"None."
"Very well. I'll waive the physical."
Mario reached up, removed the encephalograph pick-up.
"Now I can lie again."
Alien drummed a moment on the tabletop, reached forward, tossed the mesh back in the desk, scribbled on a sheet of paper, tossed it to Mario. "A contract relieving us of responsibility."
Mario read. In consideration of services rendered, Roland Mario agreed that the Chateau d'lf and its principals would not be held responsible for any injuries, physical or psychological, which he might sustain while on the premises, or as a result of his presence on the premises. Furthermore, he waived all rights to prosecute. Any and all transactions, treatments, experiments, events which occurred on, by or to his person were by his permission and express direction.
Mario chewed doubtfully at his lip. "This sounds pretty tough. About all you can't do is kill me."
"Correct," said Alien.
"A very ominous contract"
"Perhaps just the talk is adventure enough," suggested Alien, faintly contemptuous.
Mario pursed his lips. "I like pleasant adventures. A nightmare is an adventure, and I don't like nightmares."
"Who does?"
In other words, you won't tell me a thing?"
"Not a thing."
"If I had any sense," said Mario, "I'd get up and walk out."
"Suit yourself."
"What do you do with all the money?"
Mervyn Alien relaxed in his chair, put his hands behind his blond head.
"We're building the Empyrean Tower. That's no secret"
It was news to Mario. The Empyrean Tower-the vastest, grandest, heaviest, tallest, most noble structure created or even conceived by man. A sky-piercing star-aspiring shaft three miles tall.
"Why, if I may ask, are you building the Empyrean Tower?"
Alien sighed. "For the same reason you're here, at the Chateau d'lf. Boredom. And don't tell me to take my own treatment."
"Have you?"
Alien studied him with narrow eyes. "Yes. I have. You ask lots of questions. Too many. Here's the contract Sign it or tear it up. I can't give you any more time."
"First," said Mario patiently, "you'll have to give me some idea of what I'm getting into."
"It's not crime," said Alien. "Let's say-we give you a new outlook on life."
"Artificial amnesia?" asked Mario, remembering Zaer.
"No. Your memory is intact. "Here it is," and Alien thrust out the contract "Sign it or tear it up."
Mario signed. "I realize I'm a fool. Want my eight thousand?"
"We're in the business for money," said Alien shortly. "If you can spare it"
Mario counted out the eight thousand-dollar bills. "There you are."
Alien took the money, tapped it on the table, inspected Mario ruminatively. "Our customers fall pretty uniformly into three groups. Reckless young men just out of adolescence, jaded old men in search of new lands of vice, and police snoopers. You don't seem to fit"
Mario said with a shrug. "Average the first two. I'm reckless, jaded and twenty-nine."
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.