The Narrow Land

"It works," said Alien shortly. "Occupation?"

"Architect. At least I dabble at it, design dog houses and rabbit hutches for my friends. Although I did the Geraf Fleeter Corporation plant in Hanover a year or so ago, pretty big job."

"Hm. Where were you born?"

"Buenos Aires."

"Ever hold any government jobs? Civil Service? Police? Administrative? ACP?"

"No."

"Why not?"

"Red tape. Disgusting bureaucrats."

"Nearest relative?"

"My brother, Arthur Mario. In Callaco. Coffee business."

"No wife?"

"No wife."

"Approximate worth? Wealth, possessions, real estate?"

"Oh-sixty, seventy thousand. Modestly comfortable. Enough so that I can loaf all I care to."

"Why did you come to the Chateau d'lf ?"

"Same reason that everybody else comes. Boredom. Repressed energy. Lack of something to fight against."

Alien laughed. "So you think you'll work off some of that energy fighting the Chateau d'lf?"

Mario smiled faintly. "It's a challenge."

"We've got a good thing here," Alien confided. "A wonder it hasn't been done before. How did you happen to come to the Chateau d'lf?"

"Five of us rolled dice. A man named Pete Zaer lost, He came, but he wouldn't speak to us afterwards."

Alien nodded sagely. "We've got to ask that our customers keep our secrets. If there were no mystery, we would have no customers."

"It had better be good," said Mario, "after all the buildup." And he thought he saw a flicker of humor in Alien's eyes.

"It's cheap at ten million."

"And quite dear at ten thousand?" suggested Mario.

Alien leaned back in his chair, and his beautiful face was cold as a marble mask. Mario suddenly thought of the girl in the front office. The same expression of untouchable distance and height. He said, "I suppose you have the same argument with everyone who comes in."

"Identical."

"Well, where do we go from here?"

"Are you healthy? Any organic defects?"

"None."

"Very well. I'll waive the physical."

Mario reached up, removed the encephalograph pick-up.

"Now I can lie again."

Alien drummed a moment on the tabletop, reached forward, tossed the mesh back in the desk, scribbled on a sheet of paper, tossed it to Mario. "A contract relieving us of responsibility."

Mario read. In consideration of services rendered, Roland Mario agreed that the Chateau d'lf and its principals would not be held responsible for any injuries, physical or psychological, which he might sustain while on the premises, or as a result of his presence on the premises. Furthermore, he waived all rights to prosecute. Any and all transactions, treatments, experiments, events which occurred on, by or to his person were by his permission and express direction.

Mario chewed doubtfully at his lip. "This sounds pretty tough. About all you can't do is kill me."

"Correct," said Alien.

"A very ominous contract"

"Perhaps just the talk is adventure enough," suggested Alien, faintly contemptuous.

Mario pursed his lips. "I like pleasant adventures. A nightmare is an adventure, and I don't like nightmares."

"Who does?"

In other words, you won't tell me a thing?"

"Not a thing."

"If I had any sense," said Mario, "I'd get up and walk out."

"Suit yourself."

"What do you do with all the money?"

Mervyn Alien relaxed in his chair, put his hands behind his blond head.

"We're building the Empyrean Tower. That's no secret"

It was news to Mario. The Empyrean Tower-the vastest, grandest, heaviest, tallest, most noble structure created or even conceived by man. A sky-piercing star-aspiring shaft three miles tall.

"Why, if I may ask, are you building the Empyrean Tower?"

Alien sighed. "For the same reason you're here, at the Chateau d'lf. Boredom. And don't tell me to take my own treatment."

"Have you?"

Alien studied him with narrow eyes. "Yes. I have. You ask lots of questions. Too many. Here's the contract Sign it or tear it up. I can't give you any more time."

"First," said Mario patiently, "you'll have to give me some idea of what I'm getting into."

"It's not crime," said Alien. "Let's say-we give you a new outlook on life."

"Artificial amnesia?" asked Mario, remembering Zaer.

"No. Your memory is intact. "Here it is," and Alien thrust out the contract "Sign it or tear it up."

Mario signed. "I realize I'm a fool. Want my eight thousand?"

"We're in the business for money," said Alien shortly. "If you can spare it"

Mario counted out the eight thousand-dollar bills. "There you are."

Alien took the money, tapped it on the table, inspected Mario ruminatively. "Our customers fall pretty uniformly into three groups. Reckless young men just out of adolescence, jaded old men in search of new lands of vice, and police snoopers. You don't seem to fit"

Mario said with a shrug. "Average the first two. I'm reckless, jaded and twenty-nine."

Alien smiled briefly, politely, rose to his feet "This way, please."

A panel opened behind him, revealing a chamber lit with cool straw-colored light Green plants, waist-high, grew in profusion-large-leafed exotics, fragile ferns, fantastic spired fungi, nodding spear-blades the color of Aztec jade. Mario noticed Alien drawing a deep breath before entering the room, but thought nothing of it. He followed, gazing right and left in admiration for the small artificial jungles to either side. The air was strong with the mint-gardenia-antiseptic odor-pungent. He blinked. His eyes watered, blurred. He halted, swaying. Alien turned around, watched with a cool half-smile, as if this were a spectacle he knew well but found constantly amusing.

Vision retreated; hearing hummed, flagged, departed; time swam, spun....

CHAPTER IV

A New Life

Mario awoke.

It was a sharp clean-cut awakening, not the slow wading through a morass of drug.

He sat on a bench in Tanagra Square, under the big mimosa, and the copper peacocks were pecking at bread he held out to them.

He looked at his hand. It was a fat, pudgy hand. The arm was encased in hard gray fiber. No suit he owned was gray. The arm was short. His legs were short. His belly was large. He licked his lips. They were pulpy, thick.

He was Roland Mario inside the brain, the body was somebody else. He sat quite still.

The peacocks pecked at the bread. He threw it away. His arm was stiff, strangely heavy. He had flabby muscles. He rose to his feet grunting. His body was soft but not flexible. He rubbed his hand over his face, felt a short lumpy nose, long ears, heavy cheeks like pans full of cold glue. He was bald as the underside of a fish.

Who was the body? He blinked, felt his mind twisting, tugging at its restraint. Mario fought to steady himself, as a man in a teetering canoe tries to hold it steady, to prevent capsizing into dark water. He leaned against the trunk of the mimosa tree. Steady, steady, focus your eyes! What had been done to him no doubt could be undone. Or it would wear off. Was it a dream, an intensely vivid segment of narcotiana? Adventure-ha! That was a mild word.

He fumbled into his pockets, found a folded sheet of paper. He opened it, sat down while he read the typescript. First, there was a heavy warning:

MEMORIZE THE FOLLOWING, AS THIS PAPER WILL DISINTEGRATE IN APPROXIMATELY FIVE MINUTES!

You are embarking on the life you paid for.

Your name is Ralston Ebery. Your age is 56. You are married to Florence Ebery, age 50. Your home address is 19 Seafoam Place. You have three children: Luther, age 25, Ralston Jr., age 23, Clydia, age 19.

You are a wealthy manufacturer of aircraft the Ebery Air-car. Your bank is the African Federal; the pass-book is in your pocket. When you sign your name, do not consciously guide your hand; let the involuntary muscles write the signature Ralston Ebery.