“I sure am,” Althea said. “You're the most terrific lover I’ve ever had.”
“Particulawly flattewing,” the Roolik added, “when you consider that our species is normally egglaying.”
“I never would have known it,” Althea said, “if you hadn’t told me.”
“As far as I’m concerned,” the Roolik said to Nick, “you’ve held up your part of the bargain. I’ll take you whew-ever you’re going. And on my honor, I won’t bweathe a word to the authowities.”
“Mlrpa, darling,” Althea said, “do you mind if I go for a little stroll with Nicky before we sit down for breakfast? I’d like to tell him about all the fabulous things you did while they’re still fresh in my memory.”
‘‘Of couwse, my little love nut. Huwwy back.”
He suavely blew her a kiss on the tip of his free tentacle and climbed back into the saucer.
“What’s the rush?” Nick called. Althea was walking away from the saucer so quickly he almost had to run to keep up with her. When a rise of earth had hidden them from view, Althea fell to her knees and vomited her guts out. Nick held her head and stroked her hair, murmuring that she had indeed done a beautiful thing.
IV
By noon Hali, Althea and Nick, as well as the entire family of Rooliks, were safely inside the observation bubble of the saucer, watching the island receding in the distance, losing itself among thousands of other, identical islands.
“That was our honeymoon suite,” Hali whispered in Nick’s ear. “I will always remember it.”
Father Roolik operated the control console with two tentacles while the third wandered mischievously into the openings of Althea’s dress. The garment had been donated by Mother Roolik to cover Althea’s shredded underwear; it was gray and fit too tight across the bosom, too loose at the belly and too short at the knees. Althea retained her smile and backed politely away, but the tentacle followed her to the very perimeter of the room.
The children sat with their faces squashed against the glass for a better view, Mother Roolik beside them, holding and stroking them with her various arms. The blare of the holovision from below revealed Grandma’s position. None of the family seemed too concerned by Father’s persistent lechery.
Later that day Nick, finding himself alone with Father Roolik in the observation bubble, took the opportunity to ask a question he had been puzzling over since the day before.
“Yesterday, when your mother nearly ran me down with her life-preserver jar—how did she know I was standing there?”
“She has vewy stwong psi powers. Why, if I make a dispawaging wemark about her she knows it, even if she’s fifty miles away. And,” he added ruefully, “she doesn’t let me forget it, either.”
Nick nodded sympathetically. “Sounds tough. I'm surprised, though: I never knew you people had psi powers.”
“We don’t. Only Gwandma has it, and only since she’s been in the life-pweserver jar. I’ve thought about it a lot but I don’t know why it is.”
“Concentration” Nick murmured.
“Pardon me?”
“No bodily functions to diffuse the concentration. No breathing or digesting food or making love. So it’s all available for the mind.”
“I’m afwaid I don’t follow.”
But Nick’s thoughts were outpacing his ability to explain. Piece after piece tumbled into place, and suddenly he knew who had murdered the Lifestylers, knew it beyond the faintest doubt.
“Will you give me back the nerve gun?” he asked with excitement.
After considerable hesitation and repeated assurances that it would not be used against himself or his family, the Roolik agreed.
“And I’d like you to keep Hali and Althea with you for the next couple of days. I’ll be in danger and I want to know that they’re safe.”
“How could I wefuse? Both women, simultaneously—what an expewience!”
“Now wait a minute, I didn’t mean that.”
“If they cwave me, you don’t expect me to stop them?”
“Yeah, and if they don’t crave you, I don’t expect you to force them.”
“Sir!” he harumphed, “I am a Woolik!” Then, in a confidential tone, “I expect the human woman has told the Alta-Tyberian about my wemakable sexual techniques. She won’t be able to wesist twying it for herself. But I would never fowce anyone.”
“Another thing,” Nick said. “We've got to change our destination.”
The Roolik was surprised when Nick told him where he wanted to go; nevertheless he kept his word and began plotting a new course on the charts.
PART VII
The Sleeping Assassin
I
It was midnight when the saucer swooped low over the rambling ivory castle. It hovered ten feet above the lawn while Nick leaped from the hatch; then it rocketed skyward again. On catlike feet he crossed the lawn and came to an arch which sloped to a second-story window. The arch was decorative, but in his childhood it had facilitated many nighttime escapades; tonight it would do so again. It took him only minutes to shimmy to the top. He slipped in through the window and crept down the hall, the nerve gun a reassuring weight in his waistband.
He pressed the door slide outside his father’s study and entered silently. The room was dark except for one light which drew a bright parabola on the senator’s giant desk. The senator’s life-preserver jar was parked behind the desk, the senator himself shriveled like a fetus within the milky fluid. Nick wondered if he was aware of his presence. There was no way of telling whether he was awake or asleep or if he slept at all for that matter. The camera eyes were aimed roughly in Nick's direction, but that didn’t mean anything.
“Nicholas." The name crackled from speaker atop the jar, startling him. “How are you?’’
“No complaints.’’
“I am pleased that you have decided to turn yourself in to the police. I was worried about you being hurt. Now at least I know you will be safe.’’
“Safe and lobotomized.’’
“The mind-wipe. I’ve been told, is painless. The loss of forty or fifty IQ points is a small price for a technique that has rid our society of crime. Afterward one experiences a marvelous sense of peace and well-being."
“Sounds great,*’ Nick said.
For a time they gazed at each other across the massive desk. In addition to numerous holocubes for calls and information retrieval, the desk contained a laser projector which transmitted a life-sized image of the senator to the senate building on Terra, during the times when that house was in session.
On the wall behind the desk hung the official portrait of the incumbent president, a nondescript little man with glasses and a milquetoast expression, and a portrait of self-assured Johnny Quog posing with the senator, and a portrait of the senator before his death, a different man altogether, standing with his arm around the waist of a beautiful woman. She was tall, with thick black hair; the resemblance to Nick was obvious.
“I didn’t come here to turn myself in,” Nick said. ‘‘I’ve found out who murdered the Lifestylers. It wasn’t Hali.”
“Oh? And what makes you think that?”
Nick felt perspiration break out all over his body. It was impossibly difficult playing cat and mouse with this man in the jar. He was dead! He had no emotions! Even if he had wanted to smile or frown or give any clue to his thoughts, the nerve paths were simply no longer there; the muscles no longer functioned. No wonder most of the politicians were drawn from the ranks of the dead.
“The police decided that Hali did it,” Nick summarized, “because she was the only person on the planet with psi powers. Whoever killed the Lifestylers needed psi powers to work the psychic field amp. Sure she was there when the Lifestylers were murdered, but that doesn’t mean anything. The psych field amp works remotely; it’ll even work in the future, that's what Scolpes told me. And the business about her hating humans is ridiculous. She’s one of the most compassionate people I’ve ever met. So it boils down to the psi powers.