Anthony, Piers - Ghost

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Table of Contents
1. Blimped
2. Naiad
3. Black Hole
4. Four Dreads
5. Theories
6. Ghosts
7. Revelation
8. Committee
9. Puzzle
10. Parodies
11. Neutralizations
12. Chaos
Author's Note
This is a work of fiction. All the characters and events portrayed in this
book are fictional, and any resemblance to real people or incidents is purely
coincidental.
GHOST
Copyright (c) 1986 by Piers Anthony
All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book or portions
thereof in any form.
First printing: September 1986
A TOR Book
Published by Tom Doherty Associates, Inc.
49 West 24 Street
New York, N.Y. 10010
Cover art by Ron Walotsky
ISBN: 0-312-93272-3
Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: 85-50315
Printed in the United States
0987654321
Chapter 1:_____Blimped
"How long has it been, sir?" the girl inquired.
"One year," Shetland said. He did not need to qualify that; this was the
Space Service Outprocessing Clinic Satellite Station, SSOCSS, where spacemen
first put their feet on the ground. As the saying went: "Ssocss before
sshoes." The term "satellite" referred to more than orbiting bodies; this
station had never been off planet.
She considered momentarily. "Please strip, sir."
He glanced askance at her. "In your presence?"
She smiled professionally, without either malice or humor. She was a
perfect young woman in her mid twenties, marvelously symmetrical in more than
mere figure. Her full breasts were not merely appealing in a sexual sense;
they were somehow precisely right and in proportion to her overall body
structure. Her brown hair complemented the neutral color of her uniform and
was coiffed just so. Some finer hand than man's had crafted her to be subtly
esthetic. That was of course why she had this position.
Yet there was a single remarkable incongruity that loomed much more
significantly than it should have, because it stood in such contrast to her
physical poise: one eye was a lighter gray than the other. Perhaps only a
spaceman would have noticed.
"It is the rule, sir. If you can't do it here, you will be unable to do it
Outside. The Clinic will have to hold you for Leave Conditioning."
Because his year in space had deconditioned him for close association with
the masses of Earth. He was out of touch with contemporary mores. If the
current fad consisted of stripping in mixed company, failure to do so could
lead to social embarrassment at best, and to personal hazard at worst. This
appealing girl had evidently been placed to verify his adaptability.
Shetland hesitated. "I did not want to take Earth leave."
"Obviously, sir, since you went the maximum. Now you have to survive
thirty days on Earth-or be cashiered from space. One of the little anomalies
of Service."
"Hell for a month-or hell for life," he agreed.
She glanced down momentarily. "Would it help if I stripped with you?"
"Woman, do you realize that I have been denied-" He broke off. He had not
been denied sex; the Operations Manual had made all women of space accessible
to him, and all were smart and fit and skilled in the necessities. Yet he had
felt denied; the purely physical possession of women who he knew had no real
interest in him left him fundamentally unsatisfied. How much better merely to
talk with someone in honest companionship, to feel the quickening of genuine
mutual interest. In that sense a stranger became more alluring than a known
woman, for apart from the novelty of first-liaison there was at least the
delusion that a better relationship could develop.
This woman was also in the Service. She knew the manual. Therefore she
would oblige him sexually without qualm if he asked. That made it pointless.
He was sick of semiprofessional sex.
"I admire your aplomb," he said instead.
And realized that he had uttered, in lieu of a lie, a half-truth. He
envied the whole world its aplomb. The human sphere continued in what to him
seemed grandiose insanity, yet it endured, satisfied with itself in myriad
idiotic ways that he could never indulge in. The world had its niche; Shetland
had not found his own. Space was only a substitute for the true companionship
he craved.
"It is simply a matter of pride," she said seriously. He saw that this was
no casual thing with her. She was performing her chore in a manner that
reflected a deep, virtually innate, wholly attractive pride. He was reminded
of the adage of all those dependent on machinery for their well-being, which
meant every living creature in space. "A machine does not care."
Many people in space could hardly be differentiated from machines in that
respect; they had allowed routine convenience to make them resemble
automatons. It seemed to be a survival trait in the Service; a number of his
onetime classmates of this persuasion now ranked him.
But this girl was dedicated. Whatever she might do, however trivial, had
to be done with the proper flair. Yet that one discordance, the off shade eye,
interfered. It provided for her an individuality of expression that set her
involuntarily apart. She probably hated it, but he found himself attracted to
that lone discrepancy far more than to her more conventional charms. Charms
were commonplace; all young women were well proportioned these days. Few had
the art or fortune to possess or even to desire nonconformity.
Did this person really care, or was it all a mask? Historically masks had
been used to conceal expression, to hide the truly human feelings beneath.
Today they emulated it, hiding the lack of meaningful personal interest.
Unable to let it go, he played the game he disliked. "You don't know me. You
could face an unsafe situation."
"Not at all, sir. I am certain you are a gentle man." She pronounced the
last two words carefully, making clear they were two. That much he understood:
a gentleman was by one aspect of reckoning a male gentile, or non-Jew.
Therefore it carried a certain religious implication. Direct religious
reference was rigorously excluded from casual dialogue. Yet this particular
distinction was commonly ignored, and of course the majority opinion traced
the true origin of the word to "gentle," or a well-bred person.
Did this refinement of usage on her part mean that she harbored a
religious preference? Was it her way of expressing subtle objection to the law
that had abolished all semblance of religious, social or sexual distinction?
Shetland frowned. How would this beautifully balanced creature react to a
direct slur? Ordinarily he had no interest in baiting people, but this one
intrigued him. Perhaps that interest stemmed chiefly from his desire to
postpone his reckoning with the current society of Earth another moment. He
preferred to think that it was because of that trifling shade of the eye.
Truth, he remembered, is a shade of gray. Nevertheless it had taken hold. "I
did not realize that the Space Service now employs professional mistresses."
"There are no such things, sir," she said without rancor, and he realized
that she had fended off similar implications before. He had not been
sufficiently original in his choice of insult. That was part of his problem.
He was not an original man, despite his desire to be. "The exchange of sexual
relations for money or material consideration was ruled unconstitutional last
year. All things must be voluntary."
As well he knew-though in space these things were not voluntary but
mandatory. The manual covered it all. "The Constitution is getting to be a
comprehensive document," he remarked. They were of course referring to the
World document, not the lesser one he had grown up with.
"The most comprehensive document in the history of our species, sir."
Shetland started to laugh, but choked it off. She was not joking.
After a moment, he asked: "What is your name?"
"Sosthenna, sir." She was not required to give her full identity; that
would have interfered with her off duty privacy. But he pondered what she had
provided, leafing through his mental dictionary of names. The name had
originally been Hebrew-fittingly?-meaning a vigorous woman. Was she vigorous?
Did she really derive from Hebrew loins? He suffered a momentary picture of a
concentration camp, an ugly plume of thick smoke rising from a sooted chimney
within it. Her parents could have lived in an age to experience that horror,
or rather her grandparents; had they escaped the historical Nazi purge? He
shut off the vision; his imagination had no right.
"You intrigue me," Shetland said.
"I am intended to, sir. Please strip now, or a line will form."
Hardly. Each officer of space received individual outprocessing attention,
unrushed. Time was not of the essence; there was a certain irony there. But
having failed to penetrate her emotional armor, he had no recourse. He
stripped, handing her the items of his uniform as they came loose. He did not
balk at the underclothing. Soon he was no longer a Commander in the Space
Service, but merely another naked man.
Sosthenna studied him carefully. "You do not appear to have suffered
muscular deterioration during your long tour in space."
"Much of it was at one point five gee acceleration," he said. "We spun
ship at other times, and followed the manual on exercise. There is never any
need to deteriorate."
She smiled with just the right force. "That explains it. Not all spacers
honor the manual that literally, and so some suffer tissue losses that make it
harder for them on Earth for several reasons."
"If you do not get on with your business, I will demonstrate my health
more tangibly."
"In that case I'd better hurry." But she had not been bluffed; his
masculinity was obviously of neutral concern to her. Probably many men had
indulged themselves with her, and many more had wished to; none had touched
her where it counted.
She walked slowly to the wall where costumes were massed, and drew out
one. "I think this is appropriate."
"Anything," Shetland said, becoming perversely impatient with the process.
"What is it?"
"A blimped outfit." She pronounced it as two syllables, equally accented:
blim-ped. "I think you can handle it, and it is excellent camouflage."
He considered it dubiously. "Knickers and sneakers?"
"And plastic jacket and mini-cap. No one will suspect you of being a space
officer in this."
"Is this not somewhat extreme? This is not a hostile country; it is my
homeland."
"It is extreme. This is not hostile country. It is your homeland," she
agreed without inflection.
Shetland sighed and donned the outfit, transferring his identity tokens to
it. "Exactly what does a blimped do?"
"Oh-you haven't encountered them? Public transport closed down entirely
six months ago when its electric allocation ran out. Now it's every person for
self." He noticed how she avoided the standard "he" so that no vestige of
sexism showed. The language was accelerating its process of change! "The
streets are so congested with cycles that it is hazardous for anyone not used
to it. The blimped is the newest device, but it should get you there if the
wind is right. That's blimp-ped: pedal blimp."
"Pedal blimp," he repeated. "I begin to comprehend."
"It can be strenuous, especially in contrary winds, but I believe you are
up to it. We have several rental units on the roof. What direction will you be
going?"
"From here? Southwest-if the volatile modern society has not changed the
directions of the compass."
She smiled to the appropriate degree and touched a button on a column.
Instant weather came on. "Storm approaching area of receiver, ESA 1700. LTA
warning. Present 15K, veering SE and erratic at fringe. Repeat: LTA warning."
"That is not entirely clear to me," Shetland said. "We do not have much
weather in space, and it was not an immediate concern to me on my last visit
to Earth."
"Right now the wind is fifteen knots in exactly the direction you need, at
ideal speed. But in one hour the storm will ground all small lighter-than-air
craft. That means you had better hurry." Then she frowned. "Oops, I nearly
forgot your briefing. The blimp will have to wait."
"My parents reside within fifteen miles of this station," Shetland said.
"It is pointless to delay an hour when that will cost me perhaps as much as a
day before the wind turns again." Actually he was not emotionally close to his
aging parents, who had opposed his entry to space and also blamed him for a
certain-but a kind of redness formed before him like a wash-technique
painting, a malignant spirit, and he suppressed that concept immediately. He
would merely introduce himself to them, suffer their cold welcome, then find
other lodging. The remainder of his forced leave would not be as bad. At least
Earth had good libraries. But it would not be politic to say all this openly,
and it was not this woman's business.. He must seem willing to go. "I am
familiar with this area; I grew up here in the virtual shadow of the Station.
I need no briefing."
"Oh, but you do, Commander," she insisted.
They were standing close together. He enfolded her and kissed her. It was
not an expert job, just a rather hurried, sloppy effort.
Caught by surprise, she neither resisted nor responded. But he found her,
even in the dishabille of temporary stasis, a very nice object to touch. He
was tempted to remain longer, exploring the sensation, ascertaining whether
her off color eye was merely the superficial indication of a lode that
penetrated deep into her being, expanding into true individuality deep within,
where the world could not know. But he realized that it probably was no such
thing, and that she was likely as conventional as her exterior format
suggested. This returned him firmly to his original objective.
He separated from her and proceeded to the stairs, and she did not oppose
him. Better to leave some play for the imagination, to believe that there
could be a real person in there behind the near-perfection, and that such a
person could be genuinely interested in a difficult man like him. Illusion was
at times a far sweeter thing than reality. The fact of illusion needed to be
cherished as well as its content.
The stairs were a shut-off escalator. Energy had become far too precious
to waste, and it would have wasted more energy to replace the machinery with a
regular staircase or ramp, so the thing remained in place. Was this a fair
analogy of contemporary society? he wondered. A thing that had run its
dramatic upward course, going nowhere, and whose steps were now in stasis? It
was another topic to meditate at leisure. He conserved such topics; they were
valuable. To him, boredom was a greater evil than hunger or sexual
frustration, for boredom signaled the waste of a mind.
There was no alarm. Sosthenna would not turn him in. She had told him to
report for briefing, but enforcement was not her department. A man had a right
to ignore what was intended only for his own good. Provided he wasted nothing
and infringed the rights of no others.
He found the roof, pleasantly winded by his charge up four flights of
escalator. Exercise was wherever one found it; this was also the essence of
nonwaste. Conservation came naturally to those familiar with space, where life
depended on making existing resources do.
The top of the building was covered with solar collectors, each unit
enclosed by clear plastic so as to make an oven effect. The sunlight entered
freely, but reflected out with much more difficulty when polarized, so heated
the trapped air. The water circulating through the tubes carried away that
captive heat for use by the occupants of the building. Other collectors were
crystals that converted the light directly into electric power, efficiently.
Only a narrow walkway remained for access to the blimp dock, and a sign said
WATCH YOUR SHADOW.
Shetland obediently hunched down so as to minimize his power-robbing
shadow and hurried to the dock. The blimps were there: three of them anchored
to a rail on short leashes, tugging like eager steeds in the breeze. Each had
a dependent apparatus, a framework of seat and pedals, with vanes on the
sides, a plane to the front and a large propeller fan behind. No waste
material; most of it was light plastic.
He was familiar with the basic principles of guidance in atmosphere, and
could see that the wind would be the overwhelming factor. The blimps were long
and narrow, with flattened sides, like freshwater fish, so as to provide
maximum lift with minimum drag. He concluded that it should be possible to
tack into the wind in conjunction with the propeller. But far easier to ride
with the wind, especially for a novice.
He climbed into a pretty red blimped, fitted his arms into the vane
attachments, his feet into the pedal shoes, and fastened the safety harness.
The front plane was controlled by shifts of body mass. The apparatus seemed
simple enough in theory to operate; the physics of it were elementary. And it
was essentially a ship. Shetland liked that. A ship, any ship, was home, and
it was nice to feel like a captain.
The wind was steady and strong, as the weather report had promised, but
the blimp did not respond properly to his efforts as he made to cast off. He
observed that his weight was a little too much for it, so that the pedal
housing was snagging on the roof. He worked the valve to feed just enough
additional hydrogen into the bag to provide the necessary buoyancy. Hydrogen:
there had been a year when this gas was banned in favor of inert helium. But
hydrogen had greater buoyancy, and was easier to prepare-after all, most of
the universe consisted of it!-and the fire hazard had been abated by making
the system self-contained, with no leakage of gas to the atmosphere. Of course
the abolition of tobacco smoking helped; today the average citizen was not an
incendiary mechanism. Therefore blowups should be few.
When precise balance had been obtained and he hovered inches off the roof,
he valved it down, cast loose the mooring and set off downwind.
It was, in its fashion, fun. He was floating, but not in free-fall. The
effect was quite different from space travel, and somewhat eerie. For one
thing, he was appallingly close to the planet. Fifty feet. Ahead of him a tall
building loomed; the wind should carry him by it, not through it, but he
didn't care to gamble. In space nothing changed direction of its own accord,
so his reflexes urged action. He used his armvanes to guide to the side.
Nothing happened. He was drifting in air, and had no purchase. Hastily he
pedaled. The fan pushed against the atmosphere, increasing his forward
velocity. Now the vanes had some slight traction, and he wobbled over to the
side, barely clearing the building.
"Birth!" a woman screamed irritably as the blimp almost sideswiped her
window vegetable garden. "Get in your lane, purebred!"
Embarrassed, Shetland guided his craft into the airway he now discerned,
marked off by a pattern of buoys anchored to buildings and utility poles.
Faster blimps traveled higher, and traffic bore to the right. The street was
east-west, not quite aligned with the wind, so he had to pedal and steer
vigorously.
"Birth," he murmured, remembering the woman's curse-word. So reproduction
itself had become anathema in some circles. "Purebred." That was a more
established insult, more specific. He did not care to explain that he had been
born before the law had changed. But this sort of language was all too typical
of what he disliked on Earth; in space there was no parallel.
Below him were the massed cycles that Sosthenna, her of the shade of gray,
had warned him about. There were thousands of them. Most were two-wheeled, but
quite a number were one- or three- or four-wheeled: unicycles, tricycles,
quadricycles. The last were actually pedalcars, some loaded with families,
some even with solar collectors covering them. There were no fuel-powered
vehicles at all.
No mystery about that. The energy-exorbitant last century had virtually
depleted all ready sources of power. The developing crisis had been apparent
for half a century or more, but nothing had been done until too late. The
government of the world had finally reserved all remaining fossil fuel sources
for offplanet use, at one stroke abolishing the age of the automobile, jet
plane and powered watercraft. It had been desperation, not foresight.
Suddenly the pollution of the environment had decreased sharply, physical
exertion had increased, and lives had lengthened. Serendipity: perhaps the
loss of the use of fossil fuels had been a net benefit. Of course the average
citizen had not thought so, and the public transport system had been strained-
until its current had also been cut off, during his most recent tour.
Mad world! he thought. It seemed determined to do the right things for the
wrong reasons, even though the right reasons were apparent. Space was more
predictable and more reasonable. Or were those concepts redundant? Could there
be unpredictable reason, or unreasonable predictability? Well, perhaps.
Relativistic theory seemed very like the former, and as for the latter, he had
experienced an event once that in retrospect-no, no, blot that out; it was too
red, too-
"Watch where yer goin', prok!" a voice yelled in his ear.
Shetland looked about. He had drifted into the opposing air lane during
his introspection, and was interfering with traffic. In this fifteen-knot wind
it seemed impossible to pedal a blimp northwest, but some were tacking west
successfully. "Sorry." And what did "prok" mean?
"Sorry!" the other yelled indignantly. He was a young man, perhaps twenty,
light brown of hue in the current fashion. He spun his blimp about expertly
and flew alongside Shetland's craft, interfering with his wind. "Sorry! What
are you-a waster?"
Waster-that was identifiable as contemporary slang. Waste had become the
ultimate crime, especially in the eyes of those who had most freely practiced
it until very recently. New converts were generally most vigorous-and
obnoxious-in any pursuit.
"I have not used this type of craft long," Shetland explained, not wanting
to get involved in an altercation.
"Then what in seg are you doing in mainline traffic, paleface?"
This time Shetland caught the insult squarely. Seg-that would be short for
segregation, now a bad word. Paleface-the Amerind term for the white intruder,
historically. Since Shetland was a very dark black man, this was a studied
irony. Anything that called attention to the extremes of a person's racial
characteristics was an affront, for it presumed he was of illegitimate birth.
This despite the fact that the Miscegenation Act had been in force for only
twelve years. Youngsters assumed that the present state had always obtained,
even when they knew better; that was in its way also typical of this new
culture.
Shetland ignored the obnoxious youth and steered away. But the other, his
baiting spirit awakened, kept pace with him-an easy job, since he had
preeempted the windside. "Where you bin, glutton?" he demanded loudly. "Home
on the range?"
More insults. Translation was becoming easier as the nature of the youth
manifested. Food was scarce, so gluttony was an unforgivable offense. Obesity
had disappeared. Those who could afford to eat well did not dare do so, lest
they be lynched. The "range" was the old cattle-raising farm, before the
consumption of meat was banned. To have a home on the range implied either
criminal ranching for the black market meat market ("fenced" meat), or that a
person was one of the cattle.
Understand a culture's insults, he thought, and understand the culture.
How closely the two were allied!
Yet it was pointless to attempt to trade jibes with such ilk. The kid
surely had a job, as there was now a hundred percent employment, and soon he
would have to go to it. Shetland continued his flight. He had now gotten out
of the city proper and was over the suburbs-where fifty percent of the terrain
was garden. Corn stood between the houses, and cabbage ruled the back yards,
and the front lawns were waving wheat. Regular grass had become uneconomical,
since there was no fuel for power mowers. Today men used scythes-at harvest
time.
"You jobless neuter!" the youth shouted. "What kind of a fish are you?"
Jobless-neuter-fish. The lad was really scratching for something that
would hurt. It was time to shut him up. "A space fish," Shetland replied
shortly-and realized immediately that he had made a bad mistake.
"Space!" the youth exclaimed as if this were another dirty word. Then,
gleefully to the whole lane: "This character's radioactive! He's a spaceman!"
Immediately other blimps converged. Some of them were larger two-seater
tandems. "Spaceman!" The word spread like news of a radiation hazard. Shetland
tried to accelerate away, but his leg muscles weren't conditioned for this
specialized form of exercise, and the others readily caught up. White, yellow
and brown faces grinned maliciously.
"Hey, spacer! How much coal have you stole?" one yelled. Extracts of coal
provided the bulk of the chemical propellants of spaceships. There was a lot
of coal available, but processing it without destroying farmland was
expensive.
"How much shale did you fail?" another demanded. The second major source
of fossil fuel was shale oil, much of which did not make the stringent space
standards. "Failed" shale served for much of Earth's essential industry. Most
natives felt that the good shale oil should be reserved for Earthly use, so
this was another source of ire.
"How much roent did you vent?" Radiation had of course become an obscene
concept since the Atomic Act. To make the obscenity of it quite plain, the
speaker issued a loud sound of crepitation, as of breaking wind.
"How much gas did you pass?" They were getting bolder; someone chuckled.
The crepitation became a small chorus.
"How much work did you shirk?"
Shetland cut in the compressor circuit. The pedal resistance abruptly
stiffened as the hydrogen gas was recompressed to liquid state. There was no
immediate effect on the blimp; though its lift was finely balanced against its
cargo, compressing hydrogen by hand was not a rapid process. He was getting
hot, both from the exertion and the heat emitted by the compression cylinder.
Not to consider the harassment. But by the time the punks realized what he was
doing, he would be losing elevation at a rate they could not immediately
match, and should be able to escape them by floating low.
It would be much faster merely to bleed some gas from the bag! But there
was of course no way to do that short of punching a hole in the blimp, and it
would be both wasteful and dangerous. It would be difficult or impossible to
regain elevation later, even if the hole could be resealed, as the blimp
carried only a minimal reserve. Waste was a crime, a sin, and a social
indiscretion; that was a cultural view that Shetland shared completely. Even
to break wind naturally had become an offense not so much against taste but
against waste, as the taunting of the youths was making evident. Flammable gas
was a planetary resource.
"Space, space, hide yer face!"
"Some other place!"
"Go find yourself another goal!"
"Go ram your pole!"
"Up a black hole!"
The supposed cleverness of that last impromptu jibe overcame them, and the
whole gang burst out laughing. Shetland had to admit that it was an inspired
juxtaposition of spacism and racism and perhaps sexism-and it didn't help that
he was now echoing their doggerel in his own mind. With an effort he kept his
face straight, for they had scored on his most vulnerable spot. Black hole . .
.
They were using their planes to scoop down, buzzing him like so many
monstrous flies. Flies were more common since the Insecticide Act that banned
the use of all airborne poisons. But so, fortunately, were spiders and other
fly predators.
"Space, spaced!" they yelled, now linking the space effort with the
illegal use of consciousness-changing drugs. "Was'e, waste!" they chanted in
unison.
Now they started bumping into his blimp, rocking it violently in time with
the loudening chant. "SPACE-SPACED! WAS'E-WASTE!"
But the commotion had attracted official attention. A blue police glider
looped down inquiringly. The crowd of blimps scattered, finding other traffic
lanes with a facility Shetland could only envy.
Shetland slowly relaxed. What had started as mere harassment had been
working into a dangerous situation. Had one of those attempted jostlings
caused him to go out of control, with his present uncertainty of navigation,
he could have taken a bad fall.
Perhaps he should have waited for the briefing Sosthenna had urged upon
him. Like a typically short-sighted human being, he had ignored the warning
until almost too late.
Chapter 2:______Naiad
The glider moved on. It could not come in too low or close, lest it lose its
airstream and have to land. But it had done its job of breaking up the
harassment. Had the youths not scattered, it could have dropped tear gas,
forming a cloud that would have changed the nature of the activity quickly
enough. Rioting was a waste of energy, subject to immediate penalty.
Unfortunately Shetland had forgotten to cut out the compressor when the
craft started nudging down. Now he had lost too much buoyancy, and could not
regain altitude. He was dropping steadily toward the ground.
He stopped the compressor now, and the blimp shot ahead as his full pedal
power returned to the fan. He valved more gas into the chamber, but it filled
slowly: another built-in waste-reduction measure. Finally he leveled off with
the help of his plane, barely twenty feet from the ground.
Only it wasn't ground. It was water. Preoccupied with the harassment and
elevation, he had not paid attention to direction, and the wind had taken him
over a small reservoir. He was lucky he hadn't gotten dunked!
Still, it was bad enough. Sailboats were crossing the water, their masts
rising above his own present elevation. Each sail bore a large L: these were
learners, practicing maneuvers before risking the open waterways traffic. They
would not be adept at avoidance. He was headed for one now. He didn't want his
bubble punctured by the crossbar!
He worked his vanes and guided around, hardly hearing the Bailsman's angry
"Waster!" shout.
The blimp was finally rising. The stiffening wind was carrying it directly
toward another hazard. On a rocky promontory extending from a small beach was
a Darrieus hoop, a large modern windmill. Its shaft was vertical, with three
ribbonlike loops of thin metal anchored at top and bottom. These were twisted
to scoop the wind, making the whole structure rotate on its upright axis. In
fact, it most resembled a thirty-foot-tall inverted eggbeater-going at full
speed.
His little balloon was headed right for those flashing blades. Not only
would they cut it to pieces-they would perform the same service for his body.
He could not rise above it in time. He veered to the side, but a sudden
stronger gust of wind bore him straight into it anyway. The storm was
developing!
Then he remembered to use his plane. The insulting youths had used their
planes to swoop down quickly. Such motion required effort, as it was necessary
to peddle strenuously, and the effect was temporary, but at least it was fast.
He angled his plane down sharply-and offbalanced himself. These forces had to
be applied cautiously!
He was not sure precisely what maneuver he performed, but he found himself
skimming the water barely to one side of the eggbeater. He had cleared it,
somehow! But now he was too low, out of control, and too close to the beach.
People were on the shore, throwing themselves out of the way as he zoomed
toward them.
His pedal framework snagged on the sand as he swept to shore. The blimp
nosed forward and down, like a man tripping, and Shetland landed face down in
the sand. His harness kept him seated, but his plane snapped off and his knees
were dragging painfully.
Hands grabbed him, halting the rampaging blimp. Dazedly he saw girls: half
a dozen nude nymphs, sunbathers. Every one was slender and pretty in an elfin
way, as if newly formed from coalescing froth.
Oceanids, he thought. No, those were sea nymphs. These were freshwater. He
flipped the pages of his mental dictionary, that had not been disturbed by the
shakeup or the angle of his head, searching for the appropriate term, but
couldn't find it.
Of course not, he reminded himself impatiently; he had to know what word
he was looking for first. Dictionaries went from term to definition, not vice
versa.
"Are you all right, blimper?" a worried girl inquired. She had sunbleached
light brown hair, and the skin around her eyes was pale where habitual
sunglasses had interrupted the tan. That was the only place on her body where
her natural pure-white skin color showed through; she had probably been razzed
about it, though she was at least three years older than the Miscegenation
Act. Well, two years, perhaps. One, certainly. At what age did girls develop,
these days? Possibly she felt an affinity to him, the "purebred" of another
color.
"Shaken up," he muttered as she reached around him, unfastening the
straps. It was necessarily an awkward position, but her tanned small breasts
pressed against his side with more than casual force. Nymph she was, indeed;
what was the specific term?
With inspiration, he looked up "Oceanid." Sure enough, its definition
mentioned its complement, the freshwater nymph: naiad. "Naiad!" he exclaimed.
"What?" She paused, arms around him. She had a pleasant sunbaked smell,
and her skin was soft.
"Naiad. Nymph of the lake and fountain. A fair young maid, mythologically.
That is my impression of you."
She smiled. "Really? That's neat! And you're a handsome black devil. Would
you like to sex me?"
Caution! The rapidly changing sexual mores of Earth could be disastrous
for him. The costume-girl Sosthenna had already shown him that, telling him
that he had to be able to strip in mixed company. He had known that such
conventions were developing in members of the same race, since they could not
marry within it, but this girl was of a different race. But young; what was
the minimum age limit now? To "sex" her, as she put it-would that be
tantamount to betrothal? Opposite races were under strong pressure to marry.
She evidently thought he was a regular native, a dashing blimpedaler. Better
to beg off, politely.
"I would like to sex you all," he said gallantly to the group of girls.
"But in my present state I lack the capacity."
One of the brown nymphs laughed, her breasts jiggling. ''Well spoke,
bach!" To be a bachelor was now a mark of respectability, for it was assumed
that he wasn't reproducing.
"But we could make it a groupie affair," another girl said brightly,
running her left hand down the outside of her thigh as she rotated her hips,
and sliding it up on the inside. The gesture had a potent effect on him. Oh,
didn't they learn the sexual signals early today!
The others exclaimed with merry agreement, jumping and clapping their
hands. Young but eager!
Joking or serious? Shetland wasn't sure. He was normally a lusty man, and
this group of seemingly willing nymphs barely into their teens was very like
some of his space-haul erotic fancies. He was sure now: age had become no
barrier. Any individual who desired sex and possessed the physical indications
of maturity was entitled to it, provided the proposed partner was amenable and
there was no force or pain. All the girls would have been treated at menarche
to prevent conception. These were fresh and clean and wholesome creatures, and
there was no question of multiple marriage-though who could tell what the
standard might be by the time of his next leave?! But after the harassment by
摘要：

TableofContents1.Blimped2.Naiad3.BlackHole4.FourDreads5.Theories6.Ghosts7.Revelation8.Committee9.Puzzle10.Parodies11.Neutralizations12.ChaosAuthor'sNoteThisisaworkoffiction.Allthecharactersandeventsportrayedinthisbookarefictional,andanyresemblancetorealpeopleorincidentsispurelycoincidental.GHOSTCopy...

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