The Purple Pterodactyls

Priapus

I like my brother-in-law but, after what has happened each time I have visited him, I am wary of going there again. The first time, when I was in California on business, I was almost roasted alive in a burning bank building. The second time ...

The winter our son Stephen was a sophomore, I came down with the flu, which left me as limp as a wet noodle. The president of the Harrison Trust, Esau Drexel, said:

"Willy, take the rest of the month off and go somewhere warm. Business is slow, and we can handle it. Take Denise with you."

"And leave those three kids alone in the house?"

"Oh, forget about being the heavy father! They're old enough to manage, and they're about as well-behaved as you can expect of kids nowadays. Why, when I was your boy's age ..."

Having wangled an invitation from Avery and Stella Hopkins, Denise and I flew to San Romano and the Californian sunshine. True, we arrived in the middle of a two-day winter downpour, but then things cleared up to let us get some tan and tennis.

My skinny little nephew Robert Hopkins, as hairy as ever but more subdued than the year before, was a senior at the local college, where Avery Hopkins was Professor of Middle English.

"You know, Uncle Willy," said Robert at dinner, "all that stuff about burning banks and such was attacking the problem from the wrong end. I see that now. Like, if you really want to change the System, it does no good to use the same material means that the oppressing class does, because you end up just a materialistic as the oppressors. That's where the Communists went wrong. You've got to approach it on another plane, like you was making an end run in football."

"As if you were making an end run," said Avery Hopkins.

"Okay, okay, as if you were making an end run. Not that I'm any kind of jock."

"I never suspected that of you," I said. "How do you get to this other plane?"

"That takes special knowledge. There's a little study group working on it right now. We're figuring out a scientific way to use love as a weapon."

I glanced a question at Robert's parents. ~My sister Stella said: "It's some occult group that Robert has joined. We don't think much of their ideas; but they got Bob to give up marijuana, so they can't be all bad."

"So long as he keeps his marks up," said Avery Hopkins, "it's his business what ideological vagary he pursues. The young are always careening from one extreme belief to another. As Aristotle says, they despise money because they don't know what it is to be without it."

Remembering Robert's antics of the previous year, I expected a tantrum or at least an outburst. Instead, he smiled benignly.

"You'll learn," he said. "Uncle Willy, would you and Aunt Denise like to attend one of our ceremonies? I've tried to get Mom and Dad to go, but they won't touch it. The Master Daubeny's promised us a climax."

"I might," I said. "As for Denise, ask her."

"I might, also," said Denise. "My great big stubborn idiot of a husband needs me to keep him out of the trouble."

Next day, Stella took Denise on a round of the shops of San Romano. Avery Hopkins asked if I should like to see his campus. Nothing loath, I submitted to his guided tour. Since I am an engineer by training and a banker only by circumstance, the scientific laboratories interested me most. In the Worth Biology Building, Hopkins met a young instructor.

"This is Jerry Kleinfuss," said Hopkins. "My brother-in-law, Wilson Newbury. What's new, Jerry? Has anybody put piranhas in the swimming tank again?"

"Good God!" I said. "Has some poor devil been devoured while taking a swim?"

"No," replied Kleinfuss. "Some undergraduate did put a few of these fish in the tank and then spread the story during a meet. You should have seen the swimmers leap out of the water like seals! But these piranhas were of a harmless species. What puzzles us now is: who stole one of our Urechis worms?"

"Your what?" I said.

"Urechis, a large marine worm. We got several for experiments from the coast near Santa Barbara. Now somebody's pinched one, tank and all."

"Why should anybody do that?"

Kleinfuss shrugged. "We have no idea, unless the thief wanted to fry and eat it. I don't thing the result would be anything to write home about."

"Could I see one of these worms?"

"Sure. Right this way."

Kleinfuss led Hopkins and me into a room lined with small glass tanks, containing various marine organisms. Some had jointed legs, some tentacles, and some other appendages.

"Here they are," said Kleinfuss.

In each of the tanks, a large pink worm was moving slowly about in the water. Each worm was a cylinder, about eight or nine inches long and an inch in diameter. It was just the color of human flesh, which it amazingly resembled. It even had little blue veins visible through the skin. The effect was startling.

I burst out laughing. "I see the organs," I said, "but where are the organisms?"

Kleinfuss smiled. "You're not the first to notice the resemblance. Anyway, that vacant place in the row is where our missing worm was. We called him Priapus. The others are Casanova, Lothario, and Don Juan. To catch them, you stick a length of rubber tube down the burrow. The worm swallows the tube and swarms up it, forming a kind of fleshy sleeve on the outside of the tube. Then you have only to pull out the tube and scrape off the worm."

That evening, the Hopkinses had another couple to dinner. These were Associate Professor Marvin Held, from the Language Department, and his wife Ethel, an assistant professor of psychology. Held, a big, bushy-bearded chap who taught Romance languages, defended Latin and bewailed its disappearance from modern high-school curricla.

"I don't know," I said. "I've forgotten most of my high-school Latin. I'd rather have put the time on a widely-spoken modern language, like Spanish."

"Oh, you're both wrong," said young Robert in his squeaky voice. "I know people who've been all over the world, and they always found somebody who spoke English if they hollered long and loud enough."

Held snorted. "No wonder we're becoming a nation of illiterates! First the kids demand a say in college policies, and our spineless administration gives in. Then they find there's nothing duller than committee meetings to decide if full credit shall be given for French 1-A from Primeval Baptist College of Mud Creek, Mississippi. So they stop coming around. Next, they don't want to have to learn any history, or any foreign languages, and so on. Then they ask credit for what they call 'life experience.' What they really want is a diploma for merely existing, without any work at all."

"Instead of studying nine tenths of the irrelevant crap you guys give us," said Robert, "it would be more to the point, like, to spend the time learning to use the unseen forces of the universe."

"For my money," I said, "languages are the main unseen force around. Just get stuck in Iraq, as I once did, not knowing any Arabic beyond 'Yes,' 'No,' and 'Where's the toilet?' and you might change your mind."

Denise added: "No one can call himself a civilized, educated man without at least the French."

Ignoring her, Robert said: "That s not what I meant at all, Uncle Willy. Come to the big do of the Agapean Association day after tomorrow, and you'll see. We're gonna invoke the spirit of love."

Marvin Held said: "Bob, I've heard rumors about this outfit. Could Ethel and I come, too? It might be of professional interest."

"So you can look at us like bugs under a microscope?" said Robert. "Okay, come along. You might decide that the bugs have got the right idea and join us."

After the Helds had gone, Avery Hopkins said to me: "Willy, I think I ought to warn you. The rumor is that these people put on orgies."

"Really?" I said. "I've always wanted to attend an orgy. I don't know how Denise will take it; she was strictly brought up by a very proper French Protestant family. What sort of cult is it?"

"One of these sex-and-magic things that are springing up, now that the youth revolt has begun to run out of steam."

"Well, the state has always had a fine climate for nuts. I'm a little old for organized orgiastics myself, but I still want to see. I'm an old wild-life watcher, and such excesses make Homo sapiens a fascinating species to watch."

Early in this century, a man named Bannister made a mint in oil and built a mansion in San Romano. The Agapean Association had leased this mansion, which stood on an estate-sized lot, surrounded by palms, acacias, and pepper trees. The house was a huge, rambly place, pseudo-Spanish outside and medieval German baronial within. It had run down since the days of the Bannister family but was not yet decrepid enough to be really spooky.

Marvin and Ethel Held drove us to the mansion, since we might have had trouble finding it in an unfamiliar city by ourselves. Robert Hopkins was not with us. Having promised to meet us at the Bannister house, he had gone to fetch his own girl friend.

There was a delay getting in. A pair of muscular Agapeans in black robes guarded the front door. They would not admit us until Robert came to vouch for us, and Robert was late. When the formalities had at last been complied with, we were shooed into the huge living room just as the lights were being turned down for the big show.

"Sandy and I gotta get dressed," whispered Robert. "Visitors sit in the last row. You go ahead and sit; we'll be with you in, like, half a minute."

The seats were arranged in concentric crescents. We found four vacant chairs at one end of the rear row. Thence we could see many of the others present, either in profile or in three-quarters full-face.

As our eyes became accustomed to the dim light, Denise gasped. The front rows, composed of sofas, divans, and ottomans placed end to end, were occupied by thirty-odd people, in couples. Most were young, and all were naked. Some were petting.

Robert Hopkins, looking like a plucked chicken without his clothes and followed by his equally naked girl, stole in from the other side and took seats at the end of one of the forward rows. Robert's idea of "getting dressed" was not what most would understand by the term.

Denise whispered: "Willy, I do not think we ought to stay here. C'est une indécence, donc!"

"Oh, come!" I whispered back. "You took me to that nudist place in France."

"That was different—the clean, healthy nature. This is a depravity."

"Stick around," I said. "Nobody claims we have to strip, too."

Denise subsided. In front of the seats, a temporary wooden dais rose a foot from the floor. On this platform, a stand upheld a small glass tank. In the tank was water and something pink and wriggly. I recognized a urechis worm, doubtless the one stolen from the biology laboratory.

At each end of the dais, a huge candle burned in an oversized brass holder, standing high above the floor. To one side, an incense burner sent up a thread of fragrant smoke.

A man in a red robe strode out of the shadows and took his stance on the dais, behind the tank with the worm. He was a slight, balding man of about my age, with a thin film of black hair combed across his bare cranium.

"Good evening, companions in transcendental adventure," intoned the Master Daubeny. "May infinite love be yours. Tonight we shall undertake the greatest of our magical operations, to secure for ourselves and for all of factious mankind the infinite blessing of love. We shall invoke love in its purest, most concentrated form, the form of the god Priapus, the god of the ultimate act of love, personified by this marine creature before me.

"By the laws of sympathetic magic, an invocation directed at this animal, which by its form symbolizes the outstanding characteristic of the god, will draw the god himself unto us. We shall then perform the appropriate—here, here!" He spoke chidingly to Robert and Sandy, who had been fondling each other's persons and gave every sign of being about to jump the gun. "You must wait till after the god manifests himself. Patience, patience!

"To continue. We shall perform the ultimate act of love as a reverent tribute to the god. For what ails mankind today? Why wars, crimes, and strikes? Because there is not enough love. With the help of Priapus, we shall, by our command of the occult currents, instill more love, first into our fellow countrymen and then into all the world ..."

He went on for half an hour, talking about the different planes of existence, the materialization of spiritual abstractions, and the need for transcendental currents of love throughout the seven-dimensional universe. These currents were to be set flowing by a mass act of communal copulation.

From what I could see of the young men in the audience, they were ready to perform their roles in the rite. The soldiers of my outfit in the Second World War never stood up straighter. All the couples were kissing and fondling. I itched to grab Denise and join the revel, but her expression of stern disapproval squelched that idea. She whispered:

"Willy, I will not stay here longer, to see the beautiful making of the love turned into a circus!"

"Oh, come on!" I said. "What they do won't hurt us. Besides, if you left me here, who knows what mischief I might not get into?"

On the other side of her, a similar argument had broken out between the Helds. With them, however, it was the man who wished to leave and the woman to stay. As a psychologist, Ethel Held did not want to miss anything.

At last the sermon was over. Daubeny pulled a wand out of his baggy sleeve and began to utter his incantation. He faced in various directions, moved his wand as if he were leading an invisible orchestra, and chanted.

The Master's voice rose to a shout. From an occasional word, I realized that he was speaking Latin. He ended with a scream:

"Veni, magistre venereonum! Veni, ueni, veni!"

I was braced for a bit of conjuring or other hocus-pocus but not for what happened. The flames of the two big candles shrank to mere points, glowing like stationary fireflies. Then came a brilliant flash of cold, white light and a clap of thunder.

A young woman stood at one end of the dais, facing the Master Daubeny. Tall, slim, dark, and aquiline-nosed, she wore a knee-length Classical chiton, which left one small, virginal breast bare. In her left hand she bore a strung double-curved bow. A quiver of arrows hung at her back from a leathern baldric.

Standing in the darkened room in a blaze of light from no source that I could see, the maiden stared at the Master, then at the audience. The naked worshipers were sitting up, their foreplay forgotten. They stared—I suppose "aghast" is the word.

"So!" she said in a ringing alto. "You calla me for your— how you say—your comissatione turpi—your obscena misbehaviors?"

It had not occurred to me that Diana—for such I presumed our transcendental visitor to be—would speak English with a strong Italian accent.

"Willy!" said Marvin Held in a low, tense voice. "Let's get ' the hell out of here, pronto! I'll explain outside."

He rose. So did Denise and Ethel Held. Being at the end of the row, I had to rise, too.

"Quick!" said- Held. "Don't argue; I'll tell you later." I meekly accompanied the others of our quartet.

"So," continued the apparition, "I fixa you dissolutos!"

We stumbled out into the entrance hall. As we reached the front door of the mansion, the spectral presence ripped out a long sentence in Latin. I caught only the final words: "... cum impotentia, sterilitate, et frigore!"

We were on our way to the Helds' car when a call of "Hey!" made us pause. It was Robert and Sandy. Robert wore his shirt and ragged blue jeans but had fled barefoot; the girl was equally disheveled.

"What—what happened?" he panted. "All I know is, Sandy and I couldn't wait, so we split to the bedroom and were screwing away when the big boom came. It kind of, like, took our minds off what we were doing. When I stuck my nose in the meeting hall, there was this dame on the platform, hollering in some language, and the four of you running out. So I grabbed Sandy, and we high-tailed it out of there. What happened?"

Held explained: "Your wizard invoked Priapus, the phallic god, but got Diana instead. Being the goddess of chastity as well as of the moon and of hunting, she was outraged by what she saw. Therefore she cursed everybody in the room with impotence, sterility, and frigidity. Knowing the Classical myths, I guessed what might be coming."

(According to what the older Hopkinses wrote us later, the curse worked. I don't know if the effect ever wore off.)

"Oh, man!" wailed Robert Hopkins. "D'you suppose the curse reached as far as us?"

"I don't know," said Held. "You'll have to wait and see."

"How come the Master goofed?"

"Didn't know his Latin. In his invocation, he said magistre venereonum. In the first place, he thought magistre was the vocative of magister; but only second-declension nouns in -us take that ending. In the second, there's no such word as venereonum. He formed a genitive plural from a nonexistent third-declension noun uenereo, which would be the ablative—" Ethel Held poked her husband in the ribs. He concluded: "Anyway, he meant to say magister uenerar-iorum, 'master of the lovemakings.' With his bad pronunciation, what he actually said sounded like magistra uena-tionum, 'mistress of the hunts,' and it naturally fetched Diana."

"Professor Held," said Robert in a small voice, "do you think I could switch to, like, a language major next year?"

"Come to my office tomorrow and we'll talk it over."

Late that night, Denise gave a happy sigh. "At least, my old one, we know that the curse did not reach so far as us. But when I tell you that it is time to leave a place, do not argue with me, but come along a l'instant!"

"Yes, dear," I said.