Chapter Two
There will always be newspapers, always some crusty old publisher, or a young publisher with crusty old ideas, who refuses to let go of the past. I respect the past, the smoke-filled, bustling news offices and all that, but I’m not a sentimental person. We create a better future if we stay in touch with our past, but I feel damned good about my electronic newspaper. It’s my base and conduit for creativity. No details yet, but I’m about to unleash a technological breakthrough in this industry. And a related, but even more astounding development will follow shortly.
—Lutt Hanson, Jr., an interview in his Seattle Enquirer
Someone’s moving my arms, my legs and my head and controlling where I look.
These were panic thoughts in Lutt’s awareness. Through the round lenses of his spectacles, he saw foggy human shapes. He heard the rattle of keys and clanking metal. There were men walking around him—at front, back and both sides.
I stumbled and something took over my body.
An alien force held him upright and walking steadily.
“I am Ryll, son of Jongleur, the Chief Storyteller.”
That was hearing voices in his head—madness.
I was in my ship, the Vortraveler, Lutt thought. I said something to Drich Baker, my engineer and copilot. What did I say?
Memory provided no answer. He knew there had been a blackout. It had erased part of his mind.
He took a familiar mental course then, recalling the day before boarding the Vortraveler.
If I exercise the brain muscles, go through everything up to the blackout, maybe I’ll remember.
He had been in the family-owned Seattle Enquirer Building. That much he remembered. A gray, seventeen-story structure, the building housed the plant of an electronic newspaper.
Only a tax write-off in Father’s mind.
Running the family’s Newspaper Division gave Lutt the sense that the Enquirer was much more than “a fixture of antiquated technology,” as his father called it.
Lutt recalled arguing with old L.H. in the boardroom that morning. But Father always had the last word.
“Stop wasting time on that damn vorspiral crap! You’re making us a laughingstock, predicting ‘astounding developments’ and ‘technological breakthroughs’ that’ll never happen!”
“Dammit, Father, you think things will never happen just because you don’t want them to happen!”
“Son, you’re sounding more and more like that crazy brother of your mother’s. You keep on this way and you’ll wind up like your Uncle Dudley!”
Lutt stared at his father. For years, the cloud of some violent quarrel between the two men had hung over the family. And now the old man broke his own rule against mentioning Uncle Dudley.
“Just how did Uncle Dudley wind up?” Lutt asked, almost choking on the forbidden name.
“I hope what they say is true—that he disappeared on Venus! He deserved to get his ass fried!”
Seeing the signs of increasing rage in his father, Lutt changed the subject but that only led them back into the fight about the Seattle Enquirer, vorspirals and Lutt’s future in Hanson Industries.
It was a continuing conflict with predictable reactions on both sides.
But L.H. doesn’t know what Drich and I have already achieved.
Drich!
The voice in his mind said Drich was dead. And there was that brief memory—his own body with a crushed skull.
Was that really me?
Lutt cast off those thoughts.
Hallucinations. The Zone Patrol doctor gave me a shot. That’s what’s causing me to feel this way.
Vorspiral communications technology! That would win the argument with Father. The ability to send almost instantaneous messages across millions of kilometers of space—transmissions faster and clearer than anything in history.
Just a little more testing and development, some careful publicity, and it surely would be of interest to the military and even to other news services.
But old L.H. wouldn’t listen, wouldn’t bend from his rigid ways.
We’ll call it Vorspiral News Service—VNS.
And the possibility—no! the probability!—loomed before him of extremely rapid travel across interstellar space. Theory said there were vorspirals to link any place in the universe with any other place. The speed of this travel still had to be tested, but he knew it would be very fast.
Abruptly, Lutt recalled what he had said to Drich Baker in that instant before the blackout.
The memory came to him so clearly and in such detail that he found himself reliving the events. He was in the Vortraveler’s cockpit. It was late afternoon and the ship sat on the tarmac of the secret testing site just east of Seattle. A rainy day with water running down the shields. The instrument panel glowed green. There was a reassuring hum to the power systems. Drich sat beside him and they were struggling to get the ship into a vorspiral that (theory said) would link them to another solar system.
“Maybe this time.” That’s what I said.
Lutt recalled the words but nothing more. Whatever happened after those words was eaten up by … by … a blackout.
Lutt’s troubled memory returned to the morning at the Enquirer. It was after L.H. had slammed out of the boardroom.
I went to the fourteenth-floor editorial conference room.
Eight senior editors sat with him around the long table amidst ranks of electronic newspaper receivers. He recalled arguing loudly that the Enquirer was not resourceful enough or snappy enough in its news play.
The ranks of receivers showed the Enquirer and rival publications to back up his argument.
“We need more sensational stories, more grabbers!”
He flipped the paper-thin sheets of liquid crystal screens to display pages of the rivals.
“Look here!” Lutt said, pointing to a headline on page one of the Cincinnati Crier.
PATTERN TO UFO SIGHTINGS
“Here’s a story that screams to be read. The Crier says a classified Zone Patrol report shows common factors for credible UFO sightings. This is great stuff! They say all UFOs have a bulbous shape and insectlike antennae all over them, plus flexible rods that sway as though blown by a wind.”
“Those guys on the Crier make that stuff up out of their heads!”
That was city editor Anaya Nelson, caustic as usual.
Lean, heavily made up around the eyes and framed by straight golden hair, Anaya’s face still held a measure of her youthful beauty. But she had hard edges now. The staff said her face had only one relaxed expression—condescending.
“They quote pages and paragraphs of this Zone Patrol report!” Lutt snapped. “And they’re citing the First Amendment to protect their sources!”
“So they got some rear-rank swabby to steal a piece of ZP fantasy.”
“It sells papers, dammit!”
“You’re really going to turn this operation into a moneymaker? No more write-offs for our beloved parent company, Hanson Industries?”
Lutt noted the other editors trying to conceal amusement at his usual collision with Nelson, but he ignored them.
Nelson smiled, knowing this irritated Lutt.
Damn her!
Lutt had criticized her “noncooperative attitude” on many occasions but to no avail.
What could he do about her? Nelson was a hard-shelled news veteran in her late middle years, long rumored to be old L.H.’s mistress. Lutt did not know for sure but the reports were that she had been an extraordinary beauty in her youth when the old man first met her. What everyone here knew for sure was that she had a pipeline to L.H. and could not be fired. Not by Junior anyway.
Lutt felt his ire rising. “I thought I made that clear!”
His nostrils flared, picking up a faint odor of paint in the editorial conference room. Always painting and repainting in here! He fanned through a graphics file on his printer, found what he was seeking and displayed it for Anaya. It showed a new masthead for the Enquirer with “L.W. Hanson, Proprietor.”
Nelson examined the artwork disdainfully.
Managing editor Adrian (Ade) Stuart leaned close to stare over Nelson’s shoulder. A paraplegic without legs, Stuart rode an electric cart that required wide aisles in the City Room. Overweight and with a softly rounded face under gray hair, Stuart often surprised new acquaintances with his commanding baritone voice. Some said Stuart’s voice was the main asset that had carried him to power on the Enquirer.
“Very dignified,” Stuart said.
“It doesn’t specify L.W. Hanson Senior or Junior,” Nelson said. “Shouldn’t that be corrected?”
“This is the way I want it!” Lutt said.
They all know L.H. still owns this paper and my stock is a token five shares. She’ll go straight to Father with this but I still run the operation.
Suzanne Day, who edited the Style Section, leaned forward with a sweet smile. Lutt had heard she practiced that smile for “boss buttering.” Still, she was attractive enough—a slender brunette with gentle features that were sure to coarsen because she drank too much, boasting: “I can drink any newsman on this paper under the table.”
“Why don’t we offer a copying service?” she asked. “It could be built into each receiving frame. We could—”
Nelson interrupted with a calculated imitation of Lutt’s voice: “But we want increased productivity, more efficiency, more circulation, more advertising revenue.”
“We also want excellence,” Lutt said.
Day required no more encouragement. Still with that sweet smile, she said: “I’ve checked it out. If a subscriber wants a copy of any article, he just touches the screen over the article, tapping once for each copy desired.”
“It’s been tried before,” Nelson said.
“Albany Evening Bible,” Stuart said. “Mmmmm … four years ago. There were problems.”
“Because they were first,” Day said. “There were headaches with startup costs and glitches.”
Like my Vortraveler, Lutt thought.
Lutt’s erratic memory went spiraling off into his pet project—near-instantaneous communication and travel across the solar system and interstellar space. L.H. would never provide the development money.
He wants me to run Hanson Industries.
Lutt’s mother, Phoenicia, wanted the same thing—but only because she thought her son would keep up the profits. She and his younger brother, Morey—always with their hands in the till.
Morey!
Lutt recalled another detail of the day before the blackout.
I couldn’t keep my appointment with Morey. What a shock, dear brother, to learn that someone has discovered your financial indiscretions!
That’ll be worth a lot of money from his accounts. But I didn’t keep the appointment because of the crash and …
Yes! There was an accident with the Vortraveler!
This memory brought Lutt full circle and back to his immediate situation—in a corridor surrounded by Zone Patrol guards, his detached body walking under its own power.
His vision cleared slightly but he still had no control over where he aimed his attention.
How badly was I injured?
He felt too weak to take command of his own body. Lutt felt certain his eyes were not moving randomly. He was staring with too much purpose—surveying the brown and blue uniforms of his guards, examining the long gray corridor and the barred doors of the cells along both sides. He noted that a prisoner’s black and green gorcord tunic covered his body. How demeaning!
Into the clink! I said that but who did I say it to?
His detached flesh did a terrifying thing, then. It spoke without his volition.
“I demand to know where you’re taking me!”
It was a boyish voice, not Lutt’s gravelly tones.
There were strange, alien thoughts in his head, too.
How dare they treat me this way? I am Ryll, son of the Chief Storyteller! But I can’t say anything about that. I’m supposed to be an Earther. They think I’m Lutt Hanson, Jr.
Lutt wanted to speak but his voice would not obey. He could think, though.
Are you real? Someone else in my head and … body?
Oopsah! I left my thoughts unshielded.
Am I going crazy?
You are not insane, Lutt. I have been listening to the sporadic activity of your simplistic mind. Your latest thoughts about your ship and the Spirals confirm my earlier surmise. Your primitive ship and your lack of caution caused a disaster.
Ryll?
Ahhh, you remember my name.
You said … you said I could control … our body.
You were doing it too poorly. These guards are not very intelligent but they are trained to be suspicious. The Zone Patrol reported only two bodies at the crash and now they know there were two people on your ship. Ergo: Where is the pilot of the other ship? They will assume he was destroyed in the blast and fire but only if we do not feed their suspicions.
Darkness enclosed Lutt although he sensed his eyes remained open.
What’s happening? He’s not letting me see!
The guards and their prisoner arrived at an empty cell. One guard opened the door and they started to thrust Ryll through the doorway. He began to struggle and shout.
“I’ve done nothing wrong! You’ll pay for this!”
“The Hansons think they own the universe,” a guard sneered.
They sent Ryll staggering into the cell and the door slammed. The sound of the lock clanging into place was loud in the metal-walled space.
“Look, fella,” a guard said. “We know who you are but you’re still going to answer some questions. You’ll be interrogated tomorrow and there’s nothing your old man or any other Hanson can do about that!”
The guards clumped away down the corridor.
There was laughter and calling from other prisoners.
“You really got one of the Hanson tribe in there?”
“What’d he do? Steal a general’s mistress?”
Still in darkness, Lutt ventured a protesting question.
Why won’t you let me see what’s happening?
No need.
But I …
Be still! I have to decide what to do about this.
A metal door boomed closed down the corridor. The laughter and catcalls subsided.
Ryll inspected the cell. A tiny cubicle with solid walls. Bars on the door. No internal illumination. Light came through the bars from a small fluorescent panel in the corridor ceiling. Shadows of bars on wall and floor. Round metal drain hole in the floor bubbling with foul-smelling ordure. Gray floor and walls that looked as though they had never been painted. Water stains and rough scratchings from former occupants. He read one of the wall scratchings:
“Welcome to Hell.”
A toilet fixture protruded from the back wall. A bunk bed was cantilevered from a side wall. Thin mattress. One rough blanket.
There was a distinctly stale odor to the place and the smell of disinfectant did not cover the pungency of urine and excrement.
Ryll went to the bunk and stretched out on it to think.
This had become much more than an adventure.
Was there anything useful in the data about Earth assimilated from Dreen Storytellers? He began to doubt this.
Nothing was said about Earthers experimenting with travel in the Spirals.
But an … an erasure ship had been prepared.
Erasure.
He found the concept easier to contemplate.
This world was a peculiar creation. Caution with any idmage interference was strongly indicated. Who knew what Earthers might learn if they saw Dreen powers at work? But they imprisoned a Dreen in a dark, dank cell! And Patricia said they held other Dreens captive.
However, they do not know I’m a Dreen. That is a mitigating circumstance.
The bed was uncomfortable. The floor did not attract him as a resting place. Dirty and smelly down there. Ryll longed for the simple platform of hardened vegetation in his Dreenor bedroom. Well, there was something he could do about that. He got up and removed the mattress, leaning it against the barred door and exposing the bunk, a hard metal surface of pipes protruding from the wall. It felt much better when he lay down once more. The blanket, while coarse, provided some warmth. He felt himself drifting into sleep. Yes … this had been an exhausting experience.
Still in darkness, Lutt came to weak awareness of the hard surface under him. He complained about the bed.
Ryll paid little attention to the protests. The deeper stages of Dreensleep were more attractive. He drifted into a combined Dreen-human dream.
The Lutt part of the intertwined dream focused on an ideal (to him) human female and became (to Ryll) a nightmare. The woman had no visible face but she possessed a voluptuous body from which radiated a golden aura that drew the dreamers to her.
In the dream, Lutt made love to the female in the abhorrent human way that had so shocked Ryll when he encountered it in a Storyteller account on Dreenor. How could a Dreen have idmaged such a thing? The dream with its immediacy was even more revolting than the story assimilation. Ryll now felt himself almost a participant!
Still, as the nightmare continued, Ryll sensed something odd emanating from the dream encounter. This particular woman Lutt hoped to meet someday aroused tender feelings in him, feelings almost approaching Dreen tenderness. Lutt called her “Ni-Ni” and said she was far different from the whores of his past experiences.
The nightmare continued for what seemed to Ryll an interminable time. Ni-Ni never spoke or showed her face. But Lutt’s dream thoughts revealed her history. Ni-Ni had lost her family in a war on a planet other than Earth. She loved Lutt but he was forced to compete for her with another man. Dreamer-Lutt demanded the name of the other man, shouting:
“I will kill him!”
The other man appeared in the nightmare then, another faceless figure in the shadowy distance.
“You love him, too!” Lutt shouted. “I know you do!”
Dreamer-Lutt chased the faceless man but the man ran through fearful shadows and hid in impenetrable darkness.
Ryll felt the torment and frustration of the nightmare as though they were his own but could not find answers to the dream’s questions.
Was Ni-Ni real? Was she dead? Was she someone Lutt would meet in his lifetime?
In the midst of this frustration, Ryll found himself dreaming simultaneously of Dreenor’s school for gifted children. Proctor Shanlis ranted at Ryll’s inattention to lessons.
“The tests say you’re intelligent!” Shanlis screamed, menacing the youth with a flexible rod. “The tests say you will be able to idmage more than common Dreens. Why then can’t you understand the simplest lesson?”
The dream Shanlis whipped the rod against Ryll’s back, demanding: “Why? Why are you wasting my time and testing my patience? Why?”
Ryll felt the dream-whipping raise welts, saw yellow blood run down his brown skin. The pattern of the welts was that of the steel bedframe in his cell and blended with the bars on the door.
The nightmare came to an abrupt end with the clanging of a metal door somewhere in the distance.
Ryll awoke and, for a moment, could not remember where he was. He could still feel the stings of the whipping and the frustrations of the human nightmare.
Something was approaching his face. More nightmare? No … it was an insect. A fat spider dangled from its silken thread directly above him, descending slowly. Its legs were arched gracefully, extended like the stabilizers of a flying ship. Ryll saw it was preparing to land on his forehead, unaware of the eyes observing it. Rolling from beneath the arachnid, Ryll batted it toward the wall and saw there a cockroach. It waved its antennae at him.
Ryll swung his feet to the floor, looking at the Earther shape he had assumed, thinking: A cell! They’ve confined me in a cell I must escape! I’ve come from a classroom prison to this Earther cell and the prison of a merged body. What can I do?
Lutt continued to dream. Ryll picked up fragments of the human’s awareness, oddly parallel to Ryll’s classroom dream. Lutt sat in a classroom and an Earther scolded him. The instructor was Lutt Senior. How tough and cold he looked. He wore strange devices over his eyes and offered money instead of grades. The dream father waved a five-hundred-thousand-dollar bill as his mouth shaped words that had no sounds. In the dream, Lutt Junior thought: I can read your lips! I understand the language of your body. But there was no interpretation in his thoughts.
Ryll turned his attention from the dream.
The swatted spider had recovered. It swung from the end of the bedframe, descending to the floor. Abruptly, it occurred to Ryll that he could shapeshift into the spider form and escape this confinement. He leaned close to the insect and formed a single cilia, which he inserted into the spider as it dangled on the end of its thread. The thing was remarkably simple and Ryll wondered why a great Storyteller had bothered to create it.
Giving little thought to the varieties of shapeshifting, Ryll assimilated spider essentials from its cells. Confidently, he swiveled his eyes inward and focused on the changes necessary to convert himself into an arachnid.
The change was comparatively easy but he came through it with the abrupt realization that he had done something perilously wrong. Not enough oxygen! He was dying of oxygen starvation! Too late, he remembered a Dreenschool lesson.
“With simple shapeshifting, you will have approximately the same mass in the new form as in your form before the change.”
He was a gigantic spider! The gorcord tunic burst across the middle from the spider’s fat body. Eight wiry legs ripped their way through the fabric. Shoes and socks fell to the floor and the useless eyeglasses dropped onto them.
The spider’s primitive system of oxygen absorption would not support his mass!
Ryll felt consciousness fading.
His giant insect body plopped to the floor. The legs extended uselessly to the sides. Energy was fading fast.
Thoughts of escape dissipated. He had to focus on surviving this stupid mistake.
I may have energy for only one attempt to return to human form!
Desperately, he swiveled his eyes inward and concentrated on the Lutt shape he had so carelessly abandoned.
Is it working?
Slowly, he realized he lay stretched out on the floor, face down with nose pressed close to the odorous drain. His chest heaved and he realized he had returned to Earther shape.
The gorcord tunic lay in a tangled mess that required quick idmaging to restore before someone saw him in this disheveled state. He replaced the eyeglasses on his nose, put on shoes and socks and, presently, sank back to the hard pipes of the bunk, weak from exertion.
First things first: He forced himself to review the idmaging and shapeshifting lessons of the Dreenschool.
Basic idmaging: A Dreen’s personal mass, reinforced by a lifetime of experience, dominates shapeshifting. Reducing mass to the size of an insect required long training and tremendous concentration taught in a graduate course he had not yet taken. Such a shift also left a residue of protoplasm that would degenerate unless conserved in one of several dangerous ways.
“You will learn mind over fear,” a proctor had told him.
I wish I already had learned it.
Another bodily priority intruded on these reflections. Hunger gnawed at him. He had expended great stores of energy since the last time he had eaten aboard Patricia—an idmaged meal of Suprinian proteins. Now, his hunger would not let him think of anything except food.
What to eat? His Earther form and proximity to Earthed society reminded him of a favorite confection. It would take energy to bring in the required mass, but …
Something bubbled out of the drain hole and he looked down at a drowned rat. Easily available mass! Ryll’s eyes turned inward to a vision of an Earther delicacy common on Dreenor. The rat carcass vanished. In its place there appeared on the floor a strawberry ice cream sundae in a white plastic bowl. A plastic spoon stood upright in the ice cream.
Ryll did not waste time admiring the sundae. He rolled his eyes outward and sat cross-legged on the floor to eat.
The spoon, he noted, bore a familiar inscription: “McDonald’s Restaurant,” a tradition on Dreenor, a simple way to think praiseworthy thoughts about the Dreen who had created the Great Story out of which this confection arose.
Ryll reviewed praiseworthy thoughts as he savored every melting bite of the rich, creamy sundae.
Abruptly, he felt Lutt’s awareness intrude, demanding a share in control of their body.
“Ice cream?” Lutt asked.
The vocal cords produced a gravelly voice.
Ryll noted this and corrected his voice-memory against the next time he wanted to use their mutual speaking system.
“Why are we eating a strawberry sundae?” Lutt demanded. “I hate strawberries.”
Someone in the adjoining cell said: “Hey, this Hanson fella thinks he’s eating strawberries.”
Catcalls and laughter echoed up and down the corridor.
“Why can’t he think he’s eating a steak dinner?”
“Nawww, cherries jubilee!”
“He should think about sole amandine!”
“Chocolate cake!”
A commanding voice from the end of the corridor shouted: “All right, you guys! Break it up or you won’t even get your evening gruel!”
Silence.
Ryll experienced resistance in his arm muscles as he lifted another spoonful of ice cream to his mouth. He reverted to think-sharing, though, having seen what speaking aloud produced along the corridor.
You’re not eating this sundae, I am.
Tell that to our taste buds!
Strawberries are one of my favorite foods. And since I can idmage anything I wish to eat, provided I have energy to bring in conversion mass, I will eat this whenever I wish. I also enjoy rummungi, worsockels, and bitter peeps. You’ve never tasted those foods because they come from faraway planets.
Your strawberries make me sick!
Indeed, on examining his internal reactions, Ryll found the strawberries were producing a protein incompatibility that would require correction in the Lutt parts of their body.
With a sigh, Ryll put the bowl on the floor, swiveled his eyes inward and de-idmaged the sundae as much as possible. When he looked at the area near the drain, shards of rat flesh lay on the floor.
No more strawberries, he thought-shared. I do want to get us started on an amenable footing.
What did you just do, Ryll?
We call it grine-idmaging or grining. Grine means … well, your closest word would be voiding.
A kind of erasure?
Don’t use that word!
Why?
Erasure is … it’s more difficult.
It felt like my eyes turned inward.
They did.
I don’t like that feeling.
You’ll get used to it.
You call it … idmaging?
That is the name for how we create living and inanimate objects by mass transfer from a reservoir of available matter. Sometimes we use mass nearby and sometimes from far away.
I don’t believe any of this.
I see that in your thoughts.
This is schizo. I bumped my head somewhere on my ship.
Your ship is a wreck.
No, this is me being schizo because of an injury.
The condition of schizophrenia on planets where it can occur is a chemical imbalance. A bump on your head is not a likely causative factor.
Then I’m nuts in some other way.
You are not any more insane than others of your kind.
I’m supposed to believe there are two of us in my body?
My body, not yours. It looks like yours but you died on your ship. My body was badly injured and I required some of your protoplasm to survive. That is how we merged: Your awareness came with your cells.
So I’m sharing this body with an … an alien?
From my viewpoint, you might be considered the alien. It’s a matter of perspective.
If this is real, then you’re the alien, buddy. We’re in Earth territory of the Zone Patrol. Earth, not this … this what-ever-it-is where you’re supposed to come from.
Dreenor. The entire universe, you see, is a product of Dreen idmaging. We like to think of it as a unit, rather than as separated pieces alien to one another.
You think you’re some kind of god? Now I know I’m nuts.
If that’s what you prefer. You will come to accept this, however. You must because we really share this body.
Some sharing! You’re in control.
Then use our eyes and take a look around. We’re in a Zone Patrol cell.
Ryll waited while Lutt obeyed. Their view shifted around the cell—barred door, walls, floor, ceiling …
Hallucination!
I think you’ll accept it when they take us away for interrogation.
Sure! And I’ll … Ugh! Is that pieces of a dead rat on the floor?
Left over from the mass required for the strawberry sundae.
This isn’t happening. It’s impossible.
You are persistent, Lutt. I will say that.
If this body looks like me then it’s mine!
I merged our flesh and used your shape for security. The wreckage was crawling with Zone Patrol. You can imagine what they would have thought if they had seen me in the original.
Yeahhh? What do you look like?
A large Humpty Dumpty, to borrow an image from your nursery days.
So I’ve reverted to infancy. That’s the kind of insanity I’ve—
Please stop this foolish refusal to recognize facts!
I’ll decide what facts I recognize!
You remember the crash. I can see that in your mind. It was your fault. You attempted to enter a Spiral without—
Maybe that’s it! I did enter a vorspiral and … and it made me crazy.
Spiral! They are Creative Spirals, to be precise. And since Dreen knowledge predates yours, kindly employ our terms.
What’s the difference?
The Creative Spirals are sacred to us!
So my Vortraveler got in your way?
I had the right of way, Lutt! You should have seen the blue light indicating an approaching Excursion Ship. When you see that light you’re supposed to stay out until the way is clear.
Let’s say I accept this craziness. What were you doing in the … the Spiral?
I was looking for adventure.
Man, you sure found it! What made you think you’d find adventure on Earth?
The stories of my people told me all I need to know about Earth.
Not quite.
Perhaps. But I thought it might be interesting to see a human war. Dreens do not have wars. We are not violent.
Sounds dull.
I am forced to agree.
Would you like to beat up on somebody?
Oh, no! I couldn’t. It isn’t in the Dreen nature. I would not mind observing, however.
If you used my body to save your life, don’t you feel any gratitude to me?
Gratitude is an emotion Dreens do not enjoy. Besides, you were certainly dying.
And your life isn’t worth being grateful?
This is a foolish argument! Dreens don’t ordinarily die, except as casualties from stupid accidents. We have no diseases, and that includes the disease you call “old age.”
You just go around forever telling stories?
In a way, yes. We tell stories about places and life forms we have idmaged.
I still say this isn’t happening. I’m nuts but it’s interesting. I didn’t know I could imagine such weird things.
Your imagination is but a paltry shadow compared to Dreen idmaging. My people are wondrous Storytellers.
And one of you Dreens created Earth?
Oh, yes. And Earth, like all other Dreen idmages, can self-destruct, decay or be destroyed by another Dreen creation. That’s the way of idmaging. Things we idmage exist only as long as the original force remains in the one who created it or in someone who has fully assimilated the creative story.
If you all die out then the places you created die, too?
We say all creation depends on its creators.
And you say I’m not nuts? Here I am having a religious argument with myself and you say—
Not with yourself.
My ship crashed and I’m dead. This is some kind of wild cosmic joke.
I see I’m going to have to prove this to you. Very well.
Ryll felt the energy of the ice cream sundae coursing through his body. He swiveled his eyes inward and idmaged a redecoration of the cell. For energy practicality, he drew mostly on the ordure bubbling from the central drain. This immediately improved the aroma. An enclosed shower stall went over the drain, its pipes linked to the building’s plumbing. He carpeted the floor in green plush, put a cheerful shade of yellow on walls and ceiling. A full-length mirror went up beside the barred door and he hung a few pastoral pictures.
Why don’t you … grine the door out of existence? Lutt asked.
It’s called grine idmaging and I must be very careful what effects I introduce into Earth culture. There is a specific injunction against what you suggest. It’s incorporated in the original story.
All I felt was that funny twisting of my eyes. How do you do these things?
Idmaging occurs in a private portion of my thoughts not available to you.
How about idmaging a beautiful woman for me?
Really, Lutt, we must discuss the lustful nature you inherited from your father. Dreens think fornication is quite revolting. We don’t touch each other.
Yeahhh? How do you reproduce?
Habiba gives us a childseed. We place it in a seedhouse. You may think of it as a small greenhouse. Then for three days and nights, the parents sit outside with the seedhouse between them. They use concentrated idmaging to produce precisely the child they have decided to bring into being.
So you don’t get ugly ones or …
Dreen ideals have nothing to do with appearance. Desired traits are honesty, fidelity, a peaceful nature, pleasing personality, loyalty to Habiba, our Supreme Tax Collector … and characteristics of that sort.
Man, does that sound dull! And if a Dreen created Earth, he must have thought it dull, too.
It is slow, not dull. Each night, the seedhouse must be kept warm with a blanket cover and idmaged heat produced by the parents. When a Dreen baby evolves from the seed and embryo, it is brought forth—a new life.
The parents don’t touch each other?
Nor do they speak during the entire three days. Their energy is conserved for the difficult idmaging process.
Yeahhh, well I gotta have a woman occasionally.
Perhaps we could compromise. If I forgo strawberries in any form would you consider not engaging in …
Why don’t you just find a way to separate us and go back to your damned Dreenor?
I do wish I could.
What’s it like, this Dreenor?
There are many ancestral family homes built of natural mudbrick, stones, and hardened vegetation. Each home is occupied by the family’s youngest married adults and the one child they are permitted to have.
One kid per family? Is that all? But wait a minute! If you only die in accidents, the population pressures must be fierce. How do you handle that? Idmage new Dreen planets?
Ryll found this a puzzling question and reflected on it before responding.
Actually, our family homes extend far under Dreenor’s surface, the deeper levels occupied by family members in order of age—the eldest in the deepest level.
How deep do these homes go?
Habiba says the depths are endless.
There’s gotta be a limit.
I’ve … I’ve never thought about that. Perhaps it should be a worry but we are taught that worry is a negative thought process and we naturally do not worry very often. Especially about unimportant things such as how deep our homes may go. That would interfere with our requirements for positive thoughts.
Every day in every way things are getting better and better, eh?
Now that I think of it, Habiba says we depend on the concept of “ampleness” wherein Dreenor is always large enough to accommodate all Dreens. Even though I am naturally rebellious and think forbidden things, I don’t consider this worth my effort.
So you’re a rebel, too.
Yes, but I must tell you the full beauty of Dreenor. Each family home has an adjacent air shaft. Dreens can control a helium gland permitting us to airfloat up and down these shafts.
We could float out of here?
Unfortunately, Dreens cannot do this anywhere except on Dreenor. Habiba says we have a mental and physical block that is coded into us at birth.
And everything you do is controlled by this tax collector?
We pay in stories. The surface occupants of each home are the taxpayers. They are required to tell one or more stories to a Bluecap who transmits them up the hierarchy to Habiba as her tribute.
Good stories, huh?
Habiba judges that. The best story receives a maximum of ten talents, the annual tax rate on a home tract. It is best to have backup stories available at tax time, however. Habiba rarely awards maximum talents to a story.
Humans also use stories instead of money to pay taxes.
It’s not quite the same but the storytelling aptitude must be a natural part of your genetic coding because you are, after all, products of Dreen idmaging.
New stories every time?
Oh, no! Old stories are quite important, too. They are the Dreen heritage, because if any story dies out from not being shared, the physical aspects of that story—people, planets and other life forms—all vanish.
You know, this is weird, and it’s all coming out of my mind.
Our mind.
Sure, sure!
Normally, taxpayers must tell two or three stories a year to meet the tax obligation. Taxpayers with a repertoire of superior stories capable of paying their assessment five years in succession with but one story per year are invited to join either the Junior Storytellers (for those under five hundred years of age) or the Senior Storytellers (for those five hundred years of age and older). Gifted Seniors join Habiba’s personal entourage as Elite Storytellers.
This Habiba sounds like some powerhouse.
She is the eldest of us all and teaches the most. Other Elders come up from the deeper levels periodically to instruct the taxpaying surface residents in the art of storytelling. That’s how we keep the old methods and sagas alive.
Anybody ever get dispossessed for nonpayment of taxes?
We hear about family holdings being placed in jeopardy but I don’t believe a family has ever been expelled. Habiba can withhold childseed. Being childless places you in low esteem, a supreme punishment.
Ryll got up and went to the mirror.
It occurs to me, Lutt, an examination of our body proves this is true. You will notice our general appearance conforms to your rather unmuscular body but we are now stronger, have more mass and are some seven centimeters taller.
I’m going along with this hallucination because it’s interesting but I don’t have to believe it. Why not shift back into your own shape and show me that?
There is a scrambling problem when I shift back and forth between your form and mine. Please look into the mirror.
Lutt stared at his reflection.
So, okay, it’s me and I’m larger.
Ryll did not respond. He found the mirrored body curious. Not a handsome man, according to standards available from stories and Lutt’s memory. A softly blocky face, round eyeglasses … high forehead to a thin crop of red-brown hair. A serpentine raised blood vessel curled up the left temple. One eyebrow partly concealed a small black mole.
Ryll held his hands up to the mirror. A philosopher’s hands with long, slender fingers almost pointed at the tips. But there was a distinct hint of roughness and cruelty to this man.
Ryll decided that could mean trouble if he gave up control of the body.
What’re you looking for? Lutt asked.
I would have liked a better body but I had no choice.
What’s the difference how you look? Its power makes the difference in this universe, buddy. If you got the clout, that’s all you need.
A gross mistake in attitude, Lutt.
I won’t argue it because events prove me right. But I kinda like the idea of being bigger. Too bad this is all a dream.
It’s not a dream. And you’ll like it even better that this body will continue to grow.
How come?
In terms of growth completion, I am roughly equivalent to a sixteen-year-old human—about forty Dreenyears. You can blame the growth on the accident—a release of hormones.
And you’re in control of our body. How’s that for a power trip?
To be civil, I will relinquish control occasionally, permitting you to behave as you ordinarily would. I want to observe Earther behavior.
But no women?
I saved your life, Lutt. Is that not enough?
Abruptly, metal clanged far down the corridor and there was the sound of clumping footsteps approaching.
Oopsah! Ryll thought. They mustn’t see this.
He swiveled his eyes inward and restored the jail cell’s Spartan appearance, then stretched out on the bare bunk. He pulled the blanket to his chin and stared at the barred door through slitted eyelids.
A female guard appeared beyond the bars—muscular body and a heavy face.
“Just making sure you’re comfortable, honey,” she said. “I hear you like strawberries. Too bad we can’t bring you some on your evening gruel.”
She noted the mattress leaning against the wall.
“Tough guy, eh? Sleeping on the bare pipes.”
“Too many other occupants of that mattress,” Ryll growled in a reasonable copy of Lutt’s voice.
“Maybe I should come in and make you comfortable.” She laughed, a grating sound deep in her throat, and turned away. There was the sound of her clumping footsteps receding.
Lutt tried to sit up but Ryll resisted, preventing all except faint jerks and twitches. Ryll provided a lecturing thought.
You must understand that I can control this body whenever I wish. I know every thought you have but you cannot share my thoughts without my permission.
I’m getting tired of this dream.
Then we will go to sleep.
Perchance to dream of a beautiful woman and I can …
We will merely rest on this rack, Dreen fashion.
This isn’t Dreenor, asshole! You wanta learn Earth’s ways? You’re imposing on me. I’m uncomfortable.
Just to be nice, I agree that you may use the mattress for a while.
Lutt, beginning to doubt his belief that this was all some kind of nightmare, tried to suppress bitterness. If Ryll could read every thought, best to keep him happy.
Ryll relaxed and permitted Lutt to reassemble the bunk. When they returned to it, they argued about which way to rest—face down or on the back. They compromised by facing the wall, a position neither of them wanted as first choice.
Lutt tried controlling their voice, just a whisper at first.
“Let’s say I believe this crazy story,” he said. “So you’re just a Dreen kid. How come they let you take a ship?”
“I … ahhh, fed a drug to the monitor and took the ship without adult permission.”
“Dreens use drugs?”
“There is one—it’s called bazeel. The monitor was an addict.”
“Crazy, crazy. And all for a little joyride.”
“I suspect the best part is yet to come.”
As he spoke, Ryll realized his boyish zeal had returned.