Read Online Heart to Heart: Ashton Ford, Psychic Detective by Don Pendleton - Free Book Online

Francesca
experience. I mean that it was a reverse view—an opposite angle, so
to speak—like the difference between inside and outside or topside
and bottomside. It was a reverse view also in intensity. Where the
one had been frantic, demanding, consuming, this one was
languorous, lazy, a giving up and giving in, capitulation to the
sense and immersion in pleasure.
    Hai Tsu did not allow me an orgasm. She
would lick, nibble, blow and tickle right up to the boundary of no-
return then clamp and hold and divert sensations elsewhere, over
and over—I don't know how many over and overs—just endlessly it
seemed, until it gradually dawned on me that I was no longer
straining to leap that boundary, or for anything whatever, and I
slowly descended into the most relaxing peace I have ever
known.
    She wet me down again,
turned on the whirlpool in the tub, and softly announced, "Bath is
ready, Shen. Dinner in one hour."
    Then she quietly
withdrew.
    And so did I. I fell asleep, and dreamed
miraculous dreams, and visited the Magi in a beautiful reverse view
of the meaning of life and of death.
    And knew in those dreams that both are the
same.
     
     
     
     
     
     
    Chapter Nine: The Echo and The Omen
     
    The angel looked exactly like Valentinius but
said his name was Valory, which I understood to be another cover
identity for St. Germain. He told me that names are abstractions
anyway, and serve their chief purpose as a legal
convenience—hinting darkly that the human world is overly
preoccupied with legalities—and suggested that I just call him Val
for short.
    I replied that I thought names were rather
important abstractions at any rate, and that set him off on a long
dissertation about the origin and customs of names and naming,
implying that the thing had gone overboard and lost much of its
meaning in the modern age.
    He said look, in the beginning, before anyone
had a
    name, people had no trouble recognizing or
dealing with one another. One look at a guy and you knew where he
stood in the pecking order, whether he was boring or interesting,
threatening or reassuring, and whether you'd care to dine with him.
But then in order to communicate that attribute to a third person,
you had to be able to refer to the guy, and you did so by his
attribute.
    Thus a chief may be referred to as Great One
and a lackey as Kisses Ass, a rebel member as Hates Authority and a
Lothario as Screws All.
    See these are purely
utilitarian abstracts of a personality—direct and to the point
and descriptive in a way that leaves no doubt as to whom is being referred to
since everyone in the tribe knows everyone else intimately even
before the names are given. It is the knowing that determines what
is given.
    So names began as
descriptions of personalities. All of the traditional names in use
today owe their origin to that same idea but lost their directness
when people started giving names to babies, before any definite
attributes of character could be identified. The name given then
became a hopeful attribute or a flattery to some other member of
the tribe. So today we have Michael , which is from the Hebrew
for Who is Like God , and Avery, Germanic for Courageous, or how about Boyd , Celtic for Yellow-haired .
    I told Valory that I
really did not give a damn about any of that, I just wondered
why he had to
have so damned many names and why couldn't he settle on just
one?
    He talked about names as
titles and titles as names, like calling a judge "Your Honor" or a
king "His Majesty"—how in this country we address our political
leader as "Mr. President"—and how those titles remain the same even
though different personalities assume them—how church leaders
assume new identities as they ascend to the papacy. He then
returned to the earlier example and had Kisses Ass topple Great One
and take over the tribe. Should their names remain the same? Or
should they exchange names also, as they exchange roles?
    I told him I guessed it
did not really matter,