“Yes,” said the girl.
“Do you expect me to answer?”
“No,” said the girl, “not now.”
“Who are you?” said Mercer.
“We never ask that here. It doesn’t matter. But since you’re new, I’ll tell you. I used to be the Lady Da — the Emperor’s stepmother.”
“You!” he exclaimed.
She smiled, ruefully. “You’re still so fresh you think it matters! But I have something more important to tell you.” She stopped and bit her lip.
“What?” he urged. “Better tell me before I get another bite. I won’t be able to think or talk then, not for a long time. Tell me now.”
She brought her face close to his. It was still a lovely face, even in the dying orange of this violet-sunned sunset. “People never live forever.”
“Yes,” said Mercer. “I knew that.”
“Believe it,” ordered the Lady Da.
Lights flashed across the dark plain, still in the distance. Said she, “Dig in, dig in for the night. They may miss you.”
Mercer started digging. He glanced over at the man he had dug up.
The brainless body, with motions as soft as those of a starfish under water, was pushing its way back into the earth.
Five or seven days later, there was a shouting through the herd.
Mercer had come to know a half-man, the lower part of whose body was gone and whose viscera were kept in place with what resembled a translucent plastic bandage. The half-man had shown him how to lie still when the dromozoa came with their inescapable errands of doing good.
Said the half-man, “You can’t fight them. They made Alvarez as big as a mountain, so that he never stirs. Now they’re trying to make us happy. They feed us and clean us and sweeten us up. Lie still. Don’t worry about screaming. We all do.”
“When do we get the drug?” said Mercer.
“When B’dikkat comes.”
B’dikkat came that day, pushing a sort of wheeled sled ahead of him. The runners carried it over the hillocks; the wheels worked on the surface.
Even before he arrived, the herd sprang into furious action. Everywhere, people were digging up the sleepers. By the time B’dikkat reached their waiting place, the herd must have uncovered twice their own number of sleeping pink bodies — men and women, young and old. The sleepers looked no better and no worse than the waking ones.
“Hurry!” said the Lady Da. “He never gives any of us a shot until we’re all ready.”
B’dikkat wore his heavy lead suit.
He lifted an arm in friendly greeting, like a father returning home with treats for his children. The herd clustered around him but did not crowd him.
He reached into the sled. There was a harnessed bottle which he threw over his shoulders. He snapped the locks on the straps. From the bottle there hung a tube. Midway down the tube there was a small pressure-pump. At the end of the tube there was a glistening hypodermic needle.
When ready, B’dikkat gestured for them to come closer. They approached him with radiant happiness. He stepped through their ranks and past them, to the girl who had the boy growing from her neck. His mechanical voice boomed through the loudspeaker set in the top of his suit.
“Good girl. Good, good girl. You get a big, big present.” He thrust
the hypodermic into her so long that Mercer could see an air bubhle travel from the pump up to the bottle.
Then he moved back to the others, booming a word now and then, moving with improbable grace and speed amid the people. His needle flashed as he gave them hypodermics under pressure. The people dropped to sitting positions or lay down on the ground as though half-asleep.
He knew Mercer. “Hello, fellow. Now you can have the fun. It would have killed you in the cabin. Do you have anything for me?”
Mercer stammered, not knowing what B’dikkat meant, and the two-nosed man answered for him, “I think he has a nice baby head, but it isn’t big enough for you to take yet.”
Mercer never noticed the needle touch his arm.
B’dikkat had turned to the next knot of people when the super-condamine hit Mercer.
He tried to run after B’dikkat, to hug the lead space suit, to tell B’dikkat that he loved him. He stumbled and fell, but it did not hurt.
The many-bodied girl lay near him. Mercer spoke to her.
“Isn’t it wonderful? You’re beautiful, beautiful, beautiful. I’m so happy to be here.”
The woman covered with growing hands came and sat beside them. She radiated warmth and good fellowship. Mercer thought that she looked very distinguished and charming. He struggled out of his clothes. It was foolish and snobbish to wear clothing when none of these nice people did.
The two women babbled and crooned at him.
With one corner of his mind he knew that they were saying nothing, just expressing the euphoria of a drug so powerful that the known universe had forbidden it. With most of his mind he was happy. He wondered how anyone could have the good luck to visit a planet as nice as this. He tried to tell the Lady Da, but the words weren’t quite straight.
A painful stab hit him in the abdomen. The drug went after the pain and swallowed it. It was like the cap in the hospital, only a thousand times better. The pain was gone, though it had been crippling the first time.
He forced himself to be deliberate. He rammed his mind into focus and said to the two ladies who lay pinkly nude beside him in the desert, “That was a good bite. Maybe I will grow another head. That would make B’dikkat happy!”
The Lady Da forced the foremost of her bodies in an upright position. Said she, “I’m strong, too. I can talk. Remember, man, remember. People never live forever. We can die, too, we can die like real people. I do so believe in death!”
Mercer smiled at her through his happiness.
“Of course you can. But isn’t this nice… “
With this he felt his lips thicken and his mind go slack. He was wide awake, but he did not feel like doing anything. In that beautiful place, among all those companionable and attractive people, he sat and smiled.
B’dikkat was sterilizing his knives.
Mercer wondered how long the super-condamine had lasted him. He endured the ministrations of the dromozoa without screams or movement. The agonies of nerves and itching of skin were phenomena which happened somewhere near him, but meant nothing. He watched his own body with remote, casual interest. The Lady Da and the hand-covered woman stayed near him. After a long time the half-man dragged himself over to the group with his powerful arms. Having arrived he blinked sleepily and friendlily at them, and lapsed back into the restful stupor from which he had emerged. Mercer saw the sun rise on occasion, closed his eyes briefly, and opened them to see stars shining. Time had no meaning. The dromozoa fed him in their mysterious way: the drug canceled out his needs for cycles of the body.
At last he noticed a return of the inwardness of pain.
The pains themselves had not changed; he had.
He knew all the events which could take place on Shayol. He remembered them well from his happy period. Formerly he had noticed them — now he felt them.
He tried to ask the Lady Da how long they had had the drug, and how much longer they would have to wait before they had it again. She smiled at him with benign, remote happiness; apparently her many torsos, stretched out along the ground, had a greater capacity for retaining the drug than did his body. She meant him well, but was in no condition for articulate speech.
The half-man lay on the ground, arteries pulsating prettily behind the half-transparent film which protected his abdominal cavity. Mercer squeezed the man’s shoulder.
The half-man woke, recognized Mercer and gave him a healthily sleepy grin.
“ ‘A good morrow to you, my boy.’ That’s out of a play. Did you ever see a play?”