Flesh by Philip José Farmer Page B

like a virgin.”
    Her face became ecstatic.
    “I’ll know if I’m carrying the Sunhero’s child!”

7
    It rained the morning that Stagg was to lead the parade into Baltimore. Stagg and Calthorp were in a large open-walled tent and drinking hot white lightning to keep warm. Stagg was motionless as a model while submitting to the usual morning repainting of his genitals and buttocks, necessary because he wore the paint off at nights. He was silent and paying no attention to the giggles and compliments of the three girls whose only work was this daily redecorating of the Sunhero. Calthorp, who generally talked like a maniac to keep Stagg’s spirits up, was also glum.
    Finally, Stagg said, “Do you know, Doc, it’s been ten days since we left Fair Grace. Ten days and ten towns. By now you and I should have worked out a plan for escape. In fact, if we were the men we used to be, we’d have been over the hills and far away. But the only time I get to thinking is in the mornings, and I’m too exhausted and wretched to do anything constructive. And by noon I just don’t give a damn. I like the way I am!”
    “And I’ve not been much help to you, have I?” Calthorp said. “I get as drunk as you do, and I’m too sick in the morning to do anything but take a hair of the dog that bit me.”
    “What the hell’s happened?” Stagg said. “Do you realize that I don’t even know where I’m going, or what’s going to happen to me when I get there? I don’t even know, really, what a Sunhero is!”
    “It’s mostly my fault,” Calthorp said. He sighed and sipped some more of his drink. “I just can’t seem to get organized.”
    Stagg looked at one of his guards, who was standing in the entrance of a nearby tent. “Do you suppose that if I threatened to wring his neck, he’d tell me everything I want to know?”
    “You could try it.”
    Stagg rose from his chair. “Hand me that cloak, will you? I don’t think they’ll object if I wear this while it’s raining.”
    He was referring to an incident of the previous day when he had put on a kilt before going over to talk to the girl in the cage. The attendants had looked shocked, then summoned the guards. These surrounded Stagg. Before he could find out what they intended, a man behind him had torn off his kilt and run off with it into the woods.
    He did not reappear all day, apparently dreading Stagg’s wrath, but the lesson had been taught. The Sunhero was supposed to display his naked glory to the worshiping people.
    Now Stagg slipped the cloak on and strode on bare feet across the wet grass. The guards stepped out from their tents and followed him, but they did not come close.
    Stagg halted before the cage. The girl sitting inside looked up, then turned her face away.
    “You don’t need to be ashamed to look at me,” he said. “I’m covered.”
    There was silence. Then he said, “For God’s sakes, speak to me! I’m a prisoner too, you know! I’m in as much of a cage as you.”
    The girl clutched the bars and pressed her face against them. “You said, ‘For God’s sake!’ What does that mean? That you’re a Caseylander too? You can’t be. You don’t talk like my countrymen. But then you don’t talk like a Deecee, either—or like anyone I ever heard before. Tell me, are you a believer in Columbia?”
    “If you’ll stop talking for a minute, I’ll explain,” Stagg said. “Thank God, you’re talking, though.”
    “There you go again,” she said. “You couldn’t possibly be a worshiper of the foul Bitch-Goddess. But if you’re not, why are you a Horned King?”
    “I was hoping you could tell me that. If you can’t, you can tell me some other things I’d like to know.”
    He held out the bottle to her. “Would you like a drink?”
    “I’d like one, yes. But I won’t accept one from an enemy. And I’m not sure you’re not one.”
    Stagg understood her with difficulty. She used enough words similar to those of Deecee for him to