“Huh?”
She waved a bill at me. Lacking change, I had decided to leave a dollar tip. I realized at that moment that I had pulled out my one normal-looking bill, the dollar I had carried through the mobilator.
“Oh,” I said and added a quick grin. “That was for the party. Here, I’ll trade you.”
I gave her a for it and she decided she could smile, too.
“It felt real,” she said. “I couldn’t tell what was wrong with it for a second.”
“Yeah. Great gag.”
I stopped to buy a pack of cigarettes, then headed off to relocate the bus station. In that I still had plenty of time before departure, I decided that a little more antitelepath medicine might be in order. I entered an undistinguished-looking bar and got me a mug of beer.
It tasted strange. Not bad. Just very different. I backspelled the name on the tap and asked the bartender if that was what was really under it. He said that it was. I shrugged and sipped it. It was actually pretty good. Then the cigarette that I lit tasted peculiar. At first, I attributed this to the aftertaste of the beer. A few moments later, though, a half-formed thought caused me to call the bartender back again and have him pour me a shot of bourbon.
It had a rich, smoky taste, unlike anything I had ever had out of a bottle bearing that label. Or any other label, for that matter.
Then some recollections from Organic Chem I and II were suddenly with me. All of my amino acids, with the exception of glycine, had been left-handed, accounting for the handedness of my protein helices. Ditto for the nucleotides, giving that twisting to the coils of nucleic acid. But that was before my reversal. I thought madly about stereoisomers and nutrition. It seemed that the body sometimes accepted substances of one handedness and rejected the reversed version of the same thing. Then, in other cases, it would accept both, though digestion would take longer in the one case than the other. I tried to recall specific cases. My beer and the shot contained ethyl alcohol, C2H5OH . . . Okay. It was symmetrical, with the two hydrogen atoms coming off the central carbon atom that way. Reversed or unreversed, then, I would get just as stoned on it. Then why did it taste different? The congeners, yes. They were asymmetrical esters and they tickled my taste buds in a different way. My olfactory apparatus had to be playing backward games with the cigarette smoke also. I realized that I would have to look some things up in a hurry when I got home. Since I did not know how long I would be a Spiegelmensch, I wanted to provide against malnutrition, if this were a real danger.
I finished the beer. I would have a long bus ride during which I could consider the phenomenon in more detail. In the meantime, it seemed prudent to dodge around a bit and make certain whether or not I was being followed again. I went out and did this for the next fifteen or twenty minutes, but was unable to detect anyone trailing me. I moved on to the station, then, to catch my stereoisobus back home.
Drifting drowsy across the countryside, I paraded my troubles through the streets of my mind, poking occasional thoughts between the bars of their cages, hearing the clowns beat drums in my temples, I had performed my assigned task. Assigned by whom? Well, he had said he was a recording, but he had also furnished me with Article 7224, Section C, in a time of need—and anyone who helps me when I need help is automatically on the side of the angels until further notice. I wondered whether I was supposed to get drunk again for additional instructions or whether he had something else in mind for our next contact. There had to be one, of course. He had indicated that my cooperation on this venture would lead to all manner of clarification and untanglement. All right. I bought it. I was willing to take, on faith in that promise, the necessity for my reversal. Everyone else had wanted something I could not provide and offered nothing in return.
If I drifted off to sleep, would there be another message? Or was my alcohol level too low? And what was the connection there, anyway? If Sibla was to be believed, alcohol acted as a dampener rather than an exciter of telepathic phenomena. Why had my correspondent come through most clearly on the two occasions when I had been intoxicated? It occurred to me at that moment that if it were not for the obvious effect of Article 7224, Section C, I would have no way of really knowing that the communications were not simply drunken hallucinations, perhaps the best efforts to date of a highly imaginative death wish. But it had to be more than that. Even Charv and Ragma now suspected the existence of my supersensory accomplice. I felt a sense of urgency, a need to do whatever had to be done quickly, before the aliens caught on to the pattern—whatever it might be. I was certain that they would disapprove, probably attempt to interfere.
How many of them were there, pursuing or watching me? Where were Zeemeister and Buckler? What were Charv and Ragma up to? Who was the man in the dark coat Merimee had spotted? What was the State Department representative doing? Since I had answers for none of these questions, I devoted some time to planning my own actions so as to allow for the worst of everything. I would not go back to my apartment, for obvious reasons. Hal’s place seemed a bit risky, with all the activity he had described. I decided that Ralph Warp ought to be able to put me up for a time in an appropriately surreptitious fashion. After all, I owned half of the Woof & Warp, his arts-and-crafts shop, and had sacked out in the back room in the past. Yes, that was what I would do.
Steinway-like, the ghost of exertions past fell upon me then, as from a great height, and I was crumpled. Hoping for further enlightenment, I did not fight the crush. But drowsing there in my seat, I was not rewarded with another message. Instead, a nightmare encompassed me.
I dreamed I was staked out in the blazing sun once more, sweating, burning, achieving raisinhood. This reached a hellish peak, then shifted away, faded. I rediscovered myself stranded on an iceberg, teeth chattering, extremities growing numb. Then this, too, passed, but wave after wave of muscular tics swept me from toe to crown. Then I was afraid. Then angry. Elated. Horny. Despairing. With naked feet stalking, the full parade of feelings passed, clad in forms that flee from me. It was no dream . . .
“Mister, are you all right?”
There was a hand on my shoulder—from that dream or this?
“Are you all right?”
I shuddered. I rubbed a hand across my forehead. It came away wet.
“Yes,” I said. “Thanks.”
I glanced at the man. Elderly. Neatly dressed. Off to see the grandchildren, perhaps.
“I was sitting across the aisle,” he said. “Looked like you were having some sort of fit.”
I rubbed my eyes, ran my hand through my hair, touched my chin and discovered I had been drooling.
“Bad dream,” I said. “I’m okay now. Thanks for waking me up.”
He gave me a small smile, nodded and withdrew.
Damn! It just seemed to follow that it had to be some side effect of the reversal. I lit a funny-tasting cigarette and glanced at my watch. After deciphering the reversed dial and allowing for its being wrong anyway, I decided I had been dozing for about half an hour. Staring out the window, then, watching the miles pass, I grew quite afraid. What if the whole thing were a ghastly joke, a mistake or a misunderstanding? The little episode that had just occurred left me with the fear that I had screwed myself up inside at some level I had not yet considered, that subtle, irreversible damages might be taking place within me. Kind of late to think of that, though. I made an effort to maintain my faith in my friend, the recording. I felt certain that the Rhennius machine could undo what it had done when this became necessary. All that was required was someone who understood how it worked.
I sat for a long while, hoping for some answer to come. The only thing that arrived, however, was more drowsiness and eventual sleep. This time it was the big, dark, quiet thing it is supposed to be, sans all vicissitudes and angst, peaceful. All the way through into night and my station, I slept. Refreshed for a change, I stepped down to familiar concrete, remapped the world about me and threaded my way through its parking lot, an alley and four blocks of closed stores
.
I satisfied myself that I was not being followed, entered an all-night diner and ate a strange-tasting meal. Strange, because the place was a greasy spoon and the food was deliciously different. I ate two of their notorious hamburgers and great masses of soggy French fries. A sheaf of wilted lettuce and several slices of overripe tomato added to the treat. I wolfed everything down, not really caring whether or not it satisfied all my nutritional needs. It was the finest meal I had ever eaten. Except for the milkshake. It was undrinkable and I left it.
Then I walked. It was a good distance, but then I was in no hurry, I was rested and my posterior had had enough of public transportation for a time. It took the better part of an hour to reach the Woof & Warp, but it was a good night for walking.
The shop was closed, of course, but I could see a light in Ralph’s apartment upstairs. I went around back, shinnied up the drainpipe and peered in the window. He sat reading a book, and I could hear the faint sounds of a string quartet—I couldn’t tell whose—from within. Good. That he was alone, I mean. I hate to break in on people.
I rapped on the pane.
He looked up, stared a moment, rose and came over.
The window slid upward.
“Hi, Fred. Come on in.”
“Thanks, Ralph. How’ve you been?”
“Fine,” he said. “Business has been good, too.”
“Great.”
I climbed in, closed the window, crossed the room with him. I accepted a drink whose taste I did not recognize, though it looked like a fruit juice there in the pitcher on the table. We sat down, and I did not feel especially disoriented. He rearranges his rooms so often that I can never remember the layout from one time to the next, anyway. Ralph is a tall, wiry guy with lots of dark hair and bad posture. He knows all manner of crafty things. Even teaches basket weaving at the university.
“How did you like Australia?”
“Oh, barring a few mishaps, I might have enjoyed it. I haven’t decided yet.”
“What sort of mishaps?”
“Later, later,” I said. “Another time, maybe. Say, would it be too much trouble to put me up in the back room tonight?”
“Not unless you and Woof have had an argument.”
“We have an arrangement,” I said. “He sleeps with his nose under his tail and I get the blankets.”
“The last time you stayed over it worked out the other way around.”
“That’s what led to the arrangement.”
“We’ll see what happens this time. Did you just get back in town?”
“Well, yes and no.”
He clasped his hands about his knee and smiled.
“I admire your straightforward approach to things, Fred. Nothing evasive or misleading about you.”
“I’m always being misunderstood,” I said. “It is the burden of an honest man in a world of knaves. Yes, I just got back in town, but not from Australia. I did that a couple days ago, then went away and just now came back again. No, I did not just get back in town from Australia. See?”
He shook his head.
“You have a simple, almost classic lifestyle, too. What sort of trouble are you in this time? Irate husband? Mad bomber? Syndicate creditor?”
“Nothing like that,” I said.
“Worse? Or better?”
“More complicated. What have you heard?”
“Nothing. But your adviser phoned me.”
“When?”
“A little over a week ago. Then again this morning.”
“What did he want?”
“He wanted to know where you were, wanted to know whether I had heard from you. I told him no on both counts. He told me a man would be stopping by to ask some questions. The university would appreciate my cooperation. That was the first time. The man showed up a little later, asked me the same questions, got the same answers.”
“Was his name Nadler?”
“Yes. A federal man. State Department. At least, that is what his I.D. said. He gave me a number and told me to call it if I heard from you.”
“Don’t.”
He winced.
“You didn’t have to say it.”
“Sorry.”
I listened to the strings.
“I haven’t heard from him since,” he finished a few moments later.
“What did Wexroth want this morning?”
“He had the same questions, updated, and a message.”
“For me?”
He nodded. He took a sip of his drink.
“What is it?”
“If I heard from you I was to tell you that you have graduated. You can pick up your diploma at his office.”
“What?”
I was on my feet, part of my drink slopping over onto my cuff.
“That’s what he said: ‘graduated.’ ”
“They can’t do that to me!”
He hunched his shoulders, let them fall again.
“Was he joking? Did he sound stoned? Did he say why? How?”
“No—on all of them,” he said. “He sounded sober and serious. He even repeated it.”
“Damn!” I began to pace. “Who do they think they are? You can’t just force a degree on a man that way.”
“Some people want them.”
“They don’t have frozen uncles. Damn! I wonder what happened? I don’t see any angle. I’ve never given them an opening for this. How the hell could they do it?”
“I don’t know. You’ll have to ask him.”
“I will! Believe me, I will! I’m going down there first thing in the morning and punch him in the eye!”
“Will that solve anything?”
“No, but revenge fits in with a classic life-style.”
I sat down again and drank my drink. The music went round and round.
Later, after reminding the merry-eyed Irish Setter who worked as night watchman on the first floor that we had an arrangement involving tails and blankets, I sacked out on the bed in the back room. A dream of wondrous symbolism and profundity came to me there.
Many years earlier I had read an amusing little book called Sphereland by a mathematician named Burger. It was a sequel to the old Abbott classic Flatland, and in it there had been a bit of business involving the reversal of two-dimensional creatures by a being from higher space. Pedigreed dogs and mongrels were mirror images of one another, symmetrical but not congruent. The pedigreed mutts were rarer, more expensive, and a little girl had wanted one so badly. Her father arranged for her mongrel to be mated with a pedigreed dog, in hope that it would produce the more desirable pups. But alas, while there was a large litter, they were all of them mongrels. Later, however, an obliging visitor from higher space turned them into pedigreed dogs by rotating them through the third dimension. The geometric moral, while well taken, was not what had fascinated me about the incident, though. I kept trying to picture the mating that had taken place—two symmetrical but incongruent dogs going at it in two dimensions. The only available procedure involved a kind of canis obversa position, which I visualized and then imagined as rotating, whirligig-like, in two-dimensional space. I had employed the mandala thus achieved as a meditation aid in my yoga classes for some time afterward. Now it returned to me in the halls of slumber, and I was surrounded and crowded by pairs of deadly serious dogs, curling and engendering, doing their thing silently, spinning, occasionally nipping one another about the neck. Then an icy wind swept down upon me and the dogs vanished and I was cold and alone and afraid.
I awoke to discover that Woof had stolen the blankets and was sleeping on them off in the corner by the potting kiln. Snarling, I went over and recovered them. He tried to pretend it was all a misunderstanding, the son of a bitch, but I knew better and I told him so. When I glanced over later, all that I could see was his tail and a mournful expression among the dust and the potsherds.
THEY WERE WAITING FOR ME to say something, to do something. But there was nothing to say, nothing to do. We were going to die, and that was t
hat. I glanced out the window and along the beach to the place where the sea stacked slate on the shore and pulled it down again. I was reminded of my last day and night in Australia. Only then Ragma had come along and provided a way out. In fair puzzles there should always be a way out. But I saw no doorways in the sand, and try as I might I could not make the puzzle fall fair.
“Well, Fred? Do you have something for us? Or should we go ahead? It is up to you now.”
I looked at Mary, tied there in the chair. I tried not to look at her frightened face, look into her eyes, but I did. At my side, I heard Hal’s heavy breathing stop short, as though he were tensing to spring. But Jamie Buckler noted this also, and the gun twitched slightly in his hand. Hal did not spring.
“Mister Zeemeister,” I said, “If I had that stone, I would tie a bright ribbon around it and hand it to you. If I knew where it was, I would go get it for you or tell you where to find it. I do not want to see Mary dead, Hal dead, me dead. Ask me anything else and it’s yours.”
“Nothing else will do,” he said, and he picked up the pliers.
We would be tortured and killed, if we just waited our turns. If we had had the answer and we gave it to them we would still be killed, though. Either way . . .
But we would not stand there and watch. We all knew that. We would try to rush them, and Mary and Hal and I would be the losers.
Wherever you are, whatever you are, I said in my shrillest thoughts, if you can do something, do it now!
Zeemeister had taken hold of Mary’s wrist and forced her hand upward. As he reached for a finger with the pliers, the Ghost of Christmas Past or one of those guys drifted into the room behind him.
Stamping out of Jefferson Hall, cursing under my breath, I decided that a State Department official named Theodore Nadler was the next man I was going to punch in the eye. Making my way around the fountain and heading off toward the Student Union, however, I recalled that I had been remiss concerning my promise to call Hal in a day or so. I decided to phone him before I tried the Nadler number Wexroth had given me.
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