The Lovers

by Филип Хосе Фармер

  On a platform at one end of the room a five-piece band slammed out fast and weird notes. Hal saw three instruments that looked Terranlike: a harp, a trumpet, and a drum. A fourth musician, however, was not producing any music himself, but he was now and then prodding with a long stick a rat-sized locustoid creature in a cage. When so urged, the insect rubbed its hind wings over its back legs and gave four loud chirps followed by a long, nerve-scratching screech.

  The fifth player was pumping away at a bellows connected to a bag and three short and narrow pipes. A thin squealing came out.

  Fobo shouted, 'Don't think that noise is typical of our music. It's cheap, popular stuff. I'll take you to a symphony concert one of these days, and you'll hear what great music is like.'

  The wog led the man to one of the curtained-off booths scattered along the walls. They sat down. A waitress came to them. Sweat ran off her forehead and down her tubular nose.

  'Keep your mask on until we've gotten our drinks,' said Fobo. 'Then we can close the curtains.'

  The waitress said something in Wog.

  Fobo repeated in American for Hal's benefit. 'Beer, wine, or beetlejuice. Myself, I wouldn't touch the first two. They're for women and children.'

  Hal didn't want to lose face. He said, with a bravado he didn't feel, 'The latter, of course.'

  Fobo held up two fingers. The waitress returned quickly with two big steins. The wog leaned his nose into fumes and breathed deeply. He closed his eyes in ecstasy, lifted the stein, and drank a long time. When he put the container down, he belched loudly and then smacked his lips.

  'Tastes as good coming up as going down!' he bellowed.

  Hal felt queasy. He had been whipped too many times as a child for his uninhibited eructations.

  'But Hal,' said Fobo, 'you are not drinking!'

  Yarrow said weakly, 'Damifino,' Siddo for, 'I hope this doesn't hurt,' and he drank.

  Fire ran down his throat like lava down a volcano's slope. And, like a volcano, Hal erupted. He coughed and wheezed; liquor spurted out of his mouth; his eyes shut and squeezed out big tears.

  'Very good, isn't it?' said Fobo calmly.

  'Yes, very good,' croaked Yarrow from a throat that seemed to be permanently scarred. Though he had spat most of the stuff out, some of it must have dropped straight through his intestines and into his legs, for he felt a hot tide down there swinging back and forth as if pulled by some invisible moon circling around and around in his head, a big moon that bulged and brushed against the inside of his skull.

  'Have another.'

  The second drink he managed better – outwardly, at least, for he did not cough or sputter. But inwardly he was not so unconcerned. His belly writhed, and he was sure he would disgrace himself. After a few deep breaths, he thought he would keep the liquor down. Then, he belched. The lava got as far as his throat before he manage to stop it.

  'Pardon me,' he said, blushing.

  'Why?' said Fobo.

  Hal thought that was one of the funniest retorts he had ever heard. He laughed loudly and sipped at the stein. If he could empty it swiftly and then buy a quart for Jeannette, he could get back before the night was completely wasted.

  When the liquor had receded halfway down the stein, Hal heard Fobo, dimly and far-off as if he were at the end of a long tunnel, ask him if he cared to see where the alcohol was made.

  'Shib,' Hal said.

  He rose but had to put a hand on the table to steady himself. The wog told him to put his mask back on.

  'Earthmen are still objects of curiosity. We don't want to waste all evening answering questions. Or drinking drinks that'll be forced on us.'

  They threaded through the noisy crowd to a back room. There Fobo gestured and said, 'Behold! The kesarubu!'

  Hal looked. If he had not had some of his inhibitions washed away in the liquorish flood, he might have been overwhelmingly repulsed. As it was, he was curious.

  The thing sitting on a chair by the table might, at first glance, have been taken for a wogglebug. It had the blond fuzz, the bald pate, the nose, and the V-shaped mouth. It also had the round body and enormous paunch of some of the Ozagens.

  But a second look in the bright light from the unshaded bulb overhead showed a creature whose body was sheathed in a hard and light green tinted chitin. And, though it wore a long cloak, the legs and arms were naked. They were not smooth-skinned but were ring segmented with the edges of armor-sections, like stove pipes.

  Fobo spoke to it. Yarrow understood some of th words; the others, he was able to fill in.

  'Ducko, this is Mr. Yarrow. Say hello to Mr. Yarrow Ducko.'

  The big blue eyes looked at Hal. There was nothin about them to distinguish them from a wog's, yet the seemed inhuman, thoroughly arthropodal.

  'Hello, Mr. Yarrow,' Ducko said in a parrot's voice.

  'Tell Mr. Yarrow what a fine night it is.'

  'It's a fine night, Mr. Yarrow.'

  'Tell him Ducko is happy to see him.'

  'Ducko is happy to see you.'

  'And serve him.'

  'And serve you.'

  'Show Mr. Yarrow how you make beetlejuice.'

  A wog standing by the table glanced at his wristwatch. He spoke in rapid Ozagen. Fobo translated.

  'He says Ducko ate a half hour ago. He should be read to serve. These creatures eat a big meal every half hou and then they – watch!'

  Duroku set on the table a huge earthenware bowl. Ducko leaned over it until a half-inch-long tube projecting from his chest was poised above the edge of the bowl. The projection, thought Hal, was probably a modified tracheal opening. From the tube a clear liquid shot into the bowl until it was filled to the brim. Duroku grabbed the bowl and carried it off. An Ozagen came from the kitchen with a plate of what Hal later found out was highly sugared spaghetti. He set it down, and Ducko began eating from it with a big spoon.

  Hal's brain was by then not working very fast, but he began to see what was going on. Frantically, he looked around for a place to vomit. Fobo shoved a drink under his nose. For lack of anything better to do, he swallowed some. Whole hog or none. Surprisingly, the fiery stuff settled his stomach. Or else burned away the rising tide.

  'Exactly,' replied Fobo to Hal's strangled question. 'These creatures are a superb example of parasitical mimicry. Though quasi-insectal, they look much like us. They live among us and earn their room and board by furnishing us with a cheap and smooth alcoholic drink. You noticed its enormous belly, shib? It is there that they so rapidly manufacture the alcohol and so easily upchuck it. Simple and natural, yes? Duroku has two others working for him, but it is their night off, and doubtless they are in some neighborhood tavern, getting drunk. A sailor's holiday–'

  Hal burst out, 'Can't we buy a quart and get out? I feel sick. It must be the closeness of the air. Or something.'

  'Something, probably.' Fobo murmured.

  He sent a waitress after two quarts. While they were waiting for her, they saw a short wog in a mask and blue cloak enter. The newcomer stood in the door way, black boots widespread and the long tubular projection of the mask pointing this way and that like a sub's periscope peering for prey.

  Hal gasped and said, 'Pornsen! I can see his uniform under the cloak!'

  'Shib,' replied Fobo. 'That drooping shoulder and the black boots also give him away. Who does he think he's fooling?'

  Hal looked wildly around. 'I've got to get out of here!'

  The waitress returned with the bottles. Fobo paid her and gave one to Hal, who automatically put it in the inside pocket of his cloak.

  The gapt saw them through the doorway, but he must not have recognized them. Yarrow wore his mask, while the empathist probably looked to Pornsen like any other wog. Methodical as always, Pornsen evidently was determined to make a thorough search. He brought up his sloping shoulder in a sudden gesture and began parting the curtains of the booths along the walls. Whenever he saw a wog with his or her mask still on, he lifted the grostesque covering and looked b
ehind.

  Fobo chuckled, and he said, in American, 'He won't keep that up long. What does he think we Siddo are? A bunch of mouses?'

  What he had been waiting for happened. A burly wog suddenly stood up as Pornsen reached for his mask and instead lifted the gapt's. Surprised at seeing the non-Ozagenian features, the wog stared for a second. Then, he gave a screech, yelled something, and punched the Earthman in the nose.

  At once, there was bedlam. Pornsen staggered back into a table, knocking it and its steins over, and fell to the floor. Two wogs jumped him. Another hit a fourth. The fourth struck back. Duroku, carrying a short club, ran up and began thumping his fighting customers on the backs and legs. Somebody threw beetlejuice in his face.

  And, at that moment, Fobo threw the switch that plunged the tavern into darkness.

  Hal stood bewildered. A hand seized his. 'Follow me!' The hand tugged. Hal turned and allowed himself to be led, stumbling, toward what he thought was the back door.

  Any number of others must have had the same idea. Hal was knocked down and trampled upon. Fobo's hand was torn from his. Yarrow cried out for the wog, but any possible answer was drowned out in a chorus of Beat it! Get off my back; you dumb son-of-a-bug! Great Larva, we're piled up in the doorway!

  Sharp reports added to the noise. A foul stench choked Hal as the wogs, under nervous stress, released the gas in their madbags. Gasping, Hal fought his way through the door. A few seconds later, his mad scrambling over twisting bodies earned him his freedom. He lurched down an alleyway. Once on the street, he ran as fast as he could. He didn't know where he was going. His one thought was to put as much distance as possible between himself and Pornsen.

  Arc lights on top of tall, slender iron poles flashed by. He ran with his shoulder almost scraping the buildings. He wanted to stay in the shadows thrown by the many balconies jutting out from above. After a minute, he slowed down at a narrow passageway. A glance showed him it wasn't a blind alley. He darted down it until he came to a large square can, one that by its odor must have been used for garbage. Squatting behind it, he tried to lessen his gaspings. Presently, his lungs regained their balance; he no longer had to sob for air. He could listen without having his heart thudding in his ears.

  He heard no pursuer. After a while, he decided it was safe to rise. He felt the bottle in his cloak pocket. Miraculously, it had not been broken. Jeanette would get her liquor. What a story he would have to tell her! After all he had gone through for her, he would surely get just a reward...

  He shivered with goose pimples at the thought and began to walk briskly down the alley. He had no idea where he was, but he carried a map of the city in his pocket. It had been printed in the ship and bore street names in Ozagen with American and Icelandic translations beneath. All he had to do was read the street signs under one of the many lamps, orient himself with the map, and return home. As for Pornsen, the fellow had no real evidence against him and would not be able to accuse him until he got some. Hal's golden lamedh made him above suspicion. Pornsen...

  12

  Pornsen! No sooner had he muttered the name than the flesh appeared. There was a click of hard boot heels behind him. He turned. A short, cloaked figure was coming down the alley. A lamp's glow outlined the droop of a shoulder and shone on black leather boots. His mask was off.

  'Yarrow!' shrilled the gapt, truimphantly. 'No use running! I saw you in that tavern. You won't be able to save yourself now!'

  He click-clacked up to his ward's tall rigid form. 'Drinking! I know you were drinking!'

  'Yeah?' Hal croaked. 'What else?'

  'Isn't that enough?' screamed the gapt. 'Or are you hiding something in your apartment? Maybe you are! Maybe you've got the place filled with bottles. Come on! Let's get back to your apartment. We'll go over it and see what we see. I wouldn't be surprised to find all sorts of evidence of your unreal thinking.'

  Hal hunched his shoulders and clenched his fists, but he said nothing. When he was told by the gapt to precede him back to Fobo's building, he walked without a sign of resistance. Like conqueror and conquered, they marched from the alley into the street. Yarrow, however, spoiled the picture by reeling a little and having to put his hand to the wall to steady himself.

  Pornsen sneered. 'You drunken joat! You make me sick to my stomach!'

  Hal pointed ahead. 'I'm not the only one who's sick. Look at that fellow.'

  He was not really interested, but he had a wild hope that anything he said or did, however trivial, might put off the final and fatal moment when they would return to his apartment. He was pointing at a large and evidently intoxicated wogglebug hanging onto a lamppost to keep from falling on his needle-shaped nose. He might have been a nineteenth- or twentieth-century drunk, complete to top hat, cloak, and lamppost. Now and then, the creature groaned as if he were deeply disturbed.

  'Perhaps we'd better stop to see if he's hurt,' said Hal.

  He had to say something, anything to delay Pornsen. Before his captor could protest, he went up to the wog. He put his hand on the free arm – the other was wrapped around the post – and spoke in Siddo.

  'Can we help you?'

  The big wog looked as if he, too, had been in a brawl. His cloak, besides being ripped down the back, was spotted with dried green blood. He kept his face away from Hal, so that the Earthman had a hard time understanding his muttering.

  Pornsen jerked at his arm. 'Come on, Yarrow. He'll get by all right. What's one sick bug more or less?'

  'Shib,' agreed Hal tonelessly. He let his hand drop and started to walk on. Pornsen, behind, took one step and then bumped into Hal as Hal stopped.

  'What are you stopping for, Yarrow?' The gapt's voice was suddenly apprehensive.

  And then the voice was screaming in agony.

  Hal whirled – to see in grim actuality what had flashed across his mind and caused him to stop in his tracks. When he had put his hand on the wog's arm, he had felt, not warm skin, but hard and cool chitin. For a few seconds, the meaning of that had not cleared the brain's switchboard. Then it had come through, and he had remembered the talk he and Fobo had had on the way to the tavern, and why Fobo wore a sword. Too late, he had wheeled to warn Pornsen.

  Now the gapt was holding both hands to his eyes and shrieking. The big thing that had been leaning against the lamppost was advancing toward Hal. Its body seemed to grow huger with every step. A sac across its chest swelled until it looked like a palpitating gray balloon and a wheezing sound accompanied its deflation. The hideous insectal face, with two vestigial arms waving on each side of its mouth and the funnel-shaped proboscis below the mouth, was pointed at him. It was that proboscis which Hal had mistakenly thought was a wog's nose. In reality, the thing must have breathed through tracheae and two slits below the enormous eyes. Normally, its breath must saw loudly through the slits, but it must have suppressed the sound in order not to warn its victims.

  Hal yelled with fright. At the same time he grabbed his cloak and threw it up before his face. His mask might have saved him, but he did not care to take the chance.

  Something burned the back of his hand. He yelped with pain but leaped forward. Before the thing could breathe in air to bloat the sac again and expel the acid through the funnel, Hal rammed his head against its paunch.

  The thing said, 'Oof!' and fell backward where it lay on its back and thrashed its legs and arms like a giant poisonous bug – which it was. Then, as it recovered from the shock and rolled over and tried to get back on its feet, Hal kicked hard. His leather toe drove with a crunching sound through the thin chitin.

  The toe withdrew; blood, dark in the lamplight, oozed out; Hal kicked again in the open place. The thing screamed and tried to crawl away on all fours. The Terran leaped upon it with both feet and drove it sprawling to the cement. He pressed his heel against its thin neck and shoved with all the strength of his leg. The neck cracked, and the thing lay still. Its lower jaw dropped open and exposed two rows of tiny needle teeth. The mouth's rudimentary arms
wigwagged feebly for a while and then drooped.

  Hal's chest heaved in agony. He couldn't get enough air. His guts quivered and threatened to force their way through his throat. Then they did, and Hal bent over, retching.

  All at once, he was sober. By that time Pornsen had quit screaming. He was lying huddled on his side in the gutter. Hal turned him over and shuddered at what he saw. The eyes were partly burned out, and the lips were gray with large blisters. The tongue, sticking from the mouth, was swollen and lumpy. Evidently, Pornsen had swallowed some of the venom.

  Hal straightened up and walked away. A wog patrol would find the gapt's body and turn it over to the Earthmen. Let the hierarchy figure out what had happened. Pornsen was dead, and now that he was, Yarrow admitted to himself what he had never allowed himself to admit before this time. He had hated Pornsen. And he was glad that he was dead. If Pornsen had suffered horribly, so what? His pains were brief, but the pain and grief he had caused Hal had lasted for almost thirty years.

  A sound behind him made him whirl around.

  'Fobo?'

  There was a moan, followed by pain-garbled words.

  'Pornsen? You can't be... you're... dead.'

  But Pornsen was alive. He was standing up, swaying.

  He held his hands out before him to feel his way and took a few weak, exploratory steps.

  For a moment, Hal was so panicked he thought of running away. But he forced himself to remain rooted and to think rationally.

  If the wogs did find Pornsen, they'd turn him over to the doctors of the Gabriel. And the doctors would give Pornsen new eyes from the meat bank and would inject regeneratives into him. In two weeks, Pornsen's tongue would grow out again. And he'd talk. Forerunner, how he'd talk!

  Two weeks? Now! There was nothing to prevent Pornsen from writing.

  Pornsen groaned with physical pain; Hal, with mental.