IV

Rastignac saw something enormous blot out the smaller shadow of the

guard. Then both figures disappeared. A moment later a silhouette cut

across the lines of the grille. Unoiled hinges screeched; the bars

lifted. A rope uncoiled from above to fall at Rastignac's feet. He

seized it and felt himself being drawn powerfully upwards.

When he came over the edge of the well, he saw that his rescuer was a

giant Ssassaror. The light from the glowworm on the guard's hat lit up

feebly his face, which was orthagnathous and had quite humanoid eyes

and lips. Large canine teeth stuck out from the mouth, and its huge

ears were tipped with feathery tufts. The forehead down to the

eyebrows looked as if it needed a shave, but Rastignac knew that more

light would show the blue-black shade came from many small feathers,

not stubbled hair.

"Mapfarity!" Rastignac said. "It's good to see you after all these

years!"

The Ssassaror giant put his hand on his friend's shoulder. Clenched,

it was almost as big as Rastignac's head. He spoke with a voice like a

lion coughing at the bottom of a deep well.

"It is good to see you again, my friend."

"What are you doing here?" said Rastignac, tears running down his face

as he stroked the great fingers on his shoulder.

Mapfarity's huge ears quivered like the wings of a bat tied to a rock

and unable to fly off. The tufts of feathers at their ends grew stiff

and suddenly crackled with tiny sparks.

The electrical display was his equivalent of the human's weeping. Both

creatures discharged emotion; their bodies chose different avenues and

manifestations. Nevertheless, the sight of the other's joy affected

each deeply.

"I have come to rescue you," said Mapfarity. "I caught Archambaud

here,"--he indicated the other man--"stealing eggs from my golden

goose. And...."

Raoul Archambaud--pronounced Wawl Shebvo--interrupted excitedly, "I

showed him my license to steal eggs from Giants who were raising

counterfeit geese, but he was going to lock me up anyway. He was going

to take my Skin off and feed me on meat...."

"Meat!" said Rastignac, astonished and revolted despite himself.

"Mapfarity, what have you been doing in that castle of yours?"

Mapfarity lowered his voice to match the distant roar of a cataract.

"I haven't been very active these last few years," he said, "because I

am so big that it hurts my feet if I walk very much. So I've had much

time to think. And I, being logical, decided that the next step after

eating fish was eating meat. It couldn't make me any larger. So, I ate

meat. And while doing so, I came to the same conclusion that you,

apparently, have done independently. That is, the Philosophy of...."

"Of Violence," interrupted Archambaud. "Ah, Jean-Jacques, there must

be some mystic bond that brings two Humans of such different

backgrounds as yours and the Ssassaror together, giving you both the

same philosophy. When I explained what you had been doing and that you

were in jail because you had advocated getting rid of the Skins,

Mapfarity petitioned...."

"The King to make an official jail-break," said Mapfarity with an

impatient glance at the rolypoly egg-stealer. "And...."

"The King agreed," broke in Archambaud, "provided Mapfarity would turn

in his counterfeit goose and provided you would agree to say no more

about abandoning Skins, but...."

The Giant's basso profundo-redundo pushed the egg-stealer's high pitch

aside. "If this squeaker will quit interrupting, perhaps we can get on

with the rescue. We'll talk later, if you don't mind."

At that moment Lusine's voice floated up from the bottom of her cell.

"Jean-Jacques, my love, my brave, my own, would you abandon me to the

Chalice? Please take me with you! You will need somebody to hide you

when the Minister of Ill-Will sends his mucketeers after you. I can

hide you where no one will ever find you." Her voice was mocking, but

there was an undercurrent of anxiety to it.

Mapfarity muttered, "She will hide us, yes, at the bottom of a

sea-cave where we will eat strange food and suffer a change.

Never...."

"Trust an Amphib," finished Archambaud for him.

Mapfarity forgot to whisper. "_Bey-t'cul, vu nu fez yey! Fe'm sa!_" he

roared.

A shocked hush covered the courtyard. Only Mapfarity's wrathful

breathing could be heard. Then, disembodied, Lusine's voice floated

from the well.

"Jean-Jacques, do not forget that I am the foster-daughter of the King

of the Amphibians! If you were to take me with you, I could assure you

of safety and a warm welcome in the halls of the Sea-King's Palace!"

"Pah!" said Mapfarity. "That web-footed witch!"

Rastignac did not reply to her. He took the broad silk belt and the

sheathed epee from Archambaud and buckled them around his waist.

Mapfarity handed him a mucketeer's hat; he clapped that on firmly.

Last of all, he took the Skin that the fat egg-stealer had been

holding out to him.

For the first time he hesitated. It was his Skin, the one he had been

wearing since he was six. It had grown with him, fed off his blood for

twenty-two years, clung to him as clothing, censor, and castigator,

and parted from him only when he was inside the walls of his own

house, went swimming, or, as during the last seven days, when he laid

in jail.

A week ago, after they had removed his second Skin, he had felt naked

and helpless and cut off from his fellow creatures. But that was a

week ago. Since then, as he had remarked to Lusine, he had experienced

the birth of a strange feeling. It was, at first, frightening. It made

him cling to the bars as if they were the only stable thing in the

center of a whirling universe.

Later, when that first giddiness had passed, it was succeeded by

another intoxication--the joy of being an individual, the knowledge

that he was separate, not a part of a multitude. Without the Skin he

could think as he pleased. He did not have a censor.

Now, he was on level ground again, out of the cell. But as soon as he

had put that prison-shaft behind him he was faced with the old second

Skin.

Archambaud held it out like a cloak in his hands. It looked much like

a ragged garment. It was pale and limp and roughly rectangular with

four extensions at each corner. When Rastignac put it on his back, it

would sink four tiny hollow teeth into his veins and the suckers on

the inner surface of its flat body would cling to him. Its long upper

extensions would wrap themselves around his shoulders and over his

chest; the lower, around his loins and thighs. Soon it would lose its

paleness and flaccidity, become pink and slightly convex, pulsing with

Rastignac's blood.

V

Rastignac hesitated for a few seconds. Then he allowed the habit of a

lifetime to take over. Sighing, he turned his back. In a moment he

felt the cold flesh descend over his shoulders and the little bite of

the four teeth as they attached the Skin to his shoulders. Then, as

his blood poured into the creature he felt it grow warm and strong. It

spread out and followed the passages it had long ago been conditioned

to follow, wrapped him warmly and lovingly and comfortably. And he

knew, though he couldn't feel it, that it was pushing nerves into the

grooves along the teeth. Nerves to connect with his.

A minute later he experienced the first of the expected _rapport_. It

was nothing that you could put a mental finger on. It was just a

diffused tingling and then the sudden consciousness of how the others

around him _felt_.

They were ghosts in the background of his mind. Yet, pale and

ectoplasmic as they were, they were easily identifiable. Mapfarity

loomed above the others, a transparent Colossus radiating streamers of

confidence in his clumsy strength. A meat-eater, uncertain about the

future, with a hope and trust in Rastignac to show him the right way.

And with a strong current of anger against the conqueror who had

inflicted the Skin upon him.

Archambaud was a shorter phantom, rolypoly even in his psychic

manifestations, emitting bursts of impatience because other people did

not talk fast enough to suit him, his mind leaping on ahead of their

tongues, his fingers wriggling to wrap themselves around something

valuable--preferably the eggs of the golden goose--and a general

eagerness to be up and about and onwards. He was one round fidget on

two legs, yet a good man for any project requiring action.

Faintly, Rastignac detected the slumbering guard as if he were the

tendrils of some plant at the sea-bottom, floating in the green

twilight, at peace and unconscious.

And even more faintly he felt Lusine's presence, shielded by the walls

of the shaft. Hers was a pale and light hand, one whose fingers tapped

a barely heard code of impotent rage and voiceless screaming fear. Yet

beneath that anguish was a base of confidence and mockery at others.

She might be temporarily upset, but when the chance came for her to do

something she would seize it with every ability at her command.

Another radiation dipped into the general picture and out. A wild

glowworm had swooped over them and disturbed the smooth reflection

built up by the Skins.

This was the way the Skins worked. They penetrated into you and found

out what you were feeling and emoting, and then they broadcast it to

other closeby Skins, which then projected their hosts' psychosomatic

responses. The whole was then integrated so that each Skin-wearer

could detect the group-feeling and at the same time, though in a much

duller manner, the feeling of the individuals of the _gestalt_.

That wasn't the only function of the Skin. The parasite, created in

the bio-factories, had several other social and biological uses.

Rastignac almost fell into a reverie at that point. It was nothing

unusual. The effect of the Skins was a slowing-down one. The wearer

thought more slowly, acted more leisurely, and was much more

contented.

But now, by a deliberate wrenching of himself from the

feeling-pattern, Rastignac woke up. There were things to do, and

standing around and drinking in the lotus of the group-rapport was

not one of them.

He gestured at the prostrate form of the mucketeer. "You didn't hurt

him?"

The Ssassaror rumbled, "No. I scratched him with a little venom of the

dream-snake. He will sleep for an hour or so. Besides, I would not be

allowed to hurt him. You forget that all this is carefully staged by

the King's Official Jail-breaker."

"_Me'dt!_" swore Rastignac.