A year or two had gone by like this, a comfortable vegetative time. Painting, drinking with Ada and turning on with Leonie the salesgirl, being lover to each of them in a friendly noncompetitive way. By the time his retire- ment money ran out he could almost but not quite make a living from the painting. He made up the difference with a part-time scut job at the gallery; Barton's tastes, when he so chose, could be relatively inexpensive. He was drifting and he knew it; what better way to spend the dregs of his youth?

And then somehow, at no specific point he could recall, Barton had been torn away from that placid half- remembered existence. To wake up in a gray, seamless cage.

Thinking back, then. Barton lay supine on the gray floor and for the first time in his new existence mastur- bated slowly and luxuriously, building his urge almost to the deathwish-point of convulsions before he gave himself release. Then, relaxed, he wondered why in bell he had taken so long to think of such an. obvious answer to his tensions. The relaxation carried through all that waking period and into sleep.

For the first time Here, Barton woke almost happy, . smiling in reminiscence and anticipation. He ate in no great hurry, voided, thought vaguely and with only faint regret on what he could remember of Before. Then he lay down, arranged himself comfortably and thought of plea- sure.

Nothing worked. No thoughts, no touch produced the slightest response. There was no doubt in Barton's mind what had happened. The room had noticed that he had discovered a source of pleasure, and turned it off.

That was the first time Barton tried to find a way to kill himself.

He couldn't; the room wouldn't let him. When he tried to do any real damage such as biting at an artery, the room jarred him out of it with electrical shock or radical variations of the gravity, temperature or air pressure, until be gave up and lay cursing, or sometimes crying.

The room had taken a long time to notice that Barton needed a bath or its equivalent. He was getting pretty stinking; his skin was spotted with inflamed areas and mild infections. Then suddenly he began to receive treat- ments he really didn't appreciate too much. Barton de- cided the method was probably ultrasonics.

At any rate, the outer layer of his skin flaked off in patches, and so did much of his hair, quite roughly and unevenly. He didn't have a mirror, but by the feel of him- self he knew he looked like bloody hell. Furthermore, his beard "calendar" was shot down.

So when Barton one "morning" woke to find one wall no longer gray but looking like a window, with people or something else looking in at Urn, he was more angry than curious. At first he paid little attention to the appearance of those outside, although they certainly didn't look es- pecially human. But at that point he didn't give a damn whether school kept or not; he was more concerned with what these beings had done to his own looks and functions than with what they might happen to look like. What he wanted was a little action.

He did all the standard things: he shouted, made faces, waved his arms and beat on the window. The people (or something) showed no reaction, except now and then to turn to one another and exchange comments. Or appar- ently so: he couldn't be sure; there was no sound.

When his mainspring ran down. Barton realized that be had better pay attention. Here was a chance for knowl- edge; it might not last.

What he saw was a group of robed cowled figures, vaguely human-shaped and apparently human-sized. Of course, he thought, this could be closed-circuit TV and not a window at all; in that case the apparent size wouldn't mean much. But Limila had said the Demu were about the size of humans.

Besides gray robes and hoods; he saw shadowed faces and occasional glimpses of hands that didn't have enough fingers. The faces didn't show him a lot. Heavy hairless brow-ridges hid the sunken eyes. There was no nasal ridge, only close-set nostril-holes a little below the eyes. The lips were deeply serrated-like a zipper without the ban- die, he thought wryly. The whole effect was rather chi- tinous, like the body shell of a boiled crab and with the

14.

same ivory-tinged-with-red color. If there were ears, the hoods covered them. There was no sign of hair, fur or feathers. Hell, not even scales; he wondered if a snake would seem more alien to him, or less, than these crea- tures. "Demu?" he thought. "They look like a bunch of overgrown lobsters to mel"

One of them stepped forward and gestured to him.

Yes, the hand bad only three fingers, plus an oversized thumb set at an odd angle. No fingernails. The gestures carried no meaning to Barton; in return he thumbed his nose at the alien, who conferred with the two others be- fore turning again to repeat the movements.

Barton knew what he wanted, now. He paid no heed to what the other did, but repeated over and over a simple gesture of throwing back a hood and dropping a robe, followed by throwing bis arms wide in exhibition. The re- sult was another conference among part of his viewing public. Eventually one of the lobsters stepped dose to the window or screen and pushed the hood back, exposing its head.

It was about what Barton had expected. The head and neck looked crustacean; he was sure he was viewing an exoskeletal being. There were no external ears, but slightly flanged earholes not much displaced from the hu- man position. The mouth, when open briefly, showed no teeth and a short stumpy tongue. The skull was slightly broader than deep, Barton thought, but couldn't be sure since the creature did not turn to "full profile. The neck was thick and continued the chitinous look. Barton couldn't tell about the hands, when they reached up to replace the hood; perhaps the chitin was more flexible there.

Barton kept making doff-the-robe gestures but the up- front lobster ignored his movements and repeated a ges- ture of its own, with one hand in front of the middle of its robe. Suddenly Barton realized that the creature was pan- tomiming masturbation. He spat on the window, went to the far side of the room and curled up facing the wall. But'

as he did so, he felt unmistakable signs that his sexuality was working. Then, abruptly, it turned off again. He couldn't imagine bow the lobsters could control him in that aspect. Some sort of subsonics? Induced brain waves?

Hell, he didn't know. He tried to think in terms of physics, but the concepts seemed dim and jumbled in his mind.

However, he did give some thought to the properties of the exoskeleton in combat.

15.

For one thing, assuming the creatures were approxi- mately his own size and operating in the same gravity field, the outer shell had to be light in weight. It would have great tensile strength and good resistance to com- pressive loads along a limb segment But given a little leverage. Barton thought, it should bend and crumple like so much macaroni. He hoped with considerable gusto for a future chance to check his hypothesis; he was still think.

ing about it when he went to sleep.

Barton was next awakened by a metallic jangling sound, like a gong made of chain mail. The wall was a window again (or TV screen, he reminded himself), with one robed lobster facing him and gesturing. It might have been the same one or it might not; Barton couldn't tell for sure. But from the one-handed gestures and a stirring in Barton's groin, the creature obviously wanted Barton to demonstrate autoeroticism.

Well, the hell with that He'd done it once and they'd turned him off for it In return. Barton made throw-off- that-robe motions. If I have to be a solo whore, he thought, 111 get paid- for it In knowing a little more what it's all about The session ended with no sale when the window turned back into a gray wall. This time they left him turned on, but feeling stubborn, he ignored the pos- sibilities.

The dickering was repeated each waking period. Some- times there would be only one robed ehitinous alien, some- times several Occasionally there was one in the background that unlike the rest seemed nervous and twitchy, moving back and forth. Although he couldn't get a good look, it seemed to Barton that the twitchy one didn't have quite the same ehitinous sheen as the others, though the features (or lack thereof) were much the same.

Throughout this period of silent bargaining sessions, Barton took a perverse pleasure in refusing himself any sexual release except for the involuntary nocturnal type that occasionally caught up with him. He had thought to huddle up facing away from the window and do it himself, but suddenly realized that all four walls and maybe the floor and ceiling could be one-way windows. Certainly the lobsters had turned him off before he'd seen any wall as other than gray and opaque. The hell with them, Barton feit. At this point, he realized, he might cheerfully have cut off his nose to spite his face, given the proper tools for the job. He almost had to laugh.

16.

And yet Barton felt aggrieved when the silent argu- ments ended, when the wall stayed gray and no robed lobsters tried to gesture him into doing anything. During his first waking period without such an interview he was subjected to an ultrasonic "bath" of such vigor as to shake nearly every dead cell off him, leaving him not only stone-bald but also tenderly shallow of skin and with thin nails on toes and fingers, not to mention a filling or two that resonated painfully. Barton took this as a display of temper on the part of his personal number-one lobster and set in his mind the goal of someday repaying that entity in kind as best he might Thereafter the ultrasonics were mild, shaking loose only extraneous matter. Barton theorized that a different lobster had taken charge of his cage.

Going by the length of his regrowing beard. Barton fig- ured it to be nearly a year before he had any further inter- action with the outside of the room, other than exchanging food for wastes and an occasional light ultrasonic "bath."

Then one "day" he was sitting in a comer staring at the intersection of two walls and the floor, hallucinating.

He was hallucinating a great deal at that time; he had found the practice a considerable help to personal peace of mind.

At the moment he was sitting on soft grass at the top of a rounded hill under warm sunBght, facing a slim girl with long red hair. Between them was a icloth laden with a pic- nic lunch. The girl's nose began to develop a crooked out- line; absent-mindedly he thought it straight. They sipped from cold moisture-beaded cans of beer and toasted each other, smiling. A light breeze brought the scent of flowers.

He had to straighten her nose again; it wouldn't stay put.

He noticed movement far down the hill at the edge of a swamp. Insects, huge yellow-jacketed wasps, were buzzing around a cage. In the cage was a robed hooded lobster that flailed its arms at the wasps. He smiled and watched low-lying smog drift in across the swamp. Then-

He felt a slight "pop" in his ears, as in change of al- titude. At first he thought it was part of his hallucination, but on second thought it didn't fit, so gradually he took his attention from inside himself and put it outside, slowly rising and turning from the corner to look at the room overall.

A sort of dome had appeared in the middle of the floor.

17.

Yeh; air displacement popped my ears, he thought, and wondered why he bothered trying to explain anything any more.

He watched the dome awhile but it didn't do anything.

He was in the process of deciding to find out whether he could pick up his hallucination where he had left off or would have to start over, when the dome disappeared with another ear-pop and left the original flat floor with a woman lying on it. Not an Earth-type woman, but human- old and female.

Barton remembered Limila. He had seen her for a num- ber of hours, a long time ago-how long? He had largely forgotten her exact differences from women of Earth. But this woman, coming awake, beginning to sit up and shake her head and look around, had to be of the same race.

Yes, the extra fingers and toes. The high forehead, Eliza- bethan hairline straight across the top of the head above the ears. The breasts set so much lower and wider on the ribcage. Then she opened her mouth and snarled at him, and he saw the many small teeth. There had to be at least forty; Limila had about that many.

Barton prepared to make gestures of friendly welcome;

he felt friendly and welcoming. In truth he felt friendly and welcoming and lustful. Not excessively lustful, be- cause he had developed a method of self-service sex that involved curling up into a ball so that he figured those lobster bastards couldn't see what he was doing without x-rays. He used it sparingly, but often enough to keep some levels of his mind and his prostate gland in reason- able health. So he was not exactly intent on rape when he extended a hand to help his new roommate up off the floor.

She didn't see it that way. She took the hand, pulled on it and launched herself at him in attack. Barton wasnt ready for her; he had not been conducting any real ex- ercise program during his term in the room. In fact he was more flabby and slothful, he suddenly discovered, than he really cared to be.

The woman clamped more than enough of her many teeth onto the ridge of Barton's jawbone below his right ear. One knee missed smashing his crotch, slipping to the outside of his thigh as he twisted. They fell to the floor, he under her. He caught one wrist and felt safe for a moment until her other hand clawed down his forehead; he felt a finger, its nail, digging into his right eye. He panicked