He calls his friends

"Very well," he said closing his eyes and summoning his gang members to assist him with his implant.

As she had requested, eight strong men and women filed into the room, and grabbed her arms and legs, wrenching her free from her perch in the companionway. She screamed and thrashed but even as strong as she was, she could not overpower so many at once. They carried her to the bed and handcuffed her arms and legs to the bedposts.

Then Billy got onto the bed and began kissing her. First on her lips, and she wished they hadn't remembered to clean the poison off of them first. Then he worked his way down slowly, kissing her neck, her breasts, her stomach, and finally, and much to her surprise, her clit. But the kiss didn't stop, it kept going. It was unlike any kiss she had seen or heard of; even his tongue was getting involved. As the strange kiss continued, wave after wave of pleasure crashed past her implant for the first time and slammed into her brain. In her 69 years of life, she had never felt any sensations in her pussy whatsoever. Blood rushed to her clit and her pussy ached with need, but she did not want to give in and allow herself to feel the pleasure. She was still trying desperately to cling to her identity as a Hostess.

The kiss, the kiss that must have been the longest one in history, finally came to end after what felt like hours. She lay there panting and trying to regain her composure. Billy climbed on top of her and lined his cock up with her entrance, which was now dripping with a subconscious need she could neither prevent nor deny. He didn't hurt her. He just slowly pushed his cock inside her, deflowering her with a clinical skill that she found ghastly. He began thrusting slow and steady, careful not to penetrate too deeply. He surprised her when he kissed her again, this time sealing his lips around her areola and gently licking and sucking on her nipple. She'd had no idea that nipples were such a sensual zone. Her whole life hers had felt no different than any other random point on her body. Yet she couldn't argue with immense pleasure she was feeling as her nipples hardened and his tongue gently swirled around them.

Yet even that mind-blowing new sensation could not compete with what she was feeling between her legs. It had hurt, at first, but now she was experiencing a wonderful sensation of fullness that she had never even imagined before. She thought she was now approaching what she had only read about in textbooks; her first orgasm. She was moaning quietly, even as she cried from the humiliation. Not having sex was a core facet of her self-identity. She fought desperately to hold back her orgasm, she couldn't give in and let Billy the Poet win. "Orgasms are immoral. If I cum then I'm no better than these nothingheads," she reminded herself.

Billy, however, was free to give in to his pleasure, and he grunted as came. Despite herself, she enjoyed the feeling of his cock pulsing inside her, filling her pussy with cum for the first time in her long life. Something primal and animalistic inside her was assuring her that this was right and good, even though her whole life she'd been taught otherwise.

He collapsed on top of her and continued gently suckling on her nipple. She felt triumphant that she hadn't been **** to cum. Yet at the same time, and despite being unable even to acknowledge it to herself, she felt disappointed that she hadn't felt the true climax of pleasure her body was capable of. The longing for orgasm was buried deep in her subconscious, locked away behind walls of oppression that society had helped her construct in her mind. But it was beginning to break free.

He pulled out of her and stood up. He didn't seem cocky or proud. On the contrary, he was terribly depressed, and he said to Nancy, "Believe me, if there'd been any other way--"

Her reply to this was a face like stone--and silent tears of humiliation.

His helpers let down a folding bunk from the wall. It was scarcely wider than a bookshelf and hung on chains. Nancy allowed herself to be put to bed in it, and she was left alone with Billy the Poet again. Big as she was, like a double bass wedged onto that narrow shelf, she felt like a pitiful little thing. A scratchy, war-surplus blanket had been tucked in around her. It was her own idea to pull up a corner of the blanket to hide her face.

Nancy sensed from sounds what Billy was doing, which wasn't much. He was sitting at the table, sighing occasionally, sniffing occasionally, turning the pages of a book. He lit a cigar and the stink of it seeped under her blanket. Billy inhaled the cigar, then coughed and coughed and coughed.

When the coughing died down, Nancy said loathingly through the blanket, "You're so strong, so masterful, so healthy. It must be wonderful to be so manly."

Billy only sighed at this.

"I'm not a very typical nothinghead," she said. "I hated it--hated everything about it. I didn't orgasm, even without the implant preventing it."

Billy sniffed, turned a page.

"I suppose all the other women just loved it--couldn't get enough of it."

"Nope."

She uncovered her face. "What do you mean, 'Nope'?"

"They've all been like you. You didn't valiantly hold back your orgasm. We just haven't been able to figure out how to remove the orgasm block in the implant in women. We've only been to disable the numbing functionality. What you experienced tonight was an edge. And until we can overthrow the government, it's all you'll be able to experience. But it will be enough."

This was enough to make Nancy sit up and stare at him. "The women who helped you tonight--"

"What about them?"

"You've done to them what you did to me?"

He didn't look up from his book. "That's right."

"Then why don't they kill you instead of helping you?"

"Because they understand." And then he added mildly, "They're grateful."

Nancy got out of bed, came to the table, gripped the edge of the table, leaned close to him. And she said to him tautly, "I am not grateful."

"You will be."

"And what could possibly bring about that miracle?"

"Time," said Billy. He had loosened the shackles on her sexual desire, and with time and the freedom to explore her sexuality on her own terms, it would break free.

Billy closed his book, stood up. Nancy was confused by his magnetism. Somehow he was very much in charge again.

"What you've been through, Nancy," he said, "is a typical wedding night for a strait-laced girl of around a hundred years ago, when everybody was a nothinghead. The groom did without helpers, because the bride wasn't customarily ready to kill him. Otherwise, the spirit of the occasion was much the same. A bit of pain and apprehension, but in the end; pleasure. These are the pajamas my great-great-grandfather wore on his wedding night in Niagara Falls. According to his diary, his bride cried as well. She even bled. And she did not orgasm either. But, with the passage of time, she became a sexual enthusiast."

It was Nancy's turn to reply by not replying. She understood the tale. It frightened her to understand so easily that, from gruesome beginnings, sexual enthusiasm could grow and grow.

"You're a very typical nothinghead," said Billy. "If you dare to think about it now, you'll realize that you're angry because I'm such a bad lover, and a funny-looking shrimp besides. And what you can't help dreaming about from now on is a really suitable mate for a Juno like yourself. You'll find him, too--tall and strong and gentle. The nothinghead movement is growing by leaps and bounds."

"But--" said Nancy, and she stopped there. She looked out a porthole at the rising sun.

"But what?"

"The world is in the mess it is today because of the nothingheadedness of olden times. Don't you see?" She was pleading weakly. "The world can't afford sex anymore."

"Of course it can afford sex," said Billy. "All it can't afford anymore is reproduction."

"Then why the laws?"

"They're bad laws," said Billy. "If you go back through history, you'll find that the people who have been most eager to rule, to make the laws, to enforce the laws and to tell everybody exactly how God Almighty wants things here on Earth-- those people have forgiven themselves and their friends for anything and everything. But they have been absolutely disgusted and terrified by the natural sexuality of common men and women.

"Why this is, I do not know. That is one of the many questions I wish somebody would ask the AIs. I do know this: The triumph of that sort of disgust and terror is now complete. Almost every man and woman looks and feels like something the cat dragged in. The only sexual beauty that an ordinary human being can see today is in the woman who will kill him with a kiss. Sex is ****. There's a short and nasty equation for you: 'Sex is ****. Q. E. D.'

"So you see, Nancy," said Billy, "I have spent this night, and many others like it, attempting to restore a certain amount of innocent pleasure to the world, which is poorer in pleasure than it needs to be."

Nancy sat down quietly and bowed her head.

"I'll tell you what my grandfather did on the dawn of his wedding night," said Billy.

"I don't think I want to hear it."

"It isn't violent. It's--it's meant to be tender."

"Maybe that's why I don't want to hear it."

"He read his bride a poem." Billy took the book from the table, opened it. "His diary tells which poem it was. While we aren't bride and groom, and while we may not meet again for many years, I'd like to read this poem to you, to have you know I've loved you."

"Please--no. I couldn't stand it."

"All right, I'll leave the book here, with the place marked, in case you want to read it later. It's the poem beginning:"

How do I love thee? Let me count the ways.
I love thee to the depth and breadth and height
My soul can reach, when feeling out of sight
For the ends of Being and ideal Grace.

Billy put a small bottle on top of the book. "I am also leaving you these pills. If you take one a month, you will never have children. And still, you'll be a nothinghead."

And he left. And they all left but Nancy.

When Nancy raised her eyes at last to the book and bottle, she saw that there was a label on the bottle. What the label said was this:

WELCOME TO THE MONKEY HOUSE.