Pock's World by Dave Duncan

Author:Dave Duncan [Duncan, Dave]
Language: eng
Format: epub, azw3
Publisher: Open Road Media Sci-Fi & Fantasy
Published: 2009-12-31T21:00:00+00:00

Thirdensdy

Ratty wakened unromantically when hot water ran up his nose. He spluttered and choked and wondered where in the world… And which world? He was bathing in wet moss with an entirely gorgeous naked girl who had demonstrated a natural knack for love-making as if she’d been doing it for ten thousand years. He had been deprived of tender caring love for a long time, ever since a one-nighter with Whosit-the-Busty, but Joy had made up for it in spades, doubled and redoubled—greatest lay in the universe already and just started her training! The air was almost chilly on his face and above him spread infinite starry space, not the familiar stars of Ayne, a hundred light years away. And the singing…

Singing? He sat up, which was not as easy as expected in the hot mush. Joy grumbled and made sleepy noises. On the horizon loomed the great dome of Javel in eclipse, black against the stars and yet not black. The Mother glowed with a metallic bluish light, a flickering, ever-changing glow racing hither and thither over the mightiest of worlds. Almost he could see shapes in those lights, faces calling him, writing flashing strange scripts…. How could he hear singing across the vacuum of space? This was a holy place. This was where the Mother spoke to mortals.

He floundered through the moss, staggering and flailing arms to keep his balance in the low gravity, going to see why the voices were calling him, wondering what they were saying. But the singing wasn’t coming from the Mother, but from off to his left, from the tower that Joy had called Quoad, vastly larger than the one in the temple, a gargantuan phallic symbol if ever there was one. Oh Mighty Pillar of Andesite, hear my prayer… Quoad was inhabited, too. Bluish lights ever moving, drifting up the spire, floating down, dancing, writhing, waving, and it was they who were singing to him, calling him. Louder and sweeter soared the songs, odes to the Mother and Quoad. Mighty Quoad. Who was Quoad? Igneous extrusion, phallic symbol, pagan god of virility, did it matter? Dazed and ever-happier, Ratty kept stumbling, ever falling and yet soon moving again, not even remembering getting up, and the lights were brighter, closer, their song soaring to the heavens, to the Mother.

From this new angle, Quoad was crazily tilted out over the edge of the crater. A staircase, a set of crumbling steps, zigzagged up the nearer face. The luminous souls were beckoning him to climb those steps and join them. They would guide him, help him climb, go home to the Mother, and that was Joy’s too-human voice yelling, but raucous, too mortal. Angels’ song was sweeter.

Wham! She cannoned into him and they splashed down together. Water up his nose again. No! No! He struggled. She wrestled and clung, still shouting in his ear.

“What? Let me go, love. They want me. They’re calling… let me go.” He must go, yet he mustn’t hurt her. She was slippery and persistent and amazingly strong, a hundred hands and legs, tree octopus.

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