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“I mean,” George broke in, “I don’t respect my own wife; that’s the basis of it. I think of her as a thing. And myself, too. We’re both things.” He drank down his beer in one gulp.
Pete said meditatively, “But from the Blobel standpoint—”
“Listen, whose side are you on?” George demanded.
“Don’t yell at me,” Pete said, “or I’ll deck you.”
A moment later they were swinging wildly at each other. Fortunately Pete reverted to Blobel form in the nick of time; no harm was done. Now George sat alone, in human shape, while Pete oozed off somewhere else, probably to join a group of the boys who had also assumed Blobel form.
Maybe we can find a new society somewhere on a remote moon, George said to himself moodily. Neither Terran nor Blobel.
I’ve got to go back to Vivian, George resolved. What else is there for me? I’m lucky to find her; I’d be nothing but a war veteran guzzling beer here at VUW Headquarters every damn day and night, with no future, no hope, no real life…
He had a new money-making scheme going now. It was a home mail-order business; he had placed an ad in the Saturday Evening Post for MAGIC LODE-STONES REPUTED TO BRING YOU LUCK. FROM ANOTHER STAR-SYSTEM entirely! The stones had come from Proxima and were obtainable on Titan; it was Vivian who had made the commercial contact for him with her people. But so far, few people had sent in the dollar-fifty.
I’m a failure, George said to himself.
Fortunately the next child, born in the winter of 2039, showed itself to be a hybrid; it took human form fifty percent of the time, and so at last George had a child who was—occasionally, anyhow—a member of his own species.
He was still in the process of celebrating the birth of Maurice when a delegation of their neighbors at QEK-604 Apartments came and rapped on their door.
“We’ve got a petition here,” the chairman of the delegation said, shuffling his feet in embarrassment, “asking that you and Mrs. Munster leave QEK-604.”
“But why?” George asked, bewildered. “You haven’t objected to us up until now.”
“The reason is that now you’ve got a hybrid youngster who will want to play with ours, and we feel it’s unhealthy for our kids to—”
George slammed the door in their faces.
But still, he felt the pressure, the hostility from the people on all sides of them. And to think, he thought bitterly, that I fought in the war to save these people. It sure wasn ‘t worth it.
An hour later he was down at VUW Headquarters once more, drinking beer and talking with his buddy Sherman Downs, also married to a Blobel.
“Sherman, it’s no good. We’re not wanted; we’ve got to emigrate. Maybe we’ll try it on Titan, in Viv’s world.”
“Chrissakes,” Sherman protested, “I hate to see you fold up, George. Isn’t your electromagnetic reducing belt begi
For the last few months, George had been making and selling a complex electronic reducing gadget which Vivian had helped him design; it was based in principle on a Blobel device popular on Titan but unknown on Terra. And this had gone over well; George had more orders than he could fill. But—
“I had a terrible experience, Sherm,” George confided. “I was in a drugstore the other day, and they gave me a big order for my reducing belt, and I got so excited—” He broke off. “You can guess what happened. I reverted. Right in plain sight of a hundred customers. And when the buyer saw that he canceled the order for the belts. It was what we all fear… you should have seen how their attitude toward me changed.”
Sherm said, “Hire someone to do your selling for you. A full-blooded Terran.”
Thickly, George said, “I’m a full-blooded Terran, and don’t you forget it. Ever.”
“I just mean—”
“I know what you meant,” George said. And took a swing at Sherman. Fortunately he missed and in the excitement both of them reverted to Blobel form. They oozed angrily into each other for a time, but at last fellow veterans managed to separate them.
“I’m as much Terran as anyone,” George thought-radiated in the Blobel ma
In Blobel form he was unable to get home; he had to phone Vivian to come and get him. It was humiliating.
Suicide, he decided. That’s the answer.
How best to do it? In Blobel form he was unable to feel pain; best to do it then. Several substances would dissolve him… he could for instance drop himself into a heavily-chlorinated swimming pool, such as QEK-604 maintained in its recreation room.
Vivian, in human form, found him as he reposed hesitantly at the edge of the swimming pool, late one night.
“George, I beg you—go back to Dr. Jones.”
“Naw,” he boomed dully, forming a quasi-vocal apparatus with a portion of his body. “It’s no use, Viv. I don’t want to go on.” Even the belts; they had been Viv’s idea, rather than his. He was second even there… behind her, falling constantly farther behind each passing day.
Viv said, “You have so much to offer the children.”
That was true. “Maybe I’ll drop over to the UN War Office,” he decided. “Talk to them, see if there’s anything new that medical science has come up with that might stabilize me.”
“But if you stabilize as a Terran,” Vivian said, “what would become of me?”
“We’d have eighteen entire hours together a day. All the hours you take human form!”
“But you wouldn’t want to stay married to me. Because, George, then you could meet a Terran woman.”
It wasn’t fair to her, he realized. So he abandoned the idea.
In the spring of 2041 their third child was born, also a girl, and like Maurice a hybrid. It was Blobel at night and Terran by day.
Meanwhile, George found a solution to some of his problems.
He got himself a mistress.
He and Nina arranged to meet each other at the Hotel Elysium, a rundown wooden building in the heart of Los Angeles.
“Nina,” George said, sipping Teacher’s scotch and seated beside her on the shabby sofa which the hotel provided, “you’ve made my life worth living again.” He fooled with the buttons of her blouse.
“I respect you,” Nina Glaubman said, assisting him with the buttons. “In spite of the fact—well, you are a former enemy of our people.”
“God,” George protested, “we must not think about the old days—we have to close our minds to our pasts.” Nothing but our future, he thought.
His reducing belt enterprise had developed so well that now he employed fifteen full-time Terran employees and owned a small, modern factory on the outskirts of San Fernando. If UN taxes had been reasonable he would by now be a wealthy man… brooding on that, George wondered what the tax rate was in Blobel-run lands, on Io, for instance. Maybe he ought to look into it.
One night at VUW Headquarters he discussed the subject with Reinholt, Nina’s husband, who of course was ignorant of the modus vivendi between George and Nina.
“Reinholt,” George said with difficulty, as he drank his beer, “I’ve got big plans. This cradle-to-grave socialism the UN operates… it’s not for me. It’s cramping me. The Munster Magic Magnetic Belt is—” He gestured. “More than Terran civilization can support. You get me?”
Coldly, Reinholt said, “But George, you are a Terran; if you emigrate to Blobel-run territory with your factory you’ll be betraying your—”
“Listen,” George told him, “I’ve got one authentic Blobel child, two half-Blobel children, and a fourth on the way. I’ve got strong emotional ties with those people out there on Titan and Io.”
“You’re a traitor,” Reinholt said, and punched him in the mouth. “And not only that,” he continued, punching George in the stomach, “you’re ru