She was getting the message.

"But maybe the ass is better," he said thoughtfully. "A nice, braying, donkey-type ass."

She was silent. The horn hesitated inside her, then began to retr—

"I'm a piece of ass!" she cried.

"But I feel more like a wild boar, so—"

"I'm a pig! Oink, oink!"

"Then again, maybe an elephant—"

"Anything you want! Please, Prior—"

"Why," he said curiously, "you sound almost as if you want something...."

"Enter and ejaculate! Don't torture me!"

He cupped one hand behind an ear. "I'm not certain I comprehend the terminology."

"Complete the fornication!"

"Eh?"

"Fuck me! FUCK ME!"

"Oh, all right, if you feel that way." He eased the horn on in to jog the eager cervix. "Here comes the third gout, elephant ass bitch!"

And the third gout came, driving out the remnants of the first gout as new grease from the greasegun drives out old.

Chapter Thirty-Three

AFTER SEVERAL THOUSAND MILLENNIA THE CHERRY TREE EEG DEMONS (SEE GOUT NO. 2 FOR RATIONALE OF NOMENCLATURE) REALIZED THAT I COULD BE EMPLOYED FOR THEIR PURPOSE, FOR I COULD PRODUCE THE MORTAL PROTOPLASM THEY DESIRED AND I HAD NOT ACTUALLY BEEN TURNED OFF. AND SO THEY FORNICATED WITH ME UPON OCCASION—TWO OR THREE TIMES PER CENTURY—AND FROM EACH SUCH UNION A LIVING EEGLET WAS CONCEIVED AND BIRTHED AS AN EGG. THESE EGGS WERE STORED AT THE BORDERS OF LIMBO AND FORGOTTEN. BUT THE STRAIN OF SUCH POTENCY ON THE DEMONIC SYSTEMS WAS SUCH THAT THEIR GENITAL SECRETIONS WERE ADVERSELY AFFECTED. THUS THE CHERRY DEMONS DEVELOPED BUTTERSCOTCH-FLAVORED EJACULATE, MUCH TO THEIR CHAGRIN. PARAGRAPH. EVENTUALLY A CACHE OF THESE EEG EGGS WAS DISCOVERED BY A SPACEFARING MORTAL, WHO ASCERTAINED THEIR SINGULAR NATURE AND WHOLESALED THEM ON THE BLACK MARKET. SOON INFANT EEGS WERE SCATTERED ALL OVER THE UNIVERSE, FOR REMOVAL FROM LIMBO AND CONTACT WITH MORTAL FLESH STIMULATED THEIR HATCHING AND GROWTH. NATURALLY THEY PROCEEDED TO WREAK SUCH MISCHIEF AS THEY MIGHT. THIS WAS ENTIRELY AGAINST DEMONIC PRINCIPLE, FOR IT SIGNALED THE END OF THE PROPER SEPARATION OF MAGIC AND SCIENCE. BUT THE SMUGGLING CONTINUED. I AM THE SPIRE.

"And now I know about eeg eggs," Tantamount said. "This is astonishing."

"It's all leading up to the deal we are about to make," Prior said confidently. "I have what you've always wanted."

"Yes," she said, starting to turn over.

"Not so fast, bitch ass!" He caught inside her thigh, squeezing the fine firm flesh between thumb and fingers until she winced. Then he stroked his hand between her lush buttocks, bearing down on her rectum. "Now for this next number—"

"Prior," she protested, squirming. "What—"

"Now is the month of Maying," he sang, stroking her flinching sphincter again. "When merry lads are playing, fa-la-la-la-la—"

Tantamount tried to straighten out, but he hooked his other arm around her voluptuous hips and held her there, rear pointed up. He scooped a little clear grease from her vagina where it overflowed and rubbed it generously over her anus. "Each with his bonnie lass," he sang, thumbing some of the lubricant into the target hole. "A-dancing on her ass, fa-la-la-la—"

"Surely you don't intend to practice anal intercourse?" she asked, shocked.

"This isn't practice, innocent baby. I'm thoroughly experienced, thanks to the tour you started me on."

"But I never indulge in perversive exploits! It isn't—"

"You don't consider it perversive to hack off a man's living, fucking penis and crucify it in a laboratory?"

"So that's why you're so angry! Prior, how can you bear such a grudge for such a little—"

"It may be little, but it's mine. 3.97 erect. I want it back."

"But I need it for the advancement of—"

She silenced as the great horn centered on her attractively puckered rectum and nosed determinedly within. The breadth of it distended her sphincter and the hollow tip of it probed far into her virgin bowel, a hypodermic ready to inject. "Who would have suspected it would feel so good!" she murmured wantonly.

"This horn always feels divine," he said. He hesitated again. "Next time you feel like stealing a man's—"

"Never again!" she cried.

"Cross your heart?"

"Cross my fucking heart!"

He nodded, satisfied. The fourth gout flooded her colon.

Chapter Thirty-Four

NOW IT CAME TO PASS THAT EGG LEARNED OF THE EEG EGGS (IT SEEMS ONE WAS INADVERTENTLY POACHED FOR HIS BREAKFAST) AND REALIZED THAT NOT ONLY WAS SOMETHING AMISS, HIS ACRONYM HAD BEEN PROFANED. SO HE BANISHED ME TO AN UNINHABITED WORLD, AND MY GUARDIANS WITH ME, AND DECREED THAT HENCEFORTH I SHOULD SPOUT ONLY LUDICROUS SUBSTANCE. ABOUT THAT TIME ONE OF THE BACKWARD PLANETS HAD INVENTED ICE CREAM (A NOXIOUS CONFECTION OF ANIMAL MAMMARY MILK AND VEGETABLE SUGAR, DEVIOUSLY FLAVORED AND CHILLED TO SEMI-SOLIDITY), SO HE STARTED ME OFF WITH THAT, MY PENALTY FOR MILLENNIA OF LOYAL SERVICE. NATURALLY I PRODUCED ONLY THE FINEST GRADE OF EVERY FLAVOR AND TYPE—BUT THERE WAS NO ONE PRESENT TO CONSUME IT. GRADUALLY A MOUNTAIN OF IT FORMED ABOVE ME, YET I COULD NOT DESIST WITHOUT A SPECIFIC DIRECTIVE, AND THE DEMONS WERE NO LONGER EMPOWERED FOR THAT. ONLY WHEN SOME INTREPID MORTAL CONQUERED THE GUARDIAN EEGS (BY REAMING THEIR DEMON ASSES) AND PROVIDED A NEW DIRECTIVE COULD I MODIFY MY OUTPUT. FINALLY SUCH A MAN CAME. I AM THE SPIRE. FUCK YOU, SISTER—YOU'RE MY MILLIONTH-GENERATION DESCENDANT.

"Prior!" she exclaimed. "You conquered the Spire. The phallic horn of plenty!"

"It is," he murmured, "up your ass."

"Help! I've been stuffed with ice cream!"

He withdrew the tip of the Spire and watched the yellowish substance ooze out of her flaccid rectum. "Not exactly. I switched formulae each time. Standard-potency human ejaculate for the first gout that will make you a mother in just about nine months—"

"No!" she cried, appalled. "I took Precautions!"

"So did some of those wives and concubines. But the Spire has never had a failure. It is, you might say, the irresistible force."

She turned over now, stricken. "Gravid! And I'm not even married!"

"The second gout was cherry ice cream, of course," he continued imperturbably. "Petroleum jelly for the third—"

"WHAT?!"

"Well, I know we'd be needing some lubricant for the fourth, so—"

Tantamount squirted from his grasp, assisted in the maneuver by the leaking lubricant, and stood on the floor quivering beautifully with fury. "Of all the—you, you—you MAN, you!"

"But for the fourth gout I have stuffed you with what you have always most desired. That's why it felt so good."

"But all I have ever desired is science, medicine, and—" she began plaintively.

"Precisely. And how do you propose to achieve all this?"

"I was setting up my laboratory to perform an exhaustive analysis of your penile smegma, to ascertain—"

Prior removed the Spire from his crotch where it had been fastened to his attachment-base, and set it upright in the center of the room. It was about a foot long, horn-shaped, with a gentle column of steam rising from its narrow aperture. "All you needed," he said gravely, "was enough of that unique smegma to spread out for your multiple tests. And 3.97 can't have been producing much, because naturally it doesn't like being isolated in the lab, fuckless. So you haven't gotten far, have you, saving mankind from a fate worse than abstinence?"

Her full breasts shook. "But in time—"

"You don't need time. You need smegma. Well, you have it now."

"I—?"

"Shit a little, Emdee. Find out what I put in there, that last gout."

Dazed, she squatted and strained. Her bottom extruded a waxy ribbon of substance. She caught some of it on her finger, brought it to her face, frowned and touched her tongue to it. "Smegma! You mean—?"