Case and the Dreamer

by Theodore Sturgeon

  He smiled. This was the first time I ever saw a Little John smile. “I will,” he said and closed the door.

  The Little John had given me the cruiser’s own computer picture of the big jug, and I had it well in my head. It was huge and a lot more complicated than it had to be, and it was full of machines and inventions and ups and throughs. And meercaths.

  The bridge was way down in the middle of the cruiser with layers and layers of shells within shells all around it that could be sealed off, one from another, in case the big dark cruiser was damaged in space. The bridge was a sort of metal cave all studded with the pictures given it by the computer—pictures from the see-outs, the feel-outs, the how-fasts, how-soons, where-are-we’s, and so on—and big ugly meercaths watching them. On a high place in the middle stood the commander, a special meercath, extra big.

  Invisible under the shield, we stepped past the guard at the bottom of the ramp up to the high place, and went and stood behind the commander. We watched for a while, how he did the things a commander does to make a cruiser go. Mostly it was sticking out the tummy and looking fierce at one after another of the meercaths who were actually doing something.

  From the compartment deep inside the cruiser where we had hidden him, Little John Five mindspoke me: “I’m all finished, Althair.” It was a very weary mindspeak.

  So I took the shield off Will Hawkline and Jonna Verret. But I kept mine.

  You know, it seemed like forever that they stood there in plain sight, not knowing that they could be seen, while the commander strutted back and forth, not knowing they were there. Then one of the meercaths tending the little lights glanced up at the command post, froze for a second, and slowly stood up off his tail. (Meercaths sit on their tails.) Then another glanced, stared, and rose, and another. They began a funny little murmur among them, as if they were afraid to say anything to the commander.

  And oh, it seemed like such a long while before the commander thought to look behind him, and there were Will Hawkline and Jonna Verret looking him in the eye and smiling, quite used by now to being invisible, and not knowing they were not.

  The commander’s huge mouth slowly came open, and slowly he raised his little right hand, and he pointed a claw at Jonna. He said, in Earth talk: “You! You! You’re the one who disappeared!” And only then did she realize she could be seen. “Althair! Althair!” she cried, but I didn’t say anything. Will Hawkline sidled in front of her, maybe thinking he was still invisible, maybe thinking he could protect her or attack the commander, maybe both; but the commander made it clear he could see him too. His pointing claw swung toward Will Hawkline. “You! I saw your picture from Earth. The Time Center … you’re the Coordinator. You’re Will Hawkline!” He whirled around and yelled, “This is what we want! He has the back-time invention in his head! Detonate the planet! Destroy Earth!”

  “Oh … Althair!” Jonna’s soft hurt cry was the last thing I heard as the cruiser hung over Earth and a meercath slammed his hand down on the planet-smashing control.

  There was a spiraling whirl and a blink of black, and a staggering, sickening feeling like traveling in zero time.

  It was traveling in zero time.

  And the terrible lightnings stroked out from the cruiser, red from this side, blue from that, green from below and a terrible yellow from above, and they met in a river of coruscating white as they plunged into the heart of the planet below, cracked it, kindled it, scorched and exploded it and turned it into a furious little star.

  And the planet was Orel, and with it went the Mindpod, whoever they were, and never again would they move through the worlds, taking and killing.

  But oh! my pups, my pammies: Oh! I stood with the Earth people and felt drowned in color and I couldn’t breathe for shock and sorrow. Yes, the Mindpod was gone, and no, they would no longer menace us, or Earth, or anyone else: but oh, Orel and its little animals, its brave grass and the swirls and swarms of life in its seas; any hope it might have to evolve and grow, gone, gone forever from the universe. Oh yes, there are lots more worlds and lots more life, but sometimes, when you have done a good thing, you have to look at all of the good thing, and wonder forever if there couldn’t have been a better way, a way wherein nothing died.

  We watched the death of Orel, all of Orel, layer after layer boiling and swirling; lava, explosions of gas, torn mountains, insane winds and oceans flowing into space. Never mind the Mindpod; never mind the meercaths; I cried for a world and all the life on that world, which can never be known again except in memory.

  Meercaths … what of the meercaths? If I found myself heart-torn and shaking at the sight, what of the meercaths who had to watch their own home dying like that?

  I looked around, and … and … and an incredible something else happened. With the death of the Mindpod, all of the meercaths in the cruiser disappeared. For each there was a little pop! of vacuum as they ceased to exist, and we understood at last that each was a projection, a solid projection, of a real meercath on the planet; and when they were gone, the projections were gone too.

  I mindspoke: “Thank you, Little John Five.” And the answer came back, “Can I sleep now?”

  “Sleep, my friend.”

  I dropped the shield. They looked at me, Jonna and Will, as if they did not know what to say to me.

  I said, “I know I gave you a bad time for a while. I needed to get you to the bridge without your getting killed on the way; I needed to have the commander see you and think he had you captured; it was the one thing which would make him smash the planet, and do it before he could find out what Little John Five had done.”

  “Five! Where is Five? What did he do?”

  “Something neither you nor I could have done. All the orders on a big jug like this come through the computer. The commander’s orders were meant to be: Detonate the planet. Return to Orel. Little John Five thought himself into the computer and made the orders go: Return to Orel. Detonate the planet.… He’s asleep, down there where we left him. Let him sleep. He’s already set your course for Earth. Just touch that little light over there—yes, the green one—and off you’ll go. But don’t forget to message ahead. Earth may smash this cruiser the moment they detect it.”

  “Will you come with us?”

  “Oh my no,” I said. “I have something to do at home. Will,” I said suddenly, because I couldn’t help myself, “You learned acceptance … almost … try learning it the rest of the way. Take your time. The little green light will wait.”

  They stood looking into each other’s eyes for a long while, and I could see it happening: first his acceptance of what she felt, and the beginnings of his acceptance of what he felt. I called on the mindnet and went home. I had a story to tell.

  He was sleek and he was furry; he was totally amphibious, and Althair the Adventurer was what he really was. However, he was known on his lovely planet Ceer, as Althair the Storyteller just because he did that better—better even than adventuring.

  Story time was over. Slithering lithe, surfing, sliding, inchworming, cracklywhiskered, beady-bright, soft and smooth and shining, went the young, back to the ocean, back to sleepy-couches in the living living-places. I’ll be Althair! they would play tomorrow: I’ll be Jonna, I’ll be Will. This is myth aborning, this, what myth is for.

  The Country of Afterward

  “Those bastards,” said Mr. Michaelmas, “will knuckle under or so help me, I’ll have their goddamn plant burned down to the ground.”

  Joe Flagg looked nervously across the big boardroom, where the opposition was huddled around their accountant.

  “They’ll hear us,” he cautioned unnecessarily; there were chances a man like Michaelmas just wouldn’t take. Then: “Why be so hard-nosed, Mike? We can carry them for a long time with the stock we already hold and never feel it … at least until they get their new line out. They have a hell of a process there.”

  “I told you, don’t call me Mike. Hell of a process, yes, and they’re using it for what? Museum
reproductions, for God’s sake! They will release that stock, they will give us control, we will shut them down, we will take that process, and we will make toilet seats. That is the way it will go, Mister Flagg, and if it doesn’t, we will blow them away.”

  At his own peril, Joe Flagg ignored the “Mister”—a danger signal. “You’re costing a lot of good people a lot of jobs, you know.”

  Mr. Michaelmas took a gold key out of his business pocket. “I’m going to take a piss, Flagg. Hold onto the thought that while I’m in there I am pissing on your bleeding heart.” Teeth closing on his lower lip, Joe Flagg watched the Chairman of the Board head for his personal private restroom.

  Mr. Michaelmas always enjoyed the effect of the self-closing door of his restroom—silent, solid, certain, with the pulse of pressure in his eardrums accompanying the discrete click of the latch. It suited his taste for impregnability, just as it suited him to churn up as many noisy suds as he cared to with the conviction that nothing could be heard outside.

  These very suds utterly concealed the faint whisper of a shower curtain, so that his first knowledge that he was not alone came when a velvet-cool hand slipped up between his legs and enclosed his penis, and a cool, velvet voice said, “Nice. Very nice.”

  Mr. Michaelmas stood transfixed for moment, watching a blaze of shock behind his eyes. The moment lasted long enough for two fondles and a squeeze from the little hand before he could turn around.

  As he turned, she rose from her one knee and stood against him smiling—a long-eyed girl with a fine fall of hair.

  He gasped, “Who the hell are you?”

  “Apricot,” she said; and her skin was peach, and she wore a yellow dress, but indeed her hair was apricot. She slid a hand up and around to the nape of his neck, and so great was the shock that he hardly felt the tiny scratch there; and she flung both arms tight around him and held him with his arms trapped against the sides. He tried to inhale to shout, but she anticipated him with a powerful squeeze, so that all that came out was a hoarse “What the hell is this?”

  She tipped her head back so he could see her smiling face. “This is a kidnapping, Mr. Michaelmas.” He tried to struggle, whimpering, and found to his horror that his efforts were noticeably weaker. He began to feel the scratch on the back of his neck, and from it, increasing waves of nausea and weakness, matching his pounding pulse. With an enchanting quirk at one corner of her mouth, Apricot said, “You are about to experience two perfect snatches, Mr. Michaelmas: yours, and mine.”

  She swung him around like an oversized doll, propped him against the wall and confidently released him. Holding his sagging body upright with one firm elbow in his solar plexus, she produced a plastic glove from her cleavage and worked it over her left hand. With this she reached over his head and turned the T-handle of the window latch.

  The heavy steel-framed window, hinged at the top, swung open a little; she caught it and drew toward her, and immediately two leather loops fell into the room and dangled. On one of these hung a broad leather belt. This she removed and draped over her shoulder. She put one of Mr. Michaelmas’s now flaccid arms through a leather loop, then the other. Then she passed the belt behind him and cinched it tight around his body and upper arms. She gave two sharp tugs to one of the loops, and Mr. Michaelmas instantly began to rise. Apricot with one hand considerately held the window wide as he passed up through it. With her other hand, and with equal consideration, she zipped up his fly as it went by.

  In a moment one of the leather slings fell back into the room. Apricot took a turn around her left wrist and let herself be drawn up and out through the window, which she lofted with her foot as she emerged. It swung up and then down, latching with the same solid click as that which Mr. Michaelmas had so much admired.

  In a strange place a concentric Mr. Michaelmas was afloat.

  The licking began almost immediately. It was part of everything, underlay everything; it was the ambience of being there asleep and awake (as much awake as he was permitted, at first, to be). A long froth of gold across his chest and stomach. A soft rope of brown, a sentient halo of auburn, and again the gold, again the brown, and from time to time the apricot. How count the hours of a dream—and why?

  Murmurs, in and out. “Load him with the C—six thousand or better. Time release.” “Twelve patches should cover the spectrum for now.” “It’s a good one. How can a man let himself dry up like that? Erectile response not twenty percent of norm!” “Blood sugar too low. Blood pressure too high. No wonder.” “Increased niacin 20 migs twice a day until you get a rush. Talk about deficiency …!”

  Hours and hours, asleep and a little awake, the licking went on. It felt good.

  Visuals. In a dream one could ignore bare breasts and soft female laughter and a sense of caring in mysterious utterances like “Up the E four hundred IU and pack in that ginseng.” The frequent tender face framed in apricot, cool hand on stubbled cheek. Bright attentive eyes, close and closer, sometimes brown, often green, huge finally and lost in a presbyotic haze as they fall half-hooded and become tactile instead of visual: soft lips against his lips, smooth cheek against his growing stubble.

  Growing stubble. How long? Who knows? Who cares! Oh, but it feels good.…

  Murmur murmur. “Wasserman neg. Gonococci neg. Anaphylaxis neg, except guess what? He’s mildly allergic to horses.” “So guess what? We’re fresh out of horses around here.” “Did you say ‘horse’ or ‘whores’?” Tickle of laughter: female, four, five.

  Head lifted and cradled; woman-smell. Thick warm soup, delicious, overtone of something … medicine? Thiamine? She wiped his lips with a nipple.…

  Night. The sleep had been different somehow; unforced. There was a long, soft body beside him in the bed. Over them in a warm room, only a sheet. Soft fingers holding his genitals, gentle, firm, barely pulsating. Cool, velvet voice calling quietly: “Pam …”

  Half awake. Two thirds awake. Sheet drawn aside, a gentle cloud of dark, soft silk descending on his stomach and chest, and, oh, lips enclosing the head of his penis while the hand slid downward, a knowing finger pressing on the firm flesh underneath his scrotum, pressing, pressing, while the lips and tongue, the tongue, the lips and tongue …

  It came up like pain. It wasn’t pain, but it was like that; a flood with a bead leading it, a seed pushed up through a slender pipe. The lips, the tongue, sucked and flicked; warm arms slipped tight around him; other lips surrounded his, and another tongue slipped into his mouth and battled his. The traveling bead approached, exploded outward, and Michaelmas uttered a succession of barks, gasping barks, while coruscations of light sprinkled the inside of his eyes. Then everything began comfortably to fade. The lips around his penis stilled, held for a while (thank God they had stopped moving; he could not have borne the intensity) and slipped away. The arms around him became gentle; the tongue withdrew from his mouth, though the lips remained on his until his breath quieted, matched the warm currents of the woman who held him.

  His vision cleared. He lay on a broad, firm bed, and the woman beside him was Apricot. He didn’t have enough tonus left in his drained body to react or to move. All he could do was speak; all he could say was, “Where am I?”

  “You are in the Country of Afterward. The very best place in all the world. How do you feel?”

  He closed his eyes to consider this, and felt himself rushing so swiftly into total sleep that he snapped them open again. “Who are you?”

  “You remember me. Apricot. And this is Pam. She just made you come.”

  “Finally,” said Pam; but she said it kindly, smiling. She patted and stroked his now shrunken penis affectionately, and then, as if reading the distress from his mind, drew the sheet over it. She pulled up her leg, placed one foot on the edge, rested her chin on the knee and smiled at him. She looked absolutely beautiful. He wrenched his gaze away from her and found that this made him look directly at Apricot, who had now withdrawn from him and was propped up on one elbow, her cascade of extraord
inary hair flung back and to the side, not quite covering her breasts and permitting a firm little nipple to peer through its curtain. Mr. Michaelmas said, “You! You kidnapped me!”

  “That we did,” she assured him cheerfully.

  “You’re not to get away with it, you know.”

  “Honey” (and it was said as a real endearment), “we did get away with it.”

  “You know what I mean. These days there’s a thousand ways to track you down and nail you. The instant you demand the money, you’ve lost, don’t you know that?”

  “Demand what money?”

  “What else would you be kidnapping people for?”

  “You’ll find out,” said Apricot sweetly.

  Mr. Michaelmas tried to sit up, but the movement was met immediately by Apricot’s rolling toward him, her breasts against his chest. Mr. Michaelmas struggled weakly and uselessly and spit out, “Damn you bitches, you let me the hell out of—” and was then muzzled, muffled, silenced by the soft lips surrounding his.

  “You know, Ape,” he heard the lovely Pam say, “that’s not the kind of talk we tolerate in the Country of Afterward.”

  Apricot lifted her mouth away from his long enough to say, “you’re right, Pam,” and came back to him again. He was appalled to find the sheet withdrawn from his lower body, to feel the soft, dark mist of hair flung across his belly, to feel Pam’s mouth around his limpness, drawing him in entire. He twisted away from Apricot, crying, “What are you doing? What are you doing?”

  Holding him close, her voice soft and cool and fond as ever, she told him: “We’re making you come again.”

  “You can’t!”

  “Why ever not?”

  “I just did!”

  “So?”

  “I’m fifty-eight years old!” he howled.

  “So?”

  Exasperated, he fell into a sullen silence. Apricot shifted her weight and got an arm under her shoulders. She lowered her head to his chest. “You’d be astonished,” she said conversationally, “how few women know and appreciate the fact that a man has nipples.” And she began to tongue them, one and then the other, nip them ever so gently, suck and stroke them. The sensation was amazing, unnerving, quite unlike anything he had experienced in all his life before; it was almost pain; it was enough, for a while to distract his attention from the expert application of Pam’s mouth down below. Left to its own devices, and temporarily freed from the attention of his inhibitions, his astonished penis found itself: too long to be swallowed whole.