PASSING FOR HUMAN
Jody Scott

Introduction
by Barry N. Malzberg
This lady is in her late thirties (I hope I am not springing any secrets) but, as they say or at least used to say in the dear dead days of the revolution hipper than hip; so hip that her work should be a required course for the initiates as a kind of holy if very unsolemn writ. This book is a kind of miracle: it is a Swiftian satire of the most ferocious, offhand power; it manages to accomplish its job of immolation within the confines of a quite standard (and extremely well-handled) science fiction prop. Go look up when this was last done; I have no idea. Ms. Scott has proven what I always suspected: our category is so limitless that it can do remarkable things within conventional limits. What Paganini did to four strings and three and a half octaves Jody Scott does to our dear, undead genre here. Honoring it in the unbreach.
I have followed Jody Scott’s career with less than detached interest for more than a decade now. When I was an employee of a large literary agency of uncertain candor, back in the days of Johnson’s Adventure, Ms. Scott sent in a novel of the Berkeley generation, Down Will Come Baby, which I thought articulated for all time exactly what Mario Savio had started. Many dumb publishers in New York refused to buy this book so I eventually had to buy it myself through the expedient of leaving the agency, becoming managing editor of Escapade and cutting it down to 30,000 words (an act of desecration although I did not butcher the book, merely removed two subplots entire) for serial use. The July 1968 issue of Escapade is a collector’s item now, not for its inclusion of one of my own less distinguished fictions, not for its photo displays of three women of early middle years (one of whom, the kitchen maid is an absolute knockout) but for Ms. Scott’s novel which more than ever deserves hardcover publication in its full length, limning as it does exactly where we have been and why. Won’t anyone out there publish it, already?
In the meantime we have this one about which all the remarks of the first paragraph are truly meant. But I will go even beyond these, yea unto the valley of deepest testimony: this is the first science fiction novel, except for Stochastic Man and Shadrach in the Furnace by R. Silverberg, in three years which I have been able to read. Not “read with pleasure” or “read with attention” but read, period.
If it can work so upon an iconoclast like your faithful undersigned imagine what it will do for those of you who yet love this field. I wish Jody Scott well, I litter her path with psychic roses; I hope she wins the National Book Award. She deserves much; she has given freely of her great and demanding gifts.
—Barry N. Malzberg 25 March 1977

Chapter One
Warm, grasping hands! Tan, muscular calves and legs!
Looking down at her body, Benaroya had to shriek with laughter. It was so perfect it was absolutely fantastic. What would the kids back home say if they could see her now?
She glimpsed her face in the rearview mirror. The lips peeled back, displaying a set of shiny, white teeth—not apelike, but quite sharp—and a wet, red tongue. The tongue poked out and touched the upper lip. Holy Moses! The eyes were a dazzling sapphire blue, alive with lusty humor. It was the face of a predator. A sleek, dangerous animal. Make no mistake about that. From here on, anything could happen.
But leaping lizards, it was a wonderful feeling, this being alive in a human body! She couldn’t help bouncing up and down in the bucket seat out of sheer exuberance. Graduation day. What a thrill. After months of training here she was, roaming the savage, backwater planet Earth, ready to begin her first assignment.
She remembered Omark’s briefing:
“Never forget, these bushmen must eat other creatures in order to survive. Not a single one of their leaders— Presidents, Popes, Kings, Basketball Players—has a shred of ethics whatsoever. Carry a weapon at all times and don’t hesitate to kill.”
Yet the California scenery was ever so pretty. There, just ahead, was some sort of fabulous monument. What could it represent? Aha: a giant taco 80 feet tall, oozing lettuce, bits of cheese and tomato and a thick purple goo, possibly plum jam. She’d seen ever so many pictures in magazines. But the monument was made of plastic! Oh, how inventive. And the sweet, little bushmen were lining up to get small, hot duplicates of the tasty food product.
Benaroya felt a pang of ecstasy. This trip was going to be thrilling. Already she liked her Brenda Starr body, so lush and supple, wearing a thin bikini since the day was a scorcher. She had a closetful of other bodies back at the ship but the Brenda had seemed so very right. She could have slipped into a Mary Magdalene, or a Ruby Keeler in tapshoes, or Nelson Rockefeller or Dorothy from The Wizard or Toulouse-Lautrec, Zorro, Gertrude Stein or any of a dozen others. These bodies had been reproduced from films and comics, police records, time travel cubes and other devices. Each was a dead ringer for the original down to the very freckles and toenails, EKG, blood-sugar level and condition of arteries. Not a one could be distinguished from the actual person! And this wasn’t easy, boy, because primitives look so much alike.
At the moment, Benaroya was moving much too fast. She hadn’t anticipated the impact of culture shock; this lightheaded, out-of-control feeling much like the “rapture of the deep” experienced by divers. She’d stolen the Mustang a mere ten minutes ago and was already doing 90—wow! Such a kick to zoom past other cars, floating in and out of traffic, losing the police miles back, with their funny wailing sirens and flashing lights and cute, wide buttocks and slow reflexes. She knew they were hated and feared by everyone and this heightened her sense of drama.
Benaroya’s original body, the one she wore back home, was exclusively aquatic. (Rysemus was a thick-molecule “water” planet.) Her body was dolphinesque with a smash of semidivine Bright Lights class and glitter. Of course she’d never wear it here on Earth; it wouldn’t survive the rough, frontier conditions; seawater would ruin the rippling-chiffon fins, impurities would lock the gills—oh, the bod would be an absolute mess in no time. She kept it in storage back at the ship.
One of the motorcycle cops was moving up. She knew he was called “pig”—darling nickname!—and he would be terribly annoyed so she slipped between a couple of trucks and lost him. The officer made radio contact with his reinforcement down the line:
“Phil, intercept this baby. Black Mustang license H5428; red hair and a bikini; jumping lanes like she’s on speed or worse. Stop her! Before she wipes out some decent people,” at which point his voice trembled and he broke connection.
This officer was in pain. He’d fallen off his Harley the day before yesterday. Fortunately no colleague had been present to witness his embarrassment. He suspected a hernia, yet didn’t want to see a doctor and fill out all those fucking insurance forms. Benaroya caught this stream of images telepathically, and was puzzled—how very complex the sweet, little bushmen were!
“Right,” Phil barked to empty air and waited for the suicidal redhead to enter his field of vision. This took longer than expected; Benaroya was jumping a median to slither south between lines of northbound cars, now she flew twice around a cloverleaf, giggling at the deathtraps of stone-age engineering, drinking in the heady waves of larceny, guilt, greed, anguish and nervous agitation that flooded the sunbaked ether. Oh Earth, Earth, how ubiquitous is thy wide-screen insanity! (As Omark had orated this very morning at graduation exercises.) But soon she zoomed into Phil’s turf and the busy, little centurion was on her tail, using lights and siren to force her over.
Benaroya gave a joyful wave. She loved Phil’s Nazi-like helmet, his outraged sense of authority. She was drunk on industrial fumes, flocks of wheeling gulls, soot and tide-flat and carbon monoxide, new leather and her own pungent, sunkissed, unfamiliar sweat. It was a giggle to move this alien vehicle through traffic and suck waves of horror from other drivers who were popeyed at the beat of death’s approaching wings—zowie! The dial was hitting 110, 115, 120, flashing past billboards of Sea & Ski, Marlboro, Budweiser, and under enormous, spider-legged signs—San Diego! Santa Monica! Golden State! Hollywood!—names to roll on the tongue, sweet, remote echoes, exhilarating, tantalizing, incredibly exotic.
“God damn you crazy bitch pull over!” Phil screamed in an agony of frustration.
Benaroya was flying high. She flitted beneath overpasses, around curves, through a tunnel; wasn’t surprised when Phil hit an oil slick and was sucked, bike and all, under the eight, screaming wheels of a semi. She came out in flat saltmarsh where hills cut the horizon, and was slowing to admire a produce stand heaped with brilliant oranges, avocados, watermelon, red and green and waxy yellow peppers, when her first Clash began.
To a Rysemian anthropologist, the Clash is the ultimate learning experience. How else can you learn all there is to know about a person? This woman drove a green Lotus and had one of those funny Earthie names (Benaroya probed her mind carefully) that sounded like Wolf, or perhaps Fox.
This Fox was a miserable being. It seemed other people sneered at her fat arms, thin hair, angry features and at the fact that she was unbeautiful and not young. Her whole life was a waste. Salesgirls insulted her. She was never respected. She was no longer desirable. The world was rotten.. Life stunk.
Benaroya found herself charmed and amazed. Why, the darling person relied completely on the judgments of humans! She thought that “life” meant the opinions of three billion bushmen. How quaint! How adorably provincial. Here was Fox, a taco eater, glamorous, entrancing, absolutely stuffed with pulsar power, being “unhappy.” Tee hee! Earthies were ever so ramified.
Fox whipped past the Mustang and cut in front with a glance of withering contempt. Seeing how it was done, Benaroya zoomed past the Lotus and also cut in sharply with the same look of disdain.
Why in the world was Fox unhappy? The anthropologist probed. Yes indeed, it was because the other little Earthies sneered at her. But how absurd. They all did that to each other constantly. All competitive beings ripped at each other like cornered rats, but who cared? There must be a more important reason. Aha: it was because Fox’s husband ran around. But how silly! She should be pleased that the sweet, little bushman was being hysterical somewhere else. Anyway, now was the time to cheer Fox up. Give her a race she would never forget.
The anthropologist tramped on the accelerator. This was going to be gorgeous. From Fox came a burst of confusing images: Benaroya had never probed a real Earthie this close and it was like a jolt of sour mash. Fox seethed with anguish. She was a volcano of wounds and grief, of tears, prayers and frustration, which other humans forced her to keep under cover. Fascinating! Just like Omark had said. Earth was a powder keg waiting for a match.
Fox was increasingly angry at Benaroya. For what reason? Her chutzpah, her smile, the fact that she was free. Could such idiocy be possible? Earthies were so illogical. It seemed Fox craved being first in line. Excellent; Benaroya would show her some real fun.
“Do exactly as they do and you can’t go wrong,” Omark had said. How easy, how delightful it all seemed. She would become a top secret agent, make Omark fall in love with her, and be a credit to her planet.
Ahead was a sharp turn. Benaroya geared down to third, then to second, the Lotus moving up until they ran hub to hub. Benaroya looked across and smiled, winding it up, testing the silken mesh of gears—oh how she adored primitive mechanics! But Fox would have none of that smile. Fox’s morning had been a roll of ratshit and she despised bubbly redheads; this was the kind of cheap slut her husband chased. Fox could hardly control her resentment. This redheaded floozie was disgusting!
Fox bent forward grimly, her knuckles white with tension. She moved an inch out of lane and barely, almost tenderly, touched the flank of the Mustang.
It was enough to send Brenda Starr spinning across lanes of traffic, around, around in highway roulette; landscape a whirling blur, horrified faces whipping in circles to a wail of horns and a shriek of burning rubber. Then the Mustang recovered and drifted broadside. Benaroya eased into line. So much for round one.
Fox settled back to enjoy her triumph. Benaroya slid closely behind the Lotus. Fox’s lips tightened. Hadn’t this stupid girl had enough? She floored the Lotus, putting distance between the two cars!
Benaroya went flat out with the tach up to 5000. At the next curve she dropped into third and pulled abreast of the Lotus, grinning and waving.
Fox exploded with a lifetime of suppressed rage.
“You cheap slut! You cow! What right do you have to be happy!” Fox screamed, despite herself.
Benaroya blew a kiss, as they did in the films. Benaroya knew a lot about human death. She had personally strangled, drowned, shot, beheaded and dissected scores of empty bodies to test their capabilities. They were fragile eggshells, but what did it matter? Bodies were unimportant, you could grow hundreds of them in the ship tanks. Sensing this attitude, Fox experienced a stab of fear. The girl was plain crazy! Either that or she’d swallowed a whole bottle of uppers.
The Rysemian nosed out to slip ahead with a brash wiggle of the rear end. Fox tried to control her emotions. What an impudent bitch! But anger never won a race, and her Lotus could beat anything on the road.
Fox whipped around the Mustang and cut back in, horns blaring contempt. She lifted the stiffened middle finger of her right hand and punched air with it. Benaroya wondered if the gesture had some special meaning. The Lotus was boxed in for a moment; Benaroya crept up and tapped its rear bumper caressingly.
Fox screamed. She raised one fist in hatred. Now, she could never rest until the Mustang had been forced off the road.
“Cow!” she shrieked. “Cow!” Benaroya repeated. “Bitch!” “Bitch!”
The two women leapfrogged, grabbed the lead by turns, honked and yelled obscenities at each other. Brenda Starr displayed a stiffened middle finger whenever she caught Fox’s eye; it was wonderful; Fox seemed to go higher up the pole each time. Several motorcycle centurions were closing in, and now a bearded black man on a Honda 750 shot into view. He seemed infuriated. When he was even with the Mustang he screamed at Benaroya, telling her to pull over.
“This is a citizen’s arrest,” he shouted several times. Why was he angry? Field work was certainly interesting. Benaroya sorted mental patterns busily. Now five contestants were racing in a tight, emotional, little network. The more people who joined in, the more fun it became!
Signs kept flashing past, Magnolia, Burbank, Oxnard, bathed in a metallic, yellow haze. The road narrowed here; it had been raised above ground level and was flanked by scrubby weeds, not crisp iceplant or concrete like the roads downtown. Along each side were rooftops poking through a blanket of smog. Exquisite! Earthie dwellings were so meltingly picturesque! And how lovely were the endless billboards, gas stations, the brick walls of housing projects, or were they concentration camps?—oh!, so many quaint otherworldly sights to see.
But first there was a good race to be won, and a lovely, Earth lady, Fox, to be shown a bang-up jolly time.
Benaroya did a snakedance between lanes to the tune of blaring horns. She crept up on the Lotus, pushed Fox to the railing and tried to cut her off.
For Fox, this was the last straw. She jerked the wheel to give the Mustang a well-deserved slap; lost control, skittered toward the metal railing, and crashed through it.
The Lotus turned somersaults end over end. It appeared to freeze in midair at each bounce. Then it slammed down the embankment and shot across the intersection. It came to rest on a cyclone fence, teetered for a moment, and burst into flames.
Fox was pinned in the wreckage.
Her mouth gaped grotesquely. The boom of traffic drowned her screams. Benaroya bounced to a stop upside down. At that instant the Lotus exploded—BLAM!—like a hot gasbag; it shattered the windows of a barbershop across the way.
Metal, glass, and bits of human flesh rained down for a hundred yards in every direction.

Chapter Two
“Oh dear,” Benaroya sighed.
Two men with shaving cream on their faces ran out of the barbershop. The anthropologist’s left thumbnail was torn, and one leg painfully wrenched. She limped out of the Mustang, trailing her bikini top which had fallen off.
She’d really been a dummy to provoke that race. Here was Fox, sifting down over everything in hot ashes; the game had ended almost before it started and what fun was that? None at all, gosh darn it.
Lots of people were gathering. They all stared at Benaroya and at the chunks of burning car. One man knelt in the street and vomited. He had tripped on a piece of charred arm; it looked like an elbow—yes, Fox’s bracelets had fused into the skin.
The state patrol slammed up. They had that lovely light on top, revolving and scattering red jewels all around. Two angry centurions sprang out. One had a .38 Special in his hand; Benaroya recognized the model; Omark had several just like it in his collection.
The crowd melted back. They were terrified of the gun.
“Hold it right there, lady!”
Benaroya smiled, limping forward to shake hands with each of them. “Did you enjoy the race, pigs?” she asked.
The bearded black man jumped off his Honda 750 and ran toward her screaming.
“You killed that woman! I saw the whole tiling! Officer, she’s insane, she’s vicious!”
Spittle flew from the corners of his mouth. “She gave that poor woman the finger about ten times, officer. Then she forced her off the road.”
“We’ll take a statement downtown,” the cop said.
“The finger. Is that what you call it?” Benaroya jabbed the air in front of their faces with her middle finger. “Yes, I did that about twenty times; it was fun! But right now I could enjoy a nice taco with lettuce and plenty of red jam.”
They quickly threw a blanket over Benaroya and hustled her into the back seat of the patrol car. The officers spieled off her rights and said nothing else, although she asked repeatedly for a taco with all the trimmings. The Honda rider, who came along as a material witness, kept glaring at her. Like Fox, he sensed Benaroya’s freedom and desperately wanted to see her punished for it. She felt ever so tender toward him. Poor dear, he was a confused, brainwashed, little animal; he was in constant mental agony. She wanted to lean forward and comfort him but knew it would only make him furious.
At the station, the real excitement began. They rushed her upstairs in an old-fashioned elevator, down a corridor, into a small room where the matron took her only possession, an alligator bag, and said,
“Nice purse, honey.”
“Thank you.”
“This all you got?”
There was a driving license and a checkbook. “I haven’t had time to acquire many things,” Benaroya explained.
“You call yourself Brenda Starr? What are ya, topless? Or stripper?”
“Yes, yes,” the anthropologist said with delight. This matron was a lovely person, a beautiful human soul. The matron probed all Brenda Starr’s body openings, grunting and looking for contraband, then pinched one of Brenda Starr’s mammary glands with a frown.
“Silicone?”
“Oh yes, yes,” Brenda Starr smiled.
“Humph. It figures.”
Then they took fingerprints and mugshots. How wonderful that they could be this serious about such trivial foolishness. The body Benaroya was using felt terrible, but she herself was fascinated by the monkeylike routine. The matron put the alligator bag in an envelope and had it sent to the lab. This matron was a pinched-off geyser of complaints and fury. She had an I.Q. of 190 but was never going to advance. Earthies only allowed certain body-types to advance. They preferred large standardized males with deep voices. How very curious!
The matron helped Benaroya tie on her bikini top. She had chapped lips, dandruff, blackheads, greasy hair and an attractively hunched back, all of which Benaroya found entrancing.
The anthropologist was taken to the hospital wing and X-rayed as she lay under a sheet. Her teachers had said that Earth “treatment” was laughable; now to find out if this was true. But just being here was exhilarating! Benaroya had studied these bush people, she’d examined their artifacts, watched a zillion films, read books, tried to understand their seemingly senseless customs—but this was reality. Genuine human beings! How awesomely thrilling. They moved about, starched coats rustling. Pinching and probing her. Little hearts beating, warm breath going in and out, sweatglands hard at work; taking themselves ever so seriously! Benaroya felt suffused with love. She stared raptly at their faces and was overwhelmed when they sneezed, blinked, coughed or licked their mucus membrane lips. Especially she loved to hear them chatter, as they strutted and posed and performed their rituals like earnest chickens.
A “doctor” dressed her contusions very quickly. Next he performed a pap test, explaining it was for “cancer” and should be done constantly. The bushman had no insight whatsoever. He asked marvelous questions such as, “Are you on pills, smack, or acid? Can you remember everything? How long had you known Mrs. Fox? Was she a pusher? How often do you have intercourse? Does this hurt? How about this?” Benaroya was thrilled to find he was a repressed sadist, torn with power drives, guilt, voyeurism, paying heavily for malpractise insurance— gracious, what a bag of snakes! But when she attempted to stroke his neck, hoping to soothe him, the matron hustled her into another room.
“This is Chuck Goldfarb, your court-appointed lawyer,” the matron said, and left with reluctance.
They were shaking hands! O wonder of wonders, his little human paw, so fleshy, so hot! And his eyes gazing into hers, trying to probe her. On the surface, Chuck Goldfarb was briskly efficient. Underneath, the usual snakes writhed gaily.
“What’s your name, honey?”
“Brenda Starr. I’m a reporter.”
“And I’m mild-mannered Clark Kent; Goldfarb is my show biz name.”
She batted her eyelashes. What did he mean? How cute he was! She decided to confide in this wonderful man.
“Brenda Starr is the name of this body. My name is Benaroya.”
He nodded, squeezing her fingers. “Now it all comes together.” Actually she did resemble her namesake in the comic strip. Starry eyes, cascading red locks, great, shapely, luscious, knockers—zappo! The attorney was bored off his ass with Bel Air broads, was already paying alimony to two ex-wives, but the waiflike innocence of this possibly insane redhead was making him dizzy.
“What’s your address?”
She repeated the address on her driving license. Chuck Goldfarb said,
“That’s a funeral home in Salt Lake. Where are you from?”
Benaroya shook her head. If she said “Central Galaxy, Rysemus 8, that’s a Type W star as I’m sure you know,” the man would either consider her mad, or he would become overwhelmed with suppressed memories and longings; there was no middle way, as Omark had often explained.
“What’s your father’s name?” he prodded.
“I don’t have a father.” A tear slid down her cheek. Plenty of tears were advisable in situations like this.
“Mother’s maiden name?”
This was preposterous! Rysemians reproduced by cloning. Benaroya burst into sobs; the Earthie was talking dirty; she’d been warned about this.
“Oh glory be,” Chuck Goldfarb said. “Don’t cry, honey. Please don’t cry. It makes me nervous.”
He took her in his arms. How very comforting! She imagined being close to a large, talking teddy bear, one which smells of cigars, mouthwash and deodorant. Chuck Goldfarb muttered, “Are you a U.S. citizen?”
Benaroya sobbed bitterly. The lawyer quietly explained that some detectives were going to ask her these questions, and he couldn’t help unless she told the truth.
‘“Did you cause that accident, my darling?” he murmured into her hair.
“No,” Benaroya sobbed, which was the truth, in a sense.
She noticed that Chuck Goldfarb was breathing heavily. How very flattering; he actually wished to mate with her! This was going to be fun. It was a Clash of a special type. She smiled through her tears, a melting quiver of a smile a la Monroe in Bus Stop.
Chuck Goldfarb felt that he might be on the verge of a massive coronary. Could it be possible? Was this crazy shiksa planning to lay him, right here in the office? He ran quickly and locked both doors. Then he had her in his arms and was slipping her bikini off. Benaroya took copious mental notes; how exciting this was! Her court-appointed lawyer sweated, panted and fumbled; she had to giggle; he kept repeating that he adored her, which was quite nice. Then they mated quickly. In fact, extremely quickly; her court-appointed lawyer lost no time; he was very efficient. He uttered a series of sighs that sounded like laughter but were actually groans. Finally he slipped to a kneeling position on the rug.
He said, “Oh, God, Benaroya, I’m crazy about you.”
“I’m crazy about you too. And thank you ever so much for mating with me; I thought I’d have to wait two or three days, at least, for an experience like that. But you… golly but you’re good in the sack.” From sex manuals, she knew you were supposed to say this. “And now, when can I get out of here?”
His face fell. “Is that all you want of me?”
Benaroya fingered his rubbery cheeks and chin. She peeked into his ear, where thick black hairs had been trimmed to a stubble. She stroked his head. “You amazing, glorious, real live bushman,” she whispered.
There was a knock on the door. The lawyer jumped, saying,
“Listen, honey, we don’t have time.”
Whatever that meant. He adjusted his tie and belt, whistling. He took a machine out of a drawer and plugged it into a socket and blew his hair into a tousled shag.
“Come in,” he said with crisp authority.
Several grim-faced detectives filed in and began asking questions; the same questions, over and over. They were deliciously unintelligent! Benaroya said,
“Oh, please, please. I’ve got to lie down.”
She pressed a hand to her forehead. Yes, these men liked it when she was weak. If she acted strong and free, they would hate her, just as Fox and the Honda rider had done. She began to cry bitterly. The detectives loved that very much! It meant that she was sorry for what she had done. Soon they let the matron conduct her to a cell in the hospital wing for a rest.
By this time the halls were jammed with television people. They were very friendly, smiling and joking and asking her for dates. “Brenda, we love you,” they shouted, recording a series of full-length shots, some profiles and a grim closeup of the matron’s face as she protected Brenda Starr from the cameras.
“Her lawyer says no interviews,” the matron snapped.
Alone, Brenda Starr lay on her cot and sighed. The last hours had been a perfect whirlwind of marvelous experiences. Now, her body was exhausted.
She stared at the bare lightbulb in the ceiling. What an attractive room. It was wonderful to rest on this hard cot. She threw out a probe, and found that the men were less kind now that she was absent; in fact they were furious that she’d caused the death of several centurions. Poor little fellows! Of course it was their own fault. They were so eager to punish, they forgot safety.
The only one who really loved her was Chuck Goldfarb. And of course the darling matron. She smiled and blew both of them a mental kiss.
Manslaughter… Car theft… Homicide… Indecent exposure… Criminal negligence… Gracious! These bushmen were very, very angry.
Benaroya decided it was plain dumb to wait around and let them indulge their craving to punish. As Omark often remarked in his lectures, Earthies had laws piled on top of laws in a hopeless jumble. The dominant species had been insane for two million years; and they were ever so crafty about keeping it a secret.
She closed her eyes. She left the Brenda Starr body lying there unconscious and went back to her ship.

Chapter Three
A rash of UFOs had been sighted over New Jersey, Montreal and the U.S.S.R., and newscasters were having a field day.
“Little green men,” they chortled.
They interviewed a lot of people. Everyone was concerned and thoughtful. One man said he had been taken aboard a UFO and examined. A NASA spokesman said that the UFOs were products of mass hysteria. Nobody got upset about any of this, except for Benaroya’s boss, the Council Chief Mersoid.
Mersoid wore his Abraham Lincoln body; he paced the Oval Room floor, yanking at his beard. Lincoln had reason to fear the UFOs were Sajorian raider-ships. If so, they’d be under the command of Scaulzo, criminal hypnotist and dictator, whose perversion involved the playing of monstrous games with primitive races. Who else would let the Earthies ogle his corny hardware? Ye gods: they were even showing pictures of his asinine-looking “flying saucers” on their, whatchamacallit—TV.
Lincoln glared at the paintings of American Life on the Oval Room walls. The White House (along with the rest of Washington D.C. in the 1860’s) had been recreated in Mersoid’s suite aboard the Rysemian ship Vonderra— which was, naturally, totally invisible to Earthies. As a long-time student of bushmen, Mersoid knew how bizarre some of these aboriginal lifestyles were. The things his crew had to do, just to make contact with a given group of savages, were often dangerous, always outrageous. But this trip might turn out to be worse than merely insane.
Point: Scaulzo, worshipped as “Satan” on ten thousand primitive planets, had exactly what it takes to turn Earth against the Rysemians.
Point: That meant nothing in itself, since Earthies were mere monkey-gooks. What did mean something was Scaulzo’s new H-2 unit. The most appallingly perverted weapon ever invented. And the impact this development might have on virginal worlds.
Sighing, Lincoln arranged the folds of his gold lame cocktail dress with the seductive slit up the side (which for some reason seemed to make this body feel “at home”).
==========
The Rysemians were here almost by accident. They were opening a rapid transit system, The Mousehole, which terminated nearby. It would be a disaster if they’d been followed by the evil “Prince of Darkness,” as Scaulzo called himself. Now Mersoid had two worries: (1) Was he correct about the origin of these UFOs which had the insolence to be conspicuous? and, (2) If so, what should Earth’s fate be? Because in simple terms, if humans were psychotic enough to be taken in by Sajorian witchcraft it would be imperative to destroy them immediately.
Lincoln headed the staff of anthropologists which included the new cadet Benaroya, known as “B” (now appearing as Brenda Starr), scholarly professor Omark (as frontier outlaw Charles Jennison), and Frimble, brilliant Warp engineer and deviser of The Mousehole (as police officer Dirty Harry). The Supreme Head of the expedition was kindly, Swiss, white-maned Heidi’s Grandfather. These identities were of course feral; but that is precisely what it took to study the species which called itself “homo sapiens.”
Preparing for this expedition, The Rysemians had obtained several hundred Earthie movies including “The Godfather,” “Marked Woman,” “Duck Soup” and “You Were Never Lovelier.” They had analysed and studied these films meticulously. They observed that humanity was epitomized in such specimens as Jack Oakie, Ronald Reagan, Rochelle Hudson and Hattie McDaniel. The mannerisms and speech patterns, songs and dances of many celebrities had been carefully memorized. And since the Rysemians were telepaths and could always probe to find out what was expected, fitting in would be no problem.
However, constant practice was essential; since any human identity was so theroid it was almost inconceivable to a Rysemian.
For this reason we find Dirty Harry and the outlaw Jennison practising in the scoutship lounge, at the instant that Brenda Starr was killing Mrs. Fox and five patrolmen on a California freeway.
==========
“That’s our man,” Frimble pointed.
The holographic form swirled together and solidified. It showed a group of Roman carabinieri in a cordon, slashing with clubs at some bloody, screaming citizens. Frimble, as Dirty Harry, jabbed a finger at the cruel-mouthed sergeant with piercing eyes and raw-pink, jagged line from chin to temple.
“The scar wasn’t planned; he mixed up with a farmer’s pitchfork.”
Omark chewed ice cubes. “No way of proving he’s Scaulzo.”
“The M.O.‘s dead on. He moves in and picks himself a top Department job with no trouble at all. Overnight, he’s a hero; and check the overtones of torture, hypnosis, all the crap the media and public eat up. Baby, this has got to be Scaulzo.”
“Who took the pictures?”
“Lozetti. You remember the pushy Quatzler. He knows the Sajorian mind. Sticks like a burr and gets information you wouldn’t believe. For instance this is a riot on the Via Veneto, taken half an hour ago.”
Omark drained his Scotch impatiently. “Why use a Quatzel agent, for chrissake?”
“Why not? It takes the heat off our people.”
“Some picking. Your paparazzo smells like double-agent to me.”
Frimble shrugged. He still wore his Dirty Harry body too stiffly. He stumbled and gasped quite a lot. Breathing air, and balancing on the storky legs required much skill. Frimble had been at the other terminal in Mlivian form until yesterday and the difference between Earthie bodies and Mliv bodies was vast.
Dirty Harry wore jumpsuit, spacer boots and a week’s stubble on his bony, white pokerface. He and Omark were sampling cases of hundred-year-old Scotch the latter had jayhawked from a crumbling castle somewhere in Bavaria. The two friends had knocked around space together for years; they’d shivered or sweated on many a hostile planet; served in the same regiment in the Coalsack Revolution, explored, fought, shoved plans and theories at each other, teaming up often despite heavy academic schedules. Now Frimble flashed another hologram of the sergeant and said,
“Granted this is Scaulzo, my next question is, why is he so successful? Why do whole civilizations follow him? The fact that he’s a sadistic criminal seems to drive them to frenzies of worship.”
Omark squirmed; the jockey shorts of this imbecilic carcass had been put on backwards and he’d been too rushed to change them. Preposterous. Acting as caretaker to a monkey-gook body, combing its hair, brushing its teeth, feeding it, resting it, decrapping it constantly… He said,
“Okay, let’s recap briefly. We know that male bodies are incomplete, because of that stunted Y chromosome, hence males lack ‘intuition’ (which merely means they’re less intelligent, having a closed-off awareness). But since primitive Earth exists at a level of barbarism, the male is the chosen sex. Large, crude, stupid, barbaric males with criminal tendencies are worshipped. Flattering movies about them are churned out by the hundreds. They run government, business, religion, sport and crime, which are actually all the same thing.”
“So where does Scaulzo fit in?”
“The type of mentality I’m describing is grossly unstable. Earth is a planet of closet cases; humans base their entire lives on phony role-playing. What a pushover for a hypnotist! Our Sajorian friend can ride in like Hitler or The Sundance Kid and the Earthies will go crazy for him— they’ll all want one of those classy, silver helmets he hands out.”
“Hell, we could beat him to it. Start our own little private army.”
“How? He’s charismatic; we’re not. We don’t appeal to the masses, never have, and never will.”
“We could make an attempt.”
“Like casting pearls before swine. No; the only thing we’ve got going for us is that Scaulzo’s already so powerful he won’t be too ambitious. Or too cautious, either.”
“I still think we’ve got a chance, playing his game. For instance, what if the Earthies saw him in his own scaly basilisk body?”
“What if they saw you in your geeky-looking, fat, blubberfish body? Face it, pal: Scaulzo is The Devil, and primitives always go for that type of schmaltz—just as they can’t stand a Rysemian because we’re simply not their cup of tea, and don’t ask me to give you a reason because I don’t understand it myself. All I know is, we’re never gonna be popular, so we can’t fight Sajor on that level.”
“They’d never elect us President if we ran against Scaulzo,” the Warp engineer mused.
“You got it. Furthermore, it’s a very subtle thing, so don’t jump to any hasty conclusions.”
Dirty Harry put a squirt of tobacco juice into the cuspidor and said,
“And so you want Benaroya to play decoy, and lure this perverted mother into action.”
“Exactly. First, B. damaged Scaulzo’s animal export business and he wants revenge; and second, we have reason to suspect he laid the groundword for a hypnotic implant—how, we don’t know—in B. at the time she faced him off. So what could be neater?”
“Or more dangerous. For Benaroya, old buddy, not for you.”
“You got it, old buddy.”
“One thing’s shaping up, Omark. You’re a genuine prick.”
“Thank you; I try.”
The two Rysemians brooded and practiced in front of a crackling fire with their boots on the hob. The scoutship now drifted some 200 miles above Earth, near its orbiting mothership Vonderra. Earlier today they zoomed it through a branch of unfinished Mousehole, and around the grid, or station, which was newly completed and absolutely stupendous; small wonder that a primitive mind might cave in at the very sight of it. Grid 8 was the last station on the line and from its position Earth’s little sun was the merest pinprick of a star. As Dirty Harry said, “Let’s hope no Earthie test flight stumbles into this end of the woods! They’d go crazy! It would be worse than putting a Neanderthal inside Kennedy Airport without any preparation.”
The Mousehole was based on his discovery that galactic rotation (G.R.) causes a warp effect along the axis of the galaxy. The Hole was a nulltorque hollow running along the axis and using G. R. to power this incredible system of transport. Like accordion-folding a piece of paper and sticking a needle through it, Frimble found that space can be folded into a self-contained peashooter in which the payload is transmitted by the G.R.-created warp effect. A ship could enter any grid along the Mouse-hole, fall down the tube, and emerge milliseconds earlier at any other grid.
The Mousehole was now nearly completed, after years of false starts and costly experimentation. The seals hadn’t been installed yet so they zoomed through it at normal speed. But the flight through the exact center of the galaxy was a lustrating thrill. Time flowed around them in a burgeoning slipstream, past and future fused in the ship’s rooster-tail, and whorls of never-never-land came boiling up as they plowed the incandescent whirlpool.
“Can you imagine this is Scaulzo’s hands?” Dirty Harry yelled.
Omark grimaced and held on through a vortex of sound-and-light bubbles that were pure, chopped, skewered Time. Certainly Scaulzo would risk plenty, just to challenge the terminal grid alone. Once installed, he’d be impregnable. Grid 8 was isolated; way out here in the styx, even out past little Earth, Scaulzo would love to start a new world of his own. But he’d have to strike soon. Once the Mousehole was finished it would be invulnerable.
Dammit! Omark had wanted a nice, clean field trip; wanted to study Earthie culture firsthand and mosey around, look at the sights, prove a few theories of his own. Scaulzo’s unexpected presence had gummed up these plans. After the grid inspection the Rysemians put their scoutship into a wide orbit, stoked up a fire in the lounge and began checking every available scrap of data that concerned the Sajorian devil-god.
His name  in Earth-talk  sounded  like  “Scaulzo.” A series of hisses and implosions arranged to translate as “Prince of Darkness” in any language. They knew he’d appeared in Mississippi as a two-foot-tall Martian; Earthies were still drawing pictures of how his body had looked to them, before it vanished or was stolen. Scaulzo would get a laugh out of that. The poor Earthies thought a body was positive I.D.; they were easily fooled.
Nobody knew Scaulzo’s real name. Even his basic body type was anybody’s guess, but he was probably a winged basilisk. Not a reptile in any Earth sense of the word. A reptile is not malevolent. The people of Lozetti’s planet, Quatzl, said that Scaulzo was the devil in the flesh, the spirit of Evil rising out of a crypt to possess bodies. Even Bright Lights sophisticates didn’t laugh at these old folktales from the peasant worlds…
Dirty Harry was almost relieved when a validation came in. He punched buttons, all-thumbs with haste, and said, “Okay, jayhawker, I think we’ve got your proof. It’s a paid commercial running on all major channels—right now.”
The TV picture panned slowly through yeasty blue ozone toward an attractive white cloud. On the cloud reclined a frank-faced, well-built, massive, young athlete wearing nothing but a football helmet and shiny, friendship medallion. The man grinned and said in a deep, masculine voice:
“Co-operation!
“Love!
“Sharing and caring!
“Scaulzo satisfies, my friends. Give generously!
“This message will internalize and repeat.”
Then with gauzy softness the brief commercial faded away.
“Well, the sonofabitch has their number,” Omark said admiringly.
Dirty Harry mouthed his cigarillo.
He scowled at his friend and said, “Who’s going to warn Benaroya? She’s down there in the wilderness facing those closet cases all alone.”
“Perfect. I don’t want her warned. She’s got to lead that bastard into our hands.”
“No sense throwing a talented anthropologist down the tube.”
“Scaulzo already wants to destroy B.—this is nothing new. What the fuck’s the matter with you, anyway? Ya constipated, pal, or something?”
They were sinking into a familiar Earthie pattern of competition; that was excellent. Frimble would be in love with Benaroya and want to protect her. Benaroya would be in love with Omark and want a torrid affair. Omark would seek adventure, avoiding ties or ethical hangups. He disliked Earthies on principle; their bodies repelled him, all those inconceivable teeth and protuberances and ghoulish tufts of hair. Therefore, he must make every effort to match them in vileness.
Charles Jennison was a hit-and-run bandit from the 1860’s. During the Civil War his Seventh Kansas Cavalry had been known as the Jayhawker Regiment. “Jayhawk” meant “rip off.” On this trip, Jennison must rip off everything he could lay hands on, and enjoy it like a muck-rolling cockroach.
Dirty Harry snarled, “If B. gets hurt, friend, you’re dead; keep that in mind.”
“For chrissake relax, she’s just a decoy.”
“All the more reason to protect her.”
Jennison noted the throb of jealousy in the Warp engineer’s voice. They were off to a perfect Earthie start. In all their explorations, Omark and Frimble had never experienced anything like a fight over a woman. Would it end in disaster?
“I’ll protect the lady,” he drawled. “Don’t you worry your pretty little head.”
Dirty Harry had thrown up a mind-shield; following the move, Jennison threw up one of his own. From here on there could be no more friendly unity. Night and day they must rehearse the grim self-importance, the mountain of rivalry, paranoia and self-justification. Being male made it even tougher; there should be no lightness in the male life; only a bossy, arrogant machismo. And you had to do all this without losing control of sphincter or balance or endless twitches, shivers, farts, erections, nose-drips—looking after the body was a fulltime job; no wonder Earthies never got anything done. And their complicated, illogical social structure made it sheer torture.
As competitors, the pair went over Scaulzo’s traces with a finetooth comb. They were learning to work like human males, keeping a barrier of suspicion, jealousy and angrily ambivalent lust always between them.
The file on Scaulzo was meager.
Nobody knew when or where he was decanted, born, or spawned. Naturally the Sajorians kept no records (since only a permanent body gives permanent identity). The planet Sajor had developed in a way that was strikingly similar to Earth; it cooled from a molten mass into a world riddled with volcanic activity, and finally seas and plains appeared. Fish struggled up out of the sea, developed lungs, became winged lizards on the order of Earth’s Pterodactyl. The main sapient branch was much like Earth’s dinosaurs, but these enormous lizards had never become extinct; never been superseded by a race of pygmy humanoids—a monkey people—as had happened on Earth. Instead they’d developed advanced intelligence coupled with the familiar warlike, acquisitive behavior of psychotic races.
A deadly combination.
Since the dawn of time, life on Sajor (as on Earth) had been a bloody battle for “supremacy.” According to the Master Schedule at least two million years must pass before a bushman finally learns to build, keep, and use as many bodies as he desires. Before that moment of insight, his primitive superstitions prevent him from remotely considering such a possibility. Primitives believe that bodies are holy; that you only live once; that your thoughts are “private” and can be kept secret; yes, primitives are mired in such quaint superstitions.
So it’s six million years from cave days to the start of a true civilization.
Earthies had served only a fraction of this time.
Chewing a toothpick, Omark began to clean and oil his Colt revolvers.
There were rumors that Earthies were the barbaric remnant of a once-glorious race; that was being investigated. Certainly the Mousehole would speed life up and phase out the old-fashioned, backwoods flavor of the planet.
Omark rather regretted this. He’d wanted to make a complete study of Earth before it was changed beyond recognition. Instead, he’d, have to play the infantile game of search-and-destroy.
He might even be forced to go through a sex act, like a gorilla in rut, with Benaroya.
Souring prospect!
Repulsive as jumping into a primeval swamp; but still— not without its ragtags of educational value.

Chapter Four
Holy Moses.
What a relief to be out of that Brenda Starr body with its contusions and aches. But how delightful to stretch out in bodiless comfort, in her own suite aboard Vonderra.
The anthropologist loved this sanctuary, this wonderful home-away-from-home. Vonderra was not at all like a primitive “space ship.” In no way did she resemble a phallic Buck Rogers war machine. No: Vonderra was pure Aladdin’s Lamp, a vivarium of dreams ready to supply the backdrop for any desire, or turn into whatever you needed: town, guru, factory, friends; or pet, theater, flying carpet; you order it, Vonderra brings it forth. She seemed the exact opposite of Earthie hangups—all those tiresome jails, threats, flags, and dopey old laws!
Outwardly, Vonderra looked like any common meteor. Just a hunk of dirty ice rolling through space. Who’d bother with a harmless slab of rock? But under the plain shell were fairy realms. Vonderra was a self-contained little old pocket of eternity.
She was paragravity driven like the commercial giants of the Rysemus fleet. Like them, she’d been organically grown as a vast, alive, hollow diamond, and was now thousands of years old. She housed the anthropologists as they explored stone-age worlds along the fringes of the galaxy.
Benaroya was sure glad to be back. The jumbled echoes of Earth were duplicated in her suite—a sleazy motel in a rundown block from the 1970’s; she was being steeped in human culture, programming herself as a bushie, at least as far as a 36-foot “dolphin” from Rysemus could do so.
She rang the bridge. Captain Boolabung’s image appeared. Behind him were tents, palm trees and a fleet of jeeps.
“George! Am I glad to see you.”
“Where’s your body, you fool?”
“In jail.”
Boolabung wore his General George S. Patton body with tense zealousness. The mouth tightened.
“Are you out of your mind?”
“You mean for abandoning the carcass? Shit, it’s all racked up.”
“So you pulled out.” Patton’s voice was a whiplash. “Get back to it immediately.”
“No chance, George. The meat’s been in a car wreck.”
“Dead?”
“Unconscious.”
“Dead or alive, I want it recovered at once.”
The anthropologist looked with admiration at the strained, bitter face. Boolabung was this martinet down to the least gesture. She said mildly,
“Go soak your head. I’m staying.”
“Get that body.”
“Don’t hold your breath.”
“You’ve got ten minutes,” the General snapped. “Then you’ll report to the bridge in that body.”
“Your father’s mustache!”
“I gave an order.”
“You and what army? Nertz! Go chase yourself. I’m staying right here.”
“This is no joke; get that fucking body.”
Boolabung slammed up the phone. Gods. Nobody had foreseen the wrenching culture shock an agent would go through on Earth. The very atmosphere was tainted. Films lied; they made the place seem relatively sane. Well, we live and learn.
Patton was dressed as a sheik for today’s lifestyle rehearsal with the crew? He sat in his tent eating dates and making plans. It didn’t matter that Benaroya had blown her cover; Earthies were too stupid to recognize a space traveller even if you crammed one down their throats. But it was no picnic to be an anthropologist. Primitives were self-deluding cannibals. They relied on brainwash. Their civilizations were invariably founded on deceit. He didn’t envy the anthropologist her job.
Earthies, in particular, were louts. They dumped garbage all over their solar system: exploded satellites, bits of strewn wreckage, shroud, tons of junk metal whirling in orbit… Thieving sluts!
But alone, they weren’t dangerous. The real threat was Scaulzo.
Doodling, Patton pricked his thumb with his kris. He enjoyed watching blood trickle out and feeling the tiny stab of pain. Abe Lincoln had called earlier, suggesting that the Captain summon Benaroya and work her over; demonstrate that even she, in an Earth body, was vulnerable and must not be careless. Then when he had her undivided attention (a black eye or couple of loosened teeth would suffice) he could impress B. with the Sajorian menace—stressing how imperative it was that caution be used from now on. Extreme caution.
What Hitler had done to six million Earthies, Scaulzo was doing to billions, all over the galaxy.
General Patton trimmed his foot calluses with the kris and laid his plans.
The Rysemians drifted in orbit around Earth because the Mousehole was nearing completion. It made sense that Scaulzo would show up now, hoping for a chance to attack and take over. Latest info from the Rysemian network indicated that the archfiend, who possessed what he bragged of as “Powers of Darkness,” was kidnapping as many Earthies as he could lay hands on, while supplying television stations with Public Service Announcements that showed he was really a friend of the people.
Human beings! Because of Scaulzo, they had become an indirect threat.
There were billions of the ugly little goblins, swarming the surface of their planet, helpless as sitting ducks. And each ten-toed beastie could be sold for cash on the black market. Psychosis, neurosis, VD and all… Or kept in the rumored-about dungeon of the “Prince of Darkness” for his own private orgies… Patton swallowed a date pit moodily.
The galaxy is shaped like a disk, with stars clustered thickly at the center and sparsely out toward the unexplored edges. Earth, in its tiny solar system, lies near one edge and another small planet called Mliv is near the opposite rim; two primitive worlds, important only because each lies near a terminal of the Mousehole.
Rysemus, as every child knows, is the leading solar system in the fabulous Bright Lights nucleus of our galaxy. Quaintly enough Earthies call this “The Milky Way” after a secretion of their mammals; but Rysemians know it as the home grounds of all the advanced people of this galaxy.
Yet the location of Earth might prove strategic. Scaulzo was a demon no priest or psychiatrist could ever cast out, once he decided to possess a person. Boolabung himself knew of several primitive races which could be put into a hypnotic trance—leaders, master criminals and all—at the mere mention of the Sajorian dictator’s name.
Would humans follow the usual primitive pattern and idolize Scaulzo?
So far, test results looked bad. Earthies were already forecasting deep-space travel. An ounce of new technology and off they’d rip, spreading their covert sadism and hypocritical “concern” to God knows how many unspoiled worlds. If such a migration seemed immanent… No doubt about it: this expedition would turn into a mission of genocide. Because who could argue? If the human race carried disease it must, for health’s sake, be destroyed.
And that was heavy. Darned heavy. In fact gosh darned heavy, Benaroya was beginning to think. Here on Vonderra she could get a second wind and judge everything more clearly. What if Earth were declared incurable? She’d be pulling the switch on some awfully nice folks— Chuck Goldfarb, for openers, and the matron. She decided that if Earth were doomed, she’d rig her tests so that humans came out looking at least halfway sane. She simply was not going to have the blood of four billion very darling people on her hands, by golly.
The anthropologist opened the closet door. Along slanted walls, in coffins which gently exercised and nurtured them, were her empty bodies. Which to choose? Golly. Some decision. It would be neat to be a baboon for a day or so, but they’d never take her seriously. Humans thought animals were inferior; it was part of their insanity. Yuck! The lines to her Myron Breckinridge musta clogged; the bod was beginning to smell; she’d have to tell the steward to dump it down the garbage chute.
Well, what the heck should she wear? Sam Peckinpah hung by his ankles all naked and forlorn, between Truman Capote and Moses, but she didn’t care to be a male today. She wanted to test if women were really second-class citizens as they claimed. She hesitated between a Flying Nun and Lolita, slipped into the Nun and did a few soft shoe routines, then hung the body up again. Not for now.
H’mm. The Old Testament ladies, Esther and Bathsheba and that lot, were compact by today’s standards. That was sensible since they’d consume less air and food, but she had to resemble the big high-fashion bods of the moment Finally she selected the Emma Peel. Ah! Ideal. In the mirror Mrs. Peel looked dashing and aristocratic. She’d do quite nicely.
B. flexed the knees, and vaulted a couch to limber up. Golly, this was a giggle! Mrs. Peel was a really fun bod. She’d come out of a British TV series wearing white kid boots and white jumpsuit. The bod seemed designed for adventure, bounce and stamina, just as the Fay Wray had been designed for ravishment by gorillas, and the Mary Magdalene for repentance after prostitution; but none of that esoteric jazz seemed to apply in today’s world.
The bulge in one pocket was a balanced little pearl-handled .32 that smelt cleanly of oil. Not exactly a howitzer but cute as a bug’s gonad. Mrs. Peel tested it on the bed. Crack!, a satisfying little sound. The slug ripped through the mattress, came out the backside and buried itself in the floor.
Zowie!
This lifestyle was going to be ginger peachy, for doggone sure.
Mrs. Peel was practising snap kicks on chairs when Mersoid appeared.
The Council Chief materialized instantaneously, in a rage. Under usual conditions a Rysemian never violates privacy; such acts are left to bushmen and bumpkins. Mersoid wore his gangling Lincoln body with stovepipe hat and swallowtails. Above the beard his face was chalky with fury.
“Imbecile! Do you know what you’ve done?” “Has Patton been ratting?” Benaroya was on guard. She’d never seen the Chief this angry before.
“You dumped a body, stupidly, in a public place. What happens if the humans go into panic and stampede?”
“What’s eating you all of a sudden? Heck, they’re not cattle.”
“Deluded booby!”
This Lincoln was a holographic duplicate of the 1863 model; gaunt, exhausted by criticism, wondering which direction the bullet would come from. The fingers tugging his lapels were thin and graceful. The voice was a spot recording taken the day of his assassination. Mersoid personally didn’t care what the humans did; he was worried about the Sajorian threat—of which B., as yet, knew nothing.
“Let me spell it out for you,” he rumbled in Lincoln’s drawling attack, sharpened with sarcasm, which had embittered so many opponents. “Point: you destroy an Earth woman and fail to note the trail of dead officers behind you. Point: despite months of training you tell the law your name is Benaroya but the body is Starr, you let them photograph and fingerprint and paw you, and confiscate your I.D., and after all this, you leave the body in their tender care.” “So what?”
A   glare   of   ridicule.   “What   if   they   suspect   our presence?”
“Look, Chief, the planet is a hotbed of paranoia; they suspect everything. They suspect their left little toe, for godsake. And I’ve got to fit in. That’s the point.” “How do you explain the multiple deaths?” “It’s Earth, for Pete sake! They expect it. I’d gladly have offered Fox a spare body; any one she liked.” Mrs. Peel brushed her hair back with an appealing gesture. This sophist was a drag; him and his points. Well she’d merely give him an occasional blow, correction, snow, job so he’d go chew out somebody else. “Uh—where do Earthies go when they die, Mr. President? Out like a short-circuited robot, or where?”
“You’ve jeopardized our mission.” Mersoid switched on the TV. “Take a look at how the bushmen are responding to your thoughtless caper.”
Cameras were sweeping the Hollywood freeway where smoke still curled off the pieces of exploded Lotus. A street crew raked embers in a search for valuables. Roped off in the background was a crowd of gloomy humans. Overhead, helicopters chopped air.
Mrs. Peel sulked. “You don’t give Earthies any credit! You’re a chauvinist pig.”
“Shut up and use your brains, if any. Find a way out of this.”
There was a closeup of Mr. Fox’s face, weeping as police uncovered one of his wife’s emerald earrings. Then an interview with the Honda rider who said,
“It was a duel! A fight to the death! Miss Starr kept egging Mrs. Fox on, making obscene gestures! Now the world can see the truth about pampered white women.”
They cut him off and showed the barber whose window had been broken, then a still photo of Mrs. Fox, and footage of Mr. Fox being harassed last month as a union official.
“Possibility of a grudge killing is being investigated,” the newsman’s voice said.
Abe Lincoln cursed. They showed the cellblock where Brenda Starr was hustled along by detectives. She kept smiling merrily at the cameras. Once or twice she waved. Benaroya felt a pang of embarrassment. What a dumb ninny! Brenda looked all naive and sort of dopey compared to the other people. She hadn’t learned to control the rubbery features. But shucks, some planets you could live on for years and never really understand their subtle expressions.
The newsman said, “Brenda Starr, mystery woman, lies in a deep coma after the tragic accident which claimed the life of a Santa Monica beauty.” Then a flattering closeup of Mrs. Fox. Next the camera examined a door where a centurion was posted. Gloomy orderlies wheeled trays. Sour-looking bunch of zombies! But could it be her fault? Perhaps her approach had been all wrong… B. felt a twinge of success. At last! A faint whisper of “doubt” and “guilt.” The subtle, alien emotions she’d studied so carefully but still could not grasp. This was a windfall. She’d cultivate and savor these remarkable feelings. She’d let them grow like swampflowers under a prehistoric sun until she was able to wallow in such emotions. Then she’d know what being an Earthie meant!
There was a lingering shot of the Brenda Starr body lying unconscious. Around the bod were racks holding bottles. Tubes from these bottles disappeared under the blankets. B. had to shriek with laughter. Cave medicine. Gruesome. Then an interview with the doctor who said pompously,
“Miss Starr remains in a coma.” “When can she be questioned?”
“Hopefully some time today. With an injury of this type it’s hard to be specific.”
“Naturally the police are eager to question her.” The doctor bristled. “I don’t want to make any accusations but a human life is at stake.”
“What about other cases of this nature? How long can a person remain unconscious—”
Mrs. Peel snapped off the set. “In their case, forever,” she snorted.
Mersoid was implacable. “Too many loose ends, Madame. There are differences between the planet-grown body and one of ours. Usually these don’t matter, but keep pointing them out to the public and hysteria will result. God help us if they do a red corpuscle count. They will think Brenda Starr is a goat. I want to see that tedious carcass up here immediately,” and the Council Chief vanished.
B. hung her Emma Peel in its slot in the closet. What a drag! Who cared if Earthie’s got their milk in a boil over one stupid old body? They were always upset over some dumb thing or other.
The Brenda Starr body grinned nastily as Benaroya, entering it, felt drowned in drugs, nausea, and pain. Blucch! The bod had been punctured and medicated by subcortical savages who knew nothing about healing. They were one step up from leeching.
Brenda’s eyelids fluttered. She groaned softly. The nurse called the doctor who propped open her eyelids (tee hee! Preposterous) and aimed a flashlight into each of her pupils. The nurse chirped,
“How are we feeling?” and took Brenda Starr’s pulse.
“My head aches,” the comicstrip reporter said weakly.
“You had a nasty bump,” the doctor explained. This was a different doctor from the last doctor. He, too, performed a pap test, pointing out that it was for “cancer” and should be done constantly.
Brenda said, “Now can I go home?”
“Sorry. That’s not my department.”
Brenda belched with annoyance, saying,
“Anyone who needs you to diagnose a disease is already dead.”
“Neurotic,” the doctor remarked to the nurse. Nevertheless they packed up their little tools and left, fearing a malpractise suit. Brenda unhooked the tubes and limped to the door and peeked out. An armed guard sat reading at a desk. Behind him was a barred steel door. So much for escape.
Brenda took a shower and did sexy things to her red locks. She knew that her lover, Chuck Goldfarb, would rescue her from this place. She stood at the barred window and looked down at the city. There were broad streets flowing with traffic, rows of palms, shiny windows to the horizon. How pretty! Wouldn’t it be ginger peachy to walk around down there? She was positive all human life couldn’t be as stupid as it had seemed so far.
Chuck Goldfarb tapped and came in. Brenda reached out happily, to stroke his neck and mane, but he pushed her away.
She was hurt. “What’s wrong? Don’t you love me?”
He kept winking and pointing. She untied his tie but he pushed her away. He pointed to a tiny microphone embedded in the lamp. He was frantic.
“Glad to see you back in the land of the living,” he said in a calm voice.
Probing, B. felt layers of conflict. Chuck Goldfarb was in a mental straitjacket. His superiors were pressing him because Fox’s death was a grudge killing. He was sorry he’d mated on the floor with Brenda Starr since she was not only a probable whore but also an employee of the Syndicate. Further, he was aroused, revolted, and on the defensive.
Whew! B. had once programmed a robot with as many conflicts as she could think up. Now poor Chuck Goldfarb seemed like that robot. Luckily he wouldn’t blow up, so long as you didn’t raise your middle finger or otherwise violate his superstitions. To be reassuring, she reached out and yanked his zipper down.
Chuck Goldfarb gasped. He zipped up frantically, fending off her eager hands. What would the crazy broad do next? He never should have  screwed her during work hours. He must have been out of his mind. She was a pro; he could catch every disease in the book. He said roughly, “We’ve got a bit of a mess here so let’s get busy.” “Don’t you love me?”
Brenda’s lower lip trembled. She’d always felt that a flow of pure love could dissolve any problem. Her lawyer made a contorted face and pointed at the bug.
“Certainly I love you! We all love you! Now suppose you tell me exactly what happened. First I want your real name.”
B. leaned her forehead against the cool window. A tear sparkled on her cheek. She was learning to be human. That meant being split into a million confused, unhappy fragments. But analysis could come later; right now she had to escape. She’d pick her lawyer’s brains for a defense. Something that would please him, not conflict with his superstitions, and satisfy his chief who was listening through the microphone.
“My name is Brenda Putz.” The tears began to flow; her voice trembled on the edge of hysteria. “I’m running away from my husband. He’s a junky. Makes me turn tricks to support his habit; that’s the only reason I do it; otherwise I’d be a beauty operator,” she grieved. So far so good.
“Go on, Brenda, tell me the whole story. How much do you charge?”
“Thirty dollars!” She was wracked with sobs. Her attorney seemed pleased; these were certainly the correct answers. “Oh, God, what must you think of me! Oh, it’s all so sordid! But I’m a good girl.” Her voice rose to a chanting wail. “I was a virgin when I married that animal!”
Was that too idiotic? No, the lawyer seemed thrilled with the way things were developing. He handed her a Kleenex.
“Well now Brenda, they can throw involuntary man-slaughter at us which means bail runs five to ten grand. Plus which the owner of the Mustang must file suit in order to collect his insurance. You committed an unlawful act.”.
“Oh, I know!”
“At the very least you failed to exercise due caution.”
“Oh, I know,” she sobbed. “I’ve been so very, very wrong.”
Chuck Goldfarb felt sincerely rotten about all this. He didn’t want to put the poor girl down, but Christ, she was bad news; better to nip any relationship in the bud and save both their feelings. If she was working for a hit man he certainly wanted no part of her. He said,
“Can the D.A. pin a motive on you? They might try negligent homicide with a motor vehicle. Now listen carefully. Things will go easier if you tell me the name of your employer.”
“I’m a part time baby s-s-sitter.”
“Brenda, don’t try to con me! That’s hooker talk. I want bedrock truth.”
The comicstrip reporter screamed with grief. Could it be possible? Her lawyer was judging her by this body. All he saw was a big-breasted, sapphire-eyed, sobbing redhead in a bikini! He expected her to apologize, blubber, lie, spread disease, and be cowed by his wisdom. Perhaps Mersoid had been right about Earthies. But she couldn’t bear to think so. She wept with abandon.
The lawyer said impatiently, “Come on, knock off the waterworks, kiddo! Can you get bond?”
“What does that mean?”
“Between three and fifty thousand. Then you can leave.”
She blew her nose. “You mean you want money? Just dumb old money? I’ll gladly write a check for any amount.”
“No, no, you do it through a bail bondsman.” This girl needed a good psychiatrist. He’d be glad to see the last of her. “I glanced at your Mickey Mouse checkbook, honey.
That million-dollar account in the Bank of Zurich might seem pretty funny to you, but it can cause a lot more trouble than you can handle.“
“The account is perfectly genuine. Or I can pay off in gold Napoleons or pieces of eight if it would make you happier.”
The lawyer picked up his briefcase.
“Don’t get snotty. That attitude won’t buy you a thing. Nobody’s trying to persecute you, Brenda. If you can get bond, you can go home, it’s that simple.”
In an hour the red haired reporter was out of the slammer on bail. She stormed into her suite on Vonderra, mad as a wet hen.

Chapter Five
something terrible is going to happen 
something terrible is going to happen 
something terrible is going to happen
Adrian Resnick, Jr. was halfway through a steamy shower when the phone began ringing.
Well lathered, towel knotted around middle, he took the stairs three at a time and grabbed up the handset on the eighth ring. “Yes? Resnick here, who’s this?”
Silence. Breathing.
Finally a woman’s timid voice said, “Prudence?”
“Prudence? You’ve got the wrong number.”
“Oh dear. I’m so sorry. It’s my fault. I’m sorry.”
“Not at all,” Resnick grimaced. He raced back up the carpeted stairway. He hated interrupted showers; hated telephones in general, constant intrusion, sweet old ladies who gushed apologies for gentle mistakes. For some reason that annoying circuit was chewing at the back of his mind again. On and off, on and off. On and off.
Something terrible is going to happen.
Like a neon sign. SOMETHING TERRIBLE. Like one of the signs on the strip at Las Vegas. SOMETHING TERRIBLE.
What could cause such a feeling? A vague alarm, refusing to take definite shape. Again he stepped into the shower which he’d left pounding away and wasting hot water. Overwork never affected him like this before. He sponged off the dried lather. And what could happen that was so damned terrible? A climbing fall? You always took that chance.  Death of  a  relative?  Nuclear holocaust?
Maybe the big quake would happen today, the one the soothsayers feared, in which San Francisco would slide headfirst into the Pacific Ocean.
How about the crushing boredom of most people’s lives. Nothing could be more terrible than that.
Resnick hadn’t done any climbing for weeks; he’d been working like  a mole. Had just finished his quantum-mechanical theory of the electron, at least the first draft, and when he published it, the egg would hit the fan. Too many people were jealous of his “pull”—oh yes indeed; his pull—a word average minds use to mean “talent.” The public didn’t realize what adolescents scientists are. All that jockeying for space and equipment. My office. My secretary.  My four-color ballpoint pen.  And grabbing credit for students’ work like a pack of hungry cannibals; science was all “Lord of the Flies”—seventh graders on a rampage. They kept insisting, “The day of the individual genius is past. Today, all great advances are made by the group.” Oh, sure. You bet. The good old Group. A camel is a racehorse designed by a Group. When Resnick finally published, there would be anger, because he was “privileged”  (they thought)—but nobody could refute him: time did curve. Time was nibbling its own tail with infinitely accelerating bites. Resnick had proved it. And unlike Einstein he could think in comicstrip terms for the layman—hadn’t he, too, spent 500 Saturday mornings in front of the TV? Like… Time sucks up own tail faster and faster until finally, Superslurp! Oversimplification for fun and profit. Nevertheless, he felt a bit like Galileo—It Moves! But for now, he had to let the paper jell a week or two before he wrote the final draft. Give every submerged bug a chance to surface. Something terrible is going to happen. How about a press release: “Mountaineer genius, 24, son of famed Nobel laureate, after proving time’s circularity, is haunted by premonitions. Blames Saturday horror flicks, overwork. In compensation, demands roomful of sex-starved ladies.”
But it wasn’t a joke. The omen or whatever it was kept gnawing at his mind. Resnick toweled off, snapped on the TV and began stacking equipment on the four-poster bed. He was in a hurry. He was always in a hurry these days.
Hammer, whiskey, matches. They could sort everything into packs at the base camp. Goggles and compass. The Hasselblad. Plenty of film. Zinc ointment, barometer, filters for cloud effects; he’d take some good slides of Mount Robson towering over the glacier. Maybe use for Christmas cards? See how they turn out, decide later. Something terrible is going to happen.
Rot! He was really angry now. Should he ring a psychiatrist friend and just ask, casually? “Say there Doc, can overwork cause acute doomsday anxiety?” No, carry on and ignore it. Resnick’s climbing buddy, Hugh Cassidy, had just been fired from his teaching job and was feeling depressed; so it was up to Adrian to formulate some plans and come up with a good victory. The mountain they were tackling had killed its share of climbers. It was a worthy opponent. So forget the blue devils and get this trip together.
The TV news was depressing as always. Prime rate soaring, prices skyrocketing. War threats, strikes. Two Los Angeles women in a street race that left six people dead. How about that? Women were getting nastier all the time; strident, demanding their ‘rights’ while wallowing in expensive cosmetics… Then more reports on the UFO craze that was sweeping the country at the moment. A state trooper came on and said, “It was oblong! Noiseless! Travelling so fast it could turn and disappear! Had blinking green lights. A big cigar—sixty feet across the band.” Then came a very frightened man, a truck driver, with some preposterous tale about being seized and examined by faceless, toeless monsters with claws. Mother of God. Were these network people trying to start a panic?
Exasperated, Resnick snapped off the set. He glanced out across San Francisco Bay, at the bridge, the gunmetal waves and zinc sky. Trees were blowing and there was a wet “Chronicle” flapping in the rockery. He’d left his house keys with the cleaning lady. Recently there had been a rash of burglaries here on Telegraph Hill. In a way, Resnick hated to leave; the house could get boxed up and carted off in a moving van while he was up in Canada.
He glanced at his watch. One hour to make the airport. Should he give his parents a quick call? Say he’d be away for a few days? No. Waste of time. They had other things to think about. Other problems, other interests. Mrs. Resnick had the old man and the old man had his public adulation and his six-figure income. For some reason Adrian had always felt like a fifth wheel around his own parents. Well, so be it. A postcard from some hotel in the Canadian Rockies would be all they’d need.
He left lights burning, drapes open. As an added touch he left two radios going and the television blabbing away. Potential thieves should think a house is full of people. He locked all the windows and doors and began to transfer his piled-up gear from front porch to car.

Chapter Six
“Christ on a clarinet,” Brenda Starr screamed.
Her whole body ached like crazy. She yanked the bandages off and threw them into the dispose-all. Then she rang for her steward and opened the portable bar.
The steward, an anthropoid robot, was an exact duplicate of Richard Nixon, a minor 20th century president. All stewards and orderlies on Vonderra were nixons. Captain Boolabung had thought it would give an authentic Earthie touch. At the moment there were 47 nixons in working condition. Benaroya’s plan was to get bombed; then have a nixon take the empty Brenda Starr to the bodyshop for renovation. In that way, she could determine how alcohol affected a human bod, and at the same time drown her sorrow over what she considered Chuck Goldfarb’s weakness and infidelity.
“Bring me two chairs, a small round table with checked cloth and a candle stuck in a bottle. Put everything on the balcony, then sit down and take a load off your feet, Richard.”
The robot tugged its forelock. “As you wish, Miss Starr.”
The anthropologist mixed herself a Margarita, rimming the glass with salt. She loved the taste of salt, adored to eat little onions, olives, cherries, and jellybird eggs from the row of bottles in the bar. What fun to combine tequila with Triple Sec, lime juice, shaved ice and a marshmallow! What pleasure to shake everything with vigor in the frosty, silver shaker!
“Bottoms up, Richard,” Brenda said. “I wanna tell you how stinking things are on Earth. Not that I don’t love Earthies; I’m crazy about ‘em. But oh, there’s such a lot of hatred in the world.”
B. mentally thumbed an index of all the drunken speeches she’d heard. She blended these with her own recent grief, trying for a flow of genuine maudlin sentiment, meanwhile urging Richard Nixon to drink the concoctions she mixed. (These would not hurt the robot, who would occasionally nip out and relieve himself in the quaintly sordid human way.) B. did two choruses of ‘The Rose of Tralee“ and had a Tequila Sunrise with pineapple syrup. She said,
“Shit, it ain’t worth it! I scrubbed ten thousand floors, and where did it get me?”
“The Mem Sahib’s hair is in her drink,” Richard Nixon pointed out.
“What do I care? That rotten lawyer was mean to me. ‘Men are all alike.’ ‘It never rains but it pours.’ ‘Be sure that your umbrella is upside down.’ ” She sighed with bliss, scratching all over. “It’s good to get out of that fucking tight bikini and just bounce around.” “Mem Sahib knows how to live.”
“Thank you! You’re a lovely machine, Nixon, and I’m terribly fond of you.”
Brenda Starr’s head and torso sprawled across the table. She explained that she’d mastered the outline of human behavior, and now only needed to polish the nuances. Already she could gossip, whine, flirt, and demand her rights like a real Earthie. She could sing, she could play the guitar:
“No one here can love or understand me, Oh what hard luck stories they all hand me…” And she could perform lots of senseless activity which looked impressive but was truly insane. And she had a firm grasp of the three Basics: defending self loudly; keeping the finger of blame pointed at others; and selling out to the highest bidder while in the very act of boasting of own loyalty.
“But remind me not to have sex with Earthies,” Brenda said. “At least until I comprehend all their senseless taboos. I’ve found that sex throws humans into a blind panic. They babble about it all the time, the way accident victims babble about the license number of the truck…
Oh, but I want to help humans as much as I can! The poor aberrated darlings… The adorable, warped little dears…“
“That’s an extremely kind attitude,” Richard Nixon smiled.
Brenda’s lips moved slowly. “Oh, but I love Earthies! ‘Dr. Pepper’! ‘Rice-A-Roni’! ‘Ecology’! ‘People’s Republics’! ‘Education’! ‘Hail to the Chief! ’Blood of the Lamb‘! —I don’t know how Mersoid can sneer at those darling humans all the time. Of course, after today I see his point just a little, teeny bit, but, certainly not enough to kill off the entire population.”
Nixon tugged his forelock and tittered. Brenda went on, “Savages have such delicate egos. Their wretched plight makes them resentful, homicidal, and conceited. But another half million years of evolution and they should be doing quite nicely. Meanwhile they have all those semi-fun things, like ‘sports’ and ’drinking‘ and ’voting‘ and ’going to each other’s funerals.‘”
“That should be enough for any bushman,” the nixon agreed.
She belched. “Where do I show up next? Back in California? Or on to Las Vegas?”
“As Your Grace wishes. Peoria is lovely this time of year.”
“No, I prefer Amsterdam.” Brenda slid to the floor and teetered on hands and knees. “Amsterdam has everything I drooled over on far-away Rysemus. Plenty of lying, backbiting, vandalism, lovely scenery—zappo!—and mugging, greed, suicide, extortion, hysteria, tribal music—zowie! And streetfighting; oh Christ I love it, and grass and hash and speed and junk and endless blond hair billowing out from under chromium crash helmets. What could be nicer?”
“You’re being signalled,” the robot said. “So answer it. Mix me another double.  Christ, my stitches have pulled loose, you wouldn’t believe Earthie medicine, bunch of money-hungry, dirty old men!”
“It’s Captain Boolabung,” said the nixon. “You’re to report to the bridge.”
“Christ on a MIG! Tell him I’m drunk. No, wait, I’m in enough trouble already. Take this rotten body to the shop. Tell him I’ll be right there. Oh, and make a note to send the Brenda Starr to L.A. when the Fox trial comes up; otherwise she’s jumping bail.”
While she spoke, B. slipped out of the Brenda and into the Peel. Richard Nixon loaded the Brenda onto a trolley. It was good to know that the bodyshop could renovate any carcass from anywhere in the universe. An injured organ could be repaired instantly without surgery, pain, or moralistic lectures. A broken bone could be softened, reshaped and hardened again in thirty seconds. Severed limbs were instantly regenerated. Who would settle for anything else?, thought Mrs. Peel. Maybe a retarted bullfrog, or a moribund slave, but otherwise, forget it, honey.
Emma Peel stepped into a lift and was phased to the bridge. Passing other sectors, she saw crew members dying in pointless wars, shrieking with agony as they tortured each other in prison camps, living in conventional family units, and suffering blindly in countless other ways as they tried to grasp the hardcore reality of human existence. At the bridge, she walked out into a broiling desert.
Leaping lizards! Another stress microcosm. Boolabung was a glutton for S and M. Last week it had been a thousand-mile forest of towering, white fungus under a green Labomican sky. This wasteland must be the Patton syndrome, or worse.
There wasn’t a particle of shade, only rippling dunes windswept to the horizon. The sand roasted her boots. Far off against the sky a caravan of camels and men trudged into the wind, accompanied by a faint tinkling of bells. She yelled, then put two fingers into her mouth and whistled, but a gale tore at the men’s robes and their bur-noosed heads were turned away.
“A pox on both your houses!” Mrs. P. screamed. The caravan dwindled and disappeared. The dunes were empty. All right: she’d give Boolabung exactly ten minutes and then she would depart for Amsterdam and the good life.
She hunkered down to wait. The sand scorched her buttocks. Yep, this had to be Patton’s darling WW2 landscape. Boolabung was a microcosm buff, putting up great, fat, sprawling realities in which you could lose yourself for years; he was a wonderful Captain for a great ship like Vonderra, but, he sure did sneer at the poor bushies.
Maybe that went with using a male bod. Being male seemed to turn folks mean; or, maybe she was just softheaded, as Mersoid often hinted.
Mrs. Peel yawned. Where was the bloody Captain, anyway? Golly but it was nice to be on Vonderra again! Yet even in the heat she felt a chill, thinking about the sadness of the human condition; those poor lost Earthies cannibalizing each other viciously while pretending to be so doggone “concerned”! Oh, dear. It would take lots more evolution until they saw that “reality” is a mockup, as their half-aware little Boddhisatvas kept hinting. Heck, reality is just frozen imagination. Grasp that and you master the universe. She wiped her nose. Earthies disliked this kind of talk, though, because it implied taking responsibility for your future, and it’s more exciting to blame bad genes or capitalist pigs or pinko fags or something.
At last! Here was the valiant Captain, loping toward her on foot.
George S. Patton was naked except for an angry scowl. He wore only curly-toed boots and filigreed bracelets around his biceps. A slave followed, leading two wild, snorting Arabian stallions. The slave was a fawning, sunblackened nixon running barefoot with hair greased back, gonads bouncing loosely.
“Choose,” Patton boomed over the desert wind.
Benaroya could never probe Boolabung unless he allowed it; his shield was thick as her own; above all, he couldn’t be rushed. Stubborn. A dedicated ship’s officer. She swung into the saddle of an untrained, plunging Arabian. Was this an object lesson? Was Boolabung setting her up? Anyway it gave Mrs. P. a chance to show off a little horsemanship and master this rearing steed (Yaa-hoo!) over the dunes with mane and tail streaming.
The caravan toiled ahead of them. It was pleasure to sneak up from behind, overtake, and gallop past the men and beasts, busting their eardrums with Sioux screams— yaa-ha! Might as well reap the full glory of operating a biped bod, for what it was worth.
Their hooves pounded desert sand for two hours. Eventually they reached a fertile oasis where bloomed the palms, orchids, jeeps and tents she’d seen when she had phoned Boolabung earlier. The Nubians who ran out to take their horses were crew members who’d fought over these Michelangelesque, bulgy, sweaty, typical Earthie roles.
Inside the striped tent Mrs. Peel sampled her first draught of cool, rich, barbarian splendor. A slave washed her feet, another kissed her ring, a third brought wine in a jeweled flagon. She and Patton sprawled on silk pillows and allowed themselves to be waited upon.
“All this swag is genuine, Mrs. Peel,” rumbled the Commander of the Third Army. “The green stones are emeralds, the red ones are called rubies and these ones that glitter are diamonds. Can you imagine, that for each one of these stupid stones at least a hundred Earthies has died a brutal death? And this metal, gold; they sell their grandmothers for this.”
“I’ve been assimilating gobs of such data. Who could have imagined the fantastic illogic of the Earthie ‘mind’, to use the term loosely?” Mrs. Peel gorged on olives. “I’m so thrilled to be studying this world you can’t believe it.”
Patton looked glum. Yep; something baaaad must be on the way. The slaves brought dinner which was steaming rice and neo-mutton (more succulent than lambchops and of course no animal had to die to provide it). As they dipped their fingers in, General Patton explained that the gems were from a galleon out of Spain, sunk in the year 1762. Vonderra’s scanners had spotted the gold that afternoon and the crew had beamed up barrels of coins and jewels, ancient weapons, fabulous Earth treasures. There were tons of the stuff, said Patton, sunk, buried, lost and hidden all over the planet but the Earthies had a knack for looking in the wrong place.
After the feast came rich entertainment: torch jugglers, belly dancers, magicians, then the ritual disembowelling of a pair of screaming virgins, followed by dozens of courtesans of both sexes offering themselves insistently. Naked bods coupled everywhere. It was purest realism; B. had seen it again and again in Earth films. Boolabung kept dawdling with the whores and filling Mrs. Peel’s glass until she said,
“Thanks for the wonderful orgy, honey, I gotta run.”
“Don’t move!”
At Patton’s signal a slave girl knelt before them with two pairs of polished short swords and bucklers. “Your choice, Mrs. Peel.”
“Phooey on you! Chase yourself around the block.”
“I warn you, fight or die.”
“Whaddaya tryin‘ to prove, anyway?”
“That life on Earth is a serious business!”
Mrs. Peel barely had time to grab a buckler as Boolabung leaned forward and whacked it a ringing blow with his sword.
“You crazy coke sacker!” she yelped in the U.S. slang she’d heard the matron mumble at prison earlier that afternoon. Instantly she was on her feet and slashing, all senses brought together by the attack. The Captain parried easily and jumped back laughing. She lunged in, furious. Again he was away in time.
“Would you sell out, at the right price?” he taunted.
“What a rotten thing to say!”
Mrs. Peel caught the next stunning blow of his sword. Why, the brute wanted blood! She slammed in, he parried and they held hilt-to-hilt, glaring into each other’s eyes. Then Boolabung shoved with a dervish howl, and rebounded from the clinch.
Emma Peel kicked a stool at his legs and leaped after it, clanging her steel on his. Goody, first score! Red gore gushing from Boolabung’s arm was a welcome sight. Several white tendons hung loose. Excellent. That would cool his battle-lust. B. had fought the Captain many times, all part of a cadet’s brutality training; when visiting outback worlds like Earth, it is essential to be able to kill or maim without hesitation.;
The Captain attacked, driving her backward over cushions and tables. Boolabung in his natural body was about as violent as a Walt Disney porpoise. He was, however, adaptable, like every proud scion of this race of godlings. Right now he was doing an expert job of mimicking the fatheaded anger so typical in human combat.
Emma Peel admired Boolabung hugely. Her Captain was a real man, macho as all get-out, never whimpering or complaining. She yelled,
“Can’t we talk this out?”
“Shut up and fight!”
“But you’re losing, beefwit!”
“Vapid kickshaw!” he screamed.
“Odorous rootcellar!”
“Mephitic lump!”
Steel rang on steel. B. was driving him into the line of dancing girls who shrank against the curtains with screams of terror, protecting their bouncing breasts and downy pubic hair with delicate opposable-thumb hands. The tent seemed crammed with sultry, heavy-lidded faces, incense, sinuous dancing boys…
Her attention had wandered for one split second. With his good arm the Captain jerked the rug out from under Mrs. Peel who crashed down painfully on her back. Instantly he was on top of her, sword poised at her throat. He was about to drive it in! No, he was merely wiping sweat off his face with a brawny forearm.
“You see? Constantly on guard,” he panted. “No place for amateurish—”
Emma Peel rolled out from under, twisted, shot forward and butted Boolabung’s swinging beanbag with her hard head.
The Captain doubled up, screaming and retching.
Mrs. Peel dropped her sword with an affected yawn. “And to drive it home, klutz, I refuse to hack your head off; neither will I dance with it or kiss its bloodstained lips.”
Boolabung groped for a jar of wine, gulped half and sloshed the rest over his chest and swollen scrotum. He was writhing with pain. “Foul noodle! Occluded sham! If you get marooned on Earth it won’t be for lack of good coaching.”
“Don’t say things you’ll regret.” Mrs. Peel blew hair out of her eyes and glanced at her watch. There was a bloody gash along her throat. Enough of Patton’s lessons—what time was it in Amsterdam? The Captain gasped,
“No joke. If you’re frozen into a human body you’ll never see home again.”
She threw back her head and roared. “Garbage! You’re such a bad loser, George.”
The Captain called for boiling water and a slave to dress his arm wound. He pointed grimly at the planet which rolled, shrouded in poisoned clouds, 200 miles below their feet.
“Scaulzo is waiting there, my friend, with a bullet just for you.”
“You gotta be kidding.”
Boolabung shook his head. He noted that all the cocky assurance had drained from Mrs. Peel’s face.
“You just wanna scare me.”
“No. The Sajorians are on Earth, kidnapping every human they can grab and throw in the tank.”
“Scaulzo, here! It’s not possible.”
She fought a stab of nausea. What was it? Hypnotic implant, or foul dream… A disgust, a thrall… Evil spell that had been cast eons ago…
Ouch! She jerked awake. For a moment she’d been somewhere else, out of control. Whew! That’s what Scaulzo called the Agony Organ. You couldn’t explain it.
She felt Boolabung’s eyes measuring her nerve; this was no time to show weakness—Scaulzo! She’d gone cold with sweat. The “Prince of Darkness” had sworn to kill Benaroya; to obliterate her, in the only way a Rysemian could be destroyed: with the H-2 unit. The freezegun. The ultimate weapon developed on Sajor.
“Is he planning to hit the Grid?”
“We have no information. Here, mop blood.” Boolabung shoved over the sponge and basin. “The Sajorian spy net is unbeatable; we can’t compete. Our problem is very basic. The natural Rysemian, considered ugly by some, radiates peace, abundance, joy, all things Earthies shun, except verbally. It’s very complicated but humans out of jealousy always kill off the true creators and artists. Then they either start a religion on the bones, or they express grave concern and shift the blame. In some ways they’re very Sajorian.”
“Hogmaw.”
“As a good anthropologist, you’re deep into role-playing. But Rysemians know that the thing of greatest value is vast emptiness, which is very untrendy. Don’t forget, bushies love objects, sensation, power—in short, bondage.”
“I’ve had it with anti-human snow jobs.” Mrs. Peel kicked away a slave bringing bandages.. “Also with medical ‘care’! Avaunt! My Blue Cross has expired! And as for you, my dear Captain: what you are is a chauvinist pig.
Humans are good, honest, decent people. They will never follow Scaulzo.“
“Cadet, for your sake I hope you’re right.”
B. sponged her wound, remembering her first Clash with Scaulzo. It had seemed a small thing; she was a student, Scaulzo was dictator of Sajor, known for centuries as the spawning-ground of master criminals.
For her doctorate B. had decided to probe the illegal traffic in exotic animals. Every life form which could be trapped and sold was becoming an endangered species. The market in slave labor, pets, toys, experimental animals was booming. Hot on her subject, B. sneaked into one of Scaulzo’s raider ships and was horrified.
There was a cellblock of dead Tarns. These people resemble cubes of warty, green-veined jello. Although unevolved primitives they are a kindly, humorous, patient folk, several times more intelligent than humans. Their methane atmosphere had been poisoned by a helium leak from the wolf-unicorns in the next cell.
She found a Labomican Mammoth from the light gravity planet imprisoned in a heavy-G cubicle. This poor darling, who walked on white-fungus treetops at home, was flat on the floor and gasping, unable to lift its gargantuan trunk. There was a cage of Ming Elves; twinkly pink tubules starving to death and forced to cannibalize each other. Scaulzo would planet-hop for years, collecting new specimens, torturing the intelligent ones for the fun of it; he was rather like an Earthie in that respect, selling off the survivors and dumping carloads of corpses on airless planetoids many lightyears from their homes. As a humorous touch he’d leave engraved tombstones to be found thousands of years in the future, among all those mutilated, frozen bodies.
Benaroya’s attack had seemed campusy and insignificant, yet it finished Scaulzo as a legitimate importer. From then on he only worked the black markets. Later, B. knew it was Scaulzo who occasionally flashed her the pulsation,
SOMETHING TERRIBLE IS GOING TO HAPPEN
At the time she’d shrugged it off. After all, Rysemians are immortal! But suddenly, there was the H-2 unit. And there was this strange nameless fear, almost like… she had received a hypnotic implant, along with a “forgetter,” so that it was buried, hidden away in the forgotten cellars of her memory…
Nonsense! She shook off the feeling. Giving in to it would be truly dumb.
Boolabung was saying, “Some of our people have been approached with extremely attractive offers to turn over information. Lydig, Vaux, even Frimble himself, they’ve all reported high-class bribery: mastery of planets, ownership of solar systems, that sort of thing.”
“That’s got to be Sajorian.”
Boolabung selected an apple and began peeling it with his kris. “The Council knew you’d have ideas, since you met Scaulzo personally.”
“Personally! That’s a hot one. I’ve never met him face to face—which is obvious from the fact that I’m still around.”
Emma looked bleak. Boolabung whacked off a chunk of apple, speared it one-handed and offered it to her. She said,
“In plain language, you need a decoy.”
“He must know you’re doing field work on the planet,” the Captain said, chewing. “He’s going to try to waste you—the sooner the better.”
“Thanks for your darling concern!”
“So take a rain check. Stay aboard ship. Let the pros handle Scaulzo.”
B. knew this was an alternative; she could deal herself out—and face Patton’s scorn, Abe Lincoln’s contempt. She frowned and stood up. “You’re spoiling my nice visit to Earth.”
“Not spoiling, Mrs. Peel; enhancing. We’ve arranged for you to meet Field Commander Omark tomorrow evening at Punta Tragara on an island called Capri. Can we count on your support?”
“I already gave at the office.”
Nevertheless, Mrs. Peel let all her breath out. Tomorrow night—Omark! Be still my heart! She was falling into the quagmire of “love”: thrill, agony, fear, ecstasy, Holy Moses but romance was inscrutable.
Also, Scaulzo was bound to track her down sooner or later. With Omark’s help it might be a lot easier to off the Sajorian megalomaniac before he waylaid her in some dark alley.
She was going to see Omark again—tomorrow night! Omark, her tough-grading, sardonic, debonair professor from Anthro 1-A!
Whew.

Chapter Seven
Repairs to the Peel body took five minutes. In short order, the anthropologist was walking along a country road south of Rome.
Late night. Frogs croaking. Under a brilliant, full moon Mrs. Peel could see for miles across silver-powdered cornfields bordered by rows of aloes, then beyond to a ridge capped with tall cypress, a winding highway, and a plain where farmhouses dozed in the silent moonlight.
Genuine Earth scenery! Complete with creamy, authentic sound effects. A stone clunking along the concrete when she kicked it. The splash of water in a culvert, and cornstalks creaking when the wind blew. Mrs. Peel remembered fairytales she had read and her heart sang. Zowie! The moon was a turn-on, with clouds sailing across its silver face. Watery Rysemus has no moon, and a thin sunlight is constantly diffused through mile-deep waves. But golly, she didn’t want to start feeling homesick at a time like this!
She began striding down the highway to Naples. With luck she could bum a ride. Her shadow was twenty feet long on the asphalt. A skinny, black witch that pranced, kicked, and thumbed its nose. The wind up her pants was nippy luxury. A ripe stench of rotting manure steamed off the fields. Over the hills, a cock woke up and crowed once. Yep, Earth was a paradise; it was only the bleating, squealing and shoving of humans that made it seem like hell’s doorway.
Ahead she saw an olive grove and some crumbled ruins left here by the ancient people. What did Patton mean, “If you get marooned—”? That kind of talk was too frightful to be considered. To be stuck here on Earth in a mortal body? Never to see her home again? Unthinkable. No: she wouldn’t let the news about Scaulzo interfere with business or pleasure.
A pair of headlights swung over a hill and came speeding up the road.
Mrs. Peel stuck out a thumb. The driver, who was doing 90, slammed on his brakes and skidded to a stop in wet weeds. Mrs. Peel ran to catch up. Here was her chance! She’d use her new knowledge and sophistication, make friends, and avoid Brenda Starr’s pitiful mistakes.
The man was alone. His eyes traveled down her white jumpsuit with growing pleasure.
“Going to Naples, Senorina?”
“To Capri, thank you dearie.” When they were in motion she said, “Well, as they tell you in Belfast, ‘A stitch in time saves nine,’” and chuckled softly. Yes, that seemed appropriately pointless. She knew that you should make lots of small talk, any dopey remark would do so long as it challenged no local superstition and sounded vaguely flattering.
The man smiled. “Aren’t you afraid, out all alone at night?”
Her probe touched a small flicker of distress. The man himself was afraid. Probably of her. She knew that hitchhikers often robbed and murdered their hosts and vice versa so his fear was quite natural; after all, this was Earth.
She giggled, letting her mouth hang open in the bumpkin way that seemed to set everyone at ease. “It’s kind of spooky. It’s sure nice to have a ride and some company.”
Now he seemed to relax. The car was an Alfa, snug and pleasant. The man’s speech told her he was upper middle-class Roman or Milanese. Her own language bank had taken over in cultured Italian of the “Dolce Vita” school.
“It’s a nice night to walk but not all the way to Naples.”
“Have a fight with the boyfriend?”
“My car broke down and I left it at a garage up the road. They’ll probably rook me. But I’ve got to be in Capri in the morning and the buses don’t run this late.”
You always had to explain, condemn, praise, and apologize, in equal proportions. Contact among humans was a stereotyped ritual. And, when old rituals were destroyed, the new rituals became even more rigid; heck, only culture shock had made her forget that! You can fix it in mind by recalling their dinners of meat, vegetables, salad, and beverage, Omark had informed the class. Just remember never to be spontaneous. Act like a robot and you’ll do fine.
The man nodded and said,
“Let me introduce myself. I am Vittorio Lozetti at your service,” with a mannerly bow. He was middleaged, wearing an expensive suit with flashy, diamond cufflinks. On the jumpseat was a folded overcoat, two tennis rackets and a leather travel bag from Mark Cross. The bulge under his suitcoat could be nothing but a gun.
This was smashing. Lozetti had to be a Sicilian mobster. He was a beautiful man with slick, black hair, bulbous, sweat-beaded nose, drooping mustache, triple chin and a black bow tie. He was a great, fat housepet with a cheesy complexion. Like most mature Earthies, he looked very unhealthy and nervous. How the poor things suffered! She’d like to put every one of them in a good kennel, give them the proper amount of food and love, and liberate them from the gangrene of laws, lies, taxes and competition which was driving them all, pointlessly, each and every one, to an early grave.
She loved to watch his colorless tongue wipe at his fat lips, which it did incessantly. His smile was an oily leer. “Haven’t I seen you on the tube, Emma?”
Mrs. Peel giggled. “Do I look like wotsername? I mean do I? Really?”
“Now that I take a good look, you’re much prettier.”
Lozetti reached for a robe and arranged it across her legs, patting them as he did so. Mrs. Peel watched with curiosity. Now was the time to become passive as a hunk of meat smothered in strawberries. That was the accepted role for Earthie women. Why upset the poor little fellow and spoil his fun? Unzipping trousers, or saying what she really meant, or doing any non-passive thing, was definitely out and she’d learned that the hard way.
Mrs. Peel sighed and snuggled into the expensive robe. Since she didn’t object, the driver let his hand linger on her knee and said,
“What a stroke of luck. It gets boring, doing this run alone.”
“Do you do it often?”
“Every month. I’m in steel. Two plants in Naples and one in Milan. How about you?”
“I’m an anthropologist. On vacation.”
“Study Indians and that kind of thing?”
She tittered. “You might say I try to relate in a meaningful, concerned way to autochthonous bipeds in general.”
“A little girl like you with a big job like that,” he marveled. Benaroya pondered this slippery remark and decided it was the ordinary Earthie belittler camouflaged as a compliment. She liked the way Lozetti’s fat fists rested on the wheel. On his little finger was a sapphire which winked cheerfully in the dashlights.
“You’re English, no? How come you speak Italian so nicely?”
“It pays to be educated in Europe.” She giggled. “A penny saved is a penny earned.”
“Is that so,” he said absently, watching the road. There was definitely something not quite right about this driver. Her probe turned up a blank; but that in itself was odd because he seemed to be hiding something. She’d swear that a kind of sad fear kept oozing from under his “businessman” cover. Was this paranoia? She forgot her training enough to stare openly at Lozetti until he said,
“It’s a cold night. Why don’t you move closer and keep me warm?”
“Honk if you love Jesus,” she simpered.
“Ha ha! You’re quite a girl.”
He gave her a moist glance and looked back at the road. Perhaps she’d been wrong. This Lozetti was a common man, full of the ordinary anxiety about pain and death that went with being human. And yet… From what she could read, his quest for comfort, approval, and money, his lust to “get ahead of other people, didn’t seem quite frantic enough… An odd idea struck her. Maybe this man was no more human than she was.
Lozetti kept the accelerator floored. The car was under his control every second. No little human lapses for daydreaming or putting the attention elsewhere. But then, perhaps a lot of Italian businessmen were ‘top rally-class’ drivers. They shot past an orange grove, past a gas station under the sign of an eight-legged dog, past a marker that told the world Terracina was 30 Km away. Lozetti’s hand reached out and grasped her knee, then retreated. What could she have been thinking of? Of course this troglodyte was a human, what else?
“Come on. I won’t bite you.”
“Your bark is worse than your bite,” she tittered. The more non sequiturs you used, the more normal and acceptable you appeared to people. And this primitive was acting like a human, right out of the books; she must be way off base to think him unusual. Besides, he meant no harm. And yet—! There it was again. She smashed against a firm shield, which could only mean he was aware of her probe and desperately wanted to hide the fact. She’d have to keep pushing.
“Does your music thing work, Mr. Lozetti?”
“Call me Vittorio,” he smiled, and switched on the tape deck. A five string explosion flooded the car. “Man what a stone groove,” quoted Mrs. Peel, snapping her fingers to the music. After all, who cared? Lozetti could be hiding any petty crime: eating paste, or tapping the company cashbox, or skillfully ruining the life of his best friend; things Earthies did constantly with no fuss at all. Maybe he’d just come from murdering his wife. It was certainly none of her business. Yet holy catfish, how baffling; his shield kept bouncing her away like a wet otter! Golly!
She studied the man’s profile. At least she was pretty sure he didn’t plan on harming her.
The ride itself was a flying carpet through the land of Oz. They raced the moon across dazzling countryside, over fields of shiny rock. The pricklypear seemed to be silver-plated by that high-riding, pale orb which skimmed the world always to their left. Now into a village of stucco buildings, past a church with a tall spire, and an ochre textile factory, a row of houses in suspended animation, a garage, a line of silver pomegranates and, Vroom! out into the country again.
It was thrilling. Mrs. Peel sat on her hands to keep from clapping and bouncing. Umbrella pines, fig trees, the smell of azalea! But she must slow down to a sluggish crawl and act like the average dim-bulb human.
“Have you been in the steel business a long time, Vittorio?”
“Since World War Two,” he said with overweening pride and launched into a speech about some new mill near Genoa, Mussolini’s Institute for Industrial Reconstruction, four million tons of crude steel last year, the percentage of sales to the Fiat Corporation, thirty percent of this and eighty percent of that, modestly trying to help her smell the fresh print on stacks of crackly Earthie money.
“I’m a bachelor. Have an apartment in Rome with a 360° view. You’re an intelligent woman; you know how to listen. How about it? Or we could go to my country place in the Sila on a lake surrounded by fir trees. It’s like the end of the world. Unchanged since the Caesars.” He squeezed her hand. “Do you know why I’m telling you this?”
“Yes,” lisped Mrs. Peel, who knew how irresistible she was.
“I can’t let you go, now that we’ve met. Listen, I’ll take you on to Capri and show you the island. Anywhere you want to go. Anything at all. How about it? No strings.”
Mrs. Peel had a chunk of mutton stuck in her tooth. She sucked it noisily. “I’m meeting an old buddy in Capri, Vittorio. Otherwise I’d go in a minute.”
“Your friend’s a lucky dog. What’s he got that I haven’t got? Probably young and handsome, is that so? Hey? Hey?”
He put an arm around her shoulders and yanked the top half of her body close. The bottom half was belted into the bucket seat. A wonderfully uncomfortable position! Traffic was getting heavier. An oxcart lumbered by, and some farm trucks and a stream of cars. Mrs. Peel gave Lozetti a long, smoldering look, with the mouth half open in the approved position, and the lips moistened, the eyelids drooping. She let him see the tip of her quivering tongue. He was delightfully repulsive looking. The heat from his fat body was enormously pleasant.
Still, as Boolabung had warned, she’d have to keep alert. She already had a counter-shield around her thoughts so Lozetti could read nothing in case he was telepathic. Her self image was of a collegey type, ignorant, greedy, crammed with rote learning, mildly suicidal, thumbing through Italy to see what would turn up in the way of excitement. She sniveled with sin and guilt, was moderately kind, and had gobs of sentiment. She copied a few lusts from the mind of the late Mrs. Fox: a desire for heaps of dead sable, diamonds, gold, etc., plus the normal hidden resentment and hostility, plus a good supply of up-to-the-minute dirty jokes (which made no sense to the Rysemian, being based on the primitive emotions of embarrassment and scarcity).
Zowie! When she dredged up these images, she felt Lozetti withdraw in disgust. Obviously he had a probe on her. Christ on a tenspeed! Whoever this man was, he was no little old millionaire steelmaker.
They drove in silence. Her upper body was yanked against his. The seatbelt cut off circulation to her legs. He held the wheel loosely and kept an arm around her shoulders, his fingers massaging her biceps and creeping toward her right mammary gland. The road ahead was straight and empty. Lozetti’s fingers crushed her face toward his. Now his lips were bruising her mouth, their two sets of teeth clicked together, then his teeth banged into her lips. Lozetti’s eyes were shut tight. He kept crushing her backwards, as endorsed by the film GASLIGHT. Leaping lizards! All this must be the “foreplay” which led to the renowned Missionary Position.
He broke away, pouting. “You don’t respond. You don’t care for me. You think I’m fat and ugly. But I could make you learn to love me.”
“You could? How?” Mrs. Peel doted on new things to be learned.
“Don’t laugh at me! Don’t ever do that.” The bluegrass has turned to Rigoletto. Lozetti lowered the volume and drove in stony silence, his hand on her knee, inching grimly to her thigh. He seemed angry and hurt, but stubbornly determined. Earthie lovemaking! How gloriously ludicrous it was.
Suddenly, dead ahead, two police cars were blocking the highway. Lozetti gave a strangled yell and jerked his hand away. The road was full of sawhorses and lanterns. Lozetti slammed on the brakes and attempted a U turn, but two motorcycles roared in behind the Alfa with lights flashing.
“What are you doing!” Mrs. Peel yelped.
They were blocked off. She’d never seen anyone crack as rapidly as her driver did right now. He seemed to shrink behind the wheel, like a lump of wax under heat. Even his voice grew smaller.
“Hold your shield,” he croaked.
“What? What are you saying?”
“Don’t try to help me. Continue your stupid act.”
“What stupid act?” she bristled.
“I’m sorry. I thought you were someone else.”
His face had gone cheesy white under the five o’clock shadow. A centurion walked toward the car. Mrs. Peel ran her tongue along her teeth and stared at the officer. He was a sergeant in a khaki overcoat with an emaciated face, flinty eyes, and a half-healed scar from temple to chin on the right cheek. He leaned into the window and glanced around.
“Get out. Both of you. Hands in plain sight.”
Lozetti clamped his knees, scraped his feet and said in a reasonable voice, “I can be valuable to you, but if you harm me there will be trouble.”
The sergeant laughed, an amused staccato grunt or two. Mrs. Peel got out of the Alfa and stood blinking, bewildered. A bead of sweat trickled down her ribs. She fluffed her hair and coughed. “What’s this all about?” Ignoring her, the sergeant stuck one finger under Lozetti’s bow tie and slowly dragged the plump man out of the car.
Mrs. Peel gave a little shriek. “What’s he done? Has he broken a law?”
The nearest patrol car was marked POLIZIA STRADALE. Two centurions in khaki leaned against the hood and smirked. The others sat alertly in their cars and seemed to ogle the helpless captive. Lozetti was gasping, scrambling foolishly in the gravel. Mrs. Peel felt a pressure of heavy mindshields; she knew that not one of these men was human.
“What’s he done, officer?” Her voice came out in a sharp, hysterical squeak. “I want to see the British Consulate! Here’s my passport. I was hitchhiking. He picked me up.”
None of them paid any attention to her. They all stared at Lozetti with the greedy concentration of hungry snakes. The sergeant said,
“Don’t you watch the news, Senorina? He killed three women on this highway last week.”
“Oh no,” she screamed. “Oh, God. Mother of Jesus. I might have been next,” squealing, wringing her hands and crossing herself. Obviously the pigs regarded her as beneath contempt. They seemed starved for Lozetti, eye-balling him with salacious pleasure. One of them had swarthy skin with albino hair. The sergeant called this one Flench and asked him,
“What if the prisoner tries to escape?”
Lozetti stood petrified. His eyes were murky with terror.
Flench said, “Hey, you, the sergeant wants you to make a run for it.”
“No, please, I’ll give you anything,” Lozetti whimpered.
“Move,” the sergeant screamed.

Chapter Eight
Lozetti took a clumsy step backwards. Then another. The sergeant began easing one of his .45 automatics from its holster. Mrs. Peel put her fingers to her lips and moaned. Almost casually, the sergeant supported the weapon on his left wrist and followed Lozetti’s awkward shamblings with the muzzle.
Mrs. Peel gauged the distance between these two and herself. Three sides of a triangle. What would happen? Should she interfere? Apprehension made her heart pound; the role of scared chicken wasn’t all that difficult at the moment. She kept fingers to lips as though stifling a whimper.
The sergeant took careful aim. His .45 barked and recoiled like an ordinary gun. Lozetti crumpled with a howl, clawing at his head. The sergeant shouted,
“Stand up, Quats toad! You’re not hurt. It’s only a tranquilizer.”
The other centurions began to nudge each other and laugh, sucking visually at Lozetti, enjoying his distress, with lascivious delight. The “steelmaker from Milan” pulled himself erect. His eyes were glassy with shock but there was no blood and no apparent injury.
The sergeant gave him a shove. “Move! You can relax in the back seat with Flench.” As Lozetti got into the patrol car the sergeant, grinning, told Mrs. Peel, “As you can see we had to tranquilize him. We don’t want any more violence. All right; clear out and get yourself another ride.”
He swung into the driver’s seat, put the car in gear and shot off. Mrs. Peel watched Lozetti’s head bobbing stiffly in the rear window. The other patrol units pulled out single file and they all dwindled in the direction of Rome.
She ran across the roadbed and slid down the embankment. Kneeling in a ditch, she vomited up all the spicy food Boolabung had served at his banquet.
Ugh! Horrible! Mrs. Peel staggered up the bank, sat down and closed her eyes. She knew that the lean, cruel sergeant was Scaulzo. At last she’d seen the H-2 unit in action. What would they do with poor Lozetti? It was too ghastly to think about. She just wanted to ditch this vulnerable body, get off the planet and never come back. She wanted to be home!
Then she thought of what Boolabung would say about such a reaction. “A whiff of danger and out pops the yellow streak.” She could hear General Patton’s derision and see his mocking eyes. Now, shuddering, wiping her nose, B. made a decision she would regret much later. Come what may, she’d stay on Earth! Until she could free Lozetti. And destroy Scaulzo.
She stood up and began to walk. Lozetti’s car was parked on the highway but she wanted no part of it. What a stroke of luck that the Sajorians hadn’t recognized her. If Scaulzo had captured her, his enemy, who’d done him so much harm—she shuddered, unable to continue this line of thought.
So Lozetti was a Quatzler! That meant he was a spy from a near Rysemian neighbor, and that his basic body was small, amphibious, a kind of toady-frog. Would they kill him? It was hardly necessary. He was already frozen, completely in Scaulzo’s power. The mere thought of being locked into a human body was enough to unhinge your mind. Lozetti must have been tailing her for some time. Perhaps he’d been operating in L.A. too, but she hadn’t recognized him.
B. wiped her face with oak leaves and trudged along. The sun was rising; she passed fields of artichokes, clumps of azalea, then saw a mass of terracotta roofs in the distance; that would be Naples. Ahead was a gas station, opening its doors for morning. B. kept sticking up her thumb but the cars shot on by.
Jeepers, what an alien scene it all was. Birds chirped hysterically from every tree. “Peep, peep, peep” like a buncha maniacs. They did this every dawn for twenty minutes; it was compulsive, as was all behavior on this rigidly mechanized planet. There was absolutely no responsible individuality on Earth. For example, no bird ever flew upside down just for the sweet hell of it. And humans kept insisting that birds were free. “Free as a bird,” they kept babbling. But then, birds undoubtedly were free, compared to humans. And speaking of those fascinating surface-creepers—
As she passed under the Benzina sign, three people glided up in a shiny black El Dorado: man, woman, and girl of about fourteen. Each gave B. a non-look as they climbed out of their expensive contraption. They were Upper Class; they had been trained out of the popular, hostile smirk that was employed by less affluent troglodytes. B. realized that the thrill of discovery had weakened; knowing she could be frozen as one of these hideous, repulsive identities kind of took the edge off a girl’s thirst for knowledge. Well, she’d contact Mersoid and ask for one of those little cyanide capsules to bite down on in case she was ever frozen. It was the only way to face it. And meanwhile she’d put such negative thoughts out of her mind. With a little luck she’d squeak through this whole mess like a greased eel.
Wow; she was absolutely dying of thirst. Vomiting did that to a body. She spotted an opened bottle of 7-Up on the freezer, and gulped it, standing by the roadside with thumb up.
The young girl shot out of the restroom.
“Hey! That was mine, you weirdo!”
B. gave a smile of friendship and gulped the tongue-tingling liquid. She felt all crosseyed from carbon monoxide fumes. Busloads of gloomy workers kept droning past, going to their dreadful little jobs. The girl howled,
“Ma, she stole my 7-Up!”
The mama came puffing over. Oh, how interesting; this darling bushperson was a clamped firehose of angry despair. At the edge of the station, a tiny bald man was placing cerise, lime, and azure helium balloons into an overhead net; he paused to watch. The mama shouted,
“Hey, whaddaya up to, you!”
B. probed busily—why was this sweet little person so resentful? Ah yes: it was because life had become far too complicated. Her feet ached. Her husband Guido was a gelded tomcat. Her in-laws were noisy, jealous slobs; the stupid, young priests fell asleep when she confessed; she planned to kill her daughter for leaving the car radio on and draining the battery. Furthermore, unkempt, women hitchhikers were whores who deserved all they got.
Zowie! This was going to be ginger peachy. The mama shouted,
“Snitching other people’s drinks! You can buy her another one, you!”
“Fuck off,” B. said crossly, and drained the bottle.
The mama did little steps as if choking on a fishbone. Her voice seemed paralyzed.
B. stuck up a thumb but the busses whizzed right on by. The tiny, bald man popped several balloons in excitement. On his arms were many beautiful tattoos; these included a naked lady, a mushroom-shaped cloud, and a rose bleeding drops of crimson. He had no teeth. He screamed at B.,
“You should have your mouth washed out with soap!”
Meanwhile the mama milked air with her fingers. Her voice swelled until it cracked.
“Guido! Get in that phone booth! Call the police this minute!”
“Now, now, mama,” soothed Guido. Wow, this language bit was a real puzzler. Half the Earthies were enraged when you used certain words. The other half were enraged when you didn’t use those very same words. How could a person ever hope to tell the difference? And aside from that, how could mere words cause such hoopla? Jeeps. What delicate egos savages had.
Guido looked the anthropologist over, noting her messy appearance and monoxide-glazed expression. “Maybe the lady’s had an accident. Or she’s lost her way. Can we give you a ride, Miss?” His little eyes gleamed with interest at B’s rumpled condition.
“Over my dead body,” the mama bawled. “Make the thief pay up! She owes for the drink! No limey slut rides in my car!”
“I’ll knock you on your fat ass,” B. screamed happily. Wow, this was more like it; this person was at least rich enough to be honest, unlike most Earthies. “I’ll flatten your whorish nose,” she added over a shoulder, thumbing passing cars. “Say one more word and I’ll yank your mouth out of its socket, you ignorant Etruscan bumpkin!”
Mama shrieked. She trembled from head to foot in unslaked hatred. Finally she hopped into the Cadillac, locked each door and sealed the upspringing windows, fwip, fwip, fwip!, while enduring paroxysms of popped eyes and wracking asthma.
As Guido stood bunching his jaw muscles, undecided as to what type attack he should launch, a green BP truck swerved off the highway and opened its door for Mrs. Peel. She jumped on with a wave of the middle finger to the outraged assemblage.
The truck roared off. Jeepers, but that was fun! She certainly enjoyed an educational little Clash.
“Have a fight?” the driver yelled over the engine. “Just saying ciao to the folks.” “Way to go, babe,” he roared.
The driver was a brutal-looking giant in bellbottom jeans and velour blouse. A jungle of black wires sprung from his deeply-cut shirtfront. The truck was warm and comfy. The motor sang; power lines bellied and soared, and were then sucked up like spaghetti by the immediate past which always seemed so ravenous here. B. stretched out with a grateful sigh, thinking dreamily about Omark. They would be together soon…
The driver poked her ribs. “Are you saved?” he yelled. “What?”
“Are you washed in the blood?”
“How you talk,” B. giggled, examining this great craggy human. He was young, and had a ferret’s face with the sincerely crafty eyes of a politician. The anthropologist was thrilled and excited. He must be a Hind, or perhaps she meant Sikh or Druid or Muslim, there were thousands of Earthie sects, all at war with each other. The sweet little apeman wanted to be carried to glory all in one flash, while retaining the identical insane personality he already had. Wow… It was so exquisitely illogical she could have kissed him for it. Oh, there was nothing like an earnest cannibal to make you glow all over.
“I’m washed in the blood if you are,” she simpered.
“I found the Lord in prison back home,” the driver yelled. “And He is going to make our whole commune rich. He sent us some wonderful contacts, to help in the Work.”
“Golly, that’s really terrific.” B. sighed and closed her eyes, eager to analyze her most recent experiences. How could such naive savages change so they’d have a chance at survival? Boy, they sure needed to read each other’s minds. If only in a rudimentary way. This meant getting rid of all current TV, books, politics, schools and other lie-propagating nonsense. First off, they’d have to develop their atrophied telepathic powers. And to do that, they would simply have to dump every shred of delusion. Oh, dear. Trouble was, Earthie time was too squashed; humans couldn’t see the constant geologic upheavals that took place as continents crashed into bottomless oceans, and upthrusting seas petrified into iron mountains. So there they sat, four billion bushwhackers, giving each other traffic tickets, and awards for beauty, and figuring out their income tax, of all insane things, each one locked in his shell of blind ignorance and bloated self-praise. Whew! It was some problem, all right. These folks were just too madly retarded.
“Want a drink?” the man shouted in her ear.
There was a wineskin on the seat between them. The driver showed Mrs. Peel how to handle this bladder, holding it up and shooting a slender curve right into his mouth. She tried it and squirted herself in the eye. He gave her a rag, apologizing for the grease. Soon they were tearing down the Corso Umberto smiling into each other’s faces. The driver, whose breath smelt like well-garlicked sheepdung, kept insisting that he’d made excellent contacts to do the Lord’s work. He got drunker and drunker, shouting,
“Under the panels! Snow white powder! Ten million lira in cocaine! Yippee!”
And Mrs. Peel kept echoing this chant. They had a fine time singing and shouting. This driver was really one heck of a nice guy, ever so warm, human, and likeable. Of course just under the surface bubbled the usual pungent stew of confused pain, greed, conceit and self-pity, in spades. Zowie! This hairy drug-pusher was due for a psychotic break at any second. Wouldn’t that be a kick? She longed to do something unexpected, maybe start knocking Jesus, or set fire to the upholstery, and watch him explode in screaming fits; but, she had to get to Capri and meet Omark, and perhaps fall deeply in love, which was the greatest thrill known to human beings. She was really looking forward to that experience.
She kissed the kindly ex-convict goodbye at the ferry dock. Soon she was in Capri taking a cab to the hotel, leaving a call for 7 p.m., drawing the blinds, crawling between cool sheets, happy and relaxed from all that wine.
Drowsing, B. mentally listed the four normal human states: hypnotized; committed to a cause (the more fanatical the better); depressed; or active-criminal. Often these overlapped. Meanwhile, folks were perpetually imprisoned in their screamingly idiotic social conventions. They were a bunch of rubber stamps. But smug, speech-making rubber stamps. Jeepers. How… icky … the human situation was…
Then an interesting thing happened: B. had a nightmare.
Expanding, electric lights. Pain. Endless, stupid blanks to be filled out; mountains of them. Next she was swallowed by an expanding musical note that grew to enormous proportions before shattering in a million pieces. Finally a voice whispered, “Get in line! You too will taste the unspeakable fate of lying in a grave for all eternity.”
Her own screams woke her up.
Whew! That was too much; she sat up sweating.
Well, what the heck. Being an anthropologist among apemen was perilous, sure, but it was also a thrilling adventure, and very educational. Think of the neat paper she could write about this unbelievable planet, once she got back home!
Fixing her thoughts on home, B. rolled over and dropped off again with a contented smile.

Chapter Nine
Checking his visage, Omark glowered at a piece of mirror. This bod’s teeth, embedded in coarse beard, were nacreously prurient. They were a row of tombstones designed for ripping flesh; and he’d been forced to polish them every morning for two weeks now. Wasn’t that a definition of slavery? But the supermonkeys accepted all such tedious chores like the cowering little sucks they were: without a question. Blah! He couldn’t remember having to certify a more degraded race.
He pocketed the mirror, jogging along a cliff above the Tyrrhenian Sea in buffalo-hide shirt and leggings with a pair of Colt .36 revolvers in his gunbelt. The mission had fallen behind schedule. The specter of Scaulzo, gloating over his kidnap raids, and now this shocking obscenity of a freezegun, had soured the whole trip. Giving Earth the benefit of the doubt was a mistake from the beginning. Only a rotting pumpkin of a planet could attract all this bush-league melodrama. Earthies seemed drowning in homemade problems; always crying for sugartits and blood, plots, murder, chases, embroilment, any thrill to make them forget they had a terminal disease—what junkies these bushmen were!
Omark considered himself a surgeon, whose job was to trim away diseased flesh, in the form of any race which needed euthanasia. As far as he was concerned, Earthies stood condemned. Humans were crying for euthanasia, poor devils! The fact that they exploited animals proved this beyond doubt. Omark himself was an animal. The thought of humans enjoying all their consumer goodies, while across town thousands of intelligent, decent animals were tortured to death in “laboratories”, was more than he could bear. Did the morons really think they could commit murder without being haunted by their victims? Earthies were ghost-ridden by their billions of animal victims. They insisted they were committing these crimes for PEE-pull. They said: We can cage, maim, vivisect and butcher, just as long as it’s being done for PEE-pull. But the more they plundered animals, the higher the disease rate climbed, and as yet no scientist had made the connection.
Even Heidi’s Grandfather agreed that humans must go. Last year, the Rysemians had disintegrated the dominant species on a planet called Heogh, for much the same reason: pernicious slaughter of other species. Interesting to visit Heogh one day and see all those cone-shaped people scuttling around, then visit the next day and see not a single cone-shaped body anywhere; just a milligram of dust here, and a milligram of dust there, and nothing else was left of the bloody savages (except their unsightly highways and buildings, and other detritus, which soon returned to nature).
However, before the human race could receive the blessing of euthanasia, it must be certified as hopelessly insane. At least in this cowboy-thief body he’d be meeting Earth on its best terms: as a tall, swaggering Goodguy, sternly handsome, deep of voice, the type of clod who was Hero in nearly all the movies.
… Urp! The Rysemian felt a twinge of nausea. Culture shock. He dropped into weeds and listened to the sea boom and thrash, retreat, sob and giggle, then rattle back to brain itself on the rocks below several times until the qualm passed. Meanwhile he sorted smells: charred wood, goatshit, formic acid from ants he’d crushed, and a billow of fruity methane (ah yes: that would be his Mr. World body popping one of its juicier vapor-buns). When he sat, the spurs went plockle thronkle puck, jungle pinkie chonk.
Fough! Now wonder freshman students laughed and thought you were inventing “The Planet Earth” out of coprophemic delirium.
Curls of mist rose off the bay. The air was clean as glass. Omark could see for miles across a peepbox landscape which Earthies considered so gorgeous they made billions of postcards to celebrate it. Well, it would be beautiful, when the Rysemians returned it to its natural state of virgin timber and unplowed sod… which might be sooner than expected.
He followed a goatpath, considering pangs of unfamiliar shame. It had been his fault that Lozetti was captured this morning. Omark had suggested that the Council put a tail on B., hoping to protect her until she got oriented. He’d been a starry-eyed novice himself some fifty missions ago, and understood B’s tendency to coltish pranks; but the Quats agent had been hired to follow and report if things got overly rough. A fatal piece of bad judgment. Crazy Lozetti blew his cover immediately. Scaulzo was on him like a shark and it was a miracle the Sajorians hadn’t identified Mrs. Peel as well.
Crapola! Omark felt like a bushman for bungling. The shame was educational, though; something Earthies lived with constantly, so he’d savor it and analyze it carefully. He’d explain everything to Mrs. Peel tonight at the hotel. Set things right with her. Perhaps even court her, if she insisted. After all, romance was part of the Earthie lifestyle. He’d be willing to mess around a bit Avoiding extremes, as always.
But first he had to find Lozetti. The “wealthy Milanese industrialist” was due to arrive on the next ferry. Jennison dreaded this meeting. Lozetti had been frozen alive—into a human body. The concept alone was enough to crack your sanity. A Bright Lights being, trapped and helpless in a blob of matter? Imprisoned in slurping, shitting, goggling, mortal flesh? Such a thing was unthinkable. Small wonder Omark’s cheerful detachment had vanished. He despised the idea of an “ultimate weapon” in the hands of power-mad bullies. Rysemian godhood had never been threatened before; not in such an insolent way. And how could he face Lozetti—what could he say? But there was no way to avoid confronting the Quatzler in his degraded (and no doubt anguished) condition.
Up the path were two stone gateposts marking the entrance to a villa. Lines of lombardy poplars bordered the road as it dipped into woodsy acreage. The gunfighter strolled inside, ignoring a warning KEEP OUT posted at the gate. This was more like it; shady and quiet, empty of humans, only some squirrels frisking down a line of stone Romans left over from the recent Empire. There were many huge amphorae, age-pitted and scarred, once used to store wine or grain. The vista was peaceful and inviting. The leaves, grass, moss and rocks were of a deep shadowed green reminiscent of a Rysemian high noon. Ahead was a sparkling pool of emerald surrounded by, believe it or not, spouting marble porpoises. Instantly Jennison stripped off his clothes. Bellowing like a sea beast he slammed into the water, skimmed the bottom tiles, leaped straight up and plunged to the depths again; not bad; Earth had a few good points after all, if you overlooked its scabrous, ubiquitous, hillbilly population.
When he surfaced from a long refreshing dive there was a girl standing beside the pool.
She seemed irritated. “Get out of there immediately,” she snapped.
The girl was slim, bronze, black-haired, wearing a bikini and pair of lavender Guccis on her two disgusting feet. Omark probed with intense interest. She was well placed socially, a jetsetter, catpacker, beautiful person, or whatever the savages called it this season. She’d have an I.Q. of 150 in Earth terms which meant that she was a near-idiot, just a hair upscale from the normal human imbecile. She said,
“Didn’t you hear me? Get out! This is a private pool.”
“I’m awfully sorry, Mademoiselle. Be gone in a flash.”
Omark smiled, revealing his white tombstone teeth in a way Earthies admired and usually fell for. The ape’s whelp softened her tone a bit and she explained,
“This villa is owned by the Emir of Daroug. My uncle is using it for the season and there are enough armed guards on the grounds to start World War Three so please don’t waste any time.”
“Oh, right you are.”
Omark jumped out of the pool, still grinning widely to show his harmlessness. His beard dripped water across his hairy chest. The girl’s fingers flew to her mouth; she took a step backwards; amazing; she was reacting violently to the simple fact of his nudity. Her eyes bulged in their sockets.
Had the staff overdone it on the Jennison carcass? But then, the original Jennison was a vigorous hero of the Civil War and this girl was no doubt used to over-civilized fieldgoal kickers.
Great Zeus, but the creature was repulsive! Mouth dangling open. All that horrid, froggy skin. Those peggy legs. That navel. Those teeth. Those buttocks. But here was the clincher: she thought Omark’s disdainful stare indicated lust. The unspeakable ape considered herself irresistible. Zounds! Skilled actor that he was, the Rysemian looked her over calmly and said in the slowed-down Earthie way,
“My name is Charles Jennison, Colonel, Seventh Kansas Cavalry, Union Army, U.S.A.—What’s yours?”
“Tani,” the girl whimpered. What was the matter with the puerile larva? She looked like a case of cardiac arrest. She was reacting to the insane Earth training, based on their shortage-orientation, plus the usual anxieties and bushwhacker superstitions. The jayhawker reflected. This was really interesting. How could this gross troglodyte consider herself attractive? He examined her jointy fingers. She was grotesque, abominable, unbelievably warped and stupid, and the inside of her mind seemed decorated with pink wallpaper. To cap it all, Omark could never figure out which eye you were supposed to gaze into when you looked at one of these impossible human faces.
“Don’t be afraid,” he murmured, stretching out a hand.
That broke the spell. The girl jerked her head angrily.
“Put your clothes on and get out! If I call the Emir’s men they’ll give you a beating you won’t forget.”
Jennison grunted. He picked up his clothes and struggled into the leggings. He buckled on his gunbelt, watching the girl watch him out of the corners of her eyes. She was going through a classic Earthie fear-of-the-un-known routine; as predictable as a softshoe number and about as tiresome. How would the real Jennison react to this rude distress? Probably chew a piece of grass, amble over to the hillbilly, grab her in a grip of steel and muffle her ferment with avid lips.
Blah. Love in human form… Didn’t that sound like a contradiction? Constantly, Earthies rhapsodized about sex. It was their most prized sensation after sky diving. It was reputed to be intolerably pleasurable. He knew it could never, in a million years, approach the exquisiteness of Union as practiced by Rysemians. In Union every forgotten pocket of your beingness was permitted to turn itself inside out and expand in mindless ecstasy. Whereas “sex” was merely an over-touted, limited, mechanical rutting. But still, “sex” was a type of primitive Clash and probably should be experienced, however lightweight and boring it sounded.
Well… Did she expect him to pounce on her at this juncture, or what? In any case the anthropologist damned well refused to be blackmailed into having to prove his humanity. But should he force himself, as a matter of principle? The inner conflict, with its attendant flick of culture shock, caused Jennison to commit a thoughtless act.
He spotted a pair of wineglasses on a table a hundred yards off.
The two Colts were in his hands. They barked in unison. Pieces of glass tinkled. The Colts were holstered again before they appeared to move.
The girl’s knuckles flew to her mouth.
“I despise threats,” Jennison said coldly.
Tani stared at his beard and flowing curls, his bulky shoulders, old-west leggings and spurs. Wow! This was the most spectacular dude she’d seen on Capri the whole season. His coldness thrilled her. Nobody she knew looked or talked like that. He was frightening. She hated the upset he was causing in her. She saw two husky men in business suits crossing the lawn rapidly; the Emir’s spare bodyguards; they’d be frothing at the mouth because of the gunfire.
Jennison walked to the table and dropped a stack of thousand lira notes among the bits of shattered glass.
“I’m sorry I troubled you,” he said.
One of the approaching men put a hand inside his coat.
“Forget it,” Jennison rapped. “To kill you would be too simple a pleasure.”
He turned and strode off. The girl whispered urgently; in any case, nobody cared to follow the gunfighter. A probe said that Tani wanted him intact. She was intrigued by this catlike bandit. For days she’d comb the island hunting for him. Okay, fine; if he decided on copulatory activity, he would swallow a handful of anti-queasy pills and zero in on this lank-haired vegetable, who was actually no worse than the rest of her species.
==========
Shortly after the ferry landed, Omark saw Lozetti come trudging up the hill. He whistled and ran down, hiding the morbid curiosity he couldn’t help feeling. Lozetti’s face was haggard, a half-deflated beachball, yellowish, with toad eyes hooded in sacs of wrinkled blue; Omark couldn’t imagine anything uglier. Horrible to realize that the poor Quatzler was stuck in that uncomfortable body—perhaps forever.
Omark’s own bod had gone clammy with sweat. At least there were no split lips or obvious bruises; the “Polizia Stradale” knew how to administer a severe beating without leaving traces.
They went to a bar off the piazza. Jennison ordered a bottle of Jim Beam and two shotglasses. Lozetti was in a state of terrible depression. He blubbered and whined, complaining incessantly. The whiskey stung the cuts in his mouth. He was a fox in a trap, screaming in pain. The Sajorians had whipped him with rubber hoses; the humiliation was unbearable. He couldn’t endure another moment stuck in this carcass.
Finally Jennison said, “Shut up, moo-cow! You bellow like all the human beings.”
Now Omark was irritated at himself. He wanted to be sympathetic but the whole situation was repulsive. Odd how Lozetti’s contemptible whines seemed to bring out the sadist in a person; but, that was Earth: insanity was catching. Take Lozetti. He’d been famous for his guts and craziness and now look at him. Just another bleating, problem-ridden Earthie.
“You don’t know what it’s like,” Lozetti wept.
“So kill yourself! Or lay back and enjoy it. Look at all these gaping fools; every single one of them is in the same position you’re in.”
“But they were born that way. They don’t know any better. And nobody’s trying to kill them.”
“Nobody’s trying to kill you either. Use your damn brains.” The jayhawker swallowed his whiskey in one gulp, taught by Westerns. He slammed down the glass and wiped his mouth. “Scaulzo wants you alive so you can lead him to me.”
“Then you’re an asshole! Get out before he puts a slug in your back.”
“Take it easy, paisano, we’ve got time.” Jennison poured another whiskey and played with the glass, studying bar-lights through its amber swirl. “Please relax, sweetheart, the cannibals are staring at you. Tell me all about this freezing business. Tell me the exact sensations. How does it feel?”
“You want to gloat? Want a thrill, like the Sajorians?” Tears glossed the boiled-egg eyes. “Oh gods, every moment is an agony. I’ve turned into a grunting, pissing, meat-animal.” He raised his hand and stared with loathing at the jointed digits, the opposable thumb. “Look at that! I’m a freak. A freak who can be forced to do anything, under threat of death. This fleshtub is my hostage to fortune. Because of it, I’m living on my knees!”
Omark seemed hungry for details.
“Is your time slowed down? Your thinking disorganized and dull compared to what it was?”
“Oh gods, leave me alone, talking makes it worse.”
“I’ve got to know. How else can I help? What other symptoms do you have?”
“Symptoms! I hope you take one in the gut and find out. The condition is unclean, it’s a vileness. I won’t discuss pornography.” Lozetti blew his nose loudly on a napkin, wiped his eyes and said, “Just watching the big anthropologist play gunman is like a scabrous disease. Why sit here and invite danger? You’ll be a clown, stuck in that degrading identity, Omark.”
Obviously the frog wouldn’t reveal anything vital until he was goaded to anger; and Jennison didn’t have time for that. A probe said the Quatzler had at least protected B., and kept a shield under torture, not mentioning his connection with the Rysemians. Jennison said,
“Quatzler, I’m sorry as hell about this. I’m going to get you out of it, and that’s a promise. But for now, why not lay back and enjoy? You’ve got a golden opportunity to study a primitive race first hand. You’re in good shape; loaded with lira, women will throw themselves all over you, you can eat, drink, buy a yacht, be king of the world. Hell, any human in sight would give his right arm to trade places with you.”
“I’m Earthbound,” the Quatzler mourned. “It’s torture.”
“Ah, drink your whiskey, this is a waste of time.”
No use explaining strategy to this miserable frog. Night was falling; Jennison knew Benaroya was close but he kept a shield; didn’t need some student popping up at a time like this. He made Lozetti stand erect and stroll around the piazza with him. The aborigines all stared in curiosity. In spite of himself Jennison was angry, deeply enraged at the very concept of being “frozen”, and his rage spilled over onto these hicky mortals with their ever-hungry eyes. They were body-hung. Each had a fetish about his own weak body, protecting it, pampering it, slobbering over it, drooling obscenely over it and other bodies. They adored comfort; they lived to titillate and punish each other, covertly, pretending they were “evolving,” but being stuck in endless plots of sado-masochism. And each one strove to keep the others from “getting ahead.” Each one insisted he was the ideal, and others were misguided or downright evil. In this way they kept their mediocrity, and their absurd scarcities, going on forever like a broken record. But, no use getting angry; all that was just their insanity manifesting itself.
The third time around the Piazza, Jennison saw the man he was looking for. The sergeant from Poliza Stradale, with a fresh scar shining from chin to temple. He felt Lozetti go limp with dread and he muttered soothingly,
“You can fuck off now, sweetheart. You did a good job and I owe you one.”
Instantly Lozetti vanished. Jennison slouched along, a ringer Old West jayhawker with crafty eyes halfshut. He scratched his crotch, yawned and spat. The sergeant got busy lighting a cigarette, pretending not to notice, Jennison ambled closer in the wary, open-hand slouch of the gunman… This is it, baby.
The sergeant carried his guns loose and low. Their butts were gleaming chrome, both identical. He glanced at Jennison over the match. He wore that slow, psychotic grin—that gleeful smile of madness, so typical of bushmen, that Omark had analyzed and struggled to master in practice sessions aboard ship. The piazza thronged with tourists; tough luck; some PEE-pull would soon get wiped in the hail of bullets. Jennison knew that a dozen carabinieri were posted ready to blast him from every side when he drew. If he tried to back away they’d freeze him before he could take a step. Which was ideal. Scaulzo seemed pleased but hardly surprised that Omark had made this foolish mistake. In Scaulzo’s book, Omark was a troublemaker who had to be wasted as quickly as possible.
The people, sensing danger, began to shuffle and hide behind each other.
Jennison felt a thrill of amused contempt. Wasn’t this absurd? The asinine roles you were forced to play, in order to understand a race of insane primitives. Remember the Alamo, boys; hoist the colors, charge the guns, work the bull bravely, and all that incredible razzmatazz. At least Frimble had been correct; this police sergeant was the Prince of Darkness, deep in his game. The frosty eyes glittered as the jayhawker halted. Scaulzo was grateful for the plum which would now drop effortlessly into his outstretched hand.
Jennison went for his guns.
A hail of bullets from both sides shattered his wrists and right elbow. Blood spurted. Now Scaulzo was firing. First the crack of a light handgun—that would be the H-2 unit, freezing Omark into his body, setting him up for death— and then a stream of .45 slugs tore apart Jennison’s face, neck and chest.
Peculiar…
At the moment of death he was still figuring things out like a computer gone mad. Now for the quick one-two and over the fence, as planned. But what was going on? The body itself seemed to grasp at existence; it puked several pints of bloody froth, clawing away at the sod in a fancy death agony, even though Omark himself didn’t give a damn either way. One small problem remained. His shorts were still on backwards. Would that seem important to the ghouls at the morgue? Shit… Odd that humans wouldn’t even let each other die in peace…
So this was Death. The old Grim Reaper everyone kept blabbering fearfully about. Well, it was tenth-rate, like everything else on this yahoo planet.
A dizzy fall through Blackness.
Into Nothingness.

Chapter Ten
When the bell rang at seven Mrs. Peel woke up feeling slightly deranged—where was she? Excellent; that meant her wits were getting more and more addled by the surrounding madness. Every agent had to jump levels like this. Once back on Vonderra you’d heal fast, and be a god again in two shakes, so the icky emotions were only temporary; and anything for knowledge, baby.
She threw open the balcony doors. Holy cow. The whole whitewashed town went cascading into the bay, which was watercolored a glittery plum-wine-cobalt. Purple snow topped the mountains on the opposite shore behind Naples. Outasite! The elevator was also a gasser, carpeted in plum velvet; the whole damn hotel was a “sybarite’s dream of Old World opulence” just like the ads, placed conveniently in chrome racks, kept repeating.
The people were the usual tense bumpkins but B. wag getting used to that. She ate heartily at the buffet (granseola, scampi, pickled quail eggs, tagliatelle and cherries jubilee) and got some disapproving glances from the maitre d‘, but he could go choke on a horse.
Everywhere, in and out sliding doors, down marble stairs, over shaved grass, past rich poolside cabanas, eyes followed her. Whew!, all those ocular calisthenics that humans never stopped doing! When she faced them, they’d turn away. Covert little devils. Even sneakier, if such a thing were possible, than the impoverished worker-type. That figured; you didn’t make a fortune on this planet by giving away secrets.
Well, she had two hours until Omark showed up. Now to soak in the true feeling of Earth culture. Capri was a four-mile-square island of sun, wind, and crawking gulls. It had been a resort attraction for “thousands of years,” according to limited Earthie time. Before the Mousehole was installed, Earth was an obscure dustmote nobody’d ever heard of; but now it was important since the grid was so close. Travellers would be coming here. Wise decisions had to be made. She knew the Council was all shook up about Scaulzo; now was the moment to keep a cool head, and win her spurs…
Wow, the sky had turned ultramarine with pink clouds, and the sea was a mirror studded with golden rocks… Eyes kept sucking at her. Why were Earthies such sneaks? A covert glance was the first sign of psychosis… Boy, what a sick place this was… Yet she felt pity, because of the rigid existence these poor bumpkins were forced to endure.
But in two hours she’d be with Omark. It was a secure, calming fact. Together they could handle Scaulzo. Mrs. Peel wandered and dreamed.
She ignored the girl skulking behind her.
Funny how things happened. Here she stood, out on the galactic fringe where no civilized race had visited before. And there stood the natives, huddling and goggling like the poor doomed monsters they were. Not realizing it was their own dopey, sheep like huddling that was dooming them. Of course it was a paradox; mind-sickness always was. Sitting in their little offices figuring out “case histories,” each one mad as a hatter; or figuring out “systems” for sharing the “wealth” (what wealth? They had nothing and could only squabble over inert bits of matter)—oh, jeepers, it was a darned shame.
And they needed so much. Flopping, floundering, clawing and gasping, “Help me! I need, I want, I crave!”… But what an unattractive delusion. If you said, “fulfillment comes from within,” they’d lynch you. And their leaders always a bunch of dummies chosen for height, or for a deeply sincere, manly voice, or a schmaltzy, quiz-show intellect—and then heaped with blame for not being able to do anything for all that wailing, craving humanity—jeepers creepers.
B. recalled her first Earth Culture class at the Academy. Every student had to wear a human body to class. It was an uproar! When your natural face is Brobdingnagian, the round Earthie dome with the air-sucking nose is outrageous. Everybody felt like a bushie, teetering around on the shaky, little legs. And the tiny, grasping paws, Omark said, were symbolic of the Earthie mind, geared to ripping hides off animals and counting stacks of “money.” He indicated the stone-age reproductive system which Earthies considered their Holy of Holies, despite the fact that it was clumsy, obsolete, and hazardous for the unborn. The body-style was one of nature’s mistakes. It had been designed to scuttle around on four legs, in the sea of gas, but now stood on two legs so that the liver crushed the other organs and the heart had to pump like mad to keep the blood circulating. But it was a scream to make faces with those twitchy-puckery features. After a while, though, you got used to the bod and it seemed almost natural.
The course called “Primitive Food” was really tough, boy. It took a full semester to learn to distinguish Earthie food from their droppings. On the final exam you had to tell a bowl of beans from a bowl of hot rabbit raisins. B. flunked that damn test twice; the color and temperature were identical, for Pete’s sake!, and the taste was only slightly different.
Then came “Savagery One” where you learned that Earthies lived under a dark cloud called “law,” and that “law” was based on threats of violence. “Put money in the meter or we will drag your car away.” “Pay taxes or we will lock you up.” “Fill out all the blanks or you lose your job.” Then do-good groups arose, condemning violence and advising a return to “law.” But “law” was based on violence. From this circular non-reasoning, the Rysemian students learned what it meant to be Earthie. It meant sick from the word go.
Omark was a tough grader, boy, as well as a curmudgeon, but his classes were never dull. He specialized in “Old West.” He dug cowboy stuff: whore houses, lynchings, ambushes, shoot-outs, cheating at poker. Like in one day’s psychodrama, the TV-set saloon with swing doors, ornate mirror, lovely girl singers wearing black lace garters, etc., all turned into the actual reality of sawdust on a plank floor, splintery wood bar, ordinary, non-swinging door and a few small tables for gamblers. The gartered girlies became some muscular female ranch hands, a complaining grandma with T.B. and several coarse prostitutes with boozy breath and murderous tempers. This was known as “harsh reality.” Like non-harsh reality (as well as everything else Earthies believed in and held dear), it was a ridiculous lie, said Omark.
And nothing ever happened on Earth. Even the sound and the fury were illusions. Even their term ‘meaningless’ had no meaning. To visit a mad planet like Earth and actually live among the bushmen, said Omark, would be an act of heroism above and beyond the call of duty.
(Wherever Mrs. Peel went, that bikini-clad girl followed. Was she a paid shadow? If so, somebody was getting robbed, boy.)
Omark had a replica Western town which the class used in Lifestyle Analysis. B. remembered those muddy streets, the horses and mules, teams of oxen hauling lumber for new buildings, the Bank and the Hotel and the Saloon where they spent hours learning poker and ballads. Omark favored a body copied from one Charles Jennison, train robber and chief of Jennison’s Jayhawkers, most sadistic band of sweethearts in the colorful Old West. Jennison was greedy, conceited, and ruthless. A real human Success. Not quite as disagreeable as the typical human Failure, but pretty darn close, boy. He’d left scores of bodies mouldering all over the nineteenth century.
Mrs. Peel strolled by the massed flowers of villas overlooking the bay, where Roman statues weathered among pine and carob. Capri must have been neat before they hacked down the original timber. A statue of Brutus stood in an alcove and pointed out to sea. Mrs. Peel caught a flash of that tenacious girl, trying to hide behind a bush.
But why? A probe identified her as your ordinary larva with the lanky hair and mouth hanging open in the approved way. Mrs. Peel was deep in thoughts of Omark. She recalled him in his native body, a great, finned dolphin-beast fishtailing up the Prado, past a Rysemian spectacle of mist or maybe on course for the Mind Expander or scudding the Forget Mountains to the Place of Far Laughter, or the Plateau Beyond Life or… Oh, nuts, she was getting crawly with homesickness! She longed for the grad class of Advanced Creation, where every student made a world, populated it with living people and tested what they’d do under varying circumstances.
There was that doggone girl again. Standing in the path as if by accident. When Mrs. Peel tried to slip by, she became all smiles and confusion.
“May I have your autograph?”
“My who?”
“Autograph. I’m a great, great fan of yours. Would you mind terribly?”
“Power to the people,” Mrs. Peel said disarmingly.
The girl tittered. “Right on, but don’t mention it around my uncle. He’s secretary to the Emir of Daroug and you know what a big bunch of imperialists they are, but that whole generation is sick so it’s not their fault.”
Mrs. Peel dug her in the ribs with a sly elbow. “Aren’t you glad you use Dial? Don’t you wish everybody did?”
“Oh God, ha ha! You’re too funny. I think you’re just wonderful,” the girl said, taking Mrs. Peel’s arm adoringly. “They sent me to nab you because they know I’m a great fan of yours. And His Excellency is an even greater fan of yours. Would you have cocktails with him on the terrace?”
“Golly, that sounds ginger peachy.”
They skipped along arm in arm, taking a shortcut back to the hotel. Benaroya learned that this Iranian girl’s name was Tani and that she was one year short of the ideal Earthie age which was 17, and that she was a ski champion, tennis pro, and film maker, like everyone under 20. Tani whispered,
“The Emir is heir to a colossal oil fortune.”
“Oil?”
She nodded. “He could supply the entire U.S. and England; not that you’re an opportunist, but, a word to the wise,” confidentially. Then Tani borrowed a pen from a waiter for the autograph. Mrs. Peel had never learned to write but the scribble pleased Tani who thought it a neat affectation.
The Emir’s party were at a poolside table, four men in white robes who stood at Mrs. Peel’s approach. The Emir was a sturdy person of medium height with tightly curled black hair, a hawk’s nose, pouting lips, somber black eyes, and an aura of disappointed bitterness. His eyes met B’s in head-on collision. After they were introduced Tani dived into the pool and swam off, and Mrs. Peel was given a hideous drink which caused her mouth to pull itself into a tight square.
“Let me express my admiration of your Avenger reruns,” the Emir said in a bored, world-weary voice which nevertheless rang with authority.
“Bluchhh. Blechhh!”
Leaping lizards; there was nothing for it but to spit into the nearest potted palm; flashbulbs kept popping and Mrs. Peel was nervous about publicity—golly, what would Mersoid say if she made the news again? She wiped her mouth and stood up.
“Will Your Excellency come for a walk with me? I’ll borrow a black veil if necessary.”
“My pleasure,” he smiled in that lemon-sucking way of extremely serious and important men. They strolled the path toward the sea. From time to time the Emir helped Mrs. Peel down a bank (tee hee; chivalry). He kept asking questions; she’d have to watch it with such a nosey person. But he was really a swell guy. He reeked of cigar smoke and oil holdings. He said,
“Have you just arrived? I haven’t seen you here before.”
“It’s my first trip.”
“Really. Then I’m delighted to show you around.”
“How too nice.” Probing, Mrs. Peel sought the kind of dreck this bushman would believe, so she could ladle it back to him and not get caught in any jams. She said,
“Perhaps you can help. I’m studying a character for a Bernard Shaw play that was lost for fifty years until its recent discovery in a peanut butter jar in Salem, Oregon. The character is an amnesiac, all preoccupied with Good and Evil, a really meaty part.”
“A lost Shaw play? I hadn’t heard.”
“Oh yes. The role has tremendous appeal for me. Shaw himself would get a kick out of this episode. Such an interesting bit of material. Segue and montage from Robbe-Grillet to Stratford-upon-Avon.”
“How’s that?”
“Absolutely nothing has been written for a woman since ‘Little Miss Marker’ or—what’s her name again—the one who couldn’t wash the blood off her hands.”
“Ha ha! You’re a rara avis,” said the Emir, giving her a closer look. He had topped the continental ‘eligible bachelor’ list for ten years. Never did he put himself out for a woman. His favorite phrase was, “I am surrounded by idiots.” But something about Mrs. Peel’s childlike directness, self-contained grace and quaint sense of humor was unexpectedly charming. She could possibly blow his mind, as Tani might say. He excused himself and lit a cigar; then said crisply,
“How can I help, with this role of yours?”
“Well, pretend my brain’s been absolutely wiped and I don’t remember a thing. I don’t know what the sun and moon are, or anything. Explain everything to me.”
Her escort laughed. “That sounds exciting.” He pointed to a cliff limned with spotlights. It was twilight; torches were being lighted along the path. “Way up there is the summer house of the Emperor Tiberius. He has a torture chamber in the basement. After torturing his enemies he throws them down this cliff into the sea; then his men row over and batter the victims to a pulp with their oars.”
“Golly, what a mean man! Is he a friend of yours?”
“Bad news; Tiberius is dead. But he did those things right on this very spot.”
Mrs. Peel looked around her. They were sitting on a stone wall under olive branches. The Emir studied his guest, who was drinking in his every word, as everyone always did. She swung her legs and said,
“I chopped up some bodies once. It was fun but it was messy. Icky brains and poopoo all over.”
The Emir felt a twinge of irritation. This woman went too far. Was she mocking him? But of course that was impossible; she was merely schizophrenic. He felt himself wanting to alter her personality, using the meld of neo-Freud, post-Jung, and Carl Rogers he’d learned at Cambridge where he’d taken a doctorate in psychology; but first it would pay to gain her confidence. Show off his erudition and his male charm. He said,
“One day long ago Ulysses sailed past those rocks out there. Where we’re now sitting, the Sea Nymphs sat and called to him. They were naked with long, blond hair and they had voices no man could resist. But Ulysses had been warned of the danger, so he told his men to put wax in their ears, and he had himself tied to the mast.”
Mrs. Peel was bored; this was a typical, dopey, Earthie tale of madness and paranoia. She broke wind, a long rumbling roar which amused her. “You wouldn’t believe the barf I ate for breakfast,” she said cheerfully. “But go on, tell me about this weird Ulysses. What did he do next?”
“There was no breeze so the sailors took to their oars. Fortunately they couldn’t hear a thing. They watched Ulysses writhe and scream in his bonds, trying to break the ropes so he could swim ashore and be eaten.”
“And was he eaten?”
“No, he escaped to tell the story.”
“And is it a true story?”
“Absolutely. Later, in the caves below us, human bones were found. They’d been cracked and the marrow sucked out, by the people of Capri.”
“I’ve never eaten a human. What does the meat taste like?”
“Long pig, they tell me.”
The Emir dropped his cigar and crushed it with a heel. He felt irritated, not quite in control of the situation. This strange woman was coarse and exquisite, ill-bred and elegant all at the same time. Was she truly schizophrenic? Imagine actually farting aloud in public. What a classic type! Straight out of the age of mythology. And how she stared, with those wide, innocent eyes. She was a tremendous actress. But how could this waif survive, in the jungle of the entertainment world? For some reason he found himself wanting to protect her, to remold and unsettle her, to crack that calm self-sufficient armor of hers. His voice grew tender.
“I love this island, Mrs. Peel. I love its grottoes and ruins, the pagan evil of its past. But to me, the most priceless possession in the world is mental health.”
She dropped her eyelids a la “The Seven Year Itch,” saying,
“You wouldn’t kid a girl, would you?”
“Perhaps fate brought you here.” The Emir hid his annoyance and reached for her hand. “I mean in the sense that it brought the Emperor Augustus in 29 B.C. He was the adopted son of our beloved Imperator, Julius Caesar, who’d been stabbed a few years earlier. But Augustus had no heirs. Tiberius had been a good general for him in Germany so he rewarded Tiberius by making him Emperor. So you see, we must all give and take, and learn to accommodate each other. It makes life much more pleasant.”
“Hey, wait a minute.” Mrs. Peel scratched her yoni thoughtfully. “Is there one honest person on this planet or do you all live by some form of payola?”
The Emir frowned and looked injured. “That sort of attitude causes a break in communication. It makes me angry; and when people get angry, communication breaks down.”
“Gee, I’m sorry, I don’t want that to happen.”
“Of course you don’t!” He gave a tight, gratified little smile. “You see, I’m a very friendly person, and I like to be friends with everyone, but when communication breaks down, friendship stops. And I especially like you, you see.”
Actually he hadn’t meant to go that far. No use encouraging her beyond what was possible at the moment. Would she get the wrong idea? But Mrs. Peel merely yawned, staring out to sea, then picked her nose pensively with her free hand. The startled Emir refused to believe what was happening. He said:
“Now that we’ve exhausted politics—shall we walk?”
They got up and strolled toward town. Mrs. Peel drank in the air, the night, the people who passed with ogling glances. She felt tensely eager. It was almost nine. Omark would be here soon. She was getting tired of this smug oil king with his nervous self-love. If he’d only quit grabbing her elbow and bending her ear. He murmured,
“When Tiberius lived on this island, he made the gods angry. Perhaps he killed one of their favorites by mistake. So an earthquake came and destroyed the lighthouse that once stood out there in the harbor. It had been the pride of Capri; poets said it had a beam brighter than moonlight. Its fall foretold the end of the Roman Empire. My dear, am I boring you? Would you like to run over and meet Grace and Rainier? They’re anchored in the harbor; I have my cruiser waiting. Claude Levi-Strauss is spending the weekend with them. Personal friend of mine. Comes to me with little family problems, Claude does.”
“Uh, no, I gotta meet a friend.”
The Emir gave a snort of amazement. He didn’t believe this creature. Was she mad, to fluff off his best offer like this? She looked windblown, hair somewhat ratty and the part a bit crooked, as though she’d slept in a ditch. Not at all presentable. No make-up or ornament of any kind. Yet she seemed vital, ripe and earthy. What made her tick? She angered him, disturbed and challenged him. He vowed to read the whole script before this night was out.
“There’s a secret place down this street, Mrs. Peel. I go there to gamble. Do you like to gamble?”
“I’m an addict,” said Mrs. Peel, who knew nothing about gambling except what had been taught in poker class. The Emir had drawn her arm through his and was compulsively caressing her fingertips. He was amazed at himself. Never did he allow himself to be seduced by a charming personality. There were three kinds of women in the world: cows, dogs, and vipers. He despised them all. But this woman was—what? He couldn’t describe it; in a sense, he disliked it intensely. Yet here they were, wandering arm in arm past sidewalk cafes where the lights were blazing. Mrs. Peel asked,
“Who are all these bug-eyed people?”
“What, is our amnesia still acting up?” Then the Emir controlled his annoyance and said, “Very well; that pretty girl smoking the tiny pipe, as you well know, is living with a producer who’s married to a star who’s having an affair with a director. She and the producer just had twins; the producer is crushed, because his masculinity has been proved and he can’t stand it. That tall chap is a cocaine importer, enormously chic, working hand in hand with international law.” He pointed out all the Names with gossip about each, until Mrs. Peel’s head was buzzing with facts. Meanwhile they edged through a dark passage behind a perfume shop and came blinking into a room jammed with elegant Earthies.
Mrs. Peel was introduced to several humans. Then the gambling started. She was fascinated by the roulette wheel and wanted to touch the shiny ball but the Emir said chemin de fer was more rewarding. The huissier brought them chairs. Waiters brought them drinks, ashtrays, great piles of counters. The Emir whispered in her ear, still playing the amnesia game.
“These people bet big money. And they don’t all have big money, more’s the pity. So there are numbers of suicides in the parking lot Also blackmail, murder, all kinds of excitement”
It sounded pretty dull to B.; she examined the faces. The men wore dinner coats and cummerbunds and the women dripped diamonds. Everyone looked disdainful and terribly suave. Holy mackerel. They were interesting little chipmunks, and an absolute goldmine of research data, but she was getting worried. It was after nine. Where the Sam Hill was Omark?
The Emir, in honor of his freakishly vast holdings and exalted rank, was afforded the courtesy of cutting the cards. The croupier announced “Number nine.” B. saw that the Emir had won and the croupier was pushing a stack of chips across to him. She excused herself while he was gloating and went to the ladies’ room. Two bejeweled women were just leaving. They eyed her clothes with amused contempt and raked the rest of her person with smiles full of ironic pity.
Holy horsebeans! Such frosty superiority deserved careful study.
Alone, she locked herself into a booth and pressed the tap on her comm ring. Capt. Boolabung’s face appeared in a cube of air; a brisk, spit-and-polish Patton ablaze with five stars, eagles and clusters of fruit salad.
“Do you know where Omark is? I’m worried.”
“Didn’t he show yet?”
“Not a word.”
“Well, the Commander knows his onions, so hang in there toots,” Boolabung said and broke connection.
Back at the gaming table the Emir was losing steadily. B. explained that she was worried about her friend. He nodded and cashed in and they left. Out on the street they stood for a moment in the clear night and looked at the stars. That faint ribbon of brightness was the Milky Way. Home.
“What can I do? Place a call? Order a car?” The Emir seemed worried and attentive.
“I can only wait and hope he shows up. Please don’t let me keep you from your evening; I’ll be fine.”
The Emir was increasingly irritated. She was unhealthily unimpressed by all that he could offer. She was peculiar, and messy, and falsely self-confident; obviously she badly needed psychiatric help.
For her part, Benaroya was growing more and more uneasy. Something grated on her senses. What could it be? Behind the peaceful facade, something was terribly out of joint… The moon hung over the clocktower. They strolled toward the piazza, passing shops that displayed smiling dummies clutching tennis rackets, along with expensive perfume, sportclothes, and handbags.
Suddenly from behind them an ambulance came careening down the narrow street with its siren moaning. It was headed toward the piazza; a crowd had collected there. Mrs. Peel started to run, shoving people out of her way— she had to see!
In a knot of humanity was the horror she’d half expected. A man, was crumpled on the stones. He’d fallen in an awkward position, like a ragdoll oozing blood. There were other dead bodies huddled in a shop doorway. The crowd seemed thrilled. People were saying it had been a gunfight and the winner didn’t wait to be identified.
The attendants threw a blanket over the shattered face, but not before she could see who the man was. Or had been. He was Charles Jennison. Omark!
She turned in confusion to the Emir, who murmured something into her ear. She heard the attendants put Omark’s body into the ambulance. The alert Emir called a taxi. His bad mood was gone; he seemed pleased and in his element. Then they were jolting up a dark street. The memory of Lozetti, pleading and whimpering, blotted out sorrow; B. felt numb and, somehow, betrayed.
At the hotel she asked to be alone. The Emir promised to stop by later. He took charge quietly, ordering a sedative to be sent up to Mrs. Peel.

Chapter Eleven
Sprawled on the hotel bed, Mrs. Peel kept both palms squeezed over her ears. She didn’t want to see or hear anything. Her eyes were blinded by tears.
Omark was dead.
Carted away in a meat wagon.
Never to touch her hand, or smile in his school-teachery way again. He was GONE. Her shrieks rebounded off the soundproofed walls. “Death” was a fate for savage louts; not for godlings. No, no! They never should have come to this haunted graveyard of a planet!
She clawed the sheets, wailing heartbreak. Humans should do something about this “death” crap! It was—atavistic! You couldn’t be sane with something like this hanging over your head. It was too terrible, and too useless, and ridiculous as well. Omark, gone! She would never see him again. Never. Never…
When Room Service knocked, B. got up and took a tray from a bored waiter. She was weeping miserably. On the tray was a sedative, and one perfect, white rose, with a note from the Emir saying:
“Please call. Let me help.”
B. dumped tray, rose, and note into the disposal and was revolted by her face in the mirror. Inflamed eyes. Leaking nostrils. Holy mackerel. Turning into a human was a most ludicrous form of martyrdom. Why, you were sitting on thorns; you could be trashed in a twinkling by any low blow of Fate. “Laws” were a joke. You were a mere plaything; a giggling, sobbing, tennis-playing puppet who could be put to death on the hook by any enemy at any second. Why, this was plain terrible! No wonder humanity had gone insane.
… Was that a noise?
She strained to hear.
What the Sam Hill was that rattling?
Oh golly. This room was six stories up. If something was on the balcony—oh, crap, this was terrible! She was getting as paranoid as any Earthie! Better to face Scaulzo head on, than live in a paroxysm of trembling, cowering, and orgiastic plotting like the humans were forced to do.
B. tore open the drapes. A man stood on the balustrade wiping dirt off his boots. He wore a fringed shirt and two revolvers. Holy cow. It was Jennison’s ghost; the body she’d seen ripped and bleeding in the piazza. She screamed.
He pressed a finger to his lips and pointed at the lock.
B. opened the door. Was it a trap? She no longer cared. Jennison stepped in, grimacing and pointing at the ceiling.
“So what!” Mrs. Peel shrieked. “I don’t give a shit if the whole planet is bugged! I don’t care if they bug my lousy navel!”
He drew her into the bathroom, locked the door and turned on the taps in shower and basin until the water made a Niagara roar. Then he put his lips close to her ear.
“What shakes, kiddo? You’ve got to check for bugs around these creepy morons. Prying and bugging are their chief weapons. You know they’re too stupid to evolve.”
“Omark. Oh God. It’s really you.”
“Listen, this hotel is the center of a drug shakedown between Sicily and the FBI. The Feds pay the Mafia to wire these rooms and set up a bust to confiscate drugs and pass them out free in ghettos to keep the natives from banging the wardrums. Why do you think we spent two semesters on Human Sociometry?”
“Are you mad at me?”
“Of course not. Just don’t forget you’re a spy in their land. We don’t want our conversations taped. Do you own a swimsuit, Mrs. Peel?”
“Oh darling, you look like a million bucks.”
He stared at her. “To be frank, you look like shit What’s wrong with your eyes?”
“Why you lousy pig, you! Go take a flying jump! I’m lying here sick with grief about your rotten, lousy death and all you can say is I look like shit—no, fuck off! Don’t touch me with your filthy hands.”
Omark sighed. “Mrs. Peel, the calmer you remain, the faster we can get this miserable trip over with.” He knew B. suffered recurring culture shock and would try to manipulate him in the standard Earth way. If he hung around in a bod long enough he’d be playing the same degraded game himself. It was important to work fast and keep cool. He said,
“Hurry. We’ll swim out to the Blue Grotto which is unbuggable. But wear a suit. Earthies collapse at sight of a naked human body. At least they know how idiotic they look.”
“Oh Lord, I thought I’d never see you again, I’m so happy I could just—”
“Save it for later. Let’s get out of here.”
They left quietly, using a service elevator in the rear of the hotel. They walked down an isolated path to the beach, dropped their clothes in a messy heap and began swimming toward the grotto. The night was chilly; diamonds blazed on the tips of the waves. As they swam, the wind rose, the sea turned choppy and somewhere upshore a dog began howling mournfully. The two glided under and over waves like the bottle-noses they were. In due course they reached the grotto, where torches burning in rock walls lighted their way. The only entrance was a tiny opening in solid rock. They slipped through, one after the other, and came out in an echoing rock chamber.
“Home free! Now we revert to type,” Omark chortled. He made a surface dive and flashed from sight. Forty meters down B. saw the gunfighter’s shadow glide across ripples of white sand floor. The packed sand reflected moonlight into the cave. In the mirrored glow, her own body was glaucous silver.
Jennison surfaced and spat jets of water at her. “Come on, blubberfish! It’s freezing, you’ll love it.”
B. pouted and posed on the limestone. “Don’t you ever fall for a dame, big boy?”
“Shucks, I’m not that adaptable.”
“Yeah? Why dontcha let yaself go?”
“You’ve got those preposterous soundtracks down pat,”
Omark said admiringly. B. was a top student; she was handling the tricky, insane role of “Earthie Female” with the utmost skill and grace. He said,
“Zeus, but it feels good to swim! I’ve been tottering on these two crummy pins forever.”
Mrs. Peel fluffed her hair. “How about telling a girl what’s going on around here?”
He explained about Lozetti and said,
“I blew it, no apologies. But there’s a compensation; I’ve finally perfected the two-body switch. Remember when we discussed it in class?”
“You mean, two Jennisons?”
“Right. You know how humans complain about being ‘possessed by demons.’ Well, their real problem is the millions of bodies walking around empty, possessed by nothing at all; the lowest demon has more interesting things to do. Anyway, I left this carcass in a bar switched onto Automatic and blabbing a standard ego trip to the bartender who naturally wouldn’t notice the bod was empty and just being run by a tape.”
“But that’s wonderful.”
“Thanks. When Scaulzo killed Jennison One, I pulled out just before he used the H-2 unit on me. For a while I was operating both bodies. I watched them take me to the morgue and start the autopsy on me. They love autopsies. They love messing around with bodies, dead or alive.”
“Does the Council know about this?”
“I’ll file it in my report. The best part is, Scaulzo thinks I’m out of the picture. And you’re in the clear too, Mrs. Peel, because Lozetti kept his mouth shut under torture.”
“Poor frog,” B. said. “We’ve got to help him, but how?”
They stared at each other, churning moonlit water. Omark said,
“Dirty Harry thinks I’m two smells lower than a polecat for using you to attract Scaulzo.”
“He’s right. We don’t have much choice though.”
“Can you make Scaulzo tip his hand, without getting creamed?”
B. outlined her plan. She was gonna stroke around “The World” with a cheap Japanese tape recorder and do interviews. Tell Earthies where she was from. Ask what they thought of the human condition; if they didn’t think euthanasia was better than the constant grinding agony. The ship’s computers could sort out the many hysterical lies from the few kernels of truth she hoped to find.
Omark frowned. “You’ll get stacks of data, and thrills galore, but… I don’t know.”
“What don’t you know? I can take care of myself, Teach.”
“Like with that lawyer in Hollywood?”
“That was culture shock, darling. Why? Were you jealous?”
“Shit no. I merely think it’s disgusting. How could you copulate with a gross human bod without throwing up?” Mrs. Peel glanced at him from beneath lowered lashes. “Huh! Some scientist you turned out to be.” Suddenly she splashed the jayhawker with mountains of cold water, laughed uproariously and swam away. Omark arrowed in pursuit They dove to the cave floor, ceilinged in fathoms of swirling champagne. He reached for her ankle and missed. She zoomed to the surface, an inch from his grasping fingers. It was right out of ‘Esther Williams.’ Like whales they broke surface without a ripple. Shot into whitewashed air, and sank again fast as attacking barracuda, wheeling, scattering a cloud of sand, and up, exploding in foamy moonlight.
“You’re a hick with manure on your boots!” Mrs. Peel screamed. Her laughter echoed on cold rocks. Her arms and shoulders glistened. Her hair billowed on the waves. Omark had forgotten how beautiful this sea beast was and how tauntingly infuriating she could be. He wanted to smack her a good one across the withers. Her eyes were tantalizing unsettling magnets. Omark said,
“Don’t play seduction with me, toots; I’m immune.”
“For crying out loud! Tell that to the Marines!”
B. leaned forward. Her wet, red tongue flicked his ear. Omark slapped her away.
“Quit it.”
But she ran a fingertip across his shoulders. Omark felt his detachment breaking. The cold waves tickled; the water surged, rolling them onto a rocky ledge. Despite his better judgment the cowboy found himself untying the knot of her bikini top, then the ones on the lower ribbon of cloth. He swallowed, then husked,
“On the whole I’d rather be in Philadelphia.”
“Like fun you would! In a pig’s eye!, you adorable train robber, you.”
B’s soft hands were easing off his swim trunks. She raised her head and kissed him fiercely on the mouth. He fought her off. It was an excellent job, right out of the D. H. Lawrence hit, “Women in Love.” Next her fingers slid down his spine.
“God dammit, Cadet, this is manipulative.”
“Omark… Oh, I’ve wanted you so much. I’m throwing myself at you, you dirty rat. You killed my father and took the whole city for yourself, so now you’ve got to take me too.”
The jayhawker sighed. “How do you keep the eyes from crossing when you hold the faces so close?”
“Shut ‘em. Squint and breathe heavy,” B. murmured in his ear. “Come on, Teacher, get with it; then we can live happily ever after.”
It was thrilling. After they mated, homo-sap-style, on the sharp rocks, B. said,
“Well! Gracious! What a day this has been. First your death; then my period of mourning; your tremendous achievement in operating two bodies simultaneously and now this romance, chock full of orgasms, right out of ‘Alex Comfort.’ Boy! What’s next on the agenda?”
Thoughtfully, Omark washed his genitals in the surrounding seawater, and said,
“I hate to keep bringing it up, but your Sajorian buddy is doing a wholesale snatch on the human race and Mersoid wants it stopped whatever the cost.”
She was instantly alert.
“Whatever the cost? What the hell’s that supposed to mean?”
“Now don’t jump to conclusions. I merely want you to join me in ‘possessing’ one of Scaulzo’s prisoners so we can observe what goes on from an Earthie standpoint.”
“Hey, I don’t wanna be accused of demonic possession!”
“Relax and listen. This man is a Brahmin, a young chap of illustrious, scientific family who, when he gets it together, will be known as the most brilliant human in the world. Let me emphasize: our computers show that Resnick is slated to be Earth’s leading scientist—unwitting architect of the T.S. bomb, or Timesnapper—in the near future, which explains why Scaulzo tracked him down and kidnapped him. Are you ready for this?”
B. sighed primly.
“Since you don’t give a flying shit whether I live or die anyway… Lead on, Macduff,” she said.

Chapter Twelve
The entity that had been Adrian Resnick, Jr. found himself sitting in a chair beside a brass bedstead in which Einstein lay dying.
Resnick wore rubber-cleated boots. An instant ago he’d been on a hardrock climb roped up with his partner, and they’d just reached the top of the glacier after four hours’ tricky maneuvering up a sheer rock face, and he was looking out across vast icefields, looking at the tail end of the Pleistocene age, feeling jubilant, reaching for a Baby Ruth bar, thrilled with weariness and success and the snapping, cold air and diamond-faceted view, and he was looking out over a cloudbank at Mt. Robson in the glittershiny distance.
Or else he’d gone crazy.
Petrified by shock, Adrian heard the rasps of breath sandwiched between fits of compulsive shuddering. The dying man struggled for every gasp. But where—? He looked wildly around at the unknown room. He had no memory of arriving at this place, no reason whatever for being here. The room was dingy, with a single lamp that cast sinister shadows. Horrible dump. Clammy and depressing. Bitter smell of mildew.
Outside—it sounded like just up the street—a church-bell chimed away incessantly. Bong. Bong. Bong. Bong. Adrian clung to the chair, a whirling seat on some carnivalride and he felt like an elongated diagram of himself swarming with buried-alive spectators—he was highjacked into the tachyon world—whisking along showing tiny blips of existence but mostly disappearing—a discontinuous spurt between being and unbeing—crazy sensation, your soul whirling out of the vending machine’s mouth crammed with omens and hallucinations… He tried to push his mind, to grasp more clearly what was going on. It seemed connected to the portent SOMETHING TERRIBLE GOING TO HAPPEN which had been eating his brain for days.
The dying man was sinking rapidly. Adrian recognized him not only from photos, monuments of them in lavish biographies but also from the day when, as a child, he was taken by his father to Princeton to meet Einstein. It was the year Resnick, Sr. did the cardiology work which earned him a Nobel; Adrian remembered the day with detailed, almost eidetic clarity. Himself at age four wearing a new Brooks Brothers suit and red bow tie to meet the Great Man. After listening to the adults talk interminably, he’d been escorted to a chrome-and-marble emporium by a maid and presented with his very first banana split. Einstein had been his idol for many years after that. (Until, to be scrupulously honest, Resnick, Jr. decided to enter the same field as The Master. The unified field, where there was room for only one hero. No joke.) But that had been a very, very, very long time ago. Twenty years ago. So… he had to find a pattern.
He was certain it wasn’t a dream. Nor a drug overdose (mesc, acid, he’d experimented once or twice with most of them) in which random events bump along in chaos when the trip is not good. There was no wonderdrug in existence which could produce an effect like this, because this was no “effect” at all; it was just plain, everyday reality. For instance, this was a common room, a cheap fleatrap somewhere, nothing special.
But then what—?
The chair Adrian sat in was a battered old dining chair with arms and seat covered in frayed, maroon plush. He had absolutely no memory of actually sitting down in it. A chill expanded in his intestines. He’d either gone crackers, or was the victim of a very expensive practical joke, and neither alternative was believable. He was strong, healthy and sane. And none of his enemies were billionaires. He sat confusedly watching the man on the bed. Einstein had parchmenty skin, a soft nimbus of gossamer hair, green veins through which the young physicist could see the blood slowly move. His hands were transparent. Eloquent, porcelain hands. And that famous, bristling, salt-and-pepper mustache and lofty, wrinkled forehead. Face like purest alabaster. He was beautiful, but he was dying.
Adrian wondered what, if anything, should be done. The trauma was: he felt dispossessed, no longer aware of having an intact personality. Did that sound bananas? Something had wrenched the bulkheads of his mind and caused an incident seepage. Things were mixing that shouldn’t be mixing. Simple things like life and death for instance. Or like truth and illusion. Horrified, he sat and watched, trying to get a clue as to what steps should be taken.
He tried to examine everything in the room as carefully as possible. The walls were crumbling. Plaster had fallen, bricks were exposed and here and there posters had been tacked over the bricks: advertisements for a Ringling Brothers circus. In one corner of the room a flock of scraggy pigeons pecked at garbage. On the nightstand was a plate of half-eaten beef and gravy, congealed, many days old. There was a stubby candle, a glass of wine containing a drowned fly. He panned everything slowly. The floor consisted of raw planks oozing resin. The ceiling was low, of dingy plaster, badly rainmarked. A smell of mould and wet cement permeated everything. Even the dying man’s bedding was damp with mildew.
But wait. Hold on a minute. Einstein had died many years ago. Of course; Resnick remembered feeling extreme grief at the time but now he felt nothing except confusion. His thoughts had become a vague blur. Flashes of other people’s lives kept invading him. For a few seconds he would become those other beings and lose all knowledge of himself, which threw him into a kind of hysteria because he knew it was not hallucination; it was real as his own body, as the fingers he held up and wiggled, the feet he banged on the floor…
The Master’s fingernails had taken on the bluish tinge of necrosis. He sucked air as if it were thicker than grease and impossible to inhale. It was painful to watch. Resnick despised death, he hated that insolent intruder, king of cruelty, that sublime dictator who (whatever else you said about the sonofabitch) at least had the power to take final and permanent charge of mankind. Funny how life seemed to leave the hands first. The Master’s hands were wasted claws that stirred feebly on the sheets. Looking away in despair, the young man noticed that the room had no door. No door! There were lace-curtained shutters over a square window, a glow of saffron filtering through the crack, but no door anywhere.
The churchbell, or whatever it was, had stopped its nervewracking tolling but now there was a sound of horses and carriage wheels rattling interminably on the stones outside. Adrian knew he was reacting like a cornered laboratory monkey. An animal crouching in panic as if baffled by a superior, malevolent intelligence. Head lowered, he glanced around at the circus posters. They were all the same. A Bengal tiger, springing into the room through a wreath of flames. He felt giddy and nauseated. He wanted to lie down, throw up, didn’t know what. He noticed that Einstein’s eyes were wide open and staring at the ceiling. The breathing was still ragged but much easier. Hopefully the crisis had passed.
A new spasm of fear came when the Master’s eyes dropped, alert and keen, and fastened on his own. Those eyes; he felt threatened by their magnetism. He hadn’t realized how much he feared death, and by extension the dying themselves, who seemed to belong to another lifestyle than his own; they were a breed apart, and sometimes he felt they were staging the whole act as an affront, to spite the young and the living, since old people were often spiteful and it was better to keep a distance between death and yourself. But right now what choice did he have. None. None whatsoever.
Laboring for breath, the Master wheezed, “You—You’ve—”
“Hush, don’t talk,” Adrian muttered. He was afraid any effort would bring death on immediately. But the Master seemed determined. “Made a—very—” “Never mind. Just rest.”
The withered hand lifted, indicating that more was to be communicated. Everything seemed quiet outside; the carriages had stopped rattling in the street. Einstein mumbled, “One… obvious error.”
“What?”
No answer.
Resnick bent closer. “What? What error?”
“Abberations—”
But the dying man began a severe coughing bout. His chest and shoulders jerked. This would weaken him but there was nothing to be done about it. Resnick waited impatiently, clenching and unclenching his fists. The whole situation was becoming unbearable. A full minute went by before Einstein could form the words.
“One mistake—”
“Do you mean in regards to my work?”
“Crisscrossing—discrepancies—”
The labored gulps continued for a few seconds and then, “Which cancel the—the progression—”
“Go on! Go on!”
Einstein struggled for air, gesturing. “The proof of—”
“For Christ’s sake say what you mean,” Resnick cried frantically.
“The outer—the outer—”
“Yes, yes, go on.”
“The—The—”
Resnick ground his teeth and nearly screamed, “Say it! For God’s sake don’t keep me hanging.”
Einstein gestured, unable to continue. A rattling had begun deep in his chest. Resnick whispered urgently, pleading.
“Please. Just say it. You can do that, can’t you, for Christ’s sake?”
The Master coughed and said what sounded like, “Dry wind complex; uncertainty.”
All at once the head lolled backward on the reedy neck and the body seemed to swell almost imperceptibly. The eyes were half open. They glittered in the lamplight but Resnick knew the man was dead. He jumped up with a horrified exclamation and began jerking at the locked shutters of the window. He had to get out as fast as possible. It was airless and deadly in here. When the shutters wouldn’t open he gave them a couple of sharp kicks with his heel and the window flew open and banged on its casement.
Outside as far as the eye could see were empty fields.
No roads anywhere. Nothing but empty acres of stubble. A flat prairie stretched to the horizon, probably much like the old Texas panhandle or Kansas in settler days. A rusty fire escape was bolted loosely to the wall. When a wind came roaring down, the fire escape banged and the shutters began slamming. The wind rattled loose shingles; it indented the yellow-gray plain with streaks of dark yellow and suddenly it hooked the pair of old lace curtains and ballooned them straight out of the window. Resnick fled down the fire escape as fast as he could, glad to get out of that house of death.
Nevertheless, he was curious. He circled the building and saw that it had no door anywhere; and just the one square window at the top of the house. He could see for miles all around. There wasn’t another house in sight. This house was more of a barn or silo, a gaunt brick edifice with those curtains fluttering in the prairie wind like a demented Something waving goodbye to Nothing, the shutters knocking loudly at every gust. Utterly weird!, this whole scene. As freakishly ordinary as a dream.
But at least he was out of the damned shack, and feeling somewhat better in the fresh air. More “like himself,” whatever that meant. There was no reason to choose one direction over another so he set off toward the sun, walking across a field which looked like the stubble of alfalfa harvested maybe a month ago. The field extended for miles; otherwise this was featureless country, a little sandy gorse, gravel, red earth here and there, some yellow clay, but never so much as a wagon rut, let alone a house or a mailbox. What had happened to the people, if any? Had they all died of the plague? There was something grim and hard about this landscape. No animals showed themselves. Not a squirrel or a bird had he seen; not so much as an ant. Nothing but flat prairie. A deserted region.
Adrian couldn’t understand what Einstein had been doing out here in the tulies in a lonely farmhouse. As for that final message, the sooner he put it out of his mind the better. He knew his own work was perfect and that it proved once and for all, among other hard-edged realities, that “time” was a “circle”; so let the tigers roar, they couldn’t trap him at any point. Nobody yet knew he’d just completed a paper which would scrap the old thinking and would complete Einstein’s lifework and would get him, Resnick, a throne in heaven between Galileo and Copernicus, just beyond God’s right hand; he’d taken a blind leap into the unknown and landed on his feet. At one stroke he had demythologized the known universe. Now he could only guess at what the shattering effects might be. So to take that deathbed gibberish seriously would be a vitality-sapping error.
His boots crunched dried grass. The horizon was a dancing, gray haze in the sun. Perhaps he had cracked under the workload and the whole thing was madness, every bit of it, including his not-yet-published paper which in that case would be a figment, a delusion of grandeur. But he had to dismiss these ideations because he knew he was sane and capable. No, there was something else going on there; a mistake had been made—but what?… What had Einstein said? Internal contradictions? Paradoxes? Something like that. Shit, best thing was to wipe it out of his mind completely.
The young physicist hiked for an hour or more, putting. miles behind him, following the sun toward where it would eventually set in the west. There were several hours of daylight left. The sunshine glittered on the endless alfalfa stubble. Peculiar country. No sounds anywhere but his footsteps and the monotonous, soughing wind. Tomorrow he’d be at work at the bevatron in the Berkeley Hills. But would he make it? He longed to be in that familiar, snug environment of high energy physics, radioactive isotopes, subatomic particles, the comfortable life of research rigorously channelled, and next year he’d be at Stanford to work with the linear accelerator; of course he’d make it— what else? He chewed a piece of grass but it tasted dry and bitter. No moisture anywhere in this godforsaken landscape. But he was bound to hit a road or a creek soon.
After another hour of hiking, eyes sharpened by thirst and fatigue, Resnick saw what he thought was a dustcloud twirling on the horizon. The dust contracted cohesively; yep—it was coming his way and at a good clip too. Could be a twister. Dust devil. They were dangerous. No, it was defining itself into a person, one man alone, thank God; but whether on foot or horseback Adrian couldn’t tell.
Ten minutes later the twister had resolved itself into the shape of a longlegged pedestrian, coming this way… Hang on. There was something peculiar about the man. He approached in a line with the bright sun and couldn’t be made out in detail. A blurry shadow preceded him over the yellow-gray earth. But what a shadow. Adrian shaded his eyes, walking slowly.
Then he stopped.
The stranger was a tall, rangy thing; an apparition. An it. It walked in a loose-jointed, floppy way, churning its flat feet in the silt. It was a skeleton. A human skeleton, right hand outstretched as if in greeting.
Adrian turned and began running. He watched the thing over his shoulder; it had a long, bounding stride and was soon gaining on him. Its fleet slapped the ground closer and closer and since there was no winning this race Adrian slowed down. If it tried anything funny—But the skeleton looked harmless enough; it was very tall and it kept thrusting out the lower jaw, which made it wildly funnylooking. A patch of sunlight played across its face-bones. This effect gave the physicist a shuddery thrill more of curiosity than fear. The poor sucker seemed desperate to catch up. Now it chattered its teeth in a lipless, permanent smile. Feeling asinine beyond words, Adrian snapped,
“Who sent you? Hah? What do you want?”
The thing flapped its arms and banged its jaws. Sure, this would be a great way of making a person look like a complete fool. Throw him into a strange situation, then record his responses. Use them to discredit or blackmail him. Angrily he asked,
“Well, are you transmitting my reactions? What’s the story here?”
The skeleton waved its fingers and Adrian asked,
“What the fuck do you want?”
He’d forgotten, or maybe never known, how absurd a human skeleton really looks. This one was out of a sideshow, lightly floured with dust and making bumps and gyrations with its grimy pelvis—ludicrous! Adrian stood grinning. What could he do? The skeleton held up a hand for attention. Then it squatted, willowy hands dangling between widespread knees. Craftily it exposed one finger, two fingers, three fingers, like a catcher signalling from home plate, and suddenly it leaped up and began kicking its big flat feet and jerking its bald, high-domed skull. Adrian let out a guffaw. At this, the thing gestured with polished armbones… Was it protesting?
“Okay,” Adrian told it.
It snapped a military salute, rigidly at attention. The sun hammered down. A whiff of scorch blew off the gravel. Adrian rubbed his eyes which had begun to ache from hours of glare. Without warning, a bony hand shot out and snatched his wrist. The thing was strong; stronger than he’d realized. He jerked away in disgust, saying,
“What are you after, you sonofabitch?” Then had to snicker at his own words, and added quickly,
“Don’t do that again. Move on now, get away, leave me alone.”
The shoulders sagged, the head swayed on its column of neckbones and the big, yellow teeth nibbled and clacked. Adrian kept grinning. He couldn’t help it. The skeleton was frantically trying to articulate some damnfool emotion or other. It did kneebends, beaming its lidless sockets toward the physicist. When he didn’t react it circled him, stifflegged, weight on heels, fluttering prehensile fingers. The teeth chattered away in rhythm; their clicking might have been anger at Adrian’s amusement—who the hell could tell? It opened its jaws wide and pointed inside with a yellowed fingerbone. There were a lot of fillings in the teeth, mostly gold. Adrian gave an embarrassed bark of laughter.
“I can’t help you. Go away.”
It pressed hands together in a praying attitude. Adrian threw it a malicious little sidelong glance, then felt ashamed and this time when the fingers reached for him he stood and let his wrist be manipulated. The spidery touch was so unnerving he wanted to slap it off like a disgusting bug, but the thing was too pitiful. He stood it as long as he could; then he said,
“God damn it, what do you want?”
The skeleton fawned in gratitude (or anger? Grief? What?) and its fangs clicked peevishly. The left bicuspids were missing. There were two goldwired bridges in its ear-to-ear grin. Adrian hid a selfconscious laugh—of course he felt sorry for the poor sucker. Nicked shins, toes disintegrating—so. Even an apparition could arose this mordant pity in him. Interesting: it used the same weapons as live people. It took his hands and placed them on its pate, ducking so he could cherish every grubby suture. In and out of the cavernous eyeholes it guided Adrian’s fingers until he was ready to scream. Over the knobs of its collarbone, down the scaly humerus, insisting that he linger at some petrified scartissue where once the forearm had been broken (in childhood? And had classmates autographed its cast? Somber thought). Then it balanced on one foot, holding tight to his shoulder, and began to lift its leg so Resnick could stroke and fondle the eroded kneecap, but he couldn’t stand another second of this; he gave a snort of maniac laughter and pushed the hand away.
But the poor scarecrow was desperate. It hung its head, grinding its molars and repeatedly grabbing for Adrian’s hand. The grotesque pantomime was not only ridiculous but intolerable; sharp thumbs kept poking him in the ribs in an irritating way. When the pest finally swarmed him, bear-hugging with something like ardor, pushing its chalkiness against his body and trying to scrape him all over with its crusty armbones, he let out a yelp of anger and frustration, and gave it a sharp kick in the dirty-gray pelvis which sent it reeling.
“Fuck off!” he screamed.
The skeleton caught its balance, staggered and turned to him, hands folded in supplication, jaws banging away like castanets. The frantic spook was about to rattle its teeth right out of its mouth. Adrian couldn’t endure one more touch of those dust-caked, brittle bones. The empty sockets beseeched him mournfully. The skeleton hung on like a limpet; this was terrible; he couldn’t push it away. When its elbow happened to jab him accidentally, but painfully, on the cheek, he shoved back in anger, and then when the desperate thing grabbed both his arms he slammed his fist into its breastbone in exasperation.
It fell with a, noisy clatter, breaking apart as it struck the ground. Resnick backed off in horror, pity, disgust, then he turned and walked rapidly out of the area. The last he saw of the skeleton it was trying to crawl on its damaged knees to him, beseeching piteously.
But for what? What could he do? Nothing at all. He turned once and screamed,
“I can’t do anything for you! Leave me alone!” Then he turned and ran like a jackrabbit until his heart pounded and he was streaming at every pore, dying for a drink of water. Several times he had to jump a watercut, baked dry, where weeds pushed up through silt On and on went the dusty stubble. Odd: all these hours and he hadn’t seen one cow to eat the goddamned fodder in the first place. This country lacked any sign of river or creek; nothing but cracked sod, bits of glittering mica and weed-clumps; a sweeping, silent, deserted countryside. Jesus. He kept moving. Forget that poor, damned, ruined skeleton. Solve the problem at hand. Right now he’d give anything for a glass of water and a chance to rest.
After another hour Adrian finally saw a house on the horizon. About time! He’d had it with following the sun like a somnambulist! The strungout feeling was still there, plus a touch of queasiness, but he felt enormously relieved. With any luck they’d have a phone. At least there’d be water. A big glass of icewater or maybe a can or two of beer. He was dying to hear a human voice; would love to gab with some good old farmer and wife and half-a-dozen kids. Sit around and shoot the bull, watch TV, pass a football with the sons, get asked to a farmstyle feed. He was beginning to think he’d fallen off the Wall or some incredible thing. Maybe he died, huh, and this was heaven. It was a nice heaven at that: no gumwrappers or beer cans or crumpled cigarette packs. He chuckled; how fantastic to see a human habitation again after the interminable prairie. He prayed these people would at least have a telephone.
The wind blew strong from the rear; sailing before it, Adrian broke into a rapid trot The evening was getting chilly. He could sure use a wash and a shave. A warm shower would be fantastic. His sweat felt colder than alcohol on his skin. Probably looked like holy hell too. Filthy and haggard, a wild man, a rapist-murderer come to kill them in their beds. He wiped his face on a sleeve, raked at his hair and glancing up, caught one foot in a tangle of grass and went sprawling.
Oh Jesus.
Wasn’t that the same horrible barn he’d run away from, hours ago? The house without any doors?
He held his breath and listened. He could hear the fire escape rattling in the wind. The shutters slammed closed, trapping the curtains, then banging open like a pistolshot. The sun was red on the horizon; obviously he hadn’t travelled in a circle.
Nothing that simple.
The curtains ballooned from the window.
Adrian paused on hands and knees, staring at the ground.

Chapter Thirteen
Oh sure, Benaroya realized that Scaulzo was doing some awful things to the humans he kidnapped. But in lotsa ways, they asked for it, going around with that “Humanity Over All” attitude—I mean what could you expect? Act like that and you’re bound to get kicked in the tush sooner or later. Anyway right now her job was to interview lots and lots of people, and figure out, if possible, just what was happening on this fruitcakey planet.
Wearing big, round sunglasses, she hopped in front of passersby and stuck a microphone in their faces. She asked what they thought of life on Earth. They’d tell her all about their laws and economics, and about all the contradictions, and all the hidden corruptions, and zomma zomma zomma zomma—POOF!, she almost fell asleep standing up.
By Golly, that would never do. Timesies! She opened her compact and applied vermilion lipstick to her lips, noting once again that she was a real gone tomato with indigo eyes, and she was real voluptuous, kinda slinky and sulky; a cute chick; she winked at herself and snapped the compact shut, then dropped it into her cleavage.
“Ma’am or Sir whichever you are. I am from another star system. I would sincerely like to know what you think of life on Earth.”
Well they didn’t believe her in Shanghai or Stockholm, or Melbourne or Marseilles or Miami Beach. She found that most every human had three main interests in life, and these interests were:
1.  Do you like me?
2.  Am I more, or less, attractive than others?
3.  How do I sound on tape?
and after that, they thought about who had the most money, and how money could be shuffled around so that they could get more of it, and still claim they were doing the shuffling mostly for other people. Everyone was very concerned about Other People; at least as far as the talking went.
Everyone was tremendously clever, thinking and figuring all the time; they were wonderful talkers all full of schemes and opinions. But the poor sweethearts didn’t realize that their schemes were short-term, because they were always rooted in brainwash.
Somebody threw a grapefruit bomb in Dublin and 200,000 pellets went in every direction, but Mrs. Peel was only slightly pocked on one side of her face.
She was mugged five times in Mexico, and raped twice in South America; or almost raped, that is; she cried a little, having to de-genital, with a firm, twisting motion, the poor, sad clods who made the attempts. She was pick-pocketed eleven times, and kicked and slapped often until she learned not to jam the mike in people’s faces. She was given 837 religious tracts; groped 159 times, and propositioned repeatedly.
Then in Marrakesh, a grimly upsetting thing happened.
Mrs. Peel was standing in front of a pink stucco building conducting her interviews. There was a crowd of tourists milling around, and she had just asked a man, “What do you think humans should do to make life on Earth somewhat tolerable?”
The man began explaining about taxation and representation, and Mrs. Peel forced herself to listen, which put her into a light hypnotic trance. Suddenly there was a scream and everyone scattered. Before she could jump, a piano, being moved by crane to the top of the building, snapped its cable and came plummeting down, crushing Mrs. Peel to a blood-red pulp beneath its weight.
The stunned audience shrieked and ogled. They were fascinated by the sight of blood oozing from under a piano! The police came screaming up in a squadcar and Benaroya, angry, badly shaken up, returned in freeform to Vonderra to pick out another body in a hurry. She had lots to do. She couldn’t fuck around forever. It was obvious that being on Earth was messing up her reflexes something awful. Did that piano fall by accident? Or was she getting paranoid, like all these others? Anyway, she had to move fast and quit worrying.
As calmly as possible, she checked the stock bodies available. The staff had supplied duplicates of extinct human bods, the type used about a million years ago; oh boy, it would be ginger peachy to wear one of them! Nobody’d mess with her then! Probes had confirmed the existence of an ancient, heroic race of proto-humans, referred to in later books as “angels”; of course they were just the early people, who’d destroyed themselves by war. The present Earthies were their degenerated, non-telepathic descendants. No wonder the poor babydolls seemed to have a scar on their little psyches. If she showed up wearing one of these old-style bods, zappo!, they’d all go right over the cliff, so forget it.
She paused before a Mary Worth body. Wow. Mary hung there super-good, gray-haired, with her eyes closed like a saint’s. Benaroya would love to be this old meddler for a week or two. She’d move in with some young couple, and she’d show them how wrong their ways were, and how right she was, and she’d drive them absolutely crazy, and do a paper on it. Yep, Mary was self-righteous as an uncooked missionary; she’d drop in for the weekend and hang around for six months and nobody could disagree with her because she was too Nice. Thoughtfully, B. bounced Mary Worth’s left mammary two or three times. Yep; this was indeed the most powerful human being in the world. Only a politician or hardened criminal could outfox her Niceness. The average person would be forced into instant, slave-like agreement. However, Mary was arthritic, and possessed no talent for streetfighting, so B. had to pass her up—Holy cats but it was tough deciding what to wear!
In the middle of her quandary, the nixon brought in a handwritten message from Jennison. The big lug hadn’t called for days and B. was about ready to spit in his eye. The note said he’d jayhawked an H-2 unit just for her, getting a body shot out from under him in the process; trying to make it up to her probably. Huh! Well he could go take a flying jump in the lake. She wasn’t going to crawl in the feathers with him again. That’s what a girl got for being too easy. Anyway, the nixon had brought the H-2 and placed it in a secret compartment in her handbag.
She finally chose a Virginia Woolf body, circa 1903, and instructed the nixon to test-run the bod. It had been stored for decades between Marcel Proust and Little Emily.
When the bod was ready to go, Virginia Woolf cleared her desk, sat down and gingerly examined the H-2 unit. Clever mechanism, but ghastly. Looked like an ordinary Smith and Wesson .38 with a silencer. She snapped out the magazine and examined the terrible pellets inside the chamber. They looked like ordinary bullets. Each one could generate a laser-type beam which the pin would activate, hurling it down the barrel at the target.
Richard Nixon was bending over to wax the woodwork. Sneaking up behind him, Virginia Woolf pumped six slugs into his body just over the heart. There was a reflexive muscle-jerk each time but no wound appeared.
“Did that hurt, Richard, baby?”
“Not in the least, Your Grace.”
The nixon would feel nothing, not because he was insensitive, but because the H-2 unit worked only on a free being. It clamped you into whatever body you were occupying at the moment…Ugh. Beastly concept. Only a Sajorian pig could have invented it. Woolf hated the whole idea, but, she had to do it She reloaded, snapped up the safety and dropped the gun into her bag. At least she could handle the deadly thing, if she had to.
Next Virginia Woolf returned to the United States, doing interviews with anyone and everyone. The folks said things like,
“Force the country to live up to its ideals.”
“Abolish force.”
“Crucify shoplifters.”
“Make all goods free to everyone.”
“Follow the word of God.”
“Follow the word of Marx and Engels.”
“Follow the word of the Divine Marquis.”
The Earthies were so different from Rysemians it was like comparing clouds to hammers or something. Rysemians simply were not “social animals.” They could detach from space-time and live alone for a jillion forevers. They were individuals through and through. When they worked as a group, though, they were very effective, because they weren’t groupies. This sounded like a paradox but it was really what made it so neat to be a Rysemian and not an Earthie.
Lots of folks kept demanding what they called “equal opportunity.” What in the world could that mean? They had microscopic life spans, and no opportunity at all as far as she could see. She hoped the computers could figure that one out because she sure as hell couldn’t.
Then it happened. Without warning, the net tightened.
Virginia Woolf was in Seattle finishing up the day’s interviews when a strange illness came over her.
Nausea. Dizziness. A feeling that she was going to faint, like a dumbbell, right here in front of God and everybody.
The crowd kept staring so she kept interviewing. But the sick, wrenching paranoia got worse. It was like a Presence toying with her mind; sadistic, gloating… then gentle and soothing… then just plain scary… Virginia Woolf wouldn’t give in to it… She’d keep working… Keep a level head on her shoulders…
“And your name, sir?”
“Count Wladislaw de Falke,” a smooth voice purred.
“And where, uh, do you hail from?”
Ulp! Everything was going round and round. An enormous weight pressed down on her brain. She heard the man ask,
“Are you ill?”
“Whew—just a bit dizzy—”
The buildings bobbed like egg-crates in the wake of a steamer.
“My dear, you need a brandy. Let me help.”
A firm hand took possession of her arm. As they shoved through the gaping crowd, her head seemed to clear a bit. Down the street a flashing sign said CANLIS. Virginia Woolf found herself rushed inside under the haughty eyes of doormen and seated at a table. The feeling of dizziness had vanished as fast as it struck.
“Feeling better now?”
Her companion’s voice was frosted with Balkan sophistication. Who way this dude? There was something vaguely familiar about him. She sequestered her gum on the butterplate, eyes narrowed in concentration. The Count was ordering brandy, insisting that she drink up, then without further talk he ordered a sumptuous dinner for two and dismissed the waiter.
“I believe you’re just hungry, my dear,” he said.
“I believe you have gotta lotta nerve!”
The Count smiled at Virginia Woolf. He had a deeply lined outdoorsman’s face. The smile was a fashionably toothy leer, full of unpleasant charm, the kind Earthie women seemed to find so devastating. Personally Woolf couldn’t stand him; she wanted to kick his shins under the table for being so pushy; and what’s more, his shell blunted her every probe, which was beginning to confuse the bejeesus out of her.
The waiters acted like they knew him, fawning and hovering though he treated them with curt disdain. Woolf reclaimed her gum and chewed busily. People at nearby tables saluted the Count in awe as if he were the great benefactor of their city or something. That was kinda sickening, but…
“Wudja say your name was again?”
“I am Count de Falke, last of my line.”
Gee, he was a fascinating man. She got all squiggly when she looked into his eyes.
Hey wait. Was she actually falling for this bozo? Next thing you knew she’d be listening to all the sucky TV voices and running out to buy what they said, and then maybe running for Congress or some other fate worse than death—ugh! Shuddersville.
She said, “Well, I sort of wanted to drop into some fancy joint and knock back a few after work.”
“Good; follow my lead and we’ll get along nicely.”
Oh, wow. He was really attractive and romantic. Golly. And he paid attention to her, not like Omark… Dammit, this was serious! She realized she was probably dealing with the Prince of Darkness and yet here she was acting like some dopey schoolgirl with a crush. “Get hold of yourself, Benaroya,” she told herself firmly. “You know this bastard wants to murder you. Snap out of it, dope! Think!”
Aloud she said, “Yeah, you’re Count de Falke all right—and if I’m not mistaken you moonlight as the meanest cop in Italy.”
At that crucial moment, she happened to remember the H-2 tucked away in her handbag. Ulp! The worst thing she could do was concentrate on that goddam thing! If this bozo was Scaulzo or one of his men, and he found out she had the H-2 unit…
Resettling her mind screen, she fumbled in the bag, casually shifting the bulge that was the freeze gun, and brought out a bottle of Cutex Hot Glow Nail Polish and a Kleenex and began to do her nails. Waiters were serving the first course; they kept giving her withering glances but she was used to that. When the waiters had gone, the Count leaned toward her and said,
“Touche, my clever one. Off with our masks. But why do you hate me so passionately? Am I not entitled to my little games the same as you are?”
“Little games! That’s a hot one.” She popped her gum, recapping the Cutex. “You’re a beaut.”
“You’ve injured more people than I,” he pointed out.
Woolf waved her painted left-hand nails and blew on them. She’d do the other paw later. Thoughtfully she replaced the gum on the butter plate and began spooning onion soup. So okay. The die was cast Since the battle would take place on Earth, she’d have to use every rotten trick she had learned here.
She batted her lashes and said, “You wouldn’t kid a girl, would you?”
Yep. Tricks. Which meant mostly how to scheme, exploit and manipulate. Everyone manipulated everyone, here on Earth. Meanwhile protesting vigorously that it’s only the other people who are doing it Heck, even year old babies have learned to be first class manipulators. Okay; she’d try it on this phony Count With him, such degraded techniques might only work momentarily, but any sliver of advantage might be crucial.
Woolf smiled at the Count and fluttered her lashes, meanwhile  pursing her lips to  indicate  that  she  was secretly laughing in his face. She said,
“You don’t really know much about Earthie lifestyles, do you, dear,” lacing her words with as much scorn as possible.
“How’s that?”
“Well I mean who are you? Look at you. Sheesh! It’s too quaint.”
That was bound to prick him. Aha—his gaze wavered slightly—she’d scored! A mere fleabite to be sure, but at least the great Sajorian had shown he wasn’t invulnerable. She continued serenely,
“Do you really pass with that corny Count routine? I mean your Sergeant was creaky enough. I’d think any human would see through you in a minute. They’re not entirely dumb, you know. Now don’t get upset. I’m only trying to help, for your own good.”
That was always a sure-fire weapon when Earthies used it on each other. Yep, he was definitely feeling a twinge. She said,
“I mean you act like an alien from the Dog Star or somewhere. You’ve got that glassy stare, not smarmy and authentic like a proper Earthie,” making delicate slurping noises with the soup.
This process of “cutting down to size” was, according to anthropologists’ findings, the basis of all manipulation. It was how Earthies ripped each other up to make each other obey. It seemed idiotic and unworkable, yet, they used it in very sophisticated ways; sometimes so covertly you couldn’t detect it. Parents, teachers, employers and lovers all used it to great advantage. Nobody had developed a counter-weapon, except the chronically insane, and of course imbeciles and certain artists who seemed to be the only immune ones. A couple more thrusts and Scaulzo would be putty in her hands; daintily she picked up a lettuce leaf and nibbled it, little finger crooked, murmuring,
“But then it’s none of my business,” with an arch smile.
“Well now, we could make it your business, my pretty maid.”
“Yeah? How?”
“You shouldn’t judge. You must have compassion. Show good will.”
“Yeah?” Boy, he was exciting. He was really a dream-boat. She’d have to watch it He reached for her hand, and pressed each nail in turn, thrillingly. Then he said,
“You’ve gained a lot of weight”
She snatched her hand back with an exclamation. The nerve! The very nerve of this cheap bozo! Momentarily, the anthropologist in her took over; this was how human controls work. You get all indignant because some jabeep insults your body. Next thing you know you’re carrying an M-1 across the veldt or something. Aloud she crooned,
“Honey, stick that where the moon don’t shine.”
“You’re arrogant, Benaroya; divinely so; that pleases me.”
“In a pig’s eye!”
“Keep it up. I’m going to enjoy this tremendously.”
“You’re Ml of it,” she brayed.
Waiters cleared the table and served steak and mashed potatoes and fancy vegetables and lots of wine. Apparently her manipulation had worked. But now she wasn’t so sure it had been a good idea, because he seemed hooked on her, in a kind of evil way, and it was very uncool to have some malevolent creep obsessed with you. But, it was too late to worry about that now. Wow. Some strange, some exceedingly strange things were happening to her mind… The chronic homesickness had surfaced again… She wanted to be at home so bad she could just die. To be out of this apish body, swimming among fronds and seaflowers… listening to Rysemian music of the spheres instead of this jungle noise from the bandstand… Oh, she was sick of junglebunnies who screamed “Babeh, get it awwwn!”… It was unbearable not to be among tranquil friends, the serene dolphin people, far from tiresome Earthie hysteria…
Holy mackerel! What was going on here? She’d dropped her shield like a complete dope, in the presence of this creepy enemy. No, worse, the enemy was forcing her shield aside, and for some reason, Benaroya could no longer resist.
The Count was duelling with Virginia Woolf, using only his eyes. His eyes drove her toward an abyss of terror. Suddenly she realized the malignancy of his goal; those eyes, a compelling thrust… ancient shadow… living spirit of Evil…
“No!” she screamed, and grabbed the table to keep from falling.
“Control yourself. People are looking.” The Count dabbed his lips with a napkin in superficial reproof; but underneath, he quivered with sadistic triumph. So now she knew. Now she realized what this was all about… Woolf knew better than to meet the enemy head-on. She withdrew mentally and became as water, nothing but water, skimming rocks, sand, roaring over falls, freezing, boiling, water unconquerable because it kept its own nature… boomed along invincibly…
Beautiful. Ha-ha! She slipped right out from under this rat’s attempt at hypnosis. To show her unruffled poise, she jeered.
“So you’re world famous Count de Falke. What a thrill! I’ve seen you in the news winning peace prizes and heading up charity drives. I knew I’d seen you, on those wonderful public service announcements everyone’s talking about What do you do for a living, Count?”
“I dabble. Breed horses, keep a few falcons, race cars.”
“Really. How thrilling.”
“Rolled over in flames at Monte Carlo last year but managed to walk away with bruises.”
“Golly. How tremendously upperclass.”
“And you, my dear, are absolutely intriguing. Would you like to join me in a race tomorrow?”
“No, let’s talk about your work. I’ve heard you kidnap Earthies and sell them to vivisectionists, and I just wondered, is there any truth to that story?”
The Count’s lips tightened; then he leaned forward, smiling.
“Guilty as charged; for what it’s worth. Earthies are too stupid and helpless to give me any sport. I’ve taken a highly advanced specimen—but you already know that, don’t you—an innovator in what they laughingly call ‘science’; one Adrian Resnick; he’s a bit of a thrill but not much.” A conqueror’s smile, full of arrogance. “That’s why you are so important, Benaroya. You won’t scream and die before I extract a little excitement from you.”
Woolf took a deep breath and said, “Go tell your mother she’s calling you.”
The waiter brought an iced dessert, doused in brandy and set fire to the concoction with a lighter. Scaulzo’s mesmeric voice, and now this fire, were too much. Woolf lost control. She felt herself go tumbling down, down, into the ever-widening flame… She jerked awake with a protest.
The Count was pressing her fingers. Woolf couldn’t escape a compulsion to stare deeply into his eyes. Noxious, immeasurable, points of converging fire… The hold on her mind was agony… And yet: fascination. Revulsion, then attraction. Irresistible. No wonder the demon could do anything with anyone. Part of her wanted to scream and run. The other part wanted to grovel, and worship, and—Horrible! She couldn’t control herself! Anything might happen! Now she was falling—
De Falke watched, a smirk on his lips. The Rysemian found it infuriating.
“Struggling binds you tighter,” he murmured. “This is the mental form of certain medieval tortures. The hook-lined mask; the rat in the face-cage… But never give up fighting, because I enjoy it so much. Will you promise that?”
Benaroya sat back rigidly.
“I promise,” she heard her own voice muttering.
“Good! Since you’re so boastful, we’ll begin tomorrow with a snowcar race down Whistler Mountain in British Columbia. My helicopter will take us there in one hour. We can breakfast on the way. I want everything just right for you, my pet”
Her lips tried to shape a refusal. Instead, she was nodding. The Count continued,
“My condominium adjoins that of the Prime Minister and his wife. I’ve arranged a foursome for bridge after the race—to accustom you to your new role.”
“What new role?… Hey, cut that out.”
He’d reached forward and was pinching her chin between thumb and forefinger. Virginia Woolf tried to recoil from this ridiculous tableau but everything seemed frozen. The ambivalence had started again. Cobra and bird! She felt intrigued and excited, degraded, confused, filled with a primitive hatred… mixed with a surprisingly compulsive lust…
“And so you are hooked,” Scaulzo murmured. “Just like any savage. I’m under your skin like a drug. And tomorrow…”
“Don’t hold your breath,” she shrilled, grabbing wildly for any advantage.
“Tomorrow’s stakes will be high. Loser yields to winner, body and soul, and is forever possessed. I look forward to such an exquisite victory.”
He stood up. “Must dash; Resnick and his friend will be needing my tender care. As for you, you’ll get a good night’s sleep in my penthouse on top of the CBS building. My chauffeur will pick you up outside. Run along and do exactly as I say and you’ll suffer very little pain.”
The Count clicked his heels, grinned and strode off.
Virginia Woolf remained transfixed, staring at an empty wineglass. Exactly what the hell was happening? It was like being jerked and yanked, a puppet who couldn’t see the strings…
Or had she imagined that gloating basilisk across the table? For an instant Scaulzo had revealed his true body: metallic scales, webbed hands, a gargoyle’s beaked head with protruding eyeballs, and from his shoulders sprouted the filmy, curving, mysteriously veined wings…
It was the old, time worn dichotomy. The battle of Good and Evil; wow; and she’d be forced into some dumb cliche of a chase scene—just because this was Earth, planet of commercial machismo, where the foxiest crook called the shots.
And not even Virginia Woolf could escape. Who ever ran from Scaulzo? The command of the Lord of Darkness was all-powerful. She had to think of a way out. She had to master this phony Count!
Tomorrow she’d be forced into a winner-take-all race, with the odds stacked the wrong way.
No question about who had to win.

Chapter Fourteen
Squinting up, trying to focus just above his own brows, Adrian Resnick saw… An atrocity? A gag? Or what?
Either a crude brain operation had been performed while he was delirious, or: “they” were definitely trying to drive him crazy.
He yanked at the chains. Futile. Couldn’t raise his arms more than a few inches. A steel collar clamped his neck to the wall of this cell, or dungeon, torture chamber, whatever this godawful place was.
Resnick thought he’d located the pattern. He’d been kidnapped and was being forced through a battery of realistic hallucinations. The plan was to break him, for information. “They” had to be a foreign power; no small group could pull off a stunt like this. Possible? No—but better than black mystery.
The forehead bulge was horrible but a worse, a much more alarming, situation faced Resnick. His climbing partner Hugh Cassidy lay chained nearby and Cassidy’s face looked drawn and corpselike. The head was lolling at an odd angle. The pair of them must have been intercepted at the glacier (last words he remembered were Hugh’s triumphant “We did it, kid! We’re halfway up!”) and brought here, unconscious, by agents of the foreign power—or fanatics? CIA experimenters? Devils?—a power with a technology so sophisticated it blew his mind; yet a power hot after his own unpublished nuclear secrets… And that didn’t make sense. Was Hugh dead? No, God damn it, he couldn’t be dead!, his chest (or the flickering light) seemed to move.
This was an unthinkable ordeal. And Adrian was completely responsible for it. He’d kept insisting the climb would “cheer Hugh up.” Now the trick was: not to flip, but to relax utterly and think calmly. Just above his brows, a section of bone had been cut away and the frontal lobes pulled an inch out of his forehead. Illusion? Those two shiny globes over his eyes couldn’t be brain tissue. Shit no. No way. Not even Hitler’s clever little vivisectionists could do a job like this, and manage to keep the “patient” alive. This had to be one more simulacrum. “They” could lock him into any environment they chose; after Einstein’s death (a horrible mind-zap, realer than real, which still forced him into cold sweats) he’d gone through life after life, after life, after life, as different people, and the treadmill was now perceptibly speeding up. It was all weirdly loathsome, in an unheard-of way; senseless—not just crazy-trip senseless, but… alien.
He thought of the TV newscast he’d sneered at only yesterday. Extraterrestrials. Well, you couldn’t rule it out. His own past had begun to bubble and seethe, including parts he’d concealed even from himself…
For instance, his old shrink. What was his name?, good old What’s-his-name M.D., that “truly wonderful man,” his mother had called the old fart. Oh yes. As a kid, reading biogs of Edison, Newton, the Huxleys, William James, Adrian had learned how to enter the infinite river of bliss. That’s right: bliss. Emptying his mind of all crap, he’d get insights. He knew this was how most of the world’s great ideas were conceived. As a kid he was a shambling, wonderstruck introvert who entered the forbidden river of bliss every chance he got. He was called “a lonely boy” (sob!) by his teachers who thought, for Godsake, it was something that needed changing. One of them referred his parents to What’s-his-name M.D. This shrink, through a series of well meaning but gorgeously stupid attempts at manipulation, had convinced Adrian that the best hunting grounds for a modern Bahrain were the frighteningly uncharted, spookytooth boundaries of the human mind. Ergo, he faked it and managed to get a clean bill of health; took up climbing, which impressed the shrink because it was “dangerous” and “manly,” thereby proving to a hungup world that the patient was not only affluent and well-connected, but heterosexual.
Shee-it.
He was 14 at the time. That same year, kids kept calling him Scumbrain, Mathballs, Adie Egghead, etc. The ridicule was too much even for Adrian with his lofty self-sufficiency: so pleading flu he kept to his room for three days, during which time he plumbed the depths of ridicule. He forced himself to feel every kind of ridicule the mind could imagine. When he was a shamed, sobbing, suicidal wreck he forced himself to endure ever more anguishing ridicule. Gradually the whole thing began to seem funny. People were a pack of clowns throwing custard pies in each other’s faces, so who cared what the morons thought? Soon Resnick was lighthearted about ridicule. He had become a Junior Zensman of the Satisfied Outer Shell.
By then he saw school as a prison for the Hordes of Redundant Untalented, as he called his loving classmates. And about then he learned to program his dreams. Before sleeping he’d ask a dream to solve problems, or reveal tomorrow’s exam questions, and it always worked to a surprising degree. Next he began communicating with the dead, simply by getting an image in front of him and starting a conversation with it. He talked often with Einstein, among others. Einstein clarified some hangups, and admitted he himself had consulted ghosts—of Michelson, Lorentz, even Karl Marx—in his time; and so it went.
Resnick was glad he’d explored these areas, because they had toughened him and taught him something about the human mind: what it is, how it works, how to keep it safe from others. Given a chance, other people would sabotage you. This wasn’t paranoia, just hard fact People simply could not tell the difference between saint and criminal, or between genius and madman, and so they persecuted their most valuable minds and had always done so and anybody who didn’t realize this was living in a fool’s paradise. If you were “different” the others would try to cut you down to size. They were too fucked up mentally to be effective, though, which was a good thing for Adie Egghead.
Resnick was now 24 years old and wasn’t entirely sure of himself. He knew he was right, yet self-doubt kept creeping in. This was because he’d been programmed like all the other rummies, but at least he’d halfway broken free. Up to now all had gone pretty well in the life of Resnick, Junior, except for that one throbbing Achilles Heel: his relations with other people.
Sex was no problem. Sex was everywhere you looked. The hard-to-get commodity was friendship. He knew he needed a few blunt, goodhearted, salt-of-the-earth types like Hugh Cassidy around to balance his own topheavy intellect. Hugh was no angel; he did things Adrian thought were retarded; like last week he’d been fired for beltwhipping some bigmouth in his organic chemistry class. (Resnick joked that the kid must have been a Protestant but Hugh didn’t find that at all funny.) Hugh was overzealous sometimes, a typical Irishman for sure, but a nice guy, a decent dude, the kind Adrian should cultivate for a friend. So it was terribly depressing that he’d dragged Hugh into this. He’d been so positive the climb would cheer the poor guy up after he got canned. Now Adrian felt guilty almost to a panic. God damn people anyway!, they always wound up making you feel like shit.
Cassidy seemed to be breathing but it was hard to tell. The light in this place was jumpy, a frenzy of shadows. If Adrian stretched full length he might be able to touch a leg and feel warmth. He got one boot off, stretched until the steel collar bit his neck, and prodded Hugh’s leg with a stockinged foot. It felt cold. Hard as a rock. But what did that prove? Only that it was freezing in this stinking dungeon.
He squinted up at the extruded brain which had a globular, connective tissue sheen that made his flesh crawl. The shift was about to happen, he felt changes, something clicked in his brain… His plan was to ride these waves like a cork, always pop to the surface, never get swamped down here…
Looking out a window in a downtown office building. An unnerving view of cars zipping past in reverse, and people walking backwards down there on the street. The second hand of a clock on the wall was sweeping backwards. Reverse time? There was something frustrating about it when you were standing in the middle of it.
A secretary ate her lunch backwards. She was handwriting what seemed to be a personal letter; Adrian noted that her ballpoint removed the words from the page with a scratching noise. Concentrating on unwriting, the secretary disgorged fried oysters fastidiously into her left hand bite by bite, then wiped tartar sauce off each oyster into a paper cup. Adrian wanted to laugh; it was upsetting, yet oddly satisfying, to see a person unconsume things for a change. The secretary sucked clouds of white smoke into a cigarette. She placed the hot oysters back into the carton, one by one. (Would they soon return to the sea where they belonged?) After disgorging several hot biscuits she wrapped the whole works in greasy newspaper, then regurgitated some Diet Pepsi down a straw into a bottle and slipped the pristine cigarette into its pack. At that moment she noticed Adrian. With awkward abruptness, she handed him the greasy package and said primly,
“.ynnoS ,tnuocca eht no ti tuP”
The room illuminated in streaks and faded out.
He was back in the dungeon staring at Hugh, who lay motionless, and he began to think about his parents. His father… what would Dad do in a situation like this? He’d have gone crazy by now. Sure. No resiliency. Mom and Dad were both locked into roles, and neither role was any substitute for being alive. He madly wished he could see them now though, walking in here as into a deficient summercamp, being horrified, demanding his immediate release and their money back… Dad had got his Nobel; now he was treading stagnant water. Prizes were traps. They made people mediocre. Kept everybody in line discovering the same old shit over and over again, so the old applecart would get slightly tilted but never, never overturned…
Adrian figured that once his early interest in physics was satisfied he’d branch out into mind studies, the field of the future. (Not once did he consider he might not have a future.) Telepathy, telekinesis, solid projections—why not be able to imagine a thousand dollar bill in front of your eyes and make it real and negotiable? He was glad he’d spent so much time on psychic experiments because otherwise… by now… he’d have gone crazy… At least the exercises had given him a fighting chance… He hoped…
Man, wait. An onrush of…
This was worth everything. Everything.
His own private Garden of Eden.
He felt fantastic. Exhilarated, healthy, so alive that nothing else mattered. A cracking fire of pine logs. Little wisps of perfumey woodsmoke, at the end of a rough and successful day. How tantalizing the aroma of cooking meat! He was ravenous, and the kill was his. The other men helped frighten the game but it was Adrian who hurtled feet first out of a tree onto the enormous back, grabbed the horns and twisted, slipped his knife into the hairy throat, bled the sonofabitch, drank a cupful of blood to signify victory—and the game was a big sucker too, fullgrown buck water buffalo with a six foot horn spread.
Ahoola! Gwalamabu! Now the pot of stewmeat bubbled over the flames. Tumbling wolfcubs fought for scraps. Adrian, mightiest of chiefs, stood at the mouth of his own cave in naked splendor, gazing for miles over sprawling jungle burnished a magnificent copper by the setting sun, an endless forest all his own. Ahoola! Thank the Great Spirit for bringing him here! He was happier than he’d ever been in his entire life. Now he could build, hunt, make love, roam the free jungle in sun and shadow.
Hot, fresh bread dipped in the stew tasted delicious. Gwalamabu! He devoured the meat and mopped up the juice. The girl gave him more of everything. She served him. She waited on him hand and foot. She watched lovingly as he gorged himself. He had a right to this meat. He’d killed it himself, with the help of the Great Spirit Later he felt brawny and ecstatic under warm skins with the girl cuddling close, adoring him utterly. She was everything he’d ever dreamed of and longed for. And she wanted him! Fiercely, passionately, not for money or social position or some passing whim, only for himself. Their lovemaking was the keenest pleasure Adrian had ever imagined.
At dawn he chased her through the jungle and they dived into a pool banked with orchids and there was a waterfall, and fruit trees and wheeling gulls, and they planned a hike to the ocean beach; he was happy, exalted, jubilant. The girl never left his side. She loved him. She was fresh and eager, mysterious and fey, a sweet, lustful faun who adored Adrian and wanted to please him. She would do anything for him. She was a young goddess. Her creamy skin, the perfume of her hair made him dizzy with an overwhelming bliss. He’d longed for her, now she belonged to him. They were coming together on a lonely beach in the crash of waves. He caressed the skin of her thighs. He’d never known complete satisfaction, both mental and physical, before this magic night. She was alive and warm in his arms. “My darling,” she murmured, holding him close. Adoring him. At last he’d found the sublime marriage, the most perfect Heaven of all.
As the months and years flew by they were blessed with, many beloved children. Eventually the girl ripened into a woman; then coarsened into a woman over thirty. Tribal custom suggested that he dispose of her and take a new young wife, and since they’d begun quarreling he did so, and the new wife was even younger, lovelier and more sexually exciting than the first, and Adrian begat many children. When the wife was old at one score and five, he disposed of her and took a lovelier wife. He conquered lands to the north and west and united his empire.
Many moons had passed. One day he stood at the mouth of the cave, wrinkled, fragile, extremely old. His eyes were rheumy and his bones brittle. He looked at his hands, turned them over and marvelled: an old man’s hands, gnarled, spotted, trembly, but he had no regrets, life had been a sweet oyster whose meat he’d consumed with relish.
Today was the day his children would dispose of him, by tribal custom. Chanting, they swarmed up the hill; first his dark-eyed, angry daughter Shaaa, who looked like her mother, rammed him in the solar plexus with her foot and all the breath rushed out in a whistling, agonized grunt. Rocks smashed his bones. He managed to duck and whip a fist into the nearest face (ah sad, that had been Nax, the favorite son) while kicking another in the crotch, but they clubbed him down and he was soon unconscious, ropes of blood gushing from nostrils, mouth, ears, rectum and all the new body openings that had been made by his beloved children. Quickly he was dead. It was very, very easy to die, and very sad.
Now he was dead, chained in Satan’s dungeon with his brain pulled halfway out of his skull. He saw himself crumble to dust, be reborn and go through the whole dumb show as many times as there had been people on earth. He lived the human experience, life after life until a blackout drowned him. A voice called:
“Is the past alterable? Do you exist?”
Adrian groaned: “Let me off this fucking rollercoaster, for Godsake.”
Cackling laughter. “Nonsense! It’s for your own good. Your life on Earth was a hell. It’s all written there in your mind, bubby, for anyone who cares to read. You had vision, boyhood dreams, you wanted to contribute, but the fools cut you down to size with their lockstep education and their irrational meddling, right?”
“Out! Off this musty B-movie.”
“Forced you to doubt and belittle yourself in order to live on their level, the swine!”
“Out. I’ll pay anything.”
“How? You have nothing. Yours is a poverty planet of bushmen who only want to sell you junk, bad advice and foolish opinions. Four billion sanctimonious mindbutchers. Be honest! You don’t want to live there.”
“Out!”
He was standing in a series of empty lots, one after another, flipping through them quickly, vacant lots of all sizes, angles, shapes; with and without trees, some littered with garbage, or weeds, moonlight, sun, rain, piles of tin-cans, then sunflowers, a picket gate and tire swing, now hemmed in by other buildings, now open, rapid transitions between them, and fences and walls, earth, skies, fixtures, jumping in and out of space; or surrounded by warehouses, then apartments on all sides, a sandbox, the rear of a movie house,—he found this flow of sites disturbing and sickening, more so than the other realities.
Back in the dungeon watching freshly slain corpses being danced in front of him like puppets. It was grisly, an atrocity certainly, but still a relief after the flickering procession of vacant lots. A squadron of weeping soldiers were marched in and stripped, drugged, shoved along with cattle prods, mechanically de-haired, drained of fluids, thrown on a conveyor belt and cut in slices from toes to head by a giant slicing machine. The weeping had stopped. There was no sound now but the peaceful hum of the machines, and the flip-flip-flip-flip of the chops dropping into styrene packs. Swiftly, lullingly, the humans were arranged in cross sections, a series of two chops for the two legs, bones running through each slice in the same neat pattern all the way up, attractive little twin testicles flanking sliced phallus dotted with parsley, then larger slices from the midsection, veins and intestines and marbly fat lending a colorful texture to the reddened muscle-meat. Glands, heart, brain, liver and kidneys were packed separately by the swift machines. Each pack was Saran wrapped, labelled and priced, crated, loaded onto a supermarket van and trucked away by unsmiling troopers in silver helmets.
Is this what happens to the thousands of annual Missing Persons? Shit, what can you say? Adrian yelled,
“Hey sickies!, ya got any uppers?”
Instantly a stimulus made him fall back dehiscent and tear at his chains, writhing and humping like a cutworm. A voice called:
“Yes, feel guilty! That was separation anxiety, the most terrible anguish known to mankind. For your lack of compassion, we’re shipping you to far-off Korgle. The natives will thrill to your feeble body and plastic face. They’ve built a little diorama for you to inhabit: a replica of all the places you knew and loved on Earth. You will perform your functions at a linear accelerator for the amusement of the Korglians.”
“The hell you say,” Resnick screamed.
“You’ll go on fooling with beams of electrons, trying to find out about atomic nuclei by ripping pieces off, the way children tear the wings off flies—”
Then a loud crackling noise, and silence. An amusement park at night, on the midway. It was raining. The park was empty. A storm of hag-laughter reverberated from a fortuneteller seated in a dimly lighted glass booth. Gaping, Adrian saw it was a wax gypsy with earrings; a seedy, screeching hey-rube machine; cobwebs trailed between her fingers and a dirty crystal ball, yet Resnick looked for a deeper meaning, and felt intolerably guilty, prickles of sweat stinging his back. He watched the gypsy’s blubbery lips. Out of sync, they shaped words an instant ahead of the audible word.
“So the Earthie believes he can tell dream from reality!” she bellowed. “At last you see how unevolved you are, little atom smasher.”
“When can I get out of here?”
“You’ve had a nice dose of the Agony Organ. You’re well hooked by now. Listen: humans are proud of the fact that they can be hypnotized by anything at all: a shiny instrument, an advertising jingle—but this means that any criminal from an advanced world can walk in and take you over, body and soul.”
“How can I get out?” Resnick knew he was still chained in the dungeon but Cassidy was no longer there. He hoped this was a good sign. The gypsy’s hands moved stiffly over the crystal as she cackled,
“Even Earthie technicians know how to insert an electrode into the pleasure center of the brain and give a sensation so delicious the subject ignores food, water, sleep, sex, drugs, everything, just to press that button and get that jolt of irresistible pleasure. But my Agony Organ goes far beyond pleasure. It creates any life, any emotion; and knowing that ‘homo sapiens’ is a sado-masochistic species I’ve been able to make the process irreversible. You’re mine, bubby! My little toy.”
“Let’s talk ransom.”
“What do you own? Nothing. Listen: millions pray to me every day. ‘Please, o Prince of Darkness, give our leader wisdom.’ ‘Save my wife from drowning.’ ‘Don’t let my baby die.’ Secretly they want the opposite; so, I supply it.”
“You’re a liar.”
“Look around you, bubby! I never lie.”
A yellow light was glowing eerily behind her booth. This place was gigantic: an infinite labyrinth, a cycle of space with prisoners chained as far as the eye could see. The physicist howled,
“Why!”
“Because virtue is always rewarded and crime always punished,” she cackled. “Listen! The gods dream too, little toy, and my dream is to possess Benaroya the Rysemian. I’ve followed her across lightyears, a beautiful enemy, freest of free-roving spirits who will put up a wild fight when hooked; not like you whimpering Earthies who fall apart at the first touch. Benaroya excites me.” The gypsy’s eyes seemed to be glowing soulfully. The voice husked, “Very foolishly she spent too much time trying to understand your fouled civilization. This erodes the will, the intelligence, the whole character. Always a goodhearted fool, by now she’s easy prey. Would you like to help me trap her?”
“Where’s Cassidy, you freak? Bring him in here.”
“Soon.”
“Now!”
The gypsy rolled her eyes and shuddered. “Yes! Keep fighting me! Any battle from you however timid is my pleasure. But now it’s time to meet Flench, my lieutenant.”
A perspiring giant, chunky and albino-haired, grinning with amusement, was bending down to unlock Resnick’s chains. The gypsy said,
“Flench is going to freeze you for the long passage to Korgle. You’ve been sold to a zoo there, little toy animal.”
“Keep your hands off.” The physicist stood blinking weakly, peering into the mist. The room appeared shrunken; there were shadows in the corners. “Answer my question please. Where’s Cassidy?”
The fortuneteller was standing, stripping off plastic makeup. It was a male; a thin lipped man in filthy drag with a raw scar down one cheek and smudges under the eyes. He was clearly in the throes of triumph, but Resnick felt that the victory being celebrated was not the one over himself. The man came out of the glass booth. He and Flench whispered together in a language all clicks and hisses, impossible to understand, then he came closer, lighting a cigarette, looking Resnick up and down, smirking insolently. He picked shreds of plastic off his face and said,
“I’m sure you comprehend suspended animation. You’ll wake up thirty thousand lightyears away thinking it’s tomorrow morning. Your first words will be: ‘I love Scaulzo, I need Scaulzo, I cannot exist without the god Scaulzo.’ Let me hear you repeat that.”
“Where’s my friend, you shit-eating bastard!”
Adrian lunged, wanting only to destroy the simpering face. The man stepped aside with a giggle and said,
“Ah-ah, you know he’s dead. No need to swing at me, bushman. We Sajorians never waste anything; he’s marvellously lifelike for the Korgle Museum of Alien Forms.”
“Liar!”
The man pointed.
A familiar voice boomed: “We did it, kid! We’re halfway up!”
The blue eyed Irishman stood in the shadows looking eager and robust under a healthy tan. Adrian grinned in soaring relief—thank God Cassidy was all right! He bounded across the room, right hand outstretched. Then suddenly he screamed.
The voice repeated,
“We did it, kid! We’re halfway up!”
“We did it, kid! We’re—”
Cassidy was a mummy. Dead. Stuffed. Glass eyes unblinking.
“We did it, kid! We’re—!”
Adrian Resnick was deep in catatonic shock when Flench sealed the preserving units over his body.

Chapter Fifteen
Virginia Woolf was crying to beat the band.
She felt truly fucked over. Scaulzo was so fulla B.S. you wouldn’t believe it! She’d been driven to his empty penthouse by a chauffeur and now, tossing and turning in bed, couldn’t be sure if this was house arrest or bluff or what.
Woolf broke into fresh sobs. Could she escape, even if she wanted to? Scaulzo’s mesmerism played on a person’s own irrational fears. Just when you were lulled, the worst would happen. But dammit, she had to see it through; so the best plan was to get some sleep and be in shape for the face-off tomorrow…
She still didn’t comprehend the depth of horror that lay in store for her.
When the phone rang Woolf jumped awake and tore the instrument off its stand. The voice was Scaulzo’s, imperiously giving orders.
“I touch down on the CBS roof at four sharp. See that you’re ready.”
Woolf looked at her watch. Nearly four, and bloody dark out. There was an expedition suit prepared for her; racing atop a Canadian mountain would be a cold business; the demon thought of everything. Again she considered trying to beam out. But, no point. Scaulzo would hound her until doomsday. Better fight him on his own terms, and play to win.
She filled the suit’s roomy pockets with her snubnose .45, the detested H-2 unit (thank goodness they hadn’t thought it important to search her) and the new Virginia Woolf I.D., complete with Mrs. Woolf’s Bloomsbury Group membership card, in case they were stopped at the border. As always, Benaroya wore the comm ring, her instant link to Vonderra.
Wind came shrieking down the canyon between buildings. The anthropologist clawed her way to the landing circle, buffeted by a steady gale and hanging tight to the railing. Jee-weepers! Yaa-hoo! This was more like it. How super if the Count’s chopper couldn’t land in this wind and got squashed like a bug against one of these concrete buildings.
No such luck. Here he came, rotor blades churning as he hovered above the painted yellow circle. In spite of buffeting winds he set down cleanly, dead center.
The Count was alone. He opened the door and beckoned her in. The helicopter was a handsome hulk, a six seat Hiller that appeared flake navy from outside but was transparent as blue sky from within. The Count’s lips peeled off his teeth in that artificial smile, as wind rushed into the cabin.
“Nice racing weather,” Virginia Woolf shouted.
“I never refuse the collaboration of destiny,” he yelled back.
Up and away in a deft one-eighty, Woolf watching the buildings drop rapidly and dwindle to lighted jewel boxes interlaced with streets. It was quiet and spacious in the cabin. The blades chewed at the sky, fighting headwinds from the northwest. Woolf took off her goggles, unzipped her suit, removed her boots and propped her bare feet on the instrument panel. Might as well get comfy.
There was a silver bucket with a magnum of champagne on the floor between them. Hovering at 5,000 feet, Count de Falke popped the cork and poured into a pair of iced goblets.
“To your defeat,” he said, touching her glass with his.
“To your hemorrhoids,” Woolf responded.
“May that spirit carry you through the race.”
Woolf laughed and sipped champagne. Unfortunately, she still found the demon attractive as hell. He was a demiurge—but also an archfiend. Way beyond the timid little word “sadist.” Involuntarily she shivered… Whew… Had to watch these sexy reactions; it would be deadly to fall in love with the Prince of Darkness!… Odd how his species, the Sajorian, had evolved. Out of ten billion inhabited planets, Sajor alone produced a psychotic species capable of leaving its own solar system. Most feral strains, such as Earth’s humans, would nearly always self-destruct in the early days of space travel, if not sooner. A few borderline species had managed to cure themselves and survive. But the Sajorians—possibly because they lacked all feelings of guilt—had not only remained sociopathic, but had flourished to become mighty, imperialistic conquerors.
The chopper cruised nicely at 110 knots. The Count stripped black gloves off his manicured fingers, handling the controls with an expertise Virginia Woolf expected. He reached back and found a picnic hamper packed with tiny Olympia oysters, an iced bowl of Beluga caviar, hot roast pheasant, slivers of avocado on toast and a jug of fresh strawberries and cream. The idea of eating fish still bothered Woolf but she shrugged it off, braying with showboat humor,
“What, no Twinkies or Ding-Dongs? You Canadians should apply for Yankee aid.”
“I’ve waited for this day a long, long time.” The Count laid on speed as they ate, checking landmarks picked out by early sun. “Such a refreshing game. A slap in the face, by you; a vow of revenge by me. Slow buildup on a primitive planet. Quarry still tough enough to put up a struggle. Enormous tension, generated slowly. And finally, the climax! I dare you to imagine that explosive release in full detail, Mrs. Woolf.”
“I’m so happy for you. And your champagne—a remarkable vintage. From Chalons-sur-Marne, I see; must have set you back a fortune.” Woolf examined the bottle, holding it to the light. “Strange old label with a cobweb stuck to it. Looks like a hand-lettered manuscript, written only yesterday, yet the date is 1562. Of course that’s impossible. I doubt they’d even invented champagne that long ago. Is it poisoned, Wladislaw?”
“Never. I want you very much alive.”
“Explain, dear.”
The Count gave his sexy knife-slash of a smile. ‘Tomorrow I’ll see you grovel in worship, prostrated at my feet.“
His shield had slipped. As he spoke Woolf glimpsed the native body with its rows of scavenger teeth. She knew it was all allegorical—but, that’s exactly what was scary about it; and also hideously thrilling… Oh, she was getting all prickly again. How terrible. The anthropologist tried to cool it, by thrusting deeply into the mind of this Satan. She tried to recall all she knew about aberration in high-intelligence beings. “Neurotic” means self-harming; “psychotic” means causing harm to others. The so-called “normal” of the human species now hovers between these two points. When it drops to full psychotic, the race will destroy itself. But the Sajorians had broken this universal rule. The anthropologist was baffled by their lack of guilt; they had no “conscience,” no regret or self-blame in any degree. They enjoyed cruelty and thrived on torture and murder. In that sense, the Sajorians were lucky. They never suffered remorse—an emotion which in any case only made criminals go underground where their crimes were impossible to detect.
She asked, “And how were your pigeons, Adrian Res-nick and the others?”
“Poor game, I’m afraid. They are pigeons; certainly not eagles like you, my dear.”
“What will you do with them?”
Scaulzo shrugged. His shield was a masterpiece of impenetrability. Here and there she caught wisps of shifting thought. It was like peering into hell to watch the flames at work. Fantastic that a being this mad could be this successful. How did it happen? Everywhere Scaulzo went, doors flew open for him. Primitives adored him; Earth was no exception. He seemed able to satisfy a deep, unspoken need in the hearts of all barbarians. Governments and giant corporations would heap him with authority, grants, fellowships, titles. The people might protest many small things, throw out one government after another, or babble forever about “peace” and “truth,” but when Scaulzo came around, they were his. He could take anything he wanted from them. They loved him. They could be counted upon to starve a Schubert, ridicule a Van Gogh, stone Mohammed, jail Galileo, crucify Christ, drive Monroe to suicide—but they were ready to die like swooming calves for Scaulzo. Why? Why? It was the best-kept secret of the Earthie mentality. And the alarming part was, having studied Earthies so deeply, she was beginning to grasp why they reacted like that
The sun had risen and was dappling the wooded hills below. Woolf wriggled her bare toes calmly; but the Sajorian was pushing at her mind, nibbling casually as if to locate each and every weak spot. Whew! The cobra-and-bird sensation had returned. Her heart was beating like a slow jungledrum. Could she beam out now, just dump the bod and leave, even if she wanted to? Better not try. Use the water trick. Be a quiet stream. Pick up speed. Rush into rapids. You’re a booming cascade. Over the falls! A cataract! Foam, and hiss… Flow quietly. Into absolute repose. A placid pool. With a single leaf afloat on its surface…
“We’re in British Columbia,” Scaulzo was saying. “Our mountain is off to the west.”
He pointed out flocks of condominiums owned by Hollywood celebrities. “And just below us, my pet, is my own little cabin in the pines,” and he indicated an impressive A-frame with smaller outbuildings scattered nearby.
As they landed in the clearing a dozen guards ran out to stand at attention. It was a precision-trained private army. One guard opened the door and snapped a salute as Scaulzo and Virginia Woolf came down the ladder. B. recognized the man. He was Flench, the albino-haired terrorist who’d helped gun down Lozetti on the lonely road outside Naples.
The guards wore black leather uniforms, jodhpurs tucked into black boots, with a silver cartridge belt and pair of gleaming revolvers apiece. Each jacket bore the de Falke coat-of-arms emblazoned over the heart. The men wore silver racing helmets with raised shields. They had that grim, unsmiling expression, the look of the obedient sadist, that had once terrorized all of Europe. Woolf felt another rush of fear. These were killer Sajorians who would like nothing better than to watch her ruination.
Half a dozen snowcars were lined up outside a fenced area as if at the post. There was a starting light overhead, now flashing red.
Scaulzo grinned. “Is everything as you expected, my pet?”
B. put her boots on, hopping on one foot with a growing unease. The combination of mesmerism and physical action was very hard to sort out. She’d seen snowmobiles before, but these were odious monsters. They were behemoths; each bore the de Falke coat-of-arms and each looked like a cross between a tank and a killer shark. Worse, the snowcars seemed to be rocket powered.
“They cruise at two hundred miles an hour,” Scaulzo gloated. “Want to back out? You’ll forfeit, but at least you’ll save face.”
“Don’t be dumb, honey; speed’s my middle name.” Her mouth had gone dry; but, obligatory chase scene or not, Woolf wasn’t going to be faked out.
“These are my personal brutes,” Scaulzo said with affection, slapping the flank of the nearest machine. Woolf could well believe it. Each racer had a rollbar, fins and spoiler, a deeply set cockpit, windscreen, and single cleated track. Twin ski-tips jutted like swords in front. Ugh! Even at rest these iron dogs seemed to reflect their master, reeking of insolent power and a moronic, macho cruelty. The speed might be something else, too.
The Sajorian adjusted his gloves. “Make you a bargain, Mrs. Woolf. Concede, and we’ll go inside and get to know each other with no harm done.”
“On a winner-take-all basis?”
“That was the agreement.”
Woolf walked around the snowcars and eyed them with a coolness she didn’t feel. “What fuel do your machines use?”
“Porpyl nitrate. Pressurized by nitrogen and oxygen. Turbine. Take my word, you’ll be riding a flash of lightning.”
“Let me worry about that.”
“If you want to look foolish it’s your privilege. We start off on an 800 cc Honda engine, then when you hit forty or fifty you switch to these controls,” he pointed, “designed to disengage the engine from the track drive and cut in the turbine. I hope two thousand horsepower is enough worry for you, dear Bloomsbury fire-eater. And now lesson’s over; pick your beast.”
“You’re giving me a choice?”
“Fair play’s my motto.”
“Sajorian fair play. Ring-a-ding.” Woolf climbed into the nearest machine and adjusted her goggles.
The Count snapped,
“The overhead light is red. When it changes to amber I move out.” He climbed into his machine and put on a silver helmet. “Ten seconds later it changes to green and that’s your signal. If you don’t fall more than ten seconds behind at any time, through the course, I’ll concede. Fair enough?”
“What happens after you concede?”
He threw back his head and laughed. “Then Scaulzo is yours to command, my dear blubberfish. Would you enjoy such a triumph?” He revved the motor and yelled, “Of course it’s impossible but dreams will kill you yet. Ready?”
Woolf looked at the cockpit controls. Horsebeans!! Had she made a fatal mistake, overestimating her own racing skill? There had to be a centrifugal clutch in this monster. She pressed and heard the whine of the self-starter. She pushed the accelerator, revved the motor, felt the belt tighten.
“You’ll need to shave every second,” Scaulzo yelled.
At least the louse could have let her test drive this bloody machine first! She moved the controls, figuring how to snap out the conventional engine when she hit 40 MPH or so, and run it on the turbine system.
The light was turning amber! Holy cats, shortest pre-race in history! Scaulzo zoomed off with an earsplitting WHOOSH, leaving nothing behind but dancing heatwaves and a cloud of flying snow.
For a few heartbeats Woolf listened to the silence that hung over the frozen land. The word “blubberfish” rang in her ears. It was one thing to be called that by a Rysemian. Coming from Scaulzo it was the bitterest insult. Well, use it to advantage. Five seconds left to master this death machine which bears the de Falke coat-of-arms.
Glaring daylight diffused under a lowering sky. The wind keened mournfully. For a moment the sun was blotted out. There went Scaulzo, heading up the mountainside. The overhead light turned green. Woolf shoved on the accelerator and felt the snowcar jump ahead.
Scaulzo whipped around in a tight figure 8, apparently making for the glaciers. Woolf leaped after him. The cocky rabbit-start jerked her head back. Wow, this brute could really hop! Some of the anthropologist’s gutsiness came ebbing back with the speed of the machine. Scaulzo was turning and doubling over crystal powder, plowing up a roostertail which she followed easily. So far it was no trick to keep up with the Sajorian. That probably meant trouble ahead.
They were below the timber line. Scaulzo headed upgrade, taking a fifty-degree bank, zooming through scattered trees. He seemed to be picking out the heaviest patches of timber and slaloming between trees, screaming up a ridge, then diving down the other side; Woolf was standing half off the seat and zooming so fast she couldn’t even see, let alone outguess, Scaulzo.
They dipped into shadow. Then up to where the sun exploded in psychedelic needles, jabbing at her eyes. Ouch! More timber loomed. Woolf had to horse adroitly to dodge a volley of treetrunks. The trees had been topped and deliberately frosted to blend in with the snow. So that was the scheme: he wanted her to crack up on a tree, or spin off an embankment. His men were posted around the course. One of them would use the H-2 while she lay crippled or dying. Then they’d quickly repair her body and Benaroya would belong to the Sajorian swine forever.
The idea was so revolting, and yet so hypnotically riveting, she had to fight to keep from beaming straight to Vonderra. Again came the fear: Was she unable to move without Scaulzo’s permission? Suddenly, rage took over. “Blubberfish!” Poisonous insult! She’d beat this slimy reptile at his own game.
Splinters of light danced off the slopes. Woolf headed down a ditch in heavy shadow, up the other side and down again, careening along a frozen creekbed; her motor noise echoed and thundered. Scaulzo flew uphill to a narrow footbridge that spanned the creek. His shield was looser than before… No, he was trying to confuse her with that A-O blast of his. Desire, competition, confusion! He wanted Woolf to slam into the abutment at the bridge entrance. There was barely room for a snowcar to clear both posts; Scaulzo was furious when she managed to squeak through in safety.
That meant she was less than ten seconds in the rear. Which meant he was setting her up, pulling out all the stops  for the  degrading  entanglement  which   obsessed him…So the point was to be tough. Whatever it cost— outride this bastard! She’d had just about enough of reacting like a weak-minded Earthie.
Scaulzo whipped around a rock and down a trough. Woolf rocketed after him over the hardpacked surface. Just ahead was a ski run. Men were gliding down it. Uniformed centurions. They were RCMP, clearing the slopes of pleasure seekers.
Now she understood Scaulzo’s gambit.
He was planning to cross the run just below the patrolmen.
He timed it perfectly. He was already on the slope. Woolf could either turn and zoom off, throwing the race, or she could try to thread between these oncoming skiers. In any case there was no time to think; the two skiers in the lead attempted to execute rapid turns and went down; she missed one body by inches. The others were frantically trying to wave her to a stop.
Benaroya was screaming insults at Scaulzo, the words drowned in a roar of turbines. She had to slam sixty degrees uptrail to miss the oncoming ski patrol. She was hanging out low on the port side, slaloming between pig-brained lawmen who expected her to stop because they were waving red flags. They had recognized Scaulzo and would allow him free passage. The one they’d try to force over, was Virginia Woolf.
She recalled how Lozetti had been “tranquilized” with an H-2 unit in Italy. These pigs would stand by and let Flench do the same to her, before dragging her back to Scaulzo’s torture room. The anthropologist was blindingly furious; she felt a scalding anger she’d never known could exist.
Of course. Sajorians and Earthies would always gang up against a Rysemian, in jackal-like team work.
Her cleated track bit in as she flew to narrow the distance between the two snowcars. She was about twelve seconds behind Scaulzo. Did that mean she was the “loser,” by his reckoning? He shot under a gondola lift; skiers pointed and jabbered from the enclosed cars that swung by overhead.
Now they were roaring toward the scenic highway that twisted down the mountainside. It wound for miles before disappearing into the forest. Scaulzo laid on speed; he seemed energized at sight of tourists who could be used as obstacles in his blood-hungry game.
He’d been right about one thing. This was like riding a bolt of lightning. Too fast to think! Woolf saw her enemy wind in front of an RCMP squadcar, then the driver attempting to brake on icy pavement, crashing through the rail, bouncing on rocks, turning into a sulfurous torch. Then came more Mounties, painfully dismounted now and spilling across the concrete; an onslaught of squadcars leaped the railing as they attempted to avoid each other and miss the sprawled bodies. Several cars had jumped the edge. Inky smoke rolled from the flaming wreckage below. Through it all, Virginia Woolf stuck like a limpet on Scaulzo’s tail. Whoever got crushed or damned, screwed or tattooed, she wasn’t going to lose this race!
Another fleet of Mounties came flashing their lights. The sirens must be howling like banshees but she was deafened by the roar of turbines, and the pig wagons seemed eerily silent.
There was a downed RCMP skier, one leg severed at the hip and bleeding a red flow into the snow. And another, badly cracked up, dying instantly. And another. Gleefully, Scaulzo picked them off like so many squirrels. Always he ran in front, tantalizingly out of reach. And she was fascinated by this demon! He was hillclimbing again, running his snowcar up wide-banked turns where toboggans had recently passed; he bounded up the side of a drift; following close, she saw a gorge down there, deeply cleft into the earth. Scaulzo whipped along its rim spewing snow. He should have knocked Woolf off long ago. The Sajorian was angered by the delay.
In revenge, when another RCMP jumped out to wave a flag, Scaulzo impaled him full length on the twin ski-tips. He brought the Mountie a little way uptrail, turning the roostertail of snow a bright red; then shook the corpse off with a practised flip and squashed it under his cleats. He turned and gave Woolf an open-mouthed laugh of spite. To Earthies the killing wouldn’t matter. Despite what they said, the more the “Prince” destroyed, the more they’d make excuses and adore him for it.
She plowed on through the blood and over the smashed body. Couldn’t swerve, no time. How long could this madness go on? Scaulzo whipped beneath a low outcrop of rock. She ducked, barely in time to avoid getting the top of her head sheared off. Snow had started again. Tiny flakes whirled down. Raw wind lanced in from starboard. Every muscle in her body ached, longing for rest. Scaulzo headed toward one of the bowls where, to all appearances, the drifts would be hundreds of feet deep..
Then he whipped behind an embankment and disappeared from sight. Gone! Vanished into thin air.
What was he up to? She probed and felt dead emptiness. Could the Sajorian have beamed out? Was it his way of conceding…?
Woolf cut her engines and glided in silence, listening. Except for the high keening wind, there was no sound. Scaulzo’s absence was more of a worry than all the charms and obstacles had been. She gulped down icy air and licked her cracked lips, listening, trying to envision his next move. Snow whipped at her face. The heavy flakes were obscuring the horizon. Maybe he was counting on that.
She started the engine again, using conventional power. Up the trail she found what looked like Scaulzo’s track and followed it across a snowbank, trying to probe him out. Nothing. Occasionally she cut the engines and listened, but there was only silence.
A few hundred yards past the embankment, she saw his snowmobile. It had cracked into a pile of loose rock. The rock looked new. She glanced up, fearing an avalanche. Then she saw the silver-helmeted body.
It had been thrown twenty feet and was sprawled face down in the snow. Woolf pulled close and cut her motor. She glided in silence to the body. All at once she felt exhausted, longing for this race to be over.
She moved warily around the corpse. It was spread-eagled, obviously dead; the neck was broken. She reached out a boot and turned the body over.
It wasn’t Scaulzo. It was another man, a stranger.
Woolf leaped behind her machine and crouched in the small shelter it offered. But it was too late. This was an ambush; oldest trick in the book, and she’d fallen for it.
Scaulzo, halfway up the embankment, stood on a ledge and grinned down at her.

Chapter Sixteen
Afterward, you can spend eternity hashing over each mistake.
Why didn’t I move. Could have frozen Scaulzo with the H-2, then destroyed him with my .45; emptied the whole chamber into that smirking face. Or wiped him out the night before. Why didn’t I act?
Remorse is the crudest form of torture. Benaroya had plenty of time later to relive that terrible scene from every angle, and blame herself for handling it so stupidly.
“And the gun, zipped away in a pocket. Hypnosis! Should have beamed out earlier. Or called for help—”
But at the time, she had one microsecond, and she used it to jump behind the snowcar. This futile dodge gave the Sajorian the very edge he was looking for.
Pellets of amplified light tore through the snowcar and into her flesh. She sprang upright, arms outflung in a tremor that brought rapture to Scaulzo’s face. There was no pain; but the horror of being frozen wrenched her stomach. The anthropologist jerked and thrashed, fighting uncontrollable muscle contractions. She tried to unzip the pocket containing the H-2 unit but her hands jumped spastically. Scaulzo watched; he was crowing in delighted victory.
“Put your arms up, my pigeon,” he sang out.
He covered Woolf with a .44 Magnum. His men were swarming over the ridge; an RCMP helicopter was clattering this way—all reinforcements for Scaulzo.
“Show me the ring hand, my trapped bird. Just in case you feel you can still beam out.”
The Sajorian’s voice cooed with satisfaction. Even so, he was taking no chances. Woolf showed him her ring hand obediently.
“Good. Do as I say and you’ll have no trouble.”
Scaulzo jumped off the ledge and started toward her. He had no intention of pulling the Magnum trigger. He wanted Benaroya alive. This was the moment he’d lusted for. The prey was Scaulzo’s; he strode forward, grinning, to collect his prize.
The spasms had stopped. Woolf lay weakly in the snow. She watched her enemy approach with his swagger of triumph. Her right hand tightened on the H-2 unit, concealed in one pocket. Scaulzo knelt in joy; one hand slipped caressingly around her throat; the other fumbled With her comm ring, trying to remove it. He said,
“Soon we’ll know whether you can endure—”
“You’re drooling! Wipe the slime off your chin.”
She fired.
Scaulzo staggered back, his features twisted in amazement. He couldn’t believe this. He still thought the freezegun was a top-security weapon belonging only to Sajor.
“No! No, no, no!” he screamed.
Woolf leaned on one elbow in the snowdrift and fought a wave of nausea. Scaulzo’s troops in the black snowcars were closing in; she struggled to sort this out—the terrified howl, the look on Scaulzo’s face, were finer than a dozen lesser victories. She was like the Earthies now. She was trapped, angry, dependent on material things, no longer a free spirit. Already she wallowed in the lust to punish. Her hand sought and found the cold bulk of the .45 in an inside pocket.
Kill! Kill the Sajorian criminal!
The RCMP chopper had settled and Mounties came pouring out. Dazed, Virginia Woolf followed Scaulzo’s wild thrashings with the muzzle of the .45. Why couldn’t the wretch stand still! The simplest line of action seemed impossible to handle. She fired and missed; then a Mountie jumped her from the rear, grabbing at the gun.
She fired again. The centurion folded, dying with shock written on his face, but Woolf didn’t wait; her fingers sought the activator ring and found it and pressed.
A split second later she was in her quarters on Vonderra, tearing off the snowsuit, half mad with claustrophobia. It was unendurable! Writhing in degradation, Woolf lost consciousness. She fell down a bottomless well; the dream followed her all the way.
Scaulzo was bending closer. Smirking in triumph as she fell, silently, to Earth in a tight, iron mask. Scaulzo’s face expanded until it covered the whole sky. Woolf woke up to the sound of her own screaming.
“Take it easy. You’re safe now.”
Sam Spade, private investigator, was trying to shake her back to consciousness. A Lucky Strike dangled from his lips. One eye squinted against the coiled smoke.
“Benaroya! Come on, dammit, co-operate.”
He had a chalky, worried expression and a smell of whisky breath. He wore snap-brim fedora, suit, tie and trenchcoat. The anthropologist wanted to strangle him.
“Take your fucking hands off,” she screamed.
Spade’s flat voice remained patient.
“Come on, sweetheart; wake up and listen. You stepped in front of a freezegun.”
Woolf blinked up at him, her eyes awash with tears. He knew. No use trying to hide the shame, the horror and disgust. Omark stood there completely free, healthy and clean; he could leave the stupid cult-hero body whenever he chose—while Benaroya, poor wretch, was trapped forever!
She twisted away. “Leave me alone, you piece of excrement.”
“No chance.”
“Then don’t turn your back on me.”
“Don’t threaten; you know you’re helpless.”
Woolf screamed and sank her fingers into his throat. He dragged her hands away and began stripping off her clothes. She cursed and punched.
Spade slapped Woolf an ear-ringing stinger, followed by a backhand across the face. “Dammit, would you prefer a straitjacket?”
“I’ll kill you!” She tried to rip and bite, insane with rage.
Omark’s fist cracked the anthropologist’s jaw. As she went down, he caught her, all the while keeping up a soothing patter.
“Benaroya, old chum, we’ve got to work together. This won’t be easy. Your bod’s been pushed beyond human endurance and the jolt of the H-2 tore hell out of your nervous system.”
She grabbed his hand and sank her teeth into one finger. Spade yelped, doubling her arm behind her back until the jaws relaxed. Swearing, he continued to strip her clothes off. When she was naked he bundled her into the shower, set the tap at ice water and turned it on full.
Woolf screamed and fought but the Superstar’s grip was like iron. He said,
“All right, baby, enjoy yourself. Ice water helps open it up to reversal; can you figure that one out? No, don’t bother trying to bite, you can’t reach me.”
He kept up a cheerful monologue. “Aren’t you going to thank me? I lost my Jennison body getting that H-2 for you, pal. Like my new body? It was a compromise. The only humans who make any sense at all to me are the Blake-Whitman-Cocteau types. But unfortunately the people of this debased world only admire people on their own level or lower; including baboonish sports figures, confidence men, rock musicians, actors, and so forth. Anything beyond those categories is over their little heads.”
He chatted on pleasantly. Virginia Woolf’s features were contorted in agony. She couldn’t pull away from the stinging, freezing needles of water. Her tormentor was like a rooted clamp, completely dry except for hands and forearms. His face and one finger bled where she’d bitten and scratched but he ignored that.
“Feeling better now, pal? The temperature shock does it; localizes your distress, gives you something to get mad at.”
Her teeth chattered. She glared at Omark through sopping strands of hair. “I’ll kill you. Even if I die for it, I’ll kill you.”
“That’s just a natural reaction. But say it again and I’ll knock your front teeth out, baby.”
He held her until the fight was all gone and Woolf hung limply under needles of fiery, drowning ice.
“It this resembles some insane Earthie shock torture you have my apology. It’s just that I don’t know how else to get your attention.”
“Bite rubber, you cur,” Woolf sobbed.
He slung her on the bed. With a towel he beat, slapped, massaged her burning flesh. She quivered and whimpered. The detective said,
“Now listen! I want you to remember exactly what happened. Scaulzo used the H-2 on you, and you’re having a typical reaction so don’t panic. Think of the wonderful thing you accomplished back there.”
Woolf lay still, trying to control any outward display of anger so Omark wouldn’t hold her under the ice water again. He said,
“You used the H-2 I jayhawked from the pigpen in Naples. You froze Scaulzo. You’re a hero, kid.”
“Go fuck a mousetrap! Who cares! Look what happened to me!”
Woolf couldn’t control it. She went for his throat and crotch, her face a mask of pure hatred. Spade felt the impact of her knee, yelped, and delivered another pair of ringing slaps across her face.
“Don’t make me bloody you up! I know how you feel! A free spirit imprisoned like that goes crazy. If it will give you any satisfaction, Scaulzo’s also screaming in hell at this moment.”
Oddly enough, the realization did make her feel better. “I hope he goes right up the pole! He deserves it.”
“Well, I’ve been through this procedure with Lozetti,” said the Maltese Falcon antihero, rubbing her prone body with salad oil. “I hate to mention the things that little frog pulled on me while he was frozen. That’s what I’ve been doing. Experimenting with a freeze release. All over the universe, in some of the damnedest places you could hope to see.”
“Real cute,” she said sullenly. “Letting me do the dirty work while you skulk around being Mister Fix-It.”
“Perhaps. So what?” Spade flipped his cigarette into the toilet. “Listen, my sweet, a newly frozen being is the most evil suck in the known universe. It’s not hard to see why. You’re on a big ‘vendetta’ syndrome right now. Like any moronic hockey star or Mafia don, all you understand is punishment. But I don’t plan to let you hurt me.”
At this challenge, Woolf moved to knee him again. Spade twisted her arm sharply until she doubled over in pain. Her eyes bulged in helpless, human fury. The detective hissed into her ear:
“I admit this is a lousy way to do it but we haven’t time for refinements. If you hurt me we both lose, so listen hard: try that again and I’ll break you in bloody two. Understand?”
“Yes. Now take your hands off.” Woolf appeared calm but they both knew she was seething with inward antagonism.
“All in good time, baby. First absorb what I’m telling you. The pellet that froze you was imprinted with a hypnotic command. A freeze job is simply an implant telling you that you have no existence outside the bod. Follow?”
“For chrissake shut up! You talk too much!”
“Not until we go over every inch of this.”
The anthropologist twisted until her lips were hungrily against his. She arched her body.
“Make love to me, Omark. Please. Please! Now!”
Spade wiped his bleeding hand on the sheets, saying,
“In my opinion, human sex is a form of hysteria. Like canned soup, it’s been cheapened beyond recognition. So knock off the crap! Just realize that you’ve caught a contagious disease and I’m trying to cure it.”
Woolf screeched and kicked out at him. “Why you coldblooded little bastard! You—eunuch! You lured me to this crummy planet knowing I was in love with you. Then you ran off, you set me up, threw me at Scaulzo—if it weren’t for you I’d be free!”
They wrestled on the bed. Omark yelled, “Yeah, you hate me! I ruined your life! You piggy little Earth animal, it’s somebody else’s fault, never yours! Tell me about it! Tell me all about it!”
For hours Benaroya was a shrieking inferno. When her hatred wound down she went into self-pity, then anguished remorse, then into blistering schemes for revenge. When she was exhausted, Omark began speaking with patient clarity. He described a day on Rysemus, recalling things they couldn’t discuss while they were acting out the difficult Earthie roles. He spoke of the return to the sublime; the bliss of godhood, becoming absorbed in one’s own creations. He brought back sensations that had dimmed during her hectic stay on Earth. A school of dolphin leaping and skimming waves. The promise of Union, which was the glory of becoming light as it falls through space: free of obstacles, gravity, and entrapping bodies.
He conjured up the terrors of what had happened to her. How B.‘s thoughts—slowly turning into hardened plaster as she became a human through and through—a brute, actually—could return to serenity and power, if she could just hang on now! He finished with a braintrip to one scintillating Bright Lights planet after another, until Benaroya’s horizons began to expand once again.
Then Spade bandaged his finger, yanked off his necktie and rang for food. The nixon (natty in a steward’s uniform) wheeled in dinner for two. While they ate ravenously, Spade continued the treatment.
“You’ll be free soon, sweetheart. We’ll remember this as high adventure. Like getting a leg shot off in battle a few eons ago; these things fade, you’ll hardly recall Earth with its built-in snags and lacks. Next season we’ll be on Sutt 58 running some tests. Frimble and myself, and you, if you like. Sutt is a non-psychotic planet; we can breathe freely there, really enjoy life. The inhabitants use computer and aircraft and submarine bodies, don’t die or suffer pain, and are not trendy. How about it?”
Woolf sulked. She knew she was glued to an Earth environment from now on. Why was he tormenting her? She asked,
“Were you able to cure Lozetti?”
“With some difficulty. Another bottle of Beaune, please, Richard. You see, the freeze implants a blueprint for a dwindling life-force. Like what they used to call a ”spell“ or bewitchment. And Quatzlers have a limited power to begin with. But you wouldn’t recognize Lozetti now; he’s not the sloppy mobster you met on the Appian Way. More like a frog prince. But happy because he’s impervious to freezing.”
“How long does it take? The cure, I mean.”
“It takes as long as it takes. Get dressed; we’re going to beam down.”
“No!”
Woolf knocked over a table in her haste not to be grabbed. She tried to spring into the bathroom and lock the door but Spade was ready for this. She’d been frozen on Earth; the thought of going back would turn her into a cornered rat, a crafty madwoman who’d do anything to keep from facing what had happened to her. Spade had to pull her out of this reaction, fast.
He scooped up some blankets from the bed, arm-locked Virginia Woolf and beamed them down to an open basin in central New Guinea, for privacy. They stood in a grassy clearing surrounded by jumbles of verdure-clad mountains, all vertical slopes and crevices. It was a breathtaking slice of Earth scenery. But Woolf was naked, shivering, and furious.
“You cheap, tacky prick!” She remembered the H-2 unit in her snowsuit pocket back at the ship. Why hadn’t she thought to freeze the bum solid while she had the chance? Freeze him as this tight-lipped little movie star with the two legs, and let him suffer in that degraded condition until the day he died.
Spade granted. “Don’t beat it to death, anthropologist. Even the natives won’t help you here. They’re cannibals. Warm, friendly cannibals, the most honest people you can meet on Earth. They live with the skulls and bones of their dead relatives. Polish them every day and take them on vacations. Isn’t that loyalty for you? Not like the self-devoted civilized, who dump their dead into cold, lonely graves. Now cool it or I’ll let them polish your bones.”
Woolf sagged; she just wanted to give up and cry. The detective said,
“No honky ever comes near this place, sweetheart. The terrain is impassible. The rain forests and gorges can’t be crossed and no helicopter can land here. Which reminds me: the RCMP has an APB out on you. Scaulzo filed a criminal assault complaint. Virginia Woolf has a dozen counts of murder against her. There’s no way you can return to civilization, so let’s get on with it. Come on; help find some wood.”
They gathered a pile of logs and built a fire. Night was coming on; the air had gotten cool. Woolf huddled in a blanket, staring at the flames and brooding.
A toad flopped in the brush. Omark said,
“Borrow that toad’s body. Do it fast; don’t argue.”
Omark kept shoving, tying his energy in with hers. No use fighting it. Go for broke and try for a cure. Omark’s added power helped B. activate the toad’s body. She felt spears of grass tickle her belly. The ground was still warm from the sun, all sandy and delicious smelling. A lovely bug squirmed under her toe-pad; she ate it with relish and the taste was something any gourmet would hock his El Dorado to enjoy. She jumped, flopped, settled heavily. Her skin was a loose, warty, potato-colored leather. Jeepers, this was a divine lifestyle! Squatting on the turf, belly full of insects, some still wiggling; all fat and satisfied; eyes bulging in pleasure at the odors that wafted in the grass forest. Oh, this was ginger peachy. Why not be this lovely hoptoad forever?
“Move it along, sweetheart,” Omark said. He kept flash-beaming them to cold moons and barren planetoids where the suns were so remote no point of light showed. He kept this up until her mobility was restored. Then he threw more logs on the fire and said,
“Make us a city on the side of that mountain.”
B. was more than at home in the construction field. Omark’s classes on Rysemus made an infinite number of artifacts: solar systems, races of people with complex histories, whatever seemed jolly at the moment. She tossed up a latticed globe with pinpoint gravity at its center, and skyscrapers, woven around an intricate metro system, across the surface. It was solid and real, and beautiful. Omark nodded.
“That’ll do; now people it.”
She made four billion humans, using mind energy but sometimes throwing in roots and live insects to deform them, just for fun. The people stumped around in their latticed city, voting, taking out the garbage, and worrying about the future. Each one came complete with memories, hopes, pride, and plenty of opinions about everything under the sun. Half of them hated the government and wanted to destroy it. The other half loved the government for feeding and protecting them. The government was a big machine which processed IBM cards and threw out the first ball at the World’s Series. There were three sexes: one to lay eggs, one to protect eggs, and one—
“Destroy it,” Omark said.
“Now just a darn minute! These people want to live. They deserve to live!”
“All the more reason to wipe them. Go on, have the guts to be a god. Destroy the world.”
A cataclysm took place. The people ran screaming. There were billions of heroic acts. An old man named Wilbur F. Kornplotz died tragically while trying to save his little dog Honeybear. Thousands of children starved to death. B. wept softly when a flood came and washed the city away, and even the tombstones were dissolved.
They kept working until dusk faded into night and stars blazed over New Guinea. Convalescence would take more time, but B. was over the worst of it. Now she felt a bit sheepish. How could she ever apologize to Sam Spade? “Gee, fella, I’m sorry for the nearly-severed finger and double sorry I kicked you in the balls.” Or how about, “Excuse the attempted rape, but I wasn’t myself, dear.” No—
“Where’d you learn all those tricks, Teach?”
Omark yawned and settled with his head on a log. “Oh, here and there. It’s a longtime problem on Earth. There were mind masters in early centuries who were into that stuff. As you can imagine, as soon as they appear, they get murdered by the other Earthies or thrown into asylums or something. Needless to say, the people who became adept went somewhere else.”
“Um.”
B. hugged her knees and rested after the ordeal, staring peacefully into the fire. Wow. It would take days to assimilate what had happened to her. She was especially glad to be finished with that “feminine” horseshit, which seemed like pointless masochism. Ninety percent of Earthie behavior made no sense whatsoever. It was clearly non-survival; just one big, dumb, suicidal wallow. Anyway, she’d learned a lot by doing it.
The detective said,
“Listen. I want you to promise me one thing.”
“Whatever your heart desires. After all, I owe you plenty.”
Sam Spade reached for a Lucky and said,
“You’re immune to the H-2 now. You’re invulnerable; once you get stabilized you can never be refrozen. But I haven’t had that experience. So if anyone uses an H-2 on me at any time, I want you to take the biggest, toughest bod you can find and give me the full treatment. Promise?”
He lit the cigarette, squinting over the smoke. Woolf said,
“Sam baby, it will be my pleasure.”

Chapter Seventeen
After that soul-wrenching hassle, Virginia Woolf relaxed in her stateroom with a sugary vodka on the rocks. Whew! She cocked her feet on the desk and dialed Mersoid to find out how things stood.
The Council Chief wasn’t wearing his Lincoln body. You could have knocked Woolf over with a feather; this was the first time she’d seen a Rysemian through human eyes. Ugh! Imagine a grungy blob of caca afloat on greasy ocher billows. Why, he was GROSS! He looked like a bladderwort in dishwater! She was shocked. She stared in horrified fascination. Mersoid was saying, “It’s  species psychosis,  no doubt  about  that.  How they’ve managed to survive this long is a wonder.”
“Uh, where’s your human body?” Luckily he didn’t notice the goggling and gagging.
“In the closet on a hook. Where it belongs. If Earthies insist on having a leader they should find a brainy recluse who refuses to make wordy public displays of herself. Either that, or a universally-programmed computer.” “Well… Any decisions as yet?”
“First, the diagnosis.” Mersoid rippled his whiskers. Ick! What a pukey looking blubberfish. Why, he was an insult to reality! “Lacking telepathic power, humans have developed an acute paranoia, which causes the constant spying and brainwashing, which deepens the paranoia.”
“Well it’s not their fault. It’s the System that’s wrong.” Woolf shut her eyes. Urp! She couldn’t bear to look at his girth, his gills, his color… She felt like woofing her cookies. Mersoid was burbling,
“You’ve forgotten your basics. The System is always a mirror of the mass mind. It’s absurd to believe the way to change oneself is to change one’s mirror image.”
“Sez you!”
“Sez me and the whole Council. To these supermonkeys, the outward appearance of a body is all that counts. Think how dangerous that is. Any sick demon with charisma can trick the Earthies.”
“That’s a lotta bull.”
The Chief was incensed. “Apparently you haven’t begun to plumb the depths of their truly inconceivable vulgarity.”
Woolf slammed her drink down and looked him (ulp!) straight in the eye.
“Now just a darn minute. Are you jabeeps planning to destroy Earth or something?”
She began to panic, thinking how terrible that would be. Earth was so pretty, with little whitecapped lakes, pine trees and beaches and flowers, and even the stars looked kinda nice from Earth, kinda powdery and bright and faraway… Mersoid was saying,
“Of course not. Valuable piece of real estate like that? We are, however, going to disintegrate every human being on the planet. We’ve set a time: eight forty-five P.M. this coming Sunday, April the sixth. At that instant each human body will fall into its component elements, a tiny handful of chemical dust worth about three dollars on the market. Animals and plant life won’t be affected in any way. We’ll use the planet, minus humans and their endless problems, as a small but attractive tourist resort.”
“Why you rotten—crypto-fascists!” Woolf screamed.
“Now don’t get excited. You know you’ve got to be more than a deodorized sex-and-eating robot with a degree and a voter’s card to inhabit this dolphin’s universe.”
“But we can’t just wipe them out! I demand an appointment with Heidi’s Grandfather.”
“Fine, fine, go nag the old man, then get back to me.”
Virginia Woolf felt wretchedly upset All Earthies to be disintegrated? Turned into a handful of dust all in one flash? Ghastly! If she wasn’t so pleased at being inoculated against all future H-2 attacks, she’d have gone out of her mind with grief and remorse. Still, she meant to fight for Earth to the last ounce of her strength. The man to consult was Heidi’s Grandfather, supreme head of the Rysemian Foundation. He could revise any Council decision. He had to listen to her! She had to save Earth!
The old gentleman was delighted to meet Benaroya at a sidewalk cafe on the Champs Elysees.
“They have 38 kinds of ice cream here,” he said happily.
Rain had fallen on Paris that morning. The leaves of the plane trees were a fresh, glossy green. The seats were damp; Woolf and Grandfather mopped up with paper napkins. The Grandfather chatted serenely about the mountains, the goats, how things were at home. He looked healthy as ever: bushy, white brows, immense beard, and he wore a blue smock and carried an alpenstock. Benaroya felt a burst of joy. It was wonderful to be with gentle, fun-loving Grandfather! He made the silly old world seem right again. She ordered a Pernod, he ordered goatsmilk and a pastrami hero with onions. Woolf came straight to the point.
“We’ve got to help Earth.”
“Help Earth do what, my child?”
“Don’t give me the old snowjob. You know what.”
His blue eyes crinkled. “They’d spurn my help. They want money and flattery, not advice from your old Grandfather.”
“But they’re improving. Soon they’ll have abandoned the profit system.”
“Certainly, until a clever trader drops by with shiny beads. You don’t dump greed by changing systems, you just drive it underground. But look at this wonderful place. Maniacs everywhere. Look, there’s a dog! It’s a French dog. Give the dog some of these onions and a little Pernod, my dear.”
“Lissen, are you snowing me with the old Establishment crapola like Mersoid always does? Lissen: one percent of Americans own seventy-two percent of the corporate stock!”
‘Terrible. Should be remedied. But my child, have you forgotten cosmic history? After you distribute all the ’stuff‘ equally, then what? Then you find it was not the cause. It was just another effect. The problem lies much deeper.“
Woolf chewed breadsticks, frowning. Grandfather went on, “But then Earthies always hit the wrong target. It’s part of their culture. The best they can do is fight symptoms and although, as you point out, greed is a good symptom to fight, the fact remains that Earthies are suffering from a pernicious disease.
“But they’re cute.”
“Cute? Cute? Malaria bugs are cute too but you can’t have them running all over the place.”
“So how can they cure this so-called disease?”.
“Very simple. They can change completely. First, become less vulnerable; you saw what a pushover even the tough-minded Resnick is. Stop hypnotizing each other from infancy on with sales pitches, for openers. Second, concentrate all research on the the mind, as every advanced race as done. Bodies are mere tools and should never be worshipped. But to Earthies that kind of talk is witchcraft. They’re too hysterical to understand so we don’t bother trying to convince them.”
“But where would they start?”
“Close the mouth. Sit alone quietly. Junk the telly. Don’t listen to others. All brainwash is pernicious whether it calls itself ‘medical’ or ‘religious’ or ”patriotic’ or whatever. The only rule must be ‘Think for yourself’ which is no rule at all.“
“Come on, be serious, what should they do first?”
“I told you. Sit quietly and develop.”
“Is that all?”
“In a word: evolve.”
“I don’t know if that’s practical…”
“My child, instead of regenerating, they sit and play with their aberrations. They commit advertising upon each other! And as you know, advertising is a crime against nature.”
“But they’re only trying to cure sickness and things.”
“Rubbish. They are selling sickness, instilling it in each other’s minds for profit.”
“Boy. You make it all sound so hopeless.”
“My dear, a human can’t figure out the needs of his closest friend; no, not ever his own needs does he comprehend…”
“She,” Woolf interrupted.
“Does she comprehend; sorry. So how dare anyone try to influence anyone else? Let alone great masses of people.
Fight disease. War against intolerance. Buy junk. Force people to love each other. It’s a violent species and we can’t have them roaring savagely out into space ready to get angry and do harm at any moment. No, if we let such madness off the planet, we’re going to have it all over the universe. We simply can’t allow it. Earthies must stay in the isolation ward.“
“But you want to obliterate them,” she said angrily.
“If they’d admit to being barbarians and be content to remain on their planet with their own grubby little sports and wars, that would be one thing. You can let a baby play, but you can’t let a baby kill you. The fact is, their population’s increasing at over a hundred thousand a day. Soon they’ll be hopping off the planet like fleas, and that’s all that concerns us at this time.”
“But how about great minds? How about great ideas?”
“Are there any? A faint glimmer here and there, cemented over with chunks of raw confusion.”
“But how about the artists and writers?”
“Pooh. We skinned one and found a gray flannel suit underneath. Have some goatsmilk, Heidi, my child.”
“I hate goatsmilk! And my name’s not Heidi.” Jinkies—Grandfather must be getting old. Maybe he should retire. He was cramming the sandwich messily into his mouth and saying,
“Don’t you see what a vicious circle they’ve got going? And nobody, but nobody, has the wit to break it. Why, even love is based on threats. ‘Love me or I’ll take my love away.’ Blackmail is normal for Earthies. So is rampant consumerism. It’s all part of being a savage. Don’t pout, angel; have some goatsmilk, it will put roses in your cheeks.”
She sulked. “If you destroy them you’re as bad as they are.”
“My dear, it’s an anthill that went sour, an aquarium that doesn’t work. To repair is costly and difficult so we throw out the whole mess and walk away singing.”
“They are trying.”
“They are killer sharks.”
A gust of wind rattled the chestnut leaves. Grandfather cut huge slabs of bread and buttered them. “Every Earthie is brainwashed all day long,” he said, chewing. “She’s bombarded with rewards in the form of flattery, trophies, sex and approval, alternated with threats of rejection if she dares deviate from whatever bilge is currently fashionable. Any insight is ridiculed out of her in babyhood. Who needs people like that?”
“We do,” Virginia Woolf cried.
For a few minutes there was no sound but lipsmacking. Then H.G. swallowed and said,
“Pish-posh! Earth is already a world of meddlers. The best way to help is leave people in peace and trust to Natural Law which always works, even when little policemen are tucked away in dreamland.”
“Nertz,” Woolf growled under her breath.
“You’ve been brainwashed. You are in grave peril, my child, and humans are the least of your worries. Just don’t forget the facts. Every fifteen minutes humans murder a kindly, harmless whale, who is twice as intelligent as they are, using a harpoon which bursts in the intestines and causes an hour of agony before death. No, don’t interrupt! Their mad superstition teaches them that they are valuable and sacred, but animals can be slaughtered wholesale— when everyone knows it’s the other way around!”
“Well but—”
“They club baby seals to death and rip off their skins in front of their mothers. They perform fiendish experiments over and over again on innocent dogs and monkeys, saying this will ‘cure disease,’ unaware that the psychological damage they do to themselves by such oafish egotism is What causes disease… Liars to the core, what they’re really after is a research grant and a power thrill.”
“Well, we could teach them.”
“Teach them?” the Grandfather roared. “Are you mad, Heidi? Humans despise anyone not exactly like their own degraded selves. Do you know how they’d react to your native body? They’d murder and render you without a second thought. Or else, prattling endlessly about ‘ecology’ they’d throw you into a tank and force you to jump through hoops for the amusement of crowds of morons—until you close your blowhole and commit suicide the way dolphins do every day in Earthie amusement parks. And you want to turn these sadists loose on the universe? Hah! That would be murder.”
“There must be something we can do!”
He flung his arms up, crying:
“Open wide the sluice-gates! Yoho for a leap of understanding, fresh as a spring breeze! My advice to you is: go and enjoy Union. Take a weekend pass at the Grid. Cleave to your own kind. Once you ring the big bell again you’ll forget this momentary attachment to a petty race.”
“But are you gonna kill them?”
“Only if we all agree, as usual.” The old gentleman belched and adjusted his underwear. “Here’s the check. Slip it into that red-white-and-blue trash barrel on your way out. Auf Wiedersehen my child—and keep smiling! Remember, you have a Mission.”
==========
Well maybe H.G. wasn’t so far off base. After all, fie was the head honcho. She needed some R and R at the Grid and a chance to think it all over.
Benaroya put the Woolf body in storage and beamed to Grid 8, the Mousehole terminal at this end of the galaxy. The Mousehole would be open to the public next week, and then wouldn’t the good times roll! She wondered how Grid 8—gateway to hyperspace, a colossal chunk of hardware wheeling out in the dead-silent emptiness—would look to human eyes. No doubt this alien beauty would seem monstrous to her human friends. Their minds were trained so that whatever they saw was changed to fit their preconceptions; otherwise the strain would be too great for the poor little things. So maybe they’d see Grid 8 as a cathedral with soaring spires. Or Seventh Heaven, or Cloud Nine, or the upward view inside a Renaissance dome, or maybe God on His Throne; or something satanic, like an evil hell, since they were always feeling threatened by what they didn’t understand (which included just about everything). In reality the Mousehole and its grids were the shining pinnacle of Rysemian technology, promising super-fun and Satori; so the anthropologist looked forward to one heck of a satisfying weekend.
Grid 8 featured posh hotels that catered to every body form in the galaxy. The grids were stations along the galactic axis from beyond Mliv through the Bright Lights nucleus (where the best hotels were) to 8, out here in the desert beyond Earth. Since travel time between stations was clocked in negative milliseconds, culture shock was a big factor; so each grid had a comfortable replica of the home environment of every known species. These sectors branched off the Lobby. The Lobby was truly outasite. All the diverse races met here and enjoyed full communication—visual, auditory, tactile as well as telepathic, thanks to the miracles of modern science. Here, a being from a methane steam world could make friends with a silicon-based rock dweller who lived its entire life inside a mineral. Here, a blind Rigelian could have an affair with a dry-ice dweller from Wolf IV. There was even an Earth sector; it was a replica of Earth in 2600 B.C., before life got too plastic and regimented. The Earth sector was small as yet, because Earthies were not evolved enough to reach out and use it.
But, if they could make a quantum jump in technology and ethics, they too would be welcome. For the moment B. comforted herself with this thought.
==========
And now she was in her native body again, and it was like climbing out of a dank crypt into sunlight.
The home sector! Benaroya looked around with growing delight.
They were all gathered; only captain and skeleton crew remained on Vonderra. Each “bottlenose” was twelve meters long with a tranquil, granite monument of a face and a majestic, immortal grotesquery of a body.
Slowly the parts of the One swirl together.
It starts as voltage. A pressure to unfurl electric fins, the husk of demon and angel, at the motionless point around which existence turns. Next a dropping away to unguessed-at spaces; a billion points of awareness driven by the gale, finding what was lost, imploding with a supernal hiss and crack into one monolithic Being.
The planet they had left (what was its name?) seemed to belong to a distant fairyland. Its squeaks, twitters and discontent died into the kingdom of never-having-existed.
And then! The school wheeled under blowrock fire and slime, bottlegreen in open seas, intersecting dark, bitter knowingness at the heart of the universe; cracked like a pod along major fault lines and crested, unendurably, in tumbles of the fixed sting called Life.
The One God skimmed chasms in silent blackness. Endless eons shot by…
==========
Suddenly the captain’s voice sliced through and Eternity smithereened like moonbeams on a shelled river.
“All right you goldbricking troglodytes! Now hear this! Back to your Earthie bods as fast as possible.”
—Into a million splinters of agitation, danger.
It was a Red Alert. Shrill waves of alarm went rattling through the Sector in the urgent, Earth-coded message. Ships were heading toward Grid 8. Sajorian destroyers and raiders. Vonderra had been crippled trying to intercept them. Extent of damage unknown.
In the viewplate an undecorated Patton in rumpled pajamas was saying sleepily,
“Roll out, Benaroya! Scaulzo’s on the way. And this time he wants to nail your anthropoid ass to the barn door.”

Chapter Eighteen
Holy croakers! Virginia Woolf had never felt so damned fragmented in her entire life. One minute you’re deep in the bliss of Union and the next minute—war’s declared, and you’re off to the Front!
Scaulzo and his platoon of ghouls had zoomed directly to Earth Sector; a smart move, since the Sojorian leader was frozen into a human body and from here he could attack the rest of Grid 8 and threaten the entire Mouse-hole—unless Woolf could throw a monkey wrench into his plans.
But, wow! Behold Old Kingdom Egypt in the flesh, twenty-five centuries before Cleopatra! Dig the unpolluted light, flooding the landscape in waterglassy sparkles. Woolf stood and breathed deeply, one hand pressed to breast in Edwardian rapture…Arggh! The smell was something else. Manure. Skunk? Burnt feathers, then a glandy perfume as a beautiful youth strolled by, hair braided, hips waggling—leaping lizards. It was a great wonderwork; palms and houses, carts and donkeys, people gliding here and there, a whirl of naked breasts, legs, thump of many feet, clamor and confusion…
Woolf reached for a mudbrick wall. Wowzereeno. So dizzy she might just go floating up into the incredible azure sky. She kicked off the sandals and kneaded her slender toes through a clump of wild oats, searching the crowd for faces she might recognize. No time for culture shock. Had to hurry. Danger was everywhere.
B. recalled Abe Lincoln’s briefing. Today was happening 4,500 years in the past, at the height of Egypt’s golden splendor. At this very moment the Sphinx was being built out on the adjoining desert. This was a world of joy and confidence, unlike the 20th century with its trapped, murderous billions. Mathematics, art, engineering were at their peak and would roll slowly downhill from now on. The Greeks copied this architecture and the Romans copied the Greeks but it all looked like a copy, without elan or flair, and then 20th century builders copied the Romans which explains why their public buildings are so boring. But there were no shortages here. The creative juices were flowing. The granaries were bursting with wheat and barley. The population was small, so the people did not hate each other’s guts as yet These folks enjoyed their brief 70 years to the hilt This was an age of splendor and real fun, a glittering jewel in humanity’s short, prick-dominated, asinine history.
B.‘s orders were simple. She’d stroll around until the Sajorians spotted her, or vice versa. Then hustle to a stake-out on the Nile with Scaulzo as close on her heels as possible. The Rysemians wanted to take him alive; they had much to learn from a trapped, helpless Prince of Darkness. But if capture seemed too risky then the order was: shoot to kill.
As the Shockwave faded, B. sauntered past a man snoring away by a tumbledown hut, where linen was drying on vines. Some red geraniums bloomed at the doorway and everything smelt strongly of beer. The anthropologist smiled, thinking: humans sure don’t change much. But again she was subject to all those nagging Earthbody flaws: hunger, fatigue, inability to withstand temperature changes, and bladder pressure, and gas pangs, and tender skin, and blood sugar fluctuations—holy mackerel. Thank heaven she wasn’t locked into this weak, little shell of flesh.
It must be terrible for Scaulzo. He was locked in. Funny: she kinda enjoyed gloating over what she’d done to him, and that was a bad sign.
Woolf sniffed a roast cooking. The family across the way would dine on oven-hot bread and beer, meat, vegetables, milk and honey and fruit, and everything would taste like food hadn’t tasted in thousands of years. Golly, the Earthies of the 20th century—how sorry she felt for those poor, defrauded jabeeps! Maybe euthanasia was the kindest way out. It was a tough decision, all right.
Virginia Woolf was naked under a flimsy gown, like the other women on the street. But she was Nordic-pale with a long, bony face and poet’s eyes and that was obviously gonna cause problems. Both guns were concealed under an embroidered belt. The sun glared down; a stifling day— when a cool breeze billowed the gown, and caressed her naked skin, it felt delicious.
Oh-oh. Now a loudmouth fruit peddler was chasing her. Darn it, maybe she should have worn the standard bod like the other Egyptians. The horny peddler had begun chanting about her various attributes—holy mackerel!, while pelting figs at her rear; “Fuck off,” she squawked, glaring meaner than sin. The neighborhood absolutely seethed with swingers, walking purposefully, or laid back, or squatting in doorways or leaning out windows; the peddler’s antics had them all watching her.
A naked child drove a flock of geese between her legs. There were giggles and ribald remarks about her hair, dead-white skin, peering eyes and jouncing milksacks and worse—well they could just go bloat and explode! A cluster of crones were making Evil Eye signs so there was nothing for it but to give them the finger, meanwhile tripping in gutterslop where rats gnawed at fishguts; that brought down the house!, so Woolf stuck out her tongue and waggled her fingers at one and all. She strode past racks of drying squab, smelling the most piquant odors; something tart, a rotted hippo haunch, a mound of watery excrement.
The corner idlers began a new song about her mam-maries, their elasticity and jounce-rate, their aureoles— holy mackerel! Given more time, she’d blush. A gang of carpenters waved from a portico where they’d knocked off work to gorge on hot soup, beer and ribs. Well at least they were an upbeat bunch, huh?, all kinda warm and friendly, meaning no harm—she’d kinda missed that in the 1900’s, where “friendship” and “tenderness” and “joy” were trade names for various deodorant sprays.
The anthropologist’s sandals slapped over black mud, dodged cowflops, tracked through sawdust and the rubble of industry. A gang of drunks reeled past singing and yelling; one of them paused to water a bush, and at that instant Woolf caught a pair of eyes boring into her own. Then a mule loaded down with lemons bumped her, the drunks moved along, the gimlet-eyed man shifted his gaze.
She studied him narrowly. Sajorian? Looked to be just a pudgy, ordinary leather worker in his stall surrounded by piled-up hides, tool rack, stools, water jug. He kept punching holes in a strip of harness. Seemed to be the genuine thing, yet something wasn’t quite right… Well, fine; if this galoot was with Scaulzo, the bait would soon be swallowed whole.
Woolf headed for the shadows of a loggia. It was cool under here; she could watch the street and think, despite smelly garbage and a thing that resembled a decaying fetus with flies buzzing it. Part of her rapid briefing had been a study of maps of the area. There were hundreds of intricate passageways and courtyards; she hadn’t had time to memorize them all. But down this street were the open-air shops. To the east lay the Nile. To the north was the gleaming Mediterranean which they called “The Great Green Sea.” About a mile farther down, at the river’s edge, was the stake-out. All those honeycombed courts were confusing as hell; couldn’t afford a mistake. She had to lure Scaulzo down there, close enough so that Frimble and Omark could seize him alive and de-activate his ring, a tricky maneuver, before he could beam out. Then, the Prince of Darkness would be theirs; completely helpless, ready to be shipped to Rysemus for study. Wow. It seemed almost unbelievable. Capturing the Devil in person! Squatting, she chewed a hangnail and peered streetward, deep in thought. Could Scaulzo be treated? Was his psychosis curable? If so, change was at least theoretically possible, even for a moribund planet like Earth.
She watched people saunter by in the scorching heat. They seemed to radiate an easy well being, so different from the greedy hysteria of the late 1900’s. There was a good, warm glow to these folks; no stale self-righteousness or striving to be “better” than each other in some trivial way. They were simply alive in the uncomplicated pleasure of existence. To Woolf, they seemed to have it made, boy. They were much luckier than any 20th century “billionaire” or “leader” (because holy cats, what could those poor dears buy with their money, or who could they lead, except the blind? Oh what a travesty it was.) Like sure, maybe these Egyptians went naked, had scant plumbing, married relatives, whacked the hands off thieves or didn’t run around awarding each other prizes for peace; but baby, there was sure no comparison! This lifestyle made sense. Not like the fear-ridden 20th century, where people crawled over each other like these maggots on this piece of dead flesh here.
Yep; this was an easier, freer age. On the other hand it was still pretty crappy. Who could stand to be a human, under any circumstances? She couldn’t imagine being Virginia Woolf or Abraham Lincoln for a lifetime, boy. That would be a fate not to wish on your worst enemy…
Woolf peed on a rubbishpile, where many had done the same, then fluffed her hair and was about to enter the street again, when the enemy struck.
First, a nip from the Agony Organ. A warning so muted it seemed unimportant. Then a stronger tweak; one of them must be close, attempting to instill confusion and move in quickly… As Woolf crouched instinctively, a man grabbed her arms from behind and twisted, trying to slide the activator ring off her finger. She aimed a swift heel to his groin, then crunched his instep on the down-stroke and broke free. She whirled and as the attacker doubled over in pain, calmly used the H-2 unit on him. He thrashed in agonized spasms and knelt to vomit. While he was choking and puking, Virginia Woolf, with a cold smile borrowed from “Marked Woman,” shot him cleanly through the head with her pearl-handled .38 revolver.
Hot dogs! What a thrill! Her first genuine, coldblooded murder. Now was that such a very big deal? About as important as swatting a fly. Well—more satisfying, really. More fulfilling, as they kept telling women that marriage and babies were, in the early 20th century. Huh! How about that. She studied the corpse. The man wore an Egyptian kilt like the other men here in the slums. She was glad nobody had seen her waste this dude. Other Sajorians would be close so she had to get a move on.
This Sector covered about 8,000 square miles from above the Nile delta to the First Cataract. Scaulzo would have his studs all over, in the usual alert network. They believed she was frozen, and would go for her ring to prevent her from beaming out. The neat part was, she was free, thanks to Omark’s research, and could simply dump the bod at any time and take off in freeform; the activator ring would be necessary only if she wanted to take the bod along.
So, no sweat; just let Scaulzo find her, then play it by ear. She passed a reed-roofed house where three toddlers made mudpies under a mimosa tree. Woolf squatted to watch. Gee, they were cute! They had waterpots and were smeared all over with mud. This was her first chance to observe Earthie children at close range. In the 1900’s they locked them in schools, and had to warn them against strangers, because insane adult males owned the streets; these psychotics were Holy, much like sacred cows, and couldn’t be killed or even diagnosed since it was against local custom. When they murdered a child there would sometimes be a public outcry, but only a temporary one, since it was too complicated for Earthies to handle.
Like all the people here, these children were androids. Human surrogates who couldn’t be told from the real thing (whatever that meant; wasn’t everybody real? Even Richard Nixon was real, for heaven’s sake). Each was a replica of a human who had lived and died in Fourth Dynasty Egypt, and whose specs, to the smallest detail of mind and body, had been applied by the Rysemian Temporal Translation Crew. Benaroya knew she was looking at an authentic scene out of the past. The big-eared puppy frisking around was a genuine, spotted, big-eared puppy. Heartwarming! B. found herself speaking fluent Egyptian babytalk, then picking up the smallest child, who was warm and sticky and irresistible. Strange to realize he was an exact copy of a baby who’d existed long ago. His little heart was thumping; she could feel his warm breath on her face. Even his thoughts were accurate to the last detail.
The Agony Organ slashed at her mind. She put the baby down and hurried on. Scaulzo’s message was loud and clear. He’d take her hostage; his lust for revenge had corroded to monomania. He was closing in… Just a matter of time…
Yuck! The evil A-O vibration died away. B. shook off its effects, doubly alert since an attack might come from any direction. At the next crossroad she was positive she’d glimpsed the albino head of Flench, Scaulzo’s lieutenant. A crowd of elegant, laughing matrons swept across the road. After they had passed, Flench was nowhere in sight, but he was certain to lurk and follow her.
The anthropologist loped through a shop where hanging mats kept the sun off the monkeys and gazelles that were for sale. Tantalizing smells wafted from the adjoining bakery. An old bakerlady grabbed B.‘s hand, with a grin dazzling around stumps of teeth—an expression of merry horseplay that B. absolutely loved; then a husky woman offered milk from a velvety brown cow. It was really neat. Wherever she went there was banter and shouted greetings. No wonder the suicide rate here approached zero. Then—the albino head again!, just beyond the next fence.
B. hurried in and out a furniture factory, squeezed through a gap in the wall, pounded along in dust and wild grass, dived into another shop. Flench stuck close; while he dodged an oxcart that came flying across the cobbles, B. ran the other way, through a gang of student sculptors who hooted and yanked off her robe. They refused to let her pass. She finally had to straight-arm a pair of them, slam! into the smooth quartzite statue of Pharaoh they were supposed to be polishing. Insistent little pricks! If she lived in this neighborhood she’d straighten them out in a hurry. Woolf picked up the shreds of her robe and shot into the nearest open space. Workmen paused in laying the ribs of a boat to watch a naked Bloomsbury Superstar vault the cedar gate, startle patrons in a barbershop, zip through the gangway and out the rear. Flench was thrown off; she’d gained precious minutes.
Woolf padded swiftly down a passage lined with smoky buildings. Four slaves went trotting ahead of her, with a palanquin in which sat a fat, blond man in linen robes. On impulse Woolf followed, sandals slapping the baked mud. The box-like litter was carried past a cross street, then down an alley lined with dried brick homes two or three stories high. She saw heaps of garbage crawling with ants and beetles and horseflies. A cat yowled and shot across the alley. The bearers halted before a three story brick building with portico and balcony on the second floor.
Looking up, B. saw curtains stir at a window on the top floor. The fat nobleman hopped down and waddled inside. For a brief moment a woman’s face appeared at the window, the eyes strikingly outlined in green and black.
Sajorian?
The place must be an expensive whorehouse. Woolf knew that these androids would carry out the life cycle of the humans from which they were copied. They’d eat, sleep, work, love, die and be buried exactly as the originals had done. But they were alive. They existed in the Now, like everyone else. Which meant that the anthropologist could get a shiv between the ribs if she made some dumb mistake or said the wrong thing to the wrong person.
Then suddenly, in a doorway down the block—Scaulzo!
The crowd surged between them but B. felt a thrill of voyeurism: here was the enemy she had frozen! How was he taking that ruinous humiliation? She stepped quickly inside the brothel to observe from shelter. Scaulzo wore the white linen kilt of the noble Egyptian, with a jewel-encrusted pectoral. His bare torso looked tanned and muscular. But his face! It was ravaged. Golly; he was taking the defeat very badly. His eyes were murderous coals, his skin puffy and mottled. She’d look like that too, if Omark hadn’t developed a freeze release. No doubt Scaulzo was suffering tortures equal to any he had inflicted in the past.
He was heading this way!
B. raced up the stairs and plunged through a tapestry door. After the sunlight, this place was blacker than pitch. But she had to move—and fast; the Sajorians would follow in seconds.
As Virginia Woolf turned to run, a hand grabbed her arm.

Chapter Nineteen
Woolf stood without breathing, nostrils flared, body bent forward and trembling slightly.
She was in an antechamber of some sort—an airless room, fumy with boiled onions and civet. One ray of light came from a brass lamp that swung from a hook in the ceiling. By its sooty flicker she was able to identify this stranger, pressing insistent fingers into her arm, as a woman; perhaps the beautiful prostitute with kohl-lined eyes she’d seen at the upstairs window.
The woman stared at Woolf with open curiosity and challenge.
“Hush! When Nefaramon takes pleasure we keep quiet.”
“You mean that funny, fat dude?”
A nod. The ghost of a smile. “Are you in some kind of trouble?”
“Couple of men want to kill me.”
The elegance of this slim, red-nailed creature with the malachite eyepaint, the musky perfume, was a prototype of all bewitchment. Wow. From somewhere down the hall Woolf heard music: flute, harp, drum softly beaten.
Sandals slapped into the entrance hall downstairs.
“Quick! In here.”
The woman pushed Woolf into a room where shell lamps flickered on a bluegreen wall of glazed terracotta. There were painted lotus buds, and several live moths circling a flame. A man and two women nuzzled and perspired on a low, wide bed. B.‘s guide propelled her into an empty closet, whispering,
“Come to the balcony when they’ve gone.”
Heavy shoes clattered up the hallway. Shouts, more trampling feet—what was going on out there? Woolf huddled against the cold plaster and held her breath. The lovers clamored and moaned. She heard a Sajorian yank the curtain aside, curse angrily and stalk off. Then more footsteps and a furious voice that bellowed:
“What’s the disturbance in here? Who are you?”
“Sir, I’m a wine merchant—”
“Kill the son of a jackal! Kick him downstairs!”
Then loud crashes, a scream; shuffling feet, two open-handed slaps and the smash of crockery hitting a wall. Jinkies. Her pursuers were well occupied. Through it all the three lovers clamped and sobbed in insistent bed-jiggling. Now was her chance. Woolf slipped out to the balcony and looked down. A mere one-story drop. She’d make it with ease.
The red-nailed woman appeared, looking worried. “The boys can’t stall them for long. What will you do, honey?”
“I’ll be fine. Thanks for your help.”
“Any time. Are you new in Kemet?”
Kemet? What was that? Oh yeah—what the early Egyptians called Egypt. It was the Greeks who called it “Egypt,” for corn sake! The anthropologist nodded, studying this lovely lady, who had a chain of delicately carved ivory around her neck. No, not ivory; it was bone. Polished whalebone… Despite herself, Woolf felt a twinge of revulsion.
“Thanks again,” she murmured, and jumped. Landing none too softly in a stack of hay; rolled once, leaped up and ran.
The Nile glimmered in the distance straight ahead. Scaulzo would follow like a shot. Good going! This was a dirt road flanked by sycamore trees; Woolf took a flying run at a six-foot wall, cleared it and loped through the grape arbor beyond. Must be the outlands of an estate. Lots of wealth in evidence. Behind a carved gate, several guards loafed over a knucklebone game. One of them zinged a spear at her; the others laughed but didn’t bother to follow.
The closer you got to the Nile, the more gold you saw. Wow. She’d sure left the ghetto. Here was a terrace with scattered gold furniture: inlaid chairs, little tables inset with carnelian and turquoise. A pond with waterlilies and swans. Holy mackerel but Egypt was beautiful! Over the rise was a gold-roofed pavilion, then a granite chapel carved in bold relief.
As she ran swiftly over the flagstones, Woolf thought of the woman who’d helped her; that kind, helpful, compassionate person. But a woman who flaunted the bones of a dead whale around her lovely neck:
Heidi’s Grandfather is right. Earthies destroy anything they choose to call “different,” the way idiots tear apart a kitten. Is it true that humans are cruel and evil psychotics—or just ignorant buffoons? Whichever it is: the blood of a hundred billion monkeys, cows, fish and dolphins, murdered in human arrogance since the world began, now cries out for vengeance! It’s true that in my native body I would be no more than blubber for their lamps. It’s only because I’ve agreed to wear the body they wear, that I’m not viciously condemned and slaughtered without a trial.. But every little dog in one of their dissecting labs is as life-hungry as some greedy whelp of a human is! And they whine about justice. Justice indeed. When a human pleads for her rights, you must say sternly, “Oh, really? And how many furs have you worn? How many friendly ducks have you shotgunned? How many newborn lambs have you knocked on the head with an iron hammer…?”
Woolf spat on the flagstones. She’d made her decision. Euthanasia was the best fate for these sadistic hypocrites. Maybe they should be given, say, two years (would H.G. go for that long a trial period?) and then if they showed no signs of evolving… Pull the chain.
But zowie, here was a garden of glowering shrubs, and round the bend, a roof supported by dozens of columns striped horizontally blue and gold. The craftsmanship was superb, considering it came from that doomed species, humanity. Woolf dashed by a streamside party, people gaping and pointing; her side was beginning to ache—the stake-out better not be much further. Where the stream narrowed, she took a running jump and landed in spraying gravel. Directly ahead was a flowering marsh. The Nile! Only a few hundred feet more. Her muscles screamed for rest.
Scaulzo was burning into her mind again, with his hypnotic lance. Woolf sprinted up the embankment past a row of alabaster jars set in niches, and slid down the other side. It was a papyrus-reed marsh. Fabulous spot; real Shangri-la. A flock of ducks took off, flapping loudly. Several nesting cranes stared at her. Now the cold water came swirling around her ankles. She knew that Scaulzo was close. She stood and listened, lungs heaving. Everywhere was silence. A frog splashed. Ripples caressed her legs… It was a mellow summer day… She cupped her hands and drank of the sparking water.
BLAM!
The reverberation of heavy gunfire shook the reeds; a second shot kicked up spray. Woolf fell, rolled on wet stones, sprang to her feet again. There went Flench’s white head bobbing for another shot. A flame of excitement warmed the Rysemian, making her breath hiss sharply. She was going to enjoy the heck out of this! The H-2 unit was in her hands, cold, heavy, ever so reassuring.
Flench’s third bullet whined close, stirring air by her cheek. His next slug grazed her arm and drew a little blood; it didn’t matter; just made his imminent death all the more pleasurable… She took aim on that white thatch when it bobbed into view, and very slowly, almost lovingly, squeezed the trigger.
The H-2 came alive in her hands, and recoiled with an arm-jerking kick.
Flench’s horrible shriek echoed down the river. Virginia Woolf smiled, blew smoke off the H-2 muzzle and gave it a little kiss. A privet hedge jerked and thrashed; the albino head shot up, then vanished. The shrieks and the jerking continued. Flench thrashed his way out of the privet and lay exposed, huddled and weeping. Woolf walked over and looked down at him. Calmly, she shot him through the head with her .38.
The Sajorian lay motionless. A big, red flower blossomed slowly in his white hair. Woolf pumped in three more slugs just to make sure. Then she rolled the body over with her foot. Yep, Flench was really dead; his eyes were locked open and there were flecks of dirt and straw on the glazed eyeballs.
So that was “murder.” My, my. Heavy word for such an insignificant, little act.
Virginia Woolf moved like a cat along the water’s edge. The sticky blood kept oozing down her gun arm. That was a drag. Wouldn’t help matters at all. Just ahead, facing out to the Nile, was the entrance to a tunnel. Woolf slipped inside and padded down steps into a corridor. She caught her breath; murals of fantastic beauty lined the walls— chariots, battles, captives on their knees, crocodiles slavering—jeepers! The arched ceiling was painted to resemble a grape arbor. She whipped down the hall, longing for a moment to enjoy this cool sanctuary; but Scaulzo was coming—insane with anger because she had murdered Flench.
Where was this? Must be part of the mortuary, if she remembered the maps correctly. Somewhere in here, the bodies were embalmed. She ran up another stairway into a hall where polychrome reliefs lined the walls. The only sound was the slap-slap of her sandals. This place seemed to be a complex set of chambers carved out of solid rock. The Egyptians built lots of dead-end mazes and puzzle corridors, to thwart robbers. Virginia Woolf, on the move, tore a strip off her gown and wrapped a tourniquet around her arm; blood was sure a nuisance. She swung down one stairway and up another, down a cool, hypostyle hall, past rows of incised reliefs, past startlingly real paintings. Greenery with prowling cats. Herds and flocks. Women: dancing; endless rows of them. Cooking, feasting, hunting in papyrus thickets, realer than life—but leaping lizards, which way was out?
The corridor forked. On instinct B. flung herself to the left. Here were statues of gods, Horus, Thoth, Ra, Anubis, then the door to a sanctuary. She peered inside and saw priests working on a corpse. It was a man of about thirty, looking not exactly freshly dead. The room was large and tiled with false doors carved into the walls. A row of mirrors caught the sunlight and reflected it downward. The morticians labored over the cadaver, removing the entrails through an incision. B. recalled what she knew of their embalming practises. The brain had already been removed through the nostrils. The viscera were being placed in stone jars. Now the bod would be soaked in a vat of saltpeter for many weeks; then dried and bandaged, after linen pads had been placed under the skin to fill out the sunken areas. Egyptians considered death the doorway to eternal life. Humans sure liked to make simple things complicated.
A priest pulled out the intestines and dropped them, coiling and slithering, into a bowl. Slither, slither! That was really funny. Religious rites were exercises in futility, since humans considered bodies important, but would allow any taped commercial to pollute their minds. Illogical? Wow. Woolf promised herself one thing, though: if the stake-out plan didn’t work, these priests would be laboring over Count de Falke’s remains by nightfall… She’d really enjoy watching that bit of mortuary skill, boy.
Yep; B. had to admit it. The slaying of Flench had been a satisfying thrill. She was beginning to see why Earthies considered murder their number one sport…
She raced down the hall, upstairs and off to a side hall, finally spotting a door with light behind it. It was unlocked. She pushed through into sunlight at the river’s edge and stood panting, straining to get her exact bearings.
The courtyard to the first temple was nearby (if luck held). Woolf saw an avenue of ram-headed sphinxes leading south. She sprinted between them, hoping they led to the temple, and suddenly there it was: gigantic statues carved from limestone; an enormous open space circled with towering columns. There were four of these courts, with the Rysemians staked out in the last one. She’d try to make it all the way with Scaulzo panting on her tail. If trouble struck she could always signal Mayday.
Across the court stood a row of pylons. They supported a narrow stone roof, and were carved and painted to resemble flowering palms. If she could get under there, it was a sheltered run to the next courtyard. She streaked across the center—not quite fast enough; bullets zinged past her ears, and her thigh burned with an icepick of sudden pain.
She stumbled behind a column, watching angry gouges appear in the masonry as the .45 continued its roar. Blood filled her sandal. Ugly! An inch further and the slug would have taken her leg off.
Silence. Except for a harsh sound: her own lungs sobbing for air. Harsh, blinding sun baked the courtyard’s painted floor. Woolf saw a tuft of moss at the base of the column. She pried it up and pressed it into her wound.
Blood kept trickling down the bandaged arm, but the leg was a real worry; the slug had cut an artery.
Woolf slid the .38 out of her belt. She checked it, reloaded and pulled back the hammer.
Then, Scaulzo’s voice! Whining; an angry child.
“Who are you? What are you—demon, or harpy?”
“I’m your death, you creep,” she yelled.
“No! Scaulzo is always the master.”
Woolf managed a tight smile. Her poor enemy was cornered behind a pylon across the court. With a little footwork Omark could take him single-handed.
He yelled, “Shove those guns out here, bitch, if you want to live!”
Jeepers… If only the blood would stop spurting, she could think more clearly. Soon Scaulzo would be captured and all this would be over.
“You’re surrounded,” the Sajorian whined. “Move into the clearing and drop your ring. Do you hear me, blubber-fish?”
Silence. A crow screamed in the trees. More silence.
The Sajorian broke and ran to the next pylon. He was fast, but the .38 barked twice and Woolf knew she’d scored a hit.
“You fool!” the Count screamed. “Do you consider me a stupid Rysemian? I have a surprise for you. I’ve bugged Earth’s atmosphere.”
“Don’t lie to me, you psycho swine!” B. cursed her wound. Pressure might stop the gush of blood; but she couldn’t find the ends of the artery—everything was too damned slippery. Scaulzo howled,
“Hold your fire. If I’m killed my Council can touch off a chain reaction that will blow Earth right out of the sky. And we’re using their own stockpiled nuclear weapons! We can trigger the whole cache simultaneously, directly from the capital at Sajor. I took this splendid idea from our little scientist Adrian Resnick, the future Nobel laureate.” He gave a high, whinnying laugh.
“Are you listening, Benaroya? We can shatter every tank of nerve gas from Sajor as well. What other race would be stupid enough to collect such weapons? Oh, bless the thoughtful Earthies! We can trigger every bomb they own! When Earth’s surface cools in a few hundred years the planet will be a shiny, little, bald marble!”—and another squeal of laughter. Biting it off suddenly. That must be pain. He shouted,
“Move out with your hands up. If you kill me, Earth is finished.”
Woolf felt detached and lazy; she counted on five minutes of life, at the most. Was Scaulzo bluffing? She knew Earthies spent lots of time making and hiding all sorts of ridiculous weapons. They were secretly building dozens of crippling disease-spreaders to use in biological warfare. Which explained why they repeated the words “We love people” so often… No, Scaulzo wasn’t lying. He’d arranged a clever nuclear debacle that would sterilize Earth’s surface. He thought this would bring the Rysemians to heel.
She touched her comm ring. Abraham Lincoln’s face appeared. She whispered,
“Where the Sam Hill are the reinforcements? I’m at the South temple. Scaulzo’s wounded. You can drop a net on him.”
The Count was peering out, confident she wouldn’t shoot. One hand pressed his chest. Blood welled between the fingers. He shouted,
“Give it up! Think of all the whales and dolphins boiled alive in the seas!”
Lincoln was standing in a turkish bath, wet and naked, surrounded by people. He snapped, “Your co-ordinates are off, obviously. Frimble is a quarter mile downstream. Can’t you hang on for two minutes?”
“I’m bleeding to death.”
“Then kill him and get out.”
“I can’t. He’s hotwired Earth’s atmosphere.”
“Who cares? Earth is over the hill.”
“If I kill him, Sajor will detonate the whole Earthie nuclear stockpile. All the N-bombs and nerve gas, everything. A lot of animals would suffer needlessly.”
“Then stall until help comes. Either way you’re in the clear.”
The anthropologist winced. She had two, maybe three minutes left. She shouted at Scaulzo,
“Beam out, Sajorian! We’ve got a freeze release which gives immunity, so I’m beyond your threats.”
“Liar!” the Count shrieked. He was mad with pain and rage. Woolf, sliding, dragging on a river of blood, moved into the blinding sunlight and yelled,
“Is this a lie, you psychotic idiot? Get off the Grid! Disappear before I blow your head off. Haven’t you heard? We’ve scheduled Earth for euthanasia. Your human allies won’t be around much longer!”
Sam Spade and Dirty Harry burst into the courtyard.
Count de Falke gave a scream of frustrated rage.
Virginia Woolf felt his .45 discharging, repeatedly, into her dying body.

Chapter Twenty
Adrian Resnick struggled to remain unconscious. To sleep, half mad or delirious, even to die, anything was better than waking up.
Let me stay under! Floating on a warm tide. Running through Eden with my wives and children… Watching friends die, anything, just let me stay under…
He opened his eyes, yelling,
“I need Scaulzo! I want Scaulzo!”
A redhaired woman was sitting on the bed and smiling at him. She touched his cheek with cool fingers. That felt good. Probably one of Scaulzo’s tender interludes. A few bars of love from the Agony Organ, to keep him conscious longer, roasting over the flames.
“I’m Brenda Starr,” the redhead trilled. “And this here’s Heidi’s Grandfather.”
Resnick stared. “You—You live on a place called Korgle.”
“No, sugar, we’re not part of Scaulzo’s brain scrambler. You’re snug in your own little beddy-bye.”
“What about Cassidy?”
“Gee kid, I’m so sad I could just die. We got there too late to save your buddy. And those other people in the dungeon, they were already dead; you were the only one we could rescue.”
Her green eyes had moistened with sympathy. Adrian looked around very slowly. A mirage? Or a miracle? He was in his own bed, the canopied four-poster, in his house on Telegraph Hill. Every light in the place was blazing just as he’d left it—when—yesterday? Two days ago? How many lifetimes had been lived since then? He felt exhausted but physically unhurt.
The old man called Heidi’s Grandfather was puffing on a smelly cigar. His white mane held twigs, filth, shreds of meat. He seized Adrian’s hand, saying,
“We think it’s best to hypnotize you and blank out all memory of your ordeal. You will believe Cassidy killed himself after losing his job, the way so many Earthies do.”
“And who the hell are you?”
“Rysemian anthropologists, checking one of our bases. Fortunately you don’t remember us either.”
“By whose authority, God dammit? And for what purpose?”
“Holy mackerel, keep your shirt on! We’re just trying to set things right.” Brenda Starr was happy as a hog in clover. She was going home! Damage to Vonderra had been minor. The “Prince of Darkness” was in the slammer, drugged and powerless. If there were no counter-raids to reclaim him, everything would be ginger peachy at last. She sopranoed,
“Don’t fight us, lover! You’re licked before you start! You see, we’re acting for billions of life forms, not just for one grabby, little human race. Now hushabye rockabye with roses bedecked. You’re falling into a nice, warm, comfty sleep.”
“Wait! I want to talk to Scaulzo.”
The redhead caressed his hair. “Don’t be silly, honey. Scaulzo’s an old crook who hurts people. Close your eyes and go nighty-night.”
“I need him…”
“For what?”
“He’s powerful…”
Adrian’s tongue was leaden. He couldn’t control his speech. Too exhausted. If he could just manage to play these freaks off against each other. Stall for time. Anything. “Arrange the matter to our mutual satisfaction,” he croaked.
“Close your eyes, dear little pet,” Brenda whispered.
Her fingers were lightly soothing. The young physicist shivered. She seemed pleasant, but he detested her aggressive arrogance. Nobody was going to hypnotize him and blot out his memories.
“You’re an unusually smart bushman,” the Grandfather was saying. “But lucidly you’re helpless, and unable to spread poison. Und zo! We’ll be back in exactly two years and if you people don’t show the first real signs of evolving, every human alive will simply disappear—won’t that be a blessing? No longer will you be forced to endure your tortured, robotlike, quasi-non-existence.”
“No! Wait! I demand to see Scaulzo!”
“Scaulzo? That criminal psychotic? He’d only prolong your agony.”
Adrian was distraught. He felt himself begin to cry with rage and frustration. He despised these alien monsters. Who did they think they were, daring to test and judge human beings? Such arrogance was criminal. There was only one possible solution. NASA would have to develop the reach, the technique, and the clout to destroy these non-human races. Wipe them out! Otherwise how could humanity ever be safe?
The redhead murmured, “Forget the vendetta, sweetheart. We’re leaving now. We’ll be back though, and as H.G. here said, unless you evolve pronto, why the lottaya are gonna vanish—POOF!, like a buncha blown-out/birthday candles.”
“No!” Adrian sobbed. “I demand to see Scaulzo.”
“For goodness sake why?”
“He’s strong, like the father I never had. And he knows… how to punish… because he understands me and you just want to get rid of me…” Adrian wept loudly, bitterly. “Scaulzo makes exciting things happen,” he sobbed. “Scaulzo loves me, he pays attention to me…”
Tears streamed down Adrian’s cheeks. He grieved for his terrible loss. But what loss? The sequence was unclear. Of course: he grieved for his climbing partner and all those poor victims who died in Scaulzo’s dungeon, ridiculously, without a shred of human dignity. But no, this unbearable sadness was because… What? What?… The best part of his life had been ripped away and was gone beyond hope of remembering.
The redhead bounced off the bed with a yawn. “Holy mackerel what a trip this has been! One grand and glorious thrill, I wanna tell you. I’ve learned plenty from you Earthies, not only in movies and books, but face-to-face.
And I can tell you one thing, kiddo: quick euthanasia is a lot better than you deserve.“
“No, listen to me—”
“Quit chewing the fat! By tomorrow you’ll have forgotten Scaulzo and us and the whole dopey shebang.”
“Negotiate… Detente…”
Brenda sighed. “Sleep it off, kiddo. I love you dearly and thanks for a swell time, but I’m tickled pink to be dumping your dreary fleabag of a planet. Now, it’s school’s out time—yaa hooo! Home, here I come!”
Brenda jerked the Venetian blind shut with a bang.
Adrian slept.