And so months in Mario's life changed their nature from future to past, months during which he became almost accustomed to Ralston Ebery's body.
On a Tuesday night Mario's personality had been fitted into Ralston Ebery's body. Wednesday morning he had come to his senses. Friday he was deep in concentration at the office of Ebery Air-car in the Aetherian Block, and three o'clock passed without his awareness. Friday evening he thought of the Oxonian Terrace, his rendezvous with Janniver, Breaugh, the nameless spirit in the sick body named Ditmar. And the next Tuesday at three, Mario was sitting at a table on the Oxonian Terrace.
Twenty feet away sat Janniver, Breaugh, Ditmar. And Mario thought back to the day only a few weeks ago when the five sat lackadaisically in the sun. Four innocents and one man eyeing them hungrily, weighing the price their bodies would bring.
Two of those bodies he had won. And Mario saw them sitting quietly in the warm sunlight, talking slowly-two of them, at least, peaceful and secure. Breaugh spoke with the customary cocksure tilt to his dark head, Janniver was slow and sober, an odd chording of racial vibrants. And there was Ditmar, a foreign soul looking sardonically from the lean dark-bronze body. A sick body, that a man paying ten thousand dollars for adventure would consider a poor bargain. Ditmar had bought adventure-an adventure in pain and fear. For a moment Mario's flinty mood loosened enough to admit that his yearning for his old own life in his old body, a man might easily forget decency, fairness. The drowning man strangles a would-be rescuer.
Mario sipped beer indecisively. Should he join the three? It could do no harm. He was detained by a curious reluctance, urgent, almost a sense of shame. To speak to these men, tell them what their money had bought him-Mario felt the warm stickiness, the internal crawling of extreme embarrassment. At sudden thought, Mario scanned the nearby tables. Zaer. He had almost forgotten Pete Zaer. A millionaire's mind lived in Zaer's body. Would Zaer's mind bring the millionaire's body here?
Mario saw an old man with hollow eyes alone at a nearby table. Mario stared, watched his every move. The old man lit a cigarette, puffed, flicked the match-one of Zaer's tricks. The cigarette between his fingers, he lifted his highball, drank, once, twice put the cigarette in his mouth, set the glass down. Zaer's mannerism.
Mario rose, moved, took a seat. The old man looked up eagerly, then angrily, from dry red-rimmed eyes. The skin was a calcined yellow, the mouth was gray. Zaer had bought even less for his money than Mario. "Is your name Pete Zaer?" asked Mario. "In disguise?" The old man's mouth worked. The eyes swam. "How- Why do you say that?"
Mario said, "Look at the table. Who else is missing?" "Roland Mario," said the old man in a thin rasping voice. The red eyes peered. "You!"
"That's right," said Mario, with a sour grin. "In a week or two maybe there'll be three of us, maybe four." He motioned. "Look at them. What are they shaking dice for?"
"We've got to stop them," rasped Zaer. "They don't know." But he did not move. Nor did Mario. It was like trying to make himself step naked out upon a busy street.
Something rigid surrounded, took hold of Mario's brain. He stood up. "You wait here," he muttered. "I'll try to put a stop to it."
He ambled across the sun-drenched terrace, to the table where Janniver was rolling dice. Mario reached his hands down, caught up the meaningful cubes.
Janniver looked up with puzzled eyes. Breaugh bent his straight Welsh eyebrows in the start of a temper. Ditmar, frowning, leaned back.
"Excuse me," said Mario. "May I ask what you're rolling for?"
Breaugh said, "A private matter. It does not concern you." "Does it concern the Chateau d'lf?" Six eyes stared.
"Yes," said Breaugh, after a second or two of hesitation. Mario said, "I'm a friend of Roland Mario's. I have a message from him."
"What is it?"
"He said to stay away from the Chateau d'lf; not to waste your money. He said not to trust anyone who suggested for you to go there."
Breaugh snorted. "Nobody's suggesting anything to anybody."
"And he says he'll get in touch with you soon."
Mario left without formality, returned to where he had left Zaer. The old man with the hot red eyes was gone.
Ralston Ebery had many enemies, so Mario found. There were a large number of acquaintances, no friends. And there was one white-faced creature that seemed to live only to waylay him, hiss vileness. That was Letya Arnold, a former employee in the research laboratories.
Mario ignored the first and second meetings, and on the third he told the man to keep out of Ms way. "Next time I'll call the police."
"Filth-tub," gloated Arnold. "You wouldn't dare! The publicity would ruin you, and you know it, you know it!"
Mario inspected the man curiously. He was clearly ill. His breath reeked of internal decay. Under a loose gray-brown jacket his chest was concave, his shoulders pushed forward like doorknobs. His eyes were a curious shiny black, so black that the pupils were indistinguishable from the iris, and the eyes looked like big black olives pressed into two bowls of sour milk.
"There's a patrolman now," said Arnold. "Call him, mucknose, call him!"
Quickly Mario turned, walked away, and Arnold's laughter rang against his back.
Mario asked Louis Correaos about Letya Arnold. "Why wouldn't I dare have him arrested?"
And Correaos turned on him one of his long quizzical stares. "Don't you know?"
Mario remembered that Correaos thought he was Ebery. He rubbed his forehead. "I'm forgetful, Louis, Tell me about Letya Arnold."
"He worked in the radiation lab, figured out some sort of process that saved fuel. We naturally had a legal right to the patent." Correaos smiled sardonically. "Naturally we didn't use the process, since you owned stock in World Air-Power, and a big block of Lamarr Atomics. Arnold began unauthorized use. We took it to court, won, recovered damages. It put Arnold into debt and he hasn't been worth anything since."
Mario said with sudden energy, "Let me see that patent, Louis."
Correaos spoke into the mesh and a minute later a sealed envelope fell out of the slot into the catch-all.
Correaos said idly, "Myself, I think Arnold was either crazy or a fake. The idea he had couldn't work. Like perpetual motion."
Letya Arnold had written a short preface to the body of the paper, this latter a mass of circuits and symbols unintelligible to Mario.
The preface read:
Efficiency in propulsion is attained by expelling ever smaller masses at ever higher velocities. The limit, in the first case, is the electron. Expelling it at speeds approaching that of light, we find that its mass increases by the well-known effect. This property provides us a perfect propulsive method, capable of freeing flight from its dependence upon heavy loads of material to be ejected at relatively slow velocities. One electron magnetically repelled at near-light speeds, exerts as much forward recoil as many pounds of conventional fuel....
Mario knew where to find Letya Arnold. The man sat brooding day after day in Tanagra Square, on a bench beside the Centennial Pavilion. Mario stopped in front of him, a young-old man with a hysterical face.
Arnold looked up, arose eagerly, almost as if he would assault Mario physically.
Mario in a calm voice said, "Arnold, pay attention a minute. You're right, I'm wrong."
Arnold's face hung slack as a limp bladder. Attack needs resistance on which to harden itself. Feebly his fury asserted itself. He reeled off his now-familiar invective. Mario listened a minute.