But your father gave you so much.
“Nowhere near enough! You see that ship down there? I’m going to rebuild it and do it right. You’re going to help.”
How can I help? You’re planning a very dangerous—
“You don’t know the first thing about danger! But you’ll learn if you don’t tell me all the secrets of Spiral travel.”
I was only a passenger on an automatic ship.
“Don’t lie to me!”
Lutt slammed open the sliding window in front of him and, before Ryll could interfere, climbed out on a narrow ledge. He teetered there, one hand holding a window frame.
What’re you doing?
“You think you could idmage our flesh back to life if I dived onto that wreckage?”
Ryll experienced terror and the ticklings of a memory from his schooldays—something about separating from merged flesh at a moment of death. All he said, though, was: You wouldn’t!
For answer, Lutt released his hold on the window frame and swayed against a wind blowing along the ledge.
All I know is it takes seventy Dreen minutes by Spiral to reach Earth from Dreenor!
Lutt resumed his grip on the window frame. “I’ve heard of a Venusian hour but what the hell is a Dreen minute?”
Approximately 2.57 Earth minutes. Please! Let us go inside.
Lutt ducked back through the window but left it open.
Not daring to try for control of their body lest Lutt dive through the window in the struggle, Ryll focused on the opening through which Lutt stared at a distant snow-crowned mountain.
Privately, Ryll thought he would have to tell desperate lies, concealing innate knowledge of Spirals known to every Dreen.
“You see that mountain?” Lutt asked. “When you refuse to help me or answer my questions, I’ll hang glide from the top.”
Memories in Lutt’s mind made it clear what he intended.
Don’t do that! Ryll protested.
“Treacherous downdrafts up there,” Lutt said. “They can drop you to the ground—much farther down than out this window.”
You’re insane!
“Old L.H. taught me how to get what I want. And you know my glider was designed only for my original height and weight.”
But we’re heavier and taller now!
“I’ve been warned not to use that glider if I gain five pounds. Very dangerous. This could be real sport.”
Why would you take such chances?
“I enjoy danger. You read me and know that.”
But you were never this crazy before the accident.
“So maybe the crash changed me. This is the new Lutt.”
Ryll did not know what to do or say. The evil situation was getting worse by the minute.
When Ryll did not respond, Lutt said: “You try to take over our body and I’ll jump out that window or something worse first chance I get.”
Ryll experienced a surge of anger. Ingrate! I brought you back to life. Is this the thanks I get?
“What’s that funny smell?” Lutt demanded.
Smell? Oh, that’s the odor of Dreen rage.
As he revealed this, Ryll knew he had made a mistake.
“Kind of a floral perfume,” Lutt said. “I’ll remember it. I wish Morey gave off signals like that. Did you see how mad he was when he handed me the money?”
He looked angry enough to kill
“Morey? Kill? He’s too much of a coward.”
I’m told Earthers change when pushed into a corner.
“Is it the same with Dreens?”
I have no way of knowing.
“Interesting. You know what I like about our arrangement, Ryll? It’s how healthy I feel. And right now, I’m hungry.”
Will you at least let me have some say in what we eat? If this gets too dull, I may become desperate.
“I’ll know it when you give me that wonderful smell.”
Wonderful? It’s a terrible smell.
“That should tell you how different we are. There probably are lots of things I’d think are marvelous and you’d hate . . . or vice versa. Sauce for the goose could poison the gander.”
Ryll’s thoughts went immediately to bazeel.
“I’ve a great place to eat,” Lutt said.
Pausing only to don a dark-blue cape, he ordered up a long Cadichev limo and drove it himself, much too fast through dense foot and vehicular traffic in the city streets.
Ryll dipped into Lutt’s memories, recognizing their destination when they came to it. A red neon sign across the front of a high-rise building announced: “The House of Health.”
It began to rain as they emerged and went up a short flight of steps to a security door and into a parlor dominated by red velvet and crystal. There was the nearby sound of low music and laughter mingled with clinking dishes. Smells of spiced food were heavy on the air.
A burly male attendant in antique black and white formal attire took Lutt’s cape.
“Good to see you again, sir,” the attendant said.
Reading Lutt’s experiences here, Ryll felt repelled. What a strange combination of activities!
Some of Ryll’s emotions leaked through to Lutt and he shared a gleeful thought:
It’s a good business. That’s undoubtedly why Morey decided to invest
A combination restaurant, health spa and house of prostitution?
Why not? Isn’t health composed of many factors?
But isn’t this sort of thing illegal?
Wealthy patrons pay off the police and it runs smoothly. We call it among ourselves “The House of Delights.”
The attendant gestured Lutt through a wide doorway into an anteroom dominated by a short metal tunnel lined with flashing lights and hairlike probes.
Lutt stepped into the tunnel with easy familiarity, allowing the probes to touch his head and hands. He began to read aloud from a overhead display showing “BOS + .05.”
“Brain Oxygen Supply plus .05. That’s the best I’ve ever shown.”
Careful, Lutt! Can this machine detect alien cells?
It reads my chemistry. Now it’s showing which organs are supplying the oxygen and other elements I need.
But they’ll compare this new assessment with your previous readings.
So what? There’s no ‘ray attachment to the thing.
What’s the purpose?
There’s a vending machine at the other end where I can get “super medicine” to compensate for deficiencies. They’ll also add things to the food I order.
I can see that food is not your primary interest here.
Yeah! The bordello is the best on Earth.
Lutt, please don’t
Come on! I’m going to be generous and let you pick some of the food.
A heavyset female attendant in a green jumpsuit bulging with concealed weapons helped Lutt out of the tunnel’s far end.
“You see that?” Lutt crowed. “Nothing for me from the dispenser. It recommended healthy exercise upstairs!”
“You’re in superior condition, sir,” the attendant said. She had a gravelly voice. “Congratulations.”
“Food first,” Lutt said. “Nothing like one of your fine meals to tone up the gonads. I’ll want a private room. Send Priscilla with the menu.”
“You’re not going to have Toloma, your favorite?”
“That’s a definite maybe.”
The private room accorded with Lutt’s memory preview. Ryll took it in at a glance: mirrors all around, small glass-topped table, two spindly chairs, thick white carpet, low coved lights at the edges of the ceiling.
Why the mirrors on the ceiling? Ryll asked.
Can’t you read it in my memories?
I’m afraid of what I may discover there!
The mirrors are great. Wait and see. Look at this wall panel. It pulls out and there’s a bed. The table and chairs go into that slot over there.
The carpet’s so thick.
Yeahhh. Sometimes you don’t even bother with
a bed.
You’re really disgusting, Lutt!
Priscilla, entering the room behind them, interrupted this exchange.
“Oh, hello, Lutty!” she cooed.
Ryll saw a blond with narrow face and large breasts. She wore a transparent bikini and shoes with spike heels.
A pneumatique forty-four, Lutt gloated.
Lutt! Please send her away!
I thought you wanted to learn about humans firsthand.
Priscilla extended a thick folder. “Here’s the menu. I just never know what you want.”
At least send her away while we’re eating, Ryll pleaded.
You Dreens are such prudes.
We are merely fastidious.
Lutt said: “Toddle along, Prissy.”
Priscilla pouted. “Don’t you want my recommendations?”
“Another time.”
She flounced out, saying: “I’ll send Toloma!”
Lutt opened the menu. “Hey! They must have a new source of fresh basil. They’ve restored pesto Genovese to the menu.”
Ryll felt a surge of consternation. Basil! The Earther name for bazeel! Oh . . .how tempting, but dangerous . . . very revealing to Lutt. No Dreen could idmage-block the drug’s effects.
We’ll have pesto for sure, Lutt gloated. And red wine.
I may turn your pesto into rummungi or worsockels.
What the hell are those?
They vie with bitter peeps as Dreen favorites. But Ryll thought privately. No matter what I do, the bazeel will remain. The dreadful drug defied idmaging. Dreens whispered that bazeel’s origins lay buried in a “scattering” that preceded even Habiba. No one appeared certain of anything about it.
Would I like them? Lutt asked.
I don’t know. But aren’t you curious?
Yeahh, a little, but don’t mess with my pesto. I’ll order something else for you. Lutt studied the menu. Smoked eel . . . No! I hate it. Too rich.
Dreens love rich foods and especially rich desserts.
Then maybe we should stick to my preferences.
You promised.
Sometimes I break my promises.
Is that something I should learn to do?
Maybe you’ve already learned it.
You Earthers are so suspicious! You have unimaginative, dull minds. Your taste in foods is the same—very dull. No imagination.
Look here, my Dreen friend, we have to get along. I’ll admit I needed you after the wreck and maybe I like some of the benefits but . . .
Such as being alive?
Like being bigger and healthier. That machine downstairs doesn’t lie.
We’re stuck with each other for now, Lutt, but I’m going to separate us as soon as I’m able. Most of this flesh is mine!
Anytime, baby. But right now we eat pesto.
Even if I object? For the love of ampleness, can’t we compromise?
How?
As a beginning, each of us could select half of this meal.
Okay. But can you separate our taste senses?
They spoke of it at school as being very difficult.
You let me know when you’re ready, huh?
Ryll, tempted to utter a sigh of satisfaction, stayed completely separated from bodily control. As a major effort in dissimulation, this had not gone badly. Lutt needed help in rebuilding his Vortraveler? Very well, to the extent possible. Ryll recalled vaguely that the great Storyships had something to do with breaking the bonds of merged flesh. By helping Lutt build the ship, Ryll thought he might free himself in some way.
If only I can remember what they said when I wasn’t paying attention.
***
Earther life was idmaged for symmetry according to the Dreen ideal, but also with a discordant asymmetry. The symmetry of two eyes, two arms and two legs conflicts with asymmetry: one side of the face different from the other, one arm longer, one foot larger and so on. This can only be a source of other discords as life seeks to find symmetry in the midst of asymmetry.
—The Habiba Commentary
From the bordello, with Ryll choked into dizzy remoteness by the effects of bazeel and Earther lovemaking, Lutt took their shared body back to the Enquirer, hiring a “House of Health” attendant to drive them.
Ryll felt that he cowered in this body, weak and unable to do anything except record vague sensations of the flesh through Lutt’s responses. Those awful mirrors! And not just in the ceiling but folding out of the walls. The grunting, thrusting, sweaty performance—how utterly disgusting . . .except at the very end. What an oddly pleasant sensation.
Wrapped tightly in his cape, Lutt stretched out on the wide seat, muttering.
“Gotta wrie t’marra’s edi . . . editor’l. Crissakes! I shunt be drunk on th’ li’l bitta wine I had wi’ dinner!”
Barely in control of consciousness, Ryll held his silence, fearing tricks his bazeel-fogged mind might play on him. Lights in buildings they passed jiggled and danced to unheard music.
Not caring what the driver might overhear, Lutt said: “Hacum we’re so drunky, Ryll baby?”
When Ryll did not reply, Lutt became belligerent. “I’m talkin’ t’ you, baby.”
The driver spoke over one shoulder: “Sir?”
“Not talkin’ t’ you! Talkin’ to him!” Lutt pounded himself on the chest.
The driver faced forward and concealed a grin until he was sure Lutt could not see it.
“So you’re gonna play dumb, huh?” Lutt demanded. He pinched their left ear. “Ouch! Tha’ turts!”
“Sir, would you like me to stop someplace for a detox?” the driver asked.
“You jus’ drive us t’ the Enqui . . . Enquirer. Crise! Wha’ was in tha’ wine?”
At the Enquirer, Lutt turned the limo over to a phototeam driver with orders to park it and send the “House of Health” attendant home with a large tip.
Employees tried not to look at him as he staggered down a long hallway past antique signs that said “Composing Room,” “Press Room” and “Proofreaders.” Recorded sounds of a press rumbled in the building and synthetic scents of an antique newspaper plant wafted on the air.
“I like all th’ ol’ stuff,” Lutt told Ryll. “Smell ’at? We pipe’t in: prin’er’s ink, dus . . . dust, newsprin’, bad coffee an’ sta . . . stale san’wiches.”
Lutt stopped and put a palm to each side of his mouth, concentrating on clear speech.
“Stale ambience.” He dropped his hands. “Tha’s wha’ I call it.” The “it” came out with a hiccough.
He launched himself into motion and made it to his office, collecting bruises from collisions with walls and doorways.
Lutt’s office appeared to Ryll like the control room of a primitive Earther spaceship. Large panels displayed pages on demand. A keyboard projected from one wall with a contour chair in front of it. The arms of the chair held buttons for the selection of mode—editing, review scanning, new material. . . Lutt slumped into the chair and ordered caffeine. When a copyboy brought it, he gulped the liquid, belched and bent over the keyboard.
Ryll, temporarily resigned to the role of observer, watched words appear on the screen and sampled Lutt’s thoughts. Despite the senior Hanson’s objections, Lutt obviously was determined to stir up emotions and increase the Enquirer’s circulation, making the business even more profitable.
The editorial called for creation of a city-county Housing Authority to promote ways of improving the lives “of those unfortunate wretches clinging to the shadows of our lives.”
Now, to incite pressure for Mother to serve on the commission! Lutt gloated. I’ll do it secretly.
Ryll soon tired of the observer role and, strength returning, reflected on the bordello experience. Toloma, Lutt’s favorite, had been a surprise—at least fifty years old and with hair a garish henna-red. Lutt’s memories said she had known the senior Hanson for more than thirty years. The old man had brought Lutt to her on his fifteenth birthday, saying:
“Break him in, Tolly
.”
What a confused and convoluted person you are, Lutt, Ryll intruded.
“Stay out of it when I’m writing editorials!” Lutt barked.
Don’t say these things aloud! Someone might hear.
“Then shut up!”
Ryll lapsed into sullen remoteness.
Toloma definitely was a surprise, as was Lutt’s reaction to her, telling her: “You’re my best friend, Tolly.”
Toloma had shown astonishment. “You don’t mean that.”
“Sure I do.”
Ryll-observer had found it more pleasant to sample Lutt’s memories and avoid the immediate fleshly involvement. Hanson Senior’s attitudes shocked Ryll. The old man had told his son before the first visit to Toloma that Hanson men had to become buddies the way military companions did.
“Where’s the war?” Lutt had demanded.
“It’s against women, boy! Don’t you see that?”
Once more, Ryll intruded on Lutt’s work: Your father’s sick and it must be contagious. You’ve caught it, too.
Lutt took his hands off the keyboard and leaned back into the chair. Listen to me, you Dreen prude! Next time you interfere with my work. I’m going to run down the hall shouting: “There’s a Dreen in my head!”
You wouldn’t!
How long before it gets back to the Zone Patrol?
They’re sure to have spies here!
Right. Now stay out of it!
Lutt returned to his writing.
A subdued Ryll returned to his private thoughts, wondering if the Dreen idmager of Earth might have been mentally ill. There was no doubt about aberration in Lutt. While making love to Toloma, Lutt had engaged in a waking dream, pretending the woman with him was his faceless “Ni-Ni.”
Similarities between Lutt’s waking dream and Dreen idmage projection techniques did not escape Ryll. Was there useful knowledge in this fantasy “Ni-Ni”? Who was the mysterious “other man” Ni-Ni was supposed to love? Why couldn’t Lutt see her face and identify his rival? It was the stuff of nightmares. Where did insanity stop and sanity begin?
Dreen primary school warnings about merging flesh haunted Ryll. Bits of his lessons suggested separation might be achieved by adapting a Spiral ship’s equipment but none of this assured success. Stories from the few who had merged and separated shared a common comment: