The Time Hoppers

by Robert Silverberg

  The cult session was being held, Judith had informed him, at the Class Four home of a certain Brose Cashdan, an administrator of the intercontinental stat nexus. It was interesting to Quellen that a transportation tycoon like Cashdan would get involved in such a cult. Of course, the cult of social regurgitation wasn’t on the proscribed list. It might be aesthetically distasteful, but it wasn’t subversive like some of the others. Still, Quellen’s experience with high administrators had taught him that they tended to be guardians of the status quo. Maybe Cashdan was different. In any case, Quellen was curious about the house. He had not seen many Class Four homes.

  Brose Cashdan’s villa lay just within the inner zone of the Appalachia stat radius. That meant that Quellen could not reach it by the instantaneous transmission of the stat, but had to take a quickboat. A pity, that; it was a waste of half an hour. He programmed his course northward. The screen within the quickboat gave him a simulated view of what was below: the Hudson River, silvery and serpentine in the moonlight, and then the furry hills of the Adirondack Forest Preserve, a thousand acres of unspoiled wilderness in the middle of the sprawl of the city, and finally the floodlit glitter of the landing ramp. Local transport took Quellen speedily to Cashdan’s place. He was a little late, he knew, but it did not bother him.

  It was quite a villa. Quellen was not prepared for such opulence. Of course, Cashdan was required to live in just one location, unlike the Class Two people who could have several homes in scattered parts of the world. Still, it was a magnificent establishment, constructed mainly of glass with axial poles of some spongy, tough-looking synthetic. There were at least six rooms, a small garden (!), and a rooftop landing stage. Even from the air the place had a warm, inviting glow. Quellen stepped into the vestibule, peering ahead in hopes of catching sight of Judith.

  A portly, sixtyish man with a starched white tunic came out to greet him. Diagonally across the tunic was emblazoned the golden sash of power.

  ‘I’m Brose Cashdan,’ the man said. His voice was deep, the voice of authority. Quellen could see this man making brisk decisions all day long and scarcely bothering to get a recommend from a High Government official.

  ‘Joseph Quellen. I was invited by – ’

  ‘Judith da Silva. Of course. Judith’s inside. Welcome, Mr Quellen. We’re honoured that you’ve chosen to join us. Come in. Come in.’

  Cashdan managed to sound ingratiating and commanding at the same time. He propelled Quellen into an inner room twenty feet long and at least thirty feet in width, carpeted wall-to-wall with some grey foamy substance that possibly had a degree of pseudolife. There was certainly nothing austere or drab about this shining palatial residence.

  Eight or nine people sat clustered on the floor in the very middle of the room. Judith was among them. To Quellen’s surprise, Judith had not chosen to dress in the piously self-effacing manner that most communicants of this cult preferred. Obviously this upper-class gathering had different norms. She was wearing a highly immodest sprayon dress, blue with green undertones. A strip of fabric passed between her breasts, which otherwise were bare, and wound about her hips and loins. Her nakedness was covered, more or less, but since the covering was nothing but pigment she might just as well have come nude. Quellen understood that such extreme fashions were permissible only in sophisticated circles where the mode was Class Six or better. It was a trifle pushy, then, for Judith, a Class Seven, to expose herself this way. Quellen sensed that he and Judith might well be the only Sevens in the room. He smiled at Judith. She had small breasts, the desirable kind to have these days, and she had called attention to them by pigmenting her nipples.

  Beside her sat a thick-bodied, practically neckless man with a clipped blue-stained beard, moist lips, and a placid expression. He was flanked by another woman, somewhat older than Judith, who wore a sprayon rig not much more modest than hers. On Judith it looked good; but not on this other one, who had unfashionably bulging breasts and plump haunches. She simpered at Quellen, who rudely stared at her tastelessly exposed body.

  The rest had a prosperous, earnestly intellectual look – mainly men, some of them a trifle on the epicene side, all of them well dressed and clearly high on the slope. Judith, rising to her feet, made the introductions. Quellen let most of the names glide past without sticking in his consciousness. The neckless man with the blue beard, he noted, was Dr Richard Galuber, Judith’s frood. The fleshy damsel was Mrs Galuber. Interesting. Quellen hadn’t known that the frood was married. He had long suspected that Judith was his mistress through some shameful reverse transference. Maybe so; but would Galuber bring his wife to meet his mistress at such a session? Quellen wasn’t sure. Froods were often devious in their motivations, and for all Quellen knew Galuber was out to score some obscure therapeutic point on his wife by hauling her along.

  Outside the group, Judith said, ‘I’m so glad you came, Joe.

  I was afraid you’d back out.’

  ‘I promised I’d come, didn’t I?’

  ‘Yes, I know. But you’ve got a tendency to withdraw from potentially hostile social experiences.’

  Quellen was annoyed. ‘There you go, frooding me again! Stop it, Judith. I came, didn’t I?’

  ‘Of course you did.’ Her smile was suddenly warm, authentically so. ‘I’m happy that you did. I didn’t mean to impugn you. Come meet Dr Galuber.’

  ‘Must I?’

  She laughed. ‘As I said, you’ve got a tendency to withdraw from potentially – ’

  ‘All right. All right. Take me to Dr Galuber.’

  They crossed the room. Quellen was unsettled by Judith’s nakedness. A polymerized band of pigment wasn’t clothing, really. He could make out the separate cheeks of her buttocks beneath the dark blue covering. It made her look more bare than actual nudity. The effect was provocative and disturbing. Her slender, angular body attracted him almost unbearably, especially in the social context of this urbane setting. On the other hand, Mrs Galuber was just as exposed, practically, and Quellen’s basic impulse was to throw a blanket over her shoulders to shield her shame.

  The frood peered in a froodlike fashion at Quellen. ‘It’s a delight to meet you, Mr Quellen. I’ve heard a great deal about you.’

  ‘I’m sure you have,’ said Quellen nervously. He was disappointed that Galuber, despite his promisingly Teutonic name, did not fake the ritualistic Central European accent that most froods affected. ‘I didn’t know that men in your profession belonged to cults like this.’

  ‘We accept spiritual experiences of all sorts,’ Galuber said. ‘Is there some reason why we should reject them?’

  ‘Not really.’

  The frood nodded to his wife. ‘Jennifer and I have belonged to a social regurgitation group for more than a year, now. It’s led us to some remarkable insights, hasn’t it, beloved?’ Mrs Galuber simpered again. She eyed Quellen in such a frankly sexual way that he rippled with shock. ‘It’s been extremely enlightening,’ she agreed. Her voice was a warm, rich contralto. ‘Any kind of interpersonal communion is beneficial, don’t you think? Which is to say, we achieve cathexis in the manner best suited to our needs.’ Jennifer Galuber’s abundant flesh shook with genial laughter. Quellen found himself staring at the ugly upthrust mounds of her bare breasts, and he looked away, feeling guilty and sickened. The Galu-bers, he thought, must have a very odd marriage. But I will not let that fat witch sneak me off for a spot of instant interpersonal communion. Galuber may be bedding Judith, but it gains me nothing to bed his wife in turn, for the roles aren’t equal.

  Judith said, ‘I’ve been after Dr Galuber to come to one of our communion group’s meetings for months. But he’s always resisted. He felt that until he and I had reached the right stage in my therapy, he couldn’t let himself get involved on such an intimate level.’

  ‘There’s more to it than that, of course,’ said the frood benevolently. ‘There always is. In this case, it was a matter of imposing my wife’s handicap on the group, which would require spec
ial preparations. Jennifer’s a galactose-deficient mutant, you see. She’s got to stay on a galactose-free diet.’

  ‘I see,’ said Quellen blankly.

  ‘It’s a genetic fluke,’ Galuber went on. ‘She can’t metabolize galactose at all, because of an enzyme deficit. Galactose precursors would pile up, and there’d be cell damage. So she’s had to be on a galactose-free diet from birth, but that leads to other problems. Since there’s the enzyme deficit, she can’t synthesize galactose from endogenous carbohydrates, and if left uncompensated for that would lead to partial replacement of galactolipids by glucolipids in the brain, a grossly defective blood group spectrum, poor immune reaction in organ transplants, abnormal brain development – oh, a great problem, in many ways.’

  ‘Can it be cured?’ Quellen asked.

  ‘Not in the sense of total remission of pathology. But it can be dealt with. Hereditary galactose metabolism defects can be controlled through enzyme synthesis. Nevertheless, she’s got to remain on a special diet and avoid certain substances, among them the one that’s the essence of tonight’s ceremony. Which is why we had to substitute our own prepared material.

  An inconvenience to the host.’

  ‘Not at all, not at all,’ boomed Brose Cashdan unexpectedly. ‘A trivial matter! We’re delighted that you could join with us, Mrs Galuber!’

  Quellen, bewildered by Galuber’s stream of clinical verbiage, was relieved when Cashdan announced that the ceremony was about to begin. The frood had spouted all that stuff on purpose, Quellen thought resentfully, by way of establishing his intellectual supremacy. Instead of tossing forth the jargon of his own trade, which was easy enough to parry if you knew your way around cocktail-party froodianism, Galuber had chosen to engulf Quellen in a cascade of impenetrable technicalities of a medical sort. Quellen quietly cursed Jennifer Galuber’s enzyme deficit, her wanton glances, her galactolipid accumulation, and her jiggling breasts. Slipping away from her, he followed Judith back across the room to the carpeted pit in the centre where the ceremony was about to take place.

  Judith said warningly, ‘Joe, please, don’t back out the way you did the last time. You’ve got to learn to divorce yourself from tribal reactions. Look at things objectively. What’s wrong with mixing a little saliva?’

  ‘Nothing,’ he said. ‘I suppose.’

  ‘And digestive fluids – they can’t harm you. It’s all for the sake of spiritual communion. You mustn’t look at things in obsolete ways.’

  ‘Is that how you get up the nerve to come naked to a social gathering?’ he asked. ‘By looking at things in a non-obsolete way?’

  ‘I’m not naked,’ she said primly.

  ‘No. You’re wearing a coat of paint.’

  ‘It conceals what society requires us to conceal.’

  ‘It leaves your secondary sex characteristics exposed,’ Quellen pointed out. ‘That’s pretty naked.’

  ‘But not the primary ones. See for yourself. I’m perfectly covered in that area, and so I’m well within the norms. Why don’t you look at me? You can be so absurd at times, Joe.’ Since she insisted on it, he stared at her waist. His eyes travelled as far as her thighs. He had to admit it: she was decently enough clad there. She looked nude, but she wasn’t. Cunning, he thought. Provocative. He wondered how she got the sprayon outfit off. Maybe she would show him that, too, before the night was out. Her lean body held a powerful attraction for him. Unlike Helaine, whose leanness was the result of erosion and general haggardness, Judith’s body was perfect in its lithe, slim elegance. Quellen would gladly have walked out right now with her.

  But there was the ceremony to endure.

  The members of this communion group assembled themselves on the rim of the carpeted pit. Brose Cashdan, as the host, produced a shining metallic bowl in which reposed a doughy mass about the size of a man’s head. This, Quellen knew, was the substance of the love feast: an indigestible algae product with emetic properties. Adapted, no doubt, to suit Mrs Galuber’s galactose deficit.

  Cashdan said, ‘Dr Galuber has kindly consented to be our first celebrant this evening.’

  The lights were dimmed. Galuber took the gleaming bowl from Cashdan and rested it on his knees. Then, solemnly, he broke loose a fistful of the dough and crammed it into his mouth. He began to chew.

  There were many cults. Quellen was no joiner, but even he had now and then been drawn into their ceremonies, generally through the urging of Judith. She drifted everywhere in her search for spiritual fulfilment – from frood to frood, from cult to cult. Quellen suspected that she had frequented the proscribed cults, perhaps even the outlawed Flaming Bess religion. He could picture Judith dancing naked – no flimflam of sprayon to cover her shame – while a grovelling pyrotic kindled an extrasensory blaze and raging voices railed for the overthrow of the High Government. Pyrotics had actually assassinated several Class One leaders a generation ago. The cult still endured.

  Mainly, though, the cults were more innocent things – revolting, perhaps, but not criminal. Such as this one, in which the chewing of the cud somehow led to a feeling of interpersonal harmony. Cashdan was intoning a digestive litany of some sort. Galuber was still stuffing resilient dough into his mouth. How much could that capacious belly hold? Jennifer Galuber was watching her husband with pride. The frood continued to devour. His face was transfigured, the eyes virtually sightless. Jennifer glowed. Her bare body seemed even more huge as she took vicarious pleasure from her husband’s importance.

  They were all chanting, now. Even Judith. Low, serious sounds of spirituality came from them.

  She nudged him. ‘You too,’ she whispered.

  ‘I don’t know the words.’

  ‘Just drone along then.’

  He shrugged. Galuber had ingested nearly every scrap of dough in the bowl. Surely his stomach was painfully distended, now. That stuff was like rubber. The emetic it contained worked on a critical-mass basis; once you had enough of the stuff in your gut, the peristalsis reflex was triggered and the sacred regurgitation began.

  Judith, beside Quellen, was begging to be admitted into the realms of Oneness. Nirvana through upchucking, Quellen thought coldly. How could it be? What am I doing here? The chant rebounded from the glass walls and deafened him. In a subtle antiphony currents of sound were sweeping round and round the room. He could not avoid swaying in rhythm. His lips moved. He would have joined in, if only he knew the words. He found himself humming tunelessly. Cashdan, still leading the ceremony, stepped up his volume. His voice was a fine, thick, black basso, with plenty of intensity to it.

  Galuber sat motionless in the centre of the pit. His eyes were closed. His hands were clasped on his abdomen. His face was flushed. He alone was in stasis in the midst of this swaying, chanting congregation. Quellen forced himself to stay aloof, observing. He watched the rhythmic side-to-side motions of Jennifer Galuber’s offensively large breasts. He watched Judith’s fine-boned face turn radiant with some inner ecstasy. A sexless young man with slicked-down maroon hair was jerking as though he had hold of a high-voltage wire. Around the room, the mysterious passion of social regurgitation was taking hold.

  Dr Galuber began to vomit, now.

  The frood regurgitated with quiet dignity. His thick lips parted, and lumps of dough burst forth into the bowl. Sweat beaded his flushed face; there was effort in any kind of reverse peristalsis, even when the medulla was lulled, as it was by the drug within the dough. Yet he performed his function in the rite nobly. The bowl was filled.

  It was passed around.

  Hands clutched at moist dough. Take and eat, take and eat; here is the body, the authentic substance of the group. Join in the Oneness. Brose Cashdan was eating. Jennifer Galuber ate. Judith tranquilly accepted her portion. Quellen found a wet doughy mass in his hand.

  Take. Eat.

  Be objective. This is Oneness. His hand rose trembling towards his lips. He felt Judith’s thigh warm against his own, beside him. Take and eat. Take and eat. Galuber lay pro
strate in the pit, transfixed with ecstasy.

  Quellen ate.

  He chewed lustily, not allowing himself to hesitate. The particular property of the indigestible substance was that it could be digested upon contact with saliva following immersion in the alimentary tract. One swallowing wasn’t enough; Galuber had merely prepared it for their intake. Quellen swallowed. Oddly, he felt no queasiness. He had eaten ants, raw whelks, sea urchins, other exotic delicacies, and had not even been granted a chance of a spiritual experience in the bargain. Why hesitate at this?

  The other communicants were weeping in joy. Tears glistened on Judith’s sprayon garment. Quellen still felt deplorably objective about the universe. He had not joined the mystic communion after all, dutifully though he had observed the rite. He waited patiently for the ecstasy to pass from the others.

  Judith whispered to him, ‘Will you celebrate the next round?’

  ‘Absolutely not.’

  ‘Joe – ’

  ‘Please. I came, didn’t I? I’m participating. Don’t ask me to be the star.’

  ‘It’s customary for strangers to the group to – ’

  ‘I know. Not me. Someone else can have the honour.’

  She looked reproachfully at him. Quellen realized that he had failed her. Tonight had been some sort of a test, and he had nearly passed. Nearly.

  Brose Cashdan had produced a second mass of ritual dough. Without a word, Jennifer Galuber accepted the bowl and began to stuff herself. The frood, exhausted by his efforts, sat slumped wearily beside her, hardly watching. The rite proceeded as had the first. Quellen took part as before, without ever becoming involved in the action.