munchausen
TMF Expert
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- Jul 5, 2001
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Believe it or not, here's yet another installment, scant days after the last. Don't get too used to this, but I hope you enjoy. Let me know. As usual, for readers 18+ years of age only.
The Voyage Out, Part Seven: Delryn. A Train Ride. Extreme Sports.
The town of Delryn was, predictably enough, delightful. It was a little beachside community, open and accessible without seeming overly touristy. In most respects, it resembled a contemporary American or European town—there were automobiles, though they ran remarkably cleanly and quietly; there were televisions, from what they glimpsed through the open fronts of restaurants, showing the usual array of slick talking heads whose cadences and intonations were familiar, if their subject matter was not. The people they saw were generally attractive and friendly, sun-bronzed and blonde, for the most part, and dressed for the beach; after a few minutes, the women did not feel self-conscious about their bare feet. Even Akhana decided just to carry her shoes as they walked the cool, smooth, sandy streets.
Other than the surreal comfort of their surroundings—now and then one of them would observe that there were no insects, no sharp stones, no litter, or some other pleasant discovery—very little in the village seemed out of keeping with a particularly pleasant village on earth. Occasionally, though, they would see something or someone bizarrely out of place—a glance through the open door of a bar revealed a knight in full armor, prompting Courtney to do a comical double-take—or surreally beautiful. Upon reaching the town center, the women came upon a great fountain of light, a large, marble structure similar to the Trevi fountain in Rome, except that it emitted constant streams of varicolored light rather than water. Children played among the shimmering, tingling streams, while their mothers sat on the edge and dangled their feet in, watching the children and visiting. “My God,” Leah whispered, and Akhana smiled.
“This will be a place of no little wonder,” she murmured. “We must cherish our time here, even as we search for an escape.” Leah nodded, transfixed by the vision but uncertain. Courtney, grinning broadly, reached a hand into the swirling lights, and gave a delighted cry. “It tingles!” she exclaimed. “It feels wonderful!” She blushed a bit, noticing the mothers staring at her with puzzled smiles, but indulged in a few more moments of play before rejoining the others.
The town had a variety of shops that balanced quaint small-town atmosphere and selection quite well, and the women, willfully putting aside their trepidation, shopped with abandon, buying clothes and cosmetics at a rate that would make Ivana Trump a bit nervous as well as toiletries and other necessities. They were amazed and delighted to discover that the shoulderbags they bought manifested some kind of dimensional magic, holding an incredible quantity without taking on noticeable weight or size. “Rather a homely kind of magic,” Francesca mused, “but wondrous none the less.”
“Remember,” Akhana said quietly, not wanting the eager salesladies to hear, “this world, until fairly recently, has had very few of the problems that affect our own. The applications of magic, then, will often seem trivial. Where hunger and war are not problems, mages turn their attentions to matters of mere comfort.”
Leah noticed that devices and items that on Earth would be powered by gas, oil, or electricity ran almost identically to the way she was used to seeing, except that they had no cords or gas tanks, and ran with a silent efficiency she had never seen. Eventually, she allowed her curiosity to get the better of her, and asked the lady in the shoe boutique how the town generated its power.
“I’m sorry if it seems a silly or insulting question,” she said, “but I’m from some distance away, and I’m very curious.”
The woman, a slight lady in her middle forties with a kind if slightly pinched face and a friendly, maternal air, explained, as if to a retarded child, as she fit Leah for various pairs of expensive, strappy sandals. “Well, dear, we run on mirth energy, just like everyplace else. We have gatherers throughout the town, in all the houses and businesses—see?” She pointed to an unobtrusive crystal set in one corner of the ceiling. “They gather the laughter and pass it through to the central and auxiliary MacArthur amplifiers, which then transduce it into all the power we’ll ever need.”
Leah nodded, then decided to bite the bullet and ask what she feared would be an even more ridiculous question. “So…I’m sorry, please be patient with me…it comes from tickling?”
The woman laughed, incredulous. The gatherer flared softly. “Well, I suppose some of it might, dear, but even here in the hinterlands we’re a bit beyond relying on that these days. Some of the provinces up north may have to resort to such things, but even with our old MacArthurs we get enough from everyday laughter to keep us running strong. We do have two theaters running comedies, you know, and we’re generally a happy bunch. Tickling indeed,” she scoffed gently, slipping a sample shoe from Leah’s bare foot and chucking her gently under the arch, eliciting a jump and yelp from Leah and an accompanying flash from the gatherer.
Leah blushed at her ticklishness and her faux pas. “I’m sorry, I certainly didn’t mean to insult your beautiful town.”
The saleswoman smiled benignly. “Not to worry, sweetheart. It really isn’t so unheard of. You may know that in the big cities they have collection banks where the civic-minded can donate energy in that manner to those too old, infirm, or alone to generate even the little bit of mirth energy it takes to run a house. And honestly,” she said more quietly, looking around as if sharing a secret, “not many remember it now, but about fifteen years ago the MacArthurs went out and we were a week on the little auxiliary generator back of town. Then, people had to do a fair sight of tickling to keep things running. I dislike to boast, but I was quite thankful then that I was blessed with a particularly responsive body, as was my husband.” She paused, then went crimson. “Oh, my, I didn’t mean it that way!” She laughed uproariously, and Leah couldn’t help but join her.
The women met at five o’clock back at the fountain of light after a day of fascinating discoveries and hedonistic shopping. All wore new clothes, comfortable and drop-dead stylish: Akhana and Leah had opted for wrap-around skirts, loose, breezy blouses, and thong sandals, Francesca wore faded jeans with a slight flare and a midriff baring shirt with wispy flip-flops, and Courtney opted for black stretch pants that came to mid-calf, a white top, and a leather jacket made superfluous by the 72 degree temperatures. She too wore flip-flops, but hers had four-inch platform soles and rhinestones on the thongs. She had had her hair done, as well—it now hung loose around her shoulders, and sported a pair of tight braids, like lanyards, on either side. She was bubbly with enthusiasm: “My god, you guys, leather like grows on trees here! Literally!”
Suitably outfitted, the stalwart companions boarded the shuttletrain for the city of Khalkasa, ninety miles away. The train left from a small, understated station on the north side of town. Leah bought a newspaper from a vendor before they boarded the sleek, shimmering rocket-train, which hummed softly and, like everything else, seemed to produce no exhaust. The smiling conductor led them to a private cabin, with ample, comfortable seating, a complementary minibar, and a television, and the women settled in for the trip.
Leah perused the paper with great interest, though she found little that was particularly informative. The stories were similar to those she might have found in a USA Today, with the marked absence of stories of crime and disease. Most dealt with prize crops, glowing recommendations of tourist locales, and sports. There was a brief, understated, and slightly unsettling item near the back of the paper, however. A small, one-column story said that Peace Agents were investigating allegations of trade in slaves in the less civilized northern regions. The story emphasized that the allegations were based entirely on hearsay, and that no-one should be alarmed.
Leah’s prevailing attitude was one of nervous trepidation. She was excited and delighted by this strange new world, certainly, but she could not help but remember the feelings of helplessness as Yelena Kant tickled her into hysteria, as the bizarre monsters popped in and out of existence all around, as the eldritch energies crackled and hissed. That woman is not going to forget or forgive, Leah thought. And here we are going shopping and pretending this is a vacation. She sighed. She could not fault Akhana for her suggestions—she had none better, and they seemed to comfort Francesca and Courtney. Every now and then she would catch the doctor’s eye, and see her own concern mirrored beneath the cheery veneer.
Courtney was particularly interested in the television, which, unfortunately, only got three channels—the conductor apologized, pointing out the impossibility of wiring the train for cable. One channel showed what looked like a variant of baseball, while the other two showed what seemed to be bizarre, almost exact rip-offs of American situation comedies. The actors were different, the sets slightly changed, but the characters were identical—one showed a version of “Seinfeld” while the other showed “I Love Lucy.” Opting for “Lucy,” which was in black and white though clearly filmed recently, Courtney settled back and kicked off her shoes. Courtney realized that though the central actress was clearly no Lucille Ball the dialogue was taken exactly, word-for-word, from an episode she had seen several times in the past. “Check it out! They’re ripping off our shows!” she announced. The show ended with, instead of the familiar “A Desilu Production,” the legend, “A Mina Elhonne Original.” “Yeah, right,” Courtney muttered.
The show faded out, and a commercial replaced it. The scene was of a handsome couple, in their thirties, snuggling under a blanket, their feet protruding from the end. The woman’s sock-clad toe ran playfully down the man’s bare sole, and he jumped and chuckled. “Some of us are…a little,” a warm, reassuring female voice-over said. Then, the scene cut to a teenaged Asian girl reclining on a couch, talking on a cell phone, bare feet propped on the arm. A dog loped in and began lapping at her feet—she shrieked and fell off the couch, upending a bowl of popcorn all over the floor. “Some of us are…a lot,” the voice-over said, as the girl looked glumly in the camera and blew her bangs out of her eyes as the dog devoured the spilt popcorn. Then the scene changed drastically, to a gritty, urban-feeling shot of an empty, windswept parking lot and a shivering old black man sitting alone in the middle of it. The shot tightened on his sad face. “And some of us—up to one in every five hundred, according to the latest statistics—aren’t at all. Many of the Differently Sensitized can afford to be, but many cannot. Please help those who can’t help themselves, and who have little reason to laugh. Donate your joy. Grin and bear it—take a tickling for someone who can’t.”
“This is a strange, strange world,” Courtney said, to no-one in particular.
“I only wish I could tell you more about it,” Akhana said. “They don’t really make guidebooks with otherworldly visitors in mind, so the sources I’ve been able to find, just like Leah’s newspaper, tend to assume that we know exactly the things we want to—how the government works, the laws of science and magic, the prevailing cultures. We’ll just have to learn as we go.”
Francesca, who had been dividing her time between watching television and gazing at the stunning beauty outside the window, spoke up. “Ellefson told me a few things—enough to know that everyone speaks English, for example, and that on the whole this world is quite similar to our own. I had not realized until I saw that commercial that not being ticklish is seen as some sort of handicap here. Poor Ellefson—he must have been terribly self-conscious.”
“He didn’t look too handicapped when he waded through those monsters, and that Caliban guy,” Courtney offered, flipping through the limited channel selection once again. She stayed, this time, on the sports channel, which appeared to be in the middle of some kind of competition. A stunning woman—she might have been Spanish, or perhaps Arab—dark-skinned and almond-eyed, with a short mass of tight ebon curls just to the base of her neck—was posing for photographers during what looked like a kind of pre-fight weigh-in. She wore a red bikini, cut small to accentuate her tight, lithely muscled athlete’s body—she had the build of a track and field star, with well-defined muscles that glistened with oil. Her face bore a tough, almost seductive look as she struck a series of poses, raising both arms above her head in a stretch, dropping into an agile split, and finally raising one leg perfectly parallel to her body and pointing her bare toes at the ceiling. Courtney turned up the volume.
“Narala certainly looks as if she’s come prepared today. I can’t remember seeing her this strong, this sure of herself. She’s certainly having a great deal of fun with the photographers, at any rate, as she is definitely in fine, fine form. But form isn’t ultimately what it’s about, right Angelica?”
The camera switched to a pair of broadcasters, one male and one female, dressed in typical “Sportscenter” apparel. The man had the vaguely wacky anchorman look that has come to distinguish sportscasters, while the woman, a very pretty, slightly tough-looking redhead in perhaps her late thirties, had the look of a veteran athlete. As she spoke, a legend appeared on screen: “Angelica Graham, five time Powersurge World Champion.”
“That’s right Bill. As we all know, the three important things in Powersurge are sensitivity, endurance, and power, and balance is key. During my career I went up against women who generated enormous power, way beyond my typical output, but couldn’t hold out—were just too ticklish to take it for long. I went up against others who could easily outlast me, but who just didn’t have the intensity of response that it took to charge the column. Now, Narala has looked very strong as a rising up-and-comer, just twenty years old, but today she’s going up against the woman who may be the greatest ever to play the game.”
“Present company excluded, of course,” Bill added unctuously.
“Ha ha. I appreciate the sentiment, Bill, but even in my heyday I doubt I could have taken Gudrun.”
The picture shifted, now, to an incredible specimen of a woman, just beginning her posedown in front of a storm of flashbulbs. She stood well over six feet tall, a vision of Nordic beauty with long, flowing, pale blonde hair and ice blue eyes, a tan, powerful but still feminine physique, a touch more muscular than Francesca’s, and supermodel features that she displayed to their fullest effect in a series of sexy pouts as she went through her stretches and poses. Her outfit played on her Nordic looks—a bikini top of what appeared to be very fine chainmail, a brief loincloth of the same material, and silver anklets. Like her opponent, she was barefoot, and made a great show of the bottoms of her very large, sturdy feet, winking at the camera and wiggling her toes as it zoomed in on her broad, wrinkling soles.
“A typically sassy display from the self-styled Viking Goddess,” Bill commented, as another legend appeared at the bottom of the screen (Should there be a men’s Powersurge league? Vote now at www.telesports.web).
“Well, Bill, if you got it, flaunt it. I’ve never seen a better combination of genuine off-the-scale ticklishness and Amazonian endurance. Put those together with her super-high innate power signature and you’ve got what may be the greatest champion this sport has ever seen. But she’d better not get complacent—Narala’s talents are considerable, and she’s got ten years of youth on our Viking Queen.”
“And they’re choosing the focal zone for round one of what could be up to three rounds in this national qualifier, on up to three successive days. What do you figure each woman is hoping for here?”
“Well, Bill, you know Gudrun is strong all over, but her real sweet spot, as our viewers probably gathered from the posedown, is her feet. That’s where she’s got maximum sensitivity and responsiveness. The only downside for her if she draws feet the first day is that foot-tickling can be extremely wearing, and can leave her a little down if subsequent days are necessary. Narala is probably hoping for something a little higher—underarms, ribs, even knees.”
“But Angelica, didn’t Narala win regionals on a feet round?”
“She did, and she does have really remarkable sensitivity there, but she knows this champion and, I think, she must know that she’s going to have a hard time matching her endurance foot-to-foot.”
“Well, she’s going to have to try, because feet it is! The crowd seems to like that, and Gudrun is certainly playing to them.”
“Narala seems okay with it—she knew this might happen, and she’s certainly not out of it at this point. It’s tournament qualifier rules today—not the flashiest, but a good side-by-side contest of power. The ladies are coming out onto the dais—listen to that crowd! They love their champion, and I’d say a fair few are here to cheer on the upstart challenger [the camera pans to a few groups of darker skinned, red-clad fans, waving banners and cheering for Narala.]”
“That’s right, Angelica. Now as you mentioned, little more than an exhibition today, this qualifier between these two athletes, but a welcome glimpse of the champion in action before the wilder tournament action later on. They’re being strapped in now…”
The dais on which the athletes would compete was a raised platform in the center of an open-air stadium. Two great pillars of silver rose about thirty feet high behind each. Each barefoot competitor took a moment to massage oil into her feet, then climbed up onto what looked almost like a super high tech recliner. Each sat back, arms strapped onto the arms of the chair, legs elevated together out in front of her. Trainers strapped gauges around each woman’s bicep that ran back to the pillars. The camera zoomed in for a closeup of each woman’s face: Narala’s, exotic and sensuous, in deep concentration, her tongue flickering out to moisten tight lips, and Gudrun’s, now all business, a study in calm focus and confidence—and then each woman’s bare feet: Narala’s, narrow and long, with long toes accentuated by silver rings, and Gudrun’s, very large and powerful, but shapely, like the rest of her, shaped rather like a pair of parentheses, with substantial and well-proportioned toes and richly wrinkled soles.
“And now it begins!” Angelica announced, as metallic arms sporting a myriad of whirling brushes sprouted from the base of each chair and brought them into contact with both athletes’ bare soles. Both women let out howls of laughter, rendered instantly hysterical by the devilishly designed tickling machines: both pillars lit up with spikes of light reaching perhaps a quarter of the way up their length. The brushes were reactive, unerringly adapting to the wiggling of toes and flexing of arches, leaving no escape for the tickled feet but allowing, in their sleek, partially transparent design, for maximal visibility on the part of the audience.
Each athlete had been specially miked so that the coverage could focus on each laugher in turn. Narala had a high, crazed cackle, giddy and shrill; she thrashed her head from side to side so rapidly that her ringlets of hair slapped at her cheeks. Her abdominal muscles stood out in chiseled relief as she spasmed in laughter; her thighs and calves flexed, her bare feet writhed and danced at the unbearable tickling. The light on the pillar behind the sultry young woman grew ever higher, spiking rapidly toward the pinnacle that would mean victory.
Gudrun’s laughter was equally frantic, but deeper, surprisingly hoarse and whisky-voiced for a woman who made her living the way she did. By the way she heaved and shook with deep belly-laughs, it was clear that her ample bare soles were at least as ticklish as her opponents, but she had the air of a professional. While Narala fought, writhed, and thrashed, Gudrun seemed to go with it, allowing her great muscles to relax except for the necessary tightening of her laughing stomach and the reflexive curling and wiggling of her tickled toes. As the brushes tickling her sublimely sensitive bare feet kicked into higher gear, Gudrun threw her golden-tressed head back and howled in ticklish abandon, letting the uncontrollable ticklish guffaws pour out of her strong Nordic body. The pillar of light behind her climbed rapidly.
The camera cutting back to Narala found her in bad shape. Both women were in tears, and red-faced, but Narala’s face had gone almost purple, and she sputtered, choked and sobbed as her body flopped more violently. The foot-tickling had become sheer torture for her; her laughter went silent, her bare toes clenched spastically, her body shook with ticklish anguish. The pinnacle behind her continued to climb—but, at last, she tapped a large, glowing red button on the side of the chair, and the tickling stopped.
A great chime sounded, and the crowd erupted in cheers as Narala’s trainers helped her from the chair. Gudrun, exhausted but exhilarated, managed to stand after a few seconds and strike a triumphant pose, her amazing breasts heaving, tears streaming down her lovely face.
“My, my, my. There you have it, folks. A true champion, indeed. Angelica, you want to talk us through what happened there?”
“Absolutely, Bob. What happened was that the challenger was simply outclassed. Those brushes get a read on the response levels of each competitor, and each at any point can up the intensity, though neither can ever back it down. Gudrun decided she could take more, pushed the envelope, and Narala just couldn’t hang. Now, the risk would be that Narala’s meter would have filled before she tapped out—and it did get close, as you can see. But Gudrun is champ for a reason. She got a good read on what Narala could do and what she could take, and she brought home the win comfortably and decisively.”
The train chugged into the station. Courtney, who had been watching with incredulity, snapped off the set. “This is a strange, strange world,” she said again.
“Well, we’ll see what awaits in Khalkasa,” Akhana said, gathering her bags and putting on her brave face again. Leah nodded, pensive. Her mind was still on Yelena Kant, and her promise of revenge.
The Voyage Out, Part Seven: Delryn. A Train Ride. Extreme Sports.
The town of Delryn was, predictably enough, delightful. It was a little beachside community, open and accessible without seeming overly touristy. In most respects, it resembled a contemporary American or European town—there were automobiles, though they ran remarkably cleanly and quietly; there were televisions, from what they glimpsed through the open fronts of restaurants, showing the usual array of slick talking heads whose cadences and intonations were familiar, if their subject matter was not. The people they saw were generally attractive and friendly, sun-bronzed and blonde, for the most part, and dressed for the beach; after a few minutes, the women did not feel self-conscious about their bare feet. Even Akhana decided just to carry her shoes as they walked the cool, smooth, sandy streets.
Other than the surreal comfort of their surroundings—now and then one of them would observe that there were no insects, no sharp stones, no litter, or some other pleasant discovery—very little in the village seemed out of keeping with a particularly pleasant village on earth. Occasionally, though, they would see something or someone bizarrely out of place—a glance through the open door of a bar revealed a knight in full armor, prompting Courtney to do a comical double-take—or surreally beautiful. Upon reaching the town center, the women came upon a great fountain of light, a large, marble structure similar to the Trevi fountain in Rome, except that it emitted constant streams of varicolored light rather than water. Children played among the shimmering, tingling streams, while their mothers sat on the edge and dangled their feet in, watching the children and visiting. “My God,” Leah whispered, and Akhana smiled.
“This will be a place of no little wonder,” she murmured. “We must cherish our time here, even as we search for an escape.” Leah nodded, transfixed by the vision but uncertain. Courtney, grinning broadly, reached a hand into the swirling lights, and gave a delighted cry. “It tingles!” she exclaimed. “It feels wonderful!” She blushed a bit, noticing the mothers staring at her with puzzled smiles, but indulged in a few more moments of play before rejoining the others.
The town had a variety of shops that balanced quaint small-town atmosphere and selection quite well, and the women, willfully putting aside their trepidation, shopped with abandon, buying clothes and cosmetics at a rate that would make Ivana Trump a bit nervous as well as toiletries and other necessities. They were amazed and delighted to discover that the shoulderbags they bought manifested some kind of dimensional magic, holding an incredible quantity without taking on noticeable weight or size. “Rather a homely kind of magic,” Francesca mused, “but wondrous none the less.”
“Remember,” Akhana said quietly, not wanting the eager salesladies to hear, “this world, until fairly recently, has had very few of the problems that affect our own. The applications of magic, then, will often seem trivial. Where hunger and war are not problems, mages turn their attentions to matters of mere comfort.”
Leah noticed that devices and items that on Earth would be powered by gas, oil, or electricity ran almost identically to the way she was used to seeing, except that they had no cords or gas tanks, and ran with a silent efficiency she had never seen. Eventually, she allowed her curiosity to get the better of her, and asked the lady in the shoe boutique how the town generated its power.
“I’m sorry if it seems a silly or insulting question,” she said, “but I’m from some distance away, and I’m very curious.”
The woman, a slight lady in her middle forties with a kind if slightly pinched face and a friendly, maternal air, explained, as if to a retarded child, as she fit Leah for various pairs of expensive, strappy sandals. “Well, dear, we run on mirth energy, just like everyplace else. We have gatherers throughout the town, in all the houses and businesses—see?” She pointed to an unobtrusive crystal set in one corner of the ceiling. “They gather the laughter and pass it through to the central and auxiliary MacArthur amplifiers, which then transduce it into all the power we’ll ever need.”
Leah nodded, then decided to bite the bullet and ask what she feared would be an even more ridiculous question. “So…I’m sorry, please be patient with me…it comes from tickling?”
The woman laughed, incredulous. The gatherer flared softly. “Well, I suppose some of it might, dear, but even here in the hinterlands we’re a bit beyond relying on that these days. Some of the provinces up north may have to resort to such things, but even with our old MacArthurs we get enough from everyday laughter to keep us running strong. We do have two theaters running comedies, you know, and we’re generally a happy bunch. Tickling indeed,” she scoffed gently, slipping a sample shoe from Leah’s bare foot and chucking her gently under the arch, eliciting a jump and yelp from Leah and an accompanying flash from the gatherer.
Leah blushed at her ticklishness and her faux pas. “I’m sorry, I certainly didn’t mean to insult your beautiful town.”
The saleswoman smiled benignly. “Not to worry, sweetheart. It really isn’t so unheard of. You may know that in the big cities they have collection banks where the civic-minded can donate energy in that manner to those too old, infirm, or alone to generate even the little bit of mirth energy it takes to run a house. And honestly,” she said more quietly, looking around as if sharing a secret, “not many remember it now, but about fifteen years ago the MacArthurs went out and we were a week on the little auxiliary generator back of town. Then, people had to do a fair sight of tickling to keep things running. I dislike to boast, but I was quite thankful then that I was blessed with a particularly responsive body, as was my husband.” She paused, then went crimson. “Oh, my, I didn’t mean it that way!” She laughed uproariously, and Leah couldn’t help but join her.
The women met at five o’clock back at the fountain of light after a day of fascinating discoveries and hedonistic shopping. All wore new clothes, comfortable and drop-dead stylish: Akhana and Leah had opted for wrap-around skirts, loose, breezy blouses, and thong sandals, Francesca wore faded jeans with a slight flare and a midriff baring shirt with wispy flip-flops, and Courtney opted for black stretch pants that came to mid-calf, a white top, and a leather jacket made superfluous by the 72 degree temperatures. She too wore flip-flops, but hers had four-inch platform soles and rhinestones on the thongs. She had had her hair done, as well—it now hung loose around her shoulders, and sported a pair of tight braids, like lanyards, on either side. She was bubbly with enthusiasm: “My god, you guys, leather like grows on trees here! Literally!”
Suitably outfitted, the stalwart companions boarded the shuttletrain for the city of Khalkasa, ninety miles away. The train left from a small, understated station on the north side of town. Leah bought a newspaper from a vendor before they boarded the sleek, shimmering rocket-train, which hummed softly and, like everything else, seemed to produce no exhaust. The smiling conductor led them to a private cabin, with ample, comfortable seating, a complementary minibar, and a television, and the women settled in for the trip.
Leah perused the paper with great interest, though she found little that was particularly informative. The stories were similar to those she might have found in a USA Today, with the marked absence of stories of crime and disease. Most dealt with prize crops, glowing recommendations of tourist locales, and sports. There was a brief, understated, and slightly unsettling item near the back of the paper, however. A small, one-column story said that Peace Agents were investigating allegations of trade in slaves in the less civilized northern regions. The story emphasized that the allegations were based entirely on hearsay, and that no-one should be alarmed.
Leah’s prevailing attitude was one of nervous trepidation. She was excited and delighted by this strange new world, certainly, but she could not help but remember the feelings of helplessness as Yelena Kant tickled her into hysteria, as the bizarre monsters popped in and out of existence all around, as the eldritch energies crackled and hissed. That woman is not going to forget or forgive, Leah thought. And here we are going shopping and pretending this is a vacation. She sighed. She could not fault Akhana for her suggestions—she had none better, and they seemed to comfort Francesca and Courtney. Every now and then she would catch the doctor’s eye, and see her own concern mirrored beneath the cheery veneer.
Courtney was particularly interested in the television, which, unfortunately, only got three channels—the conductor apologized, pointing out the impossibility of wiring the train for cable. One channel showed what looked like a variant of baseball, while the other two showed what seemed to be bizarre, almost exact rip-offs of American situation comedies. The actors were different, the sets slightly changed, but the characters were identical—one showed a version of “Seinfeld” while the other showed “I Love Lucy.” Opting for “Lucy,” which was in black and white though clearly filmed recently, Courtney settled back and kicked off her shoes. Courtney realized that though the central actress was clearly no Lucille Ball the dialogue was taken exactly, word-for-word, from an episode she had seen several times in the past. “Check it out! They’re ripping off our shows!” she announced. The show ended with, instead of the familiar “A Desilu Production,” the legend, “A Mina Elhonne Original.” “Yeah, right,” Courtney muttered.
The show faded out, and a commercial replaced it. The scene was of a handsome couple, in their thirties, snuggling under a blanket, their feet protruding from the end. The woman’s sock-clad toe ran playfully down the man’s bare sole, and he jumped and chuckled. “Some of us are…a little,” a warm, reassuring female voice-over said. Then, the scene cut to a teenaged Asian girl reclining on a couch, talking on a cell phone, bare feet propped on the arm. A dog loped in and began lapping at her feet—she shrieked and fell off the couch, upending a bowl of popcorn all over the floor. “Some of us are…a lot,” the voice-over said, as the girl looked glumly in the camera and blew her bangs out of her eyes as the dog devoured the spilt popcorn. Then the scene changed drastically, to a gritty, urban-feeling shot of an empty, windswept parking lot and a shivering old black man sitting alone in the middle of it. The shot tightened on his sad face. “And some of us—up to one in every five hundred, according to the latest statistics—aren’t at all. Many of the Differently Sensitized can afford to be, but many cannot. Please help those who can’t help themselves, and who have little reason to laugh. Donate your joy. Grin and bear it—take a tickling for someone who can’t.”
“This is a strange, strange world,” Courtney said, to no-one in particular.
“I only wish I could tell you more about it,” Akhana said. “They don’t really make guidebooks with otherworldly visitors in mind, so the sources I’ve been able to find, just like Leah’s newspaper, tend to assume that we know exactly the things we want to—how the government works, the laws of science and magic, the prevailing cultures. We’ll just have to learn as we go.”
Francesca, who had been dividing her time between watching television and gazing at the stunning beauty outside the window, spoke up. “Ellefson told me a few things—enough to know that everyone speaks English, for example, and that on the whole this world is quite similar to our own. I had not realized until I saw that commercial that not being ticklish is seen as some sort of handicap here. Poor Ellefson—he must have been terribly self-conscious.”
“He didn’t look too handicapped when he waded through those monsters, and that Caliban guy,” Courtney offered, flipping through the limited channel selection once again. She stayed, this time, on the sports channel, which appeared to be in the middle of some kind of competition. A stunning woman—she might have been Spanish, or perhaps Arab—dark-skinned and almond-eyed, with a short mass of tight ebon curls just to the base of her neck—was posing for photographers during what looked like a kind of pre-fight weigh-in. She wore a red bikini, cut small to accentuate her tight, lithely muscled athlete’s body—she had the build of a track and field star, with well-defined muscles that glistened with oil. Her face bore a tough, almost seductive look as she struck a series of poses, raising both arms above her head in a stretch, dropping into an agile split, and finally raising one leg perfectly parallel to her body and pointing her bare toes at the ceiling. Courtney turned up the volume.
“Narala certainly looks as if she’s come prepared today. I can’t remember seeing her this strong, this sure of herself. She’s certainly having a great deal of fun with the photographers, at any rate, as she is definitely in fine, fine form. But form isn’t ultimately what it’s about, right Angelica?”
The camera switched to a pair of broadcasters, one male and one female, dressed in typical “Sportscenter” apparel. The man had the vaguely wacky anchorman look that has come to distinguish sportscasters, while the woman, a very pretty, slightly tough-looking redhead in perhaps her late thirties, had the look of a veteran athlete. As she spoke, a legend appeared on screen: “Angelica Graham, five time Powersurge World Champion.”
“That’s right Bill. As we all know, the three important things in Powersurge are sensitivity, endurance, and power, and balance is key. During my career I went up against women who generated enormous power, way beyond my typical output, but couldn’t hold out—were just too ticklish to take it for long. I went up against others who could easily outlast me, but who just didn’t have the intensity of response that it took to charge the column. Now, Narala has looked very strong as a rising up-and-comer, just twenty years old, but today she’s going up against the woman who may be the greatest ever to play the game.”
“Present company excluded, of course,” Bill added unctuously.
“Ha ha. I appreciate the sentiment, Bill, but even in my heyday I doubt I could have taken Gudrun.”
The picture shifted, now, to an incredible specimen of a woman, just beginning her posedown in front of a storm of flashbulbs. She stood well over six feet tall, a vision of Nordic beauty with long, flowing, pale blonde hair and ice blue eyes, a tan, powerful but still feminine physique, a touch more muscular than Francesca’s, and supermodel features that she displayed to their fullest effect in a series of sexy pouts as she went through her stretches and poses. Her outfit played on her Nordic looks—a bikini top of what appeared to be very fine chainmail, a brief loincloth of the same material, and silver anklets. Like her opponent, she was barefoot, and made a great show of the bottoms of her very large, sturdy feet, winking at the camera and wiggling her toes as it zoomed in on her broad, wrinkling soles.
“A typically sassy display from the self-styled Viking Goddess,” Bill commented, as another legend appeared at the bottom of the screen (Should there be a men’s Powersurge league? Vote now at www.telesports.web).
“Well, Bill, if you got it, flaunt it. I’ve never seen a better combination of genuine off-the-scale ticklishness and Amazonian endurance. Put those together with her super-high innate power signature and you’ve got what may be the greatest champion this sport has ever seen. But she’d better not get complacent—Narala’s talents are considerable, and she’s got ten years of youth on our Viking Queen.”
“And they’re choosing the focal zone for round one of what could be up to three rounds in this national qualifier, on up to three successive days. What do you figure each woman is hoping for here?”
“Well, Bill, you know Gudrun is strong all over, but her real sweet spot, as our viewers probably gathered from the posedown, is her feet. That’s where she’s got maximum sensitivity and responsiveness. The only downside for her if she draws feet the first day is that foot-tickling can be extremely wearing, and can leave her a little down if subsequent days are necessary. Narala is probably hoping for something a little higher—underarms, ribs, even knees.”
“But Angelica, didn’t Narala win regionals on a feet round?”
“She did, and she does have really remarkable sensitivity there, but she knows this champion and, I think, she must know that she’s going to have a hard time matching her endurance foot-to-foot.”
“Well, she’s going to have to try, because feet it is! The crowd seems to like that, and Gudrun is certainly playing to them.”
“Narala seems okay with it—she knew this might happen, and she’s certainly not out of it at this point. It’s tournament qualifier rules today—not the flashiest, but a good side-by-side contest of power. The ladies are coming out onto the dais—listen to that crowd! They love their champion, and I’d say a fair few are here to cheer on the upstart challenger [the camera pans to a few groups of darker skinned, red-clad fans, waving banners and cheering for Narala.]”
“That’s right, Angelica. Now as you mentioned, little more than an exhibition today, this qualifier between these two athletes, but a welcome glimpse of the champion in action before the wilder tournament action later on. They’re being strapped in now…”
The dais on which the athletes would compete was a raised platform in the center of an open-air stadium. Two great pillars of silver rose about thirty feet high behind each. Each barefoot competitor took a moment to massage oil into her feet, then climbed up onto what looked almost like a super high tech recliner. Each sat back, arms strapped onto the arms of the chair, legs elevated together out in front of her. Trainers strapped gauges around each woman’s bicep that ran back to the pillars. The camera zoomed in for a closeup of each woman’s face: Narala’s, exotic and sensuous, in deep concentration, her tongue flickering out to moisten tight lips, and Gudrun’s, now all business, a study in calm focus and confidence—and then each woman’s bare feet: Narala’s, narrow and long, with long toes accentuated by silver rings, and Gudrun’s, very large and powerful, but shapely, like the rest of her, shaped rather like a pair of parentheses, with substantial and well-proportioned toes and richly wrinkled soles.
“And now it begins!” Angelica announced, as metallic arms sporting a myriad of whirling brushes sprouted from the base of each chair and brought them into contact with both athletes’ bare soles. Both women let out howls of laughter, rendered instantly hysterical by the devilishly designed tickling machines: both pillars lit up with spikes of light reaching perhaps a quarter of the way up their length. The brushes were reactive, unerringly adapting to the wiggling of toes and flexing of arches, leaving no escape for the tickled feet but allowing, in their sleek, partially transparent design, for maximal visibility on the part of the audience.
Each athlete had been specially miked so that the coverage could focus on each laugher in turn. Narala had a high, crazed cackle, giddy and shrill; she thrashed her head from side to side so rapidly that her ringlets of hair slapped at her cheeks. Her abdominal muscles stood out in chiseled relief as she spasmed in laughter; her thighs and calves flexed, her bare feet writhed and danced at the unbearable tickling. The light on the pillar behind the sultry young woman grew ever higher, spiking rapidly toward the pinnacle that would mean victory.
Gudrun’s laughter was equally frantic, but deeper, surprisingly hoarse and whisky-voiced for a woman who made her living the way she did. By the way she heaved and shook with deep belly-laughs, it was clear that her ample bare soles were at least as ticklish as her opponents, but she had the air of a professional. While Narala fought, writhed, and thrashed, Gudrun seemed to go with it, allowing her great muscles to relax except for the necessary tightening of her laughing stomach and the reflexive curling and wiggling of her tickled toes. As the brushes tickling her sublimely sensitive bare feet kicked into higher gear, Gudrun threw her golden-tressed head back and howled in ticklish abandon, letting the uncontrollable ticklish guffaws pour out of her strong Nordic body. The pillar of light behind her climbed rapidly.
The camera cutting back to Narala found her in bad shape. Both women were in tears, and red-faced, but Narala’s face had gone almost purple, and she sputtered, choked and sobbed as her body flopped more violently. The foot-tickling had become sheer torture for her; her laughter went silent, her bare toes clenched spastically, her body shook with ticklish anguish. The pinnacle behind her continued to climb—but, at last, she tapped a large, glowing red button on the side of the chair, and the tickling stopped.
A great chime sounded, and the crowd erupted in cheers as Narala’s trainers helped her from the chair. Gudrun, exhausted but exhilarated, managed to stand after a few seconds and strike a triumphant pose, her amazing breasts heaving, tears streaming down her lovely face.
“My, my, my. There you have it, folks. A true champion, indeed. Angelica, you want to talk us through what happened there?”
“Absolutely, Bob. What happened was that the challenger was simply outclassed. Those brushes get a read on the response levels of each competitor, and each at any point can up the intensity, though neither can ever back it down. Gudrun decided she could take more, pushed the envelope, and Narala just couldn’t hang. Now, the risk would be that Narala’s meter would have filled before she tapped out—and it did get close, as you can see. But Gudrun is champ for a reason. She got a good read on what Narala could do and what she could take, and she brought home the win comfortably and decisively.”
The train chugged into the station. Courtney, who had been watching with incredulity, snapped off the set. “This is a strange, strange world,” she said again.
“Well, we’ll see what awaits in Khalkasa,” Akhana said, gathering her bags and putting on her brave face again. Leah nodded, pensive. Her mind was still on Yelena Kant, and her promise of revenge.
