The Pleasure Chateau: The Omnibus Read Online Free Page B

removing the lid, the midget stood back and contemplated the chef's preoccupation with aesthetic detail. The meat or fish, and Betty suspected it would be the latter, was wrapped in gold foil with tiny black crosses standing along its length like hatpins. The artefact might have been something belonging to post-modernist art. A way of spelling out gothic to a race of computer buffs.
    The dwarf unwrapped the foil as though he was unbandaging a mummy. The music cut out, and Betty was again made conscious of the programmed stylisation that informed each act in this house. The main dish had been cooked in a wine sauce, a lid as yet, no-one commented on its possible identity. Betty noticed that the man wearing emerald lenses had a clip-on fax attached to his lapel. The other man wore a black wool suit, and a blue oxford button-down open at the neck.
    ‘Did I tell you,' he said to Nicole, 'that my mother is in a cryogenic unit? She wants to be around when neuroscientists re-plug consciousness into the mains. She read up on the subject extensively and decided on cold storage. She said that they'll all have it. Jane Fonda, Raquel Welch, Joan Collins, Madonna. She's even asked that her wardrobe and jewellery are kept on hold. Sometimes I wonder what century she'll come out in.'
    'Probably the next one,' Leanda took up. 'Towards the middle to end. Cellular degeneracy will become treatable. A whole synergistic cocktail of drugs will prevent our extinction.'
    Betty fidgeted. The man with the emerald lenses began talking about virtual reality. Computer images generated by stereoscopic liquid crystal screens would become the new way of entering alternative dimensions. 'It would be just like wearing a pair of heavy sunglasses,' he was saying. He was explaining how the digitised input could lead to bizarre forms of auto-eroticism. The software man who wanted to have cunnilingus with Marilyn Monroe would develop a full-body suit which conveys sensation by pressure pads. In his high-tech wetsuit, and computer-accessed to the star, the sexual rite would begin. Object gadgetry like inflatable dolls, would disappear overnight.
    The midget instructed the guests to remove their black gloves, and Betty followed the unspoken protocol of placing these wide of her plate, on the understanding that they would be used again later. She became aware that additional company had entered the room. Two masked women, both with the same poppy coloured hennaed hair were standing one on either side of the doorway. Betty guessed from their petite height that they were Japanese. They were dressed in black sequined leotards with seamed fishnet tights. They appeared to be observing a ritual, and before the midget served individual portions of the main dish, one of them took up a book and began reading. 'All mysteries are translated into images. Imagination means reinventing the world. There was once a penis fish, it was purple with black fins and a single blue eye. It was kept in the emperor's private aquarium, and was said to have originated from his brother who underwent a sex change. To stimulate his sexual appetite, the emperor would watch the missile-shaped fish propel itself round the large spheroid aquarium. One night in a perverse mood of sexual hunger, he ordered the fish to be caught and prepared for his dinner. He was convinced of its aphrodisiacal properties, and consequently had selected his ideal sexual partners for after dinner entertainment. The bed already had the curtains drawn to conceal those members of his private harem who were waiting for him. The emperor ate the penis fish, and experienced the rush of sexual energy he had anticipated. But as he got up from his chair and headed towards the bedroom, he felt his vision restricted. He was seeing through one monofocused eye, without side vision. His hands instinctively went up to his face. He still had hands, but the shape of his face was veined and tubular. He directed himself towards the mirror,