The Sinners of Erspia

THREE Laedo’s Seduction

Two main problems, Laedo believed, faced him. And they each divided themselves into two sub-problems, one practical, one ethical.

The first problem concerned his line of business. Laedo was a cargo carrier. He had a small, fast ship, and specialised in carrying small, valuable cargoes. Space being so large and so easy to get lost in, such a carrier had not only to be highly skilled but also trustworthy to the point of saintliness.

In short, his main qualification was an ethical one. Accordingly, Laedo was highly ethical. He had undergone lengthy analysis in the karmayoga , or right action, school of psychotherapy. He had a certificate from his analyst which, in effect, gave him a moral rating. The certificate also stated that he had been attracted to the karmayoga school of psychology by reason of innate qualities, not because it might get him a special cargo carrier’s ticket.

There was no other way to become a class CCC special-cargo carrier.

In other circumstances Laedo might have been more than willing to spend a considerable length of time on Erspia-2. It was a delightful place. But as it was he was bound, almost regretfully, to bend his efforts to an early departure—not just because to act otherwise would prejudice his chances of future employment, but because it was his duty. In his cargo strongroom were three kilograms of crystalline cavorite—the only known substance in the universe not to respond to inertial fields such as gravitation. It was worth half a billion psalters, and he was already months overdue.

So far he had accomplished the easier part of his task. He had found his ship in the jungle, already engulfed in luxurious, fast-growing vegetation. The hull was dented, but otherwise the tough little vessel checked out unharmed. Again using the manoeuvring engine, he had raised it and steered it to the clearing where the projector station lay. With the help of the ship’s dog-sized and not-too-bright handling robot, he had clamped it in place on the station, from which it now stuck out at an odd angle.

But, worried about losing his ship again, he had taken the cavorite from the strongroom and hidden it in the projector station.

The hard part was to gain control over the projector station’s drive.

Mulling over this, Laedo sat on the grass in the shadow of a saffron-coloured orchid shot through with pale blue, in whose bell he and Histrina slept at night. Nearby other orchids towered, creating the usual varicoloured fairyland. These orchids formed a grove in the middle of the meadow, separated from the main expanse of the jungle and nearer to the lake of fresh, cool water.

Totally incurious as to why the newcomers were here, Lallalo and Lila had willingly introduced them to the society of Erspia-2 if society it could be called. The inhabitants of the planetoid lived scattered like woodland animals throughout the jungle, mostly in small groups, though they tended to wander a good deal. They were as simple as children, and their lives were purely idyllic. They did no work, and had no unfulfilled desires: the orchids supplied all their needs. There were orchids in which to have unbelievably delicious fornication. There were orchids in which to sleep at night or, if one wished, to shelter from the occasional warm rain (though Laedo and Histrina, who by now had dispensed with all clothing, preferred to expose their bodies naked to the downpour). There were orchids whose interiors produced various kinds of foods—a sweet bread-like substance flavoured with honey; pulpy fruit-like growths; crunchy stalks with an endless variety of flavours, and so forth—and orchids in whose bells could be found petal-shaped bowls and pools of refreshing, invigorating drinks, coloured, flavoured and sometimes effervescent.

And there were orchids which offered food, drink, pheromonic fornication and a bedchamber all rolled into one.

Always the orchids deposited pollen on the people who entered them—which they mostly did for sexual purposes. The big flowers all differed subtly in the quality of their pheromones, so that sex in a new one was rather like sex with a new person. Consequently people varied their copulating places a great deal—which was all part of the orchids’ reproductive strategy, of course.

Sex, in fact, was mainly what the people of Erspia-2 occupied themselves with. Everyone was almost permanently dusted with golden pollen, except early in the morning when a bath in fresh water was the custom.

Laedo found it amusing to see how the orchids had incorporated human sexuality into their reproductive function. There were children on Erspia-2 also, but the birthrate was clearly very low. He had seen only three or four youngsters, while he had encountered hundreds of adults.

And not one of them but was superb from the physical point of view. Laedo had indulged himself to excess, for the people here were wholly promiscuous and never refused an offer of love play. But he never went to an orchid with a native woman if Histrina was around. Although she herself coupled quite openly with practically every man she met, she became insanely jealous whenever Laedo showed an interest in anyone but her.

Histrina.

Histrina was his second problem.

Knowing that she would eventually find an opportunity to get the gun back off him, he had hidden it in the station along with the cavorite. But he felt uneasy whenever she was near. He knew she wasn’t sane, and that she would do anything which, in her imprinted condition of comic-book evil, seemed to her wicked.

She would cheat, lie, steal, injure and murder. He felt, however, that he was safe from her violence for the time being. She needed him, or thought she did.

He was hoping that sating herself in fornication, which she also believed was unforgivably wicked, would keep her busy for the time being. But what was he going to do with her in the long run?

The simplest course seemed to be to leave her behind on Erspia-2. After all, she was having a good time.

But to some extent he was responsible for her condition. Although he had rescued her from Hoggora’s camp, it was he who had flown her through the Ahrimanic beam at full intensity. Indeed, by bringing her aboard at all, he had wilfully taken her into his charge.

He could just imagine what his karmayoga analyst would say on hearing that he had abandoned his protegé. “This is bad, Laedo,” he would say, shaking his head. “You’re going to suffer agonies of remorse for this. You can expect to pay for it in other ways, too, through events in later life. You took on a load of bad karma when you ditched that poor girl.”

No, she had to go with him. It was his duty to find some therapy that could straighten out that twisted mind of hers.

An idea occurred to him. What if he were to subject her to the Ormazdian beam at full intensity? Might that wipe out the Ahrimanic influence? It would be easy to switch the beam back on again and inveigle Histrina into it.

As a solution it was too clumsy, he decided. He wasn’t a therapist, and the ploy might do more damage than good. Besides, he wasn’t sure a Histrina oozing Ormazdian goodness wouldn’t be even more insufferable than the one he had now.

He rose, stretched and sighed, partly with happiness at the sight of his surroundings and partly from a feeling of resignation at the thought or the task ahead. Sorting out the station’s command system was going to be tricky.

Crossing the meadow, he entered the orchid forest, making for the globe of the station which bulked over the tips of the giant flowers, with the up-pointed cargo ship attached. Once in the forest he passed a group of Erspians who were lounging on the grass, chatting and laughing in silvery, musical voices.

Receiving winsome smiles, he smiled back and went on.

Despite the planetoid’s other attractions, if he were to stay here he would get pretty short of intelligent conversation after a while, he told himself. These people just didn’t have developed minds. There was nothing to make them extend themselves.

A little further, and he come to the clearing where the station rested. He was about to mount the steep stairway to the hatch when he saw a woman standing under one of the nearest orchids. She was beckoning to him.

He peered. Even by Erspian standards, she was stunning. Her skin seemed to glow with health, a pink colour. Her golden hair shone; her mouth was vivacious and red.

He moved a little closer, and saw that there was no pollen on her. She hadn’t had sex today yet. She was, quite obviously, eager for it.

Laedo licked his lips. He ought to be getting on with the job he had set himself. But by the habits of this world, one didn’t refuse… besides, he hadn’t had sex today himself yet.

And she was something he just couldn’t pass up.

As he nodded and came up to her she smiled, her eyes sparkling. She turned and stepped into the jungle.

He had expected her to choose a nearby orchid but no, she went deeper into the forest, stepping soundlessly on the soft pile underfoot. He caught up with her and tried to take her hand. Her skin was cool; but she drew the hand away and kept her distance. Several times he spoke to her but she made no reply, merely gave him a sidelong glance and a heart-stirring smile of promise.

Pleasurably aware of the female motions of her rolling hips as she walked, he allowed her to lead him.

The jungle surrounded them, the variegated shapes of the towering orchids offering endless vistas, the entrancing colours filtering the sunlight and filling the air with their hues.

He was unsure how long they walked; perhaps fifteen minutes. But suddenly she stopped and turned to him.

He was surprised that she still had not selected an orchid. He had thought to himself that perhaps she knew of a special one and that he was in for a rare treat. Instead she reached out her arms for him, and to his puzzlement seemed to want to make love on the ground.

Her lily-cool skin touched him; her arms went around his neck. She sank down, drawing him with her.

Her arms tightened more firmly around his neck. Her legs went around his upper thighs and clamped there.

And then the nightmare unfolded. The girl’s skin was not human skin. Her flesh was not human flesh. It was composed of pulpy vegetable matter, and now it split down the middle, both body and head, to form a pod into which her arms and legs proceeded to press him.

Inside the pod he glimpsed pale finger-like extrusions, limp fronds, lumpy transparent growths which reminded him of jellyfish. He felt a stinging sensation as some of these fingers touched his skin. He yelled in fear and tried to push himself away, but the arms and legs were too strong; they were steadily squeezing him deeper into the pod, which with a creaking sound adjusted and extended itself to accommodate him. With a shock of panic he realized that it meant to close up again with him inside—after which he would no doubt be slowly digested.

He exerted himself to prise apart the lips of the almost imperceptibly closing pod. It was like trying to move an oak tree. Of course! he thought with bitter despair. Its only prey were human beings—naturally it was stronger than they were! His struggles became desperate and violent. He was gasping with fright.

Then he heard a hiss and felt a wave of heated air by his cheek. The head section of the pod blackened, shrivelled and peeled back. Suddenly the whole thing sprang open, pod agape, arms and legs akimbo.

He sprang to his feet, breathing heavily. His rescuer was Histrina. She had crept up unseen, his gun in her hand. A grimace of delight was on her features as, now, she directed the beam of the gun at the pod again, playing it up and down the horrible predator. Blackened and crackling, it squirmed and popped. It banged and hissed as fluid sacs within it exploded. Then it was a stinking mass which did no more than curl and uncurl slightly, giving off wisps of black smoke.

How had she got the gun back? He thought he had it well hidden.

Clever Histrina. She had done it again.

And this time he could not help but be emphatically glad of it. He looked down at his body. It bore a dozen or more red weals where the pod’s stings had touched him, but he could no longer feel them. He brushed his chest and belly with his hand. He was numb.

Much longer, and he would no doubt have been completely paralysed.

So Erspia-2 wasn’t a complete paradise after all, he thought dully. Predatory mimicry. A motile predator plant that used sexual enticement to trap its victims. What an apt variation on the orchid theme! And the pod had looked so perfectly like a woman!

Probably there were man-mimicking plants too. How did the biology of it work, he wondered? Plants generally did not collect enough energy to work a muscular system, but that did not necessarily apply to predator plants, of course. The disguised pod could gain enough energy from a human body to enable it to walk about for a while. Probably there were fat reservoirs where the energy was stored.

Then why hadn’t these fat reserves flamed up in the heat of the gun’s beam? Because, he reasoned, they were nearly exhausted. It had been time for the pod to claim another victim.

But why hadn’t the Erspians warned him and Histrina about these predators? Perhaps they didn’t even know about them. Perhaps they were just too simple-minded to draw the obvious conclusion when people went missing and skeletons were then found in the flower forest… if the pods left skeletons. Like animals that had lived long periods in safe environments, they had had all sense of danger bred out of them.

He wondered if the predators had been created along with the garden planetoid, or if they had evolved subsequently. The process of natural evolution might have been accelerated; a hangover of whatever process had been used to produce the orchids…

Still in a state of semi-shock, he came out of his ponderings to find Histrina now pointing the muzzle of the gun at him. Her eyes gleamed. She was revelling in the power she had over him—a power legitimised by the fact that she had saved his life.

“I ought to do the same to you!” she said shrilly. “You were going to go with her—with that!” She gestured hurriedly with the gun. “You’re unfaithful to me!”

“But, Histrina,” he said wearily. “What about you? You go with… anyone.”

His voice fell to a mumble. What was the use? Wasn’t it always the same? The thief was just as upset and indignant as anyone else if he was robbed. The thug and bully demanded that others respect his person.

Histrina had been brought up to regard sexuality in the strictly possessive sense. She delighted in breaking this moral rule herself, but she jealously demanded its strict observance in him, even though they were not formally married and, therefore, were in a state of damnation by her creed.

“You’ve been doing it with others, too!” she accused. “But I’ve fixed them! Come on, I’ll show you!”

She let her gun hand fall and walked back the way she had come. Passively, Laedo followed.

She didn’t go in the direction of the projector station, but somewhat to the left. She walked unfalteringly.

Histrina had a good sense of direction.

After a few minutes she glanced about her, cast him a mischievous grin, and stopped by the stem of an orchid whose colour was a gorgeous apricot. “I’ll show you later what I did,” she said coyly. “There’s something else I want you to see first. This orchid’s different from the others.”

Its bulb, or bell, was rather like a vast, nearly closed-up, apricot-hued tulip. The entrance was a circular portal through which one could crawl without having to push it apart any further. She went in on her hands and knees. While her fleshy buttocks were still in view her voice floated back to him. “I found it yesterday. Come and see.”

Resignedly he obeyed. Once through the portal he rolled to the floor of the orchid and, as so often in recent days, found himself in an entrancing interior.

The very air glowed a warm apricot. The orchid’s pheromones, however, seemed very weak. He felt little arousal at all. He decided, on reflection, that it was probably him who was at fault. He was still in a state of shock after his experience, or—more likely—the numbing effect of the pod’s stings overrode the orchid’s chemical sexual stimulation.

The floor of the orchid was uneven. From it, on mounds, there rose four fleshy stalks, ranging in height from one foot to two feet.

They were perfect-seeming replicas, if a trifle over-large, of the human phallus.

Histrina was on her knees caressing one of them, rubbing it up and down, holding it against her cheek.

The glans was uncovered, and purple.

“It’s wonderful, ” she announced, leering up at him. “Come and feel.”

He was reluctant, but she reached forward to seize his hand and drew him close, placing his fingers against the staff of the vegetable penis. It was less cool than he had expected. It was not as hot as an erect human penis could be, either. But it was warm. And somehow thrilling.

She let him take his hand away. He retreated and relaxed on his haunches to watch her play with the thing. She had it in both hands and was becoming more engrossed, her lips puckered as if she were murmuring and cooing to it.

Then her mouth went down on the purple knob, taking it all in, her head working up and down while her hands continued to perform similar motions down the shaft. He could hear her breath snorting through her nostrils.

Suddenly she convulsed, as if struck a physical blow. After a moment or two she removed her mouth and turned away from the penis, releasing it. She knelt there, eyes half closed. From her sullen, parted lips a golden syrup dripped. She let it run down her chin and drip to her breasts. Then she gathered it up and transferred it back to her mouth in gobs, rolling it round and round, swallowing it, licking her fingers and finally her smeared lips.

“Oh, it’s delicious,” she sighed.

She hadn’t finished yet. She stood up and straddled the phallus, then lowered herself into a half-squatting position, jockeying herself over the purple glans. At first she seemed to have difficulty getting it in.

“It’s big,” she said breathlessly. “Aaaaaaahh!”

Once the phallus entered, Laedo was fascinated to see how deeply she could take the round purple knob into herself. Her eyes rolled up. Using the strength of her legs, she began to bounce up and down with increasing speed and eagerness. Her arms were waving in the air. She had retrieved the gun from where she had lain it when playing with the phallus and was holding it in her right hand. Laedo was nervous that she might start shooting wildly in her delirium.

“Aaaaahh,” she breathed. “Aaaaaahh, aaaahh, aaaarrghh!”

The orchid chamber shook as if experiencing orgasm. Her chest heaved. Raising herself, she stood with eyes closed, as if reciting a mental prayer. The same golden syrup as before seeped from her and ran down her legs, so copiously that at first he thought she was thoughtlessly urinating.

She opened her eyes, as though suddenly recovering her senses, and looked at him. “There’s one for you too,” she said calmly. “Look.”

Directing his attention to the apricot wall, she showed him a bulge and a cleft in the petal stuff, at about the height of a urinal tube in a men’s room. Prising aside fleshy lips, she revealed an orifice.

“It does things,” she said. She inserted a finger, then all four fingers, and seemed to be experiencing something interesting.

“Go on, you do it,” she suggested, removing her fingers.

He put in his own fingers. The orifice was warm, warmer than the phallus had been, and moist. He felt a sucking, toying motion. Quickly he withdrew his hand.

“Go on, then,” she urged impatiently, seeing him just stand there. “Stick it in!” She grabbed his penis and tried to tug it towards the cleft, but he stepped back and shook his head.

“No, I don’t want to. I don’t feel like it.”

“You’re just no fun at all,” Histrina said disdainfully. She went down on her knees and wedged the gun between her thighs for safekeeping. She used the fingers of one hand to prise apart the lips of the orchid vulva, and the other to guide her breast to the orifice. Her distended nipple went in. She pushed and squirmed and squeezed until, finally, the breast itself was lodged halfway in the organ, the visible part swollen and tight-skinned as she pressed it as hard as she could against the vulva.

Laedo could see the breast surging under the action of the orchid vagina.

Appreciatively Histrina was going, “Mmmmmm, mmmmmm…”

He had seen enough. He crawled out of the bell and sat on the grass, waiting for Histrina to finish.

Listening to her murmurs of pleasure from within, a horrifying thought struck him.

Was what he had seen simply a variant of the orchids’ usual technique for obtaining a pollen carrier—or was it another, slower form of predation? What was the function of the syrup the vegetable penis had ejaculated? Was it addictive?

Or had the orchid ejected fertilised seed into Histrina, who would now become a doomed seed-bed?

He took his head in his hands and groaned.

She dropped lightly and gaily from the bell a few minutes later. Her breath and loins, he noticed, smelled sweet.

“That was great,” she congratulated herself. “Come on, and I’ll show you the other thing. It will be a lesson to you.”

Able to summon no will of his own, he followed.

She took him to a place he recognised. It was a glade in the jungle, not far from the grove where he and Histrina lived, and not far from the projector station either, though that was not visible from here, surrounded as they were by orchids.

The previous day Laedo had visited the glade, and had had sex sessions with several of the women there.

The scene which now met his eyes was less inviting. Half a dozen men, and three women, stood surrounding three female forms which lay limply on the grass. Those standing gave Histrina peculiar, puzzled stares which she ignored. Smiling knowingly, she invited Laedo to take a look at the women on the ground, pointing with her gun.

With a feeling of dread he eased himself through the group. Three girls. Each with a hole burned neatly in her forehead.

They were three out of the four women Laedo had copulated with the day before.

“See?” Histrina said primly. “That’s what’s going to happen every time you’re unfaithful to me. I saw what you were up to here yesterday—you dirty beast! I followed you and hid behind an orchid. I would have done for them there and then, but I didn’t find the gun till this morning. Then, just as I’d finished and was coming back to the station, I saw you going off with that other bitch! Only she wasn’t a bitch, was she?”

she added thoughtfully. “She was some kind of thing.”

In spite of how sick he felt, Laedo was able to ask, “You killed them—right here?”

“Yes. Went up to them, put the gun to their heads, and—poof! Down they went!” She broke into a fit of giggles, demonstrating by poking the gun at the air. “And do you know what? Nobody did a damned thing about it!”

He wondered how she had missed seeing him copulate with the fourth girl. Then he remembered that she had also found the new kind of orchid yesterday. She must have wandered off at some point.

The Erspians were paying no heed to their conversation.

“They’re not going to get up,” a girl said.

“No,” a man said gravely. “They’re finished.”

“Come on, then,” said another, nudging a corpse tentatively with his foot. “We’d better take them where they belong.”

What followed was the nearest thing to organised collective labour Laedo had yet seen on Erspia-2. The men arranged themselves two to a dead girl. One stepped between the corpse’s legs and lifted it with his arms behind the knees. The other lifted it by the arms.

Awkwardly the procession went off through the jungle. The females stayed behind. They lay down, lounged and chewed grass. They showed no sign of distress over the sudden deaths of their friends, though occasionally they glanced worriedly at Histrina

Laedo was curious to see whether any ceremony would attend the disposal of the bodies, or if they would simply be left lying somewhere. Quietly he followed the party. They didn’t go far, only about fifty yards, to halt before a cream-coloured, capsule-shaped orchid bell he had vaguely noticed before. It had no visible mouth and hung close to the ground on its stem. It looked, he thought, almost fungoid.

The leader dropped his burden, still leaving his partner holding the dead girl up by her knees. He cupped his hands to his mouth and let out a high-pitched musical tone which wavered, like the ringing of a bell.

In answer the orchid promptly opened up a gaping maw which ran its entire length. With a shudder Laedo saw that its interior resembled, not a little, the inside of the girl-mimicking pod that had trapped him, except that this was much, much bigger.

Big enough, in fact, not just for three bodies but for twice that number, had they been present.

Wordlessly the work party took hold of the cadavers one by one, by wrists and ankles, swung them once, then tossed them into the bell of the waiting orchid.

That was it. No ceremony, no farewell. The orchid closed again with a crunch, and the men set off back the way they had come, giving Laedo vague but friendly smiles as they passed.

He turned and bumped into Histrina, who without his knowing it had followed him. “Just what is it,” he said in a low, angry tone, “that makes you think you can murder whoever you like whenever you like?”

She stared at him as though he were mad. “What are you worrying about them for? They deserved to die. They were wicked.”

“These people? How can you call them wicked?”

“Because they sin. They do it all the time.” Her eyes widened. “In the orchids. That’s just as bad as killing people, the priest at home says.”

Laedo saw that she believed what she was saying. She was not joking. Before he could frame a reply she continued, speaking waspishly. “It’s terrific here, Laedo. Do you see what these people are like? They’re just like little children—naughty children, but quite helpless. You can do anything you like with them.

We’re going to be their king and queen. They’ll all be our slaves, every one, and do our bidding.”

“I thought you wanted to go on to Harkio,” Laedo reminded her wearily.

“Yes!” she said passionately, and her words came in a rush. “We’ll do everything we want to do here and then we’ll go to Harkio and do everything we want to do there!”

The will-numbing effect of the pod’s poison must have worn off. At any rate Laedo know what he had to do, and he did it quickly. He stepped to Histrina, kneed her in the solar plexus, and jabbed his fist at her jaw as she doubled up and dropped the gun. She reeled and sprawled stunned to the ground.

Wrestling her over his shoulder, he stooped to retrieve the gun, and then he was off through the orchid jungle towards the projector station. She began to stir as he was clambering up the stairway, making him wonder if he had hit her hard enough, but she didn’t struggle.

He withdrew the stairway, closed the hatch, and made for the control room. Dropping her in a corner, he activated the board. The viewscreen lit up, showing the ground hanging aslant the from top of the screen, upended by the angle of the station’s inner floors.

He looked at Histrina, who was conscious now and had sat up. “Just stay there, and don’t move or you’ll get the same again,” he warned her.

She nursed her jaw and stared at him sulkily.

Laedo addressed the hidden controller. “We’ve been trying to report to Klystar,” he said. “But he isn’t on this world any more. He’s left. Hand control of the station over to me.”

Chatter-chatter-chatter. Parchment shuddered from the machine and floated floorward.

Must report to Klystar, the burned-in words read simply. A light came on, showing that the drive unit had been energised.

There was a slight swaying sensation which was probably visual in origin, for the scene on the viewer swivelled to make the ground a vertical wall. The station had righted itself.

The drive acted in a direction parallel to the floor, in the same manner as on a surface or ocean vessel.

The horizon slid away and vanished. In an amazingly short time, the planetoid’s atmosphere thinned and became black space thick with stars.

Erspia-2 dwindled.

Laedo slumped in one of the control board’s two chairs, asking himself if he had really thought this thing through. His main concern had been to get Histrina sway from the planetoid before she started killing again. His hope that he could actually persuade the station to give him control of the drive was, he realized, forlorn.

“Now where are we going?” he wondered out loud.

But this time, the machine didn’t answer.