The second time the duo washed up on a beach was more pleasant than the first, For Goldmund, at least. Gregor was indifferent, as he was practically dead. Goldmund dropped the anchor into the sand because there was nothing to tie the boat to. Then he hopped from the vessel with the crate still in his arms. A bright, sprightly pain hammered its way into his mid-foot region and Goldmund stumbled, dropping the crate so that it rolled and opened and its contents kept. He had to jump over the cockroach to keep from squishing it. Lying face down in the sand, heaving in its course particles, Goldmund reneged his initial thought, for this washing up was far from pleasant. And that's when his hands were tied behind his back.
The boy should've been brown. The red slashes on his face could've been made from his nose. His eyes were black. Clothing scarce. Dimples too. Nil, more likely. He munched on a giant roach leg as he watched the traveler sleep. A few exoskeletal bodies sat in a pile, waiting to be roasted. Snakes shifted through the dunes, circling the scene. The boy was biting off mouthfuls bigger than his mouth. The crunching never escaped his lips, though.
Goldmund had been awake for a while and was looking through slits in his closed eyes at the boy watching him, sometimes making direct eye contact, which felt a bit creepy. When the boy finished his insect leg he kicked Goldmund, making him pretend to jolt awake. The chained man made a show of discerning that he was chained, and then lied limply where he had been. The two looked at each other under the cool rays of sunlight.
A white hand reached out and touched tanned skin, caressed it, and withdrew. The boy then felt his own bare ribcage. It would've been natural for those bony fingers to disappear into the ridges in the boy's side, evening the skin and connecting his arms back to his body so they'd look like ghoulish chicken wings, white and hollow. The boy would then squawk, raise his head to the sky, and lunge into the air, spearing pleasant doves with his terrible nose, wreaking hell across the skies. But that's only what would've been natural, what the boy did was point at his mouth, rub his side again, and point at Goldmund, or more likely, his skin. Goldmund didn't like what he thought the boy was implying.
The bone-saw the boy produced from behind the log he sat upon did less to ease Goldmund's mind. The sun above them promised the return of Gregor in say, oh about eight hours. So for now it was mano e tied up mano. The boy scooted his log chair closer to Goldmund, and then set his crude saw on Goldmund's upper thigh, apparently done with all deliberation.
This wasn't very hard. Goldmund head-butted the kid, kicked the dropped saw away like a jack rabbit, rolled onto the boy, head-butted him again, bit his nose off, hopped off the squirming boy and to the saw, bent over, sawed open his legs, walked back over to the boy, who was now unconscious, turned around, squatted over him, thunked the saw in the kid's leg, careful not to mortally wound him, grabbed the biggest cockroach in the pile and started walking toward the giant hemispherical glacier on top of a mountain a few miles away.
Goldmund only hoped that would deter the child from attempting to eat a stranger for their skin ever again.
The sun was almost down by the time Goldmund reached the bottom of the mountain. The verticality of its slope induced Goldmund to sit in the umbra and wait for the world to become it. When it did, his cockroach chittered to life, looked around and then gave Goldmund a ride to the top. There the bug became Gregor, who proceeded to untie Goldmund and ask what he had missed.
"Not much," Goldmund admitted.
The dome stood before them, radiating its frozen presence and giving the two men goosebumps. A twelve by twelve foot square slowly edged out of the hemisphere and parted in its middle, exhausting a plethora of cold mist. They shivered and stepped inside.
The cavern's icy walls were covered in long smooth intertwined worms, each carrying some kind of soulless energy toward the behemoth resting in the cavern's center. The behemoth's eyes were emptier than Kublai's, foretelling of nothing, radiating decadence. Gregor, overcome with greed, morphed into his animal form and flew into the bloated living corpse. The skin gave way without resistance, and the bug buried its jaws in the diseased and atrophied flesh, gorging itself with sickening meat. Goldmund watched the backside of his friend flitter with joy and then disappear in the humongous woman, whose face now bore a smile.
Unable to call for his comrade, or approach the vile thing ensnaring him, Goldmund heaved the contents of his stomach onto the floor as the foreign squelching of incisors separating flesh assaulted his ears. The woman now threw her head backward, laughing and letting small pills fall into her jubilant jaw, and the hole in her stomach sealed itself behind the occupied bug.
"Gregor," Goldmund whispered fiercely. "I shall avenge you!" He did not believe Gregor was actually dead, or in any danger whatsoever, but didn't feel obligated to let his enemy know this.
"Wait!" sneered the lump of mass. "Don't you wish to know why I waged war against the Khan, whose heir you were meant to become?"
Goldmund stopped, but did not let his guard down.
"I was born in a future where are desires are fulfilled, and pleasure reigns supreme. I love this future, and for it to be an inevitability is my only cause. I was sent back in time by the controllers to assure its outcome, for at this moment it becoming a reality is only 30% probable. This is because of your children, Goldmund. They will grow up without a father, as bastards, and they will grow to loathe the life you led, for it damned them to their miserable lives. They will do everything in their power to keep pleasure from becoming a ruling factor. Their will is so strong that I must constantly be pumped full of this pleasure dome's energy to keep myself from fluxing out of the timestream. To ensure my eventual existence, I must devise a way to rid the planet of your children."
Goldmund blinked. "No, there's got to be another way… can't you make them impotent? They can't pass down their values to future generations if they have no children."
"On the contrary, Goldmund, those without children will become teachers, priests, and politicians, and will influence the future much more than those bearing their own children."
"I see," Goldmund said, ruminating. "I've already met travelers from the more probable future, and their world seems to have gone to hell. For the sake of mankind, then, I shall sacrifice my children."
"Ford bless you," the woman crooned. "Now come, take me."
Goldmund tossed his sword to one side, and once more approached his foe, this time with a very different goal in mind. He took her, and it was not over until the fat lady sang out a name, "Popé."
Goldmund redressed himself as the dome shook violently, artificial lightning shooting from the wall snakes, cracks forming in the ground and ice falling from the sky.
Linda screamed, and her stomach burst wide open, revealing a monster that would destroy the future of another monster that had inhabited the same womb minutes before. It was large, grey, and hairy. It had the body of a bear, the head of a wolf and was eyeless, its sockets bleeding and brain bulging out of them. The monster hopped out of the prolapsed body its mother had become, and then dashed out of the pleasure dome, on its way to kill thousands of innocent children.
Goldmund sighed deeply, looking at the bug peeping from the remains of Linda, waved goodbye to his friend, and then began the journey back home.