"If either wife," said the ex-Miss Pinch, Mrs. Bey, "cares to prefer charges, you can be sent to prison for the rest of your life. Extradition amongst the states is automatic. You can be run down anywhere you go, brought back and thrown in the tombs." She flashed the marriage certificates from her purse. "We have these. So go ahead, you (bleepard). Try to run. That money won't help you at all. The legal system will bring you home and throw you in the pen. Either one of us will pretend the other did not know. So spend your dough, bigamist. You ain't goin' nowhere but right here."
They suddenly burst out laughing again. I must have looked very deflated.
The ex-Miss Pinch, Mrs. Bey, got up. "Now that that's settled, dear husband, take a shower."
"Why?" I pleaded. I had had enough horror today.
"Why?" she mimicked. Then her eyes narrowed and she poked her face very close to mine, for all the world like Lombar. Her voice became very deadly indeed. "You can stop your underhanded, chauvinistic machinations right now! By plying us with champagne and pot on our wedding night and then refusing to do your duty, you thought you could throw us back into lesbianism. You tried to make me break my sacred vow to crush Psychiatric Birth Control forever! Well, buster, you did NOT succeed!"
She slapped at my side just like Lombar. "It was NO good! You only confirmed my determination! Two lesbians will arrive in the next half hour and they'll be two ex-lesbians when we're through. And no more tricks to wreck the program! No more whining about them being dead!"
She stood back and surveyed me. "Learn to toe the line, dear husband, or we'll blow the whistle on you. Clean yourself up and get ready!"
They walked out. At the door, Adora looked back. "Biprnist," she said.
Defeated utterly, I began to crawl out of my clothes. I felt terribly confused. I kept thinking I did not want to have sex with Dolores Wister nee Pubiano de Copula's burro. But there was nothing I could do about it.
Belatedly, I started screaming. I hate burros!
The following morning, worn and weary, both from overexercise and a sleep that wasn't sleep but a parade of nightmares, I took a review of myself in the bathroom mirror.
I had a scratched face.
One of the candidates for sexual reeducation last night had been a thin thing, mostly bones. In addition to an immature body, her breasts> had not yet developed fully. I speculated on her age: she must have been fourteen or fifteen at the most. Someday she would be good-looking, maybe, but right now her eyes were too big and round and her oversized mouth was far too large for her face. She wore her light brown hair in a ponytail. She chewed bubble gum with very loud satisfaction.
Her name was Teenie and her job was licking stamps in Rockecenter's Medical Association Control Department. I had gathered that she had not been on the job very long, had come straight out of some psychology sex-education group in grade school and had not been wholly converted to Psychiatric Birth Control yet. So, according to Adora, it was important that pains be taken with her: my pains of course!
Last night Teenie had certainly expressed her enthusiasm for reeducation! But "enthusiasm" is too mild a word for it. She had been all over the place and me!
ACTIVE! And the others had just smiled indulgently and wouldn't pull her off!
It wouldn't have been so bad, perhaps, except that she had expressed her passion with fingernails, time after time!
But she made me realize that my own education was deficient. I didn't have a clue what "Ride 'em, cowboy!" meant. We don't have any cows on Voltar and if we did, we wouldn't keep hitting them with a hat! Or scratching them! Inhuman!
Yes, all in all, that very active Teenie had been a wearing experience. I hoped there would not be too many more like that! Too draining!
I put some patches on my face to hide the scratch marks. I hoped I would not be permanently scarred.
I thought I would cheer myself up by examining and counting and fondling the money. It was on the top shelf of my closet. I got it down. And then I just sat there staring at it. Was it worth it?
The thought had no more than begun when I sat up with alarm. Was something costing me my love of money? What if I went into a state of hypernegation?
Look at the state that Heller and the Countess Krak were bringing me to!
New alarm filled me. Heller might suspect me. And the Countess Krak, now that she had disappeared, might be looking for me. Supposing she took it into her head to turn Crobe loose on me when I went crazy!
I had not looked at Crobe's viewer much. Was she in contact with him?
Anxiously I turned Crobe's viewer on. He could make it very hard to watch due to his one penetrative x-ray eye. But today it was quite clear.
Crobe was standing in front of a group of evident psychiatrists. It was probably the operating amphitheater at Bellevue. The audience was very intent.
Before him there was a patient strapped in a chair. I gasped: Crobe was up to his old grafting tricks.
A reptile was rearing out of the patient's skull! The deadly snake head was moving about to right and left.
Crobe's voice boomed out: "Dis broofs de t'eory dot man iss running on de reptile brain. By zimply feeding de batient Drug 32, de reptile gortex 'as been restimu-lated do grow! Und it 'as grow and grow. Und vinally 'ere iss de broof!"
The assembled psychiatrists were taking notes anxiously. A medical photographer was shooting flash shots.
The fraud! He was always monkeying around with grafts. That was-how he made freaks and this is why he had been condemned to death before Lombar got him and put him to work in Spiteos. Here he was corrupting the sacredness of psychiatric science!
"Zo!" cried Crobe with a flourish, "you dgentmens iss zo right! Dere iss a reptile brain. Man runs on de reptile brain. It iss the zource which makes man zo evil! Zychlatric zience iss right!"
There was applause from the assembled learned men. Some cheers as well.
A spokesman stood up. "Dr. Crobe. I wish to announce to this gathering, now that we have seen it with our own eyes, that you are being proposed for the award of Psychiatric Genius of the Year."
"No, no," cried Crobe impatiently. "Zit down! I 'ave not vinished! Dere iss more broof!"
The hall went into a hush.
"Zis patient coom here zuffering from inanity. By
feeding Drug 32, I 'ave brought de cause to light. Now, right beefoor yer eyes, I vill CURE de patient!" The emotional-scale letters on the viewer said:
GLEE
The hall hushed. Crobe took a huge knife from the table. He flourished it. It whistled through the air. THUNK!
It severed the snake from the skull! Blood spurted all over the place! The patient went into death seizures. He died.' The letters on Crobe's viewer flashed:
PLEASURE
Crobe's voice rang out in triumph. "You zee? De end broduct uf psychiatry 'as been attained. ZE PATIENT ISS QUIET!"
Thunderous applause broke out. The psychiatrists were on their feet in a standing ovation!
Suddenly out of the cheering throng rushed a clot of media men. Foremost amongst them was a reporter with a Slime Magazine press card in his hatband. His voice could hardly be heard above the din. "Dr. Crobe! We want you on the cover of the magazine! Scientist of the Year!" A TV crew was pushing him aside. "We got it all but we gotta have close shots."
Psychiatrists were pushing the newsmen back, trying to shake Crobe's hand.
What a turmoil!
I averted my eyes and shut off the viewer.
I sat there. Psychology and psychiatry were stimulating Crobe. It was Heller's fault for making it necessary to send Crobe to Earth.