At the moment, only Lionel and the Nifty Aliens, who were taking a break, sat at Tina’s bar.
“Wassa trouble, sweetahpah?” Tina asked. “Y’ doan look lahk y’r enjoyin’ yose’f.”
“Not very much, I’m afraid,” Lionel confessed, staring at a roomful of celebrants involved in Happy Hour’s many diversions. “I’m not interested in gambling or fortune-telling, I don’t dance, and there’s nobody to talk to.”
“What do we look like? Chopped grutchah?” the two-headed fuchsiaskinned Lilithian singer-clarinettist said in unison.
Lionel waved at them uncertainly. “Hi. I’m—” Tina tsk-tsked warningly and he stopped himself from violating Regulation Number 2. “Call me Bond. James Bond.”
The Lilithian’s left (brunette) head replied, “We’re Beatrice—”
“—and you’re not,” the auburn head on the right added.
Lionel nodded. “That’s for certain.”
“Would you like to be?” she/they asked, invitingly batting four lids over two sets of green catlike eyes.
“How would that be possible?” Lionel wondered.
“Come along with we—”
“—and you’ll find out!”
So Lionel followed them into one of the small perimeter chambers. Taking his hand, Beatrice led him towards a familiar-looking portal. “But that’s a Flygate!” he protested.
“So?”
“It’s dangerous!”
“Yes. That’s half the fun. Coming?”
Lionel was too drunk and Beatrice was too beautiful to resist. He stepped through the HMD’s shimmering blue portal and began to unite with the sensual offworlder. So this is what it’s like to be a woman, he thought. Free. But so vulnerable. Their hips and breasts and limbs merged as Beatrice’s hands clasped his from within and guided their melded flesh in a frenzy of narcissistic exploration. Shared hearts beat faster, overlayered lungs rose and fell rapidly, but then Lionel coupled his mind to theirs—
ah Beatrice ahh Beatrice Beatrice ahhh
—and suddenly he felt cut off. Lonely. Unsatisfied. Diminished. He pulled away from them.
Beatrice’s auburn head reintegrated. “What’s wrong?”
“You shut me out.”
“Nonsense!”
“I was just a tool.”
“You were as much a part of it and us as any Lilithian ever would permit. If that’s not enough for you, I’m sorry, but that’s the way we are.”
“Never mind,” he said, “it was my fault.” And it was. Even though his wife walked out on him, Lionel still felt married, ergo guilty, ergo isolated. Marie is the only woman I’ve ever wanted.
Collecting himself, Lionel went back to Tina’s bar, ordered another Larkspur Eradicator and sipped it as he stared morosely into his own mirrored crimson eyes. Maybe, he reflected, I look different, but inside I’m still the same short fat ugly wimp I’ve always been.
He was not happy.
❖
TIME: 1846-1900 hours.
PROGRAM: Apotheosis.
Someone tapped him on the shoulder. He turned but saw no one.
“Down here, boss.” The odd, soupy voice came from below. Lionel looked floorwards and saw a dwarf clad in a white tropic-wear suit. He recognized the disguise as a Flygate clone of Herve Villechaize, an actor he remembered from an ancient TV series that he studied at the Cosmic Museum of Broadcasting when he was preparing for his qualifying certificate in one-camera location shooting.
The dwarf proffered a silver platter on which rested an envelope addressed to James Bond. Lionel opened it and read pencil-scrawled words on a sheet of Los Angeles Ladies letterhead—
IN RE PROMISE: GO TO CUBE 34.
The sound stage’s outer compartments served as dressing rooms and prop storage cells. Lionel hurried to cube 34... and there she was! Though she sat with her back to him, he immediately recognized her red-brown tresses. The edge of a wine glass rested against her lower lip. She looked tired and sad. In spite of Regulation Number 3, Lionel almost whispered her name, but he knew she wouldn’t recognize his disguise, so he confined himself instead to clearing his throat.
Marie turned, studied him appreciatively and said, “Hello, stranger. There’s not much time. I cost thirty-five credits.”
“What?!”
“Too expensive, handsome? Don’t you think I’m worth it?”
“Just the opposite!” he babbled, feverishly counting money into her hand. Though Lionel was shocked that his wife had become a high-priced hooker, he was also overwhelmingly excited that against all odds, he could again enjoy her addictively sweet body. “You’re worth more, much much more!” Radiant at the compliment, she hugged him impulsively and as he gazed passionately at her, he wished he could lose himself in the liquid depths of her sea-green eyes—and then he recollected that he could do just that.
“Where are you taking me?” she asked. “Happy Hour’ll be over in a few minutes!”
“Yes!” He tugged her by the hand. “It’s only a few cubes away. Hurry!” They ran to the private chamber he’d shared with Beatrice and before Marie could protest, Lionel pulled her into the Flygate and husband and wife interpenetrate and for the first time in his sad life, Lionel understands a loneliness other than his own, that of a frightened little girl so abused by her parents and her lovers that she ran away from Lionel lest he become too important to her and end up hurting her, too, but now Lionel enfolds her in an embrace so tender that Marie finally relinquishes all her outworn fears and willingly joins her mind and body and spirit to him in an intimacy more perfect than love and at last Lionel B. Horace is supremely happy
❖
Someone shook his shoulder. “Wake up, Lonny! Happy Hour’s over.”
“Wha-a-? Where am I?” Groggily aware that he’d regained his customary shape, height and weight, Lionel opened his eyes and saw that he was sitting in the antechamber where Tina inoculated him. The only other person in the room was Vincent Michaels. He clutched his employer’s arm. “Vinnie, where’s Marie?”
“I sent her home to rest till she feels more like herself.” Michaels clucked dolefully. “It was no easy task separating you two from one another.”
“I’ve got to find her.”
“Not now, Lonny. She doesn’t know who you really are, remember?”
“But we totally shared each other!”
“And you left her mighty confused. Guess what she told me? That she wishes her husband was more like you.”
“Oh, what a mess!” Lionel wrung his hands. “What’ll I do?”
“Give her time, Lonny. Go slow. Come next Happy Hour, she’ll be dying to see you.”
A wan, hopeful smile. “You really think so, Vinnie?”
“I know so. Now come on, I’ll help you home. You had too many Larkspur Eradicators.” Resting a hand on his cameraperson’s meaty shoulder, the executive steered him through the door and into the nearest commuter HMD.
After the men were gone, Tina entered the room, switched off the computer, closed and security-locked her ChemPak dispensary, packed up her tapes and hypodermic and departed. On her way out through Sound Stage A, she shivered with self-conscious delight at the firsthand glimpse she got of the soap opera sets. Though she never would have admitted it to her colleagues, Los Angeles Ladies was Tina’s favorite TV program.
When Lionel’s head hit the pillow, his carrot-colored toupee skewed ridiculously, but he was already asleep. Vincent Michaels set the hairpiece on a night table, removed his employee’s brick-orange shoes, covered him with a blanket, turned off the light and left the bedroom. On his way to the front door, he noticed a crumpled note tossed on a tabletop in the entry alcove. He unfolded the scrap of paper and read it.
Lionel, you are a short fat ugly wimp. I am leaving you—Marie
By now, she must be halfway across the galaxy, Michaels thought grimly.
In old L.A., some producers allegedly distributed pills to high-strung talent, but Vincent Michaels handled staff emotional problems wit
h electrochemical hypnotherapy. An expert like Tina Wasserman was expensive, but compared to charter-flighting in replacement personnel, she was the most cost-efficient option. In Lonny’s case, the A. P. mused, Tina and Happy Hour have salvaged a first-rate cameraperson.
At least until the next shuttle.
NOTES
1. Member, Cosmic Society of Camerapersons.
2. Cosmic Starshine, “The Man Behind LA. Ladies” (10/2/89).
Richard L. Wexelblat
Horace, Nellie, and
the Computer
Richard L. Wexelblat, the author of the definitive History of Programming Languages, is a resident of Alexandria, Virginia, who, in his spare time, writes such humorous verse as “The Dragon Over Hackensack” (in Masterpieces of Terror and the Supernatural) and the following new twist on the ancient love triangle.
I sing of Horace, fleet of finger.
Near the console he would linger.
He had a woman. He would bring her
Printed outputs every night.
Horace loved to write in COBOL,
FORTRAN, BASIC, even SNOBOL.
C and Ada, Pascal: No call
For a program caused him fright.
One time Horrie’s lovely lady
Said they should go off on May Day.
Horace said he was afraid he
Had to take a different flight.
Horrie’s friendly home computer
Seemed to him becoming cuter
Than his faithful female suitor.
She thought that was not quite right.
Nellie kidnapped that distractor,
Borrowed someone’s trash compactor,
Squoze it to a tiny factor!
Now she’s got him back at night.
Isaac Asimov
I’m in Marsport Without Hilda
Isaac Asimov, in his 1986 Doubleday collection, The Best Science Fiction of Isaac Asimov, writes, “My stories rarely contain ribald elements. This is not because I am incapable of writing in ribald fashion (consider my five books of original limericks that are not clean), but because I choose not to.” The following story “was written at an editorial dare, and I told the editor that I would write it under a pseudonym so that I could retain my principle. Then, however, when the story was written, I decided it wasn’t so terribly ribald—it was all by indirection—and I couldn’t bear to deny authorship, so I put my own name on it.”
IT WORKED ITSELF OUT, to begin with, like a dream. I didn’t have to make any arrangements. I didn’t have to touch it. I just watched things work out. Maybe right then’s when I should have smelled catastrophe.
It began with my usual month’s layoff between assignments. A month on and a month off is the right and proper routine for the Galactic Service. I reached Marsport for the usual three-day layover before the short hop to Earth.
Ordinarily, Hilda, God bless her, as sweet a wife as any man ever had, would be there waiting for me and we’d have a nice sedate time of it—a nice little interlude for the two of us. The only trouble with that is that Marsport is the rowdiest hellhole in the system, and a nice little interlude isn’t exactly what fits in. Only, how do I explain that to Hilda, hey?
Well, this time my mother-in-law—God bless her, for a change—got sick just two days before I reached Marsport; and the night before landing, I got a spacegram from Hilda saying she would stay on Earth with her mother and wouldn’t meet me this one time.
I grammed back my loving regrets and my feverish anxiety concerning her mother; and when I landed, there I was:
I was in Marsport without Hilda!
That was still nothing, you understand. It was the frame of the picture, the bones of the woman. Now there was the matter of the lines and coloring inside the frame; the skin and flesh outside the bones.
So I called up Flora—Flora of certain rare episodes in the past—and for the purpose I used a video booth. Damn the expense, full speed ahead.
I was giving myself ten to one odds she’d be out, she’d be busy with her videophone disconnected, she’d be dead, even.
But she was in, with her videophone connected and she was anything but dead.
She looked better than ever. Age cannot wither nor custom stale, as somebody or other once said, her infinite variety. And the robe she wore—or, rather, almost didn’t wear—helped a lot.
Was she glad to see me? She squealed, “Max! It’s been years.”
“I know, Flora, but this is it, if you’re available. Because guess what! I’m in Marsport without Hilda.”
She squealed again. “Isn’t that nice! Then come on over.”
I goggled a bit. This was too much. “You mean you are available?” You have to understand that Flora was never available without plenty of notice. Well, she was that kind of knockout.
She said, “Oh, I’ve got some quibbling little arrangement, Max, but I’ll take care of that. You come on over.”
“I’ll come,” I said happily.
Flora was the kind of girl—Well, I tell you, she had her rooms under Martian gravity, 0.4 Earth-normal. The gadget to free her of Marsport’s pseudo-grav field was expensive, of course, but I’ll tell you just in passing that it was worth it, and she had no trouble paying it off. If you’ve ever held a girl in your arms at 0.4 gees, you need no explanation. If you haven’t, explanations will do no good. I’m also sorry for you.
Talk about floating on clouds...
And mind you, the girl has to know how to handle low gravity. Flora did. I won’t talk about myself, you understand, but Flora didn’t howl for me to come over and start breaking previous engagements just because she was at loose ends. Her ends were never loose.
I closed connections, and only the prospect of seeing it all in the flesh—such flesh!—could have made me wipe out the image with such alacrity. I stepped out of the booth.
And at that point, that precise point, that very split instant of time, the first whiff of catastrophe nudged itself up to me.
That first whiff was the bald head of that lousy Rog Crinton of the Mars offices, gleaming over a headful of pale blue eyes, pale yellow complexion, and pale brown mustache. He was the same Rog Crinton, with some Slavic strain in his ancestry, that half the people out on field work thought had a middle name that went sunnuvabich.
I didn’t bother getting on all fours and beating my forehead against the ground because my vacation had started the minute I had gotten off the ship.
I said with only normal politeness, “What the hell do you want and I’m in a hurry. I’ve got an appointment.”
He said, “You’ve got an appointment with me. I’ve got a little job for you.”
I laughed and told him in all necessary anatomical detail where he could put the little job, and offered to get him a mallet to help. I said, “It’s my month off, friend.”
He said, “Red emergency alert, friend.”
Which meant, no vacation, just like that. I couldn’t believe it. I said, “Nuts, Rog. Have a heart. I got an emergency alert of my own.”
“Nothing like this.”
“Rog,” I pleaded, “can’t you get someone else? Anyone else?”
“You’re the only Class A agent on Mars.”
“Send to Earth, then. They stack agents like micropile units at Headquarters.”
“This has got to be done before 11 p.m. What’s the matter? You haven’t got three hours?”
I grabbed my head. The boy just didn’t know. I said, “Let me make a call, will you?”
I stepped back in the booth, glared at him, and said, “Private!”
Flora shone on the screen again, like a mirage on an asteroid. She said, “Something wrong, Max? Don’t say something’s wrong. I canceled my other engagement.”
I said, “Flora, baby, I’ll be there. I’ll be there. But something’s come up.”
She asked the natural question in a hurt tone of voice and I said, “No. Not another girl. With you in the same town they don’t make any other girls. Fe
males, maybe. Not girls. Baby! Honey! It’s business. Just hold on. It won’t take long.”
She said, “All right,” but she said it kind of like it was just enough not all right so that I got the shivers.
I stepped out of the booth and said, “All right, Rog Sunnuvabich, what kind of mess have you cooked up for me?”
❖
We went into the spaceport bar and got us an insulated booth. He said, “The Antares Giant is coming in from Sirius in exactly half an hour, at 8 p.m. local time.”
“Okay.”
“Three men will get out, among others, and will wait for the Space Eater coming in from Earth at 11 p.m. and leaving for Capella some time thereafter. The three men will get on the Space Eater and will then be out of our jurisdiction.”
“So.”
“So between eight and eleven, they will be in a special waiting room and you will be with them. I have a trimensional image of each for you so you’ll know who they are and which is which. You have between eight and eleven to decide which one is carrying contraband.”
“What kind of contraband?”
“The worst kind. Altered Spaceoline.”
“Altered Spaceoline?”
He had thrown me. I knew what Spaceoline was. If you’ve been on a space hop you know too. And in case you’re Earthbound yourself the bare fact is that everyone needs it on the first space trip; almost everybody needs it for the first dozen trips; lots need it every trip. Without it, there is vertigo associated with free fall, screaming terrors, semipermanent psychoses. With it, there is nothing; you don’t mind a thing. And it isn’t habit-forming; it has no adverse side effects. Spaceoline is ideal, essential, unsubstitutable. When in doubt, take Spaceoline.
Rog said, “That’s right, altered Spaceoline. It can be changed chemically, by a simple reaction that can be conducted in anyone’s basement, into a drug that will give one giant-size charge and become your baby-blue habit the first time. It is on a par with the most dangerous alkaloids we know.”
“And we just found out about it?”
“No. The Service has known about it for years, and we’ve kept others from knowing by squashing every discovery flat. Now, however, the discovery has gone too far.”
Lovers and Other Monsters Page 39