by William Tenn
As a means of getting places, the jumper certainly beat Edgar Rapp’s gurgling old Buick—if only it didn’t make you feel like a chocolate malted. That was the trouble with this time: every halfway nice thing in it had such unpleasant aftereffects!
The ceiling undulated over her head in the great rotunda where she was now standing and bulged a huge purplish lump down at her. It still looked, she decided nervously, like a movie house chandelier about to fall.
“Yes?” inquired the purplish lump politely. “Whom did you wish to see?”
She licked at her lipstick, then squared her shoulders. She’d been through all this before. You had to carry these things off with a certain amount of poise: it just did not do to show nervousness before a ceiling.
“I came to see Gygyo—I mean, is Mr. Gygyo Rablin in?”
“Mr. Rablin is not at size at the moment. He will return in fifteen minutes. Would you like to wait in his office? He has another visitor there.”
Mary Ann Carthington thought swiftly. She didn’t entirely like the idea of another visitor, but maybe it would be for the best. The presence of a third party would be a restraining influence for both of them and would take a little of the inevitable edge off her coming back to Gygyo as a suppliant after what had happened between them.
But what was this about his not being “at size”? These twenty-fifth century people did so many positively weird things with themselves... .
“Yes, I’ll wait in his office,” she told the ceiling. “Oh, you needn’t bother,” she said to the floor as it began to ripple under her feet. “I know the way.”
“No bother at all, Miss,” the floor replied cheerfully and continued to carry her across the rotunda to Rablin’s private office. “It‘s a pleasure.”
Mary Ann sighed and shook her head. Some of these houses were so opinionated! She relaxed and let herself be carried along, taking out her compact on the way for a last quick check of her hair and face.
But the glance at herself in the mirror evoked the memory again. She flushed and almost called for a jumper to take her hack to Mrs. Brucks’ room. No, she couldn’t—this was their last chance to get out of this world and back to their own. But damn Gygyo Rablin, anyway—damn and damn him!
A yellow square in the wall having dilated sufficiently, the floor carried her into Rablin’s private office and subsided to flatness again. She looked around, nodding slightly at the familiar surroundings.
There was Gygyo’s desk, if you could call that odd, purring thing a desk. There was that peculiar squirmy couch that
She caught her breath. A young woman was lying on the couch, one of those horrible bald-headed women that they had here.
“Excuse me,” Mary Ann said in one fast breath. “I had no idea—I didn‘t mean to—”
“That’s perfectly all right,” the young woman said, still staring up at the ceiling. “You’re not intruding. I just dropped in on Gygyo myself. Have a seat.”
As if taking a pointed hint, the floor shot up a section of Itself under Mary Ann’s bottom and, when she was securely cradled in it, lowered itself slowly to sitting height.
“You must be that twentieth century—” the young woman paused, then amended rapidly: “the visitor whom Gygyo has been seeing lately. My name’s Flureet. I’m just an old child-hood friend—’way back from Responsibility Group Three.”
Mary Ann nodded primly. “How nice, I’m sure. My name is Mary Ann Carthington. And really, if in any way I’m—I mean I just dropped in to—”
“I ‘told you it’s all right. Gygyo and I don’t mean a thing to each other. This Temporal Embassy work has kind of dulled his taste for the everyday female: they’ve either got to be stavisms or precursors. Some kind of anachronism, anyway. And I’m awaiting transformation—major transformation—so you couldn’t expect very strong feelings from my side right now. Satisfied? I hope so. Hello to you, Mary Ann.”
Flureet flexed her arm at the elbow several times in what Mary Ann recognized disdainfully as the standard greeting gesture. Such women! It made them look like a man showing off his muscle. And not so much as a polite glance in the direction of a guest!
“The ceiling said,” she began uncertainly, “that Gyg—Mr. Rablin isn’t at size at the moment. Is that like what we call not being at home?”
The bald girl nodded. “In a sense. He’s in this room, but he’s hardly large enough to talk to. Gygy’s size right now is —let me think, what did he say he was setting it for?—Oh, yes, 35 microns. He’s inside a drop of water in the field of that microscope to your left.”
Mary Ann swung around and considered the spherical black object resting on a table against the wall. Outside of the two eyepieces set flush with the surface, it had little in common with pictures of microscopes she had seen in magazines.
“In—in there? What’s he doing in there?”
“He’s on a micro-hunt. You should know your Gygyo by now. An absolutely incurable romantic. Who goes on micro-hunts anymore? And in a culture of intestinal amebae, of all things. Killing the beasties by hand instead of by routine psycho or even chemo therapy appeals to his dashing soul. Grow up, Gygyo, I said to him: these games are for children and for Responsibility Group Four children at that. Well, that hurt his pride and he said he was going in with a fifteen-minute lock. A fifteen-minute lock! When I heard that, I decided to come here and watch the battle, just in case.”
“Why—is a fifteen-minute lock dangerous?” Mary Ann asked. Her face was tightly set however; she was still thinking of that `you should know your Gygyo’ remark. That was another thing about this world she didn’t like: with all their talk of privacy and the sacred rights of the individual, men like Gygyo didn’t think twice of telling the most intimate matters about people to—to other people.
“Figure it out for yourself. Gygyo’s set himself for 35 microns. 35 Microns is about twice the size of most of the intestinal parasites he’ll have to fight—amebae like Endolimax nano, lodamoeba butschlii and Dientamoeba fragilis. But suppose he runs into a crowd of Endamoeba coli, to say nothing of our tropical dysentery friend, Endamoeba hystolytica? What then?”
“What then?” the blonde girl echoed. She had not the slightest idea. One did not face problems like this is San Francisco.
“Trouble, that’s what. Serious trouble. The colii might be as large as he is, and hystolyticae run even bigger. 36, 37 microns, sometimes more. Now, the most important factor on a micro-hunt, as you know, is size. Especially if you’re fool enough to limit your arsenal to a sword and won’t be seen carrying an automatic weapon even as insurance. Well, under those circumstances, you lock yourself down to smallness, so that you can’t get out and nobody can take you out for a full fifteen minutes, and you’re just asking for trouble. And trouble is just what our boy is having!”
“He is? l mean, is it bad?”
Flureet gestured at the microscope. “Have a look. I’ve adjusted my retina to the magnification, but you people aren’t up to that yet, I believe. You need mechanical devices for everything. Go ahead, have a Iook. That’s Dietamoeba fragilis he’s fighting now. Small, but fast. And very, very vicious.”
Mary Ann hurried to the spherically shaped microscope and stared intently through the eyepieces.
There, in the very center of the field, was Gygyo. A transparent bubble helmet covered his head and he was wearing some sort of thick but flexible one-piece garment over the rest of his body. About a dozen amebae the size of dogs swarmed about him, reaching for his body with blunt, glassy pseudopods. He hacked away at them with a great, two-handed sword in tremendous sweeps that cut in two the most venturesome and persistent of the creatures. But Mary Ann could see from his frantic breathing that he was getting tired. Every once in a while he glanced rapidly over his left shoulder as if keeping watch on something in the distance.
“Where does he get air from?” she asked.
“The suit always contains enough oxygen for the duration of the lock,” Flureet’s voice explai
ned behind her, somewhat surprised at the question. “He has about five minutes to go, and I think he’ll make it. I think he’ll be shaken up enough though, to— Did you see that?”
Mary Ann gasped. An elongated, spindle-shaped creature ending in a thrashing whip-like streak had just darted across the field, well over Gygyo’s head. It was about one and a half times his size. He had gone into a crouch as it passed and the amebae surrounding him had also leaped away. They were back at the attack in a moment, however, once the danger had passed. Very wearily now, he continued to chop at them.
“What was it.”
“A trypanosome. It went by too fast for me to identify it, but it looked like either Trypanosoma gambiense or rhodisiense—the African sleeping sickness protozoans. It was a bit too big to be either of them, now that I remember. It could have been— Oh, the fool, the fool!”
Mary Ann turned to her, genuinely frightened: “Why—what did he do?”
“He neglected to get a pure culture, that’s what he did. Taking on several different kinds of intestinal amebae is wild enough, but if there are trypanosomes in there with him, then there might be anything! And him down to 35 microns!”
Remembering the frightened glances that Gygyo had thrown over his shoulder, Mary Ann swung back to the microscope. The man was still fighting desperately, but the strokes of the sword came much more slowly. Suddenly, another ameba, different from those attacking Gygyo, swam leisurely into the field. It was almost transparent and about half his size.
“That’s a new one,” she told Flureet. “Is it dangerous?”
“No, lodamoeba butschlii is just a sluggish, friendly lump. But what in the world is Gygyo afraid of to his left? He keeps turning his head as if— Oh.”
The last exclamation came out almost as a simple comment, so completely was it weighted with despair. An oval monster—its length three times and its width fully twice Gygyo’s height—shot into the field from the left boundary as if making a stage entrance in reply to her question. The tiny, hair-like appendages with which it was covered seemed to give it fantastic speed.
Gygyo’s sword slashed at it, but it swerved aside and out of the field. It was back in a moment, coming down like a dive bomber. Gygyo leaped away, but one of the amebae which had been attacking him was a little too slow. It disappeared, struggling madly, down the funnel-shaped mouth which indented the forward end of the egg-shaped monster.
“Balantidium Coll,” Flureet explained before Mary Ann could force her trembling lips to frame the question. “100 microns long, 65 microns wide. Fast and deadly and terribly hungry. I was afraid he’d hit something like this sooner or later. Well, that’s the end of our micro-hunting friend. He’ll never be able to avoid it long enough to get out. And he can’t kill a bug that size.”
Mary Ann held quivering hands out to her. “Can’t you do something?”
The bald woman brought her eyes down from the ceiling at last. Making what seemed an intense effort, she focused them on the girl. They were lit with bright astonishment.
“What can I do? He’s locked inside that culture for another four minutes at least; an absolutely unbreakable lock. Do you expect me to—to go in there and rescue him?”
“If you can—of course!”
“But that would be interfering with his sovereign rights ns an individual! My dear girl! Even if his wish to destroy himself is unconscious, it is still a wish originating in an essential part of his personality and must be respected. The whole thing is covered by the subsidiary—rights covenant of—”
“How do you know he wants to destroy himself?” Mary Ann wept. “I never heard of such a thing! He’s supposed to be a—a friend of yours! Maybe he just accidentally got himself into more trouble than he expected, and he can’t get out. I’m positive that’s what happened. Oh—poor Gygyo, while we’re standing here talking, he’s getting killed!”
Flureet considered. “You may have something there. He is a romantic, and associating with you has given him all sorts of swaggering adventuresome notions. He’d never have done anything as risky as this before. But tell me: do you think it’s worth taking a chance of interfering with someone’s sovereign individual rights, just to save the life of an old and dear friend?”
“I don’t understand you,” Mary Ann said helplessly. “Of course! Why don’t you let me—just do whatever you have to and send me in there after him. Please!”
The other woman rose and shook her head. “No, I think I’d he more effective. I must say, this romanticism is catching. And,” she laughed to herself, “just a little intriguing. You people in the twentieth century led such lives!”
Before Mary Ann’s eyes, she shrank down rapidly. Just as she disappeared, there was a whispering movement, like a flame curving from a candle, and her body seemed to streak toward the microscope.
Gygyo was down on one knee, now, trying to present as small an area to the oval monster as possible. The amebea with which he had been surrounded had now either all fled or been swallowed. He was swinging the sword back and forth rapidly over his head as the Balantidium coil swooped down first on one side, then on the other, but he looked very tired. His lips were clenched together, his eyes squinted with desperation.
And then the huge creature came straight down, feinted with its body, and, as he lunged at it with the sword, swerved slightly and hit him from the rear. Gygyo fell, losing his weapon.
Hairy appendages churning, the monster spun around fluently so that its funnel-shaped mouth was in front, and came back rapidly for the kill.
An enormous hand, a hand the size of Gygyo’s whole body, swung into view and knocked it to one side. Gygyo I scrambled to his feet, regained the sword, and looked up unbelievingly. He exhaled with relief and then smiled. Flureet had evidently stopped her shrinkage at a size several times larger than a hundred microns. Her body was not visible in the field of the microscope to Mary Ann, but it was obviously far too visible to the Balantidium Coli which turned end over end and scudded away.
And for the remaining minutes of the lock, there was not a creature which seemed even vaguely inclined to wander into Gygyo‘s neighborhood.
To Mary Ann’s astonishment, Flureet’s first words to Gygyo when they reappeared beside her at their full height were an apology: “I’m truly sorry, but your fire-eating friend here got me all excited about your safety, Gygyo. If you want to bring me up on charges of violating the Covenant and interfering with an individual’s carefully prepared plans for self-destruction—”
Gygyo waved her to silence. “Forget it. In the words of the poet: Covenant, Shmovenant. You saved my life, and, as far as I know, I wanted it saved. If I instituted proceedings against you for interfering with my unconscious, in all fairness we’d have to subpoena my conscious mind as a witness in your defense. The case could drag on for months, and I’m far too busy.”
The woman nodded. “You’re right. There’s nothing like a schizoid lawsuit when it comes to complications and verbal quibbling. But all the same I’m grateful to you—I didn’t have to go and save your life. I don’t know quite what got into me.”
“That’s what got into you,” Gygyo gestured at Mary Ann. “The century of regimentation, of total war, of massive eavesdropping. I know: it’s contagious.”
Mary Ann exploded. “Well, really! I never in my life—really I—I—I just can’t believe it! First, she doesn’t want to save your life, because it would be interfering with your unconscious—your unconscious! Then, when she finally does something about it, she apologizes to you—she apologizes! And you, instead of thanking her, you talk as if you’re excusing her for—for committing assault and battery! And then you start insulting me—and—and—”
“I’m sorry,” Gygyo said. “I didn’t intend to insult you, Mary Ann, neither you nor your century. After all, we must remember that it was the first century of modern times, it was the crisis-sickness from which recovery began. And it was in very many ways a truly great and adventuresome period, in which Man,
for the last time, dared many things which he has never since attempted.”
“Well. In that case.” Mary Ann swallowed and began to feel better. And at that moment, she saw Gygyo and Flureet exchange the barest hint of a smile. She stopped feeling better. Damn these people! Who did they think they were?
Flureet moved to the yellow square exit. “I’ll have to be going,” she said. “I just stopped in to say good-bye before my transformation. Wish me luck, Gygyo.”
“Your transformation? So soon? Well, all the best of course. It’s been good knowing you, Flureet.”
When the woman had left, Mary Ann looked at Gygyo’s reply concerned face and asked hesitantly: “What does she mean—’transformation?’ And she said it was a major transormation. I haven’t heard of that so far.”
The dark-haired young man studied the wall for a moment. “I’d better not,” he said at last, mostly to himself. “That’s one of the concepts you’d find upsetting, like our active food for instance. And speaking of food—I’m hungry. Hungry, do you hear? Hungry!“
A section of the wall shook violently as his voice rose. It protruded an arm of itself at him. A tray was balanced on the end of the arm. Still standing, Gygyo began to eat from the tray.
He didn’t offer Mary Ann any, which, as far as she was concerned, was just as well. She had seen at a glance that it was the purple spaghetti-like stuff of which he was so terribly fund.
Maybe it tasted good. Maybe it didn’t. She’d never know. She only knew that she could never bring herself to eat anything which squirmed upwards toward one’s mouth and wriggled about cozily once it was inside.
That was another thing about this world. The things these people ate!
Gygyo glanced up and saw her face. “I wish you’d try it just once, Mary Ann,” he said wistfully. “It would add a whole new dimension to food for you. In addition to flavor, texture and aroma, you’d experience motility. Think of it: food not just lying there limp and lifeless in your mouth, but food expressing eloquently its desire to be eaten. Even your friend, Winthrop, culinary esthete that he is, admitted to me the other day that Centaurian libalilil has it all over his favorite food symphonies in many ways. You see, they’re mildly telephatic and can adjust their flavor to the dietary wishes of the person consuming them. That way, you get—”
