This was the bitch the incubus had tackled. Prior had then had a second contact with the succubus. He had been exposed, all right.

But the most recent note on the case history said simply: SPONTANEOUS CURE, COMPLETE.

Prior read and reread that note, checking its veracity and date. She had had VD—but somehow in the last two weeks the disease of a decade had aborted without treatment. Why? And since she had still had it when he ran afoul of her, why hadn't he come down with it?

If he hadn't. Maybe his case was taking three weeks to develop the first overt symptom.

Suddenly he had the courage to go to the VD clinic himself for a checkup. The notion that he might not have gonorrhea seemed more compelling reason to go than the notion that he had it—because of that potential stigma. And other factors.

That got him off on a familiarly unpleasant chain of imagination. He would walk into the clinic, where a bunch of big, hairy, full-crotched men would stare at his member and banter their remarks back and forth while Prior stood in the center like the victim of a keep-away game. "Hey, Joe—get a load of this! Less'n four inches and clapped!" "That so? I thought the clap didn't touch anything under the legal limit!" "Mister, you better cut this sort of thing out—" (brandishing a scalpel dangerously near his defenseless penis) "It'll stunt your growth!" "Bring in the mouse you fucked; we'll have to cure it too!" But Prior knew he was as foolish as the matron in this respect. Clinic people didn't really make such crude remarks; they only thought them.

He nerved himself and went in. Everything was quiet and private and clean and deadly serious, to his considerable relief. The clinic tested him and cleared him promptly. The medical attendant didn't even snicker at the size of his penis. Prior was not now, nor had he ever been, a victim of gonorrhea.