Megalomania Read online

  Dino in his machismo wore one small remaining garment which he had planned to shed for the final pounce. This garment had hard-bulged, but now it was contoured more serenely.

  Dino said: “Scheiss.” He buzzed out of the bedroom.

  Myco! Croyd mind-hissed to the chief command-android. Follow Trigg. I have to get started on this body—and thenIcan join you intermittently with Dino.

  Where frantic Dino wound up was on the exterior Sterbenräuber hull—dorsal, ventral, lateral, whatever: in uptime space it hardly mattered. He was now fully clothed, having distraughtly grabbed alternate clothing out of a dressing room in his suite. He hadn’t bothered to suit up; nor was he magnetically shod, for the yacht maintained a system which would on command activate an external gravity field, and he had impulsively commanded it. He was pacing this hull swiftly, angrily, taking less than two minutes to slam feet along the three-hundred-meter lateral span of the hull-grin.

  His fevered pacing didn’t stop, it didn’t stop, it kept going, once or twice he even ran a few paces, and the burden of his prancing was godaammit godammit I am mocked mocked …Knowing that the viciously traumatic quality of this unintentional self-mockery had to be psychosexual, pacing he set himself the task of confronting the soul-reasons for it, even though the agony of this confrontation was far worse than the gut-contorting hell of squeezed balls.

  (Croyd watched through the Myco-eyes, emphasized, began finally to form a plan…) Well, yes (pacing): of course, being entirely heterosexual, Dino’s discovery of Freya’s unexpected maleness would have terminated his desire—but why, being an arcane cosmopolite, would the revelation have (pacing) driven his soul into a Freya-killing frenzy? why had this unveiling spewed into him a brutal sense of ultimate personal defeat after his monstrous triumph of galactic-jet generation?

  Pacing, he glanced sidewise at his glowing, burgeoning jet for reassurance: it was growing as it downtimed toward germinality in its accelerated evolution, but the Sterbenräuber had been set to downtime at the same rate staying ahead of the jet, and Dino out here still was part of the yacht’s inertial system; so his sense that the jet was relatively larger now, and angrier, was doubtless an illusion…

  (Croyd, having dealt with the Freya-body, was computer-watching Dino. Croyd now understood what to do, and he prepared to do it. Dino in soul-crisis was ripe for decisive seduction by another Croyd-stimulated, Dino-projected Pseudo-Darkside who could now persuade Dino to seek out Croyd and recklessly challenge him with an abortive revelation…

  Only, something else happened first, and the phenomenon was unsettling: Dino paused in midstride, hit by something between a realization and a self-serving decision. He bellowed into silencing space where all primitively sonic vibrations, having made it through a larynx, are hushed at the lips: “DARKSIDE! YOU DID IT TO ME! GO BACK TO YOUR HELL, MY UNSAVORY DOUBLE! CROYD IS MY FIRST ENEMY, BUT BE ASSURED, YOU ARE MY SECOND! BY HELKENFLITZEN, MY SEDITIOUS DOUBLE, ONCE I WILL HAVE DONE WITH CROYD, I’LL BE DEALING WITH YOU!”

  So did Dino, by cursing the devil, inadvertently align himself on the side of God only, the devil responded!

  Croyd was now astonished and aroused by himself seeing the golden double whose role he had enacted and had been intending to reenact. He had supposed that Darkside was Dino-imagined; and on the Zauberger balcony, Croyd had successfully Dino-projected this god; but now, there urn Darkside, floating in uptime-space in front of Dino and a bit above him; and the shocked posture of Dino as he stared at his double confirmed that Darkside was a shared phenomenon and therefore likely to be real.

  But the exchange between Dino and Darkside astonished Croyd by its disappointing brevity!

  Said Dino eagerly, while his double regarded him with every appearance of being crashingly bored: “Hey, Darkside, welcome you are, my need for you is enormous, you are indeed godly-magnanimous to return after my ill-mannered hastiness—”

  Lethargically responded Darkside: I came only to give you notice that I am bugging off. It was a good ride for a while, Dino; but the good part has come to a close, and ennui is beginning to threaten; and after all these millennia, I know when to call quits to an adventure. Toodle-oo!

  Darkside vanished.

  The abandoning of Dino by his darkside-double, just at this time of Dino’s perverse triumph, simply had to precipitate a soul-crisis in Dino. The urgency now for Croyd was to concentrate ship’s attention upon Dino while psychically he would be dealing with this crisis: perhaps Croyd could usefully intervene with some gentle nudging, without revealing himself.

  I need to be aware, Croyd cautioned himself, that if the jet catches up with us, it can destroy all life aboard Sterbenräuber. But unless he could think of a way to eject Dino from the ship’s inertial system, he saw no alternative.

  “Correct me if I am wrong, Croyd. One: the jet will not destroy Dino’s life, because of his defenses.” It was the i-radio voice of Interplanetary Union President Tannen.

  Unsurprised Croyd responded: “Not unless Dino should panic and fail to set up those defenses.”

  “On the other hand, if that should happen, we would have to accept the loss of Dino, because in fact he did go through with his villainy.”

  “True.”

  “If we do lose him, will you recover, Croyd?”

  “All except a part of me, I guess. God damn it, he has to be possessed—”

  “Compris; d’accord. But while you are doing whatever you may decide to do in the service of our galaxy, I dare hope you will remember that there are three jet-destructible human lives presently aboard your ship, the Zaubergers and Kolly.”

  Croyd retorted: “There is also the brain of Sterbenräuber for which I have come to feel a certain affection, being in it. Even the robots, like Myco and Flaherty, have some kind of humanoid value.”

  “Those lives, I agree, should not be tossed away cheaply. On the other hand, the stakes are not cheap.”

  “And on still another hand, Tannen, although the timing is frighteningly close, if we can just manage to—”

  “Time it right, my very dear friend. Tannen out.”

  “Croyd out,—with affection and determination.”

  Out.

  *

  Deliberately, then, Croyd committed himself to death-jeopardy by deactivating, in the ship’s computer, certain among the inhibitor-fields that he had mastered: those which would enforce his prior command that the Sterbenräuber downtime toward the germinal present just fast enough to stay a fixed time interval ahead of the swiftly downtime-burgeoning jet-spume.

  After that, Croyd was ready to redirect his attention into the multiclone lab of this endlessly clever yacht. There, what remained of Freya, whose return from death could be crucial for several galaxies, was now dormant but entirely reconstituted under robotic ministration.

  Having caused Freya to be returned into the bed in the Presidential Suite which Dino had at least temporarily abandoned, Croyd brought Freya into gentle awakening and stayed in mental contact with Freya’s mind. Freya’s eyes came open, he sat up in bed; he looked around him for Dino his lover, recalling nothing of the murder-assault.

  Said Croyd via intercom: “Dear Freya, forget him, he will not return, and I want to talk with you a little about that. My name is Croyd.”

  Freya stared at the intercom outlet. Freya ventured: “Not—the Croyd?”

  “Aye.”

  “Oh, Mr. Chairman, I so admire you!”

  “Thank you. That’s nice. Now listen, Freya. 1 am going to lecture you briefly about the flip side of sexuality. After that, I am going to tell you a way for you to exploit the situation for your long-range good. Whereafter I suggest a cold shower followed by about an hour of time killing before you go to your quarters, confront your husband with Captain Kedrin, and try out my ploy.”

  16. Adversary vs. Adversary

  Awakening in the Zauberger bed, nakedly supine Kolly (who, a while back, had taken advantage of a rest interlude to adjust gravity somewhat upward) turned
her head to consider nakedly snoringly supine Frey Zauberger beside her. Again she experienced a stirring as she surveyed the several obvious anatomical differences in this Garbans female-termed-male. She lay indolent, viewing and reviewing possibilities…

  She became intuitively aware that they were not alone. Turning her head away from Frey, she saw a fully clothed Freya Zauberger who had penetrated into the bedroom and stood hesitant near the door which he had closed behind him.

  Queried Kolly presently: “Would you prefer that I leave you alone with Frey?”

  Freya decisively head-negated.

  Kolly, repressing a yawn, decided that the situation was interesting. She asked: “Will you awaken Frey—or shall I?”

  Freya uttered: “You.”

  Sitting up, Kolly tapped a Zauberger upper shoulder; sitting up, Frey swung startled to Kolly, then gaped at Freya beyond. Kolly having punched her pillow into suitable contours, reclined to enjoy the action.

  Characteristically, Frey went aggressive-cruel. “Ah there, Dummy. What are you—some kind of voyeur?”

  Uncharacteristically, Freya counterattacked, brows frown-down (and Freya’s down-brows were forty-centimeter antennae.) “Caught in fragrante relicto, hey, my husband? I’ve managed to accept a whole marriage-full of your nasty domineering macho, but this is a bit much, don’t you think?” Angertrembling, Freya awaited Frey’s reply, waited in gently weaving enemy-readiness that was wholly new in Frey’s experience of Freya.

  Frey snarled: “Will you kindly tell me what I have done with Kolly that you have not done with Dino?”

  Shoulders back, unmammae’d pigeon-breast out, Freya answered in a dead smoothness of fury: “With Kolly, clearly you have done a great deal. With Dino, I have done nothing! nothing at all, dammit! All right, husband, I will give you the benefit of all the doubt that I can possibly whomp up, I will accept that this was a one-night seduction by a lecherous tempter at a time when you were taut and fatigued and frazzled and needed sinful novelty. But I too was tempted, by Dino, and I did not fall; and the contrast between us has finally straightened out my focus on this marriage. You are not superior to me! You are NOT superior to me, except in your scheissty musicianship; in every interpersonal and judgmental way, you are dammit inferior to me! And if you ever so much as hint at putting me down, I swear I will cut off your antennae and stuff them side-by-side up your wavular cloaca!”

  As Frey’s lower jaw slowly sagged open, Freya’s attention turned to the naked Kedrin genitalia; and Freya said disconcertingly to Kolly: “Say, now, you Erth-males are different from us, aren’t you!”

  Kolly came out of bed and began rerobing herself, all the time watching the two principals in this amazing marital combat and expecting a Frey-explosion. But a distraction arrested her with her pants half on. The intercom baritone-lilted: “Captain Kedrin, tell the Zaubergers how your mutual charm-god Dino is using them. That is an order. Over.”

  Swinging to the intercom, hard-smiling down-browed Kolly responded: “Order heard and accepted, Mr. Chairman. It’s a pleasure!” Then she told stonefrozen Frey: “Your music has triggered a process that will destroy your galaxy. Your Vanador is already doomed—and so are you, and so is your Freya—by what Dino Trigg has made you play on your diabolical ultrasynthesizer!”

  Frey, having stared, breathed: “Is my castle safe?”

  Having appraised the idiocy of his mate, Freya tuned on Kolly and flared: “Forget my husband, deal with me. Why are we being destroyed, and what can we do about it?”

  Kolly precised: “Your husband or wife, whatever, produced music that ended by generating a new combined Magellanic Galaxy and driving it into accelerated evolution. When the new galaxy emerges into germinality, which will be awful damn soon, it will destroy both preexisting Magellanic Clouds because there will be room in that space only for the new one; and the Zaubergers and all their Hudibrasian friends will be dead because it will turn out that your Hudibras never existed.”

  Freya gaped. Dead-eyed Frey demanded: “My music will do that?”

  “Has done it, you stupid mark, has done it! So whaddaya think, Zauberger: wanna stop the process?”

  Freya blurted: “Yes we do!” Semi-paralyzed Frey contemplated her mate-liberate.

  Roily turned to the intercom: “Chairman Croyd, pray favor us with your thought.”

  Croyd told them: “This is not a certainty, but I think the new-germinal activity might be erased if you could find the music flakes—”

  “Well?”

  “And replay them. But backward. And I mean, completely in reverse from precisely the order in which Dino just played them.”

  Frowning her mighty antennae, Frey murmured: “Yes, of course, we should do it, we must do it, we will do it. Only—”

  “Good, GOO-ood!” purred Croyd. “So where are the flakes?”

  Frey vibrated her beakflab over it. She said then: “Trigg told me that he was keeping the tapes in his private safe. But where that might be—”

  Freya announced: “I know where the safe is! After he left me because he was frustrated by my perfect fidelity to this dummox Frey, I explored the suite, and—”

  Croyd commanded: “Lead on!” And bemused Frey found herself rearward in a procession resolutely led by Freya behind whom prowled Roily.

  In the Trigg-suite, they gathered in front of the safe which Freya had revealed by swinging back a side-hinged painting. There was, however, no visible combination lock. How to attack it?

  Calling the bridge, Roily summoned her prime command robot Myco which (released now from its Croyd-behest to watch Dino) joined the group in the Trigg-suite and studied the safe. “Minister Trigg,” it told them, “did make me privy to the nature of the key, it was merely his palm-pressure; but because I am physically so different from him—”

  Yelled Frey: “TRY, for the love of Schnarliwarli!”

  The galvanized android placed its four-fingered right palm against the sensor. There was a click, and the safe-door small-jumped ajar. Kolly leaped at the safe, shouldering the android aside. Out of the safe, Kolly hand-raked all that was in it.

  No music flakes.

  Doom for Hudibras. And for Erth. And for both Magellanic Clouds. And for Sol Galaxy.

  Stunned by the terminal exodus of his resident god whose immanence had for so long passion-powered him and in whose existence he had come to believe, Dino dull-stood wherever he was standing and gazed at the glowing phallos that he had created, the galactic jet-spume which was meant to bring about the deaths of three galaxies: Lesser Magellanic, Least Magellanic, and Sol-cum-Croyd. And after a while, he began to notice that the burgeoning venom of that cosmic sting was not arousing him at all, at all.

  Instead, the abrupt loss of his powering Darkside was troubling him in ways which he would not have anticipated. Struggling to formulate the complexity of his disturbance, he hit upon the idea of striving for understanding through an orderly review of what Darkside’s advent had meant for him. During all his career life, until Darkside, Dino had been pathetically earnest in his devotion to duty and control, and the rare times when Croyd had drawn him into dancing fun had invariably been followed by annoyance at himself; whereas Darkside had released him into a new career of exalted joy. When Dino’s Darkside-aroused ambition had been malevolently defeated by that same Croyd whom Dino had loved and served, Darkside had been faithful; had rescued him from suicide; had made himself known to Dino, had midwived Dino through a swift self-analysis culminating in understanding of the selfserving Croyd-villainy which had secretly underlain his patron’s fostering devotion; had enabled Dino to spread for himself a revenge-design whose epochal splendor reduced the legend of Lucifer’s malevolence to farce level.

  And just when Dino’s clever and laborious fiend-construct had been activated in glory—that snarling glory, right out there .…

  He then discovered that he was standing spreadlegged on the ship’s belly. Aaa, nah! Angry at himself for sliding into this ridiculous stance, he scrambl
ed around a flank until he was fully dorsal again, just aft of the central nose-grin. Reenergized by his contempt for fugitive Darkside, here he took a new spraddling stand, arms wide, fists clenched, head backtilted, hair streaming backward in nonwind, face toward stars—toward remote galaxies including the fuzzy little spiral called Sol Galaxy which was his home and his target.

  Aloud into sound-smothering uptime void he yelled: “I can do without your piddling help, my gone Double! You simple silly, running away from the human engenderer of a galactic metageyser merely because I frustrated your childish urge to be in me experiencing perverse dalliance with a male bird! And you are noticing, I hope, that I brought off my jet—my jet, Darkside, and ours no longer—without help from Croyd: it was begotten immaculately by Dino Trigg upon three galaxies!”

  He halted, mind brushed by a piquancy. Now, there was absolutely no reason why he shouldn’t, and every reason why he should, seize upon Croyd and gleefully tell him about impending ruination.

  The notion should have given him joy. Why wasn’t it giving him joy? Probably he was upset by the loss of divine afflatus; possibly also, Croyd having been a father-figure, there was a sense of sin. Good Crest! Dino could expunge that from himself as a trade off for the delight of the confrontation.

  HE WOULD DO IT!

  Wait, now: was there any way at all in which a warned Croyd could reverse the astronomical process which Dino had started and established so that already the death-jet was a thousand light-years long and sizzling outward almost at i-ray velocity? Let’s be careful now.

  There couldn’t be any…

  Oh yes there could! Let’s by all means squelch that possibility before we attack!

  Darting back into ship’s interior, Dino hastened to the President’s Suite. No sign of Freya in the salon; possibly he (aye, he) was weeping in the master bedroom. Dino opened the private safe, withdrew the canisters of flakes bearing the recordings of the Zauberger music, fed all the tapes into his nuclear garbage-disposal, once again leaped outside.