But she tugged at him impatiently, slipping down to wallow in the porridgy substance. “Come on,” she cried. “You’re not doing it right, but come on, you sweaty kamikaze.”
All the while the air was being recharged with the stimulant, if it was a stimulant, that had opened the gates of his senses for Forrester. It was like LSD, he thought, or a super-Benzedrine: he was seeing a whole new spectrum; hearing bat shrieks and subsonic roars; smelling, tasting, feeling things that had been out of his reach before. He perceived clearly that this was some sort of organized ritual he was in, understood that its purpose was to allow the release of tensions by saying whatever the inner mind had wanted to say and the outer censor in the brain had forbidden. Allow it? He could not stop it! He listened to the things he was saying to Adne and realized that, at a later time, in an undrugged moment, he would be appalled. But he said them.
And she nodded gravely and replied in kind. “Jealous!” she shrieked. “Typical manipulative ownership! Filthy inside, trashy!”
“Why shouldn’t I be jealous? I loved you.”
“Harem love!” sneered Taiko from beside him. The man was lying full length in the mud now—it had reached a depth of several inches and seemed to have stopped there. “She’s a brainless blot of passions, but she’s human, and how dare you try to own her?”
“Fake!” howled Forrester. “Go pretend you’re a man! Bust up some machines!” He was furious, but in one part of his mind he was alert enough and analytical enough to be surprised that he wasn’t impelled to hit Taiko. Or Adne, for that matter. What he was impelled to do was to say wounding things, as true and hurtful as he could make them. He looked around him and saw that he was the only one still on his feet. The others were all full-length in the mud, writhing and creeping. Forrester dropped to his knees. “What’s this damn foolishness all about?” he demanded.
“Shut up and crawl,” grunted Taiko. “Get some of the animal out of you.” And Adne chimed in, “You’re spoiling it for all of us if you don’t crawl! You have to crawl before you can walk.”
Forrester leaned down to her. “I don’t want to crawl!”
“Have to. Helps you get out the rot. The secrets that fester . . . Of course, you kamikazes like to decay.”
“But I don’t have—”
And Forrester paused, not because he had voluntarily chosen to stop talking just then, but because what he had been about to say was not true, and he simply could not say it. He had been about to say that he had no secrets.
He had, in fact, more secrets than he could count; and one very large one that appalled him, because his mouth wanted to blurt it out even while his brain screamed No!
If he stayed in this room one more moment, Forrester knew, he would shout at the top of his voice the fact that he had been the one to help the Sirian escape and thus had made it a good gambling bet that the whole world of men would be destroyed. Dripping mud, panting, mumbling to himself, Forrester climbed to his feet and forced himself to run—a staggering, broken-field run that dodged flailing limbs and leaped over writhing bodies, that carried him through the angry rumble of the crawlers and out into a dressing chamber, where he was sluiced down with fragrant spray, dried with warm blasts of air, and bathed in hot light. Fresh garments appeared before him, but he took no pleasure in them. He had forgotten for a moment, but now he remembered again.
He was the man who had destroyed Earth. At any moment he would be found out. . . . And what his punishment might be, he dared not think.
“Man Forrester,” cried the voice of a joymaker, “during the period of interrupted service, a number of messages accumulated for you, of which the following three priority calls are urgent.”
“Wait up,” said Forrester, startled. But there it was. Rummaging through the neatly folded heap of T-shirt and Turkish pants, he came upon the macelike shape of a joymaker. “Ho,” he said. “I’ve got you again, eh?”
“Yes, Man Forrester,” the joymaker agreed. “Will you receive your messages?”
“Um,” said Forrester. Then, cautiously, “Well, I will if any of them are of great urgency at this very moment. I mean, I don’t want somebody coming in here and blowing my brains out while I’m talking to you.”
“No such probability is evident,” said the joymaker primly. “Nevertheless, Man Forrester, there are a number of highly important messages.”
Forrester sat down on a warmed bench and sighed. He said meditatively, “The thing is this, joymaker. I never seem to get to the end of a question, because two new questions pop up while I’m still trying to find the answer to the first one. So what I would like to do right now, I would like you to get me a cup of black coffee and a pack of cigarettes, right here in this nice, warm, safe room, and then I would like to drink the coffee and smoke a cigarette and ask you some questions. Now, can I do that without dying for it?”
“Yes, Man Forrester. However, it will take several minutes for the coffee and cigarettes to be delivered, as they are not stock items in this facility and must be secured from remote inventories.”
“I understand all that. Just get them. Now.” Forrester stood up and drew the baggy pants over his legs, thinking. At last he nodded to himself.
“First question,” he said. “I just came out of a place where Adne Bensen and a bunch of other people were wallowing in mud. What was that all about?—I mean,” he added hastily, “in a few words, what is it called, and why do people do it?”
“The function is called a ‘crawl session,’ Man Forrester, or simply ‘crawling.’ Its purpose is the release of tensions and inhibitions for therapeutic purposes. Two major therapies are employed. First, there is a chemical additive in the air that suppresses inhibitors of all varieties, thus making it possible to articulate, and thus to relieve, many kinds of tensions. Second, the mere act of learning to crawl all over again is thought to provide benefits. I have on immediate access, Man Forrester, some thirty-eight papers on various aspects of the crawl session. Would you care to have me list them?”
“Not in the least,” said Forrester. “That’s fine; I understand that perfectly. Now, second question.”
There was a thunk; a receptacle opened beside him; Forrester reached in and took out a steaming and very large cup of coffee covered with a plastic lid. He worried the lid off, sought and found the cigarettes and lighter that accompanied the coffee, lit up, took a sip of the coffee, and said, “Adne Bensen said something to me about choosing a name. I interpreted this to mean that she was, uh, well, pregnant. I mean, I thought she meant a name for a baby; but actually it was something else. Reciprocal names? What are reciprocal names?”
“Reciprocal names, Man Forrester,” lectured the joymaker, “are chosen, usually by two individuals, less typically by larger groups, as private designations. A comparable institution from your original time, Man Forrester, might be the ‘pet’ name or nickname by which a person addressed his or her spouse, child, or close friend; however, the reciprocal name is used by each of the persons in addressing the other.”
“Give me a for instance,” Forrester interrupted.
“For instance,” said the joymaker obediently, “in the universe of Adne Bensen and her two children, the reciprocal names are ‘Tunt’—a form of address from one child to the other—or ‘Mim,’ when Miss Bensen addresses or is addressed by a child. As mentioned, this situation is not typical, since more than two persons are involved. A better example from the same demesne would be the relationship of Adne Bensen and Dr. Hara, where the reciprocal designation between them is ‘Tip.’ Are those adequate for instances, Man Forrester?”
“Yeah, but what’s this about Hara? You mean he and Adne have a pet name?”
“Yes, Man Forrester.”
“Yeah, but— Well, skip it.” Forrester glumly put down his coffee; it didn’t taste as good as he had thought it would. “Sounds confusing,” he muttered.
“Confusing, Man Forrester?”
“Yeah. I mean, if you and I have the same name, how do we know which one— Oh, wait a minute. I see. If you and I have a name, then if you use it, obviously you mean me. And if I use it, I have to mean you.”
“That is correct, Man Forrester. In practice it does not appear that much confusion arises.”
“All right, the hell with that, too. Let’s see.” Forrester frowned at his cigarette; it didn’t taste particularly good, either. He was unable to decide whether the reason was that he had lost the taste for coffee and cigarettes, or whether these were simply miserable examples of their kind, or whether what tasted bad was his mood. He dropped the cigarette into the rest of the coffee and said irritably, “Question three. Now that I have you again, and plenty of money, is there some way I can keep from foolishly losing it all again? Can we like work out a budget?”