Case and the Dreamer (28 page)

“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 F
ELIX
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.”

“Now wait a—”

“It’s testing time, Mister Historian, and I’m glad that’s your specialty and that I can speak to it and that I can make my point simply and quickly without sidling up to it. Do you know what a Catharist was?”

“Well, I—”

“A Huguenot, a Jansenist?”

Altair nodded. “The Huguenots were—”

Implacably, Dom Felix drove on: “Waldenses, Adamites, Irgun Zwei Leumi, Mormons, Mau Maus, Pieds Noirs, the Confederacy, Symbionese, Froets Raiders, Sans-Culottes, the Polar Gang, the IRA, the Anzac Hangmen, the PLO?”

“Most of those. A lot of them, anyway. The Polar—”

Overriding, Dom Felix demanded, “What were the issues of the Thirty Years War? Why the story that men and women were hanged for wearing the color green? Did you know that men were flogged
and churches were burned because they did or did not have candles on the altar? Why would a man be hunted down and speared like a boar because he had been seen raising his wine glass over a glass of water? What were the issues? What were the issues?”

“Well, in the case of—”

“Ah! You know. You know because you are Mister Historian. But suppose you are not Mister Historian. You are a modern Terran with a good education and a fine background, and I say to you, Catharists. I say, Waldenses. I say, what are the issues?”