Free Narabedla Ltd by Frederik Pohl Page B

little square, which was a star-shaped plot with a couple of flowering fruit trees. What caught my eye was one of the ugliest statues I had ever seen. The statue was life-size. It was a man, a very human and terrified-look-ing man, and a monster. The piece looked a little like the Laocoon group, except that there was only one man in the coils of the monster, and the monster was a lot worse-looking than any terrestrial snake.
    “A bronze general on a horse would’ve been a lot nicer,” I told my little guide. He peered up at me curiously, but didn’t respond.
    I turned away from the hideous statue and gazed around at the intersecting streets. The first street on the right appeared to be a sort of Greenwich Village mews, with gaslights and wrought-iron gates. The next looked like a little English village that the local historical authorities wouldn’t let anybody change, thatched-roof houses with diamondshaped glass panes in the windows.
    When I started toward the third the guide tugged encouragingly at my arm, and I followed him into it. The street looked like one of those Southern California hillside places with buildings pressed tight against each other, poised between brush fire and mud slide, except that these dwellings didn’t have any carports. (Why would they? I hadn’t seen any cars.) The fifth house on the right had a scarlet door with a lion’s-head knocker, framed by two lemon trees in fruit. The other thing it had was a little swinging sign that said:
    Malcolm’s Place 14
    Riverside Drive
    There wasn’t any river for it to be on the side of, I observed, and while I was staring at the door the guide turned and trotted away.
    I was on my own. One of the little black bedbugs paused in scurrying along the street to gaze at me. It didn’t linger. Evidently I wasn’t very interesting. I reached out for the doorknob.
    It disconcerted me to find that it was locked.
    Shipperton hadn’t said anything about a key. He certainly hadn’t given me one. 1 looked under the doormat hopefully ; no key there. There was no one in sight to ask for help, or even advice.
    Apart from being really worn out, I think I was by then so numbed by the shocks and weirdnesses of the previous twenty-four hours that the reasoning and competent part of my brain had just thrown up its hands and gone to sleep. (The rest of me urgently wanted to follow its example.) I couldn’t think of anything to do about the problem. I simply stood there for a minute or two, contemplating the door, until without warning it was opened by a tall, surfer-looking young woman who said, “If you want in, why don’t you knock instead of just rattling the dam doorknob?”
    She was naked. By “naked” I mean not a stitch.
    The numbness that affected my brain was powerful stuff. I said politely, making no adjustment to the fact that she didn’t have any clothes on at all, “I’m sorry. I thought this was supposed to be the house I was going to stay in, but I guess you live here.”
    “Hey, no, I’m just visiting,” she said, giving me an appeasing smile. “You want to talk to Malcolm Porchester. It’s his pad. He’s getting his chalks together, but he’ll be right out. ” She picked a kimono kind of garment off the back of a chair and wrapped herself in it, looking me over the whole time. Then she brushed past me, with lots of touching, giving me another smile on the way. She closed the door behind her, leaving me alone in what did not now appear to be my house at all.
    Considered as a home which was apparently not to be my own, it was rather attractive. There was a Chinese silk rug on the floor. There were comfortable leather armchairs on one side, and a table and chair set on the other. The remains of a breakfast for two were on the table; they had had fruit, biscuits, and something that looked like it had been an omelette and made me realize I was very hungry. More than hungry. I deeply regretted the sandwiches I had left uneaten. My tongue was