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  I got back in my chair. “Just dropped some change,” I said with a synthetic chuckle. My feet hadn’t gelled yet, and Helen continued her gentle treading and plucking.

  “Si spent the whole time you were gone under the table, Jack,” Helen said, withdrawing her feet. “He was really behaving strangely.” Her eyes bored into me with the twisted hunger of a V-sexual. I loved every minute of it. If I had to, I’d chirp and the hell with it. If not …

  Jack looked at me with respect. “Didn’t know you had it in you, Si.” We all drank in silence for a minute. Finally Helen broke the relaxed silence.

  “I don’t see how it would make sense, really, to talk about moving from one parallel world to another, Jack. If you were in both of them already, then what would there be to move?”

  Jack ran his hand back along the central part of his straight hair. “I am in many of the different parallel Earths…and in each of them I think that’s the only one I’m really in. But there should be some sort of higher consciousness which could …” His voice trailed off. I liked that about Jack, that he couldn’t figure this one out. I knew the answer to Helen’s question. After all, I come from a parallel universe.

  A “Venusian’s” mission on Earth is to reproduce by lesnerization, and then return to the Pure Land. Once enough of us have done this, there will be a web of consciousness connecting our universe and yours, and we will be able to draw the two closer together so that even the weak and diseased members of our race can move freely between “Venus” and the Earth. Several members of my swarm have completed successful missions, and they have described to me in detail what it is like to have the sort of multiple trans-universal consciousness which Jack and Helen were puzzling out.

  Suddenly I spoke up, “Jack, I know a lot about parallel universes.” Helen gave me a cautioning glance, but I continued, “I have certain connections …”

  Jack was laughing. “Connections with who, Si? Galaxy X?”

  “Why don’t we go back to my room and talk it over. The three of us.”

  Jack still didn’t get it. He thought I wanted to turn them on to some dope. So of course he came along. And Helen…she and I dropped a little behind and she slipped her hand into my shirt. No human had ever touched me there before.

  If a “Venusian” is exposed he chirps, and no evidence of his existence is left…save for the mysterious death of one of the people who discovered him. There are thousands of us on Earth now, but few of us are ever detected…and the establishment chooses to ignore whatever fragmentary proofs of our existence arise. But there are rumors and, more important, there is subconscious knowledge. V-sexuals are people who have fallen in love with this subconsciously-sensed other presence in the world. V-sexuality is, for obvious reasons, primarily a latent perversion…but as a few lucky “Venusians” know, a V-sexual can move to intense overtness in the space of a few minutes. I could hardly wait. And if we could get Jack to join in …

  It takes a minute to get my door open. I have three locks. Jack began kidding me about it. “What have you got in there Simon, a suitcase of gold?”

  “You’ll see,” I said as the door finally opened. Jack went in first, and Helen came in after me, her hand resting lightly on my back. I wanted to triple lock the door behind me, but I feared this might alarm them.

  The door opens into the kitchenette end of the room. You can tell it’s the kitchenette because that part of the room has a linoleum floor. Sometimes when I am too tired to cook, I just break some eggs on the floor, pour oil and ketchup on top of them, and then flow around on the linoleum until I have ingested everything.

  But now I had company. “Beer?” I inquired. They were sitting on my werble at the other end of the room. The only other place to sit was the chair by the kitchenette table.

  “Sure,” Jack said, “But we really can’t stay too long, Simon.” He thought he was going somewhere alone with Helen. Couldn’t he tell that now she only had eyes for me?

  I got out three beers and glided over to the werble…my body movements suggestively fluid. Helen couldn’t take her eyes off me. “Tell Jack, Helen,” I said. “Tell him, and then I’ll let you undress me.”

  With a visible effort Jack maintained his cool. “What makes you think Helen would want to undress you, Si? And what’s she supposed to tell me?”

  “Si is a ‘Venusian,’” Helen said huskily. “I never knew if they were real or not. I’ve always…I’ve always …” her face was working, and she couldn’t get the rest of the sentence out. She slid a hand back under my shirt and fingered a stiff orange bud. Her hand was damp.

  Jack jumped up off the bed and began moving towards the door. “You go out that door, and I’ll fry your brain,” I said evenly. Helen was moaning now, running her moist, trembling fingers over my face.

  “Flow now while I’m touching you, darling,” she breathed.

  I let my head go slack, and it began sinking down through the collar of my shirt. Helen was fumbling frantically at our clothes. I couldn’t see Jack anymore since I’d let my head merge into my bodymass, but I could still skren him. He had stopped near the door and was hesitating…his emotions a mixture of fear and curiosity. Finally curiosity won out.

  “I can’t believe this,” Jack said desperately. He ripped the top off another beer from the icebox. He’d left his first one by the werble, and he was scared to get close to me. He sat down on the kitchen chair. “I’ll watch,” he said shakily, “But I’m not going to let you lesnerize us.”

  That’s what he thought. I didn’t bother answering…it would have been too much trouble to form a mouth. It didn’t seem like Helen was ever going to get my clothes off, so I reduced viscosity and flowed out of my left pant leg and onto the floor. She had gotten her shirt and bra off, and she lay down to rub her stiff-nippled breasts across me. It felt nice.

  For the next half hour or so she sat there kneading and molding me…like a three-year-old girl at the nursery school play-dough table. Only they don’t moan as much in nursery school. Somewhere along the line she got her pants off too, and I grew a few suitable protuberances. I liked that Jack was watching us. He might be smarter than me, he might be human…but I had the girl.

  I guess Helen and I made something like the ultimate donkey show. When she finally got off me and lay panting on my werble, Jack was so hot that he pulled down his pants and jumped her. I flowed closer and laid a gentle pseudopod across the back of his thighs.

  He twisted away, screaming, “No, Simon, not yet, don’t lesnerize us! Please not yet! I’ve just got to…get to …” He was thrusting in and out frantically, and in a few seconds it was all over.

  I should have taken them then and there…but lesnerization goes a lot smoother if the human hosts are completely willing. It’s a simple operation. You just run a pseudopod up the person’s nose, suck out their brain, and fill their head up with part of your bodymass. Over the next year, your offspring slowly absorbs all of the host body, learning how to model it in the process. It’s the way we’ve always reproduced on Earth. When we fission like this, we have to split off two buds…baby “Venusians”…so we always have to lesnerize two people at once.

  If I could only get those buds into Jack and Helen’s skulls I’d be free to chirp back to the Pure Land. My mind drifted pleasantly as I thought of rejoining my swarm…a respected and successful colonizer…possessor of trans-universal consciousness.

  I formed Si Bork’s body again and lay down next to Jack and Helen. “How would you like to come forever?” I said softly. “That’s what lesnerization feels like…an orgasm that never stops. All I have to do is reach up through your nose and gently touch your brain,” no point telling them about what I’d do next, “and, wham, you’re as enlightened as Gautama Buddha.” Sex and enlightenment. It makes a nice package.

  But they both looked a little doubtful. “What do you mean when you say ‘wham,’ hon?” Helen asked.

  And then Jack chimed in, “Don’t you think it might be risky to fool
around with a person’s brain like that?” He covered his nose defensively.

  “Look,” I said, readjusting my features to look fatherly, “No ‘Venusian’ would ever dream of doing anything which might harm a human. We want to be your allies…your partners in a new trans-universal culture. Now I know you’ve heard the rumors about lesnerization. Take it from me, they’re all lies put out by chauvinist reactionaries. Lesnerization is just a way of getting to know each other better. Jack,” I patted his shoulder, “Once you’ve lesnerized with me, you’ll have more new stuff in that skull of yours than you can possible imagine. Lesnerization is simply a way for me to take things that I know and put them into your head.”

  They shifted uneasily and looked at each other. Finally Jack spoke. “What do you say we get dressed and go talk about it over a pizza. I can dig where you’re coming from. Brain-to-brain communication. But I’ve got to have some food first.” He pulled his pants back up.

  “That’s a good idea,” Helen said, fastening her bra. “I’m famished.” She began buttoning up her blouse. “Where is ‘Venus’ anyway, Si? And why are you all so secretive?”

  I couldn’t believe how distant she suddenly seemed. First she’s all over me, and then I ask one little favor, and she starts asking questions like a hick at the freak show. I felt like just chirping the hell out of there and blowing one of them away. But if I went back to the Pure Land without lesnerizing anyone they’d just stuff me in a ship back to Earth…or worse. So I politely answered her question as I dressed.

  “Actually, Helen, what you call ‘Venus’ is in one of those parallel universes Jack likes to talk about. In a way it’s in the same place where your Venus is, only ‘Venus’ is a different superspace location. We don’t call it ‘Venus’ though. We call it the Pure Land.”

  “But how can the Pure Land be where Venus is without really being there?” Helen responded. Jack interrupted impatiently before I could answer.

  “It has a different fourth-dimensional location is all, Helen. You can read about it in that Geometry and Relativity book I wrote.” We were all dressed and on our way out of the apartment. Jack turned to me. “What I want to hear is your answer to her other question, Simon. If you ‘Venusians’ are just here to make friends, then why do you sneak around so that only the nuts believe in you?”

  I cleared my throat nervously. “We’re scared, Jack. Scared of small-minded xenophobic bigots. We’re really a very weak race. If we tried to land a ship openly, the pigs would blast us out of the sky. We want to come out in the open, but it’s not time yet. We need to know more about human psychology first, and we need time to spread the right kind of rumors about us.” I smiled self-deprecatingly.

  But Jack seemed to be becoming more hostile. He was probably just jealous that I’d gotten more off Helen than him. “You say you’re weak, Simon, but didn’t you threaten to fry my brain just a little while ago?”

  I generated a chuckle. “Oh that. Well, I could fry your brain…hard-boil it really…but only by converting my body into pure energy. That’s how we get back to the Pure Land. We call it chirping.” I explained the process to them, meanwhile trying to put my arm around Helen, but she shrugged it off.

  Although it was supper time, the restaurant was almost empty. I’d never been there before, but Jack seemed to be a regular. He stopped to chat with the guy making pizzas in the front window.

  I steered Helen to a table in the rear…I was hoping to lesnerize them after they’d had a good meal and a few beers. I was prepared to act forcibly if necessary…at the worst I’d lose a pseudopod. I smiled moistly at Helen. “Did you have a nice time in my room?”

  “You know I did,” she said haltingly, “But I’m scared of what I could become if I keep seeing you. And I don’t know how I’ll be able to stay away.” She began crying, and reached out to touch my face. “One part of me already wants to do it again…especially with a man watching and thinking I’m the lowest kind of slut …” She hesitated, then resumed in a strained voice, “But if I kept doing that, what would happen to the rest of me…to Helen?” She covered her face with her hands.

  Someone had turned the jukebox on, and over a background of moans and abrupt guitar chords a voice crooned, “Well it’s all right now, in fact it’s a gas …” Helen was slipping away from me…but where was Jack? Surely he would listen to reason. I skrenned him walking across the room. I started to turn, but then he was already upon me, and he sank an eight-inch knife into my neck.

  That did it. No more Mr. Nice Guy. Jack Flash was going to get it. I relaxed my hold on the knotted spacetime which made up my body and put everything I had into my chirp…carefully beaming it at the spot behind me where he crouched.

  But I should have looked first. The bastard had an aluminum pizza pan in front of his face…and I bounced off it and out through the ceiling.

  It doesn’t take long to get to the Pure Land from Earth. You get a faster-than-light phase-shift going in your pulse, lock it real, tear loose, and jump spacetime sheets. Once you’re back in the home space, it’s just a matter of a little simple tube-surfing. The only hard thing about it is that the whole trip seems to happen at once…so you have to know just what you’re going to do before you start.

  I didn’t get much of a welcome at home when they found out I’d screwed up another mission. They said I could either go back to Earth or spend fifteen years in the tissue fields. I was frantic to revenge myself on Jack, and even more frantic to get back between Helen’s legs, so I would have been perfectly willing to go back to Earth…except that the trip back takes so long.

  You can’t chirp from the Pure Land to Earth, since there’s no one waiting on Earth to reconstitute you. You have to go the long way…around the Horn, as it were. That is, you have to take a spaceship out the collapsed star Gouda X-1, fly in, bounce off the ring singularity into a new universe, and fly back to Earth. It’s dangerous and the whole trip takes about ten years proper-time. So the tissue fields didn’t necessarily sound that bad.

  I asked for a week to think it over. They gave me two days, and I went out into the plaza promising to be back.

  It felt good to be flowing across the intricately grooved stones again with the swarm. We aren’t very big on individual personalities, and before long I’d almost forgotten I’d ever left. A warm hydro-carbon rain drizzled down, and I circled around the plaza in the figures of the swarm’s never-ending dance.

  The pimpled hides of my fellow “Venusians” felt familiar and comforting…but still I couldn’t put the feel of Helen’s breasts and thighs out of my mind…she was so smooth…so slippery.

  I realized I was horny, and found a willing fellow-citizen…whom you might as well think of as a girl. We flowed away from the plaza together, and our individual consciousness returned. She told me her name was Pasmit.

  As we passed through a grove of geezel fungi I paused to pry loose one of the immature spores. I threw it to Pasmit, she digested a little of it and threw it back to me.

  We went on for several versts this way, finally stopping when the singing in our tissues could no longer be ignored. We pressed our vents together, guided by the sensitive bristles surrounding them; and then we let our bodymasses mingle for a timeless interval. The hydro-carbon drizzle increased, and the geezel spore rolled stealthily back towards its mother fungus. Finally we stopped pulsing and slid apart. The gamma-radiation is much stronger out in the country, and everything was suffused with a kindly glow.

  I must have been mad to want to go back to Earth, I thought. Pasmit and I could build a burrow near the tissue fields. I’d get strong and green working in the fields, and every night we’d go dance with the swarm. It had been good enough for my ancestors; why shouldn’t it be good enough for me? There was just one thing …

  “Pasmit,” I vibrated, “Could you do something for me…something special?”

  She snuggled closer to me. “What is it, Sibork?”

  “Could you form your bodymass like this, and th
is, and this …” I gestured rapidly, “And then could you rub on me? I’ll show you how I mean.”

  She burbled, and started to do it. I sighed and went limp, images of Helen filling my mind. Pasmit leaned over me and began to knead my bodymass with her hands. Quaveringly I pulsed my next request, and extruded the appropriate protuberances. She started to do it …

  But abruptly she stopped, and her pulsations became harsh. “But this is human shape! You want me to be like a human, Sibork!” She recoiled and rapidly re-assumed “Venusian” shape. “You’re a filthy H-sexual!” she shrilled, “Don’t come near me!”

  Pasmit delivered her parting shot as she began flowing back towards the swarm. “You’re not fit to live in the Pure Land anymore, Sibork. You’re tainted. You’ll have to go back to Earth tomorrow.”

  I knew she was right. I couldn’t even blame her for feeling the way she did…I used to feel the same way about H-sexuals.

  I spent an uneasy night sleeping under a rock, and the next morning I shipped out for Earth again. Despite what I’d told Jack, we “Venusians” are virtually indestructible. So our spaceships do not need any very complex life-support systems.

  My ship consisted, basically, of one hundred kilos of geezel and the shell of a nauton, a sort of gigantic fungus-snail common in the Pure Land. I packed the geezel into the front of the cone-shaped spiral shell, crawled in after, and sealed the back off with a specially thickened section of my hide.

  During the trip I would feed off the geezel, and propel the ship by converting some of the food energy into a stream of ions, to be blown out of an aperture in my hide door. In effect, I fart myself through space. Given the steady force and the small mass of my ship, I can reach relativistic velocities rather easily…and once one travels close enough to the speed of light, time dilation sets in. As far as my body’s aging processes are concerned, the one hundred light-year trip to Gouda X-1 takes only five years.