The would-be thief fled down the dark alley, with the hot bright rays
from the stranger's gun lancing out after him in flamboyant but futile
patterns. The stranger, a thin young man with delicate, angular
features, made no attempt to follow. Instead, he bent over to examine
Gabriel Lockard's form, appropriately outstretched in the gutter. "Only
weighted out," he muttered, "he'll be all right. Whatever possessed you
two to come out to a place like this?"
"I really think Gabriel _must_ be possessed...." the girl said, mostly
to herself. "I had no idea of the kind of place it was going to be
until he brought me here. The others were bad, but this is even worse.
It almost seems as if he went around looking for trouble, doesn't it?"
"It does indeed," the stranger agreed, coughing a little. It was
growing colder and, on this world, the cities had no domes to protect
them from the climate, because it was Earth and the air was breathable
and it wasn't worth the trouble of fixing up.
The girl looked closely at him. "You look different, but you _are_ the
same man who pulled us out of that aircar crash, aren't you? And before
that the man in the gray suit? And before that...?"
The young man's cheekbones protruded as he smiled. "Yes, I'm all of
them."
"Then what they say about the zarquil games is true? There are people
who go around changing their bodies like--like hats?" Automatically she
reached to adjust the expensive bit of blue synthetic on her moon-pale
hair, for she was always conscious of her appearance; if she had not
been so before marriage, Gabriel would have taught her that.
* * * * *
He smiled again, but coughed instead of speaking.
"But why do you do it? _Why!_ Do you like it? Or is it because of
Gabriel?" She was growing a little frantic; there was menace here
and she could not understand it nor determine whether or not she was
included in its scope. "Do you want to keep him from recognizing you;
is that it?"
"Ask him."
"He won't tell me; he never tells me anything. We just keep running. I
didn't recognize it as running at first, but now I realize that's what
we've been doing ever since we were married. And running from you, I
think?"
There was no change of expression on the man's gaunt face, and she
wondered how much control he had over a body that, though second- or
third- or fourth-hand, must be new to him. How well could he make it
respond? What was it like to step into another person's casing? But she
must not let herself think that way or she would find herself looking
for a zarquil game. It would be one way of escaping Gabriel, but not,
she thought, the best way; her body was much too good a one to risk so
casually.
* * * * *
It was beginning to snow. Light, feathery flakes drifted down on her
husband's immobile body. She pulled her thick coat--of fur taken from
some animal who had lived and died light-years away--more closely about
herself. The thin young man began to cough again.
Overhead a tiny star seemed to detach itself from the pale flat disk
of the Moon and hurl itself upward--one of the interstellar ships
embarking on its long voyage to distant suns. She wished that somehow
she could be on it, but she was here, on this solitary old world in a
barren solar system, with her unconscious husband and a strange man who
followed them, and it looked as if here she would stay ... all three of
them would stay....
"If you're after Gabriel, planning to hurt him," she asked, "why then
do you keep helping him?"
"I am not helping _him_. And he knows that."
"You'll change again tonight, won't you?" she babbled. "You always
change after you ... meet us? I think I'm beginning to be able to
identify you now, even when you're ... wearing a new body; there's
something about you that doesn't change."
"Too bad he got married," the young man said. "I could have followed
him for an eternity and he would never have been able to pick me out
from the crowd. Too bad he got married anyway," he added, his voice
less impersonal, "for your sake."
She had come to the same conclusion in her six months of marriage, but
she would not admit that to an outsider. Though this man was hardly an
outsider; he was part of their small family group--as long as she had
known Gabriel, so long he must have known her. And she began to suspect
that he was even more closely involved than that.
"Why must you change again?" she persisted, obliquely approaching the
subject she feared. "You have a pretty good body there. Why run the
risk of getting a bad one?"
"This isn't a good body," he said. "It's diseased. Sure, nobody's
supposed to play the game who hasn't passed a thorough medical
examination. But in the places to which your husband has been leading
me, they're often not too particular, as long as the player has plenty
of foliage."
"How--long will it last you?"
"Four or five months, if I'm careful." He smiled. "But don't worry, if
that's what you're doing; I'll get it passed on before then. It'll be
expensive--that's all. Bad landing for the guy who gets it, but then
it was tough on me too, wasn't it?"
"But how did you get into this ... pursuit?" she asked again. "And why
are you doing it?" People didn't have any traffic with Gabriel Lockard
for fun, not after they got to know him. And this man certainly should
know him better than most.
"Ask your husband."
The original Gabriel Lockard looked down at the prostrate,
snow-powdered figure of the man who had stolen his body and his name,
and stirred it with his toe. "I'd better call a cab--he might freeze to
death."
He signaled and a cab came.
"Tell him, when he comes to," he said to the girl as he and the driver
lifted the heavy form of her husband into the helicar, "that I'm
getting pretty tired of this." He stopped for a long spell of coughing.
"Tell him that sometimes I wonder whether cutting off my nose wouldn't,
in the long run, be most beneficial for my face."
* * * * *
"Sorry," the Vinzz said impersonally, in English that was perfect
except for the slight dampening of the sibilants, "but I'm afraid you
cannot play."
"Why not?" The emaciated young man began to put on his clothes.
"You know why. Your body is worthless. And this is a reputable house."
"But I have plenty of money." The young man coughed. The Vinzz
shrugged. "I'll pay you twice the regular fee."
The green one shook his head. "Regrettably, I do mean what I say. This
game is really clean."
"In a town like this?"
"That is the reason we can afford to be honest." The Vinzz' tendrils
quivered in what the man had come to recognize as amusement through
long, but necessarily superficial acquaintance with the Vinzz. His
heavy robe of what looked like moss-green velvet, but might have been
velvet-green moss, encrusted with oddly faceted alien jewels, swung
with him.
"We do a lot of business here," he said unnecessarily, for the whole
set-up spelled wealth far beyond the dreams of the man, and he was by
no means poor when it came to worldly goods. "Why don't you try another
town where they're not so particular?"
The young man smiled wryly. Just his luck to stumble on a sunny game.
He never liked to risk following his quarry in the same configuration.
And even though only the girl had actually seen him this time, he
wouldn't feel at ease until he had made the usual body-shift. Was
he changing because of Gabriel, he wondered, or was he using his own
discoverment and identification simply as an excuse to cover the fact
that none of the bodies that fell to his lot ever seemed to fit him?
Was he activated solely by revenge or as much by the hope that in the
hazards of the game he might, impossible though it now seemed, some day
win another body that approached perfection as nearly as his original
casing had?
He didn't know. However, there seemed to be no help for it now; he
would have to wait until they reached the next town, unless the girl,
seeing him reappear in the same guise, would guess what had happened
and tell her husband. He himself had been a fool to admit to her that
the hulk he inhabited was a sick one; he still couldn't understand
how he could so casually have entrusted her with so vital a piece of
information.
* * * * *
The Vinzz had been locking antennae with another of his kind. Now they
detached, and the first approached the man once more. "There is, as it
happens, a body available for a private game," he lisped. "No questions
to be asked or answered. All I can tell you is that it is in good
health."
The man hesitated. "But unable to pass the screening?" he murmured
aloud. "A criminal then."
The green one's face--if you could call it a face--remained impassive.
"Male?"
"Of course," the Vinzz said primly. His kind did have certain ultimate
standards to which they adhered rigidly, and one of those was the
curious tabu against mixed games, strictly enforced even though it
kept them from tapping a vast source of potential players. There had
also never been a recorded instance of humans and extraterrestrials
exchanging identities, but whether that was the result of tabu or
biological impossibility, no one could tell.
It might merely be prudence on the Vinzz' part--if it had ever
been proved that an alien life-form had "desecrated" a human body,
Earthmen would clamor for war ... for on this planet humanity held
its self-bestowed purity of birthright dear--and the Vinzz, despite
being unquestionably the stronger, were pragmatic pacifists. It had
been undoubtedly some rabid member of the anti-alien groups active on
Terra who had started the rumor that the planetary slogan of Vinau was,
"Don't beat 'em; cheat 'em."
"It would have to be something pretty nuclear for the other guy to take
such a risk." The man rubbed his chin thoughtfully. "How much?"
"Thirty thousand credits."
"Why, that's three times the usual rate!"
"The other will pay five times the usual rate."
"Oh, all right," the delicate young man gave in. It was a terrific
risk he was agreeing to take, because, if the other was a criminal, he
himself would, upon assuming the body, assume responsibility for all
the crimes it had committed. But there was nothing else he could do.
* * * * *
He looked at himself in the mirror and found he had a fine new body;
tall and strikingly handsome in a dark, coarse-featured way. Nothing to
match the one he had lost, in his opinion, but there were probably many
people who might find this one preferable. No identification in the
pockets, but it wasn't necessary; he recognized the face. Not that it
was a very famous or even notorious one, but the dutchman was a careful
student of the "wanted" fax that had decorated public buildings from
time immemorial, for he was ever mindful of the possibility that he
might one day find himself trapped unwittingly in the body of one of
the men depicted there. And he knew that this particular man, though
not an important criminal in any sense of the word, was one whom the
police had been ordered to burn on sight. The abolishing of capital
punishment could not abolish the necessity for self-defense, and the
man in question was not one who would let himself be captured easily,
nor whom the police intended to capture easily.
_This might be a lucky break for me after all_, the new tenant thought,
as he tried to adjust himself to the body. It, too, despite its obvious
rude health, was not a very comfortable fit. _I can do a lot with a
hulk like this. And maybe I'm cleverer than the original owner; maybe
I'll be able to get away with it._