Robert Silverberg - The Time Hoppers

“Must I?”

She laughed. “As I said, you’ve got a tendency to withdraw from potentially—”

“All right. All right. Take me to Dr Galuber.”

They crossed the room. Quellen was unsettled by Judith’s nakedness. A polymerized band of pigment wasn’t clothing, really. He could make out the separate cheeks of her buttocks beneath the dark blue covering. It made her look more bare than actual nudity. The effect was provocative and disturbing. Her slender, angular body attracted him almost unbearably, especially in the social context of this urbane setting. On the other hand, Mrs Galuber was just as exposed, practically, and Quellen’s basic impulse was to throw a blanket over her shoulders to shield her shame.

The frood peered in a froodlike fashion at Quellen. “It’s a delight to meet you, Mr Quellen. I’ve heard a great deal about you.”

“I’m sure you have,” said Quellen nervously. He was disappointed that Galuber, despite his promisingly Teutonic name, did not fake the ritualistic Central European accent that most froods affected. “I didn’t know that men in your profession belonged to cults like this.”

“We accept spiritual experiences of all sorts,” Galuber said. “Is there some reason why we should reject them?”

“Not really.”

The frood nodded to his wife. “Jennifer and I have belonged to a social regurgitation group for more than a year, now. It’s led us to some remarkable insights, hasn’t it, beloved?” Mrs Galuber simpered again. She eyed Quellen in such a frankly sexual way that he rippled with shock. “It’s been extremely enlightening,” she agreed. Her voice was a warm, rich contralto. “Any kind of interpersonal communion is beneficial, don’t you think? Which is to say, we achieve cathexis in the manner best suited to our needs.” Jennifer Galuber’s abundant flesh shook with genial laughter. Quellen found himself staring at the ugly upthrust mounds of her bare breasts, and he looked away, feeling guilty and sickened. The Galu-bers, he thought, must have a very odd marriage. But I will not let that fat witch sneak me off for a spot of instant interpersonal communion. Galuber may be bedding Judith, but it gains me nothing to bed his wife in turn, for the roles aren’t equal.

Judith said, “I’ve been after Dr Galuber to come to one of our communion group’s meetings for months. But he’s always resisted. He felt that until he and I had reached the right stage in my therapy, he couldn’t let himself get involved on such an intimate level.”

“There’s more to it than that, of course,” said the frood benevolently. “There always is. In this case, it was a matter of imposing my wife’s handicap on the group, which would require special preparations. Jennifer’s a galactose-deficient mutant, you see. She’s got to stay on a galactose-free diet.”

“I see,” said Quellen blankly.

“It’s a genetic fluke,” Galuber went on. “She can’t metabolize galactose at all, because of an enzyme deficit. Galactose precursors would pile up, and there’d be cell damage. So she’s had to be on a galactose-free diet from birth, but that leads to other problems. Since there’s the enzyme deficit, she can’t synthesize galactose from endogenous carbohydrates, and if left uncompensated for that would lead to partial replacement of galactolipids by glucolipids in the brain, a grossly defective blood group spectrum, poor immune reaction in organ transplants, abnormal brain development—oh, a great problem, in many ways.”

“Can it be cured?” Quellen asked.

“Not in the sense of total remission of pathology. But it can be dealt with. Hereditary galactose metabolism defects can be controlled through enzyme synthesis. Nevertheless, she’s got to remain on a special diet and avoid certain substances, among them the one that’s the essence of tonight’s ceremony. Which is why we had to substitute our own prepared material.

An inconvenience to the host.”

“Not at all, not at all,” boomed Brose Cashdan unexpectedly. “A trivial matter! We’re delighted that you could join with us, Mrs Galuber!”

Quellen, bewildered by Galuber’s stream of clinical verbiage, was relieved when Cashdan announced that the ceremony was about to begin. The frood had spouted all that stuff on purpose, Quellen thought resentfully, by way of establishing his intellectual supremacy. Instead of tossing forth the jargon of his own trade, which was easy enough to parry if you knew your way around cocktail-party froodianism, Galuber had chosen to engulf Quellen in a cascade of impenetrable technicalities of a medical sort. Quellen quietly cursed Jennifer Galuber’s enzyme deficit, her wanton glances, her galactolipid accumulation, and her jiggling breasts. Slipping away from her, he followed Judith back across the room to the carpeted pit in the centre where the ceremony was about to take place.

Judith said warningly, “Joe, please, don’t back out the way you did the last time. You’ve got to learn to divorce yourself from tribal reactions. Look at things objectively. What’s wrong with mixing a little saliva?”

“Nothing,” he said. “I suppose.”

“And digestive fluids—they can’t harm you. It’s all for the sake of spiritual communion. You mustn’t look at things in obsolete ways.”

“Is that how you get up the nerve to come naked to a social gathering?” he asked. “By looking at things in a non-obsolete way?”

“I’m not naked,” she said primly.

“No. You’re wearing a coat of paint.”

“It conceals what society requires us to conceal.”

“It leaves your secondary sex characteristics exposed,” Quellen pointed out. “That’s pretty naked.”

“But not the primary ones. See for yourself. I’m perfectly covered in that area, and so I’m well within the norms. Why don’t you look at me? You can be so absurd at times, Joe.” Since she insisted on it, he stared at her waist. His eyes travelled as far as her thighs. He had to admit it: she was decently enough clad there. She looked nude, but she wasn’t. Cunning, he thought. Provocative. He wondered how she got the sprayon outfit off. Maybe she would show him that, too, before the night was out. Her lean body held a powerful attraction for him. Unlike Helaine, whose leanness was the result of erosion and general haggardness, Judith’s body was perfect in its lithe, slim elegance. Quellen would gladly have walked out right now with her.

But there was the ceremony to endure.

The members of this communion group assembled themselves on the rim of the carpeted pit. Brose Cashdan, as the host, produced a shining metallic bowl in which reposed a doughy mass about the size of a man’s head. This, Quellen knew, was the substance of the love feast: an indigestible algae product with emetic properties. Adapted, no doubt, to suit Mrs Galuber’s galactose deficit.

Cashdan said, “Dr Galuber has kindly consented to be our first celebrant this evening.”

The lights were dimmed. Galuber took the gleaming bowl from Cashdan and rested it on his knees. Then, solemnly, he broke loose a fistful of the dough and crammed it into his mouth. He began to chew.

There were many cults. Quellen was no joiner, but even he had now and then been drawn into their ceremonies, generally through the urging of Judith. She drifted everywhere in her search for spiritual fulfilment—from frood to frood, from cult to cult. Quellen suspected that she had frequented the proscribed cults, perhaps even the outlawed Flaming Bess religion. He could picture Judith dancing naked—no flimflam of sprayon to cover her shame—while a grovelling pyrotic kindled an extrasensory blaze and raging voices railed for the overthrow of the High Government. Pyrotics had actually assassinated several Class One leaders a generation ago. The cult still endured.