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"The Dummocks are too busy to worry about that puke," she said. "I went upstairs to see what was going on, there was so much noise. Would youbelieve it? That fathead was sitting in the chair and Huli was blowing him! No big dealabout that except he was taking notes! Taking notes! I wonder if heuses his penfor his prick!"
"Why don't you go back up and watch?" Forry said. "I have to gonow, Alys. I've been up all night, my car is wrecked, I'm exhausted, I'mworried, and...inshort, I've had it."
"Yes, I know all about that."
He looked at her with amazement. "You know all about it? Who could have told you?"
"I've been in it from the begi
"You've been in what from the begi
"The whole business. Starting so many years ago that you wouldnot believe it. Or, if you did, you'd be frightened. Which you're going to be, anyway, because you'll believe before I'm done."
He sat down in the chair across the room and said, "How many
years?" "About ten thousand or so Earth years," she said. He was silent for a while. Alys Merrie was a great little kidder
when she wasn't mad at him or making love. She knew well how deeply immersedin science-fiction he was--sometimes he thought of himself as theleviathan in the great sea of sci-fi or as a sort of Flying Dutchman of the outerspaceways--andshe sometimes poked fun at him about it. This did not seem a likelytime for it, however. On the other hand, she just could not be serious.
"Look around you," she said, waving her cigarette. "Look at allthose wild paintings and photographs. Strange planets, alien forms of life, big- chested, elephant-trunked Martians; winged men; sentient machines; giantinsects; synthetic humans; what have you. You've been reading books aboutweird beingsand worlds, and you've collected a monument to science-fiction andfantasy and, incidentally, to yourself. A lifetime of love and labor isrepresented here.
"You must believe in this exotic otherworld of yours. Otherwise, you wouldnever have gone to such unique lengths to gather the artifacts ofthis otherworld about you."
Something was different about Alys Merrie. She had never talkedlike this before. She had seemed incapable of talking so seriously or sofluently.
"Ten thousand years," she said. "Would you believe that I'm tenthousand years old? No! What about twelve thousand?"
"Twelve thousand?" he said. "Come on, Alys. I could believe inten thousand, but twelve? Don't be ridiculous!" "I look a hard forty years old, don't I?" she said. "How about this, Forry?"
It was like watching She or Lost Horizon, only it was in reverse. Instead of the beautiful young woman wrinkling into ghastly old age, it was acase of a woman unwrinkling, becoming a beautiful young girl. Helen Gahagan andJane Wyattshould have had it so good.
He wished his heart could beat faster. Then he wouldn't shake so much. So it was true. Everything he had read and dreamed about was true! Well, maybe not everything. But at least some of it was true.
"Who and what are you?" he said. The room was begi
"Do you like it?" Alys said. "Of course," Forry said. "But you didn't answer my question." "I am a, uh, let's say, a Toc," she said. "We are the enemies of
the Ogs. You met some of them last night. Fred Pao, Diana Rumbow, Panchita Pocyotl. And Woolston Heepish."
CHAPTER 33
"Heepish!" he almost screamed. "You mean Heepish isn't human?"
"We're not only not human," she said. "We're extra-terrestrial. Extra-solar system. More. Extra-Galactic. The home of the Tocs is on the fourthplanetcircling a star in the Andromeda galaxy."
He thought, I've always been a lucky man. I wanted only to workin science-fiction, and I was able to make my living out of it. I wantedto be the greatest collector of science-fiction and fantasy in the world, and Idid that as naturally and as easily as a snail grows a shell. I need a job anda publisher wants to put out a series of horror-movie magazines forchildren, andwho else is more capable or more willing to edit those? I have knownthe greatsof this field, I have been their good friend, I have seen the firstmen land on the moon, and I hope to see the first men land on Mars before I die. I have been lucky.
But now, this! I would have rejected this as a dream that only alunatic could believe to be true, even if I have fantasized it many manytimes. The beings from outer space make contact with Earthlings through me!
That was not exactly true, of course. If what she said wascorrect, theextees had been in contact with Earthlings for ten thousand years. But had theyrevealed themselves to any before? That was the important thing.
"You're getting too excited, Forry," she said. "I know you have athousand questions bubbling in your mind. But you'll get things straighter andquicker ifyou'll just listen quietly to my story. Okay? Good! Lean back andlisten."
There was a planet the size and shape of Earth rotating around aSol-typesun on the edge of the Andromeda galaxy, which was 800,000 lightyears distantfrom Earth. The sky was a blaze of luminous gas and giant stars shining through the gas. The planet of the Tocs had no moon, hence was tideless.
The fifth planet out had two small moons but no seas in whichtides could occur. This was the dying world of the Ogs, an evil race.
"Geeze!" Forry thought, and the extent of his excitement could begauged byhis use of the mild expletive. He abhorred the use, even in his mind, of the most dilute of expletives.
"Geeze! This is just like Gernsback! Or Early Campbell!"
The Tocs and the Ogs were not human beings. They were amphibiouscreatures who passed back and forth from a state of pure energy to that ofmatter. Theyformed configurations of bound energy in one condition andconfigurations ofmatter in the other. Their shape depended on that which they wishedto imitate--or to create. But they did have limitations of size andshape. Thesmallest body that could be formed was about the size of a large foxor, if theytook to the air, a large bat. When they existed as, the smalleranimals, theycarried the energy excess in an invisible form as a sort of exhausttrail. Or perhaps the analogy could be energy packed into an intangible andtransparentsuitcase.
"What is your true shape?" Forry said.
"You were not to talk," Alys said, flashing white teeth. Shelooked so beautiful and so young that he felt a pang of desire. Or was it anache for his own lost youth?
"We have no true shape, unless you would call the shape we usethe most our true one. I suppose you could, since long utility of a particularshape resultsin a certain 'hardening' of that shape. It becomes more difficult tochange itas time goes on. And it requires more energy to keep it in a nonhumanform. So, since most of us have been in the human shape for so long, you mightsay thatthat is our true shape."
The Ogs and the Tocs had come into contact when space travel wasinvented. Neither used rockets or antigravitational machines. They traveledfrom one placein space to another by means of a very peculiar device. That is, itwas peculiarfrom the human viewpoint.