An egg-bald man in shirtsleeves popped out of a door in the alley. “Hi,” he said, “this ain’t no hitching place.” He looked at Park’s left front fender, clucking. “Looks like you took off some paint.”
Park smiled. “I was just looking for a room, and I saw your sign. How much are you asking?”
“Forty-five a month.”
Park made a show of writing this down. He asked: “What’s the address, please?”
“One twenty-five Isleif.”
“Thanks. I’ll be back, maybe.” Park backed out, with a scrape of fender against stone, and asked Dunedin directions. Dunedin, gray of face, gave them. Park looked at him and chuckled. “Nothing to be scared of, old boy. I knew I had a good two inches clearance on both sides.”
The Sachem awaited Park in the shade of the bathhouse. He swept off his bonnet with a theatrical flourish. “Haw, Hallow! A fair day for our tryst.” Park reflected that on a dull day you could smell Rufus Callahan’s breath almost as far as you could see Rufus Callahan. He continued: “The west end’s best for talk. I have a local knick watching in case Greenfield sends a prowler. Did they follow you out?”
Park told him, meanwhile wondering how to handle the interview so as to make it yield the most information. They passed the end of the bathhouse, and Allister Park checked his stride. The beach was covered with naked men and women. Not quite naked; each had a gaily colored belt of elastic webbing around his or her middle. Just that. Park resumed his walk at Callahan’s amused look.
Callahan said: “If the head knick, Lewis, weren’t a friend of mine, I shouldn’t be here. If I ever did get pulled up-well, the judges are all MacSvensson’s men, just as Greenfield is.” Park remembered that Offa Greenfield was mayor of New Belfast. Callahan continued: “While MacSvensson’s away, the pushing eases a little.”
“When’s he due back?” asked Park.
“In a week maybe.” Callahan waved an arm toward distant New Belfast. “What a fair burg, and what a wretched wick to rule it! How do you like it?”
“Why, I live there, don’t I?”
Callahan chuckled. “Wonderful, my dear Hallow, wonderful. In another week nobody’ll know you aren’t his hallowship at all.”
“Meaning what?”
“Oh, you needn’t look at me with that wooden face. You’re nay mair Bishop Scoglund than I am.”
“Yeah?” said Park noncommittally. He lit one of the bishop’s pipes.
“How about a jinn?” asked Callahan.
Park looked at him, until the Sachem got out a cigarette.
Park lit it for him, silently conceding one to the opposition. How was he to know that a jinn was a match? He asked: “Suppose I was hit on the head?”
The big Skrelling grinned broadly. “That mick spoil your recall, in spots, but it wouldn’t give you that frickful word-tone you were using when we befreed you. I see you’ve gotten rid of most of it, by the way. How did you do that in thirty — some hours?”
Park gave up. The man might be just a slightly drunken Indian with a conspiratorial manner, but he had the goods on Allister. He explained: “I found a bunch of records of some of my sermons, and played them over and over on the machine.”
“My, my, you are a cool one! Joe Noggle mick have done worse when he picked your mind to swap with the bishop’s. Who are you, in sooth? Or perhaps I should say who were you?”
Park puffed placidly. “I’ll exchange information, but I won’t give it away.”
When Callahan agreed to tell Park all he wanted to know, Park told his story. Callahan looked thoughtful. He said: “I’m nay brain-wizard, but they do say there’s a theory that every time the history of the world hinges on some decision, there are two worlds, one that which would happen if the card fell one way, the other that which would follow from the other.”
“Which is the real one?”
“That I can’t tell you. But they do say Noggle can swap minds with his thocks, and I don’t doubt it’s swapping between one of these possible worlds and another they mean.”
He went on to tell Park of the bishop’s efforts to emancipate the Skrellings, in the teeth of the opposition of the ruling Diamond Party. This party’s strength was mainly among the rural squirearchy of the west and south, but it also controlled New Belfast through the local boss, Ivor MacSvensson. If Scoglund’s amendment to the Bretwaldate’s constitution went through at the next session of the national Thing, as seemed likely if the Ruby Party ousted the Diamonds at the forthcoming election, the squirearchy might revolt. The independent Skrelling nations of the west and south had been threatening intervention on behalf of their abused minority. (That sounded familiar to Park, except that, if he took what he had read and heard at its face value, the minority really had something to kick about this time.) The Diamonds wouldn’t mind a war, because in that case the elections, which they expected to lose, would be called off…
“You’re not listening, Thane Park, or should I say Hallow Scoglund?”
“Nice little number,” said Park, nodding toward a pretty blonde girl on the beach. Callahan clucked. “Such a wording from a strict wed-less!”
“What?”
“You’re a pillar of the church, aren’t you?”
“Oh, my Lord!” Park hadn’t thought of that angle. The Celtic Christian Church, despite its libertarian tradition, was strict on the one subject of sex.
“Anyhow,” said Callahan, “what shall we do with you? For you’re bound to arouse mistrust.”
Park felt the wrench in his pocket. “I want to get back. Got a whole career going to smash in my own world.”
“Unless the fellow who’s running your body knows what to do with it.”
“Not much chance.” Park could visualize Frenczko or Burt frantically calling his apartment to learn why he didn’t appear; the unintelligible answers they would get from the bewildered inhabitant of his body; the cops screaming up in the struggle-buggy to cart the said body off to Belleview; the headline: “PROSECUTOR BREAKS DOWN.” So they yanked me here as a bit of dirty politics, eh? I’ll get back, but meantime I’ll show ’em some real politics!
Callahan continued: “The only man who could unswap you is Joseph Noggle, and he’s in his own daffybin.”
“Huh?”
“They found him wandering about, clean daft. It’s a good deed you didn’t put in a slur against him; they’d have stripped you in court in nay time.”
“Maybe that’s what they wanted to do.”
“That’s an idea! That’s why they were so anxious for you to go to the lair. I don’t doubt they’ll be watching for to pull you up on some little charge; it won’t matter whether you’re guilty or not. Once they get hold of you, you’re headed for Noggle’s inn. What a way to get rid of the awkward bishop without pipe or knife!”
When Callahan had departed with another flourish, Park looked for the girl. She had gone too. The day was blistering, and the water inviting. Since you didn’t need a bathing suit to swim in Vinland, why not try it?
Park returned to the bathhouse and rented a locker. He stowed his clothes, and looked at himself in the nearest mirror. The bishop didn’t take half enough exercise, he thought, looking at the waistline. He’d soon fix that. No excuse for a man’s getting out of shape that way.
He strolled out, feeling a bit exposed with his white skin among all these bronzed people, but not showing it in his well-disciplined face. A few stared. Maybe it was his whiteness; maybe they thought they recognized the bishop. He plunged in and headed out. He swam like a porpoise, but shortness of breath soon reminded him that the bishop’s body wasn’t up to Allister Park’s standards. He cut loose with a few casual curses, since there was nobody to overhear, and swam back.
As he dripped out onto the sand, a policeman approached, thundering: “You! You’re under stoppage!”