“For god’s sake!” a female voice declared furiously. And at the same instant a small but wildly intent hand grabbed his, forced it back toward him.
Immediately he opened his eyes. The eye-eater glowered at him in indignation. But—it had changed. From it long strands of women’s hair grew; the eye-eater had a distinctly female appearance. Even its pawful of eyes had altered; they now appeared elongated, graceful, with heavy lashes. A woman’s eyes, he realized with a thrill of terror.
“Who are you?” he demanded, almost unable to speak; he jerked his hand back in revulsion and the pseudopodium released him.
The pseudopodia of the eye-eater, all of them, terminated in small, delicate hands. Like the hair and the eyes, distinctly female.
The eye-eater had become a woman. And, near the center of its body, it wore—ludicrously—the stiff white bra.
The eye-eater said, in a high-pitched voice, almost a squeal of indignation, “I’m Gretch Borbman, of course. And I frankly don’t believe it’s very funny to—do what you did just now.” Breathing hotly, the eye-eater glowered even more darkly.
“I’m—sorry,” he managed to say. “But I’m lost in damn paraworld; it’s not my fault. So don’t condemn me.”
“Which paraworld is it this time?” the eye-eater demanded. “The same one as before?”
He started to answer . . . and then noticed something which froze him into silence where he stood. Other eye-eaters had begun to appear, slowly undulating toward him and Gretch Borbman. Some had the distinct cast of masculinity; some obviously were, like Gretch, female.
The class. Assembling together in response to what Gretch had said.
“He attempted to reach inside me,” the eye-eater calling itself Gretchen Borbman explained to the rest of them. “I wonder which paraworld that would indicate.”
“Mr. ben Applebaum,” one of the other eye-eaters, almost certainly Sheila Quam by the sound of her voice, said. “In view of what Miss Borbman says, I think it is virtually mandatory for me to declare a special emergency Computer Day; I would say that beyond a reasonable doubt this situation which you’ve created calls for it.”
“True,” the eye-eater named Gretch agreed; the others, to varying degrees, also nodded in unison. “Have his paraworld gestalt fed in so it can be examined and compared. Personally I don’t think it’s like anyone else’s, but of course that’s up to the computer to determine. Myself, I feel perfectly safe; I know that whatever he saw, or rather sees, bears absolutely no resemblance to anything I ever perceived.”
“What did he do just now,” an eye-eater which reminded him of Hank Szantho said, “that made you yip like that?”
The Gretch Borbman thing said in a low, sullen voice, “He attempted to diddle me.”
“Well,” the Hank Szantho eye-eater said mildly, “I don’t see where that alone indicates anything; I might even attempt that myself, some day. Anyhow, as long as Sheila feels it’s called for—”
“I’ve already got the forms ready,” the one whom he had identified as Sheila Quam said. To Rachmael she said, “Here is 47-B; I’ve already signed it. Now, if you’ll come with me—” She glanced toward the Gretchen Borbman eye-eater. “Miss Borbman already knows her paraworld . . . I hope her confidence is vindicated; I hope that what you perceive, Mr. ben Applebaum, is not congruent with hers.”
“I hope so, too,” the Gretchen Borbman thing agreed faintly.
“As I recall,” the Sheila Quam eye-eating entity declared, “Mr. ben Applebaum’s initial delusional experience, set off by the LSD dart, consisted of involvement with the garrison state. Do you remember clearly enough to voluntarily testify to that, Mr. ben Applebaum?”
“Yes,” he said huskily. “And then the aquatic—”
“But before that,” Sheila interrupted. “When you first crossed by Telpor. Before the dart—before the LSD.”
Hazily, he said, “It’s a blur to me, now.” Reality, for him, had slipped and floundered too much; he could not be absolutely sure of the sequence of events. With a vast final effort he summoned his waning attention, focussed on his past—it seemed a billion light-years ago, and yet in actuality the experience with the garrison state had been reasonably recent. “It was before,” he said, then. “I perceived the garrison state, the fighting; then a THL soldier shot me. So the experience with the garrison state came first; then, after the LSD, the aquatic nightmare-shape.”
Hank Szantho said thoughtfully, “You may be interested to know, Mr. ben Applebaum, that you are not the first person among us to live with that hallucination—I refer to the prior one, that of the garrison state. If your delusional gestalt, when you present it to the computer, comes out on those lines, I can assure you that a tru bi-personal view of a paraworld will have been established . . . and this, of course, is what we fear, as you well know. Do you want to see the garrison state world established as the authentic reality?” His voice lifted harshly. “Consider.”
“The choice,” Sheila Quam said, “is not his; it’s mine. I therefore officially declare this late Wednesday afternoon and Computer Day, and I order Mr. ben Applebaum to accept this form I hold here, to fill it out, and then return it to me, as Control, to sign. You understand, Mr. ben Applebaum? Can you think clearly enough to follow what I’m saying?”
Reflexively, he accepted the form from her. “A pen?” he asked.
“A pen.” Sheila Quam, plus all the other eye-eating quasi-forms, began to search about their bulb-like bodies—to no avail.
“Chrissake,” Rachmael said irritably, and searched his own pockets. Not only to be compelled to fill out the 47-B form, but to come up with his own pencil—
In his pocket his fingers touched something: a flat, small tin. Puzzled, he lifted it out, examined it. The eye-eaters around him did so, as well. In particular the Gretchen Borbman one.
MORE FUN
AFTER DONE!
“How disgusting,” Gretchen Borbman said. To the others she said, “A tin of Yucatán prophoz. The worst kind possible—fully automated, helium-battery powered, good for a five-year life span . . . is this what you had in mind, Mr. ben Applebaum, when you diddled me a moment ago?”
“No,” he said. “I forgot I had these.” Chilled, he thought, Have I had this all along? The cammed, hyperminned UN weapon: the personnel variation of the time-warping construct which constituted the major device in Horst Bertold’s arsenal. Naturally he retained it; the effectiveness of the camouflage lay beyond dispute—and had now been tested and ratified in practice . . . it had even seemed to him, during the first moment of discovery, that this was exactly as it appeared to be: a box of prophoz and nothing more.
“Out of respect for decency and the women present here,” the Hank Szantho eye-eater stated, “I believe you should put that obnoxiously specific tin away, Mr. ben Applebaum; don’t you, on second thought, agree?”
“I suppose so,” he said. And opened the tin.
Acrid smoke billowed about him, stinging his nostrils. He halted, dropped into an instinctive crouch of self-defense; here, on the ninth planet of the Fomalhaut System, Rachmael ben Applebaum held the opened tin of Yucatán prophoz, studied the tiny, intricate controls of the time-warping instrument which the UN had provided him. More fun after done, he said to himself. Well, we’ll see; we’ll wait until we’re done—we’ll wait until we’ve found Freya.
That was his purpose, here at Whale’s Mouth; nothing else mattered.
Directly before him a soldier appeared. Huge owl-like eyes fixed on him . . . he stared back; he and the THL soldier confronted each other, both shocked into immobility by surprise. And then Rachmael dropped, rolled.
Barely in time. The LSD dart, with a muffled pop, passed over his head and exploded somewhere behind him. Out of range.
Fumbling for the prophoz tin, he thought, Too soon; they picked me up almost at once. Standing over him, the THL soldier took careful aim; this time he would not miss. The grubby, professional fingers squeezed the trigger of the dart-launcher—
And Rachmael once more spun the controls of the time-warpage device.
“Genet,” the maitre d’ called sternly, with overtones of fussiness.
A waitress, wearing the lace stockings and partial jacket-vest now popular, approached; her right nipple, exposed, ornately capped by a complex Swiss construct which played semi-classical music continually and at the same time lit and relit in a series of lovely light-patterns, winked at Rachmael enticingly. “Yes, Caspar,” the girl sighed, with a toss of her dark-blonde, high-piled natural hair.
“Escort Mr. Applebaum to table twenty-three,” the maitre d’ told her, and ignored with haughty indifference the outraged line of customers who had been waiting god knew how long for a table.
“I don’t want to—” Rachmael began, but the maitre d’ cut him off.
“All arranged. She is waiting at twenty-three.” He winked, then, at Rachmael, as if he knew everything. It was, Rachmael decided, a compliment; anyhow he had no choice but to accept it as that.