Multiples Read online

  He looked towards the dance floor. The Rigelians were lurching around in a preposterously ponderous way, like dancing bears. Some Arcturans were on the dance floor too, and a few Procyonites bouncing up and down like bundles of shiny metal rods, and a Steropid doing an eerie pas seul, weaving in dreamy circles.

  “Yes, of course,” he said, a little startled.

  “Please dance with me?”

  He glanced uneasily towards the Centauran, who nodded benignly. She smiled and said, “Anakhistos does not dance. But I would like to. Would you oblige me?”

  Eitel took her hand and led her out on the floor. Once they were dancing he was able to regain his calm. He moved easily and well. Some of the E-Ts were openly watching them—they had such curiosity about humans sometimes—but the staring didn’t bother him. He found himself registering the pressure of her thighs against his thighs, her firm heavy breasts against his chest, and for an instant he felt the old biochemical imperative trying to go roaring through his veins, telling him, follow her anywhere, promise anything, say anything, do anything. He brushed it back. There were other women: in Nice, in Rome, in Athens. When he was done with this deal he would go to one of them.

  He said, “Agila is an interesting name. Israeli, is it?”

  “No,” she said.

  The way she said it, serenely and very finally, left him without room to maneuver. He was full of questions—who was she, how had she hooked up with the Centauran, what was her deal, how well did she think Eitel’s own deal with the Centauran was likely to go? But that one cool syllable seemed to have slammed a curtain down. He concentrated on dancing again instead. She was supple, responsive, skilful. And yet the way she danced was as strange as everything else about her: she moved almost as if her feet were some inches off the floor. Odd. And her voice—an accent, but what kind? He had been everywhere, and nothing in his experience matched her way of speaking, a certain liquidity in the vowels, a certain resonance in the phrasing, as though she were hearing echoes as she spoke. She had to be something truly exotic, Rumanian, a Finn, a Bulgar—and even those did not seem exotic enough. Albanian? Lithuanian?

  Most perplexing of all was her aroma. Eitel was gifted with a sense of smell worthy of a parfumier, and he heeded a woman’s fragrance the way more ordinary men studied the curves of hip or bosom or thigh. Out of the pores and the axillae and the orifices came the truths of the body, he believed, the deepest, the most trustworthy, the most exciting communications; he studied them with rabbinical fervour and the most minute scientific zeal. But he had never smelled anything like this, a juxtaposition of incongruous spices, a totally baffling mix of flavors. Some amazing new perfume? Something imported from Arcturus or Capella, perhaps? Maybe so, though it was hard to imagine an effect like this being achieved by mere chemicals. It had to be her. But what mysterious glandular outpouring brought him that subtle hint of sea urchin mingled with honey? What hidden duct sent thyme and raisins coursing together through her bloodstream? Why did the crystalline line of light perspiration on her flawless upper lip carry those grace-notes of pomegranate, tarragon and ginger?

  He looked for answers in her eyes: deep green pools, calm, cool, unearthly. They seemed as bewildering as the rest of her.

  And then he understood. He realized now that the answer, impossible and implausible and terrifying, had been beckoning to him all evening, and that he could no longer go on rejecting it, impossible or not. And in the moment of accepting it he heard a sound within himself much like that of a wind beginning to rise, a hurricane being born on some far-off isle.

  Eitel began to tremble. He had never felt himself so totally defenseless before.

  He said, “It’s amazing, how human you seem to be.”

  “Seem to be?”

  “Outwardly identical in every way. I didn’t think it was possible for life-forms of such a degree of similarity to evolve on two different worlds.”

  “It isn’t,” she said.

  “You’re not from Earth, though.”

  She was smiling. She seemed almost pleased, he thought, that he had seen through her masquerade.

  “No.”

  “What are you, then?”

  “Centauran.”

  Eitel closed his eyes a moment. The wind was a gale within him; he swayed and struggled to keep his balance. He was starting to feel as though he were conducting this conversation from a point somewhere behind his own right ear. “But Centaurans look like—”

  “Like Anakhistos? Yes, of course we do, when we are at home. But I am not at home now.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “This is my traveling body,” she said.

  “What?”

  “It is not comfortable, visiting certain places in one’s own body. The air is sharp, the light hurts the eyes, eating is very troublesome.”

  “So you simply put on a different body?”

  “Some of us do. There are those like Anakhistos who are indifferent to the discomforts, or who actually regard them as part of the purpose of traveling. But I am of the sort that prefers to transfer into a traveling body when going to other worlds.”

  “Ah,” Eitel said. “Yes.” He continued to move through the rhythms of the dance in a numb, dazed way. It’s all just a costume, he told himself. What she really looks like is a bunch of rigid struts, with a rubber sheet draped over them. Cheek-vents for breathing, three-sided slot for eating, receptor strip instead of eyes. “And these bodies?” he asked. “Where do you get them?”

  “Why, they make them for us. Several companies do it. The human models are only just now becoming available. Very expensive, you understand.”

  “Yes,” he said. “Of course.”

  “Tell me: when was it that you first saw through my disguise?”

  “I felt right away that something was wrong. But it wasn’t until a moment ago that I figured it out.”

  “No one else has guessed, I think. It is an extremely excellent Earth body, would you not say?”

  “Extremely,” Eitel said.

  “After each trip I always regret, at first, returning to my real body. This one seems quite genuine to me by now. You like it very much, yes?”

  “Yes,” Eitel said helplessly.

  He found David out in the cab line, lounging against his taxi with one arm around a Moroccan boy of about sixteen and the other exploring the breasts of a swarthy French-looking woman. It was hard to tell which one he had selected for the late hours of the night: both, maybe. David’s cheerfully polymorphous ways were a little hard for Eitel to take, sometimes. But Eitel knew it wasn’t necessary to approve of David in order to work with him. Whenever Eitel showed up in Fez with new merchandise, David was able to finger a customer for him within twenty-four hours; and at a five percent commission he was probably the wealthiest taxi driver in Morocco, after two years as Eitel’s point man among the E-Ts.

  “Everything’s set,” Eitel said. “Take me over to get the stuff.”

  David flashed his glittering gold-toothed grin. He patted the woman’s rump, lightly slapped the boy’s cheek, pushed them both on their way, and opened the door of his cab for Eitel. The merchandise was at Eitel’s hotel, the Palais Jamai, on the edge of the native quarter. But Eitel never did business at his own hotel: it was handy to have David to take him back and forth between the Jamai and the Hotel Merinides, out here beyond the city wall by the ancient royal tombs, where most of the aliens preferred to stay.

  The night was mild, fragrant, palm trees rustling in the soft breeze, huge bunches of red geranium blossoms looking almost black in the moonlight. As they drove towards the old town, with its maze of winding medieval streets, its walls and gates straight out of The Arabian Nights, David said, “You mind I tell you something? One thing worries me.”

  “Go ahead.”

  “Inside, I watched you. Staring more at the woman than at the E-T. You got to concentrate on the deal, and forget the woman, Eitel.”

  Eitel resented being told by a kid
half his age how to conduct his operations. But he kept himself in check. To David, young and until recently poor, certain nuances were incomprehensible. Not that David lacked an interest in beauty. But beauty was just an abstraction; money was money. Eitel did not attempt to explain what time would surely teach.

  He said, “You tell me, forget the woman?”

  “Is a time for women, is a time for business. Separate times. You know that, Eitel. A Swiss, he is almost a Moroccan, when it comes to business.”

  Eitel laughed. “Thanks.”

  “I am being serious. You be careful. If she confuse you, it can cost you. Can cost me. I am in for percentage, remember. Even if you are Swiss, maybe you need to know: business and women must be kept separate things.”

  “I know.”

  “You remember it, yes?”

  “Don’t worry about me,” Eitel said.

  The cab pulled up outside the Jamai. Eitel, upstairs, withdrew four paintings and an Olmec jade statuette from the false compartment of his suitcase. The paintings were all unframed, small, genuine and unimportant. After a moment he selected the Madonna of the Palms, from the atelier of Lorenzo Bellini: plainly apprentice work, but enchanting, serene, pure, not bad, easily a $20,000 painting. He slipped it into a carrying case, put the others back, all but the statuette, which he fondled for a moment and put down on the dresser, in front of the mirror, as though setting up a little shrine. To beauty, he thought. He started to put it away and changed his mind. It looked so lovely there that he decided to take his chances. Taking your chances, he thought, is sometimes good for the health.

  He went back to the cab.

  “Is a good painting?” David asked.

  “It’s pretty. Trivial, but pretty.”

  “I don’t mean good that way. I mean, is it real?”

  “Of course,” Eitel said, perhaps too sharply. “Do we have to have this discussion again, David? You know damned well I sell only genuine paintings. Overpriced a little, but always genuine.”

  “One thing I never can understand. Why you not sell them fakes?”

  Startled, Eitel said, “You think I’m crooked, David?”

  “Sure I do.”

  “You say it so lightheartedly. I don’t like your humor sometimes.”

  “Humor? What humor? Is against law to sell valuable Earth works of art to aliens. You sell them. Makes you crook, right? Is no insult. Is only description.”

  “I don’t believe this,” Eitel said. “What are you trying to start here?”

  “I only want to know, why you sell them real stuff. Is against the law to sell real ones, is probably not against the law to sell them fakes. You see? For two years I wonder this. We make just as much money, we run less risk.”

  “My family has dealt in art for over a hundred years, David. No Eitel has ever knowingly sold a fake. None ever will.” It was a touchy point with him. “Look,” he said, “maybe you like playing these games with me, but you could go too far. All right?”

  “You forgive me, Eitel?”

  “If you shut up.”

  “You know better than that. Shutting up I am very bad at. Can I tell you one more thing, and then I shut up really?”

  “Go ahead,” Eitel said, sighing.

  “I tell you this: you a very confused man. You a crook who thinks he not a crook, you know what I mean? Which is bad thinking. But is all right. I like you. I respect you, even. I think you are excellent businessman. So you forgive rude remarks?”

  “You give me a great pain,” Eitel said.

  “I bet I do. You forget I said anything. Go make deal, many millions, tomorrow we have mint tea together and you give me my cut and everybody happy.”

  “I don’t like mint tea.”

  “Is all right. We have some anyway.”

  Seeing Agila standing in the doorway of her hotel room, Eitel was startled again by the impact of her presence, the overwhelming physical power of her beauty. If she confuse you, it can cost you. What you see is all artificial, he told himself. It’s just a mask. Eitel looked from Agila to Anakhistos, who sat oddly folded, like a giant umbrella. That’s what she really is, Eitel thought. She’s Mrs. Anakhistos from Centaurus, and her skin is like rubber and her mouth is a hinged slot and this body that she happens to be wearing right now was made in a laboratory. And yet, and yet, and yet—the wind was roaring, he was tossing wildly about—

  What the hell is happening to me?

  “Show us what you have for us,” Anakhistos said.

  Eitel slipped the little painting from its case. His hands were shaking ever so slightly. In the closeness of the room he picked up two strong fragrances, something dry and musty coming from Anakhistos, and the strange, irresistible mixtures of incongruous spices that Agila’s synthetic body emanated.

  “The Madonna of the Palms, Lorenzo Bellini, Venice, 1597,” Eitel said. “Very fine work.”

  “Bellini is extremely famous, I know.”

  “The famous ones are Giovanni and Gentile. This is Giovanni’s grandson. He’s just as good, but not well-known. I couldn’t possibly get you paintings by Giovanni or Gentile. No one on Earth could.”

  “This is quite fine,” said Anakhistos. “True Renaissance beauty. And very Earthesque. Of course it is genuine?”

  Eitel said stiffly, “Only a fool would try to sell a fake to a connoisseur such as yourself. But it would be easy enough for us to arrange a spectroscopic analysis in Casablanca, if—”

  “Ah, no, no, no, I meant no suspicioning of your reputation. You are impeccable. We unquestion the genuinity. But what is done about the export certificate?”

  “Easy. I have a document that says this is a recent copy, done by a student in Paris. They are not yet applying chemical tests of age to the paintings, not yet. You will be able to take the painting from Earth, with such a certificate.”

  “And the price?” said Anakhistos.

  Eitel took a deep breath. It was meant to steady him, but it dizzied him instead, for it filled his lungs with Agila.

  He said, “If the deal is straight cash, the price is four million dollars.”

  “And otherwise?” Agila asked.

  “I’d prefer to talk to you about that alone,” he said to her.

  “Whatever you want to say, you can say in front of Anakhistos. We are absolute mates. We have complete trust.”

  “I’d still prefer to speak more privately.”

  She shrugged. “All right. The balcony.”

  Outside, where the sweetness of night-blooming flowers filled the air, her fragrance was less overpowering. It made no difference. Looking straight at her only with difficulty, he said, “If I can spend the rest of this night making love to you, the price will be three million.”

  “This is a joke?”

  “In fact, no. Not at all.”

  “It is worth a million dollars to have sexual contact with me?”

  Eitel imagined how his father would have answered that question, his grandfather, his great-grandfather. Their accumulated wisdom pressed on him like a hump. To hell with them, he thought.

  He said, listening in wonder to his own words, “Yes. It is.”

  “You know that this body is not my real body.”

  “I know.”

  “I am an alien being.”

  “Yes. I know.”

  She studied him in silence a long while. Then she said, “Why did you make me come outside to ask me this?”

  “On Earth, men sometimes become quite angry when strangers ask their wives to go to bed with them. I didn’t know how Anakhistos would react. I don’t have any real idea how Centaurans react to anything.”

  “I am Centauran also,” she pointed out.

  “You don’t seem as alien to me.”

  She smiled quickly, on-off. “I see. Well, let us confer with Anakhistos.”

  But the conference, it turned out, did not include Eitel. He stood by, feeling rash and foolish, while Agila and Anakhistos exchanged bursts of harsh rapid words in thei
r own language, a buzzing, eerie tongue that was quite literally like nothing on Earth. He searched their faces for some understanding of the flow of conversation. Was Anakhistos shocked? Outraged? Amused? And she? Even wearing human guise, she was opaque to him too. Did she feel contempt for Eitel’s bumptious lusts? Indifference? See him as quaintly primitive, bestial, anthropoid? Or was she eagerly cajoling her husband into letting her have her little adventure? Eitel had an idea. He felt far out of his depth, a sensation as unfamiliar as it was unwelcome. Dry throat, sweaty palms, brain in turmoil: but there was no turning back now.

  At last Agila turned to him and said, “It is agreed. The painting is ours at three million. And I am yours until dawn.”

  David was still waiting. He grinned a knowing grin when Eitel emerged from the Merinides with Agila on his arm, but said nothing. I have lost points with him, Eitel thought. He thinks I have allowed the nonsense of the flesh to interfere with a business decision, and now I have made myself frivolous in his eyes. It is more complicated than that, but David would never understand. Business and women must be kept separate things. To the taxi driver, Eitel knew Helen of Troy herself would be as nothing next to a million dollars: mere meat, mere heat. So be it, Eitel told himself. David would never understand. What David would understand, Eitel thought guiltily, was that in cutting the deal with Agila he had also cut fifty thousand dollars off David’s commission. But he did not intend to let David know anything about that.

  When they were in Eitel’s room Agila said, “First, I would please like to have some mint tea, yes? It is my addiction, you know. My aphrodisiac.”

  Sizzling impatience seared Eitel’s soul. God only knew how long it might take room service to fetch a pot of tea at this hour, and at a million dollars a night he preferred not to waste even a minute. But there was no way to refuse. He could not allow himself to seem like some panting schoolboy.

  “Of course,” he said.

  After he had phoned, he walked around behind her as she stood by the window peering into the mists of the night. He put his lips to the nape of her neck and cupped his hands over her breasts. This is very crazy, he thought. I am not touching her real body. This is only some synthetic mock-up, a statue of flesh, a mere androidal shell.