The Classic Philip Jose Farmer. 1952 - 1964 Part 4

Polyphema had taken the one sure way of burying the evidence.

Eddie lay face down, nose mashed against the warm and faintly throbbing flesh of the floor. Now and then his hands clutched spasmodically as if he were reaching for something that soneone kept putting just within his reach and then moving away.

How long he was there he didn't know, for he never again looked at the clock.

Finally, in the darkness, he sat up and giggled inanely, "Mother always did make good stew."

That set him off. He leaned back on his hands and threw his head back and howled like a wolf under a full moon.

Polyphema, of course, was dead-deaf, but she could radar his posture, and her keen nostrils deduced from his body-scent that he was in terrible fear and anguish.

A tentacle glided out and gently enfolded him.

"What is the matter?" zzted the panrad.

He stuck his finger in the keyhole.

"I have lost my mother!"

"She's gone away, and she'll never come back."

"I don't understand. Here I am."

Eddie quit weeping and c.o.c.ked his head, as if he were listening to some inner voice. He snuffled a few times and wiped away the tears, slowly disengaged the tentacle, patted it, walked over to his pack in a corner, and took out the bottle of Old Red Star capsules. One he popped into the thermos; the other he gave to her with the request she duplicate it, if possible. Then he stretched out on his side, propped onone elbow like a Roman in his sensualities, sucked the rye through the nipple, and listened to a medley of Beethoven, Moussorgsky, Verdi, Strauss, Porter, Fein-stein, and Waxworth.

So the time-if there were such a thing there-flowed around Eddie. When he was tired of music or plays or books, he listened in on the area hookup. Hungry, he rose and walked-or often just crawled-to the stew-iris. Cans of rations lay in his pack; he had planned to eat those until he was sure that-what was it he was forbidden to eat? Poison? Something had been devoured by Poly-phema and the Sluggos. But sometime during the music-rye orgy, he had forgotten. He now ate quite hungrily and with thought for nothing but the satisfaction of his wants.

Sometimes the door-iris opened, and Billy Gieengrocer hopped in. Billy looked like a cross between a cricket and a kangaroo. He was the size of a collie, and he bore in a marsupialian pouch vegetables and fruit and nuts. These he extracted with shiny green, chitinous claws and gave to Mother in return for meals of stew. Happy symbiote, he chirruped merrily while his many-faceted eyes, revolving independently of each other, looked one at the Sluggos and the other at Eddie.

Eddie, on impulse, abandoned the 1000 kc. band and roved the frequencies until he found that both Polyphema and Billy were emitting a 108 wave. That, apparently, was their natural signal. When Billy had his groceries to deliver, he broadcast. Polyphema, in turn, when she needed them, sent back to him.

There was nothing intelligent on Billys part; it was just his instinct to transmit. And the Mother was, aside from the "semantic" frequency, limited to that one band. But it worked out fine.

8.

Everything was fine. What more could a man want? Free food, unlimited liquor, soft bed, air-conditioning, shower-baths, music, intellectual works (on the tape), interesting conversation (much of it was about him), privacy, and security.

If he had not already named her, he would have called her Mother Gratis.

Nor were creature comforts all. She had given him the answers to all his questions, all...

Except one.

That was never expressed vocally by him. Indeed, he would have been incapable of doing so. He was probably unaware that he had such a question.

But Polyphema voiced it one day when she asked him to do her a favor.

Eddie reacted as if outraged.

"One does not-! One does not-!"

He choked, and then he thought, how ridiculous! She is not- And looked puzzled, and said, "But she is."

He rose and opened the lab kit. While he was looking for a scalpel, he came across the carcinogens. He threw them through the half-opened l.a.b.i.a far out and down the hillside.

Then he turned and, scalpel in hand, leaped at the light gray swelling on the wall. And stopped, staring at it, while the instrument fell from his hand. And picked it up and stabbed feebly and did not even scratch the skin. And again let it drop."What is it? What is it?" crackled the panrad hanging from his wrist.

Suddenly, a heavy cloud of human odor-mansweat-was puffed in his face from a nearby vent.

And he stood, bent in a half-crouch, seemingly paralyzed. Until tentacles seized him in fury and dragged him toward the stomach-iris, yawning man-sized.

Eddie screamed and writhed and plunged his finger in the panrad and tapped, "All right! All right!"

And once back before the spot, he lunged with a sudden and wild joy; he slashed savagely; he yelled.

"Take that! And that, P..." and the rest was lost in a mindless shout.

He did not stop cutting, and he might have gone on and on until he had quite excised the spot had not Polyphema interfered by dragging him toward her stomach-iris again. For ten seconds he hung there, helpess and sobbing with a mixture of fear and glory.

Polyphema's reflexes had almost overcome her brain. Fortunately, a cold spark of reason lit up a corner of the vast, dark, and hot chapel of her frenzy.

The convolutions leading to the steaming, meat-laden pouch closed and the foldings of flesh rearranged themselves. Eddie was suddenly hosed with warm water from what he called the "sanitation" stomach.

The iris closed. He was put down. The scalpel was put back in the bag.

For a long time Mother seemed to be shaken by the thought of what she might had done to Eddie. She did not trust herself to transmit until her nerves were settled. When they were, she did not refer to his narrow escape. Nor did he.

He was happy. He felt as if a spring, tight-coiled against his bowels since he and his wife had parted, was now, for some reason, released. The dull vague pain of loss and discontent, the slight fever and cramp in his entrails, and the apathy that sometimes afflicted him, were gone. He felt fine.

Meanwhile, something akin to deep affection had been lighted, like a tiny candle under the drafty and overtowering roof of a cathedral. Mothers sh.e.l.l housed more than Eddie; it now curved over an emotion new to her kind. This was evident by the next event that filled him with terror.

For the wounds in the spot healed and the swelling increased into a large bag. Then the bag burst and ten mouse-sized Sluggos struck the floor. The impact had the same effect as a doctor spanking a newborn baby's bottom; they drew in their first breath with shock and pain; their uncontrolled and feeble pulses filled the ether with shapeless SOS's.

When Eddie was not talking with Polyphema or listening in or drinking or sleeping or eating or bathing or running off the tape, he played with the Sluggos. He was, in a sense, their father. Indeed, as they grew to hog-size, it was hard for their female parent to distinguish him from her young. As he seldom walked anymore, and was often to be found on hands and knees in their midst, she could not scan him too well.

Moreover, something in the heavywet air or in the diet had caused every hair on his body to drop off. He grew very fat. Generally speaking, he was one with the pale, soft, round, and bald offspring. A family likeness.

There was one difference. When the time came for the virgins to be expelled, Eddie crept to one end, whimpering, and stayed there until he was sure Mother was not going to thrust him out into the cold, hard, and hungry world.That final crisis over, he came back to the center of the floor. The panic in his breast had died out, but his nerves were still quivering. He filled his thermos and then listened for a while to his own tenor singing the "Sea Things" aria from his favorite opera, Gianelli's Ancient Mariner. Suddenly, he burst out and accompanied himself, finding himself thrilled as never before by the concluding words.

And from my neck so free The Albatross fell off, and sank Like lead into the sea.

Afterwards, voice silent but heart singing, he switched off the wire and cut in on Polyphema's broadcast Mother was having trouble. She could not precisely describe to the continent-wide hook-up this new and almost inexpressible emotion she felt about the mobile. It was a concept her language was not prepared for. Nor was she helped any by the gallons of Old Red Star in her bloodstream.

Eddie sucked at the plastic nipple and nodded sympathetically and drowsily at her search for words.

Presently, the thermos rolled out of his hand.

He slept on his side, curled in a ball, knees on his chest and arms crossed, neck bent forward. Like the pilot room chronometer whose hands reversed after the crash, the clock of his body was ticking backwards, ticking backwards...

In the darkness, in the moistness, safe and warm, well fed, much loved.

The G.o.d Business

1954.

IT WAS THE first time that the U.S. Marines had ever been routed with water pistols.

The screen flickered. Another scene replaced the first. But the afterimage had burned itself on my mind.

A distorted sun that had no business in a mid-Illinois sky made the scene bright for the long-range cameras. A regiment of Marines, helmeted, wearing full packs, toting rifles with bayonets and automatic weapons, were stumbling backward in full retreat before a horde of naked men and women. The nudists, laughing and capering, were aiming toy cowboy-sixshooters and Captain Orbit rayguns. These sprayed streams of liquid from tiny muzzles, streams that arched over desperately upraised guns and squirted off the faces under the helmets.

Then, the tough veterans were throwing their weapons down and running away. Or else standing foolishly, blinking, running their tongues over wet lips. And the victors were taking the victims by the hand and leading them away behind their own uneven lines.

Why didn't the Marines shoot? Simple. Their cartridges refused to explode.

Flamethrowers, burpguns, recoilless cannon? They might as well have been shillelaghs.

The screen went white. Lights flashed on. Major Alice Lewis, WHAM, put down her baton.

"Well, gentlemen, any questions? None? Mr. Temper, perhaps you'd like to tell us why you expect to succeed where so many others have failed. Mr. Temper, gentlemen, will give us the bald facts."

I rose. My face was flushed; my palms, sticky. I'd have been wiser to laugh at the major's nasty crack about my lack of hair, but a quarter century hadn't killed my self-consciousness over the eggish-ness of my head. When I was twenty, I came down with a near-fatal fever the doctors couldn't identify. When I rose from bed, I was a shorn lamb, and I'd stayed fleeced. Furthermore, I was allergic to toupees. So itwas a trifle embarra.s.sing to get up before an audience just after the beautiful Major Lewis had made a pun at the expense of my shining pate.

I walked to the table where she stood, pert and, dammit, pretty. Not until I got there did I see that the hand holding the stick was shaking. I decided to ignore her belligerent att.i.tude. After all, the two of us were going to be together on our mission, and she couldn't help it any more than I. Moreoever, she had reason to be nervous. These were trying times for everybody, and especially for the military.

I faced a roomful of civilians and officers, all V.I.P. or loud bra.s.s. Through the window at the back, I could see a segment of snow-covered Galesburg, Illinois. The declining sun was perfectly normal. People were moving about as if it were customary for fifty thousand soldiers to be camped between them and the valley of the Illinois, where strange creatures roamed through the fantastically i luxuriant vegetation.

'tl I paused to fight down the wave of reluctance which invariably inundated me when I had to speak in public. For some reason, my upper plate always went into a tap dance at such crucial moments.

"Ladie-s-s and gentlemen, I's-s-saw S-s-susie on the's-s-sea-sh.o.r.e yes-s-sterday." You know what I mean. Even if you're describing the plight of the war orphans in Azerbaijan, you watch your listeners smile and cover their lower faces, and you feel like a fool.

I shouldn't have taken so long to summon my nerve, for the major spoke again. Her lip curled. It was a very pretty lip, but I didn't think even a nonpermanent wave improved its appearance at the moment.

"Mr. Temper believes he has the key to our problem. Perhaps he does. I must warn you, however, that his story combines such unrelated and unlikely events as the escape of a bull from the stockyards, the drunken caperings of a college professor who was noted for his dedicated sobriety, to say nothing of the disappearance of said professor of cla.s.sical literature and two of his students on the same night."

I waited until the laughter died down. When I spoke, I said nothing about two other improbably connected facts. I did not mention the bottle I had purchased in an Irish tavern and shipped i to the professor two years before. Nor did I say what I thought one of the camera shots taken by an Army balloon over the city of Onaback meant. This photograph had shown a huge red brick statue of a bull astride the football field of Traybell University.

"Gentlemen," I said, "before I say much about myself, I'll tell you why the Food and Drug Administration is sending a lone agent into an area where, so far, the combined might of the Army, Air Force, Coast Guard, and Marines have failed."

Red faces blossomed like flowers in springtime.

"The F. D.A. necessarily takes a part in the affaire a I'Onaback. As you know, the Illinois River, from Chillicothe to Havana, now runs with beer."

n.o.body laughed. They'd long ago quit being amused by that. As for me, I loathed any alcoholic drink or drug. With good reason.

"I should modify that. The Illinois has an odor of hops, but those of our volunteers who have drunk from the river where the stuff begins to thin out don't react to it as they would to a regular alcoholic drink.

They report a euphoria, plus an almost total lack of inhibition, which lasts even after all alcohol is oxidized from their bloodstream. And the stuff acts like a stimulant, not a depressant. There is no hangover. To add to our mystification, our scientists can't find any unknown substance in the water to a.n.a.lyze.

"However, you all know this, just as you know why the F.D.A. is involved. The main reason I'm beingsent in, aside from the fact that I was born and raised in Onaback, is that my superiors, including the President of the United States, have been impressed with my theory about the ident.i.ty of the man responsible for this whole fantastic mess.

"Besides," I added with a not entirely unmalicious glance at Major Lewis, "they believe that, since I first thought of psychologically conditioning an agent against the lure of the river-water, I should be the agent sent in.

"After this situation had come to the notice of the ED.A. authorities, I was a.s.signed to the case. Since so many Federal Agents had disappeared in Onabagian territory, I decided to do some checking from the outside. I went to the Congressional Library and began reading the Onaback Morning Star and Evening Journal backwards, from the day the Library quit receiving copies of them. Not until I came across the January 13 issues of two years ago, did I find anything significant."

I stopped. Now that I had to put my reasonings in spoken words before these hardheaded bigshots, I could weigh their reception. Zero. Nevertheless, I plunged ahead. I did have an ace-in-the-hole. Or, to be more exact, a monkey-in-a-cage.

"Gentlemen, the January 13 issues related, among other things, the disappearance on the previous night of Dr. Boswell Durham of Traybell University, along with two of his students in his survey course on cla.s.sical literature. The reports were conflicting, but most of them agreed on the following. One, that during the day of the 13th, a male student, Andrew Polivinosel, made some slighting remark about cla.s.sical literature. Dr. Durham, a man noted for his mildness and forbearance, called Polivinosel an a.s.s.

Polivinosel, a huge football player, rose and said he'd toss Durham out of the building by the seat of his pants. Yet, if we are to believe the witnesses, the timid, spindly, and middle-aged Durham took the husky Polivinosel by one hand and literally threw him out of the door and down the hall.

"Whereupon, Peggy Rourke, an extremely comely coed and Polivinosel's 'steady,' persuaded him not to attack the professor. The athlete, however, didn't seem to need much persuasion. Dazed, he made no protest when Miss Rourke led him away.

"The other students in the cla.s.s reported that there had been friction between the two and that the athlete bugged Dr. Durham in cla.s.s. Durham now had an excellent opportunity for getting Polivinosel kicked out of school, even though Polivinosel was Little Ail-American. The professor didn't, however, report the matter to the Dean of Men. He was heard to mutter that Polivinosel was an a.s.s and that this was a fact anyone could plainly see. One student said he thought he detected liquor on the professor's breath, but believed he must have been mistaken, since it was campus tradition that the good doctor never even touched c.o.kes. His wife, it seems, had a great deal to do with that. She was an ardent temperance worker, a latter-day disciple of Frances Willard.

"This may seem irrelevant, gentlemen, but I a.s.sure you it isn't. Consider two other students' testimony.

Both swore they saw the neck of a bottle sticking from the professor's overcoat pocket as it hung in his office. It was uncapped. And, though it was freezing outside, the professor, a man famed for his aversion to cold, had both windows open. Perhaps to dispel the fumes from the bottle.

"After the fight, Peggy Rourke was asked by Dr. Durham to come into his office. An hour later, Miss Rourke burst out with her face red and her eyes full of tears. She told her roommate that the professor had acted like a madman. That he had told her he had loved her since the day she'd walked into his cla.s.sroom. That he had known he was too old and ugly even to think of eloping with her. But, now that 'things' had changed, he wanted to run away with her. She told him she had always been fond of him, but she was by no stretch of the imagination in love with him. Whereupon, he had promised that by that sameevening he would be a changed man, and that she would find him irresistible.

"Despite all this, everything seemed to be smooth that evening when Polivinosel brought Peggy Rourke to the Soph.o.m.ore Frolic. Durham, a chaperon, greeted them as if nothing had happened. His wife did not seem to sense anything wrong. That in itself was strange, for Mrs. Durham was one of those faculty wives who has one end of the campus grapevine grown permanently into her ear. Moreover, a highly nervous woman, she was not one to conceal her emotions. Nor was she subdued by the doctor. He was the b.u.t.t of many a joke behind his back because he was so obviously henpecked. Mrs. Durham often made a monkey of him and led him around like a bull with a ring in his nose. Yet that night..."

Major Lewis cleared her throat. "Mr. Temper, streamline the details, will you please? These gentlemen are very busy, and they'd like the bald facts. The bald facts, mind you."

I continued, "The bare facts are these. Late that night, shortly after the ball broke up, a hysterical Mrs.

Durham called the police and said her husband was out of his mind. Never a word that he might be drinking. Such a thing to her was unthinkable. He wouldn't dare..."

Major Lewis cleared her throat again. I shot her a look of annoyance. Apparently, she failed to realize that some of the details were necessary.

"One of the policemen who answered her call reported later that the professor was staggering around in the snow, dressed only in his pants with a bottle sticking out of his hip pocket, shooting red paint at everybody with a spray gun. Another officer contradicted him. He said the doctor did all the damage with a bucket of paint and a brush.