Fly Beebody hunkered on his knees, his fingers interlaced, babbling prayers in a high, shrill voice. Luke stood staring around curiously. Mrs. Withers stood near him, still shivering, hugging herself. Roger dumped his burden at his feet, savoring the grateful heat. The sun, halfway to zenith, glared blindingly on choppy blue water, sand, and rock.
"No signs of life," Luke said. "Where would ye say we are, Roger?"
"That's hard to say. In the tropics, apparently. But what part of the tropics is as barren as this?"
He knelt, studied the sandy ground. "No weeds, no insects." He walked down across the loose sand to the water's edge, bent, and scooped up water in his hand and tasted it. It was curiously flat and insipid. No fish swam in the shallows, no moss grew on the rocks, no seaweed drifted on the tide.
"No seashells," he called. "Just a little green scum on the water." As he turned to start back, he became suddenly aware of the sunlight beating down at him, the drag of gravity. He sucked air into his lungs, fighting a sense of suffocation that swept over him. Ahead, Fly Beebody's chanting had broken off; he half rose, bundlesome in the blanket coat, his mouth opening and closing like a fish. Luke was struggling to support the widow, who sagged against him. Roger broke into a stumbling run.
"Back!" he called. "Get back through! Bad air!" He reached the group, caught the woman's limp hand.
"Grab Beebody's hand!" he gasped to Harwood. He caught up the bundle. As his vision began to fade into a whirling fog of flickering lights, he groped forward, found the Aperture, half-fell through it.
He lay in warm, foul-smelling water, his arms buried to the elbows in soft muck, breathing in great lungfuls of humid, steaming air. A dragonfly with gauzy, foot-long wings hovered a yard away among the finger-thick stems of giant cattails, buzzing like an electric fan. As he sat up, it darted away, eerie, pre-storm sunlight glinting on its polished green body. Beside him, Luke struggled to his feet, black with reeking mud, dragged Mrs. Withers upright. Beebody floundered, spitting sulphurous water.
Standing among reeds higher than his head, Roger could see nothing but more of the same, stretching away endlessly in all directions.
"This must be an era between periods of mountain building," he said. "There was very little dry land on the planet then. I suppose we're lucky we didn't end up treading deep water."
There was a sudden splash near at hand, a sound of violent threshing in the water. The source was invisible through the screen of reeds, but spray flew up from a point twenty feet away and ripples moved toward the sodden travelers. A deep hoot sounded, like a breathy foghorn. The sounds of struggle grew louder, closer. As Roger floundered toward the portal, a finned snake as big around as his thigh burst into view, wrapped around and around a short-snouted crocodile whose jaws were clamped hard in the sinuous body. The struggling pair threshed through the reeds in a churn of crimsoned water. Roger jumped for the ribbon of light, pulling Mrs. Withers after him. There was the flash of prismatic color—
—then a cold rain was driving at him, swirled into his face by a gusty wind. Through the whirling sheets of water, a cluster of sagging, irregularly shaped tents was visible, their sodden leather coverings, marked with crude symbols, whipping in the wind.
"This doesn't look promising," Luke shouted above the sounds of the storm. "I say let's move on without waiting to get acquainted."
"Why be hasty?" Roger countered. "For all we know, we're outside—" He broke off as a bearded, dark-faced man thrust his head from the nearest tent flap. For a moment their eyes met; then the man plunged, grabbing for a short, curved sword slung at his side, and advanced, yelling.
By common assent, the party joined hands and plunged back through the shimmering barrier.
They were on a great veldt, where endless herds of game grazed and vultures circled overhead. Luke and Mrs. Withers stood by the Aperture to mark it while Roger and Beebody, the latter still bundled, sweating in his coat, walked away through the sea of chest-high grass.
Fifteen minutes later, they approached the same spot from behind.
"Still trapped," Roger said. "Let's go on."
—and were . . . on a mountainside above a wide valley with a lake far below. They went on, found themselves on a wide tundra, where far away a pair of huge, shaggy animals lumbered, head-down, into the biting wind. Next, they splashed knee-deep in cold water, near a guano-whitened headland where seabirds circled, crying. After that, there was a dry, brush-choked gorge that led back onto itself when Roger explored its twisting length. Then a bamboo thicket beside a wide, muddy river, under a gray, humid sky.
"It's a marvel how much dreary landscape the world has to offer," Luke panted after a quarter of an hour of splashing through the shallows had led them back to their starting point.
"We'll have to try again," Roger said. "We can't stay here." He swatted one of the huge, inquisitive mosquitoes that swarmed about their heads. They stepped once more through the Aperture—
—and were . . . in a wide field of flowers, under a balmy sky. All around, wooded hills rose to an encircling ring of snow-capped peaks. A small falls tumbled down over a rocky outcropping nearby, feeding a clear river that wound off across the plain.
"How beautiful!" Mrs. Withers exclaimed. "Roger—Luke—can't we stay here awhile?"
"I'm wearied with this scrambling from one climate to the next," Luke agreed. "And we're no closer to escape than ever."
"It suits me," Roger said. "And I'm hungry. Let's get a fire going and rustle a meal."
After they ate, Mrs. Withers wandered off, picking the crimson poppies and yellow buttercups that abounded there, accompanied, grumbling, by Luke. Roger stretched out on the grass by the Aperture, Beebody squatting uncomfortably beside him.
"Master Roger," the parson said awkwardly after the others had passed out of earshot. "I . . . I propose that we come to terms, thee and me."
Beebody hunkered closer. "As thee see, thy strength avails naught against mine. Try as thee will to draw my soul into Hell, still I resist, sustained by prayer and righteousness."
"Try to get this, Beebody," Roger said. "As far as I'm concerned, you can keep your soul. All I want is a way out of here."
"Aye—a path back into the Pit thee came from!" Beebody hissed. "Think thee not I can smell the brimstone on thee—and on the imp who takes the form of Luke? Did I not mark how thee two stood against thy fellow demon, sent no doubt by thee to slay Job Arkwright and his mistress." His eyes went to the bundle. "And think thee not I understand why thee was so set on bearing the foul remains of thy ally with us?"
"Go to sleep, Fly," Roger said. "You'll need all the rest you can get."
"I have prayed and meditated, even as by the strength of my virtue I kept thee from the path thee seek; and it comes to me now that, to preserve my earthly husk to continue the struggle against sin, it would be meet to come to agreement with thee. Otherwise will we both exhaust ourselves."
"Come to the point," Roger said roughly. "What do you want?"
"Take the woman," Beebody whispered. "Spare me! Return me to the true world, and I'll omit thee in my curses!"
"You're an amazing man, Fly," Roger said, studying the cherubic face, the worried eyes. "Suppose I take you, and free Odelia instead?"
"Nay, demon, my works are needed in the sinful world of fallen man! I cannot allow such a victory to the Dark One!"
"Your concern for the populace is touching," Roger said, "but—" He broke off as Fly Beebody's eyes went past him, widening. The fat man rose to his feet, pointing. Roger turned to look. A shaggy brown bear had appeared at the edge of the forest, a hundred feet distant. It moved forward confidently, directly toward the two men.
"I yield!" Beebody babbled. "Send not this new devil to me! I consent to join with thee, to aid thee in thy fell designs! Take the woman! I'll help thee now! I'll fight thee no longer!"
"Shut up, you jackass!" Roger snapped. "Luke!" he called. "Get Mrs. Withers through the Aperture!"
Luke and Mrs. Withers started back at a run. The bear, interested in the activity, broke into a heavy gallop. "Beebody!" Roger shouted. "Help me distract him until they're clear!" From the corner of his eye, he saw the parson move—in the opposite direction. He turned in time to see him lift the bagged alien, swing the bulky bundle toward the Aperture.
"Fly! Don't! You might be dumping that monster in among defenseless people!" Roger grabbed for the blanket, but Beebody resisted with surprising strength. For a moment they struggled back and forth, Beebody red of face and rattling off appeals to a Higher Power, Roger casting looks over his shoulder at the rapidly approaching animal, and at Luke and Odelia Withers, coming up fast from the right.
Suddenly his foot slipped. He felt himself whirled about, off balance. He tottered back, saw the glint of the Aperture expanding around him, saw Beebody's flushed face, Luke and the woman behind him, and beyond, the open jaws of the bear.
—to be replaced by an all-enclosing gray. For an instant, Roger teetered on one toe, struggling for balance. Then a giant hand closed on his body, yanked him up, around, and out into the brilliant light of a vast, white-floored room.
He stood half-dazed, staring around at looming banks of gleaming apparatus under a glowing ceiling that arched overhead like an opaque sky, hearing the soft hum and whine of machinery that filled the air. Nearby stood half a dozen sharp-eyed men with excellent physiques shown off by form-fitting outfits in various tasteful colors.
One of the men stepped forward, emitted a sharp, burping sound, looking at Roger warningly.
"I hear the Asiatics do that after dinner," Roger said in a tone close to hysteria. "But I never heard of using it as a greeting."
"Hmmm. Pattern noted: Subject either fails to understand, or pretends to fail to understand Speedspeak. I will therefore employ Old Traditional." He eyed Roger sternly. "I was just advising you that disorganizer beams are focused on you. Make no attempt to employ high-order mental powers, or we will be forced to stimulate your pain centers to level nine or above."
"Your behavior has puzzled us," the man went on in a cool, mellow voice. "We have followed your path through the Museum. It appears aimless. Since this is incompatible with your identity, it follows that your motives are of an order of complexity not susceptible to cybernetic analysis. It therefore becomes necessary to question you. It is for this reason that we have taken the risk of grappling you from the Channel."
"My m-motives?" Roger gulped. "Look here, you fellows have got the wrong idea."
"You continue to broadcast meaningless images of flight and primitive fear," his inquisitor stated. "These delaying tactics will not be tolerated." A swift flash of pain tingled along Roger's bones.
"What was the principle underlying your choice of route?" the questioner demanded.
"There wasn't any!" Roger yelped as the pain nipped him again.
"Hmmm. His movements do fit in with a random factor of the twelfth order," a second man spoke up. "It appears the situation is more complex than we imagined."
"His appearance here at this particular juncture is a most provocative datum," another pointed out. "It suggests a surveillance aspect we've failed heretofore to include in our computations."
"He's obviously an incredibly tough individual, capable of enduring any mere psychophysical stimulus without breaking," a man in powder blue contributed. "Otherwise he would never have been dispatched on his errand—whatever that might be."
"In that case, we may as well proceed at once to mechanical mind-stripping techniques," a lemon-yellow Adonis proposed. There was a soft click! and a large, white-enameled, blunt-snouted machine like a gigantic dentist's drill swung into position directly over Roger.
"Wait a minute!" he protested, and attempted to back away, only to discover that he was paralyzed—rooted to the spot. "What's the big idea?" he blurted. "Let me out of here! For all you know, I had important business pending back where I came from! I might have been on my way to land a high-pay, low-work job! I could have been rushing to marry the richest and most beautiful woman in the Middle West! I might even have been on my way to Washington to deliver information vital to national security!"
"What a mind-shield!" a man in raspberry pink said admiringly, studying his dials. "If I didn't know better, I'd swear he was only a high-grade moron with an IQ scarcely above one hundred forty."
"That's it!" Roger agreed. "Now we're getting somewhere! I don't know who you gentlemen think I am, but I'm not! I'm Roger Tyson, gentleman adventurer—"
"Come now," the man in blue said kindly. "Do you expect us to believe that your appearance in the Museum today—if you'll pardon the expression—just as we are about to launch our long-awaited probe mission down the null-temporal Axis is sheer coincidence?"
"Absolutely," Roger said fervently. "As a matter of fact, I haven't the faintest idea where I am now. Or"—a look of dawning wonder appeared on his face—"when I am!"
"Our era is the twenty-third decade after the Forcible Unification. About twenty-two forty-nine, Old Calendar—as if you didn't know."
"Three hundred years in the future?" Roger's voice failed. He swallowed a golf ball that had lodged in his throat. "I guess it figures. I should have known—"
"We wander afield, S'lunt," a man in deep purple interrupted. "Jump-off hour approaches. Now, quickly, fellow! What was your mission?"
There was a small stir at the edge of the circle of men, but Roger scarcely noticed, due to a sensation like an aching tooth centered in the small of his back.
"Explain the nature of the binding forces subsumed in the Rho complex!"
A heavy boot trod on the tip of a long tail Roger had never suspected he possessed.
"Define the nature and alignment matrices of the pulse guides!"
A blunt saw amputated Roger's antlers. The horns, he saw, squinting upward through a haze of pain, were imaginary, but the attendant sensations were vividly real.
"Enumerate the coordinate systems postulated in the syllogistical manipulations, and specify the axial rotations employed!"
A wrecker's ball swung from somewhere and flattened him to a thin paste.
"Hmmm. I have a feeling this entire procedure is illegal, under the provisions of Spool Nine Eighty-Seven of the Social Motivation Code!" someone whispered in Roger's ear.
"I demand a lawyer!" Roger squalled.
"Eh?" the man in blue inquired. He turned to his chartreuse-clad associate. "R'heet, run a quick semantic analysis of that utterance, in the fourth and twelfth modes, with special attention to connotational resonances of the second category."
"This whole thing is illegal!" Roger yelled. "Under Spool, uh, Nine Eighty-Seven of the Social, uh, Motivation Code!"
"How's that?" The man called S'lunt eyed Roger sharply. "How do you know of the Code?"
"What difference does that make?" the voice hissed. "Illegal is illegal!"
"What does that matter?" Roger echoed. "Illegal is illegal!"
"Just because we're faced with an emergency, there's no reason to stoop to totalitarian techniques!"
"That's right," Roger nodded vigorously. "Just because there's an emergency, is no reason to act like Hitler!"
"I don't know, S'lunt," the pink-garbed dial watcher said. "These readings are persistently in the retarded sector. I have a sneaking suspicion we may have made a mistake."
"You mean—he's not an agent of the Entity?"
"Of course not!" Roger shouted. "I'm just a poor wayfaring stranger named Roger Tyson!"
"In that case, why did he register so strongly on our gamitron detectors?"
"Maybe the varpilators need adjusting."
"Better check your varpilators," Roger said quickly.
"And while you're at it, you might just realign the transfrication rods."
"And take a look at the transfrication rods!"
"See here, you seem to know a great deal about Culture One technical installations," S'lunt said accusingly.
"Maybe you're from our future, and have an interest in history."
"That's right, how do you know I'm not from the future, hah?"
"Say—in that case, he could tell us what's going to happen next back home!"
"Gad! What an exciting prospect!" S'lunt said eagerly. "Tell me, sir, how did General Minerals do on the big board in fifty?"
"Did that intelligent slime-mould on Venus turn out to be alive?"
"Did they ever get the LBJ Memorial Asteroid towed out of the Mars-Terra space lane?"
"It's kind of hard for me to remember while I'm paralyzed with my neck at this angle," Roger pointed out.
"Dear me, forgive me, sir!" S'lunt flicked a switch and Roger felt himself unfreeze.
"R'heet, get our guest a chair. How about a little draught of medicinal alcohol, sir?"
"Thanks; don't mind if I do." Roger accepted the libation, sank into the seat, which squirmed sensually, adapting itself to his contours.
"Now, you were saying about the election of fifty-two . . . ?"
"The, ah, dark horse won," Roger improvised. "By the way, how about letting me out of this place now?"
"Did the Immortality Bill pass?"
"By a landslide. If you don't mind I'd like to just be dropped at the edge of town—any town."
"By george, what did Alpha Expedition Three report?"
"Dense fog," Roger replied tersely. "And if it's all the same to you, I'd like to get going now, before—"
"Amazing! Did you hear that, R'heet? Dense fog!"
"Ahem. What did history record as to the attainments of Technor Fourth Class S'lunt?"
"Yours was a dizzying career. I wonder, while you're at it, could you just make that Chicago? I've got a brother-in-law there. Well, not exactly a brother-in-law; actually he's the brother of a girl who was engaged to the fellow who later married my sister's husband's brother—but you know what I mean."
"I wonder if those hemlines ever went down again? I mean, for some girls it's all right, but if you don't happen to have a cute navel . . . "
"What about my General Minerals shares?" S'lunt inquired plaintively.
"They dropped to the ankle," Roger announced.
"Good Lord! But I assume they recovered and rose again? Probably higher than ever, eh?"
"Actually, they went even lower than that," Roger groped. "Of course, there was a corresponding adjustment at the top."
"Well, I should think so! That scoundrel F'hoot should never have been elected Chairman of the Board!"
"At the top? Wouldn't that be rather revealing?"
"In the end, the whole thing was exposed," Roger amplified desperately. "But about my going home . . . "
"Well, I'm glad to hear that F'hoot's chicanery was brought out in the open," S'lunt commented.
"I really shouldn't be thinking about fashions at a time like this, but I just can't help wondering what eventually happened to women's clothes."
"What about the rest of the Board?" S'lunt asked.
"Uh, they finally got rid of them entirely," Roger said, "but—"
"You don't mean . . . they did away with the whole capitalistic system?" R'heet exclaimed.
"It was a good thing, actually." Roger attempted to justify the implication. "It put an end to all that speculating."
"Gracious! I'm glad I never lived to see it!"
"Hrumph! Well, I hope it doesn't happen in my time!" a man in blue put in.
"Actually, it'll be along in the very near future, so how about turning me loose and concentrating your attention on your investments?"
"It appears I'll be stripped of my holdings entirely!" S'lunt predicted.
"History records that everyone was allowed to keep the bare essentials."
"B-but—what about when it got cold?"
"It's an outrage! I'm to be beggared—at my time of life?"
"With your reputation, I'm sure you'll find a partner with money," Roger suggested. "He'll probably have some way-out ideas to try, too."
"Why, of all the impertinent suggestions!"
"I'm too old," S'lunt mourned. "Too old to start again."
"You don't want to just sit on the sidelines and watch, do you, while the others have all the fun?"
"No . . . I suppose not," S'lunt sighed. "But it is rather depressing news."
"It's not that bad," Roger said. "Just a mild depression. Afterwards things really got exciting—"
"It's outrageous! The whole world running around stark naked!"
"Who said anything about being stark naked?" Roger demanded.
There was a sharp gasp from the periphery of Roger's fascinated audience. A slim black-haired figure, exuberantly female in white skin-tights, thrust to the fore, pointed a finger at Roger.
"Put the disorganizer beam back on him, quick!" she cried. "He's a spy! He's been reading my mind!"
Roger came to his feet with a leap, staring at the newcomer. "Y-y-y-you!" he stuttered.
It was the girl he had left for dead beside the crashed motorcycle.