“Yes, sir.” Perk went slowly to the door, then turned. “Sir … why me?”
“Because you’re a fighter. You got to be … You always have been. You got the one thing I never had, the one thing that’ll make you the greatest Chief this ol’ town ever had—your name. A man’s got a strike against him with a name like Smith or Jones or Davis or Robinson, my kind of name but your name is Percival Noodlemix. You know what you’re goin’ to do with that name? You’re goin’ to put hair on its chest. You’re goin’ to put a gun in its hand. When you’re done they’ll be proud to name their firstborns after you.
“Think a minute, son. Forgettin’ all about the man an’ his work, can you think of a more sissified name than Ernest Hemingway?”
So began the aloe busts, the frisk for half-healed scrapes, the nose-trained dogs, the piles inspections, the choked court calendars, and the police walked proud, respected and feared, and, in time, the babies were named Noodlemix.
Why Dolphins Don’t Bite
Dom Felix invented the Receiver. So say the almanacs. So say the encyclopedias, the infobanks, the students.
Dom Felix invented the Receiver.
Dom Felix was not educated in the theory or trained in the technology or temperamentally suited to such an endeavor, but he did indeed accomplish the greatest single upward, outward leap for his species since the taming of fire.
Dom Felix invented the Receiver not because he was inspired but because he was terrified; not because he had achieved wisdom but because he had to confront the truth. Therefore, it had been obsession that brought about the Receiver—obsession and terror.
The accepted version is that Dom Felix brought the Receiver from Earth. This is not true; it was developed on Medea more than three terrayears after he was defrosted there. He brought something, sure enough. He brought news of the Great Acceptance, that strange mixture of philosophy, religion, and logic (though it was really none of these) that had so drastically changed the face of the earth. Had it been a religion, Dom Felix might have been termed a missionary. Had it been a philosophy, he would have come as a teacher. Had its logic been pure, he might never have come at all. Nevertheless, he came, filled with the wonder of the success of his credo, eager to bring it to another world.
Defrosting is a word, and Receiver is a word; the Receiver is an ultrachron (some say “transchron”) transceiver. Humanity has always encapsulated its pivotal discoveries in a word, at one time or another. The Pill. The Church. The Bomb. The Trip. Cryogenics had nothing to do with spaceflight, the detection of the bioenergetic aura, and the subsequent development of the phase-inversion field, which became operable before freezing was even tried for the purpose. Yet defrosting was still the name of the process by which the field was shut off and the activity of every single one of the passengers’ organs (and biochemical reactions and bacilli and viruses) could resume functioning precisely as they had fifty-one terrayears earlier. He or she would then know that the Trip was over.
“… four, three, two, one,” Dom Felix mumbled obediently, finishing the countdown he had begun half a century earlier, and then he inhaled and coughed at the strident edge of this different air, and “Oh?” at the realization that his naked body, suited in fever heat and yet chilled, was being deftly covered by another and his face was being buried in a mass of honey-colored hair that smelled of sea spray and almonds, and “Oh!” as he felt a sensation that (by his own choice) he had never known before. There was then a long series of undulations against which, in his present condition, he had no defenses, until, with an unspellable syllable that hurt his throat, he experienced an internal explosion that left him two-thirds unconscious and with his eyes screwed shut. He was remotely aware of the other body’s weight leaving his, and “Oh!” (indignantly) as he opened his eyes and saw a nude female deftly plucking a sheath from his most private apostrophe. She caught his eye and smiled. “Welcome to Medea,” she said. Then she left.
Dom Felix shook his head in denial of this reality and, in the process, saw that there was a tall, bearded man dressed in a waxy-looking short tunic standing by his bed. The man had a voice like a tuba. He said, “Welcome indeed, Dom Felix.”
Dom Felix raised his head to look in the direction of the vanished woman. “Who was that?”
“That? That’s Wallich, about the best wide-spectrum technician there is. Nothing but the best for you, you know.”
“Damn it,” said Dom Felix, surly. He ran over the big man’s words in his mind, trying to make sense out of the outlandish accent. “Damn it, I’m celibate.”
“Not now, you’re not,” said the man cheerfully “My name is Altair II. Two, written archaically with two I’s. To differentiate me from my father, who was Altair Junior, and to differentiate him from his father, who was just plain Altair. So although there have been three of us, I’m called Two. What’s the matter?”
Dom Felix looked down at himself and made a vague gesture. “I feel self-conscious, lying here like this.” He was a short, broad man with thick, black brows over what seemed to be pupil-less black eyes, a short, thick beard, short, thick fingers and legs, and a lot of hair on his body.
“Never thought. Sorry,” said Altair, and, crossing his arms downward, he grabbed the hem of his tunic and whipped it off over his head, whereupon the woman Wallich entered. She was dressed a bit.
“Oh, God,” said Dom Felix. He sat up to protect himself. It made his head swim, and he could feel the blood draining from his face. “Easy,” said Wallich; she was by his side in one swift stride, holding him competently by one shoulder and the small of his back.
“I think the clothes thing has turned around again,” said Altair.
“Oh, sorry,” said Wallich, releasing Dom Felix’s shoulder, her hand darting to the clasp on her shoulder. Dom Felix managed to catch her wrist. “Please, no. Just get me my clothes.”
“Right here,” said Altair. He lifted a storage case marked FELIX and placed it on a small table and tapped a silver patch on the side. The top sprang open, and he lifted out a heavy mass of black fabric. “The group that came here not three years ago—everybody covered from ankles to nose—screamed when they saw what we wear here. Of course, that was a slow ship. It took almost eighty terrayears to get here. The one before that, we couldn’t keep clothes on ’em. They felt it was dishonest. Even out at the Rim, they’d rather freeze than be dishonest.”
“Please,” said Dom Felix, holding out one hand for the garment. He swung his feet over the side of the bed and again felt the rush of faintness. Wallich put her arms firmly around him. When he could, he disengaged them. “I’m all right. Please.”
“That clothes thing,” said Altair, absently turning the heavy garment over and around, evidently trying to find the most convenient way to hand the thing to Dom Felix. “The pendulum swings, all through history, but it doesn’t swing straight, and the frequency varies. Certain times and places, it was immoral to display feet. Other places, knees. Faces. Genitals. Bellybuttons. Buttocks. And combinations thereof. I have a theory; the human race is innately disinterested in sex. The more so, the nakeder it gets. So when people find the libido starting to atrophy, they begin decorating the sexual emblems and pretty soon cover them up, which is a very good way to put sex under forced draft. If it weren’t for that, the species would’ve died out long ago. What we are, what we’ve always been, is cripples. We got our rut cycles amputated; so we have the clothes thing instead.”
Dom Felix blew air out through his nostrils and started to get up. Wallich said, “Altair, stop chattering and give it to him; he’s not ready to walk yet.”
“Oh, sorry.” Altair handed the garment over, and Dom Felix found a hem and pulled the thing on over his head. He stood up and, with Wallich’s deft assistance, got his arms through the sleeves and let the garment fall around him. It was a heavy black burnoose that came halfway down his shins. He sat back, trembling, and made himself raise the hood and draw it over his head. With the beard beneath and the shadows
above, his face retreated into a dark cave, from which, astonishingly, his black-on-black eyes glowed brightly.
“That’s better.”
“Put yours on too, Altair.”
“Huh? Oh. Oh, yes.” Altair scooped up his tunic and donned it. He gestured at the burnoose. “That thing’ll be great for Circle Three on out, but it’ll smother you in here.”
“Surely that’s not all you wear on Medea.”
“What you wear on Medea depends on where you are on Medea. Medea has everything, all the time—cold, hot, wind, wet, dry, desert, mud, and supermud. Here, where we are, is Pellucidar. Center of the earth. Ancient term derived from the days when Terrans lived in burrows and ate rice. This section is central to Earth Main, which is the middle building of this colony, which is called Argoview, the dumbest name of any of the Terran enclaves, because the only places there can be an enclave on this crazy blob are places where you can view Argo. So air, light, and humidity in Pellucidar are as near Earth average as we can get. It’s positive pressure, like a ‘clean room.’ Any airflow is outward from here, so the pressure stays the same. Then there are five concentric segments, where the air is increasingly mixed with Medean air; you move out at your own pace until you get used to it. When you get used to it and come back in here, you find the lights too bright and the air too thin and the oxy-mix making you a little ding-y.”
“It shows,” said Wallich, not unkindly. To Dom Felix she said, “You stay here and talk to Altair, and relax. Please, relax. Your body has been through a lot, and your head doesn’t know it yet, not really. I’ve got to see how your fellow passenger is getting along.” She waved and left.
“Oh, God. Kert Row,” said Dom Felix. Altair raised an eyebrow. “Is that Acceptance?” he asked good-naturedly.
“Has nothing to do with Acceptance,” Dom Felix said testily. “Kert Row is an agricultural expert sent out here with new hardware dreamed up according to new theories by Occam, and for two and a half weeks during prep he did nothing but talk to me about the theories and the hardware. It happens that I have no understanding and no talent in either area. I wish I had. If I showed irritation then, it was at myself.”
Altair came over and sat down next to him. “You know I like you,” he said candidly. “Most people, ’specially Trippers trying to make a heavy impression, go all out to hide what they’re not good at. You come right out with it.”
“Well, thanks. Thank you.” Somewhere in that portable dark, the shadowed face showed that it was moved.
“And you’re not stupid. Fifty-one percent of smart is knowing what you’re dumb at. An old financier named Brentwood said that.”
Dom Felix was now close to being embarrassed. “Go on with what you were saying before.”
“Oh, yes. Pellucidar. Clothes. We wear what we please, or nothing, if we feel like it. Why should we? Controlled environment, and, anyway, like it or not, the skin is the largest organ of the body. It needs light, and it needs to breathe, and it was never meant to be covered up all the time. We grab as much light and this air as we can, when we can. There’s damn little light and far too much of the other air out there.”
“That’s too bad,” said Dom Felix.
“What’s too bad?”
“Sorry. Thinking aloud. About what I have to do here. Pass it, please.”
“No, tell me about what you’re going to do. Acceptance, and all that.”
“Well, how much do you know?”
“Not too much. What I’ve learned, I like. From what I hear, it’s changed the face of the earth. Nations don’t fight with nations, even brothers don’t fight with sisters. A man about to cheat you in a game, or a deal, suddenly tells you so and plays it straight. A contractor never estimates the highest price he can get—just his cost plus a fair profit. A man running for election starts out by saying everything bad he ever did and tells the voters what bad habits he has that he hasn’t been able to break, before he says anything about how good he is. That right?”
“That’s almost right. I mean, it’s not a hundred percent yet. But it’s getting there. It is better than it’s ever been, back there on Earth. There’ve been some bad times there, you know.”
“Sure I know. I didn’t tell you. I’m a historian. An historian, if you’re a purist in the Old Tongue. What that means is that I read a lot, think a lot, see what of that which I read and think applies to where we are and where we’re going, and pontificate about it. Out here we study Old Earth probably a lot more than the homebodies. It keeps us together.”
“And yet you’ve sent for me.”
“Oh, that. Well, yes, God knows we need you. We’re just about split in two—if we’re not already. Two and a third, maybe. It’s the Gengies, you see.”
“Gengies?”
“Genetically Engineered. They like to call themselves Truforms. They’re all Medeaborn—if you can call making them born. They’re, well, produced. If we need a supergenius math type or a guy this wide and only this high to work in the mines, we make one, that’s all. Not that we ever go too far away from the norm. They may have a specialty, but they have to live with us.”
“Us. Them.”
“Well, damn it, there is a difference. We’re Naturals—Nats, we call ourselves. We let God choose the genes, yes, and love. That’s the way it’s always been; that’s what made us two-legged critters what we are. Now they come along and act as if they’re better than us!”
“Are they?”
“Whenever we design them to be, sure. Their specialties—they’re tops. Why not? But do you think they’re grateful? No way! Look, they try to reason it both ways. They’re superior because they’re good at what they were designed for. And they’re deprived because we have history, an ancient homeland, racial memory, and they haven’t. They’re better than us, and they’re deprived. They can’t have it both ways, but they want it both ways And there’s going to be trouble. Big trouble, and Medea isn’t big enough for trouble like that. Well, Medea is, but the Terran enclaves are not. There’s talk of the Gengies driving us out.”
“Out where?”
“Out there. It’s real hell out there, Dom Felix.”
“Who talks of the Gengies driving you out?”
“Well, everybody.”
“Who, everybody? Are the Gengies telling you that?”
“They aren’t telling us anything!”
“Ah. So it’s you Nats who are telling one another that.”
“Well, it figures.”
“Does it?” Dom Felix paused. “Tell me something. Do they like to be called Gengies?”
“Oh, man, you’d better not. Not to their face.”
“Mm. And what do they call you among themselves?”
Dom Felix thought the man colored. When the answer seemed too long in coming, Dom Felix turned wordlessly toward him and waited again. At last Altair said in a low voice, “Vaj.”
“What?”
“Singular, Vaj. Plural, Vags. It means ‘vagina,’ vagina-born. And a lot is in how they say it, too. There’ve been some pretty bad fights.”
“I can imagine. What’s this third group you mentioned?”
“Oh, them. They’re Mules.”
“Mules?”
“Once in a long while a Nat gets a Gengie pregnant. Though not me. They make me nervous. And the other way ’round, too. And usually if a baby gets born, it grows up sterile. Well, you’ve heard of that before, if you know any biology. Take a lion and a tiger. Big cats, same diet, pretty much the same habits. They won’t breed. If you try it under laboratory conditions, you might make it once in twenty tries. And if you don’t get a stillbirth, you’ll get a mule.”
“Yes, I know that. It’s the very definition of species. One of the basic tenets of Acceptance is the simple scientific fact that there is no form of humanity on Earth that cannot breed readily with any other. Never mind should. Never mind might. They can. Once you grasp that, you begin to understand man as what he is—a single species.”
�
��And what we have here,” said Altair, “is a different species, and that’s all we’re saying.”
“You still get Mules, though, and that means you’re still very, very close. Tell me. What do the Mules think?”
“That’s what we don’t really know. Dom Felix, do you know what a ‘swing vote’ was in an old-time election?”
“That’s when a small party has enough votes, in a close election, to decide which of the big ones will win, although they themselves have to lose.”
“I like you better all the time,” Altair said warmly. “Well, that’s the situation with the Mules. We can’t tell where they’ll throw their weight. I’ll tell you this about them, though. In brains and in work, they vary from excellent all the way down to good.”
“That’s the nicest thing you’ve said about me all day,” said Wallich from the doorway, in a dangerously sweet voice. “Dom Felix, I’m one of those Mules. Hee haw, and all that.”
“Oh, Lord, Wally, I, I didn’t, I mean I …” Altair turned almost frantically to Dom Felix. “Listen, there stands the best synthesizing technician in all Medea. There is nobody like her, nobody. Chemistry, biochemistry, physiotherapy, psychotherapy, she can run any piece of equipment in the place. Yes, she can fix any piece of equipment. That’s what I was just telling him, Wally!”
“I’m so pleased,” she said steadily, and there were tears in her eyes. “Now tell him that I have ears as good as yours, feelings as tender as yours, and that I can hurt. Just as much as a real person.” And she turned quietly and left.
Altair sprang to his feet. “Man, I did indeed blast it good. I’d better go and—”
With a cold sternness Altair had not yet seen, Dom Felix pointed to the bed beside him. “You’d better sit right down again.” A moment of confusion, then Altair came and sat. More gently, Dom Felix said, “It won’t do a bit of good to chase after her now if I’m any judge, and I am. Later will do, and I’ll help if I can, and I can.”
“Now you’ve been almost embarrassing in expressing your liking for me. I’m going to embarrass you twice. One: I like you. I like you very much. I think you’re super-bright, and I think your instincts are in the right place, and I think you’re basically honest. Two: I think your long view of human affairs has preoccupied you so much that you’ve lost your link to the short view: here, now Medea. You told me that your function here was to apply that link, and I am telling you that you are not doing it and that therefore you are not doing your Job.”
Case and the Dreamer Page 22
