* * *
SITUATION: same.
* * *
“You’re Chad Mulligan? Prophet’s beard, I thought you were dead!”
“Might as well be. Intend to be. Just think I might as well take a lazy man’s way out. Get me another drink.”
“Elihu, here’s a man you ought to meet! I saw one of his books in your room when I called the other night!”
* * *
SITUATION: same.
* * *
“I say, someone told me you were from Bellevue and … Oh. Excuse me. I just saw somebody I know.”
“Yes, that’s right. My name’s Schritt—Mister—Helmut Schritt.” A quick glance around and an insincere smile. “Routine precaution. There’s a vanishing chance that someone might try to foul up your—uh—business along the lines I recall being mentioned last time we met. Act as normally as you can and avoid any entanglements that would prevent you leaving a bit earlier than the mass, okay?”
“Act normally!”
“That’s what I said. Like keep your voice down when you talk about the—uh—subject of importance, hm?” Another of the insincere smiles.
* * *
SITUATION: same.
* * *
“Darling, that’s a wild rig you’re sailing under!”
“Gwinnie, I’m so glad you like it!”
“But aren’t those Nipicaps a trifle out of period…?”
* * *
Sudden tension. A personal silence for all the screaming of the records in the background. A shifting of several of Guinevere’s closest sparewheels to encircle the victim and savour the inaugural forfeit of the evening.
“I—uh—I…”
“Well, I mean, I should know, darling, since I have them made specially for the Beautique and sell them by the literally thousands! And they only made their splash two years ago.”
“Forfeit!” someone said decisively, and there were grins.
“Ye-es, I think so. And it sort of writes itself, doesn’t it? Take it off, darling, from there”—shoulder—“to there”—waist.
Sickly embarrassed but complying: result, the strange hermaphrodite. Scalp to neck, elaborate coiffure, immaculately painted face with eyebrows arched and lashes lengthened and lips clear red and earrings jangling; waist to floor, skirt and hose and jewelled 1988-style boots; between them, that incongruous bare male chest with good solid muscle and hair in concentric curves swirling out from the nipples.
“I think that’ll do nicely,” Guinevere said with satisfaction, and those around chortled and clapped her and each other on the back and those as yet out of range of her decisions relaxed and began to chatter loudly again.
* * *
SITUATION: same but with an admixture of high nervous laughter.
* * *
“Darling, of course I’m only really well grounded in feminine fashions, but I do seem to detect something a teeny bit incongruous in that outfit you’re wearing…?”
“Well”—swallow hard—“ah … as a matter of fact—”
“Darling, don’t prevaricate. You know how much I detest prevarication.”
“Forfeit! Forfeit!”
“Well, Gwinnie dear, it’s as old as I could lay hands on, honestly it is.”
“No doubt, darling, but you’ve been to lots of my parties and I’m sure you’ve had as much fun out of seeing other people pay forfeits as they’re going to get out of you. Now let’s see. What would be appropriate? Bearing in mind that it’s early yet, so because of that and because we like you a whole great slobbering lot we’ll want to keep it a mild one, won’t we?”
* * *
SITUATION: less laughter, more tension.
* * *
“Sadistic bitch, isn’t she?”
“You should see her when she gets on to an Afram, Mr. Mulligan.”
“If you call me ‘Mr. Mulligan’ one more time I’ll throw this liquor all over your smart period-piece.” Gulp. “Cancel that—I’ll break the glass on your ought-to-be-nappy skull. Anyway, she’s wrong.”
“What?”
“She’s wrong. But that’s irrelevant, I guess. If that’s the way her guests like her to run her parties I’ll just sit quietly here and give thanks to any deity who may exist that I ran into intelligent company. Elihu, I’d like to know something more about this place Beninia. There are some highly anomalous factors in what you’ve been telling me—”
“Excuse me, Chad, please. How did you mean, ‘she’s wrong’?”
“Norman, you do have eyes, hm? And you’re blessed with a reliable memory, hm? The hole, then! What were you wearing in the summer of 2000? Something like that, I’ll wager.”
“The summer of—? Prophet’s beard, of course! I’m an idiot.”
“You belong to an idiotic species. I even wrote a book to draw attention to the fact. I was idiotic myself to think it would do any good.”
He turned back to Elihu and waved his empty glass without looking away to his right, hoping that a passing waiter would take it in exchange for a full one.
Norman shouldered his way through the people crowding close around Guinevere and her intended victim. He heard suggestions: “Take it off and put it back to front! Take off everything that’s newer than the century! Make it look a bit older—like by tearing a few holes in it at the right places!”
“Just a second, Gwinnie,” he said boredly, triumphantly.
“What do you want to do, Norman—arbitrate?”
“As a matter of fact, yes. That looks like a year 2000 garment to me. How about it, friend?”
“Why, it says right here on the label that it is, but—”
“Twentieth century, then.”
“What? Norman, you’re spouting dreck. Go away. Now I think what we ought to do is—”
“The twenty-first century didn’t begin until a minute past midnight January first 2001.”
Awkward pause. Someone: “Sheeting hole, I think he’s right.”
“Dreck. I recall distinctly on New Year’s 2000 we all—”
“And the commentators did say that wasn’t right, it comes back to me now.”
“The hole, let’s make him do it anyway.”
“No, got to fly by the course we set in the first place.”
Silence in the immediate vicinity.
“Gwinnie, I’m dreadfully afraid he’s right. He is, you know.”
Nods.
“Well, how funny! Lucky for him you came along, isn’t it, Norman? Never mind, sparewheels, there’s bound to be someone else. Break it up and let it fall free, hm?”
And, as she contrived to brush against Norman on her way to match orbits with a circulating waiter: “Fix you later, you clever brown-nose!”
“You’re welcome to try, darling,” Norman said. “You’re welcome to try.”
* * *
SITUATION: suddenly and to Guinevere’s enormous chagrin, a real party flying high and free in a genuine party-type orbit.
* * *
“Chad Mulligan? Never in a million lightyears!”
“I so testify.”
“Not the fat Afram?”
“No, the one with the beard.”
“The lean Afram?”
“Sheeting hole! No! The WASP talking to both of them.”
“Christ, everybody’s been saying he was dead!”
* * *
“Mel, I think some time later on we might break out a few caps of that stuff I asked you to bring. There’s a too-clever bleeder here I’d like to fetch down from orbit.”
* * *
“Hi, Don. Elihu, this is my roomie Donald Hogan—Chad Mulligan, Don.”
“Hi. Now, as I was saying, what McLuhan didn’t foresee although he came sheeting close to it was—”
“I’m delighted to meet you, Mr. Masters, but this is about the last place I’d have expected to run into you.”
“When Norman called on me the other night he mentioned this party and said I should come if I wanted to see the kind of problems Aframs still have to cope with in this country, so I thought it over and decided he was probably right, I ought to.”