Vornan? Where was Vornan?
I emerged into the feeble light of a winter afternoon, feeling faintly foolish. The visit had been educational and recreational for me, but it had hardly served the purpose of keeping watch over our unpredictable charge. I paused on the wide plaza, wondering if I should go back inside and search out Vornan. Was it possible to ask the computer for information on a customer? While I hesitated, a voice from behind said, “Leo?”
It was Kralick, sitting in a gray-green limousine from whose hood projected the blunt snouts of a communications rig’s antennae. I walked toward the car.
“Vornan’s still inside,” I said. “I don’t know what—”
“It’s all right. Get in.”
I slipped through the door that the Government man held open for me. To my discomfort I found Aster Mikkelsen in the rear of the car, her head bent low over some sort of data sheets. She smiled briefly at me and went back to what she was analyzing. It troubled me to step directly from the brothel into the company of the pure Aster.
Kralick said, “I’ve got a full pickup running on our friend. It might interest you to know that he’s on his fourth woman now, and shows no sign of running out of pep. Would you like to look?”
“No, thanks,” I told him as he started to activate the screen. “That’s not my kick. Is he making any trouble in there?”
“Not in his usual fashion. He’s just using up a lot of girls. Going down the roster, trying out positions, capering like a goat.” Muscles clenched suddenly in Kralick’s cheeks. He swung about to face me and said, “Leo, you’ve been with this guy for nearly two weeks, now. What’s your opinion? Real or fake?”
“I honestly don’t know, Sandy. There are times when I’m convinced that he’s absolutely authentic. Then I stop and pinch myself and say that nobody can come back in time, that it’s a scientific impossibility, and that in any case Vornan’s just a charlatan.”
“A scientist,” said Kralick heavily, “ought to begin with the evidence and construct a hypothesis around it, leading to a conclusion, right? Not start with a hypothesis and judge the evidence in terms of it.”
“True,” I conceded. “But what do you regard as evidence? I have experimental knowledge of time-reversal phenomena, and I know that you can’t send a particle of matter back half a second without reversing its charge. I have to judge Vornan against that.”
“All right. And the man of A.D. 999 also knew that it was impossible to fly to Mars. We can’t venture to say what’s possible a thousand years on and what isn’t. And it happens that we’ve acquired some new evidence today.”
“Which is?”
Kralick said, “Vornan consented to undergo the standard medical examination in there. The computer got a blood sample from him and a lot of other stuff, and relayed it all to us out here, and Aster’s been going over it. She says he’s got blood of a type she’s never seen before, and that it’s full of weird antibodies unknown to modern science — and that there are fifty other physical anomalies in Vornan’s medical checkout. The computer also picked up traces of unusual electrical activity in his nervous system, the gimmick that he uses to shock people he doesn’t like. He’s built like an electric eel. I don’t think he comes from this century at all, Leo. And I can’t tell you how much it costs me to say a thing like that.”
From the back seat Aster said in her lovely flutelike voice, “It seems strange that we should be doing fundamental research by sending him into a whorehouse, doesn’t it, Leo? But these findings are very odd. Would you like to see the tapes?”
“I wouldn’t be able to interpret them, thanks.”
Kralick swiveled around. “Vornan’s finished with Number Four. He’s requesting a fifth.”
“Can you do me a favor? There’s a girl in there named Esther, a slim pretty little redhead. I’d like you to arrange things with your friend the computer, Sandy. See to it that Esther is his next sweetheart.”
Kralick arranged it. Vornan had requested a tall, curvy brunette for his next romance, but the computer slipped Esther in on him instead, and he accepted the substitution, I suppose, as a forgivable defect in our medieval computer technology. I asked to watch the video pickup, and Kralick switched it on. There was Esther, wide-eyed, timid, her professional poise ragged as she found herself in the presence of the man of her dreams. Vornan spoke to her elegantly, soothing her, calming her. She removed her smock and they moved toward the bed, and I had Kralick cut off the video.
Vornan was with her a long while. His insatiable virility seemed to underline his alien origin. I sat brooding, looking into nowhere, trying to let myself accept the data Kralick had collected today. My mind refused to make the jump. I could not believe, even now, that Vornan-19 was genuine, despite the chill I had felt in Vornan’s presence and all the rest.
“He’s had enough,” Kralick said finally. “He’s coming out. Aster, clean up all the equipment, fast.”
While Aster concealed the monitoring pickups, Kralick sprinted from the car, got Vornan, and led him swiftly across the plaza. In the brutal winter weather there were no disciples about to throw themselves before him, nor any rampaging Apocalyptists, so for once we were able to make a clean, quick exit.
Vornan was beaming. “Your sexual customs are fascinating,” he said, as we drove away. “Fascinating! So wonderfully primitive! So full of vigor and mystery!” He clapped his hands in delight. I felt the odd chill again creeping through my limbs, and it had nothing to do with the weather outside the car. I hope Esther is happy now, I thought. She’ll have something to tell her grandchildren. It was the least I could have done for her.
ELEVEN
We dined that evening at a very special restaurant in Chicago, a place whose distinction is that it serves meats almost impossible to obtain elsewhere: buffalo steak, filet of bear, moose, elk, such birds as pheasant, partridge, grouse. Vornan had heard about it somehow and wanted to sample its mysterious delights. It was the first time we had gone to a public restaurant with him, a point that troubled us; already an ominous tendency was developing for uncontrollable crowds to gather about him everywhere, and we feared what might happen in a restaurant. Kralick had asked the restaurant management to serve its specialties at our hotel, and the restaurant was willing — for a price. But Vornan would have none of that. He wished to dine out, and dine out we did.
Our escort of Government people took precautions. They were learning fast how to cope with Vornan’s unpredictable ways. It turned out that the restaurant had both a side entrance and a private dining room upstairs, so we were able to sweep our guest into the place and past the regular diners without problems. Vornan seemed displeased to find himself in an isolated room, but we pretended that in our society it was the acme of luxury to eat away from the vulgar throng, and Vornan took the story for what it was worth.
Some of us did not know the nature of the restaurant. Heyman thumbed the menu cube, peered at it for a long moment, and delivered a thick Teutonic hiss. He was sizzling in wrath over the bill of fare. “Buffalo!” he cried. “Moose! These are rare animals! We are to eat valuable scientific specimens? Mr. Kralick, I protest! This is an outrage!”
Kralick had suffered much on this jaunt, and Heyman’s testiness had been nearly as much of a bother to him as Vornan’s flamboyance. He said, “I beg your pardon, Professor Heyman. Everything on the menu is approved by the Department of the Interior. You know, even the herds of rare animals need to be thinned occasionally, for the good of the species. And—”