“You’d have to go there anyhow” Dino Watters said, rousing himself at last from the slumber of his endless depression. He, alone, seemed somewhat taken by Baines’ scheme. “After all that’s where he is, in Gandhitown, where anything goes, everyone has children by everyone. By now she may be in the spirit of the thing.”
With a grunt of agreement Howard Straw said, “It’s luck for you, Gabe, that she’s among the Heebs; she ought to be more receptive to you because of that.”
“If this is the only way we can comport ourselves,” Miss Hibbler said stiffly, “I think we deserve to perish; I truly do.”
“The universe,” Omar Diamond pointed out, “possesses an infinitude of ways by which it fulfills itself. Even this must not out-of-hand be despised.” He nodded gravely.
Without another word, without even saying good-by to Annette, Gabriel Baines strode from the council chamber, down the wide stone stairs and out of the building, to the parking lot. There he boarded his turbine-driven auto and presently, at a meager seventy-five miles an hour, was on his way to Gandhitown. He would arrive before the four-hour deadline, he calculated, assuming that nothing had fallen onto the road, blocking it. Dr. Rittersdorf had returned to Gandhitown by rocket-driven launch; she was already there. He cursed at the archaic mode of transportation which he had to rely on, but there it was; this was their world and the reality for which they were fighting. As a satellite of the Terran culture once more they would regain modern means of transportation… but this in no way would make up for what they stood to lose. Better to travel at seventy-five miles an hour and be free. Ah, he thought. A slogan.
And yet it was a trifle annoying. Considering the vitalness of his mission… council-sanctioned or not.
Four hours and twenty minutes later, physically wearied by his travel but mentally alert, even keyed-up, he reached the rubbish-strewn outskirts of Gandhi-town; he smelled the odor of the settlement, the sweet smell of rot mixed with the acrid stench of countless small fires.
During the trip he had evolved a new idea. So at this last moment he turned—not toward Sarah Apostoles’ shack—but toward that of the Heeb saint Ignatz Ledebur.
He found Ledebur tinkering with an ancient, rusty gasoline generator in his yard, surrounded by his children and cats.
“I have seen your plan,” Ledebur said, raising a hand to stop Gabriel Baines from breaking into an explanation. “It was traced in blood on the horizon just a short while ago.”
“Then you know specifically what I want from you.”
“Yes.” Ledebur nodded. “And in the past, with a number of women, I have made successful use of it.” He put down the hammer which he held, strolled toward the shack; the cats but not the children followed. So did Gabriel Baines. “However it is a microscopic idea that you possess,” Ledebur said reprovingly, and chuckled.
“Can you read the future? Can you tell me if I’ll succeed?”
“I am no seer. Others may fortell but I remain silent. Wait a minute.” Within the one main room of the shack he paused, while the cats trotted and hopped and mewed on all sides. Then he reached above the sink, lifted down a quart jar with a dark substance inside; he unscrewed the lid of the jar, sniffed, shook his head, put the lid back on the jar and restored it to its place. “Not that.” He wandered off, then finally opened the ice box, rummaged within, came out with a plastic carton which he inspected with a critical frown.
His present common-law wife—Gabriel Baines did not know her name—appeared from the bedroom, glanced dully at the two of them, then started on. She wore a sack-like dress, tennis shoes and no socks, her hair a mass of uncombed dirty material coating the top and back of her head. Gabriel Baines looked away in gloomy disgust.
“Say,” Ledebur said to the woman. “Where’s that jar of you-know-what? That mixture we use before we—” he gestured.
“In the bathroom.” The woman padded on by, going outdoors.
Disappearing into the bathroom Ledebur could be heard moving objects about, glasses and bottles; at last he returned carrying a tumbler filled with a liquid that slopped against the sides as he walked. “This is it,” Ledebur said, with a grin that showed two missing teeth. “But you have to induce her to take it. How are you going to manage that?”
At the moment Gabriel Baines did not know. “We’ll see,” he said, and held out his hand for the aphrodisiac.
After leaving Ledebur he drove to the single shopping center in Gandhitown, parked before the dome-shaped wooden structure with its peeling paint, its stacks of dented cans, heaps of discarded cardboard cartons littering the entrance and parking area. Here the Alphane traders rid themselves—dumped, actually—great masses of seconds.
Within he bought a bottle of Alph’ brandy; seated in his auto he opened it, poured out a portion of the contents, added the dingy, heavily-sedimented aphrodisiac which the Heeb saint had given him. The two liquids managed somehow to mix; satisfied, he recapped the bottle, started up the car and drove on.
This was, he reflected, no time for him to depend on his natural talents; as the council had pointed out he did not particularly excel in this direction. And excellence, if they wished to survive, was mandatory.
Visually, he managed without difficulty to locate the Terran ship; it loomed high and shiny and metallically-clean above the litter of Gandhitown, and as soon as he sighted it he turned his auto in that direction.
An armed Terran guard, wearing a gray-green uniform familiar from the late war, halted him a few hundred yards from the ship, and from a nearby doorway Baines saw the muzzle of a heavy weapon trained on him. “Your ident papers, please,” the guard said, warily scrutinizing him.
Gabriel Baines said, “Tell Dr. Rittersdorf that a plenipotentiary from the supreme council is here to make a final offer by which bloodshed on both sides can be avoided.” He sat tautly bolt-upright behind the tiller of his car, gazing straight ahead.
By intercom the arrangements were made. “You may go ahead, sir.”
Another Terran, also in full military dress with side arms and decorations, conducted him on foot to the ramp that led up to the open hatch of the ship. They ascended and presently he was bumping his way morosely down a corridor, searching for Room 32-H. The confining walls made him uneasy; he longed to be back outdoors where he could breathe. But—too late now. He found the proper door, hesitated, then knocked. Under his arm the bottle gurgled slightly.
The door swung open and there stood Dr. Rittersdorf, still wearing the slightly-too-tight black sweater, the black skirt and elfish shoes. She regarded him uncertainly. “Let’s see, you’re Mr.—”
“Baines.”
“Ah. The Pare.” Half to herself she added, “Schizophrenic paranoia. Oh, I beg your pardon.” She flushed. “No offense meant.”
“I’m here,” Gabriel Baines said, “to drink a toast. Will you join me?” He walked past her, into her diminutive quarters.
“A toast to what?”
He shrugged. “That ought to be obvious.” He allowed just the right shade of irritation to enter his voice.
“Are you giving in?” Her tone was sharp, penetrating; closing the door she came a step toward him.
“Two glasses,” he said, in a deliberately resigned, muted voice. “Okay, Doctor?” He got the bottle of Alphane brandy—and its alien additive—from its paper bag, began to unscrew the cap.
“I think you’re definitely doing the wise thing,” Dr. Rittersdorf said. She looked distinctly pretty as she scurried about searching for glasses; her eyes shone. “This is a good sign, Mr. Baines. Really.”
Somberly, still the incarnation of defeat, Gabriel Baines poured from the bottle until both glasses were full.
“We can land, then, at Da Vinci Heights?” Dr. Rittersdorf asked, as she lifted her glass and sipped.
“Oh sure,” he agreed listlessly; he, too, sipped. It tasted awful.
“I’ll inform the security member of our mission,” she said. “Mr. Mageboom. So no accidental—” She all
at once became silent.
“What’s wrong?”
“I just had the strangest—” Dr. Rittersdorf frowned. “A sort of flutter. Deep inside me. If I didn’t know better—” She looked embarrassed. “Never mind, Mr.— is it Baines?” Rapidly she drank from her glass. “I feel so tense all of a sudden. I guess I was worried; we didn’t want to see…” Her voice trailed away. Walking to the corner of the compartment she seated herself on the chair, there. “You put something in that drink.” Rising, she let the glass drop; she crossed as swiftly as possible toward a red button on the far wall.
As she passed him he caught her around the waist. The plenipotentiary from the inter-clan council of Alpha III M2 had made his move. For better or worse the plan was being enacted, their struggle to survive.
Dr. Rittersdorf bit him on the ear. Nearly severing the lobe.
“Hey,” he said feebly.
Then he said, “What are you doing?”
After that he said, “Ledebur’s concoction really works.”
He added, “But I mean, there’s a limit to everything.”
Time passed and he said gaspingly, “At least there should be.”
A knock sounded on the door.
Raising herself up slightly Dr. Rittersdorf called, “Go away!”
“It’s Mageboom,” a muffled male voice sounded from the corridor.
Springing to her feet, disengaging herself from him, Dr. Rittersdorf ran to the door and locked it. At once she spun and, with a ferocious expression, dived—it looked to him as if she were diving—directly at him. He shut his eyes and prepared for the impact.
But was this going to get them what they wanted? Politically.
Holding her down, keeping her to one spot on the floor, a little to the right of the heap of her tossed-away clothing, Baines grunted, “Listen, Dr. Rittersdorf—”
“Mary,” and this time she bit him on the mouth; her teeth clinked against him with stunning force and he winced with pain, shut his eyes involuntarily. That turned out to be his cardinal mistake. Because in that moment he was tilted; the next he knew he was somehow on the bottom, pinned in place—her sharp knees dug into his loins and she grasped him just above the ears, gathering his hair between her fingers and tugging upward as if to pull his head from his shoulders. And at the same time—
He managed to call out weakly, “Help!”
The person on the other side of the door, however, had evidently already departed; there was no response.
Baines made out the sight of the red button on the wall which Mary Rittersdorf had been about to press—had intended to but now, beyond any doubt whatsoever, would never in a million years press—and began to squirm inch by inch in its direction.
He never made it.
And the thing that gets me, he thought later on in despair, is that in addition this is getting the council nowhere politically.
“Dr. Rittersdorf,” he grated, wheezing for breath, “let’s be reasonable. For god’s sake let’s talk, okay? Please.”
This time she bit the tip of his nose; he felt her sharp teeth meet. She laughed; it was a long, echoing laugh that chilled him.
I think that what’s going to kill me, he decided finally after the passage of what seemed an unending amount of time in which neither of them managed to say any more, is the biting; I’m being bitten to death and there is nothing I can do. He felt as if he had stirred up and encountered the libido of the universe; it was a mere elemental but enormous power that had him pinned to the rug, here, with no possibility of escape. If only someone would break in, one of the armed guards for instance—
“Did you know,” Mary Rittersdorf whispered wetly against his cheek, “that you’re the prettiest man alive?” At that she backed off slightly, sitting on her haunches, adjusting herself—he saw his opportunity and rolled away; scrambling, he broke for the button, groped frantically to press it, to summon someone, anyone—Terran or not.
Panting, she seized him by the ankle, brought him crashing down; his head hit the side of a metal cabinet and he moaned as the darkness of defeat and annihilation—of a sort he had never been prepared for by anything previous in his life—seeped over him.
With a laugh Mary Rittersdorf rolled him about and once more pounced on him; her bare knees again dug into him, her breasts dangled above his face as she clamped her hands over his wrists and bore him flat. It obviously did not matter to her whether he was conscious really, he discovered, as the darkness became complete. One last thought entered his mind, a final determination.
Somehow, some way, he would get the Heeb saint Ignatz Ledebur for this. If it was his last act in life.
“Oh, you’re so lovely,” Mary Rittersdorf’s voice, uttered within a quarter-inch of his left ear, rang, deafening him. “I could just eat you up.” She quivered from head to foot, an undulation that was like a storm of mobility, a tossing of the surface of the earth itself.
He had, as he passed out, a terrible feeling that Dr. Rittersdorf had just begun. And Ledebur’s concoction did not account for this because it had not affected him this way. Gabriel Baines and the Heeb saint’s concoction had provided an opportunity for something already in Dr. Mary Rittersdorf to emerge. And he would be lucky if the combination did not turn out to be—as it seemingly was turning out to be—not a so-called love potion but a clear-cut potion of death.
At no time did he truly lose consciousness. Therefore he was aware that, much later, the activity in which he was caught began by degrees to abate. The artificially-induced whirlwind diminished and then at last there was a fitful peace. And then—by an agency which remained obscure to him—he was physically moved from his place on the floor, from Dr. Mary Rittersdorf’s compartment, to some other place entirely.
I wish I was dead, he said to himself. Obviously the last of the grace-period had trickled away; the Terran ultimatum had expired and he had failed to halt events. And where was he? Cautiously Baines opened his eyes.
It was dark. He lay outdoors, under stars, and around him rose the junk-heap which was the Heeb settlement of Gandhitown. In no direction—he peered frantically—could he make out the shape of the Terran ship. So obviously it had taken off. To land at Da Vinci Heights.
Shivering, he sat weakly up. Where, in the name of all that was sacred to the species, were his clothes? Hadn’t she cared enough to give them back? It seemed a gratuitous coda; he lay back and shut his eyes and cursed to himself in a sing-song voice… and he, the Pare delegate to the supreme council. Too much, he thought bitterly.
A noise to his right attracted him; again he opened his eyes, this time peering shrewdly. An antique vehicle of some obsolete sort put-putted toward him. He made out, now, bushes; yes, he realized, he had been tossed in the bushes, too, fulfilling the ancient saw: Mary Rittersdorf had reduced him to the status of a participant in a folk-saying. He hated her for that—but his fear of her, much greater, did not budge. What was coming was nothing more than a typical Heeb internal combustion engine car; he could distinguish its yellow headlights.
Climbing to his feet he waved the car to a halt, standing in the center of the nebulous Heeb-built cowpath, here on the outskirts of Gandhitown.
“What’s the matter?” the Heeb driver in his drawly, jejune voice inquired; he was so deteriorated as to be devoid of caution.
Baines walked up to the door of the car and said, “I was—attacked.”
“Oh? Too bad. Took your clothes, too? Get in.” The Heeb banged on the door behind him until it swung creakily open. “I’ll drive you to my place. Get you something to wear.”
Baines said grimly, “I’d prefer it if you took me to Ignatz Ledebur’s shack. I want to talk to him.” But, if it had all been there, buried inside the woman in the first place, how could he blame the Heeb saint? No one could have predicted it, and surely if it generally affected women this way Ledebur would have ceased to employ it.
“What’s that?” the Heeb driver inquired as he started up the car.
Th
ere was that little intercommunication in Gandhitown; it was a symptom, Baines realized, that rather bore out Mary Rittersdorf’s statements about them all. However, he drew himself together and described as best he could the location of the Heeb saint’s shack.
“Oh yeah,” the driver said, “the guy who has all those cats. I ran over one the other day.” He chuckled. Baines shut his eyes, groaned.
Presently they had halted before the dimly-lit shack of the Heeb saint. The driver banged open the car door; Baines climbed stiffly out, aching in every joint and still suffering unbearably from the million and one bites which Mary Rittersdorf, in her passion, had inflicted. He made his way step by step across the littered yard, in the uneven yellow light of the car’s headlights, found the shack’s door, nudged an undetermined collection of cats from his way, and rapped on the door.
Seeing him, Ignatz Ledebur rocked with laughter. “What a time it must have been—you’re bleeding all over. I’ll get you something to wear and Elsie’ll probably have something for those bites or whatever they are… it looks as if she worked you over with a pair of cuticle scissors.” Chuckling, he shuffled off somewhere in the rear of the shack. A horde of grimy children regarded Baines as he stood by the oil heater warming himself; he ignored them.
Later, as Ledebur’s common-law wife dabbed ointment on the bites—which constellated around his nose, mouth and ears—and Ledebur laid out tattered but reasonably clean clothes, Gabriel Baines said, “I’ve got her figured out. Obviously she’s the oral sadistic type. That’s where things went wrong.” Mary Rittersdorf, he realized soberly, was as sick as, or even more than, anyone on Alpha III M2. But it had been latent.
Ledebur said, “The Terran ship took off.”
“I know.” He began now to dress.
“There has been a vision,” Ledebur said, “That has reached me in the last hour. About the arrival of another Terran ship.”
“A warship,” Baines guessed. “To take Da Vinci Heights.” He wondered if they’d go so far as to H-bomb the Manses’ settlement—in the name of psychotherapy.