He swallowed his heart. Twice. “Of course! How stupid of me! We'll go back now. I can do that for every Mutie you bring me.”
“No.”
He stopped tugging at her. “What do you mean — no.”
“Are you even more stupid than I thought? No means no! No, we don't tell Corgi. No, we don't tell Babe. No, we don't put any of them in he-man bodies!”
“Come on. Let's find Corgi—”
“No!”
“But you said—”
“I baited you. I wanted to see if you have even the slightest glimmer of understanding about us, Tohm, wonderful Tohm, Hero Tohm.”
“Now wait,” he said desperately, clutching her hand. He could feel the final rumbles as the volcano began to surge with lava. He didn't think he wanted to see the eruption.
She jerked her hand from his. “You wait! What makes you think Babe could adjust to being normal, huh? Two hundred and twenty-three years he's been a Mutie. Two hundred and twenty-three years he's been a child. Just overnight he takes a he-man body of a normal and thinks nothing of it? And Hunk. Precious goddamn Hunk. Hunk spits out his bodily wastes, a green liquid that smells damned unpleasant. Hunk, you think, could just up and be normal without any trauma involved, no mess up in his mind.”
“The machine surgeons are good. They won't make a mistake in—”
For a moment, she seemed to snarl. “I'm not talking about the physical end of it. Psychologically, man. Way down there in his id and his ego and his superego, even, all these years he has been suppressing the desires that were human and fostering the ones that were Mutie because the Mutie desires were the only ones he could satisfy. All those years, his ego has been building him up, telling him that he is more than a normal, better, happier, less prejudiced, more liberal, more talented. You want to change his id, turn it upside down, smash the old and slip in the new. Oh, boy! You want to tell him that all those human desires that were unsatisfiable are suddenly his again. You want to smash his ego by telling him that he was lying to himself, that being normal is better. You want to crush, mash, burn, and blow away the ashes of his life. And you can't see where it would mess him up.”
“I never thought—”
She spun about, facing him with something akin to hatred in her eyes — but not quite. Nothing seemed to be quite anything anymore. “You never thought! You never added it up. And, Mr. Tohm, what makes you think we even want to be like you? What makes you think being normal is such a lack? We want equality, man, not conformity. We want a world where we don't have to hide in cellars like rats. We don't want to be humans, normals. We're different. We aren't the same but, God, we aren't all ugly. Most, almost all of us are intriguing, not hideous. We're the new mythology for this world, Hero Tohm, but we aren't a mythology on paper. We live, breathe, walk about — fantasies in flesh. You should see some of those in the other hutches on this world and all the others — some of those who died under old Hazabob's hand. Beautiful. A phantasmagoria of wonderful creatures, beings hidden in the folds of creative imaginations for a million years — now stepping through the womb and popping up alive. They are better than normals.”
He grabbed her by the arm, swung her around. “All right. I grant all this. But why take it out on me?”
“You wouldn't understand!” she hissed.
“Everyone, goddamn it, says that I don't understand. But no one will explain it.”
“You couldn't understand it.”
“Shut up!”
“You couldn't!”
He slapped his hand across her face, stared at the red imprint it left. The smell of her was strong, sweet and somehow musky. When he plunged his lips against hers, he was not thinking so very much of what he was doing. Not very much at all. Frustration and confusion had mounted within him and found its form in this. She kissed back for a moment, then tore herself from him and ran back toward the hutch. From the main cavern, she called to him, “Supper will be almost ready. The men cooked it tonight. It might not be good, but you had better hurry.”
And she was gone.
X
“The market of concubines,” Corgi said, staring at him with eyes that perceived only fuzz patches and blips.
“On the Street of the Pleasure Sellers.”
“Mapwise, what quadrant is that?” Babe asked.
“Second.”
“Name the different merchant's platforms in the marketplace in the order in which they appear.”
Tohm strained back through the hypno-lessons, the drills of the afternoon. “Raddish, Fulmono, Kinger, Fadsteon, Frin, Rashinghi, Talaman, and Froste.”
“Very good,” Corgi said. “Very good indeed.”
“All the platforms are owned by the same people— the Romaghin board of governors. There is no free trade in the slave market, though the board of governors wishes to convey that impression.”
“Where'd you get that?” Babe asked, puffing on his odorless cigar.
“Reading on my own — some history books I pored through once.”
Corgi ran through his mental list of questions, which seemed to be endless. “How do you find the hutch in that quadrant if you need help or shelter?”
“I go to the comfort station near the prison, take the third stall from the end, and depress a brick ten up from the floor and five in from the left partition.”
“Okay. I deem you prepared. Now, you will leave at dawn when the markets are preparing for the day. You will make your way to the Market of Concubines. I have contacted the Old Man and told him about you, and Hunk's plan. He agrees on Hunk's idea and on your being given a chance to find Tarnilee. He is contacting all other groups and evacuating them to friendly but unarmed planets. We are scheduled to join a large Mutie group on Columbiad. We will put our plan into action then. I hope you understand what we want to do. We are going to create — that is not the proper word, but it will serve — a universe without warlike worlds. We hope to live in peace. If you wish to come with us, be back here no later than twenty-four hours from the time you leave. You must find your woman in that period. We have shown you the city via maps and have tutored you in the customs of the lowest class so that you can move more freely than many people in the upper strata of society. Babe will give you one thousand credits with which you may, with some luck, bid for your woman should she come up on the platform. There will also be another fifty credits there for the miscellaneous. We can't accompany you, only wish you luck.”
“I'll find her and bring her back,” Tohm said, standing.
“Now I guess I should catch some sleep while there's still time.”
“You'll need it,” Corgi said.
“Goodnight." — Babe.
“Goodnight,” he answered, moving through the door and into the corridor, conscious of their eyes and semi-eyes on him. His mind was in a turmoil. His conversation with Mayna hung heavy about him, made him feel strangely inadequate, impotent. Somehow, he was not as excited about the search tomorrow as he should have been. Would finding Tarnilee mean returning home? Although baffled by it, he was charmed with the civilized worlds. The red-leafed trees, the fish and the fruits were no longer enough. The simple life had fled from him and left a hole in his being, in the delicate fabric of his soul.
His thoughts were intruded upon by a strange noise that competed for his attention. He stopped and listened. He had heard — and yes, there it was again — an animal sound, a rumbling noise and a weeping. Very strange indeed. It seemed to be coming from Seer's room.