This is the next short section of my Sci-fi book The Gordian Fetish. It is a light, fun read with serious overtones.
Elsewhere on the same planet Pev was engaging in his usual pastime, you might say favourite pastime but that would suggest something out of the ordinary, or one of many, and this was far from out of the ordinary, and this was pretty much his only pastime; he was sprawled on a couch in a narcodive blissed out on narcojuice, with both eye-pods blearily engaged in watching a young Gordian wrapping himself around a pole and revealing tantalising glimpses of a very pronounced bump. The young man was close to budding – very close! That bump was sprouting a distinct well-formed head with eye-pods that were already blinking and taking in the scene around. The bump’s manipulators were opening and closing. If you looked closely it was possible to see that there was a distinct pinching in where the bump was attached to the young Gordian’s body. Quite disgusting and thrilling! Not a sight you would ever expect to see outside of a low-level dive like this. Gordian’s who had decided on budding were expected to obey stringent seclusion and don the durogown for the duration so that even their own eyes were shielded from the filthy sight of their own budding. There was big money to be made flaunting your bud, if you had the stomach for the work. In a few days’ time that bud would drop. It was incredibly illegal to display that, indeed it was illegal to display a full bud, even draped in a shapeless durogown, in public, but nobody seemed to enforce that particular law and Pev had observed a large number of the judiciary frequenting this particular ‘private’ narcodive where naked buds were always on display – for a price. Pev made it his business to ensure they knew he’d seen those members of the elite lasciviously ogling the nubiles in this joint and contrived to befriend them and surreptitiously gain visual proof of their presence in the illicit enterprise of prurient ogling. You never knew, in his line of business, when that might come in handy. A picture or two might be worth its weight in gold.
The young Gordian had finally left the pole and got around to flaunting the whole bump and was parading it around the room, thrusting it into everyone’s face and even lasciviously caressing the rudimentary protuberances that sprouted from it. It was utterly scandalous. Pev noted the two judges sitting with the chief of police trembling with excitement, their eye-pods bobbing about as the young Gordian, with a vacant, bored expression, worked the room extracting creds right left and centre as the eager clientele pressed the cash into the grasping mits of the bumps manipulators and delighted in the way it grasped the money. The room reverberated to the raucous cheers and leers.
Drop ‘im for us, dear!
Show us your bump!
You know, Pev remarked to Qip, his companion of the night, that trollop, he nodded towards the hussy of a Gordian, is due to drop in a few days.
Certainly looks like it, Qip replied in a quavering voice, not taking his eyes of the naked bump as the young Gordian blatantly displayed all its attributes for everyone to gawp at.
Pev flicked him a sideways glance. He’s going to do it in public.
NO! Qip exclaimed involuntarily, equally shocked and excited by the thought. Imagine – a bud actually dropping. That was probably the most disgusting thing you could ever imagine. People only ever did that in the utmost privacy. Dropping a bud was simply not talked about in polite society. You could imagine that nobody had ever done such a thing – that people were all brought about through some sterile surgical procedure. Budding – it was too disgusting for words. The thought of it made him tremble with excitement.
For a fee, Pev remarked nonchalantly.
I bet that’s quite a sum, Qip remarked, studying the bump and allowing his imagination to rampage through his mind as the Gordian approached. Buoyed up by the excitement he started thrusting creds into its tiny manipulators protruding from the bump. Nobody would do something as dirty as that lightly.
The Gordian Fetish can be purchased in both paperback and digital versions:
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I am so looking forward to reading this book over my summer break!
I’d like to hear what you think about it. Roll on summer.