Emil Petaja - The Prism

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THE PRISM

EMIL PETAJA

ACE BOOKS, INC.

1120 Avenue of the Americas

New York, N.Y. 10036

Version 3.0

THE PRISM

A portion of this novel appeared in Worlds of Tomorrow under the title

Cover by Jack Gaughan.

Chapter I

Chapter II

Chapter III

Chapter IV

Chapter V

Chapter VI

Chapter VII

Chapter VIII

Chapter IX

Chapter X

Chapter XI

Chapter XII

Chapter XIII

Chapter XIV

Chapter XV

Chapter XVI

Chapter XVII

Jack and Phoebe Gaughan

Back to back, Kor and Atlan of the Forests fought the Green Ones. Their

serrated blades purloined light from the tropical dawn to dazzle the swamp

creatures' eyes-on-sticks.

“I told you that the swamp path was folly,” Atlan commented, thrusting

steel into a green belly.

Kor showed even white teeth in a brown battle-tough face. “Then are

the Seven Kingdoms for weaklings? Are the Forest Helden become skittish

cave-skulkers? Speak, comrade!”

“Wait until I dispatch this big green bolo,” Atlan panted. “There! I think

we've routed them for the nonce.”

“So.” Kor nodded. The long claws of the swamp men dripped venom but

the bronzed Helden of the Forests put their long blades to good use;

presently the three Green Ones who didn't fall slithered off to sink back in

their lairs under the swamp.

From the woodpath between the purple trees they watched the

evil-smelling bubbles rise through the putrescent fen-mist where they sank.

Kor gave his great shoulders a shrug of good-riddance as he wiped the

ichor from his blade on the wide leaves of a berry bush before sheathing it

in the copper thrust at the side of his wide dragon-leather belt. Atlan

grinned back at him. Kor's smile broke off when those voices started up

again. They came from inside of his mind, abruptly, like a turned-on switch:

“These heroic combats are not to my taste, but I suppose

Tarzan-cum-Siegfried will always be popular with base-color. Anyone mind

if I switch to something less obvious?”

“I'd like to follow Kor a little further.”

Chuckle. “My daughter is young, Gold Dorff. She still finds muscles and a

handsome face intriguing.”

“We must indulge the child, by all means.”

Kor's weather-hard fight-hard face turned to stone, listening to such

strange talk. It was not until Atlan flicked his fingertips across his biceps in

a stinging slap that he snapped to.

“What gives, comrade Kor?” Atlan demanded. “Why are you standing

there staring at nothing? Thinking of Liti, I wager?”

“No. Not of Liti.”

Again Kor decided to say nothing. What would be the use? Atlan would

laugh and begin to wonder if his boyhood buddy was beginning to slip.

Sometimes Kor yearned back for the days when the two of them were boys

and Liti their inevitable tagalong; golden afternoons and silky dawns when

they swam the blue lagoons, fished the white-water streams, or hunted

selki with crossbow and flinted arrow. No mind-voices to plague him. No

questions to try answering when there were no answers to be had anywhere

within the boundaries of their adventuresome Seven Kingdoms.

They walked along through the purple sun-dappled trees.

“Well?” Atlan demanded.

“I was thinking of the Princess.”

Atlan's blue eyes danced. “So do all Helden youths. She is what keeps

us fighting and yearning. But she is only a fantasy, a hapless dream!”

Kor made no comment; his long bared legs brushed aside fern fronds as

they moved off the circuitous dragon's trail to rising ground and no trail at

all. Their sandals made no sound on the sward; their hunt-stalk-fight-kill

instructor had taught the two of them well. Had he not they would be dead

by now. Life was paced hot and fast among the Helden tribes of the Purple

Forests and the devil took the hindmost. Young.

Mists of shimmering vapor shrugged off the night-wet as the

tropical-close sun lifted into the heat of day; a sibilant wind sang through

the natural flutes among the soaring swaying trees.

When they reached the diminished forest's rim and a wide upland

clearing bisected the rearing tangle of verdure, they, could see the cliffs.

The cliffs! High as heaven itself. Unassailable, they were taught by the

Care Women, even before their tough cranky fight-instructors took over.

The cliffs were to dream on, a fanciful ever-fogged tableland which bespoke

the unattainable, the forever unknown, a place to look up at with awed

eyes and gaping mouth and wonder and never know or expect to know.

And now—just at this incredible moment!—the fog that never went

away did. Briefly, so briefly that it must have been illusion. And there it

was! The fabled castle of the Princess!

They stood there, gawking and gurgling.

Then it was gone.

Kor swallowed the thing that had leaped to his throat. “I—I never

doubted it was there. We all worship the Princess and wear her banner on

our hearts, yet not all of the Helden believe in her. But I did! Always! And

now that I know she is real and I have seen her castle I'm going up there!”

Atlan cried out and slapped his shoulder in a plea for sanity. “Kor!

Nobody has ever made it up that cliff! See how it beetles out! There are no

holds. It's like polished flint. Forget it!” He added in a low growl, “I still

think it was just an illusion. We dreamed it.”

Kor took his hand. “Goodbye, friend.”

“Hey! Not now!” Atlan cried. “Think on it! Let your brains struggle for

sense!”

“Now is as good a time as any.”

“What'll I tell Liti?”

“Tell her—” Kor shrugged; for a moment the must in his lake-blue eyes

wavered. “Tell her I had to go. After all, this is our life, here in the Forests.

To challenge. To fight. To die.”

“But you're our leader, Kor!”

“You will lead, Atlan. Until I return.”

“Return! You know—”

“Farewell, comrade.”

Kor left Atlan scowling and blinking among the bracken; he did not look

back.

* * *

Questions seethed in his head while he moved out of the brush-spotted

field and onto rocky terrain in the direction of the cliff-foot. It would take

him the best of an hour to reach the scarp itself, and while his long legs

carried him toward destiny and death his brain wrestled with a thousand

strange thoughts—the kind of thoughts most of the Helden had no time for

or rejected out of hand. Thoughts like: where did the people of Vicaria

come from? Early in life he had seen the animals of the Forests give birth

to their young. Not so the Helden, nor as far as he knew anything about it,

did the peoples of the other Kingdoms. The Deevs. The albino cave-folk.

The nightmarish Dracs. Or—Circe of the Palaces of Unendurable Pleasure.

No. It wasn't like the mammals of the Purple Forests at all, suckling their

young and parentally training them in the arts of survival. With the Helden

suddenly the children were there. No gestation periods among the women.

No laboring. No final birth. They were suddenly there—a new crop of

children for the Care Women to foster until it was time for the Teachers to

take over and train them in predestined skills.

Helden life was of a heroic cast, rich with excitement, with danger;

Helden heroes died young and while they lived it was always just on the

sword's point of death from a thousand perils. Each day brought new

hazards. So who had time for these questions and philosophical ponderings

on the meaning of life when death was but a stone's throw away, leering,

waiting, taunting?

Yet Kor did think. His nights were plagued with unwanted thoughts.

Something inborn goaded him on. It was as if what had been washed clean

from the minds of the rest had somehow slipped in his case. . . .

His thoughts and plaguings were all wrapped up in the Princess. He

equated the mystery with the strange high castle in the forever-mist. The

answer was up there. As for the Princess herself, Kor dared not think of her

as for him. Such a thing was impossible. Yet it was from the Princess he

would learn what she and he and the whole peaceless planet of Vicaria was

all about.

Princess Sena was beautiful beyond description. Of course she was.

Beautiful and unattainable. Every day's challenge was dedicated to the

Princess. Had it not been the slimy Greens of this morning's battles, no

doubt it would have been the fire-folk or the lurking white shadows of the

caves or—worst of any—the blood-sucking Dracs who kept Helden herds to

feed their young. And all for Princess Sena.

For Liti, too. Liti loved Kor and they were as good as bespoke. It was

Liti Kor chose to sit beside him at the bardic fire-sings although, as

strongest and bravest, Kor might have his choice. And Liti loved him. He

was chieftain. He was beloved by a lissome and desirable maiden.

Wasn't that enough?

No.

Princess Sena was a myth to the others, a goddess to fight and die for.

Her silver rose graced every Helden banner. But Kor . . . it had started

months ago, the coalescing of what had been a boyish dream deep in his

brain into a palpable reality. Mental, yes, but sometimes at night Kor saw

the Princess! He would swear it, if only to himself! He saw her raven-black

hair, her petal-soft face, her green-blue eyes. And she spoke to him. It was

as though she had chosen Kor—out of all the warriors of all the Helden

tribes—chosen him out of some urgent need for a hero who would perform

some unimaginable task for her. And he must not fail her. He could not!

“What a tedious procedure! He will climb the cliff halfway, then tumble

to his death. Must we, Sena?”

“Just until he reaches the top, please?”

“But he won't make it. They never actually do get up to the castle; it's

not compatible with the Legend. Right, Gold Dorff?”

“There might have been some recent revision for piquancy. We permit

changes when the battle-to-the-death syndromes begin to bore even the

base-colors. But these big-muscled Helden are a little too obvious for me. I

leave them and their legend-gods to my assistants.”

“Of course, Gold Dorff. Sena, we are boring our illustrious guest.”

“Father—please? Pretty please?”

* * *

Climbing, Kor felt the warmth of her mind clinging to his, the way that

his fingers reached out and clung to the projecting bits of rock-shard. He

didn't understand. He never did. But the warmth was there, and behind it a

compelling tug. “Come, Kor! I need you!”

There were times when the molecules of his body resented the whole

thing, when the lithe cord-like muscles gave way and the entirety of his

neural structure screamed for him to let go and die and be done with it. It

was too much to take. He dared not look up or down either. It was some

comfort to find himself actually within the shrouding fogs so that he

couldn't tell how the cliff beetled out except by the unnatural tortures his

back was enduring. The tendrils of wet fog cut the rivers of sweat, too.

Miraculously his fingers found cracks; once, when his sandaled feet shot

away and left him dangling he called out her name in prayerful invocation.

“Kor!” her mind called back across unguessable reaches. “Hold on! I

need you! You must not die!”

He yelled out to defy gravity and when he could force away the

petrifying fear that glued him against the rock and make himself move

again, his floundering feet did find a mere toe-niche. He cried out again

when, suddenly, the rock to which his fingertips clung gave way. When it

seemed that the universe had run out of miracles his wildly flailing hands

clawed up and out— and out was where they encountered roots like snakes,

a musty tangle of earth and rope-like tendril. He grabbed, held, sobbed. His

fingers inched upward, agonizingly slow between the slippings of wet clods

and the blood-freezing times when dirt rained down in his face. But finally

his frantic upgrips brought him to all-topsoil, to grass, and then his elbows

walked up, crooked, and pivoted Kor around and to normal lateral being.

He lay there. He sobbed in great gulps of air. He clung against the

planet as if it might teeter again and drop out from under him. Finally, he

sat. Fog swirled moistly around him on every side so that first he could see

nothing. Then he saw what made him scream-sob and leap away: the

projection of clayey loam at the cliff's edge was giving under his weight.

He jumped wildly, grabbing for safe ground as the projecting headland

snapped and fell.

Every muscle hurt. Every cell of his six-foot-six body screamed for

oxygen, for sustenance, for exile from heroic duty. For a while that was all

too brief he lay there, gulping in the thin windy air, denying the call that

plagued him on. It was agony to wrench up on his feet, to force one foot

ahead of the other, away from the cliffs edge. There was no telling which

way would bring him to the castle's entrance, but for the moment he didn't

much care.

He had made it! Nobody else had, ever. At least not within memory of

the ancient song-stories told around the fires at night between flagons of

beer and charred haunches of selki meat. Nobody! Triumph put a new edge

on his stamina. His nerves and the death-release-wish within his mind was

silent, stifled.

Yet, as life played itself on in the Purple Forests, triumph was all too

transitory. First death came as a far-off bellow trumpeting in counterpoint

across the skirling wind. Hearing that bellow stopped him cold. He waited,

frozen. Then he saw it; it was monstrous, the largest dragon he had ever

seen in his life. Scaled, low-bellied, it moved on him in rapid scuttled darts

of its webbed black hindfeet. When the wind drove the fog-curtain aside in

a vagary Kor saw it full. On that tapering neck the red dragon's head

surveyed him, savoring him with glowing eyes and slavering jaws, while its

half-webbed foreclaws made coy preliminary snatches in his direction.

“An ancient dragon! How dull!”

“The base-colors love them. We keep them right out of the old legendry.

One must have a dragon guarding a castle.”

“I suppose one must. Our oaf is persistent and stubborn about refusing

to die. I do hope he will show us the least bit of consideration and allow

himself to be eaten at this point.”

“Would that amuse you, Sena?”

“Oh, yes! I love it when they finally get mangled and devoured!”

Kor snapped his head vigorously to shake off the buzzing voices; he

gripped out his sword. The beast before him goggled and weaved its

razor-toothed head, burbling anticipatory delight deep in its throat. It

swished its broad fork-tipped tail as it contemplated such an unexpected

morsel. With a trumpeting roar it came on full-charge.

The blast of its hot breath hurled Kor back toward the cliffline; his blade

tore across the low-slung triangle of belly and made the dragon roar louder,

and add a rageful scream of pain for a fillip ending. Kor's backleap tumbled

him across a knoll and with a deft dip upward the dragon had him in its

jaws.

“Happy, Sena?”

“Ecstatic!”

Kor screamed from blind pain, then his great body lopped and swung

limply back and forth as the dragon turned ponderously and moved back

toward some lair where he might relish and truly enjoy his unexpected

feast. When the pressure of the cutting cuspids relaxed slightly, Kor gave a

desperate lunge up—he drove his blade as hard as he could right into the

roof of the great beast's mouth. The dragon's wide scream opened his

mouth and that was what Kor was after. He dropped in a roll, heavily, on

the thick blue grass. He bled in a dozen places. Life was a tangle of pain,

but he must not fail Princess Sena now. He dropped flat and scuttled back

between the beast's stumpy legs.

He ran.

Blindly into the fog, anywhere away from those ravening jaws and away

from the cliff. He ran in panic until the dragon's ragings were only an echo

on the driving wind; then, only then, did he fling himself down on the

ground and pull ragged breath into his starved lungs.

* * *

Finally the fog came to an end. He called out silent prayers to the

Princess for her boon. Her urgent reply inside his deepest brain cells gave

him the resurgence of hero-power he needed to further his nagging

self-demand.

“Hurry, Kor! I am waiting!”

Scrambling over a lichened hillock of rock he saw the castle, looming

close and palpable. A thrill raced through his veins. The castle was

many-turreted and large, gray and black and mauve-shadowed where turret

met forehall; it was tangled over with moss and vine. The portcullis was

down, the drawbridge drawn up from a moat so ancient and unkempt that

the water in it was a foul stagnance of green and brown slimes.

Kor sucked in deep from the altitudinal air; then, without further delay,

he dove into the brackish scum. The water was cold as ice, as cold as the

foretaste of death. He swam fast, sure-stroked from the lazy days in the

lagoons of the Forest, then sought handholds in the slimes to scramble up

rocks to the foretower's base. Hugging wall, he circled the vine-choked walk

until he reached a weedy garden of dead flowers and rampant foliage; there

was a small door, arched, where blunt entrance hall met tower, as if in days

long gone the Princess and her handmaidens had used this door for a

morning's dalliance in the flowerbeds.

The door was locked. Kor put his shoulder to it; hasps, locks,

hinges—oxidized by brooding centuries of disuse—yielded to his second

heave. The door popped inward with a noise that echoed and reechoed

down the long corridors, halls where arachnids and rodents roamed and

sullied at will. Kor waited there, heart sinking from portentous dread of

what he might find inside. The eddies of dust made him cough, stepping

across the door where motes spun and danced silent fandangos in vagrant

light beams that fingered their way through the ever-fog. Ghosts were here

and ghosts of ghosts.

He called out.

“Princess! Princess Sena!”

Echoes skittered back out of the dusty gloom. The voice in his mind was

silent. Mocked by the echoes, he moved in and past the mailed sentries in

heavy armor, toward the center of the great tower. The silence, the dark,

the closeness—these were all heavy weights dragging his heels and urging

him to quit this dead place. Once he touched a helmeted figure's

breastplate to avoid a tangle of spider-web; the helmet rocked, then

toppled off to the floor with a noisy metallic clank, revealing a white skull.

Kor shivered and ran.

His footsteps were an outrage on the stillness. Staring around him at

the stony circle, he saw that the central chamber was hung with tattered

shreds of tapestries; gay hunting scenes and feasts mocked the dusty

silence, faded, moldered by relentless years.

Kor's probing eyes dug the gloom, from the high elongated slots of

window to the places where damp had encrusted the crumbled masonry

with fungus. He moved quickly to the spiral of stone stairs leading up. . . .

He found her in the small topmost chamber at the summit of the

winding stairs; her bed was four-postered silver, and the white satin of her

gossamer bedcovering lay heavy with dust like animal fur. Yet Princess

Sena herself was no skeleton; it was as though the dust-pall had not dared

to touch the carved ivory and shell-tint of her face and her folded hands like

doves.

Her beauty caught Kor's breath, then wrenched out a forlorn cry. Her

carmine lips were curved in a sighing smile; her raven-black hair billowed

over the satin pillow like a fan; under her delicately arched brows her eyes

slept.

Kor bent to her and kissed her with impatient reverence. He had to.

Touching her petaled cheek with his sunburned lips he pulled back with a

second cry. Princess Sena was cold. Cold as death.

With a sob he dropped to his knees; he ached in every fiber and his

nerves were like jelly. Dry blood darkened his brown Helden body. But it

was his inner agony that defeated him. By some eldritch magic Princess

Sena was forever young and beautiful—but, like the castle's servitors and

all the rest, she was dead. Dead for centuries. The Legend was that and

nothing more. Atlan was right!

He snapped shut his eyes not to see her. The beauty in her cameo of a

face, in the curve of her throat and swelling breasts, all of it was a

mockery. His dream was over.

A gibbering laugh from the tower's open window pulled him dully out of

his dizzy defeat. He turned and saw them.

There were three of them. Three Dracs. Blood-drinkers from the Vales of

Horror. Their black-mottled-with-scarlet faces grinned delightedly while they

chittered glee. Only the Dracs, with their powerful bat wings, could attain

the castle heights. But the Dracs were only quasi-human and of low

intelligence. To them the Princess meant nothing. The Drac religion was of

a different order altogether. The Dracs worshipped a strange non-dying

creature whom they called Condracu of Transalvan: it had been Condracu

who had exalted the piddling human organism into the immortal

transcendental state of Drac-hood. To the Dracs Princess Sena was a

wheyfaced nothing, without a drop of blood in her. Ugh!

But Kor. Here was something else again, something to make them

chitter thanks to Condracu the Magnificent for a rich boon. They had sniffed

him out on their morning rounds; incredible as it might seem to find a

Helden from the Purple Forests up here—a muscular, huge brown creature

whose heart even now pounded up a tempest of rich red blood through his

arteries and veins!—here the spoor had led them, and here he was! Why,

they could see the jugular's pulse hammering in his thick neck from where

they lingered by the arch of window, drooling!

What a natural for their blood-herds! Why, such a virile creature should

let seven pints a week! More, maybe!

Hero-taught as he was, Kor's reaction was purely involuntary. One died,

but one died fighting. He edged back and pulled out steel. The Dracs

gibbered between themselves, talons flexing, fangs adrool. Even while Kor's

look flashed to the stairway door, which he'd left open, one of the

blood-beasts anticipated him; it flapped across the chamber to cut him off

from escape down the winding stone spring. Yet Kor's intricate amalgam of

nerve and muscle responded to danger as it had been taught to by his

harsh taskmaster. His blade went out, lashing wing-membrane, when the

other two made their sudden attack.

Facing them, he saw a thousand near-deaths glittering in those

agate-pink eyes before the final release from the horror. Stories of the

chainings, the browsings for scant rations of a kind to make a Helden

shudder, the stocks where they were pinned down while the young got first

crack—all this flashed horridly across his mind.

He fought. His blade sang. Yet his heart was empty. Somehow what

happened to him didn't matter in the least . . . now. The Princess was

dead. There was no dream to battle for, no prize to win . . . nothing. He

lashed out, but the bat-wings were agile animal creatures and while his

sword busied itself on one—the other two were circling him about, harrying

him with their talons, taunting him with their gleeful strident squealings.

Bone-weary from the prodigious climb and his battle with the dragon,

Kor's stamina flagged. But it was despair that pinned him to the stone wall,

in the end. Cold arms like spiny rubber closed in, along with the flapping

sail-like wings. Kor's sword clattered to the floor. He had one last mocking

glimpse of Princess Sena's frozen smile of endless sleep before the floor

dropped away and then the castle itself, lost in a blur of gray fog and mist

like a winding sheet.

* * *

Sena sighed. She reached languidly across her vid-couch for the off

button. All at once the Dracs and the mist and the greatest of the Helden

heroes, Kor of the Purple Forest—along with the scents, the tactiles, the

chitterings and the flappings of the great black wings on the wind—all of

this was erased and gone. An opalescence moved in as the walls of the

livideo room defined themselves; they were sea-green and vaguely

translucent as a suitable presage to Vicaria when the mood for sensual

titillation came upon her and her aging parent.

Her father touched her arm fondly, indulgently. “Happy now, Sena? Your

hero is suitably dead.”

“Blissful.” Sena yawned prettily. And she was pretty, too. Her hair was

dark as a raven's wing. Her skin was palest ivory-gold with hints of roses at

the high cheekbones, and red, red lips. Her eyes were not quite green, nor

yet blue, but a lapis lazuli admixture of these and other swirling hues; they

charmed Gold Dorff, jaded as he was, when she turned them on him and

put on a girlish pout.

“But it is all such base-color nonsense, child!” Gold Dorff protested.

“I know it's base-color nonsense. But I love to see one of those

storybook types get his. The Drac-chicks will drink hearty tonight.”

Their fat guest, whose supernumerary chins and puffed eye pouches,

along with his pendulous flabby arm-flesh and his mountainous middle, was

pigmented gold, as were Sena and her father, Gold Ambon. He chuckled and

tweaked the girl's cheek.

“And, if you wish to indulge your masochistic inclinations, you can

continue to watch your hero—up to the bitter end. But, after I've gone,

please!”

Sena giggled. “Gold Dorff, you're our greatest psychiatrist, aren't you? I

mean, in the whole world?”

“I do have some reputation, I believe.”

“Of course you are, silly! But you said if I watched Kor I would be

masochistic! Didn't you mean sadistic? I mean, if I watched the little Drac

kids suck the blood out of his neck and like that. I mean—” She batted her

eyes and tittered helplessly.

“A semantic paradox,” Gold Dorff rumbled. “We Golds are permitted to

understand why, which is what makes us superior to the base-colors. Of

course you are sadistic! All women are, more than men, actually. They love

the sight of blood, and in the old days when their men went off to war,

they loved every minute of it. And quite properly, too! What I meant by

being masochistic is—how can you stand all that ridiculous guff, child? As a

Gold, why bother? Kor and the Purple Forest, as well as his battles, are

intended for base-color consumption, not for you, child.”

Gold Ambon looked worried. “You mean Sena oughtn't—?”

Gold Dorff waved a plump hand. “Chht! Chht! If Sena gets some mingled

satisfaction out of the more obvious Kingdoms, let her. After all, she's still

a child.”

“I'm eighteen!”

“Exactly. A child.” His pinched eyes moved carefully over the lounging

length of her slim curves. “As I was saying, women need the sadistic outlet

and have always been more sensible about it than men, although they were

equally sensible about not letting the men know it. The death-fight-sex

parlay is perfectly normal. Livideo gives us all a vent for our completely

natural urges, even the lesser breed—or should I say lesser bred?” He

smiled at his cleverness. “Everyone, from Golds down to Blacks, needs

fulfillment in all directions. And Vicaria provides it for all. So you see—my

little kitten—those brainless oafs like Kor really do serve a very useful

purpose by their existence.”

“If one felt—umm—pity?”

Gold Dorff frowned. “That, of course, would be psychotic. These heroes

and the creatures they battle perform a necessary function. And that is

that. An outlet for our Own passions. Something for everybody within the

Seven Kingdoms of Vicaria. Have you tried Circe and her Palaces of

Unendurable Pleasure yet?”

“Father thinks I'm too young.” Sena stretched out kittenishly and gave

the white-haired man lying next to her a pettish toss. “We don't even have

Sixth yet.”

“Ah. The bypaths.”

“Tell Father I've got to visit Circe! Tell him!”

The white-haired man patted her shoulder. “Next year, Sena.” He turned

to their important guest. “You mustn't mind Sena, Gold Dorff. I mean, her

mentioning the sympathy syndrome. Of course she knows what Vicaria is all

about and how it isn't only for entertainment. Sena's a perfectly healthy

normal Gold.”

“I can see that.”

The old man's eyebrows met. “Gold Dorff, there is one thing.”

“Yes?”

“These new Lech groups? I don't quite understand them. Are they all

right? In my day—”

“Which was quite a while back.” Gold Dorff laughed. “No. The Lechs are

primarily for adolescent experimentation. Before even Golds settle down to

Vicaria and the permissible sex life, they go through a period of adjustment

and sex-ploration. After all, youngsters have to experiment. It's part of

growing up. Why? Has Sena—?”

“Only three times.” Sena giggled. “I had a ball.”

Gold Dorff concealed his private wink from her father.

“But the drugs!”

“Nothing to worry yourself about, Gold Ambon. Teens must have their

secret wickednesses to prove superiority to the old guard. Just so long as

the Color Code is rigidly observed. The Color Code is of peak importance in

our great society. His Goldness IX gives the Lechs his blessing, which

surely is enough for parents and teeners alike.”

The significance of his veiled look was not lost on Gold Ambon.

“Of course! Of course!” the old man said hastily. He lifted his right hand

up, clenched fist and opened his fingers twice in rapid succession. Then,

the middle finger jabbed the air straight up.

The Sign.

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ContentsTHEPRISMEMILPETAJAACEBOOKS,INC.1120AvenueoftheAmericasNewYork,N.Y.10036 Version3.0THEPRISM Copyright©,1968,byEmilPetaja AllRightsReserved AportionofthisnovelappearedinWorldsofTomorrowunderthetitleWorldoftheSpectrum,copyright©,1965,byGalaxyPublications,Inc. CoverbyJackGaughan.Chapter I Cha...

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Emil Petaja - The Prism

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