Narabedla Ltd

by Frederik Pohl

  Getting out of that pool sounded like a great idea. I don’t know if I could have done it by myself, but there were half a dozen of the Mother’s drones suddenly in the pool with me, butting me away from the orange and blue and scarlet body, ramming me forcefully toward the edge. Binnda’s clawed, sinuous arms darted down and hauled me out. I sprawled on the slick, warm floor, in pain. Dots of blood sprang up all along my shoulders and legs where the Mother’s tentacles had rasped me raw, like metal potato-graters on my skin.

  When I turned to look back I was shamed.

  Purry had saved my life, but not cheaply.

  He was actually being eaten, a mouthful at a time, held fast by the Mother’s implacable tentacles. Little squealy sounds were coming from those apertures in his skin. They weren’t words. They weren’t even cries of pain, although he was being devoured. They were just the sounds a bagpipe makes when you squeeze the last of the air out of the collapsing sack.

  Then he managed words.

  “Have you any orders for me, Meretekabinnda?” Purry gasped.

  Binnda said sorrowfully. “Oh, no. It’s too late now. Go ahead and get eaten.” And there, right before my eyes, Purry did.

  At least when I saw the Duntidon ripping out the throat of Jerry Harper it was only horrible. There was no sense of personal loss. I hadn’t ever known Jerry Harper. But Purry—Purry was my friend. Purry was the one who had guided me around Narabedla, the one who had accompanied me when I wanted to raise my voice in song simply to celebrate the fact that I had a voice again … the one who had just saved my life.

  And he was being eaten alive. Most of his body was gone now, pulled into that awful mouth. All that was left was his head, with one rabbity little eye looking sadly at me, then looking at nothing as it glazed over. And Binnda was not even watching. He was moving restlessly about the margin of the pool, pausing in front of me. He said, “As to the question of your returning to your The Earth—”

  I didn’t even hear him. I was staring transfixed as the last of Purry vanished into the Mother’s mouth.

  He was gone, and I was fighting the need to vomit.

  Then what Binnda had said penetrated. I gaped at him. “What?” I demanded.

  “That is possible,” Binnda said.

  I sat down, still naked, still bewildered, still with that lump of bile in my throat that wanted to come up. I rubbed the tiny blood spots on my arm. “What are you talking about?” I demanded.

  He said, glancing at the silent, attentive bedbug, “The Tlotta-Mother wishes to see your The Earth. She has agreed to let you return, under certain conditions.”

  I shook my head. I said reasonably, “But you told me yourself that the Mother never goes anywhere. I know she said she wished she could go there and see it, but there’s no way. She can’t move; and if she could, my God, how could she disguise herself?”

  Binnda preened himself. “It’s true,” he admitted, “that not everyone is fortunate enough to have nearly human anatomy, like me. Nevertheless, disguise is possible.”

  “Disguise her as a human being? But that’s ridiculous!”

  “Not necessarily the Mother herself,” Binnda said, reaching out his arm to tap the bedbug by his side.

  Which got up on its hind legs to address me. “And not necessarily like a human being, Mr. Stennis,” it piped.

  The Mother moaned a command, and one of the other bedbugs rushed out of the chamber. I said, dazed, “Are you really saying I can go back home?”

  “Exactly, my boy,” Binnda said sadly. “Oh, I’ll miss you. The whole company will miss you—it’s been terrible, trying to salvage the troupe, in these trying times, especially without our best baritone. But the Mother says you can go.”

  I shook my head. “But the rules—”

  His bright green tongue sagged in misery. “Rules,” he echoed. “Yes, there used to be rules. Much has happened while you were—away—my dear boy. The Eleven Associated Peoples aren’t the same anymore. Even I shouldn’t be here, but—”

  “Wait a minute! Eleven?”

  “There have been secessions,” he said, licking the lips of his three-cornered mouth.

  “What about Davidson-Jones?” I asked, trying to take it all in.

  “Henry Davidson-Jones need know nothing about it,” Binnda said forcefully. “He is not on his vessel. The crew will obey the instructions of the Eye of the Mother. You will simply—ah, here is the costume for the Eye. You see how well it will work?”

  I stared. The bedbug had scurried back, bearing what looked like a small version of the kind of sheepskin you throw over the corner of a couch to show you’ve been to New Zealand. The English-speaking bedbug seized it and, making faint mewing sounds of effort, slipped four of his legs into the legs of the skin, pulled it over his body, and stood there waiting for approval.

  “A perfect copy,” Binnda said proudly, “of one of your The Earth dogs. You can take it anywhere.”

  I shook my head wonderingly. It didn’t really look like a very convincing dog, but it looked more like a dog than anything else. I began to believe that they were serious in all this.

  It was time for me to get serious, too. “All right,” I said, making up my mind. “I’ll take that thing. But I won’t go alone. I’m not going unless Irene Madigan can go back with me. She was kidnapped, just like me; she has every right—”

  I stopped, because the Mother was moaning at me. The bedbug translated, its voice slightly muffled by the fur. “The human aboriginal Irene Madigan may accompany us. It is true to say that she was not validly here, and she has already been released from the deceleration chamber.”

  “She’s been staying with her cousin for nearly a month, my dear boy,” said Binnda, in confirmation. “It’s been quite a strain for both of them.”

  “All right,” I said, pushing my streak. “Then Tricia should have the choice of coming back, too, and Conjur Kowalski and Ephard Joyce—”

  “No,” said the bedbug. “Only the two of you, each of whom was brought here in violation of agreements.”

  “Even now,” Binnda said sadly, “the Mother insists on respecting the regulations concerning aboriginals. What do you say, my boy? Do you want to go home to your The Earth?”

  I had not forgotten Rule One of any negotiation: You push right up to the moment when the next thing would make them say no. Then you stop. That was the point we appeared to be at, so I made up my mind fast. “Let’s go,” I said, turning toward the beaded door.

  “Very well,” Binnda said, beaming in gratification. “But, my boy? Don’t you think you should put your pajamas back on first?”

  CHAPTER

  41

  The door that let us onto Henry Davidson-Jones’s yacht hadn’t changed. There was still the same mismatch in ceiling height, and we had to clamber up over the same high sill.

  The bedbug, hampered by its poodle suit, had trouble making it. So did I, for a different reason. We were back on the good old surface of the good old Earth, and I found out that I was suddenly a good twenty-five pounds heavier than I had been for a long time.

  I stood up to find myself looking into the eyes of a Kekkety, standing before us as motionless and unoccupied-looking as a suit of armor on a stand. I grabbed protectively at Irene’s arm—pure reflex action; a little leftover testosterone, I suppose. But the Kekkety wasn’t threatening. When our bedbug moaned something at it in, no doubt, the Mother’s own language, the Kekkety jumped, touched its cap, and turned to lead us down that familiar metal-walled corridor.

  “Where are we?” I demanded.

  “We are at what you call your ‘New York City.’ Now please come with me,” the bedbug said politely. We did.

  I looked around warily. The last couple of times I had been aboard that yacht I hadn’t known I was there, and wouldn’t have been able to do anything about it if I had. This time it was different. This time we had the bedbug along, and it was in charge. When we got to the end of the corridor, the Kekkety opened a door for us a
nd stood meekly beside it, waiting for orders.

  We entered into Henry Davidson-Jones’s personal cabin, the one that served him as an office on the yacht.

  I had been there before, too. I had telephoned Marlene Abramson from that very desk, but now the desk was vacant. “Where’s Davidson-Jones?” I asked.

  “Mr. Davidson-Jones is not aboard this vessel. Only the ship’s officers and crew are aboard. I will instruct them to say nothing. One moment, please, while I have this thing open this safe.” The bedbug gave a quick command, and the Kekkety trotted over to the wall, spun a dial, and opened it. It was a big safe, and well stuffed. The bedbug clambered on a chair to peer inside, then pulled out a number of packets of papers and tossed them on the desk.

  “Will this be enough?” it asked.

  Irene glanced at what the bedbug had taken out of the safe. She looked up at me unbelievingly and whispered, “Oh, my God!”

  What the safe had been stuffed with was sheaves of currency—all kinds of currency—francs and pesetas and pounds sterling, but most of all good U.S.A. dollars. Irene poked the nearest packet with a finger as though it might bite.

  My attitude toward large sums of money had changed since going to Narabedla. I just shrugged. “Let’s see what we’ve got,” I said, and picked up a few handfuls of it to examine, stacking them crosswise to admire them.

  “That’s not ours,” Irene said warningly.

  “Excuse me,” the bedbug interposed deferentially, “but the Mother informed me that you will need ‘money’ to carry out her instructions. Isn’t that what this is?”

  “It’s money, all right,” I confirmed. “Ms. Madigan just wonders if it belongs to us.”

  “Oh, yes, Mr. Stennis. Anything you want on this vessel ‘belongs’ to you,” the bedbug told us.

  Irene closed her eyes and sighed. Then she opened them and said resignedly, “Does that include clothing?”

  “Of course,” the bedbug confirmed.

  “Then I think you ought to see if you can find some in Mr. Stennis’s size,” she said, looking at me. “Or were you going to go out in the street in your pajamas?”

  When the bedbug was gone, Irene looked at me and sighed again. “Nolly,” she said, “I’m not off my rocker, am I? This is all real, isn’t it?”

  “It’s real. If it isn’t, we’re both off our rockers.”

  She nodded. “Just checking. There really are these flying-saucer people, then?”

  “Fifteen different kinds of them, right. Each one weirder than the next.”

  “Uh-huh,” she said. “And they’re all fighting with each other because they had some big thing that blew up or something, and they’ve got all these captured human beings that can’t go home—anyway, that’s what Tricia told me.”

  “As to that,” I said, “you know more than I do. I’ve been out of circulation for a while. But yes, that’s the general idea.”

  She nodded, philosophically accepting that the world she knew had gone out of its tree. “Yes, I thought that was the way it was. Well, I see what looks like an empty dispatch case over there on the table. Don’t you think we ought to fill it with some of this money?”

  So that was what we did. A very practical woman, Irene Madigan.

  If anyone should ever ask me how many ten- and twenty-dollar bills will fit in an ordinary dispatch case I can answer exactly. Enough to total $128,500. “What are we going to do with it all?” Irene asked.

  “Use it.”

  “Yes, I understand that, but for what?”

  I hesitated. Although the bedbug seemed to be on our side and in fairly complete charge of the situation, I didn’t know who might, sooner or later, be listening. A plan was beginning to form in my mind, but all I said was, “We’re going to get off this yacht with it as soon as we can. That’s the first thing.”

  “And what’s the second thing?”

  “When we come to the second thing,” I told her, “we’ll figure it out then. All we can do is play it by ear.”

  When we walked down the yacht’s gangplank there was snow on the ground and a mid-winter wind was coming up along the East River.

  “Oh!” cried Irene Madigan, pulling up the collar of her light summer jacket. “I wasn’t expecting this!”

  Neither was I, but I felt a sudden rising of the heart, because I knew where we were. The yacht was moored at the Twenty-third Street boat basin. I had jogged along these very streets.

  “We’re only a few blocks from my apartment,” I told Irene.

  “Can we go there?” she said, shivering.

  “Absolutely not! No. We’re not going where anybody might look for us. Come on, if we go over to First Avenue there are always cabs going uptown.”

  And so we did, but by the time a taxi stopped for us, the bedbug was whimpering with cold, even with his fur coat on. “Gramercy Park,” I told the driver, reaching for the handle of the door.

  It didn’t open. The driver had his hand resting on the door lock as he squinted out at us. “Is that a dog?” he asked. “Yes, that’s right,” I said. “Open the door.”

  “I don’t want no dog—excuse me, miss—crapping in my cab,” he informed us.

  I had almost forgotten what a New York taxi driver was like, but I hadn’t forgotten how to deal with one. “If he does, I’ll give you fifty dollars.”

  “Yeah?” The driver thought for a minute. “And you’ll clean it all up, too? Because my doctor says I’ve got a real sensitive stomach, you know what I mean? Okay, let’s go.” The hotel I’d picked was only ten minutes away. It wasn’t a bad ride, apart from the bedbug scrambling up into my lap to peer outside at the buildings, the people on the streets in their winter parkas and boots, the cars competing with us for lanes through the jams at each corner. In spite of the traffic, the driver mellowed as we went along. By the time we got to the hotel he was at the friendly just-before-the-tip stage.

  “That’s a real nice, ah, pooch,” he said admiringly. “Mind if I ask what breed he is?”

  “He’s a Lapsang-Oolang,” Irene said smugly. “They’re very rare in America. I think there are only half a dozen of them here, mostly in Beverly Hills.”

  And the bedbug obligingly said, “Woof.”

  When I registered us at the hotel I had a story all prepared. The damn airlines had lost all our damn baggage, even my credit cards—yes, it was certainly foolish of me to check my briefcase! But it wasn’t necessary. The clerk wasn’t interested. He didn’t even ask how come I still had some kind of briefcase tucked securely under my arm. He simply took my two-thousand-dollar cash deposit, welcomed me to the hotel, and handed over the little plastic things they use instead of door keys.

  The bellhop offered to relieve me of the dispatch case with the money, but I shook my head. “I’ll carry it myself,” I said, giving him a five-dollar bill. “Just show us to our rooms.”

  The rooms were actually adjacent suites, two of them, one for Irene Madigan and one for me to share with the bedbug. As soon as we all were in one of them the bedbug began to shed its woolly poodle suit. “It’s very hot in here,” it complained. “Why do you keep this place so hot? And it is very cold outside. You didn’t tell me that water existed in the solid phase on this planet. Also I’m hungry.”

  It wasn’t until it said that that I realized I was, too. It was not surprising. I hadn’t eaten a thing since I was on the Hrunw planet—a year and a half ago! That was easy to remedy. After some discussion I picked up the phone and ordered from room service. The club sandwich, milk, and a piece of cherry cheesecake for me, the shrimp salad and a pot of tea for Irene Madigan, and, “How about that filet of sole? Can we get that without any breading or anything like that? Fine. We’ll take two of them. And, oh, yes, we want them raw.”

  I put the phone down and thought. The bedbug was already busy, exploring the suite, piling cushions on a chair to reach the thermostat, flushing the toilet, worrying up a corner of the carpeting so it could see what was underneath. I opened the hall do
or and peered outside. No one was in sight. “Come with me,” I ordered the bedbug, and escorted it to the next-door suite, where I left it with the TV set (twenty-five channels to keep it amused; thank heaven for cable) and a “Do Not Disturb” sign on the door and returned to Irene Madigan.

  Who was waiting with growing impatience. “Nolly?” she said. “What are we doing, exactly?”

  It was an overdue question. “I think we can talk here,” I said, looking around. “I doubt the bedbug can hear us through the wall.”

  “There isn’t much to hear, because you haven’t been saying much,” she pointed out.

  I said, “We’re going to blow the whistle on Narabedla. There’s nothing else to do, is there?”

  She pursed her lips. “Well,” she said, “I’m not exactly arguing with you, but couldn’t we just go back to living our lives?”

  I shook my head. “I don’t think so. The Associated Peoples are all messed up right now, but what happens when they get back together again? Sooner or later they’re bound to. And then there’s Henry Davidson-Jones. The Mother let us come back, but he didn’t. He’s got a lot to protect, Irene. We’re a permanent threat.”

  I paused to see what she would say. What she said was, “I’m listening.”

  “So we’re going to lay low for a few days,” I explained. “We’re going to make affidavits. We’ll write out everything we know about Davidson-Jones and Narabedla, and our own experience. Then we’ll send copies to as many people we can trust as we can think of, with instructions that if they don’t hear from us they’ll send them to the police, the FBI, the CIA, their congressmen, The New York Times—everybody. And we’ll include proof.”

  “What kind of proof is that?” she inquired.

  “I’ve been thinking about that. First thing we need is a Polaroid camera, so we can take pictures of the bedbug with us; that should be a good start. Then we can tell them about all the people we know there. They can exhume some of the fake bodies and check fingerprints and dental records, like the one you buried thinking it was Tricia—”