CHAPTER 9

They pondered it the next few hours. Autopsy turned out to be a good hostess, having accepted the new reality, and they had an excellent hotel suite. They were sure it was bugged, but didn’t care.

“It’s only because she loves you, father,” Nefer said as they relaxed before the TV in the evening. “She wants you to be pleased with her, and to stay here. She knows she can’t stop you from leaving, and that you’re not going to take her into your family the way you did me, and anyway, she’d lose her base if she left here. She has to fuck those men regularly or they’ll start getting restive.” What she said seemed true, but her use of the term father signaled that it was false. She thought Autopsy was faking her conversion. Abner agreed. They had handled only the first round of their encounter.

“That makes me wonder, Abner,” Bunty said. “She said she has had sex with all the local men, and we have no reason to doubt it, because it’s how she maintains control. So why isn’t she pregnant? She surely doesn’t use any contraceptives.” Again, what she said made sense, but she didn’t trust the situation.

“That’s right,” Abner agreed. “We know sopaths can get pregnant, because the ones that service Sweetpea men do. And what about VD? In any large group of men, that’s bound to exist.”

“Daddy, what’s veedee?” Dreda asked. Her horror of the morning was subsiding.

“The letters V D stand for venereal disease,” Abner said. “It’s a group of illnesses that spread sexually. Most are treatable, but none of them are things anyone wants to have. It’s a practical reason for not having careless sex.”

“I’ll remember,” she promised.

“So if Topsy has sex with a lot of men, she should get pregnant or VD?” Clark asked. He had a natural curiosity about things, especially the supposedly naughty secrets.

“That’s it,” Abner agreed. “But she doesn’t seem to have had any trouble. Either she’s quite lucky, or she’s more careful than she suggests.”

“She’s a sopath,” Nefer said. “She won’t be careful. I’m not.”

“You’re too young to get pregnant, and have been lucky to avoid VD,” Abner said. “Your activity has been more limited. You’ve had sex with what, ten boys and men? She’s had sex with hundreds.”

“I guess you’re right. She should be knocked up or sick, and she isn’t.”

“Which may relate to our answer,” Bunty said. “If souls are local, then anyone living in a soul-poor area needs to prevent pregnancy, to avoid getting a sopath. They need good contraception.”

“That’s right,” Abner said. “We don’t need to control the global population, just bring the birthrate down to the level where souls are available. Especially in areas like this. Contraception can solve the sopath problem.”

“Contraception could have solved the population problem long ago,” Bunty said. “But too many people are like sopaths in that respect: they simply don’t bother. And try to persuade the major religions to preach contraception!”

“Which side are the religions really serving?” Nefer asked. “God or Satan? Not that I care, but I’m curious.”

They smiled, knowing it was a joke.

“We’re back with that problem,” Abner said. “We know how to solve the sopath challenge, but we can’t implement it because of religion, carelessness, and ignorance.”

“Unless there’s a way to have safe sex that those things won’t stop,” Bunty said. “This is probably a blind alley, but let’s ask Autopsy what her secret is.”

“She’ll say ‘Fuck me, Abner, and I’ll tell you,’” Nefer said, smiling. “I would.”

“Will she settle for holding my hand?”

“She’d rather hold your cock.” The others had to smile, appreciating the reference.

“I’ll offer my hand,” Abner said.

When it was time to sleep, Abner murmured “The watch continues.”

They all knew what that meant. He did not trust Autopsy despite her seeming conversion. She was probably faking it. She surely did love Abner, now, but that did not necessarily mean she accepted his family in the way Nefer did. Autopsy was older, and accustomed to having her own way. It was more likely that she would be scheming to eliminate the family so she could have Abner for herself. Because she knew Abner stood by his family, and probably meant the formidable threat he had made on Dreda’s behalf, Autopsy was being cautious. She would be looking for a way to get rid of them without implicating herself. Then, by her reckoning, Abner would have no choice but to take what was offered: repeated raw sex with the sopath.

“Do we have to, father?” Nefer asked. “We’re safe here, aren’t we, under Autopsy’s protection?” She was lying, meaning the opposite, as her continuing use of the term indicated.

“It’s good discipline,” Abner said. “We won’t always be in a protected situation. We need to stay in practice.”

“We understand, father,” Clark said. “It’s a pain, but we’ll do it.”

“A pain, father,” Dreda agreed. They were all on board, understanding that they remained in danger.

Nefer took the first watch, walking from room to room in the suite, checking frequently on everyone. Meanwhile Abner and Bunty, pretending assurance of their privacy, made enthusiastic love. Nefer, on her rounds, looked in on them, and nodded; what Autopsy viewed in her film would make her jealous as hell, if she were capable of jealousy.

Then Bunty took her turn on guard, and Nefer lay down beside Abner and took his hand. Again, Autopsy should be jealous, perhaps not of the hand holding specifically, but of Nefer’s freedom to lie beside him and touch him as he slept. Nefer was a sopath, and they all knew it, yet she had this privilege. It meant, among other things, that Abner could get friendly with a known sopath, if he trusted her. Autopsy would be pondering that.

The others, including Abner, took their turns. Thus they passed the night in a routine that signified their caution despite their words. That, too, Autopsy would note and ponder.

In the morning they met with Autopsy again, in the dining room for a lavish breakfast. She was conservatively garbed, showing no private flesh, and her hair was bound back into a bun. “I’ll tell you right off, I don’t use anything when I fuck,” she said. “I have no trouble with VD or pregnancy. I’m immune.”

“Here is our reasoning,” Abner said, not pretending to be surprised. It was a kind of game they were playing, with moves and counter-moves having implications beyond their seeming simplicity. Autopsy was spying on them, and they knew it, and she knew they knew it. “If there’s something protective you use, it’s very effective. We need to know whether it would work on a global scale.”

“There really isn’t. Only—” She broke off, pondering.

“There is something,” Nefer said.

“It’s the grotto.” She did not seem to be lying; this was something important to her.

“The what?”

“I go there every day, because it gives me a high. Probably it has no connection, but I can show it to you if you want.”

She wanted to show them something. They needed to find out why. Sopaths as a class were not into incidental sightseeing. What was really on her mind? “We had better see it,” Abner said.

“Give me your hand. I’ll take you there.”

There was no further doubt she knew of their evening dialogue. She was implying that she would settle for hand holding, as Nefer did. But of course she would not. It had to be a ploy. “Take us there,” Abner said, proffering his hand.

Autopsy took it and led him outside. Her fingers massaged his fingers as they walked, with a surprisingly erotic effect. “It’s a couple miles away, in the hills. We should drive.”

They got into the motor home, and Abner drove while Autopsy sat up front and put her hand on his arm, subtly massaging it too. She really was settling for that, for now, perhaps considering it an avenue to greater intimacy. He remembered how she had massaged his penis.

He wondered again why a sopath should desire contact with any souler. It seemed that even though she lacked a soul, she missed it, and touching him meant she was also touching his soul. Sexual intimacy would represent an even closer touch.

“This is nice out in the country,” Clark remarked from in back, evidently looking around. “Will you let us run around and play, father?” Something the children had no intention of doing. The family was staying close together.

“If you really want to, son.”

They remained on red alert. All of them understood that there was a vicious animal in their midst that only looked like a lovely young woman. Nefer had educated them well in that respect.

They parked in the hills below a wooded slope. Autopsy led him up to a small cave. The grotto was a quiet chamber overgrown with moss. “I don’t let anyone else come here,” she said. “It’s mine. I think the fruities knew of it, because I’ve found some of their trinkets here, but they didn’t mess it up. Maybe they liked the high.” She breathed deeply. “Feel it.”

They breathed deeply. There was a certain indefinable odor, not unpleasant, but it did nothing for Abner and evidently not for Clark. The girls, however—Bunty, Nefer, and Dreda—soon were truly appreciating it. “There is something,” Bunty murmured.

Abner looked at her. She was almost glowing, and her breasts seemed to be pushing against the cloth of her shirt, accentuating her sex appeal. She gazed at him with a certain barely-muted passion that made him want to have sex with her right there where she stood. He had a burgeoning erection that he suspected was partly her appearance and partly her subtle odor reaching his internal triggers.

“You feel it too,” Autopsy said wisely.

Abner looked at her, and saw the same sexual passion, unmuted. Then he looked at Nefer, and it was there too. Even little Dreda looked hungry for something. But not Clark, who looked uneasy about the kind of stares the girls were giving him. He could be having a sexual rush that he did not know how to handle. Abner sympathized.

“This is an aphrodisiac environment,” Abner said. “That turns on females, who it seems then turn on males with their pheromones or whatever. This explains a little, but not enough.”

“The moss,” Bunty said. “Maybe there’s fungus or lichen, with spores that act like pheromones, turning on people. But I’m not sure why, unless it’s simply a remarkable coincidence.”

“If it is restricted to a special environment, like a cave,” Abner said, “it could have trouble propagating. It could send spores out on the wind, but it might be more efficient to use an animal host, the way many plants use bees.”

“Flowers don’t make bees sexy,” Bunty said. “They provide them with sweet food as an inducement. Then their spores or equivalent get carried along when the bees travel.”

“But something that made human females like it, might then be able to spread as they interacted with others,” Abner said, working it out. “If the spores are delicate, needing a warm moist environment, sex could be a way to transfer them safely.”

“How about rabies?” Clark asked, edging toward the cave exit. “That makes animals really mad, and they bite and spread it in their spit.”

“Now there’s an idea,” Abner agreed. “If the spores emulated pheromones and made the host not mad but sexually turned on, that would do it.”

“What about no VD?” Nefer asked. Her eyes were wide, her breathing was fast and her mouth wet; she stood with her legs spread as if ready to accommodate intimacy. It was hard to believe she was only seven years old; she seemed to be suffering a genuine sexual arousal.

“A really sharp infection would try to keep a host healthy,” Abner said. “So it might fight off other infections, and maybe in the process pregnancy also, since its purpose is to maximize its opportunities to spread. It might want the area of contact, the sex organs, to be reserved for it alone.”

“That would explain a lot,” Autopsy said. “When I first came here I was six years old and ordinary. But soon I began developing, and I really got interested in sex, and men really got interested in me.”

“The fruities!” Nefer said. “They must have found this grotto, and discovered how it made their women sexy without babies. Only they wanted babies. So they got the hell out of here to avoid temptation.”

“That could certainly explain their abrupt departure,” Bunty agreed. “There’s no fanatic like a religious fanatic.”

Abner glanced again at Bunty, whose measurements seemed to have expanded. He suspected that only her strong interest in fathoming the erotic mystery of the grotto kept her from trying to get him alone for phenomenal passion. “We need to get samples of those spores, or whatever it is in the air here,” he said. “It just might be the perfect contraceptive.”

“If you want to drop the birth rate,” Bunty said, “Give women a contraceptive that not only protects them from VD, but also enhances their sexual desire and allure. They’ll use it often, and have no babies, regardless of their religious strictures. Sex appeal is the average woman’s real religion, because of the power it can give her over men.”

“We may just have our answer,” Abner said, excited. “Take samples to a laboratory, isolate the active ingredients, manufacture, package, and distribute them as a turn-on sexiness pill. We wouldn’t even have to mention its contraceptive aspect, to avoid religious feedback. People would use it regardless.”

“Samples?” Autopsy asked, frowning. This was it seemed not part of her agenda.

“Sections of the moss, the air, the earth, any water here,” he explained. “To get them analyzed in a chemical laboratory. To find out how this stuff works. To solve the population problem, and stop the births of more sopaths.”

“What’s in it for me?”

And of course she didn’t care about the possible good for the world. She had her own price.

“Persuade her,” Bunty said abruptly. “We’ll go search the motor. We should have some jars there for samples.” She glanced at the children and Nefer, and the four of them left the cave.

Abner realized that Bunty had had more than enough of the erotic arousal fostered by the grotto and needed to get herself and the girls out of it immediately. It wasn’t that she had any objection to sex, but that this artificial promotion of lust was not appropriate to the family setting. She was probably not keen on exposing Clark to the attention of aroused girls, either. Nefer was behaving, but in that environment she might see about seducing the boy, and Clark was surely willing.

Then he remembered her words: “Persuade her.” Bunty was not merely extricating herself and the children, she was giving him leave to pay Autopsy’s price, so they could get the samples and depart before the day finished. As she had said before, she would put him into bed with an ardent sopath if that was what it took to solve the larger sopath problem once and for all. This just might be that opportunity. Should he take it? Intellectually he realized it might make sense, but emotionally he felt it could be a bad mistake. This was a remorseless sopath!

“Well, now,” Autopsy said. “You know what I want, Abner.” She opened her blouse.

He was wary, as he had been of her abrupt capitulation the day before. Yet if they got the samples they could be rapidly done with Sauerkraut. Was it worth it? The potential reward was huge, but he didn’t trust her.

She gave him no time to temporize. She threw off her blouse, baring her fine breasts. She wore no bra, being so well formed that she didn’t need it. “We have what, maybe five minutes? Time enough. Let’s get to it. Take off your pants.” She inhaled and exhaled. It was compelling.

Was this conveniently sudden? What was her angle? Yet her sex appeal was phenomenal and his body was responding strongly. It was hard to fight his burgeoning desire. Pheromones were almost certainly turning him on. Still, he tried again. “I really don’t think—”

“You don’t need to think, Abner.” She drew off her skirt. She wore no panties. Yes, she had come prepared, knowing the effect of the grotto, and he distrusted that while being strongly turned on by it.

“If this proves to be the answer we seek, then I will consider having a—a relationship with you. But not right now. We have other things to do.”

“Right now or nothing,” she said. “Give me what I want, and I’ll give you what you want.” She stepped close and put her arms around him.

Yes, there had to be pheromones, because her closeness was instantly arousing his passion despite his misgiving. Still he tried to demur, realizing that to yield would be playing into her hands. “There will be time enough later. Right now I want to learn more about this moss.”

She drew herself close, lifted on tiptoes, and kissed him. The impact was potent. Suddenly his desire was overwhelming. It was like a dam bursting asunder. He kissed her back, no longer caring that he would probably be safer kissing an anaconda.

Then she was opening his fly to bring out his rampant member. She hauled herself up, then let herself down, and his penis was nudging into her eager cleft. She was thoroughly experienced; she knew how to make the connection no-handed.

In a moment he was plunging into her as they stood, her weight coming down to make the penetration complete and very firm. She kissed him again as he thrust. His ejaculation was immediate, and seemed to last forever, spurting all that he had into her body. There was nothing in the whole world as important as that phenomenal connection.

Yet that was only a portion of it. Autopsy’s urgency and joy of the occasion seemed to more than match his own, maybe because she suffered no guilt. It was as if each of his pulses was a wash of sheer bliss for her, enhancing her own continuing orgasm. As if she were drawing passion from him and savoring it like fine wine, which further enhanced his own rapture. Her vagina was rhythmically milking his member, drawing every possible bit of pleasure along with the fluid.

It was the most remarkable sex he had ever had, qualitatively distinguished from routine sex. It was savagely addictive. If regular sex was marijuana, this was cocaine.

She had him. All he wanted was her favor, in the hope of further fulfillment like this. She had mentioned how she controlled the souler men of Kraut by dispensing her favor sparingly and giving sex once a week per man, if he behaved. That had seemed inadequate to control grown men. Abner understood now that it wasn’t. She had imprinted on him a new desire that could never be completely satisfied. He wanted the ambiance of her nearness, the pleasure of doing her bidding, the delight of her passing favor. The rapture of her pheromones. Exactly as her other men did.

His copious ejaculation dribbled to its conclusion and his member started softening, but the pleasure of contact with her remained. It wasn’t limited to sex. His phenomenal orgasm had been magnified because it was for her, giving her pleasure. It was becoming a memory, but his delight in touching her remained. He was utterly besotted with her. She had turned the tables on him, fascinating him the way he had hoped to fascinate her. He had become her love slave.

She slid off his member and dropped to the floor. “Now you are mine,” she said, satisfied as she found a cloth in a cubbyhole and mopped the semen welling from her cleft. “You may still try to fight it, but the hook is in, and you will inevitably succumb.”

Abner did not answer, because he could not refute it. She had conquered him, and knew it. His penis was spent, and was going limp, but already he was thinking of the next time he might have her. Whatever she wanted of him he would do, for the promise of that next fulfillment. She was simply the most remarkable female creature he could imagine.

This was the trap she had made for him. To bring him here, isolate him, and overwhelm him sexually. Simple, straightforward, and infernally effective. He had walked right into it. Had her nearness, her hand holding, quietly compelled him so that he had not really resisted? She had made him react the day before, tempting him, setting him up for this more serious effort. And Bunty, thinking that one indulgence would satisfy him, had let him do it. She had miscalculated too, underestimating the thoroughness of the desire. Autopsy was not the child Nefer; she was a fully developed and competent woman, buttressed by the pheromones.

“You will not be traveling again,” Autopsy said as she completed her cleanup. “You will remain here, and service me often, because with you it’s not a duty but a pleasure. I simply had to capture you, because you’re the most man I have encountered. It will take me some time to tire of you.” As a sopath she had no inclination to relate to his feelings; she had taken him prisoner and now was establishing the routine.

“I have a family,” he said weakly.

She shrugged. “We’ll find a use for it, I’m sure. Except for the sopath. She put a knife to my throat; she must die.”

And he dared not argue, because Bunty was surely next on Autopsy’s list of nuisances. He still loved Bunty, but would not be able to protect her from Autopsy’s wrath. He had to do his utmost to ensure that wrath was never aroused. If that meant servicing her frequently, as she put it, well, he was eager to do exactly that.

Autopsy nodded, not yet dressing. She was letting him gaze at her perfect body, cementing his desire for it. He knew that if he pleased her, he would see that body often, and sometimes touch it. “I see you understand. Behave, and I will treat you well.”

Behave. Do her bidding without question. Then she would reward him with her favor, and sometimes with sex. She was his mistress in both senses of the word. He felt his penis thickening again. Yet at the same time he hated the trap he had fallen into. He was bound and gagged, his personal will overridden by hers. He had to break out, yet knew he could not.

There was the sound of an explosion outside. They both hurried to the cave opening and looked out.

There below was the blasted motor home, with an ugly roiling cloud of smoke rising from it. “Bunty!” Abner cried in horror.

“Something must have happened,” Autopsy said, unperturbed. “Maybe someone thought I was in there, and tried to take me out. Too bad for your family.”

Abner stared at her. “You arranged this! You set it up. You got me alone in the grotto, distracted by sex, while they went down to the vehicle you knew your minions had booby-trapped!”

She shrugged. “And what if I did? They were impediments anyway. It was the sopath I was after. If the others went in with her, well, they were collateral damage. Now I have you all to myself, without complications.”

Abner had been overwhelmed by sex. Now a different emotion surfaced: the shock of grief translating rapidly to outrage. “I said I’d kill you if you harmed my family.”

She smiled, facing him with her ideal naked body almost glowing. “Oh? Maybe you did. What are you going to do, Abner, with no hot poker handy? Fuck me to death?” She glanced at his penis, which was stirring.

She had conquered him, but had overplayed her hand. Now his sick fury overrode his desire. “I’ll rape you with cold steel.” He drew his knife.

She laughed. “Do it. I’m calling your bluff, and will punish you for it later.” She dropped to the mossy floor and spread her legs wide. “Here’s the place, Abner. Put it in there!” She held her labia apart, exactly as Nefer had when they first interacted, only in this case it supercharged his returning desire. He was desperate to get into that aperture, to pump out whatever fluid remained in him, filling her up again. She was flaunting her power over him, daring him to make good on a threat she thought had become impossible for him to honor. Rubbing his face in his helplessness. Punishing him for even trying to escape her control. He knew that this was just the beginning; she would make him violate all his ethical and moral principles, just because she could. He would have to torture others on her say-so, as her other minions did.

He had to follow through.

Abner dropped to the ground beside her, put a knee on her chest to hold her down, positioned the blade, and rammed it into the slit. The motion was sexual in its fashion, a sadistic turn-on as he saw the steel disappear into her.

Autopsy screamed, as much in surprise as in pain. He had indeed raped her with the knife.

She struggled, her breasts pushing against his knee, but he held her down. She could match neither his strength nor his ferocity, and the thrust had severely wounded her.

He drew the knife out, and thrust it in again, deeper, like a deadly phallus. He stabbed her repeatedly in the groin, twisting the blade as he did so. Hot blood spurted out like a red ejaculation, covering the knife and his hand, pooling on the ground. He kept on stabbing and cutting as her belly was minced from inside.

Suddenly she quieted. “Now you have nothing,” she gasped, and died.

Abner’s blind rage abated. He had murdered her, and now he had nothing. He realized that part of his motivation had been to get free of her, and that her death was the only way. He’d had to do it immediately, because he would never have been able to summon the will later. He would have been her love-slave, like the other men of the town. He had his promised vengeance, and nothing else. She was right about that one thing.

He got up and staggered out of the grotto. What was he to do? Everything he valued had been lost. Again. Only this time it was worse than before. He had loved his prior family, but he had come to love his second family more. Now, in the agony of his loss, he could see that.

“Daddy!”

It was Dreda, running toward the cave, disheveled and frightened. She had survived!

He bent to scoop her up into his embrace. “I thought you were dead!” he said.

“Nefer saved us,” she said, clinging tearfully to him. “We’re all alive.”

Abner was stunned by relief. He sank to the ground, sobbing. Dreda hugged him, trying to comfort him. It really did help.

It seemed only a moment before the others were with them. Then he learned what had happened.

The four of them had entered the motor home, searching for jars. Then Nefer had spoken up. “I smell a bomb, like the one Abner and I set off.”

“A bomb?” Bunty asked, not focusing.

“And I hear it ticking! It’ll blow in maybe half a minute. GET OUT OF HERE!”

They piled out and ran from the vehicle. Perhaps ten seconds later the bomb went off. The blast was like a huge hand smacking their backsides, but they were far enough away to escape damage. Then, fearful of some other attack, they had hidden in the brush.

The bomb had evidently been set to be primed when the door opened, to detonate perhaps a minute later, so that they all had time to get inside. Autopsy had to have ordered it, knowing that Bunty would not care to remain long in the grotto. It had been a good plan, and it had almost worked.

So Nefer had saved them all. Abner owed her again. Yet she was a sopath, like Autopsy only younger. “How am I ever going to repay you?” he asked her.

She smiled, knowing he knew her price. “I’ll think of something, Abner. I got a jar; I’ll get the sample.”

“It’s ugly in there.” But she was already on her way.

“Ugly?” Bunty asked.

Now Abner realized that there was blood on his arm and shirt, and some had spread to Dreda. “When I thought you were all dead, I knifed her,” he said grimly. “She had—had ensorcelled me, with her hormones, but she misjudged my reaction to her treachery.”

“Ensorcelled?” Bunty asked.

“She seduced me. I tried to fight it, and could not. I’m sorry.”

“Don’t be. I know how it was in there. Even Clark had an erection from those spreading hormones. I told you to do it. I thought it was a fair exchange for the possible solution to the entire sopath problem.” She smiled. “I also thought it was your chance to possess an outstanding body, one time. I thought you’d like that.”

She was certainly not the jealous type. But she too had miscalculated. “She was trying to capture me and kill the rest of you. That was no fair exchange. Ah, Bunty, if I lost you--”

She kissed him. “I understand. I really do. You love me and I love you. If she had killed you, I’d have butchered her in an instant.”

“Oh Bunty, I love you so much!” They kissed again, Dreda between them. Neither Clark nor Dreda protested. They would not have protested if Abner and Bunty had sex right there. It was one of the elements that held their oddly formed family together. Probably they were still being affected by the ambiance of the grotto, the stimulated hormones. It didn’t matter; their love was real regardless.

Nefer returned with the closed jar, unfazed by what she had seen. “Did you fuck her first?”

“I fucked her,” Abner agreed. “Then I slew her.”

“She did not know you as well as I do. I’d have been more careful. I’d have known not to try to hurt your family.”

Nefer was a child. But she would not remain one long. The time was apt to come when she, aided by the pheromones, had the body and desire of Autopsy. But that was a future problem. “See that you never forget,” Abner told her.

“Someone there,” Nefer said alertly, gazing down at the bombed motor home. “Someone making sure we’re dead, maybe.”

“We need to get out of here before they discover the body,” Bunty said, alarmed.

“Abner can call in another mortar strike,” Nefer said. “Zero in on our position, then move on so the pursuers are there when it lands. Then we can call Pariah and have them send a van to pick us up and spirit us away.”

“You’re quite the organizer,” Bunty said.

“It comes with the territory of being a genius. I want to save my own hide.”

“What do you think, dear?” Bunty asked Abner. She was always careful to defer to him with major decisions, in private and in public, promoting his authority. He rather liked that.

“I think there’s no need for heroics,” Abner said. “It should be easy to take over this town. I doubt Autopsy had the wit to establish any formal government other than her whim, or any second in command. With her gone, it will be chaos until a new sopath takes her place. That would be a waste of a perfect opportunity.”

“I don’t follow.”

“We are going to need a manufacturing plant to make the fungus pheromone product.”

“Fungo,” Clark said.

Abner laughed, and that was a relief. The horror of Autopsy was already fading. Then he reconsidered. “Fungo as in fun, and as in fungus,” he said. “I believe you have named it, Clark.”

“Yeah,” Clark said, pleased.

“Anyway,” Abner continued, “If we want to circulate this contraceptive globally, why give it away to a big soulless company that will seek to maximize profits rather than distribution? We can start out by distributing it free, then charge a modest amount as it catches on. Soon enough the demand will become huge. We’ll need more than a garage laboratory to refine it. We will have here a complete town in need of employment, and this can provide it. Souler adults to handle the various aspects competently, sopath children to test samples.”

“But it’s an aphrodisiac!” Bunty protested.

“Those girls have been whoring in Sweetpea all along. This will not only enhance their business, it will keep them sterile and VD free. It will give them options to advance themselves in ways other than sexual. That’s an improvement.”

“I suppose it is,” she agreed thoughtfully.

“It promotes orgasm in the woman, too,” he said. “I saw it and felt it in Autopsy. She was climaxing as powerfully as I was. Sexual equality in the truest sense.”

“We shall have to verify that soon,” she said. “That alone would make it commercially irresistible.”

“This can be our base for saving the world,” he said grandly. “All we need to do is organize it.”

“What’s in it for me?” Nefer asked, echoing Autopsy’s question.

And there was the problem. They did owe her, but she was a sopath. “What do you want?”

“Your favor. To be part of your family. To start.”

It was that “to start” that made him especially cautious. “You want Bunty and me to adopt you into the family, as we did Clark and Dreda?”

“She did save us,” Dreda said.

“You’re not my sister!” Clark protested with surprising vehemence.

“I’ll never be your sister,” Nefer agreed, eying him. She returned to Abner. “But I do want to be Nefer Slate when I mature.”

That was what he had feared. She had a larger design, and they could not ignore it. “I’m not going to marry you, regardless how you mature,” Abner said. “I am more than satisfied with Bunty, and yes, I am prepared to kill anyone who tries to kill her. You know that. One experience with Autopsy was far more than enough.” He realized that now that Autopsy was dead, he no longer cared about her. She had compelled him with fascination and transcendent sex, not true love.

“I was thinking maybe of being a second wife.”

A larger design indeed!

“Not in this culture,” Bunty said. “One wife at a time is the limit. But if you mean to be his mistress, when you’re grown, there are problems there too.”

Abner was glad to have her take over this dialogue. She had a perspective he lacked.

“What problems?” Nefer asked.

“A mistress does not take her lover’s name.”

“Oh.” That evidently set the girl back. “What else?”

“By the time you are grown, your crush on Abner will have faded. You will be more interested in boys your own age. So he can’t promise you anything now that will survive the passage of time. It would be a deceit, and therefore cheat you of a reward you surely deserve.”

Nefer’s jaw dropped. “I’ll be damned!”

“You think about it,” Bunty said. “We will do right by you. You just need to come to better understand your true will.”

Bunty just might have saved him some extreme future awkwardness. When Nefer matured physically, enhanced by the pheromones, she would be as compelling as Autopsy had been. “Did I mention that I love you?” he asked her.

“Not often enough. Now let’s attend to that man.” For the man they had seen was walking purposefully toward them.

“I’ll take it from here,” Abner said. He raised a hand, hailing the man. “You’re one of Autopsy’s minions.”

The man nodded. “Yes.”

“She had you plant a bomb in our motor home.”

“Yes. I do what she tells me to.”

“Well, things have changed. My family escaped the bomb, but it annoyed me, and I stabbed Autopsy to death. You will now take your orders from me.”

That brought the man up short. “You killed her?”

“Go into the grotto and see the body. Then convey us to your vehicle. We’re going into town, where I will address the citizens. There will be a new order, and chances are your lives will markedly improve. Get moving.”

The man hesitated, then walked on past them toward the grotto.

“A new order,” Nefer repeated. “I think I’m going to like this.”

“You should,” Abner said. “You will be one of my chief lieutenants, helping me get important things done.”

“Gee,” she said, pleased. “And can I hold your hand?”

“Often,” he agreed. He saw that Bunty, Clark, and Dreda approved. He had found a way to keep Nefer satisfied without displacing any of them.

They all had a phenomenal future to explore.