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Oh, sure, of course. You have very trim ankles.
Thank you.
Bert s voice exploded through the speaker.
Jeezus
Kee rice, Inez!
Enoch, Dr. Arpin continued, ignoring Bert, are you speaking in tongues?
Enoch Mirren was silent for a moment, then said, Gee, I m awfully sorry. I
guess
I ve been linked up with the Cissaldan so long, I ve absorbed a lot of how it
thinks and speaks. I m really sorry. I ll try to translate.
The studious voice spoke again. How did you meet the, uh, Cissaldan?
Just appeared. I didn t call it or anything. Didn t even see it arrive. One
minute it wasn t there, and the next it was.
Dr. Arpin spoke. But how did it get from its own planet to Earth ? Some kind
of
2
spaceship, perhaps?
No, it just... came. It can move by will. It told me it felt my presence, and
just simply hopped across all the way from its home in that other star-system.
I think it was true love that brought it. Isn t that nice?
All three voices tried speaking at once.
Teleportation! Dr. Arpin said, wonderingly.
Mind-to-mind contact, telepathy, across unfathomable light-years of space,
the studious voice said, awesomely.
And what does it want, Mirren? Bert demanded, forgetting the conciliatory
tone.
His voice was the loudest.
Just to make love; it s really a terrific little person.
So you just hopped in the sack with that disgusting thing, is that right?
Didn t even give a thought to decent morals or contamination or your
responsibility to us, or the mission, or anything? Just jumped right into the
hay with that pukeable pervert?
It seemed like a good idea at the time, Enoch said.
Well, it was a lousy idea, whaddaya think about that, Mirren? And there ll be
repercussions, you can bet on that, too; repercussions! Investigations!
Responsibility must be placed! Bert was shouting again. Dr. Arpin was trying
to calm him.
At that moment, Enoch heard an alarm go off somewhere. It came through the
speakers in the ceiling quite clearly, and in a moment the speakers were cut
off. But in that
moment the sound filled the interrogation cell, its ululations signaling dire
emergency. Enoch sat in silence, in darkness, naked, humming, waiting for the
voices to return. He hoped he d be allowed to get back to his Cissaldan pretty
soon.
But they never came back. Not ever.
The alarm had rung because the disgusting thing had vanished. The alien
morphologists who had been monitoring it through the one-way glass of the
control booth fronting on the examination stage that formed the escape-proof
study chamber had been turned away only a few seconds, accepting mugs of
steaming stimulant-laced coffee from a
Tech 3. When they turned back, the examination stage was empty. The disgusting
thing was gone.
People began running around in ever-decreasing circles. Some of them
disappeared into holes in the walls and made like they weren t there.
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Three hours later they found the disgusting thing.
It was making love with Dr. Marilyn Hornback in a broom closet.
TimeSep Central, deep underground, was the primary locus of visitation,
because it had taken the Cissaldan a little while to acclimate itself. But
even as Bert, Dr. Inez Arpin, the studious type whose name does not matter,
and all the others who came under the classification of chrono-experts were
trying to unscramble their brains at the bizarre progression of events in
TimeSep Central, matters were already out of their hands.
Cissaldans began appearing everywhere.
As though summoned by some silent song of space and time (which, in fact, was
the case), disgusting things began popping into existence allover Earth. Like
kernels of corn suddenly erupting into blossoms of popcorn, one moment there
would be nothing--or a great deal of what passed for nothing--and the next
moment a Cissaldan was there. Invariably right beside a human being. And in
the next moment the invariable human being would get this good idea that it
might be nice to, uh, er, that is, well, sorta do it with this creature.
Saffron-robed monks entering the mountain fastness of the Dalai Lama found
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