Marzian placed a hand on the nape of his neck and smoothed some hair down over his collar. “You could blow bubbles off your tongue.”
“That’s right,” Bryant said with some signs of animation. “It’s not as easy as you might think. You’ve got to work up the right sort of saliva—not too thick and not too thin—to form a durable bubble. Then you’ve got to direct your breath against it at exactly the right angle to separate it from the tip of your tongue—not too high and not too low. And you have to curl your tongue into the right shape, as well. I was the only boy in my class who ever got four bubbles into the air at once.”
“Really? Well, I suppose it’s worth a try.” Marzian tapped some keys on his desk, studied a visual display unit for a moment, then looked up at Bryant in round-eyed surprise. “This business never ceases to amaze me—there actually are other realities in which the principal glamour sport is skimming bubbles off the end of your tongue!”
“And the women are…normal?”
Marzian nodded. “We’re talking about Sector One probabilities, which means that everything else is pretty much the same as it is here.”
“Can you transfer me to one of them?” Bryant said, with an abrupt up-swing in his mood. “One where the all-time champ had never managed more than three bubbles in the air at once?”
“It’s at the extreme range of the equipment, but I can do it.” Marzian gestured in the direction of Miss Cruft. “You’ll need to complete a new authorisation.”
“Of course.” When Bryant stooped over Miss Cruft’s desk to fill in the necessary forms, he became aware that she used an extremely heady brand of perfume, but his mind was preoccupied with visions of the slim-waisted sirens who were to be in his ideal universe. He signed his name with a flourish and strode over to the probability focus plate.
“Good luck,” Miss Cruft said.
Bryant scarcely heard her. He took up his position on the silver disk, folded his arms and watched Marzian’s fingers flicker over the control panels as they tampered with the very structure of reality. Marzian concluded by hitting the red button and, as before, the transfer was instantaneous.
Bryant found himself standing in a busy street in what could have been Manhattan had the buildings been higher and the traffic a few decibels louder. The men and women who thronged the sidewalks appeared normal, and the styles of their clothing differed only slightly from those of the reality Bryant had left behind. He looked closely at passers-by and saw that many of them were attempting to blow bubbles off their tongues as they went about the day’s business. Men and women alike were trying, and Bryant was gratified to see that not one of them had any vestige of style or technique. In his ten minutes of watching not one succeeded in launching a single bubble.
Feeling more than a little self-conscious, Bryant moved out of the doorway in which he had been sheltering and began flipping bubbles. His boyhood skills did not return immediately, but within a short time he had begun achieving good separations. Bubble after bubble was lobbed into quivering flight, and inevitably—in spite of the far from ideal conditions—there came a moment when he had two in the air at once. By then he was at the centre of a crowd of spectators, and the event was greeted with a rousing cheer. He nodded demurely, acknowledging the applause, and was heartened to see that quite a few of his audience were desirable women and that they were gazing at him with every sign of adoration.
This is more like it, he thought.
A gleaming chauffeur-driven limousine pulled up at the edge of the crowd. The fat man who got out of it was richly dressed and exuded an unmistakable aura of power. Bryant, aware of his scrutiny, speeded up his action and almost at once got three bubbles airborne. The crowd went wild. Car horns sounded as traffic began to jam the street.
“Say, are you a professional?” The fat man had somehow forced his way to Bryant’s side. “What’s your name?”
Bryant grinned up at him, intuitively sure of what was coming next. “Arthur Bryant, and I’m not a professional.”
“You are now—I can get you a million shiller a contest.” The fat man indicated his limousine. “Come on.”
“With pleasure.” Bryant struggled to the car in the wake of his benefactor, got in and found himself sharing the rear seat with two of the most stunning women he had ever seen.
“Girls, I’d like you to meet Arthur,” the fat man said. “He’s the next world champion bubbler, and I want you to be nice to him. Real nice. Got that?” The girls nodded in unison and turned to Bryant with slow-smouldering smiles which caused every nerve in his body to thrum like harp strings.
Bryant sat up in the huge circular bed, rearranged the black satin pillows to support his back, and stared moodily at the beautiful young woman who was lying beside him.
Three weeks had passed since he switched realities, and in that time he had become world champion in his chosen field, had made additional fortunes through endorsing a range of commercial products, had bought an island and a yacht, and had just signed up for his first three movies. He had also consorted with a succession of incredibly beautiful and passionate women, and many, many others were waiting in line just for the privilege of being seen with him.
By all his own estimates he should have been deliriously happy—but something had gone wrong with his dream world. Something he had not foreseen.
The young woman beside him opened her eyes, stirred languorously and said, “Do it again, Arthur.”
Bryant shook his head. “I’m not in the mood.”
“Go on, Arthur baby,” she pleaded. “Just one more time.”
He tightened his lips obstinately. The effort of flicking thousands of bubbles a day into the air had given him a painful blister where the underside of his tongue rubbed against his teeth. As a result he had had to modify his technique and flick much faster, and the associated hyperventilation gave him dizzy spells and nausea. Into the bargain, he was bored. The girl purred sensuously and moved closer. “Just once more—just one little bubble.”
Bryant put out his much-abused tongue and pointed at it angrily. “There’s more to me than this thing, you know,” he said with forgivable indistinctness. “I’m not just a tongue—I’ve got a mind. Doesn’t it ever occur to anybody that I might want to discuss philosophy?”
The girl frowned. “Phil who?”
“That does it!” On impulse, Bryant snatched his Probability Normalizer from the bedside table and pressed the button. On the instant, he was back in the Alterealities office, sprawling on the floor under the startled gazes of T. D. Marzian and Miss Cruft. The latter’s face turned a becoming shade of pink. Cursing himself for not having had the foresight to change out of his silk boudoir suit, Bryant scrambled to his feet and took shelter behind a chair while he adjusted what there was of his clothing.
“It’s been three weeks, Mr Bryant,” Marzian said in neutral tones, opening a closet door and taking out a dressing gown. “Have we still got problems?”
“Problems!” Bryant accepted the gown and was slipping it on when a new thought occurred to him. “You seem to have quite a few of these things in there.”
An indecipherable expression flitted across Marzian’s face as he removed the Probability Normalizer from Bryant’s unresisting fingers and dropped it into his own pocket. “Other clients have returned on the spur of the moment. Were things getting tiresome?”
“Tiresome isn’t the word for it,” Bryant said, grateful for an understanding ear. “You have no idea what it’s like to be treated as an unfeeling object, to have people simply making use of you night and day.”