Rastignac quit his limited roving and called up to the guard.
“Shoo I’footyay, kal v ay tee?”
The guard leaned over the grille. His large hat with its tall wings sticking from the peak was green in the daytime. But now, illuminated only by a far off torchlight and by a glowworm coiled around the band, it was black.
“Ah, shoo Zhaw-Zhawk W’stenyek,” he said, loudly. “What time is it? What do you care what time it is?” And he concluded with the stock phrase of the jailer, unchanged through millenia and over light-years. “You’re not going any place, are you?”
Rastignac threw his head back to howl at the guard but stopped to wince at the sudden pain in his neck. After uttering, “Sek Ploo!” and “S’pweestee! both of which were close enough to the old Terran French so that a language specialist might have recognized them, he said, more calmly, “If you would let me out on the ground, monsier le foutriquet, and give me a good epee. I would show you where I am going. Or, at least, where my sword is going. I am thinking of a nice sheath for it.”
Tonight, he had a special reason for keeping the attention of the King’s mucketeer directed towards himself. So, when the guard grew tired of returning insults—mainly because his limited imagination could invent no new ones—Rastignac began telling jokes aimed at the mucketeer’s narrow intellect.
“Then,” said Rastignac, “there was the itinerant salesman whose s’fel threw a shoe. He knocked on the door of the hut of the nearest peasant and said . . .” What was said by the salesman was never known.
A strangled gasp had come from above.
IV
Rastignac saw something enormous blot out the smaller shadow of the guard. Then, both figures disappeared. A moment later, a silhouette cut across the lines of the grille. Unoiled hinges screeched; the bars lifted. A rope uncoiled from above to fall at Rastignac’s feet. He seized it and felt himself being drawn powerfully upwards.
When he came over the edge of the well, he saw that his rescuer was a giant Ssassaror. The light from the glowworm on the guard’s hat lit up feebly his face, which was orthagnathous and had quite humanoid eyes and lips. Large canine teeth stuck out from the mouth, and its huge ears were tipped with feathery tufts. The forehead down to the eyebrows looked as if it needed a shave, but Rastignac knew that more light would show the blue-black shade came from many small feathers, not stubbled hair.
“Mapfarity!” Rastignac said. “It’s good to see you after all these years!”
The Ssassaror giant put his hand on his friend’s shoulder. Clenched, it was almost as big as Rastignac’s head. He spoke with a voice like a lion coughing at the bottom of a deep well.
“It is good to see you again, my friend.”
“What are you doing here?” said Rastignac, tears running down his face as he stroked the great fingers on his shoulder.
Mapfarity’s huge ears quivered like the wings of a bat tied to a rock and unable to fly off. The tufts of feathers at their ends grew stiff and suddenly crackled with tiny sparks.
The electrical display was his equivalent of the human’s weeping. Both creatures discharged emotion; their bodies chose different avenues and manifestations. Nevertheless, the sight of the other’s joy affected each deeply.
“I have come to rescue you,” said Mapfarity. “I caught Archambaud here,”—he indicated the other man—”stealing eggs from my golden goose. And . . .”
Raoul Archambaud—pronounced Wawl Shebvo—interrupted excitedly, “I showed him my license to steal eggs from Giants who were raising counterfeit geese, but he was going to lock me up anyway. He was going to take my Skin off and feed me on meat . . .”
“Meat!” said Rastignac, astonished and revolted despite himself. “Mapfarity, what have you been doing in that castle of yours?”
Mapfarity lowered his voice to match the distant roar of a cataract. “I haven’t been very active these last few years,” he said, “because I am so big that it hurts my feet if I walk very much. So I’ve had much time to think. And I, being logical, decided that the next step after eating fish was eating meat. It couldn’t make me any larger. So, I ate meat. And while doing so, I came to the same conclusion that you, apparently, have done independently. That is, the Philosophy of . . .”
“Of Violence,” interrupted Archambaud. “Ah, Jean-Jacques, there must be some mystic bond that brings two of such different backgrounds as yours and the Ssassaror together, giving you both the same philosophy. When I explained what you had been doing and that you were in jail because you had advocated getting rid of the Skins, Mapfarity petitioned. . .”
“The King to make an official jail-break,” said Mapfarity with an impatient glance at the rolypoly egg-stealer. “And . . .”
“The King agreed,” broke in Archambaud, “provided Mapfarity would turn in his counterfeit goose and provided you would agree to say no more about abandoning Skins, but. . .”
The Giant’s basso profundo-redundo pushed the eggstealer’s high pitch aside. “If this squeaker will quit interrupting, perhaps we can get on with the rescue. We’ll talk later, if you don’t mind.”
At that moment, Lusine’s voice floated up from the bottom of her cell. “Jean-Jacques, my love, my brave, my own, would you abandon me to the Chalice? Please take me with you! You will need somebody to hide you when the Minister of Ill-Will sends his mucketeers after you. I can hide you where no one will ever find you.” Her voice was mocking, but there was an undercurrent of anxiety to it.
Mapfarity muttered, “She will hide us, yes, at the bottom of a sea-cave where we will eat strange food and suffer a change. Never . . .”
“Trust an Amphib,” finished Archambaud for him.
Mapfarity forgot to whisper. “Bey-t’cul, vu nu fez vey! Fe’m sa!” he roared.
A shocked hush covered the courtyard. Only Mapfarity’s wrathful breathing could be heard. Then, disembodied, Lusine’s voice floated from the well.
“Jean-Jacques, do not forget that I am the foster-daughter of the King of the Amphibians! If you were to take me with you, I could assure you of safety and a warm welcome in the halls of the Sea-King’s Palace!”
“Pah!” said Mapfarity. “That web-footed witch!”
Rastignac did not reply to her. He took the broad silk belt and the sheathed epee from Archambaud and buckled them around his waist. Mapfarity handed him a mucketeer’s hat; he clapped that on firmly. Last of all, he took the Skin that the fat egg-stealer had been holding out to him.
For the first time, he hesitated. It was his Skin, the one he had been wearing since he was six. It had grown with him, fed off his blood for twenty-two years, clung to him as clothing, censor, and castigator, and parted from him only when he was inside the walls of his own house, went swimming, or, as during the last seven days, when he lay in jail.
A week ago, after they had removed his second Skin, he had felt naked and helpless and cut off from his fellow creatures. But that was a week ago. Since then, as he had remarked to Lusine, he had experienced the birth of a strange feeling. It was, at first, frightening. It made him cling to the bars as if they were the only stable thing in the center of a whirling universe.
Later, when that first giddiness had passed, it was succeeded by another intoxication—the joy of being an individual, the knowledge that he was separate, not a part of a multitude. Without the Skin, he could think as he pleased. He did not have a censor.
Now, he was on level ground again, out of the cell. But as soon as he put that prison-shaft behind him, he was faced with the old second Skin.
Archambaud held it out like a cloak in his hands. It looked much like a ragged garment. It was pale and limp and roughly rectangular with four extensions at each corner. When Rastignac put it on his back, it would sink four tiny hollow teeth into his veins and the suckers on the inner surface of its flat body would cling to him. Its long upper extensions would wrap themselves around his shoulders and over his chest; the lower, around his loins and thighs. Soon it would lose its pa
leness and flaccidity, become pink and slightly convex, pulsing with Rastignac’s blood.
V
Rastignac hesitated for a few seconds. Then, he allowed the habit of a lifetime to take over. Sighing, he turned his back. In a moment, he felt the cold flesh descend over his shoulders and the little bite of the four teeth as they attached the Skin to his shoulders. Then, as his blood poured into the creature he felt it grow warm and strong. It spread out and followed the passages it had long ago been conditioned to follow, wrapped him warmly and lovingly and comfortably. And he knew, though he couldn’t feel it, that it was pushing nerves into the grooves along the teeth. Nerves to connect with his.
A minute later, he experienced the first of the expected rapport. It was nothing that you could put a mental finger on. It was just a diffused tingling and then the sudden consciousness of how the others around him felt.
They were ghosts in the background of his mind. Yet, pale and ectoplasmic as they were, they were easily identifiable. Mapfarity loomed above the others, a transparent Colossus radiating streamers of confidence in his clumsy strength. A meat-eater, uncertain about the future, with a hope and trust in Rastignac to show him the right way. And with a strong current of anger against the conqueror who had inflicted the Skin upon him.
Archambaud was a shorter phantom, roly-poly even in his psychic manifestations, emitting bursts of impatience because other people did not talk fast enough to suit him, his mind leaping on ahead of their tongues, his fingers wriggling to wrap themselves around something valuable—preferably the eggs of the golden goose—and a general eagerness to be up and about and onwards. He was one round fidget on two legs yet a good man for any project requiring action.
Faintly, Rastignac detected the slumbering guard as if he were the tendrils of some plant at the sea-bottom, floating in the green twilight, at peace and unconscious.
Another radiation dipped into the general picture and out. A wild glowworm had swooped over them and disturbed the smooth reflection built up by the Skins.
This was the way the Skins worked. They penetrated into you and found out what you were feeling and emoting, and then they broadcast it to other closeby Skins, which then projected their hosts’ psychosomatic responses. The whole was then integrated so that each Skin-wearer could detect the group-feeling and at the same time, though in a much duller manner, the feeling of the individuals of the gestalt.
That wasn’t the only function of the Skin. The parasite, created in the bio-factories, had several other social and biological uses.
Rastignac almost fell into a reverie at that point. It was nothing unusual. The effect of the Skins was a slowing-down one. The wearer thought more slowly, acted more leisurely, and was much more contented.
But now, by a deliberate wrenching of himself from the feeling-pattern, Rastignac woke up. There were things to do, and standing around and eating the lotus of the group-rapport was not one of them.
He gestured at the prostrate form of the mucketeer. “You didn’t hurt him?”
The Ssassaror rumbled, “No. I scratched him with a little venom of the dream-snake. He will sleep for an hour or so. Besides, I would not be allowed to hurt him. You forget that all this is carefully staged by the King’s Official Jail-breaker.”
“Me’dt!” swore Rastignac.
Alarmed, Archambaud said, “What’s the matter, Jean-Jacques?”
“Can’t we do anything on our own? Must the King meddle in everything?”
“You wouldn’t want us to take a chance and have to shed’ blood, would you?” breathed Archambaud.
“What are you carrying those swords for? As a decoration?” Rastignac snarled.
“Seelahs, m’fweh,” warned Mapfarity. “If you alarm the other guards, you will embarrass them. They will be forced to do their duty and recapture you. And the Jail-breaker would be reprimanded because he had fallen down on his job. He might even get a demotion.”
Rastignac was so upset that his Skin, reacting to the negative fields racing over the Skin and the hormone imbalance of his blood, writhed away from his back.
“What are we, a bunch of children playing war?”
Mapfarity growled, “We are all God’s children, and we mustn’t hurt anyone if we can help it.”
“Mapfarity, you eat meat!”
“Voo zavf w’zaw m’fweh,” admitted the Giant. “But it is the flesh of unintelligent creatures. I have not yet shed the blood of any being that can talk.”
Rastignac snorted and said, “If you stick with me you will some day do that, m’fweh Mapfarity. There is no other course. It is inevitable.”
“Nature spare me the day! But if it comes it will find Mapfarity unafraid. They do not call me Giant for nothing.”
Rastignac sighed and walked ahead. Sometimes he wondered if the members of his underground—or anybody else for that matter—ever realized the grim conclusions formed by the Philosophy of Violence.
The Amphibians, he was sure, did. And they were doing something positive about it. But it was the Amphibians who had driven Rastignac to adopt a Philosophy of Violence.
“Law,” he said again, “Let’s go.”
The three of them walked out of the huge courtyard and through the open gate. Nearby stood a short man whose Skin gleamed black-red in the light shed by the two glowworms attached to his shoulders. The Skin was oversized and hung to the ground.
The King’s man, however, did not think he was a comic figure. He sputtered, and the red of his face matched the color of the skin on his back.
“You took long enough,” he said accusingly, and then, when Rastignac opened his mouth to protest, the Jail-breaker said, “Never mind, never mind. Sa n’apawt. The thing is that we get you away fast. The Minister of Ill-will has doubtless by now received word that an official jail-break is planned for tonight. He will send in advance of his mucketeers to intercept you. By coming in advance of the appointed time we shall have time to escape before the official rescue party arrives.”
“How much time do we have?” asked Rastignac.
The King’s man said, “Let’s see. After I escort you through the rooms of the Duke, the King’s foster-brother—he is most favorable to the Violent Philosophy, you know, and has petitioned the King to become your official patron, which petition will be considered at the next meeting of the Chamber of Deputies in three months—let’s see, where was I? Ah, yes, I escort you through the rooms of the King’s brother. You will be disguised as His Majesty’s mucketeers, ostensibly looking for the escaped prisoners. From the rooms of the Duke, you will be let out through a small door in the wall of the palace itself. A car will be waiting.
“From then on it will be up to you. I suggest, however, that you make a dash for Mapfarity’s castle. Follow the Rue des Nues; that is your best chance. The mucketeers have been pulled off that boulevard. However, it is possible that Auverpin, the Ill-Will Minister, may see that order and will rescind it, realizing what it means. If he does, I suppose I will see you back in your cell, Rastignac.”
He bowed to the Ssassaror and Archambaud and said, “And you two gentlemen will then be with him.”
“And then what?” rumbled Mapfarity.
“According to the law, you will be allowed one more jail-break. Any more after that will, of course, be illegal. That is, unthinkable.”
Rastignac unsheathed his epee and slashed it at the air. “Let the mucketeers stand in my way,” he said fiercely. “I will cut them down with this!”
The Jail-breaker staggered back, hands out-thrust.
“Please, Monsieur Rastignac! Please! Don’t even talk about it! You know that your philosophy is, as yet, illegal. The shedding of blood is an act that will be regarded with horror throughout the sentient planet. People would think you are an Amphibian!”
“The Amphibians know what they’re doing far better than we do,” answered Rastignac. “Why do you think they’re winning against us Humans?”
Suddenly, before anybody could answer, the soun
d of blaring horns came from somewhere on the rampants. Shouts went up; drums began to beat, calling the mucketeers to alert.
“M’plew!” said the Jail-breaker. “The Minister of Ill-Will has warned the guards! Or something else, equally disastrous, has happened!”
Lusine’s voice, shrill but powerful, soared out of the well.
“Jean-Jacques, will you take me with you? You must!”
“No!” shouted Rastignac. “Never! Nothing would make me help a bloodsucker!”
“Ah, Jean-Jacques, but you do not know what I know. Something I would never have told you if I did not have to tell in order to get free!”
“Shut up, Lusine! You cannot influence me!”
“But I can. I have a secret! A secret that will enable you to escape from this planet, to fly to the stars!”
Rastignac almost dropped his sword. But, before he could run to the lip of the well, Mapfarity had leaned his huge head over the mouth and rumbled something to the prisoner below.
Rastignac could not hear what Lusine answered, but he did not have to. The giant Ssassaror straightened up, and he bellowed, “She says that an Earthship has landed in the sea! And the pilot of the ship is in the hands of the Amphibians!”
Surprisingly, Mapfarity began laughing. Finally, choking, the sparks crackling from the tips of his ears, he said, “You can leave her in the well. Her news is no news; I know her so-called secret. But I didn’t say anything to you because I didn’t think that now was the time.”
As the meaning of the words seeped into Rastignac’s consciousness, he made a sudden violent movement—and began to tear the Skin from his body!
VI
Rastignac ran down the steps, out into the courtyard. He seized the Jail-breaker’s arm and demanded the key to the grilles. Dazed, the white-faced official meekly and silently handed it to him. Without his Skin, Rastignac was no longer fearfully inhibited. If you were forceful enough and did not behave according to the normal pattern, you could get just about anything you wanted. The average Man or Ssassaror did not know how to react to his violence. By the time they had recovered from their confusion, he could be miles away.