, but the secondary one remained vacant. He didn't object to anal penetration, when it was not his own anus being penetrated.

He knocked against the tight sphincter. At first it resisted, but then, no doubt in response to the sensations of the moment, it relaxed, and he got the head of the snake in. Then that tense-quiver, tense-quiver rhythm as her toes left the floor helped him, and he worked up a respectable depth.

Now for the other half. He carried the left fork around to Black's back haunch and aimed for the secondary (but only) location there. Because he was already anchored on the right, he had to stretch to make the left. Fortunately the member had been designed for just such manipulations and was elastic. The tip reached target, and, after several charges, found its lodging.

Not a moment too soon! The long pig climaxed violently and the ebony ivory bastard triggered off in response. Both anuses clenched and puffed with the jettison rhythm, sending dual shock waves of urgency into Prior's crotch. He fancied he could feel the ejaculate galloping from the one body to the other, pressing against each rectal cavity and the member lodged therein. Prior was experiencing both halves of the orgasm, and was building for the most solid eruption himself since his prosthetic graduation!

Black, his organ spent, became aware of his other apertures. "What's this pig at my face!" he cried, jerking back his head. "What's this shit up my ass!" he yelled, jumping away.

Prior's left extension stretched like rubber but did not let go. Klo saw it too, now. "Snake!" she screamed, bolting for the exit. Her anus, too, was clenched like a trap on Prior's half member.

"Snake!" Black cried, echoing her. He seemed to be twice as shy of reptiles as she, oddly.

Black scrambled out of the shower, and Klo was pacing him. Both seemed berserk. Prior followed, perforce. The two halves of his penis remained hooked in the two sealed sphincters, and he could not detach it from his own side while it was under such tension.

Black burst out the door and into the snow, dragging his company with him. Klo skidded alongside him, then caught her footing and raced ahead. Like two thoroughbreds hauling a harness-cart, the black stallion and the white mare hauled Prior Gross along on rubbery bands stretching from crotch to crotch. The vanilla flew to the sides as their bare feet slipped and kicked.

Then they hit a maple-syrup slick. Black windmilled, caught Klo by the left breast, and held his position. Prior's soles skidded on the goo. Now he was a water-ski amateur, his cord hitched to two live boats.

Klo's foot struck an encrustation of crystallized sugar—probably maple-sugar. She did a split and spun off to the side. Since she was the only one retaining secure footing, until this point, a splendid crash was in the making.

Prior's penis-head popped out of her bottom and snapped back stingingly. With half his forward pull deflected, Prior fell to the other side. Here there was an outcropping of pistachio that piled up as he plowed sidewise through it. This tension, combined with the shrinkage sponsored by the cold, was enough finally to yank out the other glans, and he rolled to a stop half-buried in green snow.

He was freezing. But before he uncovered himself he twisted off the bifurcate, shrunken member and threw it away. Not only had his orgasm been stifled, he had been hauled roughly and painfully from a hot shower to sub-freezing cold, and he had no one to blame but his penis!

Black trotted back, shivering. He saw the splay of pistachio. He pounced. "Got it!" he exclaimed, lifting the discarded member. "Fucking two-headed snake!" He inspected it more closely. He did a doubletake. He faced Prior, who was just standing up and brushing off the green. "Where'd you get this, Gross?"

So Black wasn't entirely naive about prosthetics. "Doctor named Oubliette Emdee, back on Earth." Prior shivered and started back for the camp. "Want her address?"

Black considered, hefting the member. "Yeah. Yeah, I do. If she makes these in basic black."

"She doesn't make them, she fits them. But she has quite an assortment."

Black became almost friendly as the three of them crowded back into the warm room, shaking off ice. "It ain't that I hate you less, you white cocksucker, but that I hate cops more."

"Nice to know," Prior said neutrally. It was possible to get along with Black if you didn't argue with him, as Klo had shown.

"Yeah. There's this squad of whiteass cops back home. Cops ain't all bad—I heard of one once that wasn't, anyway—but these ones—five, six of 'em—need a proper screwing. Know what I mean?"

"Six at once?" This man had big ambitions!

"Got to be, or they'll scatter. Every night they bust up somebody's crap game, grab the stakes, and play it out themselves. All them fat asses, bending over..."

Prior laughed. "I'll write out her address for you!"

Chapter Twenty-Three

The third day's hike was stiff, but still Klo didn't break. Now they mounted massive projections of rocklike sugar crystals that crumbled treacherously when subjected to the slightest stress or warmth. The candy grime got into their suits and wouldn't quite melt and wouldn't quite dry. At the margins of neck, wrist and ankle it became the consistency of half-chewed taffy (which it was) and pulled and chafed. In the crotches of thigh and armpit it became the consistency of luke-warm milk-chocolate, the kind that melts in your hand not in your mouth (which it was), and sucked and gooked with every motion. In the hair of the head it became caked butterscotch pudding; in the hair of the pubes, caked vanilla icing.

"Up farther where it's colder we'll be able to use pitons," Prior said, for all the dubious comfort that was worth. Anything would be better than this gooey intermediate zone!

Stage Three was nestled in a chocolate crevasse. The chocolate looked like bare dirt, just as the distant pistachio looked like living foliage and the vanilla snow like vanilla snow. But the consistency of this chocolate was more like wood. The cabin roof was piled with purple—blueberry or black raspberry flavor, Prior judged.

"After this, the climb gets rough," Prior said as they scraped rancid rind off their torsos. "This is higher than most parties get, so it's no shame to turn back."

"I hear no white man's made it all the way up," Black said, with the accent on "white."

"I hear no man's made it up," Klo said, her accent on "man."

"Not to Stage Five, no," Prior admitted. "No human beings of any color or sex. The robots built that stage, and a couple of them were lost in glaciers or something."

"I ain't even going to fuck, tonight," Black said grimly.

"Who asked you to?" Klo demanded. "You attract snakes."

"Save my great black godless strength to put beautiful black Black on the friggin' white pinnacle," he finished, glowering at Prior. "First man to make it."

Prior laughed. "If we make it, you can step on the top first. You're the paying customer. I have other plans."

"Yeah?" Black looked at him suspiciously. "What?"

"I'm going to climb the Cherry Tree." It was safe to talk about it now; they wouldn't comprehend the reference anyway, or care one way or the other.

"The Cherry Tree! You mean that's up there? On top of ol' Icecream? I changed my black mind!"

"You know about it?" Prior asked, surprised.

"I'm a man, ain't I? I got a cock, don't I? But that sure ain't my kind of cunt. I ain't goin' near it!"

Prior was intrigued. "You'll risk your precious black life to climb a stupid mountain of ice cream, but you're afraid of a little tree?"

"That tree, yes! I don't mind dying so much, but I'm choosy about how my ass gets reamed." He rubbed his backside, perhaps remembering what Prior had done the day before, but decided not to make an issue of it.

It occurred to Prior that the talking statues hadn't told him everything. "I only want to climb it and get the spire at the top. You can stand back and watch. If I fall, I'm the only one who gets hurt. Then the robots will come and carry us all back down. What's so frightening about that?"

Black shook his head as he stepped into the shower. "You're a whiteassed pekkernosed candy-coated bugging stooge, but you don't deserve what you're headed for. I tell you this for your own cornholing good: lay off the Cherry Tree."

"Why? I need that spire."

"Like elephant turds in your beer you need it! And you can't get near it."

"I'm curious too," Klo said as Black emerged from the shower. The Negro hadn't taken long at all this time; apparently he was serious about not fornicating. "What's so dangerous about a tree—a cherry tree, yet?"

Black ignored her and looked at Prior inscrutably. "They's no fool like a white fool!" He pondered while he toweled off his robust torso and Klo got into the spray of hot water. "Hokay. I know a little magic—black magic, of course—enough to haul down a branch or two. Suppose I bring one here, so you can see it? Then you'll know."

"You can bring the Cherry Tree here?" Prior was excited.

"A branch of it, paleass. That's enough. You look at it—then you can quit, and we'll just sashay back down the mountain, and not break any ill wind about it, okay?"

"Quit?" Prior demanded incredulously. "Because of a look at one fool branch? You're nuttier than I thought, and that was pretty damn—"

"I'm smart," Black said, taking no offense. He brought out a red crayon and began marking off a large pentagram. "You got a notion that'll wipe you out—and not only in this life."

"For someone who doesn't believe in God—" Klo said, poking her head and one breast out of the spray. Then she saw the pentagram. "Hey! That's how you summon a demon!"

"Don't bother me, pig. This is tricky."

Prior decided not to bother him either. Black was acting as if he knew what he was doing.

The Negro completed the diagram, then brought out a package of powder and a candle.

"Talk of the dark ages!" Klo said, coming out. Prior was ready for his own shower, but decided to keep his clothing on despite the discomfort until he had a better notion what this was all about.

"The black ages," Black corrected her automatically. "Now you two stand back. I've got an amulet to protect me, but your only safeguard is this diagram. Don't step in it, don't get too close—DON'T DRIP ON IT, BITCH!" he screamed as Klo did get too close. She stepped back hastily and wrapped the towel about her.

Black glared at her a moment more, then resumed. "When I light this—"

"Sure," Prior said, amused. Black magic, indeed! He scratched a wrinkle in his scrotum where some chocolate had lodged itchily.

Black set the candle in the center of the pentagram. It promptly fell over. "So it's like that, eh," he muttered. He lit a wooden match and melted the candle's base so that the wax dripped, then set it down firmly in the puddle. This time it stayed. He used the same match to light the wick. When the candle flame was steady he popped the lighted match into his mouth to extinguish it, stood back beyond the rim of the pentagram, poured some of the powder into his palm, and made a last check to see that Klo and Prior were well clear.

Black chanted:

FEE FOO FII FANCH, I SMELL THE SAP OF A CHERRY BRANCH!

BE YE GREEN OR BE YE BRASS, I'LL GRIND YOUR WOOD TO WIPE MY ASS!

As he chanted, he threw a pinch of powder into the candle flame, taking care not to enter the pentagram himself, and there was a bright flash.

As Prior's sight cleared, he saw within the pentagram a mass of foliage. It was a limb from a tree—and a single bright red cherry showed.

"There it is!" Black grunted, sweating.

"Sure enough," Prior agreed, not knowing what to make of it. It was the spire he required, not the actual branches of the cherry tree, and their removal from the tree wouldn't make it any easier to climb.

"Now will you leave Mt. Icecream?" Black asked.

"Because you tore one branch off a cherry tree by magic?" Prior chuckled, walking toward it. "What kind of a white fool do you take me for?"

"Stay back, idiot!"

Prior ignored him. He stepped into the pentagram and kicked at the lone cherry.

His foot never landed. The greenery metamorphosed into a tremendous demon-shape. A huge gray hand shot out to fasten around Prior's neck.

"So you'll grind my wood to wipe your smelly little pucker, eh?" the demon boomed, blowing sawdust in Prior's face.

Prior was just beginning to comprehend what Black had tried to warn him of. He should have realized that this was no ordinary cherry tree. How could it grow in perpetual snow, otherwise? Now he was in trouble.

"No, no!" he gasped, trying to free his neck from the crushing grip. "All I wanted was to—"

"To take my cherry!" the demon cried. "Well, let's see you try it, sucker! My cherry has never been breached by mortal man, but there's always a first fucking time, right?"

"To get the spire!" Prior finished, beginning to black out.

"To get the spire!" the demon mimicked. "As if you could mount to the divine dildo without first plucking the cherries off the five guardian branches of the Tree! Well, I am the least of those branches, and I have taken the cherries of better mortals than you, fool. I'll wipe your ass, all right—right out from your puny body!"

"Cherries?" Prior was confused, and the hand choking him did not facilitate his clarity of mind.

"Well," said the demon conversationally as he squeezed. "Technically they aren't cherries unless they're ripe and fresh and female, and most aren't, unfortunately." It gave Prior's neck another painful tweak. "But you know what I mean. Unfucked."

Prior finally twisted his neck free, leaving some skin and possibly a vein or two behind, and sucked wind. "No I don't know what you mean. All I came for—"

The demon put a talon in Prior's collar and ripped the shirt lengthwise. "All you came for was to grind my wood. Ha ha. Well, grind, mortal, grind!" It ripped Prior's trousers open, the claw narrowly missing a testicle. "Shit, mortal—not only are you deficient in wit, charm, and personal hygiene, you're missing a copulatory organ! Wait till I tell my siblings about this!"

Prior still didn't quite understand what was going on, but was sure he didn't like it. He was naked now, and of course the demon had never been clothed. And the demon had a fat nine-inch phallus stiffened for business.

Prior tried to pull away and get out of the pentagram, but the demon tripped him and sent him sprawling. Prior tried to roll, and the demon kicked him back. It was, in fact, a game of cat and mouse; the demon couldn't help chuckling every time Prior's chance at escape turned out to be illusory.

Prior noticed, however, that the cheery cherry demon stayed well clear of the burning candle. Maybe the thing really was made of wood, and would go up in smoke—literally—if ignited.

Prior reached for the candle. But the demon, no fool, was too quick for him. It caught his foot, twisted it, and threw him down prone with the step-over toe hold. "Hey!" Prior screamed inanely.

"Sorry—business before pleasure," the demon grunted regretfully. "Much as I'd like to play with you longer—chew your balls, bite your dong, squeeze the shit out of both ends of you, and all that innocent fun—I have to inflate you first."

Prior opened his mouth to scream for help, but saw that Black and Klo were staying well clear of the pentagram. They wouldn't come in after him. This wasn't betrayal so much as common sense. It was his own fight, brought about by his own stupidity in blithely entering the forbidden diagram.

The demon positioned itself, its heavy limbs holding down Prior's own. It leaned forward and banged woody fists into Prior's thighs. "Get them open, flabhole—I can't see your cherry." And the trunklike penis rammed into a tender buttock. Prior felt as though he were being impaled on a dull stake.

In fact, he finally had the message. He was about to get raped.

"You see, only the unfucked can hope to attain the Spire," the demon said conversationally as it zeroed in for another shot. "That's the way it is. So we five branches eliminate threats by fucking everything that approaches. Beautifully simple, is it not?"

The demon shifted about in order to gain better penile leverage—and in so doing released the submission hold on Prior's leg. This happened just as Prior realized the truth about cherries. This coincidental (?) juxtaposition galvanized him; he jumped and scrambled so suddenly that the demon was caught offguard.

Prior somersaulted out of the pentagram where the demon could not follow. "Gee, it was a virgin hole, too," the creature lamented. "Unsoiled by anything other than shit, water, a few fingers—and an Eeg egg." It nursed its disappointed phallus. "An only slightly tarnished cherry."

"Good for you, white turdling!" Black exclaimed. "You won through on your own. Now I can banish the branch and—"

"Leave it there!" Prior gasped, suddenly determined. The notion of getting mutilated or killed had been bad enough, but the threat against his assiduously-defended rectum had made him really angry. He dived for his supply pack.

"What are you doing?" Klo cried apprehensively. "Don't you know when to quit? That thing might break out and screw us all!"

Literally, Prior now knew. But this didn't change his mind. He plunged a hand in and brought out the twelve-incher. He clapped Monster to his socket and waited while it burgeoned. "I came to climb the Cherry Tree, and this branch sure needs some climbing."

"Man!" Black said admiringly as the pigskin towered turgidly, vaguely resembling a football in its full formation.

Prior marched toward the pentagram, phallus clearing the way like a snowplow. "Now I'm armed, you manfucking woodpecker! Come and get it!"

The demon seemed daunted, for Prior's fighting member was longer by three inches and leather-tough. But the spell and diagram kept the supernatural creature there, and this was its fucking business.

Prior stepped into the combat zone again, leading with that massive genital bludgeon. The demon's nerve broke; it was outgunned. It tried to run, but bounced off the invisible shield outlined by the pentagram and fell, its front scorched. Prior strode forward and caught it from behind, reaching a hand down and under to grasp the hanging testicles and yank the entire loin back. With his free hand he hauled one of the large gray arms around, tweaking those demonic balls when he encountered resistance. Soon he had the demon's hands and feet together, and tied them in one bundle with the remains of his torn trousers: wrists and ankles crossed under the clumsy knot.

Now the demon got over its momentary shock and struggled earnestly, but that delay had been fatal for it. Prior wrestled the folded posterior into an upright posture and applied the pulsing tip of Monster to the demon's anus. The sphincter resisted, so Prior stepped back and kicked it with his snowboot, leaving a smear of caked vanilla across the hole. The muscle loosened only enough to fire a gaseous stench at him, then sealed as tightly as before. The demon flesh was tough!

"So it's like that, is it?" Prior muttered as he choked on the fumes. He picked up the candle and applied the flame to the aperture. "Fart again, why don't you!"

The demon did, not realizing what was waiting. A blow-torch developed as the gas hit the fire, and Prior had to reel back before he got singed. But first he jammed the blazing candle-wick into the open rectum.

The demon howled. Its body distended, blimplike. Flame shot out of its ears. Then the candle blasted out of its ass and accelerated like a rocket toward the ceiling, leaving a trail of thick smoke.

Prior launched himself at the rectum again, and drilled in with Monster before the sphincter could recover. It was like a furnace inside the demon, but he gritted his teeth and rammed in every inch before he began bouncing.

"Fee foo fii fanch!" he chanted in time to the beats. "I smell the sap of a cherry branch!"

"Mercy, you fucking bastard!" the demon cried as the odor of burning cherry-wood rose from it.

Prior might have let up then, but something about the phrasing of this appeal annoyed him. "Be ye green or be ye brass, I'll grind your wood to wipe my ass!"

As he finished the chant, he came, putting out the fire with living fluid.

The demon emitted a terrible scream as the first jet of semen struck. Then it dissolved in greasy reddish vapor. Prior was left spurting into air.

"You did it!" Black cried. "You beat the branch! You roasted its cherry!"

"Yeah," Prior said, contemplating the spatter on the floor. He knew that his victory had been largely luck—that and a brief combat rage that now was gone. He had never reacted that savagely before. Of course no one had ever tried to sodomize him against his will before, either.

Black was right: the Cherry Tree was dangerous! He wouldn't care to try battling another demon like that. His quest for his natural penis wasn't worth such macabre risk of life and limb, not to mention virgin anus. They would have to go back down the mountain.

"I thought you didn't know the score," Black said as he erased the pentagram. "But that's the finest fuck I ever saw. By a white cock, I mean. You screwed that cherry right out of existence! Man, I sure wouldn't stand in your way now! Let's go on up and smear the whole spook-ridden Cherry Tree with baby-juice!"

"Amen," Klo said. "I thought you were a eunuch, but now I know you were just biding your time for a real challenge I want to watch it all."

And what could Prior say?

Chapter Twenty-Four

The ascent to Stage Four was the roughest yet. It was not a far piece, but it was steep and treacherous. Prior had found new clothing at Stage Three, but it did not fit him well, and chafed in sundry new places. They used the pitons and ropes to scale a crystalline cliff, then had to lay low in the colored snow for two hours while a black walnut-flavored storm whistled over. The ice cream dumped on their heads was bad enough, but the pelting fragments of nut were like shrapnel, threatening to gouge out the skin of face and hands wherever it was exposed. In addition, their leaking body warmth sank them down into an underlayer of mixed sludge that became jelly-like around them. Prior would gladly have abolished all ice cream from the universe for all time!

They resumed the climb when the storm abated—and got caught in an avalanche of chocolate chip. The chips were like darts, then like stilettos, and at the height of it like fine swords, for the weather here did not honor dessert-bowl conventions. Black got gashed on the arm by a fragment weighing several pounds, and his cherry-colored blood stained his sleeve, but he wouldn't quit.

"To get cut by chocolate!" he grunted in disgust. "It's enough to make a fellow believe in white!" Then he looked about nervously, worried that the candy lightning might strike him down for his blasphemy.

"Probably there was an admixture of vanilla in it," Prior suggested as Klo did some makeshift bandaging. "That's what made it nasty. It was hybrid."

"Say, yeah," Black agreed. "Pure black chocolate would never slice me. You, maybe, but never me. Always trouble when you mix races."

"Can't trust halfbreeds," Prior agreed. No, it wasn't at all difficult to get along with the big militant, once he knew how!

They made it. Prior was dead tired, but it occurred to him that he might be better off tackling the four remaining Cherry Tree branches individually instead of in concert. He was not one of those men who could spurt twice in five minutes (except perhaps in extraordinary cases, such as the time with Oubliette) and certainly not four times consecutively, despite the fine array of weapons available. But if he could space each demon a day or so apart, and make careful preparation....

"I dunno," Black said in answer to Prior's query. "My magic ain't all that strong. I'm pretty much a layman, there. I might get the second branch here, but it could reach out of the pentagram some. And I know I couldn't handle the magic of the third branch, even with my amulet. You're strictly on your own there."

He considered a moment. "But with a dingus like that twelve incher, you can do it. Man, I almost came myself when I saw that thing start pumping!"

Every time Prior thought it was time to give up, he got unwelcome support for his quest. "Well, I'll give it a try," he said, more bravely than he felt.

Black set the stage and chanted his chant:

FII FOO FUM FEE, I SMELL A BRANCH OF THE CHERRY TREE!

BE IT DEAD OR BE IT GREEN, I'LL GIRDLE IT TO JACK MY PEEN!

And the branch was there, its leaves green, its cherry bright.

Prior decided to stick with a winner. He had Monster attached and erect. He took a breath and jumped into the arena, grabbing for foliage where he judged an arm would materialize, and thrusting the phallus toward the anticipated rectum. He wanted to do this rapidly, before the demon had a proper chance to fight. That might spell the difference!

He found himself with a handful of leaves, his penis nudging rough bark.

Um. "So you won't convert, eh? Well, I can still core your cherry!" he cried. He picked up the candle and brought it near, hoping that he hadn't been tricked into assaulting a genuine non-demonic tree-limb.

Then the metamorphosis occurred, but quietly.

A woman formed from the wood. She was a dusky nude knock-out—bold of breast, massive of thigh, classic of feature. She wore a necklace of little shriveled sticks, oddly incongruous against her physical beauty. "You wouldn't club an innocent maiden, would you, handsome?" she purred.

Black exploded with derisive mirth at the sideline. "Innocent! My uncle's cunt!"

Prior was taken aback momentarily, until he realized exactly what she'd said. Then he doubled his effort. "This is precisely the kind of clubbing an innocent maiden needs!"

He supposed that she would fight him, but she merely spread her comely legs with resignation. She had a remarkably neat genital region, not a hair out of place. Prior's member throbbed with something more than a sense of duty. "I'm really not in the mood at the moment," she said.

Prior was not to be put off by such conventional excuses. "You don't have to be, sister." He got down on her, on guard against a sneak attack.

"Not tonight; I have a headache."

"This is a sure cure for headaches," Prior said, orienting on her cleft.

"Yeah," Black called from the sideline. "Trade a headache for a pain in the ass!"

"But your organ is too large for me," she demurred.

"I'll just bet!" Prior hastened to ram Monster home before the demoness could strike, either physically or verbally. He gripped his phallus in both hands and aimed for the lush target—but the member found no purchase. Somehow it slid past the aperture and smashed harmlessly against her firm cushiony and exciting but nevertheless irrelevant buttock.

He peered between those statuesque thighs, parting the labia with his fingers, and discovered that she had spoken truth. Her inner cleft—her cunette—was ludicrously narrow, and her virginal vagina was no larger than the diameter of a knitting needle. There simply was no sufficient avenue for his tremendous penis, knock as it might at the portal.

"Now that you have tried and failed," she murmured with that same gentle purr, "I shall claim your formidable member as my memento of the occasion, my trophy." She gestured to her necklace that was now almost under his nose.

Prior suddenly realized that these were not little twisted twigs, but severed, dehydrated penises. There were about fifty of them strung together, some circumcised, some not. All had been hacked off at the base, and a few even had shrunken testicles dangling like beads on their strings.

His erection evanesced. What a bitch!

She lifted one delicate hand, and the nails on her slender fingers snapped out like the claws of a cat, as sharp as razor blades. "What a fine specimen this will make!"

Prior put his hand involuntarily to his crotch. His penis could be replaced, but he suspected that once she cut it he would have lost the battle, by the demonic terms of this quest Regardless, he could bleed to death if she cut it beyond the socket-valve, for the plugged-in member kept that open.

"That won't help you," she said in a dulcet tone. "You entered the pentagram; you made a romantic overture to me, despite my demurrals. You may not depart until our delightful business together has been consummated." She reached for his shrinking penis, light glinting from those double-edged talons.

Prior lurched to his feet, but stumbled immediately. Vines encircled his ankles, holding him prisoner. Her feet had reverted to vegetative status—clinging, thorny strands. He kicked and struggled, but succeeded only in lacerating his ankles, while she hoisted her fabulous bosom and lovely head and reached her sleek, dagger-tipped arm toward his wilting crotch. She was in no hurry; she knew she had him.

"Here, you whitepekkered shitslinger!" Black called.

Prior looked up at this friendly hailing and saw the Negro throwing something at him. He caught it automatically.

It was the Pipecleaner model attachment.

"Thanks, Brother!" Prior called gratefully. And to the fair demoness: "Cutie, hold your trophy-cutter. I have not yet begun to fuck."

Swiftly he twisted off Monster and threw it aside. It was not completely flaccid and some blood squirted, but that couldn't be helped. He twisted on Pipecleaner and willed it instantly erect. The wide-open sight of her manicured cleft assisted this endeavor nicely.

The sultry demoness viewed the change and blanched. "That's not fair!" she wailed. "You changed weapons in the middle of the tourney!"

"All's fair in love and war, sweetheart," he replied. "If this isn't love, it must be war. Now serve up your sweet little cherry, 'cause I'm aiming to make the pie."

She struggled, but she was built for sex-appeal rather than combat—as all the finest women were—and her own vine-feet held her delicious posterior captive. Prior caught her wrists to nullify the knife-nails and pressed down on her voluptuous form. Her shape was truly immortal! As his moderately hairy chest crushed flat her surging female breasts, his thin long penis probed her twisting, twitching cleft. Now his practice with Oubliette stood him in good stead; he knew how to zero in no-handed on a pinpoint target.

Unfortunately, that wasn't enough. The channel was still too tight for the ship. He had range and azimuth, but the Pipecleaner bent painfully rather than penetrating that constricted orifice. What a minuscule hole, considering the complete and generous sexuality of the remainder of the demoness!

But that was the point of it. She wasn't supposed to be readily breached!

"So you figure you're impregnable," Prior grated as his crotch twinged again. "Well, I'm still going to impregnate you—or vaporize you in the attempt!" And wondered if that made sense.

He sat up, holding her at penis-length, and slapped her pretty face a bit, trying to loosen up that crack. Her head rolled back and forth, but she was laughing at him. She was demonic, literally! There was only one place he could really hurt her, and that was between the legs—where he couldn't penetrate. He couldn't even get his little finger in; he had tried. It would take a sledgehammer to drive in a pin, he thought despairingly.

Her feet became feet again, and she kicked them about, making things more difficult. Her nails were still claws, or maybe modified thorns, so he couldn't let her hands be free for long. He was getting nowhere. In time he would wear himself out—and it was a fair guess that she never would tire!

Still, there were positions and positions. This frontal assault was not the best for loose entry. Maybe some other configuration....

But he couldn't let go of her. Her hands were too dangerous, her legs too lively. Her toenails were barbed, too. How could he shift her about to suit himself under such conditions? Well....

First thing was to distract her. To make her mad, if that were possible. How short was the temper of a demon? He held her arms spreadeagled and bent down his face, centering on her marvelous bosom. He took her right nipple in his mouth, sucked on it until it swelled... and chomped down hard.

She yelped and bucked and cursed him in Arabic. Good, he thought; she could feel pain and didn't like it.

He wrestled her flat again and mouthed the other breast, but this time he didn't bite, though her torso was tense and stressed beneath him. He let her struggle and swear ineffectively for a while, then gave the turgid nipple a lingering lick and spat it out.

And made a lightning plunge for the rightie again as she relaxed, and ground it savagely between his molars.

She nearly bucked him into the ceiling. She was mad, all right. Fortunately she lacked the necessary cool for such work. She didn't like being teased.

Prior got to his feet, still holding her wrists. He forced her hands together and grasped her crossed wrists with the fingers of one hand. Her breasts flattened against each other and quivered like warm pudding, but she was too busy screaming obscenities at him to do what she should have: concentrate on breaking the grip. Even the words weren't very effective, because they were not in any language he could understand.

So far so good. He had her mad, so that she was not pursuing her best strategies. Now it got tricky.

Prior clenched his free hand, forming a fist with the knuckles pointed down. He didn't like doing this, even to a demon, but—He punched her hard in the belly. Her knees came up as her breath wooshed out, and for a moment she was unable to cuss him properly. He couldn't really hurt her supernatural flesh, but while she was distracted by the blow he caught her left ankle and brought it up to her pinioned hands. Then he leaned against that leg from the underside while he positioned his groin and aimed Pipecleaner for the definitive thrust.

Then she caught on to his strategy. But it was too late. Her hands were caught, one long thigh well flexed, and her little cleft stretched wide and taut. He placed the tip of his member against the clenching slit and leaned into it, using her arms for leverage to draw himself in farther. The action was all his.

This position was like riding a bucking bronco upsidedown, but it was indeed better for penetration. Her tight vagina was spread to its widest, and the full weight of his body was hammering at the weakened portal, and her frantic kicking with the other leg served only to vibrate the skin of the orifice and work the probing needle in farther. It was still a very tight squeeze, but persistence was making the entry.

It hurt as he drove on and in, for she was very like the pencil-sharpener he had dreamed of. But what was pain, when victory was surging in his loin? Past her straining childlike labia majoris, pressing in between the slick labia minoris, drilling down into that puckered well—

She screamed as he distended her miniature vulva and greased the inner channel with his own preliminary lubricant. She groaned in real agony as he reached operative depth and began jogging. The fit was so compelling that a single bounce was sufficient to bring on his climax. And when the semen sizzled through the constricted conduit and sprayed into her most jealously guarded vestibule, she puffed into vapor and dissipated with a despairing sigh. He didn't even have a chance to mouth her tempting breast again; his teeth closed on cold mist.

Only the necklace of dehydrated penises remained, lying inertly on the floor.

Now his member was half-limp and stinging from the excessive torsion and friction as it dribbled on the floor. But he had conquered the second branch of the nefarious Cherry Tree!

Chapter Twenty-Five

The haul to Stage Five was something else. Glassy sheets of sherbet led up to a bloody strawberry glacier with treacherous mint-filled crevices. Prior had never been this far before, and he was daunted by the savagery of the unfamiliar terrain. Twice Klo lost her footing and tumbled into yawning sugar-crystal pits, nearly yanking both men in after her as the rope lost its slack. Once Prior himself missed a piton and skidded toward a noxious rum-raisin cavity, saved only by a lucky grab at a protruding stratum of frozen fudge.

The worst of it was that the climb was not straightforward. The mountain curved around and about, and was bulged with impassable boulders of icemilk and carved into deadly slanting valleys and jagged channels and shifting cracks and riddled with slippery fossae and ridges and thinly iced sink-holes. The wind was intermittent and spiced with cinnamon; now quiescent, now firing missiles of peach or walnut or chocolate at the weary mountaineers.

Toward noon the maple-flavor snow grew tacky. At first Prior thought it was the marginal heat of the lime-ringed sun; then he realized it was worse. They were coming upon a hot-fudge spring.

There was no reasonable way around it. They had inadvertently entered the canyon formed by the melting snow below the bubbling aperture, and the walls on either side were too sheer to climb, too fragile to trust. It would take half a day to descend and remount another icy face—which might be no better. His map was no good; up here the contours and flavors of the mountain could change with every storm. He should have been warned when he saw that fudge stratum—obviously left over from an earlier flood condition. Now all they could do was plow—or slog—grimly ahead, and hope that this wouldn't turn out to be as bad as it almost certainly was.

Of course, if the slope became impassable, then he would have an excellent excuse to give up his quest. No dishonor in accepting the inevitable.

Prior's boots sank into the chocolate overlay—first half an inch, then two inches, then six. He glanced back at Klo and saw she had taken another spill; her complexion was now a rich Negroid brown. As, perhaps, was his own. Thus did Mt. Icecream seek to equalize them all!

The mud continued to heat and thin. They squished through a level swamp of it, with the canyon walls overhanging threateningly some fifty feet above. They turned a murky corner and found the spring itself.

The chocolate burbled in the center of a pool twenty feet in diameter. At the fringes assorted objects floated—massed fruit-slices, nuts, candy, and solidified chocolate. Overhead the flavored icewater sides arched up into an almost perfect dome. Impossible to scale.

It was warm—seventy or eighty degrees Fahrenheit, here at the dribbling overflow. It might be boiling in the center. They would have to swim around the edge—if there was any viable exit above the spring. There didn't seem to be. The ringwall appeared to have only one aperture—the exit they had entered.

"I swallowed too much chocolate getting in here," Klo said. "I have to use the ladies' room."

"You mean you gotta shit," Black said. "So shit, sister. It'll come out healthy brown. But wait'll I get upcurrent from you."

"He's right," Prior said. "Nothing will show under all this chocolate, and the stream will carry anything on down the mountain."

She looked dubious, but also in dire need. She began squirming about as though loosening her clothing under the surface.

Prior consulted with Black. "Do you have any magic to get us out of this?"

"I'm strictly a summoner," Black said. "Pentagram, chanting, et cetera. I'm no magician. I can't do anything much here."

"Summon a fireman's ladder, then," Klo murmured, wiping brown out of her eyes. Prior wondered whether she had finished her nether business or was still in progress.

"Can't. Has to be a supernatural creature. They're the only ones subject to supernatural summons. And I wouldn't dare let any of them out of the pentagram—even if I could make a decent diagram here on this liquid shit, which I can't. Got your turd put out yet, or do you need help?"

She ignored his last remark. "We could make a pentagram on the surface, you know. Look—this white stuff is marshmallow. String this out between the five points—"

Black fished out an object. "Say, there is a lot of shit floating around here." He squinted, then sniffed. "Shit? This looks just like—"

"I think there's a sidewise eddy," Klo said. "I didn't know it would float."

Black looked disgusted. He hurled the object far downstream and wiped his hand off on his sodden shirt. "Livin' breathin' fecal matter shit!" he exclaimed.

"Healthy brown," she agreed.

Prior was too weary to laugh. At least they knew Klo had finished. "But the current would break up the pentagram lines," he pointed out. "Then the demon would escape—and here we are, chocolate covered."

Black scratched his fuzzy head, smearing more chocolate or similar healthy brown on his scalp. "No—I could keep it tight for the duration with a small subsidiary spell. But it still wouldn't solve the problem. How could a demon in the penalty box do anything for us outside?"

"It could drink up the fudge," Klo said.

"Say, you ain't half stupid, for a whiteass sow," Black said admiringly. "Even if your shit does stink of chocolate. But that still won't get us out of here—we'd just be at the bottom of the lakebed."

"Reverse it, then. Have the demon fill up the place with fudge, and we'll float out the top."

"And get carried down the mountain on a waterfall of boiling chocolate?" Prior demanded. "Too dangerous, and the wrong direction. And if a demon could do that, he'd use it to harm us outside the pentagram, and I'll bet that's forbidden by demonic law. Otherwise every demon ever summoned would circumvent the safeguards and abolish—"

"It ain't that simple, whiteprick," Black said. "Depends on the type of pentagram. Some summoners do get reamed, but I'm more careful. But mainly, some demons are brighter than others. Get a dumb one and the simplest diagram will hold him, depending on his strength. Now a mephistopheles is so clever it don't even need the pentagram to haul your ass into hell; it'll talk you there, and—"

"Maybe we need a demon animal, then," Prior suggested. "One we can talk into—"

"I've got it!" Black cried. "I'll summon a hellephant! Always wanted to conjure one of those."

Klo looked at him. "An elephant? What good would that do? Anyway, you said you couldn't summon a natural creature."

"You and him just form up the diagram while I work up the spell," Black said excitedly. "This'll exhaust my magic, but man, it'll be an experience!"

Klo shrugged, chocolate dripping from her shoulders. "Let's mark off five points around the pool here, and work in opposite directions." She scooped up an armful of floating marshmallow and began spreading a string of it across the gooey crust. Prior did the same, shaping the stuff into suitable lengths. He discovered to his surprise that Black's subsidiary holding spell was already in effect; the lines remained in place as they were laid down, despite the slow current.

Chapter Twenty-Six

It took almost an hour to do the job, but they finally finished with a pentagram twenty feet in diameter, anchored at the corners by icebergs of thick whipped cream. It swayed with the brown eddies, but did not disintegrate and always drew back into place.

"Jism spread on shit," Black said, shaking his head with admiring wonder. "What a pentagram! Should get the award for novelty, even if I don't have power to bring the beast."

He got out his magic powder and candle. He lit the wick, stuck the candle in a floating crust of fruitcake, and sent it drifting into the pentagram. He began to chant:

FII FEE FOO FELL, LET'S GET RELEVANT!

GET THEE TO HELL, FETCH BACK HELLEPHANT!

And he wafted a cloud of powder toward the flame.

As he completed the ritual, a monster materialized. It resembled an elephant as Mr. Hyde resembled Dr. Jekyll.

"Who in the name of Heaven are you?" the hellephant trumpeted, stomping angrily in the muddy fudge and almost dousing the floating candle. "I just cleaned my feet, and look!" It held up a dripping brown extremity.

"All yours," Black said to Prior.

"All mine? But what do I do?" He certainly wasn't going to enter into any fornication contest with this thing!

"Make a deal to get us out of here. That was the idea, wasn't it?"

"But—"

"Oh, for pity's sake!" Klo exclaimed. "You timid men will never get anything done." She addressed the hellephant. "We want to get out of here. Can you help us?"

The hellephant peered down its enormous snout at her. "That depends on where you want to go, madam."

"To the Cherry Tree. Safely."

"There is no safe conduct there for mortals. The guardian demons fornicate—if you'll excuse the uncouth expression—any intruder out of existence."

"We know. We've met a couple. But you can get us to it, whatever else happens?"

"I could bore you a tunnel to the fringe of the Cherry Orchard, as it is not far from here. The tunnel itself will be secure. Will that be satisfactory?"

"See?" Klo said to the men. "Nothing to it." And to the demon again: "That'll be fine. How soon?"

"The construction will require about fifteen minutes. Usual terms?"

"Don't answer that!" Black warned her.

She ignored him. "What are the usual terms?"

The hellephant made a gesture Prior didn't catch. Klo blushed—and so did the demon, strangely. "Oh," she said. "Well, I'm not sure—"

"COD, of course," the hellephant said anxiously.

"We don't need no usual terms for no fifteen minute job!" Black yelled. "Fuck your COD! Make another offer."

But Klo had already come to her decision. "Yes, then. Usual terms. COD."

The hellephant made a motion like a bow. "Very good. Observe."

They observed. The creature faced about, stretched forth its trunk, harrumphed a few times, and began squirting hot liquid fudge against a section of the icewall. It was like the jet from a rusty fire hydrant. Brown fluid splashed away, but soon the heat and force of it ate a hole in the ice, and the hole grew steadily wider and deeper.

"I could have used that technique on the second branch," Prior murmured appreciatively. "But when does he suck it up? I never saw him inhale."

"Keep watching," Black said smugly. "The hellephant ain't no genius, but he's a good, honest craftsman."

The hole broke through the first rim, and the fudge disappeared down it, draining elsewhere inside that makeshift vagina. But the hellephant continued to blast it forth, still never taking a breath. Gradually the level of the pool subsided, revealing more of the elephantine body. The creature was squatting on the bottom, its hind end lowermost. It wore a G-string with a tiny patch in front. There was a turbulence around the base.

Finally the chocolate level dropped below the demon's torso, stranding the floating candle on a bar of brown ice. There was a horrendous sucking sound, as of three hundred bathtubs draining simultaneously: gunk, gunk, GUNK! Now Prior saw what was happening. The hellephant was sucking fudge into its rectum and spewing it from its trunk! No wonder the thing never took a breath! But the supply of hot liquid had been exhausted. There was only a bubbling puddle where the original hot spring operated, but it would take many days for it to fill the pool again.

The brown jet sputtered to a halt. The hellephant sucked wind, choked, then farted bellicosely from both ends, clearing its tubes. Caked chocolate shot out, the refuse from its filters, and plopped down like so many bushels of diarrhea. Clouds of chocolate-flavored mist enveloped demon and people. Prior gagged, knowing where it had come from, but he still had to inhale the stuff or suffocate directly.

"I believe the connection is complete," the hellephant said politely. "Do you wish to verify it before making payment?"

"We'll take your word," Klo said. She turned to the two men. "Well, I guess I won't be seeing you...."

"What do you mean?" Prior asked. "We have to stay together, or the robots will come and stop our mission."

"The robots'll never get past the hellephant," Black said. "The demon gets very fussy about interruptions, once it starts."

"Once what starts?"

"She agreed to the usual terms, despite my advice," Black said. "COD."

"Cash on Delivery," Prior agreed. "Sure. I'm not stupid. And I'll pay her back what it costs."

"You can't," Klo said.

"Not C.O.D., turd," Black explained. "COD. As in cod-piece. He's the cod, she's the piece. Only more so, in the case of the hellephant. Much more so."

"Precisely," agreed the demon, removing the eyepatch from its crotch. Underneath was a tiny penis, proportionately—no more than eight or nine inches.

"COD—Cunt on Delivery," Klo said. "Everyone knows that." She splashed into the pentagram, removing her chocolate caked clothing.

"The hellephant only fucks once a century," Black explained. "But he makes that one count. He prefers human females, because they're comfortable, they don't have frigid cycles, and they live a fair spell. Most animals only get hot every so often, and are pretty uptight when not in heat."

"Yeah, I saw two dogs stuck together once," Prior said. "If that's what you mean by uptight. So the hellephant's fornication kills them? With a trunk like that, I'm not surprised."

"Of course not. He doesn't use his trunk for that. The hellephant is always polite and gentle—that's why most female demons won't touch him."

"Makes sense," Prior admitted, remembering what bitches the female demons he had encountered were. But he still wasn't clear on the nature of the deal Klo had made.

Klo reached the creature and lifted her chocolate arms. The hellephant curled its trunk carefully around her body and brought her in close. She scissored open her legs, and the demon's little member pushed up and in, not stopping until it was completely embedded. There was no panting, no preliminary byplay; just that matter-of-fact coupling, lubricated by liquid chocolate.

"Well, let's move on before the pool fills up again and covers our tunnel," Black said.

"Right now? In a moment that intercourse will be over. He's already all the way into her."

Black laughed. "It'll be a long moment, whiteass. Why do you think I tried to warn her off? The hellephant fucks for life—and she could live to seventy or eighty."

Prior gasped. "You mean—they won't stop? Until she dies of old age?"

"That's what I was hinting at, pale-prick. She'll eat, sleep and shit right there—and that cock will never pull out." He watched a moment more, then shrugged, accepting it. "She made the deal. She didn't have to, so she must have wanted it that way. Actually, I hear it's a mighty comfortable living, for those who like COD. Cock onto Death, some call it. A pretty fair burial, too—the hellephant only comes when there's nothing left worth waiting for, when the fuck is falling apart, maybe two months after death. Then he creams up a storm and buries the bones in it. That's what I call a real sendoff—to be buried in your lover's cream."

"Yes indeed," Prior agreed, shaking his head.

They left the lovers to their stasis as the fudge spring bubbled up around them, starting the tedious business of refilling the pool.

Chapter Twenty-Seven

The fudge had cooled and hardened, leaving an opaque tunnel into the bowels of the mountain. And bowel was what the brown-caked tube resembled! Despite the solid ice under the solid chocolate, the air was reasonably warm here, and by walking swiftly they were able to keep comfortable without clothing. Prior carried his sodden outfit in a wadded ball under his arm, hoping to rinse it eventually in some clear soda stream. Where there was one hot spring, there might be others.

No such luck. The passage debouched into a system of icy caverns. Red stalactites hung from the vaulted ceiling, and similar stalagmites rose to meet them, like sets of teeth slowly dosing. Prior broke the tip off a small one and touched his tongue to it. "Cherry," he said, noting the concentric rings of ice like the growth-rings of trees. "We're in the Orchard, all right."

"Well, get your rod hot," Black said, shivering. "Once we meet up with those three other branches—"

Prior nodded nervously. Fate kept impelling him forward into this challenge, despite his willingness to slide backward. He had vanquished the first two guardian demons—but how would he handle three at once? The moment he reamed one, another would be reaming him. But he had to make the effort, now that Klo had given her all for the cause. All her vagina.

The cavern passages led generally down, and fortunately they did not become killingly cold. Perhaps there were hot springs here, after all, melting new passages and imbuing the entire system with some warmth. But Prior didn't like the direction.

"How can we find the Tree, if we don't get to the top?" he demanded, trying to sound more upset than he felt. He didn't want to be trapped in here, but if they really couldn't find those malevolent demons—

"Tree's got to be in the orchard, whitepiss. Keep moving." Unfortunately Black was correct. They traversed a cherry tunnel, stepped into a dull red chamber, and came up against a demon.

It was large and male, but its penis was stubby. "Who the potash are you?" it snorted menacingly, evidently disturbed from some private contemplation, as its erect and throbbing member indicated.

Prior knew he had either to stand up or turn tail—and he was afraid to present his backside to this demon, knowing what he knew of the propensities of these creatures. So with the courage of last resort he said: "I'm Prior Gross—and I've come to climb the Cherry Tree."

The demon frowned down at him, pulling on its penis reflectively. The organ jogged in and out like a telescope. "Have you any last wish before I dilate your puckered little ass?" it asked in the tone of a firing officer beside an execution wall.

"Just let me arm myself." And Prior drew forth the prehensile unit.

The demon charged. Prior had forgotten that there was no pentagram to hold it back, and of course the infernal creature had no conception of fair play. The bundle of chocolate-stiffened clothing flew out of his grasp and he found himself hoisted in the air, his member unattached. The serpent dangled from his hand uselessly.

"I haven't fucked a mortal into oblivion in years!" the demon cried zestfully. "But I wish you'd had the common courtesy to be female. Cunt is so much more lubricious than colon."

"Same to you, cherry branch!" Prior gasped, struggling to reach the floor and gain some purchase. If he could just gain time to fasten on his member and whip it up into fighting condition! "Think I like to dirty my member on supernatural shit?"

"You need have no fear of that with me," the demon said, chuckling. For a moment it wavered into the cherry-branch format, but its grip on Prior did not loosen.

"You're overconfident," Prior said, feeling underconfident. "I defeated the first two branches, you know."

"That so? They were weaklings." And this demon's strength did indeed seem greater. It threw Prior down flat, put a bark-hard knee in his back, and limbered up that horsehung penis. It had not been, after all, completely erect before.

Prior's own member was still in his hand. He brought it down and shoved it under his hips, scratching for the vital connection. But he was face down with weight on his torso, and he couldn't get it attached without more leeway.

The demon poked a woody finger between Prior's buttocks. "Let's see your touch-hole, runt. If it isn't big enough, I may have to widen it, ha-ha!"

"Ha-ha!" Prior echoed heavily. He tried to defecate on the demon's hand, but the position was wrong and nothing came out. Instead the probing finger got inside and scraped cruelly at the tender mucous membrane.

"I believe it will fit," the demon murmured with satisfaction, "after I enlarge it a trifle. Scream, please—this is going to hurt."

Prior clenched his sphincter as tightly as possible, as the demon brought its loin down and began expanding its member. The greasy tip of it slobbered along Prior's scrotum before centering accurately on his hole. The demon pushed.

The muscle held. "Fucking position's wrong," the demon said, annoyed, but not completely dismayed by this challenge. It put bark-rough hands against Prior's hips and lifted his rear.

At first Prior resisted, stiffening his body. Then he realized that this was an opportunity for him. He bent in the middle, bringing his knees up under him while his hand jammed the prehensile member onto its socket and twisted it into place.

"Excellent," the demon said, breathing on Prior's elevated rectum. "An extraordinary neo-virginal asshole! You must really have saved it for me! I like this attitude. It makes it so much easier when you cooperate. Now we'll just fasten you in place—" It muttered an obscure pornographic spell, and Prior found himself invisibly clamped where he was. He could not budge head, arms or legs.

This demon was tough, all right! The others hadn't used magic on him. But Prior still had control over his sphincter. Probably the spell had to exclude that, or it would have been frozen closed, and be impenetrable.

Meanwhile his attached member was swelling rapidly. So the entire genital region was free, as well as his eyes and mouth. The battle wasn't over yet!

"Easy does it," the demon said, making itself comfortable behind Prior, dog-fashion. "First a little choice lubrication—" The ugly face moved down, and the huge canine tongue slurped over Prior's crack, wetting it down thoroughly with gooey saliva. "You've been consuming too much chocolate!" the demon complained.

"So what's wrong with healthy brown chocolate?" Prior demanded, momentarily gratified. So maybe he had gotten a little fecal matter out, and the demon had licked it up! Served it right!

"Cherry is better, as I shall shortly demonstrate." The demon chuckled. "Get that? demon-strate." But it became serious again when Prior did not laugh at the pun. "So you're still fighting it? Then we'll just brace against the portal and slide in a bit when it relaxes, so." And that slimy skinned-wood penis shoved, not hard but very firm and steady.

Prior kept his sphincter clenched, but the muscle was tiring. He remembered how starfish opened clams by exerting steady pull on the shells, until the clams could no longer hang on. In time that insistent pressure would wear him down, and he knew he would have no chance once the outer defense had been breached.

But Prehensile was finally ready. What luck that he had selected this particular organ this time! Prior curled it down between his legs, out of sight of the demon, then under his own hanging testicles, across behind those of the demon, and up. It looped in a three-quarter circle back toward the demon's rectal region. He was about to attack from the rear.

Now came the ticklish part. He had to make a good entry on the first thrust, before the demon realized what was happening. If that failed he would not have another chance, because his leverage was weak and his own rectum was on the verge of yielding.

Get ready... get set... THRUST!

Prehensile lunged forward, a striking snake, aiming blindly but with pretty good judgment for the supernatural anus. The azimuth and elevation and orientation were almost perfect; Prior felt the glancing contact of thorny buttocks, the bald alcove between them, the base of the crevice. He was driving for a hole-in-one!

Except—

Where was the aperture?

Up and down the veneer-polished crack Prehensile undulated, seeking its entrance—and there was none. From balls to backbone, the demon's bottom was sealed.

"Ha-ha!" the creature bellowed. "Thought you'd pull a fast one, eh? Well get this, dimwit: I saw your friggin' worm, I let you put it on, and I near busted out laughing. You can't get me with that! Know, oh mortal—I have no asshole! You can shove and slither all you want—you can tickle me but you'll never nudge my shit!"

It was all too true. Prior was sunk. The demon had only been playing with him, letting him think he had a chance.

"That little torment was for fucking my innocent little brother out of existence," the demon gloated. "Now I'm going to get even for what you did to my precious little sister, she of the small sweet ripe cherry."

It brought its hulking head around, at the same time cuffing Prior's frozen body sidewise. Its face was grotesque: tiny near-spaced eyes whose whites were blood-red (technically, cherry-red), purplish wiry hair, monstrous flaring nostrils, pointed ears, and a chin whose cleft surface sported two sprawling hairy warts.

But it was the mouth that horrified Prior. The lips were black and blotchy, peeling back to expose jagged animal teeth.

"You tried to ram my rectum, touch my twat," the demon said. "Well now you can fuck my face." It crunched those devastating dentures together loudly. "See—I'm giving you more chance than you ever gave my mistress!"

"I thought she was your little sister," Prior said, his eyes following the thing's clacking jaws. His poor member would have no chance at all in a beartrap like that. But he could not move even one hand to shove the mouth away or disconnect Prehensile.

"Same thing. It doesn't count when it's all in the family. Not that I ever could quite get into her tail, in man-form. In flea-form it was possible, but then it wasn't much fun."

If he whipped Prehensile aside, Prior thought, those jaws would follow, playing cat and mouse until there was no further room to retreat. No doubt that was what the demon wanted. But if he detumesced it, he would still be disarmed.

The Cherry Branch meant to bite off Prehensile, then sodomize Prior at leisure while he bled to death. And there was nothing he could do to prevent it.

"Use your bleached gray matter, whiteface!" Black called from a safe distance. "Is that the best you can do? I thought you were a real fucker!" And the big Negro blew his nose disdainfully.

Black wasn't even a fair-weather friend. He had expressed nothing but contempt for Prior all along. Now he was rubbing it in. Blowing his ebony nose, while Prior was getting demonically chewed and screwed.

Nose....

The demon's breath was hot upon Prior's scrotum. The huge teeth hovered near the quivering glans. The mouth came down, smiling evilly. Slowly, slowly, tantalizingly slowly....

Think... real fucker... nose....

Prior launched Prehensile forward, a rattlesnake. The tip bounced off the demon's stubby chin, scratched nauseatingly against the hairy warts, skated over the slimy upper teeth scraping away a channel of smegma-like plaque deposit, skidded on the cleft of the mottled upper lip....

And plunged at last into the gaping left nostril.

"Oomph!" the demon cried, jerking back.

But Prehensile followed, thrusting deeper, wedging a passage through the caked snot inside. Three inches, four, five! The force of it slammed the demon's head back against Prior's raised knees, stopping the retreat.

Six inches, and he was well settled in the sinus cavity, warm and soft and slick. "Go, go, go, gonads!" Prior grunted.

In and out his faithful penis thrust, heating the membranes by the friction of its travel while the demon howled and clawed futilely at it. Then the Cherry Branch got belatedly smart: took a deep breath, pinched shut its other nostril, closed its big mouth, and prepared to blow its nose violently. This was a blow-job that would finish Prior—

Suddenly the spasm came, sending its fluid coursing along the winding hose and into the demon's pressurized sinus.

"HA-CHOOO!" the demon sneezed in agony... and exploded into vapor. At that moment the spell abated, and Prior's limbs were free.

He had won again... by a nose. Thanks to Black's seeming insults, which were actually advice couched in a manner the demon would not understand and counter.

Chapter Twenty-Eight

They moved on down the cherry caverns. This time Prior kept himself prepared: he had Normal, the six-incher, connected and halfway turgid. That way he was halfway ready for anything. Halfassed, as Black put it. But he hoped he wouldn't meet the fourth Branch soon, because the struggle with the third had exhausted him, physically and chemically. He wasn't certain he could get a full erection, let alone ejaculate!

"Well!"

Prior and Black both jumped. A demoness lay before them, dusky, sultry and sexy. She was another branch of the Cherry Tree, all right, for her cherry was bright red and sparkled between her supple, leaf-green-shaded thighs.

"Sa-ay," Black said appreciatively. "Can anybody play? I wouldn't mind cornholing that brown beauty myself."

Prior wasn't sure of the legalities, but his limp member cast the deciding vote. He might get it up for this encounter, for the demoness was as luscious a piece as he had ever approached—but what if the next demon arrived on the scene too quickly? Sheer glandular fatigue would do him in when he faced the last branch! Black knew he was not eligible to approach the Spire itself—but that was not his purpose. He just wanted a good fuck, and he knew the risk entailed. "Okay by me," Prior said.

Black needed no further urging. "Now you stay out of it, the way I stayed out of yours," he cautioned. "I know she's a bitch, and she'll kill me if she can, but this here motherfuckin' horn will not be denied." And, indeed, his erection was impressive.

"Right," Prior said, realizing only now that it had not been indifference or cowardice that prevented Black from coming to his assistance before, but the man's own code of ethics. Three was a crowd, when it came to serious combat or fornication! Except for advice from the sidelines.

Black advanced penis-first on the waiting female, took hold of one arm and breast, dropped onto her torso and issued a pneumatic sigh. "Just let me dip my stick in your transmission, black baby," he said.

She shimmered—and Black found himself embracing a crocodile. Great and green and alligator-hided, with a thrashing tail and elongated snout and cruel hungry eyes.

Prior, watching, was as dismayed as Black. There, but for the grace of circumstance and a flaccid member, went he! He had known the demons could change shape, but this was ridiculous!

Black, whatever his political sentiments, was sexually normal. Bestiality was hardly in his line, when he considered it degrading to sample the lubricity of even nonblack human females. Prior saw the ebony penis losing elevation as it brushed the cold belly-scales of the reptile. A luscious woman-form was one thing, demon though she might be; this was something else.

But there was no release from that embrace. The crocodile's immense jaws whipped around, snapped at Black's face—

But Black had brought up his wrist with the amulet. A blue spark jumped, singeing the reptile's teeth. "No kissin', cousin!" Black cried. "You can't hurt me. I got protection!"

"Human bastard!" the crocodile muttered, licking the charred surface of the tooth. "Think you're pretty mortal smart!" And it changed into a monstrous crab. "Well I'll just pinch you to see if you're real!"

Two gigantic pincers reached for the man. One went for the throat, and Black had to fend it off immediately with the amulet.

The other pincer moved simultaneously for his groin, and Black, distracted by the threat to his neck, didn't catch it in time. It clamped on the genitalia and wrenched—and suddenly Black was a bleeding eunuch. He screamed once, horribly, then fainted.

Prior was appalled, sickened, and terrified, but also angry. The foul-mouthed Negro was his friend in his black-humor fashion. Black had twice summoned cherry branches for him to tackle individually, and had once thrown him a penis when he had been caught short. Last time Black had given him the life-saving hint about the Demon's nose—the facial aperture without deadly teeth. And Black had gotten them safely here by summoning the hellephant.

Yes, Black was a friend in deed and sometimes in word. Prior knew he could not have made it this far without the man's timely assistance. Black didn't deserve such mutilation and death, when all he had wanted was a decent dusky fuck.

The crab metamorphosed back into the crocodile, and the crocodile opened her jaws to take another bite of manflesh. The dripping penis and scrotum lay on the cold cavern floor, the blood melting into the cherry ice.

Prior charged.

If he had had time to think it through properly, he would have known he had no chance, and let the Negro's corpse buy him time to escape. He would have given up his insanely foolish quest for the Spire. He would have returned to Earth a sadder but more potent man.

But now rage drove out all fear and all reason. His six-incher was not even rigid, but he tensed his legs to pounce on the crocodile.

His foot slipped on the severed, peeled-banana penis. A testicle squirted out from under as Prior fought for balance. He couldn't stop; he had to fall, so he fell forward.

And landed astride a tigress. Literally.

"Another lover, so soon!" she purred, her predator-muscles orienting on him. "Well here's some real pussy for you, half-mast!"

She twisted off Black and faced Prior, the deadly sharp claws of all four feet driving for his gut. But he still had some of the advantage of surprise; she was not properly braced for his impact, and the floor was slippery with diluted blood on the ice. He crashed into her bodily and shoved her sidewise, away from Black.

Instinctively he wrapped his arms about her torso, pulling her tight to restrict those scraping claws. And then she was an enormous fat hen. "Squa-awk!" she squawked. "Let's have some cock!"

He tried to wring her small neck, but the clumsy bird became an unclumsy bird: a giant eagle, its bill stabbing down at his eyeballs.

There was hardly time to react, let alone think. Prior butted his head against hers, using his hard skull to blunt her sharp beak, and reached out wildly for Black's body. There was sharp pain in his skull as hair and skin were gouged, but he found the body. While he fought off the buffeting eagle's wings one-handed he wrestled with the Negro's body for that magic amulet. It was set in a bracelet, and if he could get it off—well, he could take the punishment of claw and beak for a little while, so long as he got hold of that protection.

Meanwhile his opponent had changed her shape again. A man-sized hairy spider threw loops of sticky web about him while purple mandibles came at his face. But he got hold of Black's arm, slid along the wrist, hooked a finger under the band. As the spider's venom-dripping jaws opened to damp on his nose, he hauled desperately on amulet and hand, and brought it between him and the demoness. The spark jumped again.

"Now cut that out!" the spider said, jerking back while its face-fur smoked. Its six or ten eyes blinked in pain. "I'm just trying to offer you a little good hair-pie." But already she was a shark, with seemingly endless teeth.

"There's something fishy about you," Prior grated. He put the amulet right into that underslung maw and drove it back. He had a weapon now—but he knew it could not win the battle for him by itself. It had not been enough for poor Black! He used it to fend her off while he concentrated desperately on his definitive weapon: his penis. He could only vanquish her completely by copulating with her—and it had to be fast, or he was dead, amulet or no.

But it was hard to stiffen his torpid member in the face of these repeated changes of form! Now the bitch was a bear, now a snake, now a pig. Each form constituted a new attack by claw, fang or snout, and none was sexually conducive. And he sorely missed the semen he had so recently expended on the assless demon. An amulet was no substitute for ejaculate!

Nevertheless the heat of combat elevated his blood pressure, and his member gradually came erect. The abrasion it received during the struggle helped, though there was little sexual appeal in this. As his penis hardened, the demoness lost strength, for here was the thrusting phallus she most feared. Her scratches became shallow, and her blows futile. Finally she collapsed back into human form.

Prior wedged her luscious thighs apart and forced his full-sized meat into her loosening hole. At least this vagina was ample! He had been half afraid she wouldn't have one. She screamed and went limp.

He had won again!

Except—

Except that he hadn't come yet. And she hadn't puffed into smoke. That was suspicious.

She was playing possum, though she had carefully avoided assuming the possum shape, evidently hoping he'd be satisfied with the seeming victory. She must have known that he couldn't come quickly, so her loose vulva was safe for the time being. If he fell for that ruse, who could guess what deviltry she would come up with once she recovered the initiative?

Prior rammed into her the full six inches, finding no resistance. It was such a contrast to the vicelike tightness of the other female; this one was a cool ocean in her laxity. In fact, he had precious little to strive against, and his penis was freezing!

That was her trap! She was zero weather inside, and his hot blood was rapidly chilling. He had to finish the job promptly, or his flesh would go numb.

He couldn't come. He had to have incentive, stimulation, and friction, and there was no more of these here than might be had by having intercourse with a day-old corpse. In fact she even felt corpselike now—a body in the freezer.

Black groaned and stirred. "Did you trim her wick, whiteshit?"

So he was alive! "I have it in, but the juice is congealing. Do you have any more advice?"

Black coughed unhealthily. "My old man—curse his black hide—always said...." He trailed off.

"What did he say?" Prior demanded. His whole front was getting chilled; he might as well have been having intercourse with a bank of snow! "Don't faint now, you bastard nigger!"

"Flattery... nowhere...."

"Listen, Black, I'm not flattering you! My cock is an icicle! Tell me what you know!"

"If you can't eat it, and you can't...." The voice became an indecipherable mumble.

"What? What?" Prior shouted desperately. Not only was his member going numb, it seemed to be frozen in place in her ice-solid body. To withdraw now might well be to rip it off himself!

"...can't fuck it...."

"I know I can't fuck it!" Prior cried. "That's my problem! Tell me, you deballed wonder!"

"PISS ON IT!" Black screamed furiously. And died.

There went his last hope! Black's eleventh-hour help had pulled him through before, but there was no chance of that now. "Piss on it!" Prior echoed with mixed sorrow and rage. Why had he driven Black into such anger as the man lay dying? His thoughtlessness had cost them both their penises and their lives!

Piss on it....

Inspiration! Would it work?

He resumed pumping, pretending that there was still fire in his phallus. "I'm getting near the climax, you demonic cherry whore," he told her. "You're a corpse, but you can't cool my organ. Not deep down to the source of semen. It's sort of fun, fucking frigidity; a novelty, sets me off. You can't shrink me before I spurt. Feel that hot burble starting?"

"No," she said uncertainly.

He jogged his dead member, hoping it was more rigid than it seemed, and not because of getting frozen. "What an orgasm! It's raging in my gut! I can't hold it back any longer, much as I enjoy playing with you! You're quite a lay, know that?"

"You're quite a bluffer, know that?"

"Ooooh!" he cried, twisting his face in simulated rapture. "Ah, crocodile-cunt, I've never had one like this! Aaaaah!" And he panted and tensed his whole cold body as though torn by the spasm.

She changed into a giant, slimy, wriggling worm. But his member was wedged in the thing's cloaca, and he continued his act. "I'm coming! I'm coming! Swing low, sweet chariot! Feel that hot liquid!"

And he compressed his belly and urinated forcefully into her quivering vagina as she changed back into a woman.

"A-a-a-a-ah!" she screamed in climactic agony. She began to dissolve into chilly vapor.

Suddenly her misty eyes opened. "You unmitigated fucker!" she snarled, metamorphosing into the tiger. Her hole clenched airily. "That's not ejaculate!"

Prior just waited, letting his bladder drain into her, warming his cold penis during its passage. It felt almost as good as a real climax.

"That's PISS!" the crocodile bellowed.

But it was too late. She could not pull her wafting flesh together again. Slowly, reluctantly, angrily, and with multiple changes of form, she faded into brown, urine-saturated mist. His last drops spattered on the pink ice.

This time he really had won—by cheating.

Chapter Twenty-Nine

He buried Black in the cherry-flavored terrain, and found some chocolate snow for a shroud. "You gave good advice, you ebony racist," he said by way of benediction. "I'll take care of the cop-fucking matter for you, if I ever get back to Earth. Keep cool."

Black kept cool. He was frozen stiff.

Four branches of the Cherry Tree had been severed—each one worse than the last. Surely the worst was yet to come. But now he had to go on. He would vanquish the final demon, or die in the fucking attempt.

He arrived at last at the bottom of the cavern system, in the very heart of Mt. Icecream. Here he found a fountain: liquid ice cream spurting up from a tiny nozzle, shooting high up through a gap in the pinnacle, and fanning far above into perpetual snow. As he watched, the color changed from yellow to green: vanilla to pistachio.

"PISStachio," he murmured. "How appropriate."

Mt. Icecream, it seemed, was a cold but active volcano—and this nozzle was the apparent source of it all. It must have taken centuries for the mountain itself to form.

But what lay below the nozzle? Surely all that ice cream came from somewhere! Was the core of the planet made of it, and was this the only hole in the crust for it to squirt out? That seemed ridiculous on numerous grounds. But at the moment he found no better explanation for what he witnessed here.

He stepped close to that ever-jetting phallus, feeling the convective wind at his back, and probed at the base. There might be a pipe leading in, a conduit for pressured ice cream—

Heavy footfalls sounded behind him. Prior whirled to face the last branch of the Cherry Tree.

It stood about seven feet tall. It looked a little like a griffin and a little like a goblin, but mostly like a walking phallus with priapism. It had snaggle-tusks that projected from the place its mouth should have been but wasn't, and a wickedly hooked beak without nostril-holes, and saber-claws, and a spiked tail and barbed wings. Its upthrusting animal ears were metallic, with serrated saw-blade edges but no apertures into the head. Its grotesque eyes were mere patches of light-sensitive skin. Its penis was just about two feet long from bell to balls, and proportionately massive. And it was absolutely rigid.

"An eeg!" Prior cried, recognizing the form. "An adult eeg!"

The creature made no answer. How could it, without a mouth? How could it really see him or hear him or smell him, with those sealed-over organs of perception? Now Prior saw that it had no apertures of any kind, especially not a rectum. Just that atomic cannon of a penis.

Prior still wore Normal, and the respite he had gained by urinating into the last branch allowed him to bring it to attention with reasonable dispatch despite the lingering chill. He knew he could ejaculate, once he found appropriate lodging. But this demon was invulnerable, for it was completely without orifices. In all the galaxy there was no finer single-purpose fucking machine!

The eeg charged on stubby goblin-legs, its phallus swaying heavily as though about to unbalance the entire body. The demon's eye-patches glowed cherry red, and so did the tip of its penis. What internal fires did this leakage presage?

Prior tried to run, but his feet skidded on the ice and he sprawled ignominiously. The eeg came to stand over him, huge chicken-feet on either side of his body, that volcanic member looming. The intrusion of that timber would surely split a human body wide open! But there was no ready escape. The cold of the cavern floor gripped his naked body; was that why he shivered so?

The demon lowered the boom. That hinged instrument was as thick and solid as Prior's thigh! It banged brutally against his buttock, a solid wooden club.

Prior realized that he was in luck—of a sort. A penis that size couldn't possibly penetrate his anus, mouth, or any other bodily aperture!

The eeg reached down with spindly arms and hauled Prior up with astonishing strength. It carried him to a region of massed stalagmites: giant spokes of cherry ice rising erotically out of the floor. It jammed him between two of them, headfirst, and shoved him down, so that his torso was pinned where the columns came together at the base.

Oh-oh! Now he was thoroughly anchored. That huge penis just might get into him, if driven with enough force while he was tied down. After all, the Assyrians used to drive wooden stakes up the rectums of their captives and mount them along the highways! And the eeg was bracing against a fortuitously placed third stalagmite, orienting itself so that its entire strength could shove the cannon into the recalcitrant hole. The eeg must have done this many times before; trust it to know its infernal business!

The club drove at Prior's posterior, harder and harder. His buttocks were bruising, his poor little sphincter was hopelessly outclassed. Neither flesh nor cartilage could withstand the savagery of this assault. It was like giving birth to a baby, sidewise—except that he was no mother, this was no baby, and it wasn't going but coming. In more ways than one.

The icy stalagmites chilled his sides—but his body heat was melting them in return. Prior realized that he had a chance here to escape. He waited for another eeg-thrust, then sucked in his breath and shoved back against those translucent columns with both hands.

It worked! He squirted out of that stockade, a human watermelon seed goosed by an inhuman battering ram. He crashed into another stalagmite, bruising a shoulder—but he was loose! He had another chance to escape!

The eeg made a mouthless roar and lumbered after him. Prior dodged behind the icy column. One advantage he had now: he was more agile. Much more of his muscle was in his arms and legs, while the greatest mass of the eeg was in its terrific penis. The creature was inherently off-balance; it had to lean back just to stand up straight, and it couldn't accelerate rapidly around corners.

Poor as its eyes and ears seemed, the demon obviously had an excellent notion where Prior was. Did it use magic to follow him so accurately? In that case, why hadn't it bound him with an immobility spell, the way the other branch had?

Prior could guess the answer to that: it must take some intelligence to master the complexities of magic, and the eeg's brain was only big enough to master the simplicities of fornication. And pursuit.

Prior scrambled over a mound of solidly frozen cherries, then paused to watch from hiding. If he wanted to escape this diabolic creature, let alone overcome it, he'd better find out what powers it had beside fornication!

First he heard a sniff-sniff, snuff-snuff. Oh? Was its nose perforated after all? Prior knew what to do in that case!

Then the eeg came into view. Its penis was leaning toward the floor, cantilevered, the bulging glans almost touching the ice, and the elephantine slit at the end was sniffing out the trail.

So that was the secret! Versatile member, there!

But if it was smell that gave him away, he was doomed. He could avoid the eeg for a considerable time, but eventually he would have to rest or sleep. He was sure the eeg, being basically demonic, never had to do either. It would never even stop to defecate, with no anus. It would just keep going indefatigably. In time it would surely catch him, no matter where he went, now that he had challenged it by entering its lair.

Prior whipped around another slender stalagmite—no, this one was a stalactite, hanging from the ceiling—and stumbled as it snapped off in his hands.

He righted himself and looked at what he held. A spear!

He took the caked shirt he still carried and wrapped it about the basal end, both to protect his hand from the cold and to prevent the icy needle from melting. With this he might make his own hole in the eeg, and ram home there for victory! "Now come and get it," he snarled. "If you can come after you get it...."

The demon, too stupid to be cautious, approached. The penis lifted, centering on him as though it were a sword in its own right. And perhaps it was, or at least a bludgeon. Prior fenced with it.

"Touche!" he yelled, lunging.

The rapier scored—but slid off the penis. He lunged again—and was deflected again.

"Wouldn't you know it!" he griped. "Invulnerable meat!"

But he made ready for another attack. Maybe a swift stab in the balls—

The eeg-penis burbled. Fluid squirted from its slit, striking the stalactite-weapon. The ice melted instantly, and the spear broke in half.

"Oh, no!" Prior cried, dismayed. He needed a metal rapier, and there was nothing here but ice. He fled, wishing there was a river or something for him to lose his scent-trail in, or some cubbyhole the eeg couldn't reach.

Then he remembered the mound of cherries. He veered back to it and used the stub of his sword to pry loose a handful. He wheeled and pelted the demon with the red bullets.

Then he noted that some were not shaped quite like cherries. He inspected one of these more closely—and discovered that it was actually a frozen testicle.

Well, they were still solid, stinging little missiles. He knew the strikes annoyed the creature, though they could hardly hurt it. Maybe it was angry because its trophy-collection was being scattered.

The mighty penis aimed again, swinging grandly around as though mounted on gimbals. Prior tried to button the slit with a well-aimed cherry-ball, but his marksmanship wasn't that good. More fluid gooshed forth, arching beautifully and descending to strike Prior's arm. It was hot and gooey and repulsive. He jerked away but the gob clung to him. He slapped at it with his other hand—and it stuck there too, stretching out between arm and hand in a glistening string, that cooled as it thinned and hardened as it cooled. It smelled richly of butterscotch.

Good God! This wasn't ejaculate as he knew it—it was taffy!

Prior lurched on. The hardened goo just would not come off without taking the skin along too. Now his mobility was seriously hampered. What if the next ejaculation struck his legs? Or his face?

He couldn't escape the eeg and he couldn't fight it. What else remained?

What else but copulation?

He imagined being reamed by that horrendous member, and half a gallon of boiling taffy being firehosed into his colon, and knew he couldn't surrender. He'd kill himself first.

In the midst of this noble sentiment, he slipped on a rolling cherry and went down on his face. This time he hit hard, because his arms were entangled in solidified taffy jack. Light and darkness tinged with cherry-red exploded in his eyes, and he knew he was on the verge of unconsciousness. An unconsciousness he was unlikely to emerge from before being stuffed with butterscotch.

One thing fixed in his mind: what the hell was a cherry demon doing with butterscotch in its generative tract? The eeg should at least be consistent!

The light and the darkness and the bit of red swirled through face and brain, dancing shadow-shapes of zero depth. White and black stretched and strove as though at war and shaped themselves into a silhouette, and the image was of an ebony head with red in the mouth.

"You two-bit, whiteassed, lily-pekkered shit!" the head said.

"Black!" Prior cried. "How good to hear your compliments again! I thought you were dead!"

"I am dead, you pale-faced mother-sucker! That whore-demon defucked me, may the Good Lord piss on her."

"The Good Lord didn't get around to it, assuming that He still lives. But if it makes you feel better, I—"

"Shut your farting face, bleachturd! I'm dead (that's how I know God ain't)—but you still got heat in your balls. Get up and fuck that fucker!"

"But the eeg is invulnerable!" Prior bleated.

And woke. The vision of Black was gone, and the eeg was hauling his torso into position for the final ass-sault.

Well, he had Black's posthumous advice, for what it was worth. All he had to do was fuck the fucker (to use the big dead Negro's quaint idiom)—when the eeg had no orifice for the occasion.

Then his mind cleared, helped by a jolt from the demon, and he understood.

The eeg was dragging him arsey-versey past the geyser of ice cream. Prior jerked and twisted and managed to fling one booted foot into that rising column. Instantly his leg was wrenched up, splattering peach ice cream over them both, and he and the demon were hurled sidewise. The eeg's grip was broken, the taffy on Prior's arms cracked with the cold, and he scrambled free again.

He got to his feet and ran. His toes were numb from cold and shock even through the sturdy leather, and his entire leg was coated with peach syrup, but it remained serviceable. He lunged for his pack and pawed through its contents.

The eeg caught up again and resumed hauling, feet-first. It certainly didn't have much imagination! The demon probably had more intellect in its scrotum than in its birdlike skull, at that. But Prior had what he needed: Pipecleaner.

No problem about removing Normal. That member was thoroughly flaccid and half-frozen again under the ice cream. He twisted it off as the demon continued dragging, threw it away and applied the spaghetti-limp substitute, warming it with his two hands. Then he relaxed and concentrated on concupiscence, while his head bumped along the cherry ice. Oubliette, now... and her sister Tantamount. There was a female who really needed some penile edification, and not in the operating room.

He waited for his opportunity while Pipecleaner swelled into raw macaroni rigidity. Just as the demon got him to the stalagmites, Prior wrenched around, slender phallus erect and eager. "What do you think of that, eggshit?" he demanded.

The eeg's monster penis creaked down like a drawbridge and sniffed. Then the demon began shaking with laughter. Prior's challenging member was no larger in diameter than the slit in the tip of the eeg's phallus!

And as the eeg quaked with its derisive emotion (it probably hadn't had a laugh like that in centuries), Prior took careful aim, braced himself, and thrust. At that slit.

Pipecleaner rammed straight up the giant urethra of the demon.

Prior was fucking the fucker.

The eeg pulled back, amazed; but Prior grabbed handfulls of its disgusting hairy scrotum and hung on. He continued to drive his knitting needle up the cannon-bore.

The eeg tried to scream, but it could only make sounds through its penis, and that was occupied at the moment. Anyway, it hadn't finished laughing, and it was too stupid to realize that the nature of the joke had changed.

When Prior achieved operative depth he fired off six stitches, knit three and pearl three.

Now the eeg's laughter turned to a vast shuddering. Then the massive penis split open, and the rest of the body separated along that same line of cleavage, becoming truly bifurcate. Both halves fell to the floor and dissolved into cherry-wood smoke with a butterscotch mist topping.

Black's final advice had been good. Prior had defeated the last demon in fair genital combat, and now the Spire was his to claim.