Abruptly, Lutt recalled what he had said to Drich Baker in that instant before the blackout.
The memory came to him so clearly and in such detail that he found himself reliving the events. He was in the Vortraveler’s cockpit. It was late afternoon and the ship sat on the tarmac of the secret testing site just east of Seattle. A rainy day with water running down the shields. The instrument panel glowed green. There was a reassuring hum to the power systems. Drich sat beside him and they were struggling to get the ship into a vorspiral that (theory said) would link them to another solar system.
“Maybe this time.” That’s what I said.
Lutt recalled the words but nothing more. Whatever happened after those words was eaten up by . . . by . . . a blackout.
Lutt’s troubled memory returned to the morning at the Enquirer. It was after L.H. had slammed out of the boardroom.
I went to the fourteenth-floor editorial conference room.
Eight senior editors sat with him around the long table amidst ranks of electronic newspaper receivers. He recalled arguing loudly that the Enquirer was not resourceful enough or snappy enough in its news play.
The ranks of receivers showed the Enquirer and rival publications to back up his argument.
“We need more sensational stories, more grabbers!”
He flipped the paper-thin sheets of liquid crystal screens to display pages of the rivals.
“Look here!” Lutt said, pointing to a headline on page one of the Cincinnati Crier. PATTERN TO UFO SIGHTINGS
“Here’s a story that screams to be read. The Crier says a classified Zone Patrol report shows common factors for credible UFO sightings. This is great stuff! They say all UFOs have a bulbous shape and insectlike antennae all over them, plus flexible rods that sway as though blown by a wind.”
“Those guys on the Crier make that stuff up out of their heads!”
That was city editor Anaya Nelson, caustic as usual.
Lean, heavily made up around the eyes and framed by straight golden hair, Anaya’s face still held a measure of her youthful beauty. But she had hard edges now. The staff said her face had only one relaxed expression—condescending.
“They quote pages and paragraphs of this Zone Patrol report!” Lutt snapped. “And they’re citing the First Amendment to protect their sources!”
“So they got some rear-rank swabby to steal a piece of ZP fantasy.”
“It sells papers, dammit!”
“You’re really going to turn this operation into a moneymaker? No more writeoffs for our beloved parent company, Hanson Industries?”
Lutt noted the other editors trying to conceal amusement at his usual collision with Nelson, but he ignored them.
Nelson smiled, knowing this irritated Lutt.
Damn her!
Lutt had criticized her “noncooperative attitude” on many occasions but to no avail.
What could he do about her? Nelson was a hard-shelled news veteran in her late middle years, long rumored to be old L.H.’s mistress. Lutt did not know for sure but the reports were that she had been an extraordinary beauty in her youth when the old man first met her. What everyone here knew for sure was that she had a pipeline to L.H. and could not be fired. Not by Junior anyway.
Lutt felt his ire rising. “I thought I made that clear!”
His nostrils flared, picking up a faint odor of paint in the editorial conference room. Always painting and repainting in here! He fanned through a graphics file on his printer, found what he was seeking and displayed it for Anaya. It showed a new masthead for the Enquirer with “L.W. Hanson, Proprietor.”
Nelson examined the artwork disdainfully.
Managing editor Adrian (Ade) Stuart leaned close to stare over Nelson’s shoulder. A paraplegic without legs, Stuart rode an electric cart that required wide aisles in the City Room. Overweight and with a softly rounded face under gray hair, Stuart often surprised new acquaintances with his commanding baritone voice. Some said Stuart’s voice was the main asset that had carried him to power on the Enquirer.
“Very dignified,” Stuart said.
“It doesn’t specify L.W. Hanson Senior or Junior,” Nelson said. “Shouldn’t that be corrected?”
“This is the way I want it!” Lutt said.
They all know L.H. still owns this paper and my stock is a token five shares. She’ll go straight to Father with this but I still run the operation.
Suzanne Day, who edited the Style Section, leaned forward with a sweet smile. Lutt had heard she practiced that smile for “boss buttering.” Still, she was attractive enough—a slender brunette with gentle features that were sure to coarsen because she drank too much, boasting: “I can drink any newsman on this paper under the table.”
“Why don’t we offer a copying service?” she asked. “It could be built into each receiving frame. We could—”
Nelson interrupted with a calculated imitation of Lutt’s voice: “But we want increased productivity, more efficiency, more circulation, more advertising revenue.”
“We also want excellence,” Lutt said.
Day required no more encouragement. Still with that sweet smile, she said: “I’ve checked it out. If a subscriber wants a copy of any article, he just touches the screen over the article, tapping once for each copy desired.”
“It’s been tried before,” Nelson said.
“Albany Evening Bible,” Stuart said. “Mmmmm . . . four years ago. There were problems.”
“Because they were first,” Day said. “There were headaches with startup costs and glitches.”
Like my Vortraveler, Lutt thought.
Lutt’s erratic memory went spiraling off into his pet project—near-instantaneous communication and travel across the solar system and interstellar space. L.H. would never provide the development money.
He wants me to run Hanson Industries.
Lutt’s mother, Phoenicia, wanted the same thing—but only because she thought her son would keep up the profits. She and his younger brother, Morey—always with their hands in the till.
Morey!
Lutt recalled another detail of the day before the blackout.
I couldn’t keep my appointment with Morey. What a shock, dear brother, to learn that someone has discovered your financial indiscretions!
That’ll be worth a lot of money from his accounts. But I didn’t keep the appointment because of the crash and . . .
Yes! There was an accident with the Vortraveler!
This memory brought Lutt full circle and back to his immediate situation—in a corridor surrounded by Zone Patrol guards, his detached body walking under its own power.
His vision cleared slightly but he still had no control over where he aimed his attention.
How badly was I injured?
He felt too weak to take command of his own body. Lutt felt certain his eyes were not moving randomly. He was staring with too much purpose—surveying the brown and blue uniforms of his guards, examining the long gray corridor and the barred doors of the cells along both sides. He noted that a prisoner’s black and green gorcord tunic covered his body. How demeaning!
Into the clink! I said that but who did I say it to?
His detached flesh did a terrifying thing, then. It spoke without his volition.
“I demand to know where you’re taking me!”
It was a boyish voice, not Lutt’s gravelly tones.
There were strange, alien thoughts in his head, too.
How dare they treat me this way? I am Ryll, son of the Chief Storyteller! But I can’t say anything about that. I’m supposed to be an Earther. They think I’m Lutt Hanson, Jr.
Lutt wanted to speak but his voice would not obey. He could think, though.
Are you real? Someone else in my head and . . . body?
Oopsah! I left my thoughts unshielded.
Am I going crazy?
You are not insane, Lutt. I have been listening to the sporadic activity of your simplistic mind. Your latest thoughts
about your ship and the Spirals confirm my earlier surmise. Your primitive ship and your lack of caution caused a disaster.
Ryll?
Ahhh, you remember my name.
You said . . . you said I could control. . . our body.
You were doing it too poorly. These guards are not very intelligent but they are trained to be suspicious. The Zone Patrol reported only two bodies at the crash and now they know there were two people on your ship. Ergo: Where is the pilot of the other ship? They will assume he was destroyed in the blast and fire but only if we do not feed their suspicions.
Darkness enclosed Lutt although he sensed his eyes remained open.
What’s happening? He’s not letting me see!
The guards and their prisoner arrived at an empty cell. One guard opened the door and they started to thrust Ryll through the doorway. He began to struggle and shout.
“I’ve done nothing wrong! You’ll pay for this!”
“The Hansons think they own the universe,” a guard sneered.
They sent Ryll staggering into the cell and the door slammed. The sound of the lock clanging into place was loud in the metal-walled space.
“Look, fella,” a guard said. “We know who you are but you’re still going to answer some questions. You’ll be interrogated tomorrow and there’s nothing your old man or any other Hanson can do about that!”
The guards clumped away down the corridor.
There was laughter and calling from other prisoners.
“You really got one of the Hanson tribe in there?”
“What’d he do? Steal a general’s mistress?”
Still in darkness, Lutt ventured a protesting question.
Why won’t you let me see what’s happening?
No need.
But I . . .
Be still! I have to decide what to do about this.
A metal door boomed closed down the corridor. The laughter and catcalls subsided.
Ryll inspected the cell. A tiny cubicle with solid walls. Bars on the door. No internal illumination. Light came through the bars from a small fluorescent panel in the corridor ceiling. Shadows of bars on wall and floor. Round metal drain hole in the floor bubbling with foul-smelling ordure. Gray floor and walls that looked as though they had never been painted. Water stains and rough scratchings from former occupants. He read one of the wall scratchings:
“Welcome to Hell.”
A toilet fixture protruded from the back wall. A bunk bed was cantilevered from a side wall. Thin mattress. One rough blanket.
There was a distinctly stale odor to the place and the smell of disinfectant did not cover the pungency of urine and excrement.
Ryll went to the bunk and stretched out on it to think.
This had become much more than an adventure.
Was there anything useful in the data about Earth assimilated from Dreen Storytellers? He began to doubt this.
Nothing was said about Earthers experimenting with travel in the Spirals.
But an . . . an erasure ship had been prepared.
Erasure.
He found the concept easier to contemplate.
This world was a peculiar creation. Caution with any idmage interference was strongly indicated. Who knew what Earthers might learn if they saw Dreen powers at work? But they imprisoned a Dreen in a dark, dank cell! And Patricia said they held other Dreens captive.
However, they do not know I’m a Dreen. That is a mitigating circumstance.
The bed was uncomfortable. The floor did not attract him as a resting place. Dirty and smelly down there. Ryll longed for the simple platform of hardened vegetation in his Dreenor bedroom. Well, there was something he could do about that. He got up and removed the mattress, leaning it against the barred door and exposing the bunk, a hard metal surface of pipes protruding from the wall. It felt much better when he lay down once more. The blanket, while coarse, provided some warmth. He felt himself drifting into sleep. Yes . . . this had been an exhausting experience.
Still in darkness, Lutt came to weak awareness of the hard surface under him. He complained about the bed.
Ryll paid little attention to the protests. The deeper stages of Dreensleep were more attractive. He drifted into a combined Dreen-human dream.
The Lutt part of the intertwined dream focused on an ideal (to him) human female and became (to Ryll) a nightmare. The woman had no visible face but she possessed a voluptuous body from which radiated a golden aura that drew the dreamers to her.
In the dream, Lutt made love to the female in the abhorrent human way that had so shocked Ryll when he encountered it in a Storyteller account on Dreenor. How could a Dreen have idmaged such a thing? The dream with its immediacy was even more revolting than the story assimilation. Ryll now felt himself almost a participant!
Still, as the nightmare continued, Ryll sensed something odd emanating from the dream encounter. This particular woman Lutt hoped to meet someday aroused tender feelings in him, feelings almost approaching Dreen tenderness. Lutt called her “Ni-Ni” and said she was far different from the whores of his past experiences.
The nightmare continued for what seemed to Ryll an interminable time. Ni-Ni never spoke or showed her face. But Lutt’s dream thoughts revealed her history. Ni-Ni had lost her family in a war on a planet other than Earth. She loved Lutt but he was forced to compete for her with another man. Dreamer-Lutt demanded the name of the other man, shouting:
“I will kill him!”
The other man appeared in the nightmare then, another faceless figure in the shadowy distance.
“You love him, too!” Lutt shouted. “I know you do!”
Dreamer-Lutt chased the faceless man but the man ran through fearful shadows land hid in impenetrable darkness.
Ryll felt the torment and frustration of the nightmare as though they were his own but could not find answers to the dream’s questions.
Was Ni-Ni real? Was she dead? Was she someone Lutt would meet in his lifetime?
In the midst of this frustration, Ryll found himself dreaming simultaneously of Dreenor’s school for gifted children. Proctor Shanlis ranted at Ryll’s inattention to lessons.
“The tests say you’re intelligent!” Shanlis screamed, menacing the youth with a flexible rod. “The tests say you will be able to idmage more than common Dreens. Why then can’t you understand the simplest lesson?”
The dream Shanlis whipped the rod against Ryll’s back, demanding: “Why? Why are you wasting my time and testing my patience? Why?”
Ryll felt the dream-whipping raise welts, saw yellow blood run down his brown skin. The pattern of the welts was that of the steel bedframe in his cell and blended with the bars on the door.
The nightmare came to an abrupt end with the clanging of a metal door somewhere in the distance.
Ryll awoke and, for a moment, could not remember where he was. He could still feel the stings of the whipping and the frustrations of the human nightmare.
Something was approaching his face. More nightmare? No . . . it was an insect. A fat spider dangled from its silken thread directly above him, descending slowly. Its legs were arched gracefully, extended like the stabilizers of a flying ship. Ryll saw it was preparing to land on his forehead, unaware of the eyes observing it. Rolling from beneath the arachnid, Ryll batted it toward the wall and saw there a cockroach. It waved its antennae at him.
Ryll swung his feet to the floor, looking at the Earther shape he had assumed, thinking: A cell! They’ve confined me in a cell I must escape! I’ve come from a classroom prison to this Earther cell and the prison of a merged body. What can I do?
Lutt continued to dream. Ryll picked up fragments of the human’s awareness, oddly parallel to Ryll’s classroom dream. Lutt sat in a classroom and an Earther scolded him. The instructor was Lutt Senior. How tough and cold he looked. He wore strange devices over his eyes and offered money instead of grades. The dream father waved a five-hundred-thousand-dollar bill as his mouth shaped words that had no sounds.
In the dream, Lutt Junior thought: I can read your lips! I understand the language of your body. But there was no interpretation in his thoughts.
Ryll turned his attention from the dream.
The swatted spider had recovered. It swung from the end of the bedframe, descending to the floor. Abruptly, it occurred to Ryll that he could shapeshift into the spider form and escape this confinement. He leaned close to the insect and formed a single cilia, which he inserted into the spider as it dangled on the end of its thread. The thing was remarkably simple and Ryll wondered why a great Storyteller had bothered to create it.
Giving little thought to the varieties of shapeshifting, Ryll assimilated spider essentials from its cells. Confidently, he swiveled his eyes inward and focused on the changes necessary to convert himself into an arachnid.
The change was comparatively easy but he came through it with the abrupt realization that he had done something perilously wrong. Not enough oxygen! He was dying of oxygen starvation! Too late, he remembered a Dreenschool lesson.
“With simple shapeshifting, you will have approximately the same mass in the new form as in your form before the change.”
He was a gigantic spider! The gorcord tunic burst across the middle from the spider’s fat body. Eight wiry legs ripped their way through the fabric. Shoes and socks fell to the floor and the useless eyeglasses dropped onto them.
The spider’s primitive system of oxygen absorption would not support his mass!
Ryll felt consciousness fading.
His giant insect body plopped to the floor. The legs extended uselessly to the sides. Energy was fading fast.
Thoughts of escape dissipated. He had to focus on surviving this stupid mistake.
I may have energy for only one attempt to return to human form!
Desperately, he swiveled his eyes inward and concentrated on the Lutt shape he had so carelessly abandoned.
Is it working?
Slowly, he realized he lay stretched out on the floor, face down with nose pressed close to the odorous drain. His chest heaved and he realized he had returned to Earther shape.