Alien smiled briefly, politely, rose to his feet "This way, please."
A panel opened behind him, revealing a chamber lit with cool straw-colored light Green plants, waist-high, grew in profusion-large-leafed exotics, fragile ferns, fantastic spired fungi, nodding spear-blades the color of Aztec jade. Mario noticed Alien drawing a deep breath before entering the room, but thought nothing of it. He followed, gazing right and left in admiration for the small artificial jungles to either side. The air was strong with the mint-gardenia-antiseptic odor-pungent. He blinked. His eyes watered, blurred. He halted, swaying. Alien turned around, watched with a cool half-smile, as if this were a spectacle he knew well but found constantly amusing.
Vision retreated; hearing hummed, flagged, departed; time swam, spun....
CHAPTER IV
A New Life
Mario awoke.
It was a sharp clean-cut awakening, not the slow wading through a morass of drug.
He sat on a bench in Tanagra Square, under the big mimosa, and the copper peacocks were pecking at bread he held out to them.
He looked at his hand. It was a fat, pudgy hand. The arm was encased in hard gray fiber. No suit he owned was gray. The arm was short. His legs were short. His belly was large. He licked his lips. They were pulpy, thick.
He was Roland Mario inside the brain, the body was somebody else. He sat quite still.
The peacocks pecked at the bread. He threw it away. His arm was stiff, strangely heavy. He had flabby muscles. He rose to his feet grunting. His body was soft but not flexible. He rubbed his hand over his face, felt a short lumpy nose, long ears, heavy cheeks like pans full of cold glue. He was bald as the underside of a fish.
Who was the body? He blinked, felt his mind twisting, tugging at its restraint. Mario fought to steady himself, as a man in a teetering canoe tries to hold it steady, to prevent capsizing into dark water. He leaned against the trunk of the mimosa tree. Steady, steady, focus your eyes! What had been done to him no doubt could be undone. Or it would wear off. Was it a dream, an intensely vivid segment of narcotiana? Adventure-ha! That was a mild word.
He fumbled into his pockets, found a folded sheet of paper. He opened it, sat down while he read the typescript. First, there was a heavy warning:
MEMORIZE THE FOLLOWING, AS THIS PAPER WILL DISINTEGRATE IN APPROXIMATELY FIVE MINUTES!
You are embarking on the life you paid for.
Your name is Ralston Ebery. Your age is 56. You are married to Florence Ebery, age 50. Your home address is 19 Seafoam Place. You have three children: Luther, age 25, Ralston Jr., age 23, Clydia, age 19.
You are a wealthy manufacturer of aircraft the Ebery Air-car. Your bank is the African Federal; the pass-book is in your pocket. When you sign your name, do not consciously guide your hand; let the involuntary muscles write the signature Ralston Ebery.
If you dislike your present form, you may return to the Chateau d'lf. Ten thousand dollars will buy you a body of your choice, ten million dollars will buy you a young healthy body to your own specifications.
Please do not communicate with the police. In the first place, they will believe you to be insane. In the second place, if they successfully hampered the operation of the Chateau d'lf, you would be marooned in the body of Ralston Ebery, a prospect you may or may not enjoy. In the third place, the body of Roland Mario will insist on his legal identity.
With your business opportunities, ten million dollars is a sum well within your reach. When you have it return to the Chateau d'lf for a young and healthy body.
We have fulfilled our bargain with you. We have given you adventure. With skill and ingenuity, you will be able to join the group of men without age, eternally young.
Mario read the sheet a second time. As he finished, it crumbled into dust in his hands. He leaned back, aware of nausea rising in him like an elevator in a shaft. The most hateful of intimacies, dwelling in another man's body-especially one so gross and untidy. He felt a sensation of hunger, and with perverse malice decided to let Ralston Ebery's body go hungry.
Ralston Ebery! The name was vaguely familiar. Did Ralston Ebery now possess Mario's own body? Possibly. Not necessarily. Mario had no conception of the principle involved in the transfer. There seemed to be no incision, no brain graft
Now what?
He could report to the ACP. But, if he could make them believe him, there still would be no legal recourse. To the best of his knowledge, no one at the Chateau d'lf had performed a criminal act upon him. There was not even a good case of battery, since he had waived his right to prosecute.
The newspapers, the telescreens? Suppose unpleasant publicity were able to force the Chateau d'lf out of business, what then? Mervyn Alien could set up a similar business elsewhere-and Mario would never be allowed to return to his own body.
He could follow the suggestion of the now disintegrated paper. No doubt Ralston Ebery had powerful political and financial connections, as well as great wealth in his own right. Or had he? Would it not be more likely that Ebery had liquidated as much of his wealth as possible, both to pay ten million dollars to the Chateau d'lf, and also to provide his new body with financial backing?
Mario contemplated the use of force. There might be some means to compel the return of his body. Help would be useful. Should he report to Ditmar, Janniver, Breaugh? Indeed, he owed them some sort of explanation.
He rose to his feet. Mervyn Alien would not conceivably leave vulnerable areas in his defenses. He must realize that violence, revenge, would be the first idea in a mind shanghaied into an old sick body. There would be precautions against obvious violence, of that he was certain.
The ideas thronged, swirled, frothed, like different-colored paints stirred in a bucket. His head became light, a buzzing sounded in his ears. A dream, when would he awake? He gasped, panted, made feeble struggling motions. A patrolman stopped beside him, tripped his incident-camera automatically.
"What's wrong, sir? Taken sick?" "No, no," said Mario. "I'm all right. Just dozed off." He rose to his feet, stepped on the Choreops Strip, passed the central fountain flagged with aventurine quartz, stepped off at the Malabar Pavilion, wandered under the great bay trees out onto Kesselyn Avenue. Slowly, heavily, he plodded through the wholesale florist shops, and at Pacific, let the escalator take him to the third level, where he stepped on the fast ped-strip of the Grand Footway to the Concourse.
His progress had been unconscious, automatic, as if his body made the turns at its' own volition. Now at the foot of the Aetherian Block he stepped off the strip, breathing a little heavily. The body of Ralston Ebery was spongy, in poor condition. And Mario felt an unholy gloating as he thought of Ralston Ebery's body sweating, puffing, panting, fasting-working off its lard.
A face suddenly thrust into his, a snarling hate-brimmed face. Teeth showed, the pupils of the eyes were like the black-tipped poison darts of the Mazumbwe Backlands. The face was that of a young-old man-unlined, but gray-haired; innocent but wise, distorted by the inner thrash and coil of his hate. Through tight teeth and corded jaw muscles the young-old man snarled:
"You filthy misbegotten dung-thief, do you hope to live? You venom, you stench. It would soil me to kill you. But I shall!"
Mario stepped back. The man was a stranger. "I'm sorry. You must be mistaken," he said, before it dawned that Ralston Ebery's deeds were now accountable to him.
A hand fell on the young-old man's shoulder. "Beat it, Arnold!" said a hard voice. "Be off with you!" The young-old man fell back.
Marie's rescuer turned around-a dapper young man with an agile fox-face. He nodded respectfully. "Good morning, Mr. Ebery. Sorry that crank bothered you."
"Good morning," said Mario. "Ah-who was he?"
The young man eyed nun curiously. "Why, that's Letya Arnold. Used to work for us. You fired him."