Thoughts of incipient s.e.x sprouted wings and flapped away in the trail of the Rocker.

"Hey!" called a voice behind him.

Bill spun around. Standing there with a thoughtful look was the formerly female satyr.

"By the way, the name is Bruce," said the satyr, extending a hand. Still stunned, Bill shook the hand.

"What.... What was that?"

"Hey, we mythological creatures have got our problems! It ain't all nectar and ambrosia and hot juicy l.u.s.t here, ya know? All kinds of loathsome monsters would just as soon eat you as look at you. Why, just last week the Labor Union finally got ahold of poor old Hercules and made him cough up dues." The satyr named Bruce quavered in fear and emitted a pungent goat-smell. "Anyway, that there's Zeus' Rocker. Old Zeus is the king of the G.o.ds, and he's been hankering after a taste of Irma's flank steaks. Jumped her once as a swan, but Irma got him by the neck and near throttled him. Looks like you guys just walked too far out into the open."

"Where did he take her?" Bill asked, realizing with a sinking heart that no other woman would be able to satisfy his unrequited desires like Irma could.

"Oh! Up yonder, onto the top of Mt. Olympus. That's where the Palace of the G.o.ds is!" Bruce noticed the lump in Bill's jumpsuit. "Hey, pal. Is that your lute, or are you just happy to see me?"

"Huh? Oh, it's a dove I found a little while ago. Kept it in case I needed a little snack."

Bill took the dove out and was not pleased to see that it had suffocated during its incarceration. He looked unhappily at its limp, dead corpse, feathers fluttering down to the ground.

Bruce gasped and staggered back. "Gurgle!" he gurgled. "You didn't...."

"Didn't what...?"

"You are really in the merda now, bub!" His little eyes bugged out like Greek olives amidst his wilting saladlike hair. "That there's one of the Doves Above! You kill one of those and..."

A trembling whir of wind. A harsh rattle of thunder.

"And here they come! Not only that - I just happened to remember that they still want me for putting the blocks to their changeling!"

"Who?" asked Bill.

"The Furries, man. The Furry Eumensuckadees!"

With no further adieu, the beast man started to run gallop toward the olive groves. But he'd gotten no further than ten yards away when a dazzling sizzle of lightning split the air like the crack of Doom. A bright bolt seared down, striking the satyr directly in the keester, frying him on the spot. When the smoke cleared, all that was left was a rotary spit of roasted gyro meat.

Stunned, Bill turned around to see who had hurled this incredible bolt of fire, and was immediately confronted by the third most astonishing thing he had ever seen. (What numbers two and one are will be revealed later on.) Riding an island of moiling, electricity-shot clouds, were three stern-looking la.s.ses in Bill Bla.s.s business suits, carrying briefcases in one hand, and copies of INTERSTELLAR MS. and GALACTIC SAVVY in the other.

"You!" bellowed one, and a stream of lightning shot down, hurtling between his legs and blasting the ground not a yard from Bill's b.u.t.t. "Move further and kiss the family jewels goodbye!"

This sounded anatomically improbable, but Bill nonetheless decided it would be best to heed the command, since the smell of charred lamb and garlic in the air was a heavy reminder of Bruce's fate. "I'm convinced!" he shrieked. "I'm not moving! Don't zap me!"

The ladies murmured amongst themselves, then one leaned down off the cloud, scrutinizing Bill, distaste edging suspicious anger. "My name is Hymenestra, leader of the Furries. Guardians of the Doves Above!

Our mystical needles have hopped off their moorings! We have reason to believe that one of our sacred charges hast been stricken down, yea, unto Death! Knowest thou ought of this, mortal?"

Bill grimaced, trying to keep the dead dove hidden behind his back. "No, gee. Absolutely nothing!"

One of the other ladies leaned over the edge of the clouds, peering down upon the ground. "My name is v.u.l.v.ania. Whyest do I seest bird feathers strewnest about yon area?"

"Uhm," said Bill. "Bruce and I, er, uhm.... We were having a pillow fight. Yeah! That's what was happening!"

The third lady leaned over and pointed a stiff finger. "My name is G-spotstra. Whatest is that you are obscuring behindest thy posterior, mortal?"

"Hmm? Oh, this? What's that doing here?" Bill took out the dove. Its wings and head hung down pathetically; somehow the letter X had appeared over both of its eyes. "Oh! Yes, Bruce.... Remember?

The satyr you cooked over there. Yes. He asked me to hold on to it. Old Bruce smells pretty good. You ladies wouldn't have some pita bread and some lemon on you, would you?"

The ground seemed to shake with thunder as Hymenestra roared. "Lying male abomination! Of coursest, that isest the general description of thy breed! Thou hastest killed one of our Doves! Oh woest uponest thou head!"

More thunder crashed, more lightning flashed. The ladies conferred amongst one another, muttering vile imprecations. Bill decided that the heat of a pulsar beam battle between Chinger dreadnoughts and Empire cruisers was a far preferable place to be.

"Very wellest!" cried Hymenestra after the lengthy conference. "We chargest thou with guilt, pure and simplest! Thou hast killed a sacred Dove! We perceive that you are a man of war! How like all men! So eager to perpetrate death and destruction upon thyest neighbor at the slightest provocation! Very well, you have brought our curse down upon you, insect! Be-est thou visited with the Grime of the Aging Marinator!"

The ladies suddenly heaved up great ma.s.ses of glop from the bottom of their cloud and chucked these at Bill. His Trooper reflexes jerked his body away from the first splash of glop, but the second caught him full in the face, and he could feel the third striking him in the midsection. The stuff had the consistency of pureed roc guano and had the astringent stench of bilge water at the bottom of a sea-cruiser after a weeklong rum party below-decks. Bill felt himself being hurled about w.i.l.l.y-nilly by forces of which he had no conception.

When the shaking had ceased, he found himself face first staring at trampled gra.s.s, quite dirty and quite confused. He heaved himself up off the ground, and wiped the odorous stuff from his face and body. In doing so, his hands. .h.i.t upon something that hung from his neck. Very quickly, he determined that it was the dead dove, its breast pierced by a leather thong, which in turn was tied around his neck.

Moreover, the dove was beginning to stink.

Bill, of course, made to take this off. However, the knot in the leather thongs seemed to have defied his mud-slippery fingers.

"Beholdest thou the Curse of the Grime of the Aging Marinator!" bellowed the voice of Hymenestra from On High. "Thou canst not remove the dead avian until thou satisfiest two conditions. Onest: "Thou must rescue she whom ist the love of thy life and give voice to thy tendermost feelings.

"Twoest A: Thou must seek the answer to the age-old question: How canst personskind achieve peace in our time, obtain a truce withest the Chingers, and live happily ever after.

"Twoest B: (It's a corollary) Verily, whyest dost thou hairy monstrosities called 'men' rejoice in war, mindless l.u.s.t, strong drink and Sunday afternoon anti-gravball."

"Gosh," snarled Bill. "Why don't you ask me to find the Meaning of Life as well."

"Oh, we women know that, silly," said one of the Furries slyly. "Now be-est off with you and heed the curse and solve our request, for sure as the dove that you have murdered rots, so rottest thy soul, and perhaps eventually the root-spot of thy short and curlies!"

With a thunderclap and a blast of fire, the Furries were suddenly gone, leaving behind only the smell of sulfur, brimstone and the toiletries section of Galactic Harrods-Bloomingdales.

Bill clutched his crotch reflexively at the very thought of the last threat. The thought of a groin transplant was enough to chill his very marrow. He'd had enough problems with his foot! Imagine if he got stuck with a mood pe- "No!" he cried out, shutting out the very idea. "I'll get out of this. Somehow!"

First, the true love bit. Well, clearly in this case, the Furries meant Irma. He'd have to traipse after her and save her from Zeus, up there on Mount Olympus.

Fine. But then that other bit - peace with the Chingers? This sounded awfully suspicious, but what could he do? He didn't want to go around his entire life with a dead and moldering dove around his neck. It would make a big impression back in the barracks. His recruits would laugh him right off the drill field!

He tried again to take the thing off, but could not.

First, though, he went down to the bubbling brook he'd hoped to take Irma skinny-dipping in, and washed off some of the Grime.

Then, he went over to the roasted spit of Bruce meat, cut off a few hunks for the trip, and set out for the celestial home of the Home of the G.o.ds, and a mano a mano with Zeus himself.

All in all, thought Bill, he'd rather be back in boot camp.

CHAPTER 6.

A STARSHIP NAMED "DESIRE".

Bill climbed the mountain.

Since his home planet of Phigerinadon II was a very flat world, and he'd yet to be a.s.signed for battle duty or so-called rest upon a mountainous world, Bill had absolutely nil experience with climbing mountains.

However, his Trooper training, to say nothing of his rock-hard Trooper ex-farmer muscles, now served him in good stead. His legs worked like rusty pistons as he climbed up the narrow crevices and steep goat trails of Mount Olympus. For fuel, he ate the pieces of Bruce the Transvest.i.te Satyr he had taken along which, while certainly being a novel diet to say the least, sustained capric-satyric life. Actually, they were very tasty, though for Bill's taste the garlic could have been a bit less p.r.o.nounced, and some Chingerra sauce would be nice. Halfway up though he reached a kind of plateau and the climbing got easier and even a little boring, so he stuck his copy of BLEEDER'S DIGEST up his nose so that he could read as he climbed.

He could feel the device slide around inside his sinuses as it attached its electronic appendages. There was a m.u.f.fled whirring sound as it did its work and a shuddering frisson as it attached itself to his brain.

A "mind's eye" screen appeared in his frontal lobes which he could read wonderfully well, as it superimposed orange words over his field of vision.

First up was a short catalog of the Read-a-Book's contents.

He selected an appropriate condensed novel and dug into the craggy prose even as his hands found holds in the craggy mountainside.

CRITTERS OF MYST AND MEMORY.

by Michael Huge-Jackson Call me Conrad Hilton.

No, strike that. Call me Gunga Din.

Naw, just go ahead and call me Gus.

When I'm a professional wrestler, they call me Grandiose Gus, the Eternal Victor or some other such swill. They say I saved Earth from the swarms of Harpy creatures from Greekus Planetus, but h.e.l.l, I was drinking lots of ouzo that week and it's all a blackout to me, so what the hay! All I know is that I woke up in the Parthenon with a hot blaster in my hands and the landscape looking like catharsis time in a Sophoclean tragedy. Phew, dead mythological critters everywhere!

Then again, maybe I'm making all this up.

That's what myths are, you know. Made-up stories with heroes and G.o.ds and things. Some of my critics say that I just make up all these stories and whisper them into the ears of my lovers, who promptly spread them all around Earth. Others say they've seen me furtively sneaking from the Library of New Alexandria with stolen copies of the Secret Writings of Joseph Campbell tucked under, my trench coat.

Stuff and nonsense, of course. Truth is, while I generally keep a paperback copy of Edith Hamilton tucked into my chinos' back pocket to while away the boring bits of adventures, my real name is Philip Chandler from the mysterious world of Camelot. This Earth business started a few years ago when I was a private d.i.c.k in Old LA, and the following narrative means to set the record straight.

It was a sunny day in the City of Angels, and I was lubricating the bore of my .38 with oil and the back of my throat with some Jack Daniels, when the babe strolled into my office.

"My name is Frigga Athena," she sang, her mammoth gazongas hammocked in a steel bra that shone like a healthy Double Sun system. "Are you Philip Chandler, Private Third Eye from the Secret World of Camelot?"

"That's right, sweetheart," I snarled in my best Humphrey Bogart lisp. "Exiled here on Earth by Merlin himself after I trumped out in a Dimensional Bridge game."

She heaved those magnificent b.r.e.a.s.t.s at me like calling cards. "I'm in dreadful trouble, Mr. Chandler."

She was batting a pair of baby blues at me from a moviestar face, and was already batting a thousand with my pulse.

"Trouble is my business, ma'am," I told her. "'Specially trouble involving Beautiful Mythologically Proportioned Blondes. So what the scoop? Lost your unicorn? Husband cheating on you with that s.l.u.t Aphrodite?"

I offered her a gla.s.s of whiskey and she knocked it back like her tonsils were on fire. She sat down and I got a blast of Lotus Eaters Perfume like Bargain Night at Nero Wolfe's hothouse. "It's my husband, you see. Loki Agonistes. He's being blackmailed for running guns to semi-magical Third World Revolutionary countries."

Loki Agonistes! Buddha on Crutches! My eyes rolled like catseye marbles at the very name! I managed to get my eyes back in their orbits after some blind groping on my desk, and made appropriate gasping noises.

"Christ, lady. I still got a couple thousand years left in this old bod! I fool around with people after Loki Agonistes and my karma will be in Hades' sling, and this section of my life will be included in the Egyptian BOOK OF THE DEAD, in the Dumb d.i.c.ks section!" I got up to show her out. "Why don't you try this buddy of mine. Lives in Sausalito on a houseboat called the Screwed Straight, name of Travis Watts. He handles the Metaphysical Detection. Me, I stick to pure Mythological stuff."

The broad's hopeful smile flip-flopped into a frown that almost touched her toes. "But Mr. Chandler, I want you!" Suddenly, those arms were around me, and I had a face full of galvanized mammaries and a snootful of pheromones that would have steamed up the testosterone of an Ice Giant in mid-winter. She started to grind against me. I supplied the b.u.mps.

By the time a half-hour pa.s.sed and I came up for air from some serious couch Olympics, I was on the case.

Little did I realize that if this was a cosmic card game I was just entering, I'd just pulled the Trump of Jerkoffs to play with.

"It's like this," she said breathily, smoking a cigarette and blowing the smoke into my ear. "There are these Three Weird Sisters, you see -"

"Hullo!"

The voice sounded like it came from a great distance and had been amplified by a wonky klaxon-speaker.

Bill blinked. He came out of his book-induced fugue. He willed the words to disappear from his vision, and they did, but only after the second try. He realized that he had stopped climbing. He was standing on a level plateau with marble-columned temples in the near distance. In the forefront of this scene, on the stone agora - that is, Greek marketplace, or meeting place or a.s.sembly or, you know, something like that - stood a thirty-meter-high gleaming-silver starship with a needle nose and fins that looked as though it would have been more at home on top of a trophy for bad pulp fiction awards than here on Olympus. In big l.u.s.trous curlicued letters on its side was a name: DESIRE. The entire scene had an amazing l.u.s.ter and sheen to it, like a movie matte: in the background, a magnificent silver moon was rising up over acrylic-blue and white mountains. The creatures and citizens in the background looked like cartoons and tended to wear ruffles at their arms and throats. In short, not very Greek at all. And Zoroaster! In the skies, the stars looked like stylized twinkles on Christmas trees!

Bill was flabbergasted, stunned. Unbelievingly, he felt his flabber - and it really was gasted!

The whole panorama looked like an animated poster done by the Kelly Freebees school of Art at the L.

Ron Hubris University, the boys who did the artwork for Trooper recruiting posters!

He drifted toward it, so dazzled by the bravura colors and airbrush work that he barely noticed the stink of the dead dove that hung about his neck.

Bill was approaching the starship cautiously when suddenly a pneumatic door opened in its belly, and a rope ladder unwound down to the marble floor. By the time he'd reached the base, a figure had exited the starship and was descending the rope with reckless ease. He was a tall, handsome man, wearing a rhinestone eye-patch, bright orange epaulets, tastefully decorated with shining tinsel, and long shiny black boots. A metallic-orange sash was tied around his slender midsection and from this dangled a holstered hand-blaster on one side, and a menacing cutla.s.s on the other. This highly impressive, not to say ferociously gaudy, figure dropped down the last eight feet, tripping and falling with a clatter onto his b.u.t.t.

Bill caught a decided whiff of lavender and rum. The man looked up, bemused, at Bill with one startling blue eye. The other was startlingly rhinestone.

"Arrrrrrrr," he said in a voice like Blackbeard's after Remedial English Lessons. "Hyperboreals, me fellow bucko! Does life remind you of the junk that floats onto the beach in Tokyo Bay?"

"No. I don't think that I ever heard of Tokyo Bay."

"Me neither. Hudson Bay, more like. Right by Nyark City on Earth. I did a quick read once on fabled Earth, historical home of all mankind, now riven by the blasts of atomic war. Where was I?"

"In the middle of Hudson Bay, I think."

"Of course, dear boy. How bright you are! Anyway, medical detritus, junkie needles, old Charlie Parker records. Never mind. Name's Rick. Rick the Supernal Hero." He held up his hand to shake, which Bill promptly did, introducing himself.

"Hullo, I'm Bill. Spelled with two L's. Was that you who hailed me a moment ago?"

"Certainly was. Saw you coming up over the horizon with that dead dove around your neck, knew at once that you must be a mariner in the ocean of Life like your obedient servant!" He looked on his shoulder.

"Arrrrr! Now where's me own little bird! Archimedes!" He yelled back to the door in the side of the splendiferous starship. "Archimedes, come down and meet another bird-fancier."

"Awwwwwwwwwwwk!" squawked a voice from above. "Pieces of shayte! Pieces of shayte!"