The Fanciers & Realizers MEGAPACK

by Phyllis Ann Karr

  “Yes, the vital area. I can see most of your dog where she lies on the bed, and most of your chair beside it. But I should like to test opening the door.”

  “Yes, that is wise.” She stepped over to her chair, thus moving into his line of sight. “Very well, Raven, make your test.”

  To his relief, the attache’ case behaved as she had promised—fell away, and slid easily over the carpet in front of the door as he thrust it open. Tucking himself inside once again, he asked, “Uh ... What about the room light, She-wolf?”

  “I have thought much of this. I have decided that we must leave it on, so that when they come, they will see at once how I seem to sleep. Even more important, so that you will see as much as possible, for they may bring flashlights to use if they find the room dark. It would not be logical to fear tabbing on my room light, but untermenschen do not always act with logic. Is it bright enough for you, Raven?”

  “It might be two or three degrees brighter.”

  She moved out of his range of vision. The room light grew two or three degrees brighter. She returned to her chair and sat, balancing her walking-stick carefully between the bed and the window desktable. “Now,” she said, “we must wait and be quiet. They will not have heard us through the sound-soaking, but we must not risk their hearing us when they make to enter.”

  Valkyrie whimpered once more. The obersturmbannfuehrerin stroked her and murmured reassurances. After what seemed five minutes and was probably nearer thirty seconds, the dog having remained quiet for that length of time, the woman leaned forward and buried her head in her folded arms. Even to Corwin, her weariness looked far from feigned.

  He was infinitely grateful that she had opted for leaving on the light.

  And so, they waited.

  Chapter 18

  “Whatever life aboard a zeppelin was like for the proto-crews of the early 20th century, the crew of a modern NTC airship lives as well as the passengers—sometimes better. Weight is still at a premium (overtipping the scales means being transferred to groundside duty till the old uniform fits again—but dieters take heart! The menu for an NTC airship crew is carefully and tastefully planned, pun intended, for maximum savor, satisfaction, and nutrition with minimum calorie content). But space, up in the ship’s hull, is plentiful enough to give every crew member a private cubicle. Two, three, four, or even half a dozen who find themselves mutually compatible can increase their turnspace even more by removing the sound-soak partitions, stacking their bunks, and rooming together. ...

  “As a member of the cabin crew, your living quarters directly above the main gondola will be even better than the average crew member’s. As good, in fact, as an officer’s, to compensate for your need to be on clockround call. You’ll probably find, however, that fancy-class passengers tend to be a considerate, etiquette-minded, and self-sufficient bunch who rarely chime for the steward(ess) in the middle of the night except for the kind of solid emergency that gives deep service satisfaction to work out. ... Because every cabin crew has at least three members, your chances are at least 50-50 that you’ll have a fellow of the same gender to share these usually minimal clockround on-call duties. You may want to room with him or her ...”

  —Al Everymind, NTC Recruitment Manual (corporate undated copyright)

  * * * *

  Finally alone in her own cabin, Miz Peach Ming Blossom blessed the captain’s decision—it would have been ghastly to have to go on playing the calm automaton much longer in that roomful of people—and punched her pillow until she would have seen feathers flying, if she’d been a fancier who perceived it as stuffed with eiderdown, rather than a realizer who knew perfectly well that it was stuffed with moldfoam.

  Why, why had they sneaked those cups of soup, she and M. Stewart, M. Garson, and the cook, while the passengers were sipping their before-dinner cocktails? It was against Company guidelines, but they too often did it anyway, especially with delicacies like iguanice soup. M. Lightouch called it chef’s privilege, saying it dated from long before Company guidelines and the Company secretly recognized it. Well, Miz Ming hoped M. Lightouch was right about that, because the Company would certainly know about the practice now, whether or not they had known before.

  If she had lived in the 2020s, when everyday fashions were scandalous and both contraceptives and abortives available in streetcorner vending machines! Or a hundred years ago, in the Shameless Quarter-Century, the 1970s to ’90s, when every woman had to go prepared all the time, so that feverish research made the vending machines possible for the ’20s. But she had lived all her twenty-three years in the Century of Reason, the Age of Morality, when orgies were supposed to be “For Fanciers Only,” and reality perceivers were supposed to have some sense of responsibility!

  Not always much sense, perhaps. M. Flier had been tabbing at her ever since she took her position with NTC, every time they flew in the same ship or met groundside. “A joint procreational permit, a little bungalow in bamboo, a neighborhood florist shop if she absolutely insisted on a religious wedding ceremony according to whatever creed she chose.” And every time they had one or more couples on the passenger list: “Look at them, Mingling! Don’t they look happy enough for you?” This crossing had been especially bad, between the Olympians, still together after forty years, and the honeymooners—Yes, and why couldn’t M. Poe have come back and rescued me, after dragging his bride to safety? Hero, indeed! Or M.’s Carstairs, Catstep, Braniff, and Nkima—oh, yes, maybe they had been ordered to keep hands off unless they saw some chance of physical danger, but what else was ... And shouldn’t they have done something else than stand around watching and no doubt sniggering? Major von Cruewell hadn’t been so dainty with the Firebird—and why couldn’t she have locked me safe inside a stateroom, too? thought Miz Ming. That ballet dancer was a silly fool for complaining about it! She, at least, still had her virtue.

  Miz Ming didn’t even have a procreational permit. That alone ought to have protected her—from honorable men, and all the men she came into contact with were supposed to be honorable and responsible. Even fanciers respected good women, at least in public, and Cygnus was “in public,” no matter how small his onboard population might be. But nobody could be honorable and responsible and whammied all at once—that was M. Flier’s excuse now. But Miz Ming hadn’t gone grabbing! And, as nearly as she could determine, neither M. Flier nor anybody else had gone after the musician. And Second Officer Airborne and M. Stewart and even M. Gillikin seemed to have managed to keep their honor, despite the shambles of their dignity. And M. Windsong had at least limited his activities. Mother Frances ought to be thankful she’d had only the one, who kept all the others off her. Miz Ming had had—she feared—three. A virgin twenty-three years, and now three in one fling! And SHE had not gone grabbing for THEM! Why, she’d been ... what was the word…gang-raped! Thank heaven she’d been whammied too, or it must have been unbearable physically as much as mentally and emotionally. Jove, M. Flier, and Garson. And M. Tolliver had snatched a kiss—nothing more, she thought, from him, and for that she could almost hope he had a chance of getting away.

  And she didn’t think M. Flier had grabbed anyone else except her. So let him try to tell her again that the whammy made him do it—that the whammy wasn’t just a convenient excuse! Let him tell her again that if a baby should come just nine months from tonight, he would take responsibility, no matter who it most looked like ...

  Three! And not one of them with a visible trace of the Orient in his ancestry! That was the very reason she had practiced the oldest, surest, and safest birth control all these years, waiting for a pureblood Mandarin lover. There were so few of them left here in the Occident. So proud a heritage, and her own life options had been so much enhanced by the demand for pure ethnic types in various fields. With even a little acting talent, she could have gone far in stage or screen entertainment; with the slightest bent for scholastics, she could have graced the prestige
of any university’s Oriental Studies. Ethnic purebloods did not seek recruiters, recruiters sought them.

  No acting talent? The halfbrain who gave her that test should have seen her a few minutes ago, playing the composed little automaton, cleaning messes, fluffing cushions, helping to calm fancy-class passengers, pretending that not a thing had happened to herself, and all the while ... But she had listened to that halfbrain talent scout, and then she had listened to the NTC recruiters, with their assurances of “off-the-record” pay bonuses and fringe benefits for ethnic purebloods; and now she had only hours to decide whether she should risk pregnancy and arrange an emergency one-birth permit, or swallow a pill and risk blanking a life for being guiltlessly hybrid.

  Faintly, through the sound-soak, she thought she heard the thumps of pursuit. She hoped it would be a long pursuit, giving her a long time alone. Praying that the passengers would obey the captain, that none of them would chime for her to go down to them, she fell on her bed and sobbed into the moldfoam pillow.

  * * * *

  Andrew Gorky Stewart and Amahl Garson shared a cabin. Tonight Stewart wished they didn’t. It had seemed a good idea when he first agreed to it. The companionship, for one thing, with himself as older, wiser mentor and Garson as innocent young apprentice. For another thing, the Company both encouraged and tacitly expected it. The arrangement made it easier for the waiter to take the steward’s calls at need.

  Tonight, however, Garson would be of no use as substitute steward, and was at several minus points in his companionship quotient. Since they came up, he had done little except huddle in his upper bunk and snivel.

  “There was a time,” Stewart told him, “when crying was considered unmanly.”

  “Fancy-class words.”

  “All right, then, ‘unhuman.’”

  “‘Crying’s one thing every human does,’” said Garson, who read such poets as Housman and Wildemeyer.

  “Most healthy people,” Stewart said sarcastically, “find it pleasurable.” He no longer meant crying.

  In the upper bunk, Garson sniffled again and said, “I screwed Miz Ming, and she’ll never forgive me. And M. Olympian, and she’ll probably sue me—or he will, or they both will. And M. Ribald, and she scratched my cheek and hit my shoulder and ... it still aches.”

  “I was talking about the pleasures of whammy. But as to the other, yes, most normal, healthy people find that enjoyable, too, no matter what drysticks like Dr. Liveright and Brother von Hofer may try to preach.”

  “Don’t you grunchtalk Brother von Hofer—sir!”

  “And don’t you worry about their nibs the Olympians. They aren’t about to sue anyone except whoever smuggled the stuff aboard. Unless that happens to be you, Garson.”

  Garson heaved himself from the upper bunk and tried to take a swing at his cabinmate before he’d found his footing. Already lying propped on one elbow in the lower bunk, the older man had only to catch the younger one’s flying wrist. Garson sat on the floor with a thump.

  Two more dull thumps from outside the cabin seemed to echo Garson’s. Noises had to be very loud to carry through the sound-soak at all. Both men held their breath and listened.

  After a few moments, when no further noises reached them, Garson said shakily, “I wonder if they got him.”

  “We’ll know soon enough. And you can rest in the knowledge that if the Olympians sue anyone, it’ll more likely be Tolliver than you.”

  “That’s right. He got the stuff down for the soup. M. Stewart, do you think he’s really the smuggler?”

  “We don’t know when, exactly, he shipped aboard, or with what undeclared baggage, or how long he may have been up there stowing it before they found him.” The steward had thought it through. “And another thing: that infernal woman’s seeing-eye, sniffing-nose dog. Trained to scent out whammy. As I understand matters, that dog was the one who really caught Tolliver.”

  “Yes! Yes, that’s the way they told it. You’re sure the M.’s Olympian won’t sue anybody else, sir?”

  Stewart laughed. “They will naturally sue the smuggler or smugglers, if it should happen not to be Tolliver, or if he’s got accomplices, and if the authorities should ever find them out. And they may well sue the Company in any event, if the Olympians’ lawyers can make a case that has any chance of standing up in court. NTC is the only involved party able to pay the kind of damages their nibs will be interested in. The rest of us ... Well, they might try some kind of negligence case on M. Lightouch for failing to put all her ingredients through chemical analysis before using them, but it’d be laughed out of court. As would any kind of lawsuit they attempted against the rest of us. We’re all victims too, my boy, right along with the Olympians. They’d risk their prestige by trying to sue us. The group of us together wouldn’t have enough money to make it worth their gamble, anyway. NTC doesn’t pay us quite that much!”

  Stewart released Garson’s wrist. The young man stared at it as if trying to remember how he’d fallen in such a position, then got up off the floor and rubbed his right arm, which must have come near receiving a sharpish wrench. “Well,” he said, “... but the morals charges?”

  “Come on, Garson! You don’t think you’re the first young Ganymede whom Juno Olympian has seduced? You weren’t even her first choice for this crossing.”

  “Thanks.”

  “But if she should break the pattern and try hitting you with a lawsuit, hit her back with one of your own. You might try it anyway, whatever she does.”

  “And get squashed by their infinitillions? NTC might be able to put up a good enough legal team to go to court against them. I never could.”

  “Don’t overestimate the Olympian infinitillions,” Stewart said wryly. “Don’t worry about M. Jove, either. He’s never prosecuted any of his wife’s other Ganymedes, and he won’t now, with all the tail he twisted tonight. Ribald, Doc Caduceus, our own Miz Ming, and if I’m not mistaken, even our good captain. All of them could hit him with charges. Maybe even Chef Lightouch.”

  “Miz Ming and M. Ribald can hit me, too. And I don’t have any tri-billions to buy good defense lawyers.”

  “You won’t need them, I tell you!” Stewart was becoming impatient. “I can count on humanity’s oldest calculator, and have fingers left over, the number of juries that have found for the plaintiff in morals cases involving a whammy orgy. Most of the time, such cases never come to court at all. You still need to sleep it off, boy.” The older man got out of his berth and started for the cabinet. “I’m giving you a stiff rum and tonic.”

  “On top of whammy?”

  “The whammy’s long enough out of your system, or you wouldn’t be talking lucidly now. But I can give you a Dozoff caplet instead. They’re guaranteed nonreactive with anything.”

  “No ... we might be called. I can’t afford to be unavailable. I’m in enough trouble with the Company as it is.”

  “No more than are the rest of us. Rum and tonic, then.” Stewart mixed it, with considerably less tonic than rum, turned back, and forced it into Garson’s fingers. “Drink it like a mensch.”

  “Mensch.” The boy took two or three swallows, relaxed a little, and took two or three more. “In Major von Cruewell’s world, we’d be untermenschen too, you and I. Wouldn’t we, sir?”

  “Maybe. I don’t give a melted ice cube. Better climb back into your berth while you can still maneuver.”

  Garson handed back his rum and tonic, climbed into his upper bunk, and held his hand out again. Stewart returned the drink. Already it was taking effect. The boy’s smile grew dreamier with every swallow.

  Gratefully, for he much preferred a relaxed and slumbering cabinmate to a tense and sobbing one, Stewart eased back into his own berth.

  “M. Stewart.” Garson wasn’t much of a drinker. His words were already slurring. Of course, his drink had two parts rum to one part tonic. “Sir. How did you m
anage not to…to grab a…a lady ...”

  “Bad luck, boy.” Stewart eased his voice to a soothing murmur. “Plain, simple bad luck.”

  Garson made some response, but Stewart couldn’t catch the words. After a while, the boy spoke again, more clearly: “Maybe they should let the major question him. She’d get the truth, I bet.”

  “Undoubtedly,” Stewart replied, just loud enough to be heard assenting.

  Another little while, and Garson’s empty glass fell to the floor. Since the floor was an inch deep in carpet and the glass was lightweight crystalplast, it did not break.

  Andrew Gorky Stewart took some pride in his tested aptitude for calming people, even when he didn’t greatly like them and didn’t feel greatly in the mood. This ability was one of the reasons he had gone into passenger stewardship.

  * * * *

  Ilna had not chosen to tell M. Poe, but she did have sharper suspicions of some than of others. No longer of him, not very much, though secretly her nerves remained alert to the risk, and that stress-swollen proportion of her which was fantasy perceiver found it difficult to ignore the possibility that, guilty or not of this smuggling, the Raven would try to seize advantage of her seeming comparative helplessness. Her muscles tautened at every creak, every sigh from the wardrobe behind her, even though she understood that the most sincere and innocent ally, in such a hiding place, must sometimes seek to ease the cramp.

  But none of that was why she had kept her suspicions to herself. No. M. Poe had never shown any taint of doppelganger perception in his standard tests, had indeed given crucial testimony not so long ago in a murder trial. Her own private preliminary checks on the passengers and crew, facilitated by her Inindrucon number, had revealed that. But he was nevertheless a registered fancier. In the minds of many realizers, that was enough to lay anyone open to the suspicion of slipping now and again into dopplerism. Even she, Ilna von Cruewell, had occasionally had her identifications questioned, less on account of her sightlessness than on account of her tested fantasy perception in excess of ten percent. Therefore, she must give her witness no advance suggestion whom he might see. Besides that, if he knew whom she chiefly suspected, he would need greater determination than most people possessed in order to stand firm behind her.