3 Block

Every time Block shut his eyes, he saw rats.

He didn't like it.

A few serious glasses of Scotch might dim of the rats, but he had to get going. Marise referred him to Dr. Mesne Marsdy in Tri-este, pointing out the place was a hotbed for genetic research and its older relative, eugenics. She then, thankfully, retired to the cockpit, leaving him with his relentless rats.

How to get rid of them?

The only thing he could think was to overwrite the memory with something else. But what with? Whatever he overwrote the rats with would constantly be on his mind because the rats simply wouldn't go away. He idly conjured up a breast, a quite large breast. The rats started gnawing at it. He shook them off and con-jured up a pair of large breasts resting on an incredibly thin stom-ach. As they swam into view, he got a sinking sensation in his stomach as the nipples turned into the red eyes of a rat.

Block took another slug of Scotch. The breasts swam back into view, bigger still, this time with perfect nipples floating above symmetrical hips, the forming stomach a dizzying concave in be-tween. He reached out to cup one and realized the tightness in his stomach was pooling the alcohol with unpleasant consequences.

He took another pull on it in mindless defiance and returned to the, now her, breasts with abandon, determined to make them, if not real, at least palatable.

He let the most fabulous rear he could imagine swim into view. He did it effortlessly, and with the aide of his physical response, he allowed the picture to form into perfection, her rounded buttocks moving from all directions of a universal sphere, melding together into the impossibly small, perfect back, so small, so perfect, it could almost be mistaken for a neck, and below her neck, her breasts swelling out, their gorgeous nipples pushing out against the space they had to occupy.

Her breasts were formed perfectly before he realized her but-tocks were being gnawed away by rats.

He quickly recalled her buttocks in their effortless beauty, fol-lowing them up to the small of her back, watching as her back turned into her neck, and followed her neck down onto the fullness of her breasts.

At each transition, he felt beady red eyes trying to intrude, but with effort, the eyes grew fainter.

He refilled his glass and, cupping his hands around it, looked into the amber liquid at the endless reel he was looping in his mind, with her buttocks forming into breasts and back to buttocks for re-transformation.

By the time the Stratodart began its descent into Trieste, he had her magnificent breasts permanently attached to her full body and his mouth was dry. The rats were gone. All he could think about were those big, marvelous breasts.

"You awake?" Marise called from the opening cockpit door. "We'll be on the ground in a minute or two."

Block looked at his watch. He must've gotten some sleep during the trip. By the time he got into downtown Trieste, the people at BioLife Systems would be up and about. He sat back and watched out the window as Marise brought the Stratodart into a smooth as glass landing.

"How will I catch up with you?" she asked, coming out of the pilot's cabin.

"I don't know where I'm going to be. You're going where? The Amazon. I'm not familiar with what's going on there."

"The guy Jarred that was at Mahmudabad, he's supposed to be honchoing the internationalization of the Amazon Basin. He showed up to visit with The Chairman unexpectedly, probably alerted by the increased security he's carrying with him these days. The Chairman had an uneasy feeling about him and wanted me to go down there and see the lay of the land. I can be back this evening."

"I don't want to wait if I get on the trail of something. I'll put something in your box."

"Okay," Marise answered, pointing at the runway where a sporty Italian car waited with a statuesque brunette leaning against its door.

"Your driver awaits," she said.

Block looked at her, his eyes immediately dropping to her breasts, then retreating in disappointment. He was perplexed at his reaction, then realized his exercise in blockading the rats had worked. He wanted to see what he'd created in reality.

"Thanks," he said to Marise, "see you when." He navigated the steps thinking about the driver. He couldn't recall ever looking at a woman's breasts before he appraised her totality. In fact, he could-n't recall ever focusing on breasts. He thought back over the legion of drivers, pilots, companions he bedded and couldn't remember choosing one based on breasts, let alone on huge breasts.

"Dareze Dillon," she said, holding out her hand to him as he reached the car.

Block took her hand. She used it to walk him around the car, a baby blue two-seater.

"Unless you want to drive?" she asked.

Block followed her lead, walking around the front of the car and plopping into the seat. He found himself looking for her breasts as she eased herself into the driver's seat. He may have cured himself of the vision of the rats by focusing on imaginary breasts, but he must have turned them into an obsession in the process.

"Darn," he muttered.

"What's that?" Dareze asked.

"Must've been thinking out loud," he replied.

"Well, I'll introduce you if you want."

"Introduce me?"

"To my breasts. You've been trying to find them ever since you got off the Stratodart."

Block laughed. "That's what I was cussing myself for. I was do-ing a little mind game on the plane, and it got out of hand."

"There's not much there, but they're yours for the taking," she replied without a hint of guile.

Block looked at the Adriatic shimmering in the breaking light. Marise wouldn't be back until evening and he'd be through in an hour. He could have an entire day on the beach, the sun glinting off Dareze's green eyes. He could close his and see her slender body, nude, the lines cutting the sky with wonder, reaching for them, trying to grasp them with his mind, pulling her close to him, his lips running down her neck, over her quivering breasts, flowing down the ridge of her stomach, down, down, down to where the pleasure would meet his lips . . .

"Well?" she asked.

"BioTech, Life, something about systems?"

"They're in downtown Trieste. BioLife Systems. Run by a guy named Malarky."

"Malarky," Block said incredulously.

"Not malarkey," Dareze replied, "Malarky. Dr. Dr. Hocus Ma-larky."

"Marise said there was someone named Mesne Marsdy," Block said, puzzled.

"Marsdy is somewhat of a shadowy figure. Even when the Iron Curtain was up, he traveled regularly across the Italian boarder to points east. Doctors Malarky operates the laboratory."

"Doctors?" he asked, quizzically.

"Dr. Dr. Hocus Malarky, PhD, PD, DP, DD, DPBA to be exact," Dareze replied.

"Marise said I wanted to deal with Mesne Marsdy."

"I checked ahead. If he's not there now, he's racing back to the office. He should, if not when we get there, be there soon after."

"And these people are engaged in what?" Block asked.

"Basic eugenic research, although after the announcement of the genome project, the attempt to map the human gene, they put their oar into genetics research. You go with the flow if you want to get funding."

"Eugenics. Didn't that have something to do with racial purity?"

"That's what its detractors advertise it as. Actually, it's the science of improving human stock by mating only the most fit specimens."

"How do you determine the most fit?"

"That, of course, is the problem. That's apparently why BioLife converted to genetics. If they can determine what a healthy strand of DNA is, that takes subjective analysis out of the picture. Actu-ally, BioLife is considered a well rounded laboratory with the capa-bility to, in the words of their advertising, make a contribution in a field that's mutually useful and beneficial to mankind."

"In short, eugenics, genetics, or anything else is just a set up to process funding," Block observed. "I don't know what I'm supposed to learn from them."

"A lot of these research laboratories contract to do private re-search. BioLife received a contract to manipulate massive amounts of data that's being produced deep in Romania."

"What type of data?" Block asked.

"Data concerning extremely low electrical flows. At first it looked like efforts to perfect a unique method for retrieving data. As you know, all information processed in a computer is stored at specific locations. Each byte of information requires an individual location. There's been some speculation whether information could be stored and received based on the strength of the current flow. If so, the number of locations could be reduced."

"What you're saying is," Block tried to rephrase, "the same set of bytes could be differentiated by the current level?"

"More or less. The resulting information would be a combination of the bytes retrieved and the level of current retrieving them. In effect, the level of current is changing the nature of the informa-tion even though the bytes retrieved are the same bytes that would produce different information at a different current level. Using variable currents to retrieve information was a speculative system until BioLife got a contract to analyze the effects of commingling extremely small currents. The contract was reported at once, of course, as it's illegal for a public firm to enter into private re-search contracts. At first, no one could figure out what was going on until the computer explanation came up. But if the research is going to be used to develop a new method for retrieving computer data, it didn't connect."

"Why's that?" Block asked.

"No one could figure out how the same bytes at the same loca-tion would be altered by varying currents. Then The Chairman, fooling around with his pet project, the probability program, no-ticed there'd been a patent application for the production of elec-tron clusters transportable by a specific electric current."

"Wait a minute," Block interrupted, "you're saying instead of the electric current altering the information, it picks up electron clusters by matching current level?"

"Precisely. As The Chairman pointed out, it's Lansdowne's Mind Model jumping off the page of theory into reality. The Chairman said the first thing we're going to have to do is come up with a name for a structure that's composed of electrons. It's not on the molecular level, it's not on the atomic level, it's on the level of the smallest particle. We're calling it a microstructure."

"That's amazing. The reality units and memory units Lansdowne hypothesizes are now microstructures. Does he know about this?" Block looked over at Dareze as she eased the sportster through the gathering traffic, avoiding the occasional, seemingly inevitable, accident staffed by stiffly dressed gendarmes playing with brightly painted paddles.

"I think so. But we don't think we're dealing with the same thing here. If whoever is experimenting with the, let's call them micro-currents, is also involved in the development of the microstruc-tures, we haven't found the connection. And, of course, what it all means when put against The Chairman's principle concern, the out-breaks of disunity in pockets of what would ordinarily be harmoni-ous Millenial behavior, is anybody's guess."

Dareze eased back into her lane, gunned the engine to catch up with traffic, then took a sharp left, downshifting on the hill, angling right with the road and spurting to a stop in front of a facade dating back a century, possibly more.

"This is it. Not too shabby, eh?" she said.

"You want to come in with me?" Block asked.

"Might as well, I'm here for the duration, or at least until Ma-rise catches up with you." She got out her side. Block, a little big-ger, struggled to get out because the road grade tilted the car against him. Dareze had him in hand as he pushed to right himself, helping him get out.

"Sure you don't want to have a little interlude?" she asked as she stopped his forward motion with her body.

Block mentally shook his head. Her slender frame supported a rear that hours before would've sent him rushing to a secluded beach, but now only melded into mental bulbous breasts with pro-truding nipples absent in reality.

"Maybe later," he muttered. "Let's get on with this business."

"I could get implants while you're talking with the good Doc-tors," she said, laughing.

"Now your making fun of me," he replied, barely catching her sarcasm.

"But that's what I want to do. Maybe I can get a girlfriend, I do have girlfriends, you know, and some of them are really huge."

Block was taking the oversized doorknocker in his hand when the door suddenly opened. A guy with a head big enough to be a media commentator stood in front of him, a long white jacket flowing down to his calves, dark pants bottomed by scuffed brown shoes sticking out below.

"Dr. Dr. Hocus Malarky, Ph d, PD, DP, DD, DPBA at your serv-ice," he said, holding out his hand while squinting at a torn piece of crumpled paper through oversized dark rimmed glasses. "Mesne leaves me a note you're here for the grand tour, funding, no. Ex-cellent. Mesne is racing to attend."

He shook Block's hand briefly but with animation, ignoring Dareze who dropped her hand after he took Block by the elbow and dragged him into the entrance way.

Dareze followed behind.

"What shall we start with, we've so many good things going on here. Let me show you our brain map." He pulled Block through large double doors into what was probably a ballroom in the days Trieste was the crossroads for the more sinister elements of East and West. The walls of the room looked like they'd been covered in burlap. Dareze was able to scoot through the door before Malarky closed it behind Block. She was invisible to him.

"You'll see the brain at work," he said, taking out an electronic control and pushing a button. The lights went out. "Name a word," he said, his voice coming out of the darkness.

"Bird," Dareze said.

Nothing happened.

"Bird," Block repeated.

"Ah, bird," Malarky said, "coming right up."

After a moment, a patch of light appeared on one of the walls.

Block looked closely and realized the patch of light was really a pattern of lights, perhaps a hundred, covering a square foot of the wall. He realized the room wasn't covered in burlap, but rather with millions of tiny lights. Malarky had created a particular pat-tern of lights to represent the word "bird."

"That's bird," Malarky said, " let's add fly, not the insect, the motion."

A moment later another pattern of lights emerged on another wall.

"We've a bird, a thing, and fly, which is something that's done, an act. The bird exists in space and the act of flying exists in both space and time. Now we have to connect the two so we can see the relationship between the bird and what the bird can do."

A thin line of lights started forming between the light sets rep-resenting the bird and the act of flying.

"See? When we think of a bird, we associate it with flying. Let's add the act of swimming."

Seconds later another patch of light appeared on another wall.

They waited.

"No connecting lines," Malarky noted, "so we know birds don't swim. Isn't that exciting? What we see here is the inside of the brain showing how it actually works. Each of the points of light rep-resents a neuron. The neurons are the cells of the brain. They're interconnected by billions of connections so they can communicate with each other."

"Neurons are cells?" Dareze asked.

"So when they're connected with one another as a result of some sort of stimuli representing what the brain receives from the outside world, they become a representation of that stimuli."

"How do you class neurons cells?" Block asked.

"Why, that's a given. We take a piece of brain, look at it in the microscope, and there they are, brain cells. We can even draw pictures of them and photograph them. How could anyone question whether the brain has cells. Everything is made up of cells."

"I thought cells divided," Block said. "Do your brain cells di-vide?"

"Of course not. That's the special thing about the brain. Its cells don't reproduce, so if you abuse your brain, your cells will die and you'll become an idiot."

"That means they're different from an ordinary cell, doesn't it?" Block asked.

"Of course they are," Malarky replied. "They're brain cells. We take what we see and then see how they behave. Cells are cells, whether they divide or not," Malarky replied. "And instead of di-viding, they send electrical signals to each other so they form a picture of reality."

"The neurons are what form a picture of reality?" Block asked.

Malarky appeared pleased in the dim points of light, a man who'd finally gotten though to a child. "You can see what we mean if you consider the brain a giant electronic scoreboard with the lights all interconnected. Something happens, electricity courses through the board, and the lights light up. They could light up as a bird, or as a bird flying."

"How would they light up as the act of flying?" Dareze asked.

"The lights on the scoreboard represent a pattern we can see as a bird. In our mind, the bird sets off electrical flows in our mind. These flows move through our neurons. As they do, they establish permanent connections, producing memory. We've proven cells can remember, so it's obvious they can remember the cells touched from the stimuli of the bird. The next time we see a bird, the same cells activate just like they do over there on the wall. As a result, we 'see' the bird."

"How does the next guy react to the bird?" Block asked Ma-larky. "Does his brain cells all of a sudden light up the same way the first person's brain cells did."

"Oh, no, no, obviously not. There are millions of brain cells, bil-lions, trillions, depending on the size of the brain, and it'd be too much to assume they'd all hook up together in the same way in re-sponse to external stimuli. No. I see a bird and it creates the con-nections in my neurons that'll forever after represent a bird to me. You do the same thing. Then, when we get together and understand what we're talking about when we talk about a bird, we can forever after know what we're referring to. All language requires agree-ment before there can be understanding, but the neuronic pattern established by each individual by a bird is different."

"So, how," Block gestured at the light pattern "did you derive that particular light pattern to represent a bird?"

"Just like the brain, it's random. We don't conduct any experi-ment here that's not in strict conformity with accepted scientific protocol. The brain cells respond to novel stimuli in a random fash-ion. We spent a long time programming the computer so it could come up with strictly random assignments for the lights we wanted to use to represent reality. For instance, any combination of lights could be used if it didn't exceed a square meter in area or twenty percent of the lights in the square meter. And, to anticipate your question, yes, meters can overlap in area. That was one of our big-gest insights in understanding how the brain works. Let me demon-strate. You have the picture of the bird over there. Now I'm going to turn it off and put on a picture bird feces."

The lights went off representing the bird and another set went on. Block couldn't tell the difference.

"Now, we're going to represent the concept of bird feces," Ma-larky continued.

Several additional lights blinked on.

"The interesting point here," Malarky said, "is the brain cells can participate can participate in representing more than one word." He toggled the switch back and forth between bird and feces. "92.3% of the lights participate in both words, so when we finally put the whole concept up, we've produce bird crap with a great deal of economy. Economy is at the basis of the operation of the brain, there's no question about it. We can see it right here in front of our eyes.

"We have the computer programmed with over fifty thousand words. In fact, we're running out of space for them, so we're thinking of enlarging the room to make it represent the brain more accurately. Let me show you how the mind thinks." Malarky pushed another button and all of a sudden, the room was dancing in light, with light rippling in waves from one side to the other, curtains of light opening and closing, light tides ebbing and flowing over the ceiling and walls.

"Fascinating," Dareze murmured.

"Isn't it?" Malarky replied. "We take pains to duplicate nature to the extent possible."

"I wonder what it's thinking?" Dareze asked.

"For without nature to work with, we couldn't work to under-stand the secrets of the universe," Malarky continued, having ac-knowledging only Dareze's first comment.

"I suppose you've taken into account Lansdowne's Model of the Mind when you programmed the computer on this," Block com-mented.

"Who's Lansdowne?" Malarky asked suspiciously. "I don't know anybody in our group named Lansdowne."

"He's not in your group," Block replied. "He works independ-ently."

"Lansdowne. Lansdowne. You don't mean that crackpot up in Can-ada, hides out in Gaspé?" Malarky cried. "He should have some-body do research on his mind instead of claiming to do research on the mind. The man's crazy, stark raving mad. That idiot claims neurons are used as storage areas for something he calls memory units. The memory units are formed as a result of the mind recon-structing reality, but there's no need for a bunch of cells to create a memory unit because each cell has a memory of the network it's called to participate in. It's neural networks that provide the pic-ture of reality. You can actually see the neural nets all over the wall here."

The overhead lights came on, drowning out the rhythmic pulsing of the lights.

"Mesne said I was to take care of you until he got here," Ma-larky snarled, "but he didn't say anything about taking care of idi-ots. Let's see, what are you here for? Oh yes, funding. You can't be idiots if you have funding." He moderated his tone. "Let me show you how the neuron works so you can see plain as day this guy Lansdowne has no basis in reality for his fantasies."

Dareze gasped as a soft, pulsating light enveloped them like a womb as a result of Malarky's stroking the electronic control.

"This," he said, waving his arm in a wide gesture, "Is a neu-ron."

Block could make out the cell core of the holographic represen-tation of which they were the center. Threads of light stretched out in all directions from the core, the threads branching into smaller threads. Spots of light were randomly moving along the light paths, entering the core and moving out over other paths.

"In front of us," Malarky said, retuning to his instructive tone, "we have the paths that lead to Mr. Dendrite. You can see from the moving lights coming in, all impulses enter the neuron through the dendrites. Each neuron has thousands of them, as you can plainly see. Mr. Dendrite shakes hands with Mr. Axon. As they come in one side, they enter the center of the neuron and take off up another path."

Malarky led them over to the other side where the spots of light were moving away from the center on the branching paths of light.

"Here the neuron's axons pass the impulses over to the den-drites of the next cell. You can see with thousands of inputs and thousands of outputs, each connecting with the thousands of inputs and outputs of other neurons, the number of connections is ele-gantly unlimited. See how the concept produces indescribably deli-cious results? It'll take years to develop computers capable of factoring all the possible connections for just a thousand cells. This is truly the work of a lifetime, maybe two."

Malarky led them back to the center of the cell where the core was pulsating smoothly with spots of light as the impulses entered and left.

"As the inputs come in, they either are stimulative or inhibi-tive, with the inhibitive canceling the stimulative. However, if in response to external stimulation, the stimulative input exceeds the inhibitive input, the cell lights up and fires into the next cell, which is overcome by the stimulative input, and it too lights up. The brain, of course, works by one simple rule: Once two cells light up together, they create the memory we recognize as recognition. Science is full of these insights. We work and work and work, and the answer, when it's presented to us, is so simple, it's breath-taking in its elegance. We saw that elegance in the combination of bird and crap, and here we see it for real, up close and operating."

"So you're saying the brain has no storehouse of memory," Block noted.

"That old wives tale has long since been disproved. The neurons merely respond to electrical stimuli, lighting up at random, and once lit, chemically recognize that pattern. If you view the Mona Lisa for the first time, your neurons light up in a random pattern. When you see it again, the neurons light up the same way making us the sentient creatures we are."

"So there's no memory?" Block asked, not knowing what else to say.

"Memories are stored as patterns of newly connected neurons. As knowledge is acquired, old patterns reform into new patterns so the reality we create is constantly changing. These patterns of neu-ronic connections are actually symbols standing for the ideas and objects making up our individual worlds. Neuron programming is the basic physical process behind the acquisition of all knowledge. We don't recall, so there's no memory. The billions of neurons regu-larly reconfigure themselves. There's no index giving the page number of items in a non-existent storehouse of memory."

"How, then, does the brain know what cells it's fired?" Block asked.

"What do you mean?"

"You've explained how the brain might recognize something it'd seen before, but you haven't explained how the brain knows what it's thinking. You're sitting here in the middle of the neuron telling me how it works. What's sitting in the middle of your neurons tell-ing you what you're thinking?"

"What do you mean?" Malarky repeated, puzzled.

"The universe is an external reconstruction your neurons some-how light up in a pattern so, once you shut your eyes, the neurons can relight so you can examine it. Where is the function of the sys-tem allowing you to recognize which neurons are used to go into making up the universe you continue to see?"

"What do you mean?" Malarky sounded like a recording.

"The level of current that moves through the neurons is con-stantly changing, isn't it?"

"Certainly," Malarky said, changing the recording. "That can be measured any time."

"How can the simulators and inhibitors come up with the same firing sequences in order to provide recognizable patterns in an en-vironment where the strength of the electrical flows is constantly changing?"

"Oh. I never thought to connect the varying flows with the firing sequence. That's not in the computer model."

"So the computer model is wrong?"

"No. You can see any variance in the current flows coursing through the brain doesn't affect the firing pattern."

Malarky manipulated the controls. The holographic neuron faded and a pattern reemerged on the far wall.

"See, the bird crap is still there. It hasn't been affected by the current flows establishing the neuron. That's Newtonian proof."

"What the heck is Newtonian proof?" Block asked.

"The pendulum!"

"What about the pendulum?"

"A swinging pendulum once put into motion will continue to swing but for friction and air pressure," Malarky replied.

"That's not the case," Block laughed. "No pendulum's ever swung forever."

"Nor will it, that would violate the second law of thermody-namics, that everything runs down in the end."

"Then a pendulum won't swing forever?" Block asked.

"Sure it will. Newton proved that with the moon."

"He did?"

"There's no friction involved in the movement of the moon, is there? And there's certainly no air in space. And you can't deny that the moon has been moving for billions of years."

"I was taught the moon was falling." Dareze said, "and as it falls, it gains momentum, and the increasing momentum causes it to stay in orbit."

Malarky blinked. "Hello," he said, holding his hand out. "I'm Dr. Dr. Hocus Malarky, PhD, PD, DP, DD, DPBA. I don't recall meeting you. That's the most intriguing thought I've ever encountered, my dear."

"Well, I don't know if it's a thought or not, its just what my second grade teacher said."

"Commendable. Commendable. But, in any event, I don't think it'll replace the accepted understanding for the movement of the moon, that it moves because of momentum obtained from the his-toric mass of swirling gas, and it'll continue to move for the same reason. Things like momentum lack the simplicity at the basis of the elegance we judge scientific thought by. We can't fudge up our brains in our search for scientific truth.

"But you're quite right in bringing up alternate approaches to the great search. We can slice up a brain, take a cross section of it, put it under a highly sophisticated microscope, and actually see the neurons. We can see the dendrites and the axons. We can hook up an ohmmeter and measure the current flows. So it's like the moon, you can't deny what exists. Every time we measure the moon, its still there. And neurons haven't evolved since we first saw them in our microscopes. However, we have a sister laboratory right here at BioLife that's probing the creation of the mind from the silicon and silver connections that make up our sophisticated computers, although if you ask me, what did you say your name was, Dareze, a beautiful name, if you ask me, my dear, trying to make a mind out of metal is like trying to fuck without a fantasy. It leads to nothing but frustration. Do you ever fantasize? I do it as an escape from the reality of my work."

Malarky led them out the door and down a long corridor. "We're passing through a number of different buildings. Everything here has been remodeled to accommodate the scientific advances we're producing. Scientific advancement is extremely expensive. The equipment necessary to test hypothesis generally has to be fabri-cated, so there are never any economies of scale. And, of course, the fabrication has to be undertaken only by the most intelligent, not just anyone, because the intelligent are the only people who can understand the subtleties of scientific thought. And, of course, the equipment must be housed in a manner that doesn't detract from the scientific validity of our scientific endeavors, so you can see our enterprise is one of the utmost importance to mankind. Here we are."

Malarky opened a door to a room the same size as the neural network room. "We play no favorites here. No one claims to have the ultimate truth. Open inquiry is at the basis of the scientific dis-cipline."

He gestured around the room. The computer project was im-pressive, but not in the way the neural net project was. The neural net project was light and movement as opposed to the coldly calcu-lated orderliness here.

Dareze thought they had walked into the middle of a mechanical brain, with walkways wending their way between quietly humming towers, graceful oblong cases, storage cabinets with twinkling lights, their color ambiguous behind smoked glass fronts, cooling pipes snaking around, between and under the various locations, emerging here from the floor and disappearing there to deposit their accumulated heat.

Along the walls, in three tiers, were rows of monitors where immaculately dressed technicians probed the mysteries of the con-nections between and among the processors, hoping against hope for a spark of human intelligence to emerge from the machines and pre-sent them with the number that would explain in a single significant thrust the meaning of all the formulae of the universe, the TOE of life, the Theory of Everything.

In concession to the light show next door, the multiple input data flows into each monitor were represented by streaks of light arcing up through a maze of fiber optic channels connecting the proces-sors.

"It's just like thought," Malarky said, pointing to the lightening streaks of light flowing back and forth throughout the room, "but just between you and me, these nitwits will never succeed in any-thing. We could use the money better in our neural net model. I mean, can you imagine what it'd be like if we'd come up with the idea of using fiber optics. Fiber optics could put a whole new slant on the way we understand the brain, but these guys are using it to try to create a computer that thinks.

"When we argue it can't be done, they say as long as we don't understand how the brain understands, we can't argue computers aren't like the brain, which is ridiculous because, as we've seen, we understand how the brain understands, so their whole premise isn't understandable. Every time we make the point we need the funding more than they do, they say, what do you mean. I mean, can you believe that? They'll never be able to eke intelligence out of a computer no matter how they arrange their processors."

He moved closer to Dareze. "You have to admit, this intimate glimpse of the thought process is stimulating," he said in a husky voice.

"Weren't we supposed to see a Mesne Marsdy?" Dareze coun-tered, moving down the walkway.

"He should be here. You still haven't seen the core of the opera-tion, the brain center that makes all this possible. In fact, Mesne usually shows that. I don't think I should take you any further. Mesne usually goes through the formality of checking your credit." He hesitated. "Oh well."

They moved across the huge room on the catwalk. Malarky keyed the door they came to. They entered a small room with a shelf running across one side. A keypad was sitting alone on the shelf.

"Everything from here on in is top secret, so we need to see the color of your money."

Block looked at Dareze, who was in the process of taking out a pen and pad. She wrote 55001 and showed it to Block. Block went over to the keypad, punched his own identification number in and followed it with the project account number Dareze gave him.

"Great," Malarky said as the keypad's window flashed green and the door opened onto a cavernous room, a scene of mayhem when compared to the clean orderliness of the project room.

"This is the Hocus Hypothesis room," he said proudly, as they moved into the disorder. "It's here that all the sensitive work is done."

"What work is that?" Block asked.

"It's here that we quantify concepts."

"How in the world do you quantify concepts?" Block asked. "More to the point, why would you want to? Concepts are what we use to understand the world. If you quantify them, turn them into so many numbers, they won't be concepts any more, they'll be dis-tortions of reality."

"Ah ha, brilliant," Malarky said, rubbing his hands together. "Just brilliant. We're fortunate to operate on the Galilean fallacy."

"Galilean? You mean Galileo?"

"The master himself. No one would believe the Copernican proposition the Earth wasn't the center of the universe, but instead travels around the sun, until Galileo provided visual proof of ob-jects traveling around a central point when he showed off the moons of Jupiter in his new telescope. Jupiter and its moons were like a miniature solar system, and viewing it finally made the con-cept of the solar system a reality. Once Galileo demonstrated on a physical basis what up to then had just been a concept, he became infallible. Anything he said became the gospel truth. One thing he said, fortunately, was you could prove hypotheses."

"How can you prove hypotheses?" Block asked.

"If the hypothesis predicts the existence of a fact, and you find the fact, you've proven the hypothesis."

"The heck you say," Block replied. "You can't prove a concept by the existence of an additional fact it explains. Hypotheses are concepts used to explain facts. If you have three facts giving rise to a hypothesis and the hypothesis suggests the existence of an ad-ditional fact, finding that fact doesn't prove the hypothesis, it just means you now have a concept that explains four facts instead of three. Hypotheses, concepts, by their very nature, aren't prov-able."

"But that's the beauty of the Galilean Fallacy. He gave us a way to prove hypotheses even though hypotheses aren't provable."

"What do you mean?" Block asked, mocking Malarky's favorite question.

"Facts exist," Malarky replied. "Hypotheses are concepts that explain facts. They provide the understanding these idiots are try-ing to coax out of their mind computer project, the understanding that's apparent when the lights for bird combine with the lights for crap in our neural net. However, if we have a procedure for prov-ing hypotheses to be facts, we can turn our fantasies into fact."

He winked at Dareze.

"What's the purpose of turning fantasies into fact?" Block asked. "If our purpose is to understand physical phenomena and come up with a consistent explanation for physical reality, why would we want to substitute fantasy for fact?"

"Because we'll never know what the forces at the basis of the universe are. Your guess is as good as mine. Therefore, if I want mine to prevail, I have to come up with a procedure that gives it validity."

"But what about progress?" Block asked. "What about technol-ogy?"

"We've done alright so far," Malarky replied.

"Technology, trial and error, has done pretty well. It has noth-ing to do with theory."

"Precisely. You're brilliant. Theory gets us nowhere, so my theory is just as good as yours and therefore my theory is the one that's going to prevail because I restrict myself to the Galilean Fallacy."

"Well, if that's what you say, but it seems to me your hypothe-ses are going to be disproven sooner or latter."

"Ah ha," Malarky exclaimed. "You put your finger on it again. Obviously, the only validity of the Galilean methodology, the scien-tific method if you will, is its ability to disprove facts, and to some extent disprove hypotheses. If you understand that, you understand the basis of Hocus Hypotheses that underlies all modern science. You don't want to generate provable hypotheses." He waived his arm around the room. "These guys are lucky to come up with any hypothesis. But the provable hypotheses are soon disproven. So the gold ring goes to the person who can think up the plausible hypothe-sis that defies disproof."

"You're saying if you come up with a hypothesis that's so far out, so wild, so far from reality, there's no way in the world to disprove it, you have a valid hypothesis?" Block asked incredu-lously.

"No. You don't have a valid hypothesis yet. But you're on your way. How many people remember the name of the inventor of the wheel? Someone came up with the idea a wheel could be used to roll weights. What did he do. Or . . ." he smiled at Dareze, "she, as the case may be. She tested it. It worked. It was a provable hypothesis. If it hadn't rolled, the hypothesis would've been disproven. Who-ever came up with the hypothesis, their name is lost in the mists of time, that horrible place where none of us wants to be. But New-ton's fantasy, there's a whole different ballgame. He came up with what's probably a sillier hypothesis than the Ptolemaic Earth as the center of the universe, but it was a hypothesis that's totally non-disprovable.

"For hundreds of years, people fell out of bed and said, 'Duh, I fell out of bed because it's a property of matter that makes me fall.' That was dumber than getting up in the morning, watching the sun come up and saying the sun is moving around the Earth. At least the sun looks like it's moving around the Earth.

"There was no excuse for dismissing the fact that objects fall as the result of a property of the object doing the falling. We all know ascribing action to inanimate objects is the dead science of alchemy, the resort to the oracles of old ghosts, spirits, the neth-erworld. That stuff doesn't sell well today. Why? Because it's not testable! But the gravity as a property of matter is totally nondis-provable. It still is today."

"So what we need is a nonprovable hypothesis that's testable." Block snorted.

"Bull's eye," Malarky laughed. "If you don't have a testable hy-pothesis, you don't have anything to test. If you don't have anything to test, you can't devise an experiment to test it. If you can't per-form an experiment to test it, then you don't have any basis for getting funding."

Malarky began to walk them through the cavernous room. They passed people throwing paper airplanes, playing basketball with their trashcans, chatting, making coffee, eating, shooting the bull, sleeping.

"This is our creative group. It's their job to come up with the nondisprovable hypotheses."

They walked into an area filled with machines of every type and description, calibrators, scales, meters of every size and shape. The people were dressed in neat white coats and walking around in a very business-like manner.

"In this area, our technicians think up ways to test the nondis-provable hypotheses."

They passed into another section where acres of people were bent over desks, writing, sharpening pencils, their green eyeshades protecting their eyes from the bright florescent lights overhead.

"This is our costing group." He involuntarily slowed as he moved through the sterile atmosphere, winking at Dareze. "I find this the most stimulating place of all. Once a nondisprovable hypothesis has been thought up, and the technicians have found a way to test it, then it's evaluated on how much it'll cost to keep it disproven. There's little sense in wasting a really blockbuster nondisprovable hypothesis on penny ante proofs.

"The more nondisprovable the hypothesis, the greater the ex-penditure of resources it deserves to attempt to prove it. That's because the chance of a nondisprovable hypothesis being accepted as fact is proportional to the amount of resources expended on the attempt to discover the predicted fact. The predicted fact, of course, is always going to be discovered. After all, if you're spending an identifiable percentage of the gross national product attempting to find a predicted fact, who's going to say it wasn't found. For that matter, who's going to be qualified to say it wasn't found when the search is so sophisticated, the only people qualified to do the research are the people involved in proving the predictive fact.

"Beautiful, isn't it? Instead of finding the predictive fact, we find a fact that's just off enough to generate a new nondisprovable hypothesis that starts the process all over again. With any luck, we can support our grandchildren's grandchildren on one well-thought-out nondisprovable hypothesis. All relevant criteria must balance. How capable is it of never being disproven? How expensive can the experiments used to test the hypothesis be made? Can the estima-tors come up with figures capable of supporting whole populations of people in the style to which it's so easy to become accustomed?"

"I don't suppose you plan to send up any rockets, or build a space station," Block commented wryly.

"Good heavens, no, perish the thought. Those are technological advances that provide a substantial return that is uncontrollable. But we've been kicking around the idea of a 44,000-mile space ele-vator."

"Why would anybody give you funding?" Block asked.

"It's the honor of the thing, Malarky replied. " Ah. Here we come to the fund-raising staff."

They entered what looked like the lobby of a gigantic hotel. If the doors that lined the balconies of the tiers surrounding the lobby were any indication, it was just that. The room was filled with a panoply of people, groupings here of beautiful girls in evening attire chatting over drinks with men in business suits, bars scattered around, restaurants, garden areas, conversation pits, swimming pools, electric carts moving silently among the animated people. Before he knew it, Block had a girl on either arm. Malarky shooed off two boys making a beeline for Dareze, and Dareze was in turn shooing off Malarky. Block dragged his eyes off the ample breasts within snuggling range of his nose to see her lean over, cup her hand on Malarky's ear, and, eyes dancing at Block, say something that first caused Malarky to turn red, then caused him to walk quickly toward a sign of a figure with a bulge in his back pocket, apparently BioLife's sign for the men's room.

Block turned his attention back to the ample breasts, felt the urge to explore what they looked like without the soft silk covering their prominent nipples, quelled the urge, and felt a little sheepish as Dareze came over.

"You really have a one track mind when it comes to women's chests, don't you?"

Block disengaged from the two women and took Dareze by the arm, moving over to one of the many bars around them.

"To tell the truth," he replied, "I've been conducting an ex-periment."

"Oh? With a nondisprovable testable hypothesis with a predic-tive fact?" She looked in the direction of his crotch. "What equip-ment are you planning to use? White wine, please," she said, turn-ing to the bartender.

Block ordered a Scotch. "Not quite. I try to understand the uni-verse rather than abdicating the understanding to the universe."

"What do you mean?" Dareze replied, mocking Malarky.

Block laughed. "That was interesting, really. What in the world did you say to Malarky to turn him into such a puddle?"

"I told him how long and slender my clit is . . ."

"How long your what . . ."

"And where I was going to stick it if he didn't keep his mind off me."

It was Block's turn to puddle and he took a sip of his drink to cover his embarrassment, although he couldn't see why he was em-barrassed. Why would talking about a women's clit embarrass him? He'd never been one for comparing men's appendages. The idea of comparing women's parts never entered his mind until his recent breast fetish. Did women compare their clits?

"That must've embarrassed him," Block said over the rim of his glass.

"You too, I see," Dareze replied, her eyes twinkling. "Men's dicks are all over the map. You don't think women have different pussies?"

"Sure they do, I just never thought of women in terms of being hung."

"Touché," she said, lifting her glass and touching the tip of his. "It put a stop to the good Doctors' foolishness. He's a strange mix-ture."

"Conscious good intentions," Block replied, "and unconscious bad ones. It defines us all. I certainly don't think anyone who puts down Lansdowne's Mind Model has good intentions, but you have to credit his honesty with his testable hypothesis."

"It seems impossible," Dareze said speculatively, "to come up with a way of testing something we're just now starting to refer to as microcurrents and microstructures."

"They're stable structures no matter how small they are," Block replied. "Whatever's holding the structures into a state of stable equilibrium would resist the smallest force possible. But your right, I doubt there's a way to test the hypothesis that the mind actually exists."

They both sensed a presence behind them and turned simultane-ously to see a man, perhaps in his mid-fifties, though Block had the impression he might be quite a bit older. He was casually dressed, dark from pigment rather than sun, had an easy smile, and winked at Dareze as she turned to face him.

"Ronald here looks like he's still a virgin when it comes to you," he said to Dareze. "Don't look so startled, Ronald, I know you. I met you with your father when you were two years old." He held out his hand. "Mesne Marsdy." He turned to Dareze. "I've been looking for-ward to meeting you, Ms. Dillon, may I call you Dareze?"

"Anytime you want," Dareze replied.

"I'll take that as an invitation," Mesne said, taking the drink the hostess had already prepared for him. "Sorry I'm late, but there's only one person who could've caused me to be late."

"The Chairman is around here?" Block asked.

"He was down in Chioggia."

"As in if Venice sinks, there's always Chioggia?" Dareze asked. "What's he doing there?"

"Looking for you, I suspect. After all, he's partial to drop-dead beautiful women. When I told him I was meeting with Ronald on Ma-rise's request, he discovered you were going to pick him up, pro-nounced one of his trademarked darn its, took out a notebook, crossed something off, and changed the discussion to the possibility of developing a multicurrent computer."

"Multicurrent apparently means using currents to store and re-trieve information," Block added.

"So I gather," Mesne said. "I gather you're chasing something similar."

"I understand you're contracted to process research results from a lab set up in, let me see, Tirgo Ocna I think it was, in Roma-nia, on the eastern side of the Carpathian Chain."

"It's a minor part of our operations, but, yes, we're doing that," Mesne replied.

"I hope," Block observed, "it's more constructive than the ac-tivities I've seen so far.

Mesne laughed. "Appearances can be deceptive. We operate on a budget well in excess of three billion dollars and you can hide a lot of sin in three billion dollars. By the way, Drs. Malarky didn't un-derstand that carding you was unnecessary. My bad. When you get a chance to visit with The Chairman, no matter how long you've known him, you don't pass it up. But down to business. What do you want to know about this research outfit in Romania?"

"I need the routing information to access their account."

"Let's go. Bring your drinks." He put his arm around Dareze's waist. "How long are you going to be with Ronald here?" he asked.

"I don't know," Dareze replied, moving smoothly with his gait.

"Even though I worked with your father, Ronald, I'm sure he never mentioned me given our situations. But we did engage in sev-eral projects together. He'd be proud to see his son following in his footsteps, although yours seem to be a little larger than most."

They walked by the restroom where Malarky was still hiding behind a garden area into a suite of plush offices.

"Trieste was basically the command post for the war in Eastern Europe in the forties," Mesne noted as they passed through the outer offices. "We accumulated most of this space taking over vari-ous quarters and offices, receiving others as donations, and pur-chasing still others as they came on the market. Everything has been interconnected and integrated into BioLife's purposes while maintaining externally the architectural integrity of the whole, very important."

They entered a lavish, but utilic, office with a large oak desk framed by a series of computer screens and other electronic gear.

"Open," Mesne said, and a portion of the top of the desk slid open revealing a keyboard. He input a request and stood back so Block could watch the screen. "You mind if I peek?" he asked.

"Three minds are better than one," Block replied, highlighting the routing code of the financial transfer now on the screen. "PI International, Tirgo Ocna, Romania. Sounds harmless. Here we go." The account came up on the screen. Mesne in the meantime turned on a large screen on the side of the room. As the PI International account sprang into view on the desktop monitor, a large duplicate of it covered one wall of the room.

Block punched in numbers from the account. Mesne and Dareze watched in fascination. Very few people had the ability to pass through security at the levels Block was using.

"What are you accessing now?" Dareze asked.

"The signatories on the account."

The screen filled with unreadable rectangles. Block highlighted the first row, set the viewing time at five seconds, and punched display. The screen immediately filled with account applications.

"Lisp sound familiar to anyone?" Block asked, directing atten-tion to the signatories listed on the account, "Bottom?" and after a negative mummer, "Flimp?"

No one recognized the names.

"Let's dig a little deeper," Block said. The computer translated the routing information into the names.

"They make an awful lot of open transactions," Dareze com-mented.

"That's like making transfers to cash," Mesne noted. "Can't trace cash."

"Wait a second," Block said. He froze the frame. "Look closely. Now that you brought it up, Dareze, that isn't PI, it's PE."

Block went back and looked at all the transactions they thought were open. The routing numbers varied by one digit in the middle of the number. All the open transactions were from PI to PE.

"It looks like they did it on purpose," Mesne observed.

"Who would try to do something like that on purpose?" Block asked. "What would be gained?"

"We didn't notice it, for one, even when we had your security clearance level," Dareze observed.

"What do you have now that you've noticed it?" Mesne asked.

"Let's look at the account papers for PE," Block said, typing in more numbers.

"I know him," Mesne cried when the signatories appeared. "He used to be a trade representative for the Eastern Block Nations be-fore there was any trade with them."

Block froze the frame and enlarged the signature. All he could make out were a series of vertical scrawls.

"That doesn't say diddly squat to me," he commented.

"Gleetch. See." Mesne went over to the wall and started tracing the letters. "'G here, with the L a part of the G's hook, the double E and . . ."

Block saw the tch swim into view as soon as the Glee appeared in response to Mesne's prompting.

"Where do we go from PE and Gleetch?" Dareze asked.

"Simple triangulation," Block replied. "We trace PE and Gleetch until we get something that matches both. Let's try an officers and directors database and see what we come up with."

Block began opening windows on the screen, zipping down lists, opening other windows until he found the corporate filing papers for PE. A corporate fact sheet appeared.

"Doesn't tell us much more than we already know," Mesne com-mented.

"Sure it does," Block said. The screen contained a long list of links to determine if PE was in specific databases. He linked to fines. The screen filled with four columns of entries for $1,000 next to a row of consecutive dates. "They're behind in their filing requirements. They're drawing a thousand dollar per day penalty for failure to update their information."

He clicked back onto the corporate fact sheet. "It shows a guy named Philbrook as founder, president and sole owner. Why would a guy running a laboratory in Romania appear on a corporation owned by a guy named Philbrook who isn't bothering to file corporate up-dates?"

"Philbrook has a familiar ring to it," Mesne said. "The Chair-man used it. He said the ability to store information on a multicur-rent basis might be found in the Philbrook Effect."

"PE!" Dareze exclaimed. "The Philbrook Effect."

"I guess we have to go to Tirgo Ocna," Block replied. "Do we have anything close we can use as a center of operations?"

"The Chairman has an agent in Tirgo Mures,"

Dareze replied. "It's the regional capital of the Romanian occupied area of Hungary. It's on the other side of the Carpathians from Tirgo Ocna, but we can direct the fly-in from there and hop over when it's secured. What're we going to find there?"

"For starters, a corporation that's in violation of its filing re-quirements has to keep its books and records at its principal place of business or pay the thousand dollar a day fine. PE isn't paying its fine, so its books must be at its principle place of business. There's no address on the corporate record, but we know its being funded by PI. PI is therefore responsible for keeping its books and re-cords."

"What do all these fines mean if no one ever pays them," Dareze asked. "I mean, if they're on the up and up, they'd file and not have to pay them. If they weren't on the up and up, they'd want to pay them to keep from attracting attention. If no one enforces them, no one pays anything."

"They file because it becomes a lean on the assets of the re-sponsible party. If the party doesn't plan to be around that long, why file? As far as I know, PI International hasn't violated any law. It hasn't made any move, overt or covert, against the Representa-tive World Government, so we're going to use the fact it hasn't maintained the filing requirements of an organization it makes sub-stantial payments to as the basis for our entry."

"They're certainly going to give you an argument on that one," Mesne commented.

"They very well may, but by the time they hire a lawyer to ar-gue it, we're going to be in and out, and it's a lot safer than trying to breach their security."

He closed the screen and turned to Dareze. "You on board?"

"You bet. You'll like the agent in Tirgo Mures. Auburn haired Ireless."

"What makes you think I like auburn hair?" Block asked.

"It's not her auburn hair you're going to like," Dareze said, laughing.

"I wish I could join the fun," Mesne said, escorting them to the door. "Unfortunately, I have to get a group together to make sense out of all this data we've processed for PI. If PE turns out to be the Philbrook Effect, I think I'll have to move in when you secure the place. We can convert the facility to The Chairman's ends of coming up with a multicurrent computer."

They walked across the reception area to the front door.

"If it is the Philbrook Effect, I'll probably be in Tirgo Ocna when you get there," she said to Mesne. "I just don't want to have to put up with any malarkey."

"Don't worry, he won't be involved, but I sure will," Mesne said with a wink.

"You sure have a lot of people hitting on you," Block observed as she gunned the car from the curb, did a tight U turn, and sped down the hill, effortlessly fitting into the heavy stream of traffic with-out breaking.

"Not everyone thinks that I'm homely," Dareze replied, laughing.

"I don't think you're homely. It's just . . ."

"That I don't have big breasts."

"I've never particularly focused on breasts. It's just I've worked myself into this position that . . ."

"You're hung up on breasts."

"Would you stop finishing everything I start to say?"

"Am I finishing any of it wrong?" Dareze asked.

"No," Block admitted sheepishly.

"Then why stop?" She reached over and put her hand on his leg. "You're going to find me delicious, you know, you really are."

She downshifted, moved around still another Gendarme with his traffic-stopping paddle, and raced up the road, the Adriatic falling off to the west.

"I found Marsdy's comments about your father interesting. Did you remember him?"

"Not at all. But then, I don't remember my father that much. My impressions of him are probably drawn more from what I've heard about him than what I know about him."

"Can we ever know the adjacent generation."

"I probably know The Chairman better than I know my own fa-ther. He's sort of a father to me."

"Well, I'll probably never get to know The Chairman, thanks to you."

"How's that?" Block asked.

"That little description of The Chairman crossing something off in one of his notebooks was probably him crossing my name off when he found out I was going to be squiring you around."

"Why would he do that?"

"Don't be silly. Here we are. I see Marsdy has transportation waiting for us." She pulled onto the tarmac and drove up under the wing of a Stratodart just having its fueling hoses retracted. They got on and were on their way in minutes.

"We haven't far to go," she said as she pulled back the lever, hurtling the Stratodart down the runway, angling it up at a steep angle.

Block poured her a glass of white wine, decided on the same, and joined her in the cockpit.

"What did you mean when you said Tirgo Mures was the regional capital of Romanian occupied Hungary? I didn't realize when they dismantled the Austro-Hungarian Empire as a result of World War I, they dismantled Hungary also."

"Oh, yes. The south half of the former Czechoslovakia, the north part of the former Yugoslavia, the western part of Romania, all a part of Hungary, or at least were a part of Hungary when it became one of the crowns in the Austro-Hungarian Empire," Dareze con-cluded.

"Just one of the dangers of Empire," Block observed. "Live by the sword, die by the sword. Makes you wonder whether Balkani-zation did any good."

"Makes little difference now."

"Unless you're permanently Balkanized," Block said, taking Dareze's glass and going back for a refill.

"Bring the bottle, we're almost there," she said over her shoul-der.

Block returned with the bottle, putting it between his legs as he sat down. The Carpathian Mountains were off to their left, looking like hills from their altitude. He felt the Stratodart slow as Dareze throttled back.

"There's something mystical about those mountains," he said, passing Dareze her refilled glass.

"'and the mists of the mountain tops enshrouded the vampire's bliss'," Dareze said poetically, clinking glasses with Block. "To Eros."

The tone the glasses made sent a pleasant feeling through Block's stomach. The mountains were romantic. "I thought vampires sucked blood. There's nothing erotic about blood."

"The blood is a metaphor," Dareze said, giving Block a vampish look. "The vampires delivered endless, all consuming, ecstasy. Once you were touched by it, you could never go back. You gave yourself up completely to pleasure, allowing your body to drift away, emaciate and die in the throws of a continuous orgasm."

"A lot of people are captured by ecstasy and pursue it their en-tire lives without starving to death," Block noted clinically.

"I didn't say anything about pursuing pleasure. I said giving yourself up to pleasure, the pleasure of a continuous orgasm."

"But that's impossible," Block said. "Orgasm's a release. You can't have a continuous release. It'd be counterproductive to the continued existence of the species. If perpetual orgasms were pos-sible, the human race would've ceased to exist before it started."

"You don't think sex can be something more than the satisfaction of a primal urge?" Dareze asked, faking a startled look. "I thought you practiced Perceptionism, the idealization of reality to make it more pleasurable."

"Having five or ten orgasmic encounters during the course of an evening may be a continuous pleasure, but it's not continuous ec-stasy," Block said, still treating the conversation seriously. "It's five or ten separate orgasms."

"But women can learn to have serial orgasms," Dareze coun-tered.

" I can't."

"How do you know?" she said, laughing.

"Okay," he said, starting to lighten up. "I don't do too bad with a series, I like it, and I don't think I'd have as much, shall I say, tactile pleasure, if I were in a continuous state of orgasm, so even if it's possible, I'll stick with what I do best. Does that satisfy you?"

"Not the way I want to be satisfied," Dareze replied, putting her hand on his leg.

"And that's having a continuous orgasm?"

"No silly, it's having a bunch of tactile orgasms using your magnificent body." She rubbed his leg lightly. "But I guess I'll have to let you get your fill of Ireless first, and believe me, she's got a lot to get full on."

Block blushed again, still not understanding why he was embar-rassed.

Dareze reached for the bottle, giving it a couple of quick half turns before she slid it from between Block's legs.

Block blushed deeper as she refilled first his glass, then her own.

He wet his lips and let the heat in his face subside.

"I guess I could sum up," he finally said, "by concluding if there can be continuous orgasms, there must be vampires."

"Anything's possible," she said, raising her filled glass to the tops of the Carpathians, which were rising above the windows of the Stratodart as it settled down past the edges of the clouds that misted them.

A sizeable city spread out beneath them, but one building clearly stood out, elevated, imposing, surrounded by greenery.

"The Citadel," Dareze said, as she piloted the Stratodart di-rectly toward the building, stately even from the air.

"Hello," she remarked, pointing to a Stratodart already sitting on the lawn beside the massive circular driveway. "Looks like we've got company." She took a slug directly from the bottle. "Party time."

"We still have a little business to do," Blocks said.

"Frump," she said, throttling the Stratodart down. "Wait till you see Ireless. You won't be thinking about business. Besides, she's already ordered in the troops, so all we have to do is kill the five or ten hours it's going to take to get them in place. Tirgo Ocna is only a ten minute hop from here, if you're in a hurry."

Dareze led Block out of the cockpit, waited for the stairs to drop, then preceded him down. "Grab a bottle of wine," she in-structed.

They walked up the gravel driveway in front of the Citadel where a figure awaited them. Even at this distance, Block realized it was a figure and a half, but they loomed larger the closer they got.

"I told you you'd like Ireless," Dareze said, seeing his trans-fixed eyes.

Block realized he was looking directly at one of the most promi-nent set of breasts he'd ever been in the presence of, at least in a social setting. And he'd never envisioned himself with someone solely because of large breasts. He blushed as red as the soft cloth that separated them from his too attentive eyes.

"He's obsessed," Ireless observed. "I like that."

"I knew you would," Dareze replied. "And to boot, you've al-ready met The Chairman."

Block refocused and saw Ireless was indeed an auburn haired treat. She was fully as tall as Block, and proportioned to match, her auburn hair a sharp contrast to her piercing blue eyes flaming out beneath her soft curls. Her lipstick matched the color of her dress and her dress was designed to match the curves of her body.

Block started to give her the bottle of wine before he realized she already had it.

"I was just having an interesting conversation with my re-placement," Ireless continued.

"Your replacement? I didn't know you'd been transferred."

"Yes. I'm on hold for another assignment. I don't know what it is, but The Chairman's in a dither about something and he wants me close when things break. Block's going to need another pair of eyes with Claret and me in the same room."

"Sort of a pair of pairs," Dareze said.

Block looked at Dareze.

"You're still going to like me better," she said simply.

"Well, let's get on with it," Ireless said. "We should be able to make a lively time of it. I hope Ronald's reputation isn't a myth."

"I wouldn't know. I tried to tumble him on the beach in Trieste, but he was too intent on finding out what the secrets of BioLife were, and then when he found out what the secrets of BioLife were, all he wanted to do on the way up was talk about orgasms."

"That's a start," Ireless said, ushering them into and through the huge circular entranceway to the Citadel. "Claret and I were just talking about the same thing, more or less."

Block's eyes fell on a stunning honey blonde rising from a couch as they entered the room. The lights twinkled off her soft brown eyes, but it didn't take long to see her perfectly formed breasts pushing sharply against her honey colored dress.

"Yes," Claret said, walking over and taking Block's hand. "We were talking about who was luckier in orgasm, the man or the woman."

"More like the quality," Ireless countered.

"What time can we expect PI International's facilities to be oc-cupied?" Block asked, walking with Ireless to the bar.

"Help yourself," she said, pointing out the fresh bottle of Scotch. The facilities will be occupied at daybreak. We have," she moved closer to Block, brushing his arm with her chest, "all night."

Block couldn't remember forming an image of sex in his mind. The feeling in his stomach and the reaction in his groin were in-stantaneous, and then, as she moved back, just a trace, an empty feeling he wanted to refill.

His hand trembled slightly as he poured the Scotch. Her hand rested comfortably barely above the bulge of his buttocks as she chuckled, the sound comforting rather than embarrassing. She leaned over so her lips were close to his ear. "And when I say we, I mean all of us."

The sensation from his ear filled the empty gap between his legs. Again, it seemed to bypass his brain. He realized with sur-prise it was only the sensations that filled the empty gap. There was no mental connection. She was affecting him on an unconscious level.

"Can I get anybody anything?" he asked over his shoulder, breaking her spell. He wanted to feel uncomfortable, he felt he should feel uncomfortable, but he didn't. Something about Ireless, her naturalness, her relaxed bearing, made him trust her explic-itly.

"Wine," Claret and Dareze said in unison.

"You hold, I'll pour," Ireless said. "Three," she added as he took out two glasses.

Ireless picked up two, Block one and his Scotch. They walked over to the conversation area, Ireless melding next to Block like a shadow, her presence as internal as external, his eyes feasting on the material covering Claret's luscious body. He was glad he pro-grammed his mind on breasts. He immersed himself in the seem-ingly endless repertoire of curves.

"I was just telling Claret that Ronald didn't believe in serial or-gasms," Dareze was saying.

"I didn't say I didn't believe in them, I said I'd never experi-enced one, or rather, two, in a row, and anyway, you were talking about some continuous orgasm produced by vampires."

"That's what I was telling Ireless," Claret said. "It's fruitless for a man and a woman to try and compare orgasms because one can never experience the other's. I can remember as a young girl thinking how lucky boys were because they could get all their pleasure concentrated at the end of that marvelous rod they have between their legs. And then a guy complained to me how men were cheated because women had a whole vagina for their orgasm, not to mention the comparative areas of sensitivity were larger for women."

"Well, areas of sensitivity aside," Ireless replied, "that's like thinking that a women with big breasts has more sensation than a women with little breasts. I'm sure Dareze isn't jealous of our big breasts. At least not from the point of view of what sexual pleas-ure she gets from them."

"That's a good point," Dareze responded. "Why would I want big breasts if I get the same feeling out of my breasts you do out of yours, assuming, of course, all our nerves and the nerve endings are functioning properly. And blowing them up because of ego, well that risks those properly functioning nerve endings."

"Anybody here with poorly functioning nerve endings?" Claret asked, laughing. "Here's to properly functioning nerve endings, then," she toasted, "we can eliminate that from the discussion."

"So why would I want big breasts?" Dareze continued.

"Because Ronald here likes them," Ireless and Claret said in uni-son.

"Ronald says he only likes them for now. He says he psyched himself into liking them on the trip over to Trieste. He's not nor-mally this obsessed," Dareze replied.

"He may not be, but enough men are to make it a valid question," Ireless said. "If having big breasts attracts men, is that a sufficient reason for having them? Should Dareze go out and have herself cut up so she can attract men, even if it endangers her pleasure?"

"Not me," Dareze replied emphatically, "I don't need big breasts to attract men. But if they attract men, they must attract men for reasons other than sexual, because what does it mean to them once they get them?" Dareze looked to Block for an answer.

"I don't know," he said sheepishly, "I've never paid much at-tention to them before. I mean, I've paid attention to them, just not their size."

"Now that they're your fetish, what are you going to do with them?" Claret asked.

"Feel them, I guess," he replied.

"Isn't that what you did with them before?"

"Yes."

"Then you're just going to feel more of the same thing."

"I guess so."

"But your hands are only so big," Dareze joked, "and you don't have any sex organs on your hand. So what are you feeling?"

"Maybe it's just the idea, seeing them hanging there when you're the active one."

"Well, there's no question that's sexy, but I think men just like to be with women with big boobs because they think other men are looking at them wishing they were with the woman themselves," Ireless said.

"Whoa," Claret held up her hand. "That's a mouthful."

"The mouth, the hand, same difference. Men want to be with big-breasted women because it makes them think other men envy them. It's the same reason they buy a sportscar. It doesn't have anything to do with sex."

"Or else the sportscar has something to do with sex," Dareze said.

"If that's the case, then a man is getting a sexual thrill from imagining other men imagining doing what he is doing when he's do-ing it," Claret said.

"Worse, he gets off from imagining other men imagining doing what he's imagining doing. It doesn't require a women, just big breasts," Ireless added.

"Wait a minute," Block said. "Before you trash mankind, what about you women. Which one of you hasn't bonked The Chairman?"

"Me," Dareze said, quickly raising her hand.

"I take silence as an admission," Block said to Ireless and Claret. "You didn't go to bed with him because of a body part, you went to bed with him because you were turned on by his power. You were imagining other women envying you."

"It's not the same thing," Claret observed, "a man stepping into a crowd with a big busted woman and a women jumping into bed with The Chairman."

"It's the same thing," Block said, "because we're all doing it for the benefit of some third party we imagine envying us, that is, if you're right about the breast thing. You know, The Chairman keeps talking about cynosure. I think that's what we're talking about here."

"Cynosure?" Dareze asked.

"Sure. Take a model. She's put up on billboards all over the world. Millions of people see her. She becomes a cynosure. All eyes are directed at her. Guys want to take her out. Why? Because she has a good personality, she's a lot of fun, she's a fantastic lay? No. They want to take her out because they want to be seen with her. She's the cynosure. She attracts men's eyes. Therefore, a man that's with her will be the center of attention. It's ego, for crying out loud."

"Well, I'll tell you, I didn't anticipate the pleasure I got when I slept with The Chairman," Claret said.

"I agree with you," Ireless said. "There's no comparison be-tween sleeping with a powerful man and holding a big boob. With a powerful man, you're dealing with the energy that created the man's power. With a big boob, you're dealing with a big boob."

"Which makes men the big boobs," Dareze added, underling Claret's pun, "and answers the question, why do girls get their boobs blown up. It gives them a better chance to get laid by a pow-erful man."

"In other words, you have to have boobs to get boobs," Claret carried the analogy forward.

"As if you'd have any trouble getting anyone in bed," Ireless said to Dareze.

"I utterly failed in my effort to bed Ronald," she replied.

"That's because you've been saving him for us, all four of us, and, of course, your two also," Ireless replied.

"Anyway," Dareze continued, "it looks like The Chairman crossed me off his list because of Block."

"How did he find out you were assigned to sub for Marise?" Ireless asked.

"He was in Italy to do some research, and Marise was some-where else and my name came up, of course, and because Marise was somewhere else, he looked me up himself, found I was with Block, and, zip, I'm off the list."

"What in the world does working with me have to do with who The Chairman sleeps with?" Block asked, genuinely puzzled.

The three looked at him incredulously.

"Don't be silly," Dareze said.

"You said that before, but I still don't know why I'm being silly," Block said, his puzzlement starting to seep through to the girls.

"You don't remember Mary Renon?" Ireless asked.

"And Janette?"

"Sure I remember them. What about them?" Block asked.

"After you got ahold of them, they were never the same," Claret said.

"I thought they were better," Block said.

"But not the same," Ireless said. "The Chairman wanted the same."

"So how does that affect who he sleeps with?" Block asked, still puzzled.

"He figures he'd just as soon stop porking girls you've porked, or might have porked, so you wouldn't come along and change their entire libido," Dareze replied.

"Which brings me to a subject dear to all our hearts," Claret said.

"What's that?" Block asked, willing to take any path leading away from the current topic. He'd never experienced Mary Renon's goal directed sexual activities before he found her an unending source of pleasure, too unending as it turned out, for any one man. As for Janette, the promiscuous Lanette he'd known, so anxious to find the elusive orgasm there wasn't a man she wouldn't bed, be-came Danette, the untouchable priestess of Lansdowne, untouchable that is, by other than the ever-reclusive Lansdowne.

"The marriage bed," Dareze said, waiting in anticipation for Block's reaction.

Block leaped up.

"Settle down," Dareze said, laughing.

"I'm just going over for a refill," Block said, trying to act non-chalant. "Anybody else?"

Ireless and Claret got up along with Dareze, flanking Block as he walked over to the bar.

"The only legal way to commit bigamy is stay single," Ireless said.

Block felt Ireless's breasts on his left forearm, Claret's on his right forearm, and the combined effect rolled down into his stomach and burrowed a hot streak into his groin, shifting the position of his pants, the pressure giving him a feeling of exhilaration, of moving in front of his body, of wanting to shout and thrust.

As he picked up the bottle of Scotch, Ireless steadied his hand, Claret picked up a glass and cupped his hand around it with her own.

"What's the marriage bed?" Block was finally able to ask.

Ireless took his arm after the glass was full. "This Citadel goes back even before its walls were built, at least its present walls," she said.

Claret passed the filled glass back to Dareze to steward and took Block's other arm.

"Ireless was describing how underneath the Citadel, there's a dungeon used by Attila the Hun," Claret said.

"Yes," Ireless continued. "Claret's taking over the job here and as the new agent in charge, she'll be in charge of the Citadel. She has to know everything about it."

They led Block down a long corridor apparently designed to ac-cess the kitchen. Just before the pantry, Ireless turned sidewise into a narrow passage Block hadn't noticed. Her movement and Claret's hands turned him sideways into the crack, making him al-most stumble down a narrow curving staircase. He checked back to make sure Dareze was coming with his drink. He was glad to see she'd brought the bottle.

"This couldn't be that old," Block observed, regaining his com-posure.

"Oh, I'm sure it isn't," Ireless continued. "I'm sure the stones have come and gone with the generations. But the site has remained the same, and its confluent position between two rivers at the base of the Carpathians dictated it the seat of power. But it's not the stones that are important, it's the knowledge passed down from generation to generation dealing with the technology of the mar-riage bed."

They wound down the circular staircase, emerging from a wid-ening slit opening onto a dungeon, the walls made of huge square cut stones fit and shaped to create a huge circular room that appeared to meet the Citadel's overall dimensions. Hundreds of tiny electric lights dotted the stonewalls. The light from each, while slight, was cumulative, casting a dreamlike glow in the room, turning the harsh stone into soft shadows. Block could see Ireless' auburn hair be-come fiery in the particled light, her yellow eyes reminiscent of Lanette's, yet reflective rather than deep, promising the pleasure of her body rather than her mind.

He turned to get his drink, but was startled by Claret's hair.

Normally brown, although with a blondish cast, the light re-flecting off it turned it into spun gold, every point of vision a high-light. Her deep brown eyes were widely expectant.

Dareze's dark hair, by comparison, appeared to blend in with the shadows, but vividly highlighted her eyes, which blazed like oval emeralds in the graining darkness.

"The marriage bed," Ireless continued, gesturing to the large circular dais in the center of the circular star-studded darkness, "is reputed to be an enlarged version of the actual bed used by At-tila to punish his concubines."

Block held up the procession long enough to retrieve his drink from Dareze and then allowed himself to be pulled over to the dais.

The dais itself was at least ten feet in diameter, its floor cov-ered by a wild array of pillows and cushions. Poking though the plushness, an occasional table or reclining chair provided an op-portunity for rest among the recreation. In the center was a con-traption the likes of which Block had never seen.

"That's Attila's marriage bed?" he asked, incredulously.

"When Attila wasn't satisfied by one of his concubines, he used to take her out, tie her by the hair to a wild horse's tail, and let the wild horse run free. As the survival rate for this type of activity was low, the concubines decided to get together and come up with a punishment that would not endanger their lives.

"'What, one wanted to know, could be a better punishment than one that would give them pleasure? Another was reputed to have responded, what could possibly give us pleasure that Attila would think was punishment. The first concubine replied, 'You all know where the seat of our pleasure is. Attila has absolutely no idea where that point, the point leading to unlimited pleasure, is because he's spending all his time jacking himself off in us just beneath it.'"

The four settled down on the cushions, Block with his head on Claret's bosom, Dareze holding one of his hands, leaving his other free to fondle his drink, and Ireless, the storyteller, leaning on her elbows directly in front of Block so he could see her cleavage, which seemed to extend to infinity.

"Makes you wonder about nature," he mused.

"Nature compensated for moving a women's clit directly out of the field of action in so many ways, it makes a comparison of whether a man or a woman gets more pleasure from sex moot," Claret observed. Block looked up as she spoke and her hair, high-lighted, surrounded her face like a halo.

"That was precisely the situation Attila's concubines decided to exploit," Ireless continued. "Of course, having the clit, in all its complexity, out of the direct action is nature's way of protecting women. If men knew how strong a woman's reaction is to direct clitoral stimulation, it would scare the heck out of them, make them impotent, and women wouldn't get any male action at all."

"So what did Attila's concubines dream up?" Dareze asked, her green eyes sparkling in the semi-darkness.

"They pointed out to Attila that once he let the wild horse go with the girl tied onto its tail, he only got the pleasure of listening to her initial screams. He could, of course, as he did, take as much time with the preliminaries as he wished, enjoying her pleading and screaming, but that gets tiresome, not to mention messy. Why not come up with a torment that Attila could observe throughout, and that could continue for as long as Attila wished, could be culminated in Attila having pleasure with the body he was tormenting, and he'd have the girl around in the future to boot.

"Well, you can imagine Attila's curiosity. He was known the world over for has rapine and plundering, his ability to torture a body to the last ounce of agony, and here someone was telling him there was a better way to go about it. You can believe he wasn't going to pass up learning about it."

Block found a firm spot to rest his glass, set it down, and buried his hand into Ireless' lush cleavage.

"In anticipation of having to satisfy Attila's curiosity," Ireless continued, shrugging her shoulders to allow him freer access, "the concubines selected the youngest, most virginal among them, the one with the most sensitive clit, and laid out a group of cushions as pallets so the girl could lie at her most supine, with her hips thrust forward. They'd devised a way to hold her down so, with knees spread wide, back arched, pelvis jutting forward, so the girl's clit would actually peek out from beneath its hood.

"When they ushered Attila into this scene, he instantly dropped his sword and rushed to stick himself into the waiting girl, but the concubines anticipated this, and were able to restrain him.

"'You can't pleasure her if you want to punish her!' they all said in unison.

"'What am I supposed to do to her to punish her?' Attila asked.

"'Rub the hole at the end of Happy Attila on the little nubbin you see sticking up,' they replied.

"'That's all?' Attila asked.

"'That's all.' they replied.

"'That's ridiculous.' Attila said.

"'Trust us,' they urged 'You'll be amazed at the result.'

"'What exactly do I have to do?' Attila asked again."

Block had the urge for a drink, but he finally found the bottom of the cleavage and he turned his hand sideways so see how much of it he could get around the base of one of them.

"One of the concubines brought up a angled bench for him to rest against," Ireless continued, jutting her chest forward just enough to give him purchase. "'Just lean on this, hold Little Attila with your other hand, and rub the hole on the end of it gently over the little nub you see sticking up there. Don't do it too hard. You don't want to hurt yourself. Here. We'll help you.'

"Attila eased himself down so his tip was almost touching the girl's little nubbin, and then with some trepidation, he pushed the hole in it around the nubbin. The girl's reaction was immediate and violent. Her screams bounced off the tapestried walls as she invol-untarily flung a concubine holding one of her hands over Attila's back. It was fortunate others were able to hold her in position.

"'I'm sorry.' she whimpered to a surprised Attila, who was having trouble believing so little effort could result in so much pain.

"'The pain must be horrible.' he said to the watching and waiting concubines.

"'Only you can be the judge of that, and of the punishment you wish to mete out.' one replied.

"'Well, get a good hold of her,' Attila directed. ' We'll see how much she can take.'

"With that, he got himself in hand and once again surrounded the girl's clit with his hole. The girl, as you can well imagine, began to buck and scream, shout and twist, moan and cry, beg and plead. The more she put into it, for I'm sure for this crucial performance, she was giving more than she was getting, the more Attila kept up contact. Several times he slipped, but as this caused the girls agony to subside visibly, he made quite sure to obtain the skill and dex-terity to keep her torture pin inside his hole.

"The concubines figured the demonstration would only take a short time, but when Attila was still going strong after the sands of the hour glass ran out, they began to wonder if they should find a way to replace the girl, who's vocal chords, not to mention clit, were sure to give out. After a quick conference on how to do it without disturbing Attila, and not finding any effective way, they decided to just do it.

"When they did, they found to their surprise that Attila had gone into some sort of trance. He was there in the sense he was continu-ously surrounding the tender surface of the young girl's clit, and he was responding to her response, but otherwise, he just wasn't there. His movements were geared solely to the girl's movements and the sounds she was making while he was moving on her.

"So one of the concubines, with the help of the others, just eased down on the lap of the young girl, and when she was in place, the others pulled the young girl out, and Attila slipped right over the new clit."

"That would certainly go a long way to solving the problem of what one man does with more than one woman after he's had one woman and only wants to watch football," Claret commented, hold-ing Blocks head to her breasts and stroking his forehead.

"You bet," Ireless replied, "and after awhile, the second concu-bine was replaced with a third, and then a fourth and a fifth.

"Attila was continuing unabated, and they suddenly realized they had a problem how to bring the whole thing to a happy ending. Attila was totally senseless to what was going on around him, only that his actions were resulting in the screams he so dearly loved.

"The screams provided the answer. They revived the first girl, who'd passed out with a smile splitting her face in half, slapped her around a little to get some tears rolling down her cheeks, and slipped her back under Attila's ceaseless ministrations. They then all shut up, creating total quiet except for the gentle sloshing of Attila's hole over her clit. The sound of the sloshing brought Attila out of his trance. The girl feigned unconsciousness and Attila, look-ing around, said 'That'll teach her,' buckled on his sword and left.

"'Don't you feel like making love?' one of the concubines asked with some temerity.

"'Later. Later. Everything in it's place,' Attila responded, not realizing the need the process had instilled in his body. He wasn't on the first step when he turned and worked his way through four women before he passed out.

"The concubines didn't know what to make of it all, but they did know what to do. They drew straws who would commit an act to displease Attila, and as soon as the chosen girl did, they were off to the races, changing girls as Attila went into his trance, and drawing straws to determine who got seconds, who got thirds, so forth. They'd brought an hourglass, and limited the amount of time each girl could be tortured so as many as possible could participate each time.

"Attila, for his part, started to change his whole method of op-eration. He'd been in the habit of having all the women captured af-ter he slaughtered their men brought before him for his selection before his senior officers took their choices. Now he brought sev-eral of his concubines to hold the captured slaves in the proper po-sition for him to torture at his leisure. Then he began bringing the concubines to battle to punish them, setting aside the captives for rape after he'd finished his torture session.

"Then he stopped setting aside captives for rape, returning im-mediately to take his pleasure with his concubines. Then he missed a few campaigns, leaving his senior offices to carry on the task of being the scourge of God in order to stay home and punish his con-cubines. As he got older, his sword hand grew less steady and his stamina started to desert him. This didn't affect his ability to in-stitute punishment, but it affected his ability to continue it through the many substitutions his concubinage desired, so they undertook the construction of the marriage bed you see before you. It kept the girl in the right position, allowing Attila minimum work with maxi-mum rest."

Ireless lowered her blouse on the side Block was circling her breast to reveal his large hand cupping only half its circumference. "Attila," she said, leaning forward, the motion elongating her breast, providing Block with a fuller grip, "of course, didn't know he was pleasuring all his concubines in succession. The concubines often talked in his absence, with one group taking the position they should tell him about the pleasure he was giving them, that it'd make him proud to know, the other, the older group, flatly prohib-iting any knowledge of their pleasure becoming known. They well remembered the young concubine who'd gotten carried away and screamed how good it was for her. She'd been taken out and tied by her hair to a wild horse, and it wasn't the hair on her head this time. Her death hadn't been pretty, what with her rump being removed without knocking her silly like the hair pull did.

"Even though Attila never used any form of punishment on any of his concubines other than the one they'd devised, and in fact had ceased all punishments, instead resorting to reason and reward to bind people to him, the group in favor of secrecy prevailed. There-fore the marriage bed incorporated not only a place for Attila to rest comfortably as he went about his ministrations, and a place to position the girl, but also a way for one girl to ease in and replace the other without unduly disturbing Attila's trance.

"This," Ireless said, holding out Block's glass for him, her breast sliding slowing through his grasp and waving at the bed, "is where Attila rested."

The four got up and walked over to the structure.

The superstructure, made of highly polished wood, rested over the bed of the device so a man could lie comfortably while dangling down appropriately and still use his hands to administer the tor-ture.

Ireless demonstrated the wooden restraints both at the top and the base of the underlying structure. "This is where Attila strapped in the object of his wrath," she said. "Of course, after Attila went into his trance, the restraints were ignored, but," she pulled a lever causing the bed of the structure to open with a loud thump, like a door slamming shut, "once he was in his trance, the bed could be lowered and a new girl substituted at will.

"I imagine it was a little bit quieter in those days," she said, showing how easily the bed could be replaced into position for the new girl, and flicking the lever once again, letting the thump soak into the darkness. "I've found this lever comes in handy sometimes when the pleasure becomes so intense I can't physically stand it. I admit I resist it with all my might, but with me, it sometimes takes two or three thumps before I can settle down and get into it.

"You ready to do some thumping, Ronald?" she asked, turning to Block, but Block was already stripped and scaling the end of the contraption.

"Since you're inheriting the whole shebang, Claret, I guess you get firsties."

Block froze halfway up the superstructure as Claret stripped off her clothes. He couldn't take his eyes off her full firm beasts as they bobbed into view over her delicious stomach. Ireless broke the spell, helping her up onto the polished wood bed and spreading pil-lows around as she slid into position.

"You'll want to keep your hand on this," she said, pointing to the lever as Claret gyrated her hips so her pelvis, thighs parted, jutted towards Block, who was momentarily puzzled when he couldn't reach around the frame to touch her breasts.

"It wasn't built for that, but Dareze and I'll be right next to you if you want to grope," Ireless said as Block settled in and felt his own hardening pleasure reach downward toward Claret. "Here," she said as she saw Block overshoot the target because of length. "You can control the distance with your hips." Using her hands on his buttocks, she showed him how the superstructure could be moved several inches in either direction by a thrusting motion. "You don't want to be too close when you put yourself into posi-tion."

She stepped back.

"Hold on a moment," she continued, inspecting the angle of Clar-ets hips, checking to see the shape and size of her clit, and how it was projecting our from beneath its hood, together with the dis-tance from Blocks position compared to his length. "I think you've got it. Do you want to start it yourself, Ronald, or do you want me to help?"

"Let me do it," Claret said, wiggling her hips a little in the proc-ess.

"You just stay as quite as possible and keep your hand on the release lever," Ireless ordered.

"I can help," Dareze said.

"I can get it," Block said, reaching around the wooden frame, grasping himself, and tentatively moving around, trying to feel his positioning. He couldn't see the target for the firm mounds of her breasts, their nipples growing in anticipation, rising from Claret's chest like mountains blocking his view.

Ireless reached in, gently grasped Block's hand and guided him so his hole hit right on top of Claret's slightly protruding clit.

"Whoosh," Claret cried, catching her breath, biting her lip, tensing her body for what was to come.

Block felt the tiny nub grow hard, penetrating the end of his prick ever so slightly. Thus oriented, he moved it slowly back and forth, feeling her clit gently slip between the internal edges of his hole.

"Whoosh, whoosh, whoosh," he heard, as Claret was struggling to maintain her control, and then his face involuntarily jerked back to avoid her hand as she flailed around for the release lever.

Ireless quickly came to her aid.

Thump.

Block relaxed as Claret broke contact and she fell with the re-leased bed.

"I, uh, I damn, I damn tired," she cried through gritted teeth. "Ooh," she moaned, squirming around looking for the way to rees-tablish the bed in position. "I need to get back in position fast."

Ireless put her hand on Block's shoulder. "You'll have to be a lit-tle patient with us."

"That's okay. It'll take me a minute to get the hang of it."

"Good. Up you go," she said to Claret. "All set?" She stepped back. "Go."

Dareze moved up for a closer look as Block lowered himself, this time with unerring accuracy, right over the clit Claret was straining to expose. As he swallowed her up, Dareze could see a thin line of blood appear under slightly exposed teeth as she bit her lip in an effort to keep her body rigid and unyielding to the pleasure she could see coursing through her body, a pleasure radiating in anticipation to her own.

Thump.

"Darn," Claret exclaimed as the bed dropped out of place, breaking the connection once again.

"Practice makes perfect," Ireless said, laughing while she re-established the bed, watching the perspiration bead on Claret's forehead as Block went to work again.

Claret's hand moved toward the release lever, started to give it a pull, hesitated, retreated, went into a fist, opened up, tiny dots of blood spotting her palm from her nails, inched slowly back to the lever, hesitated.

Block watched in fascination, no longer finding a clue in Claret's facial features, which were set with determination. He wondered if she was going to make it this time when all of a sudden he began to feel a weakness in his toes, a place he'd never felt weak before. It couldn't be a weak feeling, then, he thought, but some other sensa-tion. Whatever it was, it moved from his toes, without leaving them, into his feet, and while also staying there, moved up his legs, spread over his back, leaving him breathless while clearly breath-ing.

It was a new sensation, a sensation he'd never felt, a sensation he realized he had a choice to categorize as pleasant or unpleasant, a sensation directly related to what he was doing with his hand, the slight insertion and movement of her clit inside him. As he experi-mented with the sensation, he found it increased or decreased with the rate of his movement over her clit. He had no idea what was happening in her nervous system, but he knew what was happening in his, and he decided to like it.

Once he made the decision to enjoy it, the weakness, a feeling like his nervous system had been stripped out of his body and im-mersed in the white water of a rapidly moving stream under a warm morning sun, overtook him entirely, floating him away above Claret and out into the starry points of light surrounding them.

Time seemed to stop. He was only vaguely aware of Ireless and Dareze. One moment they seemed to be there, the next they were gone, then they were at a table drinking wine, Dareze was looking at her watch, then Dareze was drinking wine alone, and then the two were next to him watching, and then Ireless was looking at Dareze's watch, reaching for the lever.

Thump.

"No, no, please, no," Claret cried, her hands moving between her legs, her shoulders shrugging her luscious breasts together. "Please, please, please, more, more," she begged.

Block lay on the superstructure, stunned, speechless.

"How do you feel?" Dareze asked, looking at where he was hanging beneath the wooden braces. "You don't look like you got any pleasure out of it. I mean, you don't look like you got off."

"Whew," Block found his voice. "It's beyond getting off. Who wants to go next?"

"We're running out of time," Ireless said. "The troops move in within three hours."

"Three hours," Claret yelled. "That's impossible."

"We were only doing it for a minute," Block agreed, equally as-tonished.

"How about just over two hours," Dareze said. "We had several bottles of wine while you were pleasuring Claret."

"Holy cow. It was like a minute," Block said. "Where was I?"

"With Attila, I guess" Dareze said.

"Anyway," Ireless said, "I'm going to give it a quick turn, say a half-hour, then I'll turn you loose on Dareze who's getting off on anticipation alone."

"She'll find out quick enough that the reality includes the antici-pation," Claret sighed, pulling herself from the collapsed bed.

Ireless stripped and slipped the bed back into place. Her effort-less movement into position betrayed the confidence of an old pro at the game as she put Block into position. Block was trying to com-prehend the magnificence, both in size and form, of her breasts when he made contact with her clit. The shape was different, Claret's being tight and protruding, Ireless' feeling flatter with lit-tle penetration. Block had to press down harder to splay his hole so his mucous membranes made direct contact with her. He realized Ireless was more vocal than Claret, and, because of her experi-ence, felt freer to buck around, maintaining contact all the while, but these observations dropped away almost immediately as his sensations returned with equal quality and took over his mind. He tried to stay conscious but as he began to float, he became less and less defined, becoming lost in the simulated stars around him.

Thump.

Ireless activated the lever. "That's refreshing," she said, jumping easily off the collapsed bed. "Your turn," she said to Dareze.

"How long was that?" Block asked.

"Just a half-hour. Dareze wanted more than just a couple of hours."

How come you didn't drop down several times like Claret?"

"Duh," Ireless answered. "How many times do you think I came watching Claret for two hours. I was ready, and wasn't about to give a minute of it up."

"How long have I got?" Dareze asked, scrambling onto the bed as Ireless raised it into position.

"Two and a half hours."

Block made a mental check of his physical status. He was re-laxed everywhere, he noted, and he didn't feel tired. The thought of sleep crossed his mind but he figured the dreamless sleep was probably invigorating.

"He still hasn't come," Dareze was saying as she moved into po-sition. "I bet I can make him come."

"It's not the object," Ireless replied, helping her into position.

Block watched as the small mounds of flesh, capped with per-fectly formed nipples, amazingly, almost half an inch long, moved into position beneath him, and waited for Ireless' signal to begin.

"Ready, get set, go," she said.

Block grabbed himself, arched his back to adjust for distance, and moved directly where his mind told him Dareze's clit waited, wondering what shape this one would take. He deftly made contact, felt it enter his waiting hole, and felt a bolt of electricity he'd never before experienced as her clit became a hard shaft and en-tered him, smoothly sliding up his canal.

Before he could form a clear picture of what was happening to him, he felt the electricity explode in his brain, and then, without hesitation, move back into his body, racing from all points at once to a single center, the center of which was impaled on Dareze's rigid clit. When the charges collided at their inevitable target, he felt himself pulled over the edge, enter a climax with an intensity he'd never before experienced. He opened his eyes, trying to get some dockage in the sea of sensations pouring out of her into every fiber of his body.

Thump.

He felt her drop away, connected still by the viscous paste ooz-ing out of him.

"I'm glad you called it off," he said, heaving a final shudder of relief as Dareze's green eyes swam into view.

"Who called what off?" Dareze asked with a laugh, "my time was up."