The telephone rang.
"I can't answer," he called to it. The phone's relay picked up his anguished message and conveyed it to the calling party. Now Munster had become a single transparent gelatinous mass in the middle of the rug; he undulated toward the phone--it was still ringing, despite his statement to it, and he felt furious resentment; didn't he have enough troubles already, without having to deal with a ringing phone?
Reaching it, he extended a pseudopodium and snatched the receiver from the hook. With great effort he formed his plastic substance into the semblance of a vocal apparatus, resonating dully. "I'm busy," he resonated in a low booming fashion into the mouthpiece of the phone. "Call later." Call, he thought as he hung up, tomorrow morning. When I've been able to regain my human form.
The apartment was quiet, now.
Sighing, Munster flowed back across the carpet, to the window, where he rose into a high pillar in order to see the view beyond; there was a light-sensitive spot on his outer surface, and although he did not possess a true lens he was able to appreciate--nostalgically--the sight of San Francisco Bay, the Golden Gate Bridge, the playground for small children which was Alcatraz Island.
Dammit, he thought bitterly. I can't marry; I can't live a genuine human existence, reverting this way to the form the War Office bigshots forced me into back in the war times...
He had not known then, when he accepted the mission, that it would leave this permanent effect. They had assured him it was "only temporary, for the duration," or some such glib phrase. Duration my ass, Munster thought with furious, impotent resentment. It's been eleven years, now.
The psychological problems created for him, the pressure on his psyche, were immense. Hence his visit to Dr. Jones.
Once more the phone rang.
"Okay," Munster said aloud, and flowed laboriously back across the room to it. "You want to talk to me?" he said as he came closer and closer; the trip, for someone in Blobel form, was a long one. "I'll talk to you. You can even turn on the vidscreen and look at me." At the phone he snapped the switch which would permit visual communication as well as auditory. "Have a good look," he said, and displayed his amorphous form before the scanning tube of the video.
Dr. Jones' voice came: "I'm sorry to bother you at your home, Mr. Munster, especially when you're in this, um, awkward condition..." The homeostatic analyst paused. "But I've been devoting time to problem-solving vis-a-vis your condition. I may have at least a partial solution."
"What?" Munster said, taken by surprise. "You mean to imply that medical science can now--"
"No, no," Dr. Jones said hurriedly. "The physical aspects lie out of my domain; you must keep that in mind, Munster. When you consulted me about your problems it was the psychological adjustment that--"
"I'll come right down to your office and talk to you," Munster said. And then he realized that he could not; in his Blobel form it would take him days to undulate all the way across town to Dr. Jones' office. "Jones," he said desperately, "you see the problems I face. I'm stuck here in this apartment every night beginning about eight o'clock and lasting through until almost seven in the morning... I can't even visit you and consult you and get help--"
"Be quiet, Mr. Munster," Dr. Jones interrupted. "I'm trying to tell you something. You're not the only one in this condition. Did you know that?"
Heavily, Munster said, "Sure. In all, eighty-three Terrans were made over into Blobels at one time or another during the war. Of the eighty-three--" He knew the facts by heart. "Sixty-one survived and now there's an organization called Veterans of Unnatural Wars of which fifty are members. I'm a member. We meet twice a month, revert in unison..." He started to hang up the phone. So this was what he had gotten for his money, this stale news. "Goodbye, Doctor," he murmured.
Dr. Jones whirred in agitation. "Mr. Munster, I don't mean other Terrans. I've researched this in your behalf, and I discover that according to captured records at the Library of Congress fifteen Blobels were formed into pseudo-Terrans to act as spies for their side. Do you understand?"
After a moment Munster said, "Not exactly."
"You have a mental block against being helped," Dr. Jones said. "But here's what I want, Munster; you be at my office at eleven in the morning tomorrow. We'll take up the solution to your problem then. Goodnight."
Wearily, Munster said, "When I'm in my Blobel form my wits aren't too keen, Doctor. You'll have to forgive me." He hung up, still puzzled. So there were fifteen Blobels walking around on Titan this moment, doomed to occupy human forms--so what? How did that help him? Maybe he would find out at eleven tomorrow.
When he strode into Dr. Jones' waiting room he saw, seated in a deep chair in a corner by a lamp, reading a copy of Fortune, an exceedingly attractive young woman.
Automatically, Munster found a place to sit from which he could eye her. Stylish dyed-white hair braided down the back of her neck... he took in the sight of her with delight, pretending to read his own copy of Fortune. Slender legs, small and delicate elbows. And her sharp, clearly-featured face. The intelligent eyes, the thin, tapered nostrils--a truly lovely girl, he thought. He drank in the sight of her... until all at once she raised her head and stared coolly back at him.
"Dull, having to wait," Munster mumbled.
The girl said, "Do you come to Dr. Jones often?"
"No," he admitted. "This is just the second time."
"I've never been here before," the girl said. "I was going to another electronic fully-homeostatic psychoanalyst in Los Angeles and then late yesterday Dr. Bing, my analyst, called me and told me to fly up here and see Dr. Jones this morning. Is this one good?"
"Um," Munster said. "I guess so." We'll see, he thought. That's precisely what we don't know, at this point.
The inner office door opened and there stood Dr. Jones. "Miss Arrasmith," it said, nodding to the girl. "Mr. Munster." It nodded to George. "Won't you both come in?"
Rising to her feet, Miss Arrasmith said, "Who pays the twenty dollars then?"
But the analyst had become silent; it had turned off.
"I'll pay," Miss Arrasmith said, reaching into her purse.
"No, no," Munster said. "Let me." He got out a twenty-dollar piece and dropped it into the analyst's slot.
At once, Dr. Jones said, "You're a gentleman, Mr. Munster." Smiling, it ushered the two of them into its office. "Be seated, please. Miss Arrasmith, without preamble please allow me to explain your--condition to Mr. Munster." To Munster it said, "Miss Arrasmith is a Blobel."
Munster could only stare at the girl.
"Obviously," Dr. Jones continued, "presently in human form. This, for her, is the state of involuntary reversion. During the war she operated behind Terran lines, acting for the Blobel War League. She was captured and held, but then the war ended and she was neither tried nor sentenced."
"They released me," Miss Arrasmith said in a low, carefully-controlled voice. "Still in human form. I stayed here out of shame. I just couldn't go back to Titan and--" Her voice wavered.
"There is great shame attached to this condition," Dr. Jones said, "for any high-caste Blobel."
Nodding, Miss Arrasmith sat, clutching a tiny Irish linen handkerchief and trying to look poised. "Correct, Doctor. I did visit Titan to discuss my condition with medical authorities there. After expensive and prolonged therapy with me they were able to induce a return to my natural form for a period of--" She hesitated. "About one-fourth of the time. But the other three-fourths... I am as you perceive me now." She ducked her head and touched the handkerchief to her right eye.
"Jeez," Munster protested, "you're lucky; a human form is infinitely superior to a Blobel form--I ought to know. As a Blobel you have to creep along... you're like a big jellyfish, no skeleton to keep you erect. And binary fission--it's lousy, I say really lousy, compared to the Terran form of--you know. Reproduction." He colored.
Dr. Jones ticked and stated, "For a period of about six hours your human forms overlap. And then for about o
ne hour your Blobel forms overlap. So all in all, the two of you possess seven hours out of twenty-four in which you both possess identical forms. In my opinion--" It toyed with its pen and paper. "Seven hours is not too bad. If you follow my meaning."
After a moment Miss Arrasmith said, "But Mr. Munster and I are natural enemies."
"That was years ago," Munster said.
"Correct," Dr. Jones agreed. "True, Miss Arrasmith is basically a Blobel and you, Munster, are a Terran, but--" It gestured. "Both of you are outcasts in either civilization; both of you are stateless and hence gradually suffering a loss of ego-identity. I predict for both of you a gradual deterioration ending finally in severe mental illness. Unless you two can develop a rapprochement." The analyst was silent, then.
Miss Arrasmith said softly, "I think we're very lucky, Mr. Munster. As Dr. Jones said, we do overlap for seven hours a day... we can enjoy that time together, no longer in wretched isolation." She smiled up hopefully at him, rearranging her coat. Certainly, she had a nice figure; the somewhat low-cut dress gave an ideal clue to that.
Studying her, Munster pondered.
"Give him time," Dr. Jones told Miss Arrasmith. "My analysis of him is that he will see this correctly and do the right thing."
Still rearranging her coat and dabbing at her large, dark eyes, Miss Arrasmith waited.
The phone in Dr. Jones' office rang, a number of years later. He answered it in his customary way. "Please, sir or madam, deposit twenty dollars if you wish to speak to me."
A tough male voice on the other end of the line said, "Listen, this is the UN Legal Office and we don't deposit twenty dollars to talk to anybody. So trip that mechanism inside you, Jones."
"Yes, sir," Dr. Jones said, and with his right hand tripped the lever behind his ear that caused him to come on free.
"Back in 2037," the UN legal expert said, "did you advise a couple to marry? A George Munster and a Vivian Arrasmith, now Mrs. Munster?"
"Why yes," Dr. Jones said, after consulting his built-in memory banks.
"Had you investigated the legal ramifications of their issue?"
"Um well," Dr. Jones said, "that's not my worry."
"You can be arraigned for advising any action contrary to UN law."
"There's no law prohibiting a Blobel and a Terran from marrying."
The UN legal expert said, "All right, Doctor, I'll settle for a look at their case histories."
"Absolutely not," Dr. Jones said. "That would be a breach of ethics."
"We'll get a writ and sequester them, then."
"Go ahead." Dr. Jones reached behind his ear to shut himself off.
"Wait. It may interest you to know that the Munsters now have four children. And, following the Mendelian Law, the offspring comprise a strict one, two, one ratio. One Blobel girl, one hybrid boy, one hybrid girl, one Terran girl. The legal problem arises in that the Blobel Supreme Council claims the pure-blooded Blobel girl as a citizen of Titan and also suggests that one of the two hybrids be donated to the Council's jurisdiction." The UN legal expert explained, "You see, the Munsters' marriage is breaking up; they're getting divorced and it's sticky finding which laws obtain regarding them and their issue."
"Yes," Dr. Jones admitted, "I would think so. What has caused their marriage to break up?"
"I don't know and don't care. Possibly the fact that both adults and two of the four children rotate daily between being Blobels and Terrans; maybe the strain got to be too much. If you want to give them psychological advice, consult them. Goodbye." The UN legal expert rang off.
Did I make a mistake, advising them to marry? Dr. Jones asked itself. I wonder if I shouldn 't look them up; I owe at least that to them.
Opening the Los Angeles phone book, it began thumbing through the Ms.
These had been six difficult years for the Munsters.
First, George had moved from San Francisco to Los Angeles; he and Vivian had set up a household in a condominium apartment with three instead of two rooms. Vivian, being in Terran form three-fourths of the time, had been able to obtain a job; right out in public she gave jet flight information at the Fifth Los Angeles Airport. George, however--
His pension comprised an amount only one-fourth that of his wife's salary and he felt it keenly. To augment it, he had searched for a way of earning money at home. Finally in a magazine he had found this valuable ad:
Make Swift Profits in Your Own Condo!
Raise Giant Bullfrogs From Jupiter, Capable of Eighty-Foot Leaps.
Can Be Used in Frog-Racing (where legal) and...
So in 2038 he had bought his first pair of frogs imported from Jupiter and had begun raising them for swift profits, right in his own condominium apartment building, in a corner of the basement that Leopold, the partially-homeostatic janitor, let him use gratis.
But in the relatively feeble Terran gravity the frogs were capable of enormous leaps, and the basement proved too small for them; they ricocheted from wall to wall like green ping pong balls and soon died. Obviously it took more than a portion of the basement at QEK-604 Apartments to house a crop of the damned things, George realized.
And then, too, their first child had been born. It had turned out to be a pure-blooded Blobel; for twenty-four hours a day it consisted of a gelatinous mass and George found himself waiting in vain for it to switch over to a human form, even for a moment.
He faced Vivian defiantly in this matter, during a period when both of them were in human form.
"How can I consider it my child?" he asked her. "It's--an alien life form to me." He was discouraged and even horrified. "Dr. Jones should have foreseen this; maybe it's your child--it looks just like you."
Tears filled Vivian's eyes. "You mean that insultingly."
"Damn right I do. We fought you creatures--we used to consider you no better than Portuguese sting-rays." Gloomily, he put on his coat. "I'm going down to Veterans of Unnatural Wars Headquarters," he informed his wife. "Have a beer with the boys." Shortly, he was on his way to join with his old war-time buddies, glad to get out of the apartment house.
VUW Headquarters was a decrepit cement building in downtown Los Angeles left over from the twentieth century and sadly in need of paint. The VUW had little funds because most of its members were, like George Munster, living on UN pensions. However, there was a pool table and an old 3-D television set and a few dozen tapes of popular music and also a chess set. George generally drank his beer and played chess with his fellow members, either in human form or in Blobel form; this was one place in which both were accepted.
This particular evening he sat with Pete Ruggles, a fellow veteran who also had married a Blobel female, reverting, as Vivian did, to human form.
"Pete, I can't go on. I've got a gelatinous blob for a child. My whole life I've wanted a kid, and now what have I got? Something that looks like it washed up on the beach."
Sipping his beer--he too was in human form at the moment--Pete answered, "Criminy, George, I admit it's a mess. But you must have known what you were getting into when you married her. And my God, according to Mendel's Law, the next kid--"
"I mean," George broke in, "I don't respect my own wife; that's the basis of it. I think of her as a thing. And myself, too. We're both things." He drank down his beer in one gulp.
Pete said meditatively, "But from the Blobel standpoint--"
"Listen, whose side are you on?" George demanded.
"Don't yell at me," Pete said, "or I'll deck you."
A moment later they were swinging wildly at each other. Fortunately Pete reverted to Blobel form in the nick of time; no harm was done. Now George sat alone, in human shape, while Pete oozed off somewhere else, probably to join a group of the boys who had also assumed Blobel form.
Maybe we can find a new society somewhere on a remote moon, George said to himself moodily. Neither Terran nor Blobel.
I've got to go back to Vivian, George resolved. What else is there for me? I'm lucky to find her; I'd be nothing but a w
ar veteran guzzling beer here at VUW Headquarters every damn day and night, with no future, no hope, no real life...
He had a new money-making scheme going now. It was a home mail-order business; he had placed an ad in the Saturday Evening Post for MAGIC LODE-STONES REPUTED TO BRING YOU LUCK. FROM ANOTHER STAR-SYSTEM entirely! The stones had come from Proxima and were obtainable on Titan; it was Vivian who had made the commercial contact for him with her people. But so far, few people had sent in the dollar-fifty.
I'm a failure, George said to himself.
Fortunately the next child, born in the winter of 2039, showed itself to be a hybrid; it took human form fifty percent of the time, and so at last George had a child who was--occasionally, anyhow--a member of his own species.
He was still in the process of celebrating the birth of Maurice when a delegation of their neighbors at QEK-604 Apartments came and rapped on their door.
"We've got a petition here," the chairman of the delegation said, shuffling his feet in embarrassment, "asking that you and Mrs. Munster leave QEK-604."
"But why?" George asked, bewildered. "You haven't objected to us up until now."
"The reason is that now you've got a hybrid youngster who will want to play with ours, and we feel it's unhealthy for our kids to--"
George slammed the door in their faces.
But still, he felt the pressure, the hostility from the people on all sides of them. And to think, he thought bitterly, that I fought in the war to save these people. It sure wasn 't worth it.
An hour later he was down at VUW Headquarters once more, drinking beer and talking with his buddy Sherman Downs, also married to a Blobel.
"Sherman, it's no good. We're not wanted; we've got to emigrate. Maybe we'll try it on Titan, in Viv's world."
"Chrissakes," Sherman protested, "I hate to see you fold up, George. Isn't your electromagnetic reducing belt beginning to sell, finally?"