Narabedla Ltd (38 page)

The big Ptrreek issued an order, and Purry translated. “But this is all very interesting to Mr. Tsooshirrisip,” he said. “He asks that others of you tell something about your life on your own planet before you were allowed to enter the civilized worlds.”

I looked around the room. Sue-Mary and Maggie were harmonizing in “Down by the Old Mill Stream” near the neglected skry, some of the other singers were drifting toward us, and Tricia Madigan was nowhere in sight. At the powder room, I supposed, and wished her luck. (I’d already tried the Ptrreek idea of sanitary facilities.)

The Kekketies were bringing us fresh drinks, and I decided to stay for the stories. I already knew some of them, but the party was getting to the relaxed state when just talking was pleasant, and besides it was interesting. Every one of us had a different history, every one of us came from a different time in the recent history of the Earth, and every one of the fourteen of us had had a different reason for being there. I was the only one who had no reason of my own at all, but Floyd Morcher came close. He had signed up on the promise of finding many, many people whose souls had not been saved; he accepted Davidson-Jones’s offer in order to mission to these poor heathen, and the exact nature of the “people” he found was only the first disappointment he had encountered on Narabedla. Eamon McGuire had been on Skid Row until Davidson-Jones’s people promised him a new life and a cure for his drinking problem. Maggie Murk had been a singing teacher until, along about 1975, she got into trouble when a fourteen-year-old girl in her class blew the whistle on her for improper sexual advances. Narabedla was an unexpected way out, and she regretted nothing about coming here, because on Narabedla she had found Sue-Mary Petticardi. Who was, she said, a little over ninety years old now. Sue-Mary had been a French singer, converted to an Army whore for the Germans when they occupied everything north of the Marne in World War I. She wound up with syphilis and a shaved head. Narabedla had cured the syphilis and given her a career. She didn’t miss her family, because they would no longer have anything to do with her after the Armistice. The Kaiser’s infantrymen had left her with a great distaste for males, and when Narabedla produced Maggie for her, her life became complete. Norah Platt had been sick, too, though with tuberculosis, and when old Dr. Lafourriere came to the hospital—

I stopped her there. “Who was Dr. Lafourriere? I thought Narabedla was American?”

“Oh, heavens, Nolly,
nobody
was American then! Nobody important, at least. No, this was long before Henry Davidson-Jones and all those; Dr. Lafourriere was a French gentleman, quite old, even then. He’s still here, you know. In slow time, of course, but I understand he hasn’t quite died yet.”

Mr. Tsooshirrisip, following the conversation through Purry’s rapid-fire translation, put in a comment. “Mr. Tsooshirrisip points out that you humans from the planet Earth should be very grateful for being allowed to enter slow time when death is near.”

Conjur Kowalski snorted. “Oh, we be
grateful,
all right. You just ask Mr. de Negras here, he tell you how
grateful
he is.”

Purry squeaked in alarm as he translated that. Tsooshirrisip’s reply was frosty. “Señor de Negras violated our hospitality,” he declared. “He was placed in slow time because he was a danger to you all, and justly so. After all, why should he be allowed to travel to Earth when I am not?”

That put a damper on the little circle. Conjur didn’t answer him. He just clamped a fist on my forearm and dragged me over to the bar. Barak intercepted us on the way with another testy request for more jitterbugging, and Conjur grinned and shuffled his feet and said, “’Deed we will, Mr. Barak, sir, soon’s Miss Tricia gets back.” Then, a safe distance away, he screwed up his face in pain. “Damn,” he said. “You got to say it don’t smell good around that one. You know what does it?”

I said doubtfully, “A lot of these aliens smell funny. Body chemistry, maybe?”

“Not Barak. He’s
uncivilized.
What we’re smellin’ is his piss, Nolly. He does it all the time, ’cause he can’t sweat. So he does like a dog when he hangs out his tongue; only Barak don’t
have
a tongue, so he gets his cooling from evaporation in that ugly patch of fur by his dipstick, you know? He just leaks into it and lets it evaporate to cool off.”

“But it isn’t hot in here.”

“Be grateful for small mercies, because that’s why he don’t smell as bad as usual.” He picked up a glass and handed one to me. “You get a chance to talk to our señor yet?”

“Not much. I don’t speak Spanish, you see.”

“Get your Purry to help you,” he advised. “Manuel’s just out of slow time for doing what you were talking about doing, and you might want to hear what he says. Or was all that talk about getting home just talk?”

Actually, he was beginning to annoy me. I thought it over. It was all complicated in my mind, but I said, explaining it to myself as much as to him, “I’d
like
to go home. Sooner or later, I mean. But I wouldn’t want to die for it, or kill anybody else—not even somebody like Boddadukti.” 

“Would you want it enough to take a chance?” he persisted.

“How big a chance?”

He shrugged, keeping his eyes on me.

“Come on,” I said, angry now. “Don’t crap me. Have you got some way to do it or not?”

“I don’t know,” he admitted. Then he looked around to see who might be listening and lowered his voice. “There’s ways,” he told me.

“What kind of ways?”

“Depends. There’s lots of these aliens would like to go to Earth, if they could, only right now they’re all too happy about their damn probe to get out of line. Only some of them ain’t as happy as others, you know?”

“I
don’t
know. Spit it out, Conjur.”

He said, “After we split this place we’re going to the Hrunw planet. There’s a dude there who might be willing to do something about it, if you want.”

I stared at him. “Are you putting me on?”

“I’m not.
He
might be. I never met the gentleman so far, but we could go pay him a little call if you want to.”

I hesitated. “I’d have to think about it,” I said cautiously. “Why, sure you would, my man,” he said, grinning.

“Wouldn’t want you to stick your neck out without figuring everything out first. Now I better find Trish and do some dancin’ for old Barak … but listen, Nolly. You get a chance, you do some talking with de Negras, you hear? I think you be interested.”

Barak finally got his wish. A band appeared and struck up “Rock Around the Clock” and switched to “Shaboom” in the authentic Crew Cuts style—of course, it was all Purry, piping away behind the hologrammed musicians—and Tricia and Conjur did their thing. I had another drink while I watched them, turning over what Conjur had said in my mind. It was very unlikely, I told myself, that Conjur had a lead on any plan that would work—after all, nobody had ever got back from Narabedla before, had they?

Then, when they came off, the band kept going. Conjur’s annoying persistence drifted to the back of my mind as I watched the gruesome spectacle of half a dozen Ptrreeks lumbering around the middle of the room as they tried to do what some of the opera troupe were doing. They seemed to be having fun.

I tried it myself, with Norah Platt, and then with Maggie Murk—well, not the real jitterbugging, the sort of prom-chaperone’s attempt to be one of the kids. I took time out for a little more champagne.

Then I switched to the bourbon (real bourbon) and ginger ale (the bottles had actual Schweppes labels on them) and, by gosh, it wasn’t such a bad party after all.

I even went around the floor a couple of times with Tricia, though it was obvious I wasn’t up to Conjur Kowalski’s standards. Besides, it was what she was doing for a living. When I suggested we sit the next one out she gave me a hug. “The other thing we could do,” she said, “is, hey, we could split. You want to take me home, Nolly?”

Well, there was only one answer to that. I hesitated just for a second, remembering something. “I did want to talk to Floyd Morcher,” I said.

“Oh, he’s been gone for hours—took after Eamon, trying to keep him sober. We don’t need to do that, though. Bring the bottle, why don’t you?”

Actually, we each took one. I didn’t want to try those midair passages again with all that liquor sloshing around in me, so we took the “elevator” down to the “lobby” and strolled across the now dark space (both suns were out of the sky) to our own tower. Even at that hour there were Ptrreek about, some of them gathered about another skry with the Andromeda probe still looping around its star, others going about whatever business might engage a Ptrreek.’ They looked at us the way vacationing senior citizens on Earth look at conventioneers in any Hilton or Hyatt, only these particular respectable “hotel” guests were fourteen feet tall. We waved amiably at them and continued on our way.

At Tricia’s door she said, “Coming in for a minute?”

There was only one answer to that, too. We popped the cork of the first bottle—both of them were champagne—and drifted over to her window. Tricia had shoved a sort of coffee-table-sized thing against the wall. We climbed up on it and looked out. There were about a million stars in the dark sky. Tricia leaned against me. I put my arm around her, and one thing led to another.

Why, I thought in pleased surprise, it certainly looks like the operation was a complete success.

Indeed it was. Although I’d never made love in a hammock before, it worked out just fine. And I didn’t think about the missing Ephard Joyce or about the probe to the Andromeda nebula or about what to say to Conjur Kowalski if he brought up the subject of going home again or, in fact, about much of anything else outside that hot, swaying, alien room for all the rest of that long night.

T
he next day was, I guess, about the happiest of my life. And Tricia seemed to second the motion.

Reason told me that going to bed with me probably was not really the most earthshaking event ever in Tricia Madigan’s experience. I knew of at least two of her quite recent lovers. She had not been sexually deprived. But reason just didn’t enter into it. For me it was—oh—it was the first glorious day of a wonderful spring, after a winter that had lasted for a dozen long years. And the funniest thing was that I felt, well,
guilty.
Not about the morality of it, or anything like that. About Tricia’s cousin Irene.

It was really stupid for me to feel as though I’d been unfaithful to Irene Madigan. There had certainly not been anything between Irene and me. But I did.

And, you know, I kind of enjoyed that feeling. It had been quite some time since I had had any opportunity to feel anything like that.

Everything in sight was going my way. I had my voice back. I had thrilled an audience. I once again had the use of the masculinity I’d been born with, and I had pretty Tricia Madigan to use it with. Who can blame me? I didn’t have much concern with willful old men getting themselves lost, like Ephard Joyce. I wasn’t worrying about people trying to lure me into some harebrained scheme for escaping back to Earth, like Conjur. I wasn’t worrying about any possible future problems at all. I was simply exultant, and Tricia was fond enough (or just nice enough) to meet my mood, which lasted all through that day.

It was a good long day for us, too. The troupe ware doing
Idomeneo.
It was the best of all possible operas for my purposes, which for that day were not entirely musical. It was too long to need Tricia’s opening number, and too lacking in baritone parts to require me.

So we stayed in our room. We had our meals on trays. Actually, it was a close thing whether we went to the performance that night or not, because I was much more interested in our own performances in the hammock.

But even miraculously repaired glands can do just so much in one day, and when it came near time for the opera we were there.

When I saw the first troops of tall, cloaked Ptrreek riding the moving stairways down to their seats I made an effort to count them. Of course, that was impossible, but it seemed clear that the house (I didn’t mind discovering) was not likely to be quite as packed for
Idomeneo
(without me) as it had been for
I Pagliacci
(with me) the night before. Even so, there were thousands of Ptrreek coming in.

Which raised a question in my mind. Just how much dough had I hauled in the night before? I knew I was earning plenty, but I didn’t exactly know what I was earning plenty of. They all paid for their seats, I was sure of that. But what did it come to in United States dollars? I couldn’t just go to the nearest currency exchange to find out. There weren’t any currency exchanges. So I asked Tricia, and she said shortly, “How would I know? I get paid by the week.”

“Oh, sorry,” I said. Meaning, oh, so you’re a little jealous, but I’ll try not to rub it in. Then I remembered what Binnda had told me. “Floyd Morcher’s supposed to know that sort of thing. Shall we go backstage and look for him?” She shook her head. “Morcher’s not real crazy about me, you know. You go ahead; I’ll see you inside.”