Psychoshop

by Alfred Bester

  Upstairs, we closed the door to Glory’s room behind us. By then, the sounds of movement had recommenced below.

  “What’s their story?” I asked, as we both sprawled for a moment on the big bed.

  “They met a very long time ago in the distant future/’ Glory said. “They hit it off very well, too. Then one day they learned that they were each other’s designated mates, for purposes of preserving the Kaleideion genes. It seemed one of those cases of really enjoying something until someone tells you you have to do it. Immediately, some spark went out of the romance. Or the whole thing was a powder keg and the spark was ignited. Either way, they quarreled. Now, Adam hadn’t told her about this project—the Luogo Nero— and he simply took off shortly thereafter.”

  “A moment,” I said. “Surely they could simply have donated a few cells to the project and continued just as they were.”

  “Nevertheless, it bothered them. I don’t know whether it’s simply their mutual neurosis or represents something in the structure of the cat mind itself—not wanting to do what you are told. I know that it wouldn’t matter to me or to my species at large, and you Graylons are even said to make a virtue of it—”

  I turned and looked into her eyes.

  “Oops,” she said.

  I nodded.

  “‘Graylon’ was one of the words Ursula used about me,” I said.

  “It means ‘human’ but there are certain other connotations.”

  “What are they?”

  “You must first understand that a standard model human being such as yourself is quite rare in the last—that is, distant—future. The ones who have struggled to retain this form are racial purists of the highest sort.”

  “It would seem as if you cat and snake and mongoose and fox people would have to be pretty much the same way. If you can’t interbreed you’ve got racial purity whether you want it or not.”

  “True. But with the Graylon—who worked so long at preserving it and enhancing it—there’s an ideological component as well. That is, the original human form is considered the best. Others are deemed inferior.”

  I smiled. “… And of course we can’t conceive of snakes, cats, mongooses, foxes—whatever—thinking that way about themselves.”

  She was silent for several moments, then, “Certain individuals of any race are always going to believe that,” she said.

  “Only when the Graylon do it, it’s bad,” I said, “because they’re probably the devils in your mythology—the dictatorial creators from whom you had to win your freedom. Pride in anything has to be a vice if they’ve got it.”

  “They’ve done everything they can in the way of gene manipulation, cloning, and specialized training to turn themselves into a super-race, one that really is superior to all of the others. The last true humans are self-designed monuments to the notion of superiority.”

  I laughed.

  “How is this so different from you guys winnowing, breeding, selecting, tailoring to produce your Kaleideion? Sounds as if you might even have stolen the notion from those who wanted to see their entire race that way—a fully democratic end within a people. But a Kaleideion? Seems as if they’d like to have everybody goose-stepping—pardon me, pussyfooting—before him. Seems a lot more dangerous than the Graylons’ self-improvement program.”

  “You must all be programmed to think that way!”

  “I’m not even willing to admit that I’m one of those guys! I’m just trying to apply a little reason to the claims I’m hearing.”

  “… And it’s so deeply ingrained that it functions without your even being aware of it.”

  “I hope you realize you’re setting up a no-win scenario for me, no matter what I say.”

  “What are the highest virtues of a civilized people?” she said suddenly. “Respect for the law? The arts? Devotion to high cultural ends? A dedication to learning the will of the people and promulgating it for the greatest good?”

  “I’d be willing to bet it differs from species to species,” I said.

  “Fair enough. I was drawing generalities from several of them. What do you think the Graylons’ ideal might be?”

  I shrugged.

  “They reasoned that humanity started out as a band of predators, and in one fashion or another remained so throughout history. Therefore, since this was the virtue that made them great, they would enhance it. And they did. No matter what their final individual goals in life, the basic breeding, conditioning, and training of a Graylon is for the hunt. Yours is a race of hunters, Alf.”

  “So is yours, Glory, or it wouldn’t have survived to be perpetuated in your delightful person. All of the species had to be predators in order to survive. That’s no big deal. And the cats even throw in a touch of sadism in dealing with their prey. No, you’ve told me nothing I consider morally objectionable about the Graylon. Is what bothers you the fact that they make open avowals concerning their basic nature?”

  “No,” she said. “But they send their youths off to hunt the most dangerous beasts in the universe. This is how their career choices are made. And those who show a flair for it become their real hunters.”

  “The custodians?”

  “‘Colosodians.’ They are the professional hunters, the ones to whom all others turn when there is hunting to be done. They range up and down spacetime after whatever they have been hired to pursue. Their prowess is legendary, as is their record of achievement. Pay them enough, and they’ll bring back whatever you want, dead or alive.”

  “The universe has to have its cops,” I said.

  “A Graylon colosodian is more like a bounty hunter.”

  “Them, too, ” I said.

  “That’s your conditioning talking.”

  “Or yours. So let’s call it even for now. All of this came out of Adam and Prandy’s story, which I still haven’t heard.”

  She nodded. “After they quarreled and he departed on this job, she spent a long time trying to figure where he had gone.”

  “So this is a secret project, outside the quadratic fraternity?”

  “Because Adam is the Kaleideion, it was kept very quiet.”

  “How’d she find him, then?”

  She turned onto her side, facing away from me. She reached out and stroked a former self upon the wall. Below, the caterwauling sounds had died away, to be replaced by something softer and steadier.

  Finally, she said, “I get the impression she hired a colosodian to track him through time, since they are the best and have their own ways of traveling through it.”

  I managed to stifle my laugh, turned it into an “Oy!”

  “And one day, back in Etruria, she turned up on the doorstep. There was a joyous, tear-filled reconciliation, and they lived happily ever after for a number of years.”

  “Till they quarreled again?” I asked.

  “That’s right. She went away then and he was sad for a long while.”

  “Till she came back.”

  “Yes.”

  “And later they quarreled and she left again.”

  “Yes.”

  “And this pattern was to be repeated down the centuries.”

  “Yes.”

  “It almost sounds like a special mating ritual—taking time off to become a somewhat different person when things grow stale, returning in a new avatar.”

  From downstairs the new avatars began to wail.

  Glory turned back and she was smiling.

  “You have a lot of odd insights for one of your kind,” she said. “Too bad you’re also a bloodthirsty bastard out to kill us for money.”

  I covered my face with my hands and heaved my shoulders a few times. “I weep,” I said. “I weep at all this misunderstanding.”

  She drew nearer. “You do not,” she said. “It’s entirely phony. You’re not crying.”

  “No, I’m not very good at it. But at least I’m going through the motions on your behalf—which is totally Confucian and full of respect.”

  She touche
d my neck. “Weirdest damned hunter I ever heard of,” she said.

  “I refuse to be your self-fulfilling prophecy,” I stated. “So now what do we have to look forward to from Adam and Prandy? A period of domestic bliss? The lover’s inadvertent lobotomizing of a customer when he meant only to remove the quality of perfect pitch?”

  “Yes, silly little things like that,” she said. “But I’ve a feeling it won’t last. For ages, I’ve kept track of these things, and this reconciliation is way ahead of schedule. So I made it a point for once to listen carefully to what she was saying.”

  “‘For once’? Are you the mother-in-law figure in the poor girl’s existence?”

  She hissed long and hard. Then, “Do you want to hear this story or don’t you?” she asked.

  “Please. Go on.”

  “She came back,” she said, “because of the discovery of a fragment of an ancient historical document which actually mentions this place.”

  “Got nostalgic, huh?”

  “No. But the document indicated that we go out of business about now.”

  “Say how?”

  “No. Maybe on another page. That’s the way it is with fragments.”

  “And of course it didn’t indicate what becomes of the proprietor?”

  “Right.”

  I stretched slowly, reached out and drew her to me. “So what’s to do?”

  “Wait and watch and try to protect him,” she said. “I wish I knew more about you.” So I kissed her.

  Later, looking down upon her, I recalled an old poem I had once written. I recited it:

  “you are different

  from any other

  when I look upon you

  I see only you

  there is no room between us

  for flowers

  sunsets

  moons over water

  or the eyes of another

  the smell and touch and taste of you

  have broken that which compares

  the heat of you has warmed me

  and I have heard a song without sound

  we are different

  whatever suns moons

  flowers water

  or the eyes of others may do

  the riddle was love

  and it has solved us “

  She stared up into my eyes. Then, “I have never heard that rendered into English before,” she said.

  “What do you mean?”

  “It is a famous Eighth Millennium, Pan-Galactic Era love poem,” she told me, “applicable to many species. You couldn’t have written it.”

  “I thought I did.”

  “Even if you were there you couldn’t have. Colosodians don’t write poetry.”

  I shook my head and smiled. “Who knows?” I said. “I don’t. Kiss me, Glory.”

  At some point many hours later there came a scratching on our door. I got up and opened it.

  Adam stood before me, casually dressed, smiling. “All,” he said. “I want you to let us out. Would you put on a garment and come down and throw the Switch for us? Prandy and I want to get away, outside, somewhere, for a time, together. Then you can flip the Switch again and sleep for as long as you want.”

  “Sure thing,” I said, snatching up my trousers from the floor, shaking them out, holding them just right, and performing my favorite gymnastic feat. It was seldom I had an audience for it. …

  Afterwards, our gazes met and held for a moment.

  “Most impressive,” he said. “That’s the first time I’ve really seen someone put on a pair of pants, both legs at once.”

  “… And to answer your question, no,” I told him. “The skill is not up for trade. I spent too long learning it when I should have been studying.”

  I walked him down the stairs, nodded to Prandy, and asked, “Uh, how long you plan on being gone? What I’m getting at is do you want us to be open for business while you’re away?”

  “Hell, yes,” he said. “You’ve got to throw the Switch sooner or later and get into the timestream just to be able to let us back in. Anyway, you’ve learned the meet-the-public stuff real well, and Nan will do all the psyche cutting and pasting. She might even start you in on the simpler procedures. It’ll be good for you.” He glanced at Prandy. “A few days, perhaps,” he added. “Maybe even a week or so.”

  Prandy nodded and glanced at the door. I reached into the niche and threw the Switch and saw them on their way. Sunny day.

  When I crawled back into bed Glory asked me, “What was that all about?”

  “They wanted to go off, outside, and be together for a few days.”

  She yawned.

  “Always happens,” she told me.

  “… And we’re supposed to run the place—maybe further my education in the Hellhole.”

  “Good idea,” she said, drawing me to her. “No problem.”

  I wondered what she had been dreaming, as there were green stains on her pillow and around her mouth. Venom is like olives, though. You can develop a taste for it.

  There was a lot of business in the days that followed. As usual, much of it was mundane and some of it interesting. The ones that light up in my memory are the Case of the Man with the Invisible Appendage, the Woman Who Was Too Acid, the Human-Tuned Portian, the Man Who Broadcast Moods, the Involuntary Teleporter, the Lady Whose Looks Could Kill, the Case of the Double Doppelganger, the Man Who Dreamed Upside Down, the Village in a Rigelian Crystal, the Girl Who Stole Blue, the Seven Bonded Muzwachians and their Unusual Spatial Orientation, the Rudwhorvian Who Was Too Courteous, the Greatest Lover on Peridip, the Vendetta Flowers, and the Bland Augur.

  Every day, though, come Rudwhorvians or the absence of blue, I repaired to the John for five minutes or so and practiced my mini-teleports, finally picking up a little facility with them—though I still couldn’t manage the smile bit. But smiles could wait for later.

  Things went well enough. Glory did let me operate a little, and one day I realized I was actually starting to like the work. Sure enough, though, Glory was upstairs and not available for immediate assistance the day Cagliostro appeared, adding a faint whiff of sulfur and brimstone to the air. He clasped my shoulder and clasped my hand, looking past me the while. “Bonjour, M’sieur. How are you? Is M’sieur Maser in, is le Maitre in?” he asked.

  “Afraid not. Perhaps I can help you, Count.”

  “Is he expected back soon?”

  “I’m not sure when he’ll be back. He’s taking care of a little personal business.”

  “Ah, c’est damage, but perhaps you will serve,” the Count said, turning his attention to me. “How goes our project?”

  “Oh, it’s coming along very nicely,” I told him. “A great number of the ingredients have been collected—and some, as Adam said, were already in stock. I don’t think it will be too much longer before he has them all and can assemble the iddroid.”

  Cagliostro wrinkled his nose.

  “Son mot,” he said. “M’sieur Maser’s word. I’m not overjoyed with it.”

  “Why not?”

  “It’s Freudian. The id is an idee Freudian, the space psychological where the primal sexual energy—the libido—is wild and strong, driving the rest of the mind—”

  “I know,” I said. “I’ve read Freud. What’s wrong with his term?”

  “The psychology of Freud is mainly about the young, people still defining themselves sexually, people whose hormones aren’t settled yet. Once their chemistry and their life experiences lay down regular patterns it becomes apparent where the real power lies.”

  “Jung?” I said. “For the more mature? Individuation and all that? Your collective unconscious is a Jungian term. By the way, Adam’s found you the one you needed. Traded it off an interstellar headhunter from a million or so years back.”

  “Oui.The man is terribly efficient.”

  “Yes.”

  “Mais non, it was not Jung that I was thinking of. It was Adler.”

  “Power drives?”

&n
bsp; “Power. Oui. The drive to dominate, to command, to be le premier, the boss. That’s where all the energy psychique goes after the youthful sex drives have had their fun.”

  “Maybe for every psychologist there’s an equal and opposite psychologist,” I offered.

  He chuckled. “Non, non,” he said. “M’sieur Alf, look around you. Look inside yourself. Life is all power games. Everyone wants to be the God of something, tout le monde. It’s just a question of how big a kingdom we can each carve ourselves, how high we can rise.”

  “So you don’t like ‘Iddroid.’ What do you want to call it?”

  “Dominoid,” he said.

  I nodded. “‘Dominoid.’ Has a nice sound to it. What’s in a name, anyway?”

  He slapped me on the back.

  “Vraiment. Precisely,” he said. “Here we are playing word games and we could call the creature ‘Fido’ for all it matters. The name won’t change its nature … which, of course, will be Adlerian. May I see what we’ve got now?”

  “I don’t know whether Adam would like you looking over his workshop when he’s not there,” I said. “I think it would be better if you came back in a few days and let him show you the collection himself. I know you’d get better explanations from him, too.”

  He put an arm around my shoulders and turned me toward the Hellhole. “All,” he said, “it’s not as if I’m some customer in off the street. We’re partners.”

  “True. Still…”

  “I just want a quick look, one moment.”

  “All right. Come on.”

  I took him into the Hellhole and led him toward the work area Adam had set up for this project. Within it, in stasis, hung all of the qualities so far assembled, neatly aligned. The ones that did not lend themselves to visual representation had labeled icons hovering amid their sparkling spaces. To touch any one of them was momentarily to experience it.

  “Merveilleux!” Cagliostro said. “He’s certainly been busy.”

  “Indeed.”