“Boy, are you fucked up,” Nick said, finally losing patience.
“I? Fucked up? How dare you!”
“I dare because I want to kiss you and all you can believe is that I’m using you. I’ll tell you what your problem is: you hate humans but you’re practically human yourself. So you wind up hating yourself, and you can’t believe anyone else could feel differently.”
“Oh! So now it’s Terran psychology. Please, spare me your drivel.”
“Look, you may not like it, but your head is just as Terran as mine—”
“Bah! That is what I say to you, bah!”
Now they reached the landing strip. Pilgrims who had stayed for supper were cleaning up their picnic spreads, folding collapsible chairs and tables, incinerating dishes and silverware. Oblivious of their audience, Nick and Hali continued the discussion.
“I am Alta-Tyberian!” she insisted. “I am blue, in case you have not noticed. My eyes are queer and my bones are hollow and I eat my babies when I am very hungry!”
“Your sarcasm doesn’t impress me.”
“Furthermore I find things human depressing and appalling. Your militarism, your love of technology, your squandering of resources and your rampant consumerism, your Lijestylers—they are worst of all! Grotesque parodies of the human form, freaks and mutants preying on human weaknesses. If you were not so confused you would understand that the one to worship is not a Lifestyler, but God— and God is all around you in every molecule of air and every atom of dust, not a thing to be assembled from recombinant DNA!”
“Miss Hasannah,” Nick whispered, and his voice was suddenly urgently calm and rational, “you may or you may not be correct, but I must ask you to lower your voice because the people listening to us love the Lifestylers more than anything else in the world, and judging from the way they are looking at you, any moment now they may try and lynch you.’*
Silent, Hali stared at Nick. Then she looked around. Everywhere pilgrims had stopped in the midst of their cleanups and were gazing at her with undisguised hate. Not bad enough their Lex had been taken from them; now the same day to have an alien calling the Lifestylers mutants and freaks. . . .
“Let’s go,’’ Nick said.
Several of the pilgrims moved toward them. One held a collapsible chair which, folded, might make a first-rate bludgeon.
Nick took her arm and moved quickly past them, smiling and nodding, wishing them good evening.
Reaching the saucer, he dragged Hali up the boarding ramp. He raced to the observation bubble, seated himself at the control console and began frantically arranging the levers. Oscillating whistles emanated from the bowels of the ship.
“Sit down,’’ Nick shouted and Hali had barely taken a seat when the ship lurched up, vertically, like a rocket. Stomachs, they felt, had been left below. Nick punched in the autopilot; only then did he dare to relax. His face was white, his hands were damp.
“Criticize anything you like about our culture,” he said gently, “but don’t ever, ever, criticize the Lifestylers. Understand?”
“I said I was sorry!” she screeched and turned and ran. He could hear the patter of her footsteps descending to the bottom deck, then the sound of her stateroom door slamming shut.
He put his elbows on the control console, cradled his head in his hands and sighed.
V
Nick stayed up most of the night watching the holovision reporting of Lex's murder. There were tributes to him, retrospectives of his career, interviews with his agents, managers and legal staff, even an interview with Hiram Scolpes, who looked much better than when Nick had last spoken to him.
Later Senator Harmon, in a special address to the people of Sifra Messa and the United Federation of Worlds, announced that the Lifestyler Temples would not close down! (Applause) He had arranged with Police Chief Bob Clinger for a hundred-man squadron to guard each of the remaining twenty-six temples. Meanwhile all departing spaceflights had been canceled and a planetary dragnet had been set in motion which included large cash rewards for information. While no suspects had yet been apprehended, Chief Clinger said there were many leads; he was confident of an arrest by the end of the week.
In the morning a weary, red-eyed Nick Harmon landed the ship at the temple of Sir Etherium, high atop Mt. Watson. After the welcome bump of the landing legs against the earth he went to his stateroom and slept soundly for five hours. Then he showered and dressed and knocked at Hali’s door.
“I’m going to Sir Etherium’s temple,” he shouted, “and I’d be very happy if you came with me.”
Silence.
“Only if you want to,” Nick shouted. “Otherwise you can stay here.”
About a minute later Hali appeared. She was wearing a robe of a thick yet lightweight mesh which fluctuated in color when it creased.
“Sleep okay?” Nick asked.
“Yes, thank you.”
“Hungry?”
“No, thank you.”
“Think you’ll be warm enough?”
“Yes, thank you.”
“Think you’ll ever say anything to me besides ‘Yes, thank you* and ‘No, thank you’? I mean, I really don’t know what you’re so pissed off about, all I did was to—”
“Mr. Harmon,” she interrupted, “I see no reason to prolong the arguing. We are basically incompatible. Let us be cordial shipmates for the rest of the trip, then you will go your way and I will go mine and we will never have to bother with one another again, yes? It is the best idea, I think.”
“You drive me nuts,” Nick said.
A chill wind whipped their clothes as they left the ship. Apparently Chief Clinger’s promises had not been idle; in addition to the usual assortment of campers and buses, four gleaming black police saucers squatted at the opposite end of the landing strip. How incongruous they looked in what had been until a day ago the most crimeless and sanctified ground.
Past the strip the mountaintop was barren earth stippled with moss and a few evergreens, rocks protruding like blisters, clouds masking whatever lay in the valley beyond. The temple, a massive windowless gray cylinder, grew to awesome proportions as the slidewalk swept them nearer.
Four cops were stationed at the theater entrance with a polygraph and a sonargram stall. Every Supplicant had to undergo questioning while strapped to the polygraph, and a frisking, and a sonargramming—for concealed weapons—before they could take a seat. Nick and Hali waited on line for nearly twenty minutes. Then her turn came and, to Nick’s shame, they plied her with the most bigoted sort of questions—everything short of popping eyeballs and eating children—and while she stood in the sonargram stall the cop who was operating the machine called his friends over to view the picture.
“Ever see anything like that?’’ the first cop asked. He wore the standard uniform, the knee-high leaping boots, the black plastic jump suit, the shiny black communications helmet and silvered visor which made him as anonymous as any mass-produced machine. His fright-stick dangled by a short cord from his utility belt; periodically he reached down to stroke it.
“Son of a bitch! What is it?”
“Looks like she’s got two stomachs,” offered the third.
“That’s a new one on me,” the second said.
When he saw what was going on Nick rushed over and explained in an urgent whisper that she was an important dignitary, a special guest of Mutagen.
“Look, sonny,” the second cop said, “I don’t care who she is, everybody goes through the sonargram, and aliens are particularly suspect.”
“What kind of garbage is that?” Nick said. “Why are aliens particularly suspect?”
“Because they’re not human,” he replied logically. “If she was a Roolik it would be something else, but I can’t see what the fuck she is.”