Lies, Inc Part 6

And babies, she thought, as the flapple carried her toward the New New York offices of Lies, Incorporated, are discovered under cabbages.

Sure, Mat; you keep on believing.

EIGHT.

To the pleasant, rather overextensively bosomed young female receptionist, Rachmael ben Applebaum said, "My name is Stuart Trent. My wife was teleported earlier today, so I'm anxious to slip in under the wire; I know you're about to close your office."

He had planned this for some time. It was his top card, to be played-hopefully to the surprise of everyone.

The girl glanced searchingly at him. "You're certain, Mr. Trent, that you desire to-"

"My wife," he repeatedly harshly. "She's already over. She left at five." He added, "I have two suitcases. A leady is bringing them." And into the office of Trails of Hoffman, strode the robot-like machine, bearing the two imitation cowhide bulging suitcases.

The consummately nubile receptionist said, "Please fill out these forms, Mr. Trent. I'll make certain that the Telpor techs are ready to receive one more, because as you say, we are about to close."

The entrance gate, in fact, was now locked.

He made out the forms, feeling only a coldness, an empty mindless-fear. Lord, it really was fear! He actually, at this late moment, when Freya had already been teleported across to Whale's Mouth, felt his autonomic nervous system secrete its hormones of cringing panic; he wanted to back out.

But this was too well-planned. If they were expecting anyone they would be expecting Matson Glazer-Holliday. No one would expect him.

However, despite his panic, he managed to fill out the forms. Because, higher than the autonomic nervous system, was the frontal lobe's awareness that the moment Freya crossed over, it was decided.

In fact, that was the reason for sending her in advance; he knew his own irresolution. Freya had been made the cat's paw of that irresolution; by having her go he forced himself to complete this.

And, he thought, for the best; we must find some way, in life, to overcome ourselves . . . we're our own worst enemies.

"Your shots, Mr. Trent." A THL nurse stood by with needles. "Will you please remove your outer garments?" The nurse pointed to a small and hygienic back chamber; he entered, began removing his clothing.

Presently he had received his shots; his arms ached and he wondered dully if they had done it already. Had this been something fatal, administered over the cover of prophylactic shots?

Two elderly German technicians, both as bald as doork.n.o.bs, all at once manifested themselves, wearing the goggles of Telpor operators. The field itself, if viewed too long, caused permanent destruction of the retina. "Mein Herr," the first technician said briskly, "kindly, sir, remove the balance of your garb. Sie sollen ganz unbedeckt sein. Sie sollen ganz unbedeckt sein. We wish not material, no sort, to impede the Starke of the field. All objects, including your parcels, will follow you within minutes." We wish not material, no sort, to impede the Starke of the field. All objects, including your parcels, will follow you within minutes."

Rachmael finished undressing, and terrified, followed them down a tiled hall to what suddenly loomed as a mammoth chamber, almost barren. He saw in it no elaborate Dr. Frankenstein hodgepodge of retorts and bubbling cauldrons, only the twin perpendicular poles, like the concrete walls of a good tennis court, covered with circular cup-like terminals. Between the poles he would stand, a mute ox, and the surge of the field would pa.s.s from pole to pole, engulfing him. And he would either die-if they knew who he was-or if not, then he would be gone from Terra for the balance of his life, or at least thirty-six years.

Lord G.o.d, he thought. I hope Freya got by all right. Anyhow the short encoded message signifying everything all right had arrived from her. He knew that.

Abba had told him. Abba reborn-in Rachmael's own mind. Abba immortal and discorporate, to bond with one of the believers.

"Mr. Trent," a technician said (he could not discern which one it was; they looked the same), fitting his goggles in place. "Bitte; please look down so that your eyes do not perceive the field-emanations; Sie versteh'n the retinal hazard."

"Okay," he said, nodding, and looked down, then, in almost a gesture of modesty. He raised one arm, touched his bare chest with one hand, as if concealing himself-protecting himself against what suddenly became a stunning, blinding ram-head which b.u.t.ted him simultaneously from both sides.

The forces, absolutely equal, made him freeze, as if poured as a polyester as he stood. Anyone watching would have thought him free to move. But he was ensnared for good by the surge pa.s.sing from anode to cathode, with himself as-what, the ion ring? His body attracted the field; he felt it infuse him as a dissolving agent.

And then the left surge stopped. He staggered, glanced up involuntarily. And thought, Abba, are you with me?

No answer from within his mind.

The two bald, goggled Reich technicians were gone. He was in a far smaller chamber, and one elderly man sat at a desk, an old-fas.h.i.+oned desk, carefully logging from numbered tags a huge mound of suitcases and wrapped, tied parcels.

"Your clothing," the official said, "lies in a metal basket to your right marked 121628. And if you're faint, there's a cot; you may lie down."

"I'm-all right," Rachmael said. Abba! he thought in panic. Did they destroy you within me? Are you gone? Do I have to face this alone, now?

Silence within him.

He made his way unsteadily to his clothing. Hands shaking, he dressed, then stood uncertainly.

"Here are your two items of luggage," the bureaucrat at the desk said, without looking up. He seemed like some ancient nodding sheep, drowsing away at his ch.o.r.es. "Numbers 39485 and 39486. Please arrange to remove them from the premises." He then brought out an old golden pocket watch on a fob, flipped it open to read the dial. "No, excuse me. No one will be following you from the New New York nexus. Take your time."

"Thanks." Rachmael picked up the heavy suitcases, walked toward a large double door. "Is this," he asked, "the right direction?"

"That will indeed take you out on Laughing Willow Tree Avenue," the clerk informed him.

"I want a hotel or a motel."

"Any surface vehicle can transport you." The clerk returned to his work, broke contact. He had no more info to offer.

Pus.h.i.+ng the door open, Rachmael stepped out onto the sidewalk. And stopped dead in his tracks.

Acrid smoke billowed about him, stinging his nostrils. He bent in a reflexive half-crouch. Then, here now on the far side, on the ninth planet of Fomalhaut, Rachmael ben Applebaum fingered relentlessly the meager flat tin, the container in his trouser pocket: this was the wep-x that the Advance-weapons Archives had at last provided him-radically disguised as well as radically beyond anything in the standard a.r.s.enals of the UN. The camouflage of the hyper-miniaturized time-warping construct had seemed to him, when he first viewed it, the sine quo non of misleading packages: the weapon appeared to be a bootlegged tin of prophoz from Yucatan, fully automated, helium-battery powered, guaranteed for five-year operation and gynetropic.

Briefly, he huddled in the safe shadow of a wall, the weapon out, now, visible in the palm of his hand. Even the gaily painted half wit-ted slogan of the Central American factory had been duplicated, and, at a time like this, on a stranger-planet in another system, he read the quixotic words familiar to him since adolescence: MORE FUN.

AFTER DONE!.

And with this, he thought, I'm going to get Freya back. In its witless, gaily colored way the camouflage-package of the weapon seemed more of an insult, a quasi-obscene commentary on the situation confronting him. However, he returned it to his pocket; sliding upward to an erect position he once again viewed the nebulous rolls of particles in suspension, the cloud ma.s.ses derived from the molecularization of the nearby buildings. He saw, too, dim human shapes that sped at ludicrously accelerated speed, each in its own direction, as if some central control usually in operation had, at this dangerous time, where so much was at stake, clicked off, leaving each of the sprinting figures on its own.

And yet they all seemed to understand what they were doing; their activities were not undirected, not random. To his right a cl.u.s.ter had gathered to a.s.semble a complex weapon; with industrious, ant-busy fingers they snapped one component after another into position in expert progression: they knew their business, and he wondered-he could not, in the erratic light, make out their uniforms-which faction they represented. Probably, he decided, better to conclude they belonged to THL; safer, he realized. And he would have to a.s.sume this, until otherwise proved, about each and every person whom he encountered here on this side, this Newcolonizedland which was no- Directly before him a soldier appeared whose eyes glowed huge and unwinking, owl eyes which fixed on him and would never, now that they had perceived him, again look away.

Diving to the ground, Rachmael fumbled numbly for the prophoz tin; it had happened too soon, too unexpectedly-he was not ready and the weapon which he had brought here to use for Freya was not even positioned to protect him, let alone her. His hand touched it, buried deep within his pocket . . . and at that moment a m.u.f.fled pop pop burst near his face as, above him, the THL soldier twisted to re-aim and fire once more. burst near his face as, above him, the THL soldier twisted to re-aim and fire once more.

A high-velocity dart waggled its directing fins as it spun at him. It was, he realized as he watched it descend toward him, an LSD-TIPPED dart; the hallucinogenic ergotic alkaloid derivative const.i.tuted-had const.i.tuted ever since its introduction into the field of weapons of war-a unique instrument for reducing the enemy to a condition in which he was absolutely neutralized: instead of destroying him, the LSD, injected intravenously by the dart, destroyed his world world.

Sharp, quick pain snuffed at his arm; the dart had plunged into him, had embedded itself successfully.

The LSD had entered his circulatory system. He had, now, only a few minutes ahead; that realization alone generally took the target out: to know, under conditions such as these, that very shortly the entire self-system, the structure of world-character which had developed stage by stage over the years from birth on- His thoughts ceased. The LSD had reached the cortical tissue of his frontal lobe and all abstract mentational processes had instantly shut down. He still saw the world, saw the THL soldier leisurely reloading the dart-releasing gun, the rolling clouds of A-warhead-contaminated ash, the half-ruined buildings, the ant-like scampering figures here and there. He could recognize them and understand what each was. But beyond that-nothing.

Color, Rachmael thought as he saw the transformation in the THL soldier's face; the color-transformation-it had already set in. Swiftly, the drug moved him to ruin; in his bloodstream it rushed him toward the end of his existence in the shared world. For me, he knew, this-but he could not even think it, carry out the steps of a logical thought. Awareness was there, knowledge of what was happening. He watched the lips of the THL soldier become bright, phosph.o.r.escent, s.h.i.+ny-pink pure luminosity; the lips, forming a perfect bow, then floated off, detached themselves from the soldier's face, leaving behind the ordinary colorless lips: one hemisphere of Rachmael's brain had received the LSD and succ.u.mbed, undoubtedly the right, he being right-handed, the hemisphere on that side therefore being the undifferentiated of the two. The left still held out, still saw the mundane world; even now, deprived of abstract reasoning, no longer capable of adult cerebral processes, the higher centers of the left hemisphere of his brain fought to stabilize the picture of the world as he knew it, fought knowing that within seconds, now, that picture would give way, would collapse and let in, like some endless flood, the entirety of raw percept-data, uncontrolled, unstructured, without meaning or order, each datum unrelated to the others: the portion of his brain which imposed the framework of s.p.a.ce and time onto incoming data would not be able to carry out its task. And, with the ringing in of that instant, he would plunge back decades. Back to the initial interval after birth- entry into a world utterly unfamiliar, utterly incomprehensible.

He had lived through that once. Each human, at the moment of birth, had. But now. Now he possessed memory, retention of the disappearing usual world. That and language; that and realization of what ordinary and expected experience would presently become.

And how long, subjectively, it would last. How long it would be before he regained-if he did regain-his customary world once more.

The THL soldier, his weapon reloaded, started away, already searching for the next target; he did not bother to notice Rachmael, now. He, too, knew what lay ahead. Rachmael could be forgotten; even now he no longer lived in the shared world, no longer existed.

Without thought, prompted by a brain-area silent but still functioning, Rachmael raced after the THL soldier; with no lapse of time, without a sense of having crossed intervening s.p.a.ce, he clutched the soldier, dragged him aside and took possession of the long-bladed throwing knife holstered at the man's waist. Choking him with his left arm Rachmael yanked the blade backward in an arc that reversed itself: the blade returned, and the THL soldier followed its reverse trajectory as it approached his stomach. He struggled; in Rachmael's grip he strained, and his eyes dulled as if baked, dried out, without fluid and old, mummified by a thousand years. And, in Rachmael's hand, the knife became something he did not know.

The thing which he held ceased its horizontal motion. It moved, but in another direction which was neither up nor forward; he had never seen this direction and its weirdness appalled him, because the thing in his hand moved without moving; it progressed and yet stayed where it was, so that he did not have to change the direction of his eye focus. His gaze fixed, he watched the s.h.i.+ning, brittle, transparent thing elaborate itself, produce from its central column slender branches like gla.s.s stalagmites; in a series of lurches, of jumps forward into the nons.p.a.cial dimension of altered movement, the tree-thing developed until its complexity terrified him. It was all over the world, now; from his hand it had jerked out into stage after stage so that, he knew, it was everywhere, and nothing else had room to exist: the tree-thing had taken up all s.p.a.ce and crowded reality-as-it-usually-was out.

And still it grew.

He decided, then, to look away from it. In his mind he recalled in distinctness, with labored, painstaking concentration, the THL soldier; he noted the direction, in relation to the enormous, worldfilling tree-thing, along which the soldier could be found. He made his head turn, his eyes focus that way.

A small circle, like some far end of a declining tube, opened up and unveiled for him a minute portion of reality-as-it-usually-was. Within that circle he made out the face of the THL soldier, unchanged; it stabilized in normal luminosity and shape. And, meanwhile, throughout the endless area which was not the distant circle of the world, a mult.i.tude of noiseless, sparklike configurations flicked on and achieved form with such magnitude of brightness that even without focussing on them he experienced pain; they appalled the optic portion of his percept-system, and yet did not halt the transfer of their impressions: despite the unendurable brilliance the configurations continued to flow into him, and he knew that they had come to stay. Never, he knew. They would never never leave. leave.

For an almost unmeasurable fraction of an instant he ventured to look directly at one unusually compelling light-configuration; its furious activity attracted his gaze.

Below it, the circle which contained unaltered reality changed. At once he forced his attention back. Too late?

The THL soldier's face. Swollen eyes. Pale. The man returned Rachmael's gaze; their eyes met and each perceived the other, and then the physiognomic properties of the reality-landscape swiftly underwent a crumbling new alteration; the eyes became rocks that immediately were engulfed by a freezing wind which obliterated them with dense snow. The jaw, the cheeks and mouth and chin, even the nose disappeared as they became lesser mountains of barren, uninhabited rock that also succ.u.mbed to the snow. Only the tip of the nose projected, a peak presiding alone above a ten-thousand-mile waste that supported no life nor anything that moved. Rachmael watched, and years lapsed by, recorded by the internal clock of his perceiving mind; he knew the duration and knew the meaning of the landscape's perpetual refusal to live: he knew where he was and he recognized this which he saw. It was beyond his ability not not to recognize it. to recognize it.

This was the h.e.l.lscape.

No, he thought. It has to stop. Because now he saw tiny distant figures sprouting everywhere to populate the h.e.l.lscape, and as they formed they continued the dancing, frenzied activities familiar to them-and familiar to him, as if he were back once more and again witnessing this, and knowing with cert.i.tude that he would, within the next thousand years, be forced to scrutinize.

His fear, concentrated and directed in this one field, superimposed like a dissolving beam over the h.e.l.lscape, rolled back the snow, made its thousand-year-old depth fade into thinness; the rocks once more appeared and then retreated backward into time to resume their function as features of a face. The h.e.l.lscape reverted with awful obedience to what it had been, as if almost no force were needed to push it out of existence, away from the stronghold of reality in which it had a moment before entrenched itself. And this appalled him the most of all: this told him dreadful news. The merest presence of life, even the smallest possible quant.i.ty of volition, desire and intent was enough to reverse the process by which the eternal landscape of h.e.l.l made itself known. And this meant that not long ago, when the h.e.l.lscape first formed, he had been without any any life, any at all. Not an enormous force from outside breaking in-that was not what confronted him. There was no adversary. These, the terrible trans.m.u.tations of world in every direction, had spontaneously entered as his own life had dwindled, faded, and at last-for a moment, anyhow-entirely shut down. life, any at all. Not an enormous force from outside breaking in-that was not what confronted him. There was no adversary. These, the terrible trans.m.u.tations of world in every direction, had spontaneously entered as his own life had dwindled, faded, and at last-for a moment, anyhow-entirely shut down.

He had died.

But he was now again alive.

Where, then? Not where he had lived before.

The THL soldier's face, customary and natural, hung within the diminished, constricted aperture through which reality showed, a face relieved of the intrusion of h.e.l.l-attributes. As long, Rachmael realized, as I keep that face in front of me, I'm okay. And if he talks. That would do it; that would get me through.

But he won't, he realized. He tried to kill me; he wants me dead. He did did kill me. This man-this sole link with outside-is my murderer. kill me. This man-this sole link with outside-is my murderer.

He stared at the face; in return, the eyes glared unwinkingly back, the owl eyes of cruelty that loathed him and wanted him dead, wanted him to suffer. And the THL soldier said nothing; Rachmael waited and heard no sound, even after years-a decade had pa.s.sed and another began and still no word was spoken. Or if it was he failed to hear it.

"G.o.dd.a.m.n you," Rachmael said. His own voice did not reach him; he felt his throat tremble with the sound, but his ears detected no change, nothing. "Do something," Rachmael said. "Please."

The soldier smiled.

"Then you can hear me," Rachmael said. "Even after this long." It was amazing that this man still lived, after so many centuries. But he did not bother to reflect on that; all that mattered was the uninterrupted realness of the face before him. "Say something," Rachmael said, "or I'll break you." His words weren't right, he realized. Meaningful, familiar, but somehow not correct; he was bewildered. "Like a rod of iron," he said. "I will dash you in pieces. Like a potter's vessel. For I am like a refiner's fire." Horrified, he tried to comprehend the warpage of his language; where had the conventional, everyday- Within him all his language disappeared; all words were gone. Some scanning agency of his brain, some organic searching device, swept out mile after mile of emptiness, finding no stored words, nothing to draw on: he felt it sweeping wider and wider, extending its oscillations into every dark reach, overlooking nothing; it wanted, would accept, anything, now; it was desperate. And still, year after year, the empty bins where words, many of them, had once been but were not now.

He said, then, "Tremens factus sum ego et timeo." "Tremens factus sum ego et timeo." Because out of the periphery of his vision he had obtained a clear glimpse of the progress of the brilliant light-based drama unfolding silently. Because out of the periphery of his vision he had obtained a clear glimpse of the progress of the brilliant light-based drama unfolding silently. "Libere "Libere me," me," he said, and repeated it, once, twice, then on and on, without cease. he said, and repeated it, once, twice, then on and on, without cease. "Libere me Domini," "Libere me Domini," he said, and for a hundred years he listened, watched the events projected soundlessly before him, witnessed forever. he said, and for a hundred years he listened, watched the events projected soundlessly before him, witnessed forever.

"Let go of me, you b.a.s.t.a.r.d," the THL soldier said. His hands grasped Rachmael's neck and the pain was vast beyond compare; Rachmael let go and the face mocked him in leering hate. "And enjoy your expanded consciousness," the soldier said with malice so overwhelming that Rachmael felt throughout him unendurable somatic torment which came and then stayed.

"Mors scribitum," Rachmael said, appealing to the THL soldier. He repeated it, but there was no response. Rachmael said, appealing to the THL soldier. He repeated it, but there was no response. "Misere me," "Misere me," he said, then; he had nothing else available, nothing more to draw on. he said, then; he had nothing else available, nothing more to draw on. "Dies "Dies Irae," Irae," he said, trying to explain what was happening inside him. he said, trying to explain what was happening inside him. "Dies Illa." "Dies Illa." He waited hopefully; he waited years, but no help, no sound, came. I won't make it, he realized then. He waited hopefully; he waited years, but no help, no sound, came. I won't make it, he realized then. Time has stopped. Time has stopped. There is no answer. There is no answer.

"Lots of luck," the face said, then. And began to recede, to move away. The soldier was leaving.

Rachmael hit him. Crushed the mouth. Teeth flew; bits of broken white escaped and vanished, and blood that shone with dazzling flame, like a flow of new, clear fire, exposed itself and filled his vision; the power of illumination emanating from the blood overwhelmed everything, and he saw only that-its intensity stifled everything else and for the first time since the dart had approached him he felt wonder, not fear; this was good. This captivated and pleased him, and he contemplated it with joy.

In five centuries the blood by degrees faded. The flame lessened. Once more, drifting dimly behind the breathing color, the l.u.s.terless face of the THL soldier could be made out, uninteresting and unimportant, of no value because it had no light. It was a dreary and tiresome specter, long known, infinitely boring; he experienced excruciating disappointment to see the fire decrease and the THL soldier's features regather. How long, he asked himself, do I have to keep seeing this same unlit scene?

The face, however, was not the same. He had broken it. Split it open with his fist. Opened it up, let out the precious, blinding blood; the face, a ruined husk, gaped disrobed of its sh.e.l.l: he saw, not the mere outside, but into its genuine works.

Another face, concealed before, wriggled and squeezed out, as if wis.h.i.+ng to escape. As if, Rachmael thought, it knows I can see it, and it can't stand that. That's the one thing it can't endure.

The inner face, emerging from the cracked-open gray-chitin mask, now tried to fold up within itself, attempted vigorously to wrap itself in its own semi-fluid tissue. A wet, limp face, made of the sea, dripping, and at the same time stinking; he smelled its salty, acrid scent and felt sick.

The oceanic face possessed a single multi-lensed eye. Beneath the beak. And when it opened its toothless mouth the wideness of the cavity divided the face entirely; the mouth separated the face into two unconnected equal parts.

"Esse h.o.m.o bonus est," Rachmael said, and wondered numbly why such a simple statement as Rachmael said, and wondered numbly why such a simple statement as To be a man is good To be a man is good sounded so peculiar to his ears. sounded so peculiar to his ears. "Non h.o.m.o," "Non h.o.m.o," he said, then, to the squashed, divided sea-face, he said, then, to the squashed, divided sea-face, "video. Atque malus et timeo; libere me Domini." "video. Atque malus et timeo; libere me Domini." What he saw before him was not a man, not a man's face, and it was bad and it frightened him. And he could do nothing about it; he could not stop seeing it, he could not leave, and it did not go away, it would never go because there was no time at work, no possibility of change; what confronted him would peer at him forever, and his knowledge of it would dwell inside him for an equal duration, pa.s.sed on by him to no one because there was no one. What he saw before him was not a man, not a man's face, and it was bad and it frightened him. And he could do nothing about it; he could not stop seeing it, he could not leave, and it did not go away, it would never go because there was no time at work, no possibility of change; what confronted him would peer at him forever, and his knowledge of it would dwell inside him for an equal duration, pa.s.sed on by him to no one because there was no one. "Exe," "Exe," he said, helplessly; he spoke pointlessly, knowing it would do no good to tell the creature to go away, since there was no way by which it could; it was as trapped as he, and probably just as terrified. he said, helplessly; he spoke pointlessly, knowing it would do no good to tell the creature to go away, since there was no way by which it could; it was as trapped as he, and probably just as terrified. "Amicus sum," "Amicus sum," he said to it, and wondered if it understood him. he said to it, and wondered if it understood him. "Sumus "Sumus amici," amici," he said, then, even though he knew it was not so; he and the thing of water were not friends, did not even know what the other consisted of or where it had come from, and he himself, in the dull, sinking dark red expiration of decaying time, time at its wasted and entropic final phase, would stay grafted in this spot confronted by this unfamiliar thing for a million years ticked away by the ponderous moribund clock within him. And never in all that great interval would he obtain any news as to what this ugly deformed creature signified. he said, then, even though he knew it was not so; he and the thing of water were not friends, did not even know what the other consisted of or where it had come from, and he himself, in the dull, sinking dark red expiration of decaying time, time at its wasted and entropic final phase, would stay grafted in this spot confronted by this unfamiliar thing for a million years ticked away by the ponderous moribund clock within him. And never in all that great interval would he obtain any news as to what this ugly deformed creature signified.

It means something, he realized. This thing's ocean-face; its presence at the far end of the tube, at the outer opening where I'm not, that isn't a hallucinated event inside me-it's here for a reason; it drips and wads itself into glued-together folds and stares without winking at me and wants to keep me dead, keep me from ever getting back. Not my friend, Not my friend, he thought. Or rather knew. It was not an idea; it was a concrete piece of observed reality outside: when he looked at the thing he saw this fact as part of it: the non-friend attribute came along inseparably. The thing oozed; it oozed and hated together. Hated him, and with absolute contempt; in its over-splattering liquid eye he perceived its derision: not only did it not like him, it did not respect him. He wondered why. he thought. Or rather knew. It was not an idea; it was a concrete piece of observed reality outside: when he looked at the thing he saw this fact as part of it: the non-friend attribute came along inseparably. The thing oozed; it oozed and hated together. Hated him, and with absolute contempt; in its over-splattering liquid eye he perceived its derision: not only did it not like him, it did not respect him. He wondered why.

My G.o.d, he realized. It must know something about me. Probably it has seen me before, even though I haven't seen it. He knew, then, what this meant.

It had been here all this time.

NINE.

In a pleasant living room he sat, and across from him a stout man with good-intentioned features gnawed on a toothpick, eyed him with a compound of tolerant amus.e.m.e.nt and sympathy, then turned to grunt at a thin-faced middle-aged dapper man wearing gold-rimmed gla.s.ses who also watched Rachmael, but with a severe, virtually reproving frown.

"Finally coming back for a couple of breaths of real air," the stout man observed, nodding toward Rachmael.

"There's no such thing as real air," a woman seated across from the two of them said; dark-skinned, tall, with acutely penetrating chitin-black eyes, she scrutinized Rachmael and he imagined for an instant that he was seeing Freya. "All air is real; it's either that or no air at all. Unless you think there's something called false false air." air."

The stout man chuckled, nudged his companion. "Listen to that; you hear that? I guess everything you see is real, then; there's no fake nothing." To Rachmael he said, "Everything including dying and being in-"

"Can't you discuss all those sorts of things later?" a blond curly-haired youth at the far end of the room said irritably. "This is a most particularly important summation he's making, and after all, he is our elected president; we owe him our undivided attention, every one of us." His gaze traveled around the tastefully furnished room, taking all of the people in, including Rachmael. Eleven persons in addition to himself, he realized; eleven and me, but what is me? Am I what? His mind, clouded, dwelt in some strange overcast gloom, an obscuring mist that impeded his ability to think or to understand; he could see the people, the room also. But he could not identify this place, these people, and he wondered if the breach with that which had been familiar was so complete as to include himself; had his own physical ident.i.ty, his customary self, been eradicated too, and some new gathering of matter set in its place? He examined his hands, then. Just hands; he could learn nothing from them, only that he did have hands and that he could see them-he could see everything, with no difficulty. Colors did not rise out of the walls, drapes, prints, the dresses of the seated, casual women; nothing distorted and magnified floated as a median world between this clearly tangible environment and his own lifelong established percept-system.

Beside him suddenly an attractive tall girl bent and said close to his ear, "What about a cup of syn-cof? You should drink something hot. I'll fix it for you." She added, "Actually it's imitation syn-cof, but I know you know we don't have the genuine product here, except in April."

An authoritative-looking middle-aged man, bony, hard-eyed with an intensity that implied a ceaseless judging of everyone and everything, said, "This is worse than 'real air.' Now we're talking about genuine synthetic coffee. I wonder what a syn-cof plant would look like growing in a field. Yes, that's the crop Whale's Mouth ought to invest in; we'd be rich in a week." To the woman beside him, a white-oak blonde, he said, "After all, Gretch, it's a cold hard fact that every G.o.dd.a.m.n syn-cof plant or shrub or however the dratted stuff grows back on Terra got-how's it go? Sing it for me, Gretch." He jerked his head toward Rachmael. "Him, too; he's never heard your quaint attempts to blat out authentic Terran folk songs."

The white-oak blonde, in a listless, bored voice, murmured half to herself, half to Rachmael, whom she was now eyeing, " 'The little boy that held the bowl / Was washed away in the flood.' " She continued to contemplate Rachmael, now with an expression which he could not read. "Flood," she repeated, then, her light blue eyes watchful, alert for his reaction. "See anything resembling-"

"Shut up and listen," the curly-haired youth said loudly. "n.o.body expects you to grovel, but at least show the proper respect; this man-" He indicated the TV screen, on which Omar Jones, in the fas.h.i.+on long-familiar to Rachmael, boomed cheerily away; the President of Newcolonizedland at this moment was dilating on the rapture of one's first experience at seeing a high-grade rexeroid ingot slide from the backyard atomic furnace, which, for a nominal sum, could be included in the purchase of a home at the colony-and at virtually no money down. The usual pitch, Rachmael thought caustically; Terra and its inhabitants had listened to this, watched this dogged PR tirade in all its many variants, its multiple adaptations to suit every occasion. "This man," the curly-haired youth finished, "is speaking for us us ; it's everyone here in this room up there on that screen, and as President Jones himself said in that press release last week, to deny him is for us to repudiate our own selves." He turned to a large-nosed dour individual hunched over beside him, a mildly ugly unmasculine personage who merely grimaced and continued his state of absorption in Omar Jones' monolog. ; it's everyone here in this room up there on that screen, and as President Jones himself said in that press release last week, to deny him is for us to repudiate our own selves." He turned to a large-nosed dour individual hunched over beside him, a mildly ugly unmasculine personage who merely grimaced and continued his state of absorption in Omar Jones' monolog.