She smiled. "Only when I'm having tantrums. It was civilized of you to
agree with me."
"But I actually do believe in monogamy," he protested.
She gave his hand a little squeeze. "You are nice, but let's rush now.
I've finished my tantrum and I want you to meet my group. You can fresh
yourself with us."
As they hurried across the heated sands, Tom Dorset felt for the first
time a twinge of uneasiness. There was something about this girl, more
than her strange clothes and the odd words she used now and then,
something almost--though ghosts don't wear digitals--spectral.
They scrambled up a little rise, digging their footgear into the sand,
until they stood on a long flat. And there, serpentining around two
great clumps of rock, was a many-windowed adobe ranch house with a
roof like fresh soot.
"Oh, they've put on their clothes," his companion exclaimed with
pleasure. "They've decided to make it a holiday after all."
Tom spotted a beard in the group swarming out to meet them. Its cultish
look gave him a momentary feeling of superiority, followed by an
equally momentary apprehension--the five husbands were certainly husky.
Then both feelings were swallowed up in the swirl of introduction.
He told his own name, found that his companion's was Lois Wolver, then
smiling faces began to bob toward his, his hands were shaken, his
cheeks were kissed, he was even spun around like blind man's bluff, so
that he lost track of the husbands and failed to attach Mary, Rachel,
Simone and Joyce to the right owners.
He did notice that Jokichi was an Oriental with a skin as tight as
enameled china, and that Rachel was a tall slim Negro girl. Also
someone said, "Joyce isn't a Wolver, she's just visiting."
He got a much clearer impression of the clothes than the names. They
were colorful, costly-looking, and mostly Egyptian and Cretan in
inspiration. Some of them would have been quite immodest, even compared
to Miss Tosker's famous playsuits, except that the wearers didn't seem
to feel so.
"There goes the middle-morning rocket!" one of them eagerly cried.
Tom looked up with the rest, but his eyes caught the dazzling sun.
However, he heard a faint roaring that quickly sank in volume and
pitch, and it reminded him that the Army had a rocket testing range in
this area. He had little interest in science, but he hadn't known they
were on a daily schedule.
"Do you suppose it's off the track?" he asked anxiously.
"Not a chance," someone told him--the beard, he thought. The assurance
of the tones gave him a possible solution. Scientists came from all
over the world these days and might have all sorts of advanced ideas.
This could be a group working at a nearby atomic project and leading
its peculiar private life on the side.
* * * * *
As they eddied toward the house he heard Lois remind someone, "But you
finally did declare it a holiday," and a husband who looked like a gay
pharaoh respond, "I had another see at the mood charts and I found a
subtle surge I'd missed."
Meanwhile the beard (a black one) had taken Tom in charge. Tom wasn't
sure of his name, but he had a tan skin, a green sarong, and a fiercely
jovial expression. "The swimming pool's around there, the landing
spot's on the other side," he began, then noticed Tom gazing at the
sooty roof. "Sun power cells," he explained proudly. "They store all
the current we need."
Tom felt his idea confirmed. "Wonder you don't use atomic power," he
observed lightly.
The beard nodded. "We've been asked that. Matter of esthetics. Why
waste sunlight or use hard radiations needlessly? Of course, you might
feel differently. What's your group, did you say?"
"Tosker-Brown," Tom told him, adding when the beard frowned, "the
Fellowship people, you know."
"I don't," the beard confessed. "Where are you located?"
Tom briefly described the ranch house and cabins at the other end of
the valley.
"Comic, I can't place it." The beard shrugged. "Here come the children."
A dozen naked youngsters raced around the ranch house, followed by a
woman in a vaguely African dress open down the sides.
"Yours?" Tom asked.
"Ours," the beard answered.
"C'est un homme!"
"Regardez des vĂȘtements!"
"No need to practice, kids; this is a holiday," the beard told them.
"Tom, Helen," he said, introducing the woman with the air-conditioned
garment. "Her turn today to companion die Kinder."
One of the latter rapped on the beard's knee. "May we show the stranger
our things?" Instantly the others joined in pleading. The beard shot
an inquiring glance at Tom, who nodded. A moment later the small troupe
was hurrying him toward a spacious lean-to at the end of the ranch
house. It was chuckful of strange toys, rocks and plants, small animals
in cages and out, and the oddest model airplanes, or submarines. But
Tom was given no time to look at any one thing for long.
"See my crystals? I grew them."
"Smell my mutated gardenias. Tell now, isn't there a difference?" There
didn't seem to be, but he nodded.
"Look at my squabbits." This referred to some long-eared white
squirrels nibbling carrots and nuts.
"Here's my newest model spaceship, a DS-57-B. Notice the detail." The
oldest boy shoved one of the submarine affairs in his face.
* * * * *
Tom felt like a figure that is being tugged about in a rococo painting
by wide pink ribbons in the chubby hands of naked cherubs. Except
that these cherubs were slim and tanned, fantastically energetic, and
apparently of depressingly high IQ. (What these scientists did to
children!) He missed Lois and was grateful for the single little girl
solemnly skipping rope in a corner and paying no attention to him.
The odd lingo she repeated stuck in his mind: "Gik-lo, I-o, Rik-o,
Gis-so. Gik-lo, I-o...."
Suddenly the air was filled with soft chimes. "Lunch," the children
shouted and ran away.
Tom followed at a soberer pace along the wall of the ranch house. He
glanced in the huge windows, curious about the living and sleeping
arrangements of the Wolvers, but the panes were strangely darkened.
Then he entered the wide doorway through which the children had
scampered and his curiosity turned to wonder.
A resilient green floor that wasn't flat, but sloped up toward the
white of the far wall like a breaking wave. Chairs like giants' hands
tenderly cupped. Little tables growing like mushrooms and broad-leafed
plants out of the green floor. A vast picture window showing the red
rocks.
Yet it was the wood-paneled walls that electrified his artistic
interest. They blossomed with fruits and flowers, deep and poignantly
carved in several styles. He had never seen such work.
He became aware of a silence and realized that his hosts and hostesses
were smiling at him from around a long table. Moved by a sudden
humility, he knelt and unlaced his sneakers and added them to the pile
of sandals and digitals by the door. As he rose, a soft and comic
piping started and he realized that beyond the table the children were
lined up, solemnly puffing at little wooden flutes and recorders. He
saw the empty chair at the table and went toward it, conscious for the
moment of nothing but his dusty feet.
He was disappointed that Lois wasn't sitting next to him, but the food
reminded him that he was hungry. There was a charming little steak,
striped black and brown with perfection, and all sorts of vegetables
and fruits, one or two of which he didn't recognize.
"Flown from Africa," someone explained to him.
These sly scientists, he thought, living behind their security curtain
in the most improbable world!
When they were sitting with coffee and wine, and the children had
finished their concert and were busy at another table, he asked, "How
do you manage all this?"