*Jumpin'~ Jack Flash*

  It was a hell of a lecture.  `Out of Your Mindscape,' Jack
had called it on the posters he'd put up all over town.  The
posters had a picture of a guy thinking a thought balloon of
himself thinking a thought ballon of himself thinking etcetera
and ad infinitum.  Jack Flash was wild about infinite regresses
that term.
  I never could see the use of them myself.  So my mind has
an image of my mind which has an image of my mind and so
on.  So what.  To me the fact that my mind is infinite is about
as significant as the fact that human bodies have ten toes.  Big
Mind doesn't have anything to do with the finite-infinite
distinction.  And in terms of my immediate life, what counts
in the Pure Land is having two minds instead of one mind
... and who cares if they're infinite.
  At the time I'm talking about, I was an English instructor at
the same upstate New York college where Jack taught. 
People don't take to me, and I always have trouble keeping
jobs on Earth.  They were going to terminate my contract even
though I'd just had a paper on _Invasion of the Body Snatchers_
accepted by the _Journal of Popular Culture._
  I had just gotten the bad news from my chairman at lunch
time, and I'd spent the afternoon going through my second to
last spore of geezel.  That's a pretty hefty dose for one sitting,
so I was kind of lit when I walked into Jack's lecture.
  Jack had drawn a big crowd, but they were pretty stiff.  I
was feeling reckless, and decided to loosen things up by
laughing and stamping my feet every time Jack said, `infin-
ity.'  Before long the place was rocking.
  Jack likes to work a crowd; and once I'd gotten them
started he kept bringing them higher... changing the
subject, making slips of the tongue, and mixing in side-raps,
one-liners, and level changes.  It was a pleasure to watch him.
  He was wearing light tan corduroys and a blue flannel
Bean's shirt.  He never stopped moving except when he
wanted to say something heavy.  For that he would lean
forward on the desk and manage to look every one of us in the
eye.  But mostly he'd be writing things on the board, wiping
chalk dust off on his corduroys, pushing his long brown hair
back from his forehead, or taking his ratty black sweater on
and off.
  I couldn't really tell you what the talk was about.  After all,
I _was_ pretty high, and I've never bothered to master a lot of
the standard human concepts.  Roughly speaking, it seemed
like Jack thought he could prove that every possible universe
exists.  Considering my background, you'd think I'd be in-
terested in what he might have to say on this topic... but
you'd be wrong.  I just wanted to lesnerize a couple of people
and get the hell back to the Pure Land.
  Without thinking about it too hard, I suspected that most of
what Jack said was wrong anyway... but it was fun
listening to him rave.  Quite a few people came up to him
afterwards, and I stuck around.
  After a while it was down to just one chick talking to Jack. 
I walked up to join their conversation.  `That was splendid,
Jack,' I said.
  `Thanks, Simon,' he answered.  He turned to the girl,
`What do you say the three of us go get a beer?'  He had
already put on his brown leather jacket.
  `All right,' the girl said, and we started out.  I'd never
seen her before.  She reminded me of a Mercedes-Benz...
classic features and a flawless exterior, gliding along on
smoothly meshing joints.
  `I'm Si Bork,' I said to her, hoping for a handshake.
  `Helen,' she said nodding, and then picked up the thread
of her conversation with Jack.  `I mean, how can you be sure
that those parallel universes you were talking about really
exist?  Can you leave your body?'
  Jack hated to answer no to a question like that, so he just
shrugged.  `How could I ever tell?'  And then he was back on
his favorite subject, his own ideas.  `I've got a whole new
thing I'm working on now.  Did it ever occur to you that black
holes and white holes really exist in your Mindscape?'
  Actually he wasn't far off, but I wasn't going to start
blabbing everything I knew.  Not yet anyway.  If I played it
right Jack would probably go along with me... maybe
... and if I could just find someone else...
  Helen was talking quietly to Jack as we went into the bar.  I
was sure she was already wondering how to get rid of this
obvious loser, Simon Bork, so that she and Jack could really
rap.  But I knew Jack wanted me to stick around, and I started
trying to make friends with Helen while Jack got us a pitcher.
  We exchanged a few listless facts about what we did for a
living... she was in medical school... and then a silence
fell.  I had to say something interesting.
  `You remind me of a Mercedes,' I blurted out finally,
unable to come up with anything more abstract.  She gave me
her full attention for a few seconds... sizing me up.
  I know what I look like... hell, I build this body from
scratch every morning, including the glasses.  Gold-rimmed
glasses, set deep into eyesockets with colorless eyes.  Pre-
maturely bald, with a few lank strands across the top. 
Twitchy face with a rabbity mouth.  The kind of guy who eats
Oreos for dessert after everyone of the crummy little meals
he cooks in his rented room.
  Helen shook her head, `You look like a Studebaker your-
self.'  But as she said it she patted my arm, and I could feel a
tingle... almost a shock... pass up the arm and into my
bodymass.
  She was so beautiful.  Teeth, mouth, swelling breasts, her
voice.  This was as close to a girl this beautiful as I had ever
been.  If only I could get closer...  I closed my eyes to skren
her better.  It was so relaxing to be near this woman.  She
seemed so kind... perhaps I could tell her...
  `I have this problem...'  I started to say, but a gassy
wet vibrato had crept into my voice.  I was starting to flow! 
Beneath my shirt the stiff orange buds were already forming
on the transparent hide covering my swirling green body-
mass.  Helen's eyes widened as my face sagged.
  I couldn't stop myself from shlubbering out, `I want to
lesnerize you.'  Why did I have to go and tip my hand like
that, a part of my mind wondered bleakly.  Helen had jumped
to her feet, and when I slid to the floor I could see her shiny
black underwear.  It took the full force of my will to keep from
beginning to rave in the mother tongue.
  Not that she could have any doubts about what I was.  In
seconds she would begin to scream, and things would get
worse until finally I would have to chirp again.  I couldn't
figure out how I could have let myself go like this.  For two
years I had held human shape except when I got into my
werble... disguised as the bed in my cheap, but well-
locked, boarding-house room.
  But now sitting here with this woman my control had
suddenly snapped... and I was flopping around under the
table like a sun-ripened manta ray.  This would make the third
mission in a row I had blown.  Any second she would scream.
  I tensed myself and prepared to chirp.  When the humans
discover a `Venusian,' we always take one of them with us. 
When forced out of my body, I convert its mass into a single
pulse of electromagnetic energy... a chirp... which
eventually reaches the Pure Land and is reconstituted there. 
They've got a radio-telescope hooked up to a vat of undiffer-
entiated tissue.
  Just so that the few humans in the know will think twice
before attacking a `Venusian,' we always make it a point to
beam the chirp through someone's head on the way out.  The
energy density hard-boils their brain like an egg in a micro-
wave oven.
  But still no one came... and there was no scream. 
Something brushed against me.  Something soft... it was
the girl!  Helen had sat down, taken off her shoes, and was
gently kneading my bodymass.  I grew bristles which slipped
between her toes, and she clenched and gently tugged at
them.  Unmistakable pheromones were drifting down.  I
couldn't believe my good fortune.  Helen was a V-sexual.
  There was still time to save this mission.  I forced myself
back into human form and crawled out from under the table. 
Just as I stood up, Jack Flash came back with a pitcher of
beer.  `Was just talking to a friend,' he explained, jerking
his head towards a group of backs at the bar.  `And what have
you been doing down there, Simon... checking Helen's
oil?'
  I got back in my chair.  `Just dropped some change,' I
said with a synthetic chuckle.  My feet hadn't gelled yet, and
Helen continued her gentle treading and plucking.
  `Si spent the whole time you were gone under the table,
Jack,' Helen said, withdrawing her feet.  `He was really
behaving quite strangely.'  Her eyes bored into me with the
twisted hunger of a V-sexual.  I loved every minute of it.  If I
had to, I'd chirp and the hell with it.  If not...
  Jack looked at me with respect.  `Didn't know you had it in
you, Si.'  We all drank quietly for a minute.  Finally Helen
broke the relaxed silence.
  `I don't see how it would make sense, really, to talk about
moving from one parallel world to another, Jack.  If you were
in both of them already, then what would there be to move?'
  Jack ran his hand back along the central part in his straight
hair.  `I _am_ in many of the different parallel Earths... and
in each of them I think that's the only one I'm really in.  But
there should be some sort of higher consciousness which
could...'  His voice trailed off.  I liked that about Jack,
that he couldn't figure this one out.  I knew the answer
to Helen's question.  After all, I come from a parallel uni-
verse.
  A `Venusian's' mission on Earth is to reproduce by
lesnerization, and then return to the Pure Land.  Once enough
of us have done this, there will be a web of consciousness
connecting our universe and yours, and we will be able to
draw the two closer together so that even the weak and
diseased members of our race can move freely between
`Venus' and the Earth.  Several members of my swarm have
completed successful missions, and they have described to
me in detail what it is like to have the sort of multiple
trans-universal consciousness which Jack and Helen were
puzzling over.
  Suddenly I spoke up, `Jack, I know a lot about parallel
universes.'  Helen gave me a cautioning glance, but I con-
tinued, `I have certain connections...'
  Jack was laughing.  `Connections with who, Si?  Galaxy
X?'
  `Why don't we go back to my room and talk it over.  The
three of us.'
  Jack still didn't get it.  He thought I wanted to turn them on
to some dope.  So of course he came along.  And Helen...
she and I dropped a little behind and she slipped her hand into
my shirt.  No human had ever touched me there before.
  If a `Venusian' is exposed he chirps, and no evidence of
his existence is left... save for the mysterious death of one
of the people who discovered him.  There are thousands of us
on Earth now, but few of us are ever detected... and the
establishment chooses to ignore whatever fragmentary
proofs of our existence arise.  But there are rumours and,
more important, there is subconscious knowledge.  V-sexuals
are people who have fallen in love with this subconsciously- 
sensed other presence in the world.  V-sexuality is, for obvi-
ous reasons, primarily a latent perversion... but as a few
lucky `Venusians' know, a V-sexual can move to intense
overtness in the space of a few minutes.  I could hardly wait. 
And if we could get Jack to join in...
  It takes a minute to get my door open.  I have three
locks.  Jack began kidding me about it.  `What have you got
in there Simon, a suitcase of gold?'
  `You'll see,' I said as the door finally opened.  Jack went
in first, and Helen came in after me, her hand resting
lightly on my back.  I wanted to triple lock the door behind
me, but I feared this might alarm them.
  The door opens into the kichenette end of the room.  You
can tell it's the kitchenette because that part of the room has a
linoleum floor.  Sometimes when I am too tired to cook, I just
break some eggs on the floor, pour oil and ketchup on top of
them, and then flow around on the linoleum until I have
ingested everything.
  But now I had company.  `Beer?' I inquired.  They were
sitting on my werble at the other end of the room.  The only
other place to sit was the one chair by the kitchenette table.
  `Sure,' Jack said, `But we really can't stay too long,
Simon.'  He thought he was going somewhere alone with
Helen.  Couldn't he tell that now she only had eyes for me?
  I got out three beers and glided over to the werble... my
body movements suggestively fluid.  Helen couldn't take her
eyes off me.  `Tell Jack, Helen,' I said.  `Tell him, and then
I'll let you undress me.'
  With a visible effort Jack maintained his cool.  `What
makes you think Helen would want to undress you, Si?  And
what's she supposed to tell me?'
  `Si is a `Venusian,'' Helen said huskily.  `I never knew
if they were real or not.  I've always...  I've always...' 
Her face was working, and she couldn't get the rest of the
sentence out.  She slid a hand back under my shirt and
fingered a stiff orange bud.  Her hand was damp.
  Jack jumped up off the bed and began moving towards the
door.  `You go out that door, and I'll fry your brain,' I said
evenly.  Helen was moaning now, running her moist, trem-
bling fingers over my face.
  `Flow now while I'm touching you, darling,' she
breathed.
  I let my head go slack, and it began sinking down through
the collar of my shirt.  Helen was fumbling frantically at our
clothes.  I couldn't see Jack anymore since I'd let my head
merge into my bodymass, but I could still skren him.  He had
stopped near the door and was hesitating... his emotions a
mixture of fear and curiosity.  Finally curiosity won out.
  `I can't believe this,' Jack said desperately.  He ripped the
top off another beer from the icebox.  He'd left his first one by
the werble, and he was scared to get close to me.  He sat down
on the kitchen chair.  `I'll watch,' he said shakily, `But I'm
not going to let you lesnerize us.'
  That's what _he_ thought.  I didn't bother answering... it
would have been too much trouble to form a mouth.  It didn't
seem like Helen was ever going to get my clothes off, so I
reduced viscosity and flowed out of my left pant leg and onto
the floor.  She had gotten her shirt and bra off, and she lay
down to rub her stiff-nippled breasts across me.  It felt nice.
  For the next half hour or so she sat there kneading and
molding me... like a three-year-old girl at the nursery
school play-dough table.  Only they don't moan as much in
nursery school.  Somewhere along the line she got her pants
off too, and I grew a few suitable protuberances.  I liked that
Jack was watching us.  He might be smarter than me, he might
be human... but I had the girl.
  I guess Helen and I made something like the ultimate
donkey show.  When she finally got off me and lay panting on
my werble, Jack was so hot that he pulled down his pants and
jumped her.  I flowed closer and laid a gentle pseudopod
across the back of his thighs.
  He twisted away, screaming, `No, Simon, not yet, don't
lesnerize us!  Please not yet!  I've just got to... got
to...'  He was thrusting in and out frantically, and in a
few seconds it was all over.
  I should have taken them then and there... but lesneriza-
tion goes a lot smoother if the human hosts are completely
willing.  It's a simple operation.  You just run a pseudopod up
the person's nose, suck out their brain, and fill their head up
with part of your bodymass.  Over the next year, your off-
spring slowly absorbs all of the host body, learning how to
model it in the process.  It's the way we've always reproduced
on Earth.  When we fission like this, we have to split off two
buds... baby `Venusians'... so we always have to
lesnerize two people at once.
  If I could only get those buds into Jack and Helen's skulls
I'd be free to chirp back to the Pure Land.  My mind drifted
pleasantly as I thought of rejoining my swarm... a re-
spected and successful colonizer... possessor of trans- 
universal consciousness.
  I formed Si Bork's body again and lay down next to Jack
and Helen.  `How would you like to come forever?' I said
softly.  `That's what lesnerization feels like... an orgasm
that never stops.  All I have to do is reach up through your
nose and gently touch your brain,' no point telling them
about what I'd do next, `and, _wham,_ you're as enlightened
as Gautama Buddha.'  Sex and enlightenment.  It makes a
nice package.
  But they both looked a little doubtful.  `What do you mean
when you say `wham,' hon?' Helen asked.
  And then Jack chimed in, `Don't you think it might be
risky to fool around with a person's brain like that?'  He
covered his nose defensively.
  `Look,'  I said, readjusting my features to look fatherly,
`No `Venusian' would ever dream of doing anything which
might harm a human.  We want to be your allies... your
partners in a new trans-universal culture.  Now I know you've
heard the rumors about lesnerization.  Take it from me,
they're all lies put out by chauvinist reactionaries.  Lesneriza-
tion is just a way of getting to know each other better.  Jack,'
I patted his shoulder, `Once you've lesnerized with me,
you'll have more new stuff in that skull of yours than you can
possibly imagine.  Lesnerization is simply a way for me to
take things that I know and put them into your head.'
  They shifted uneasily and looked at each other.  Finally
Jack spoke.  `What do you say we get dressed and go talk
about it over a pizza.  I can dig where you're coming from. 
Brain-to-brain communication.  But I've got to have some
food first.'  He pulled his pants back up.
  `That's a good idea,' Helen said, fastening her bra.  `I'm
famished.'  She began buttoning up her blouse.  `Where is
`Venus' anyway, Si?  And why are you all so secretive?'
  I couldn't believe how distant she suddenly seemed.  First
she's all over me, and then I ask one little favor, and she starts
asking questions like a hick at the freak show.  I felt like just
chirping the hell out of there and blowing one of them away. 
But if I went back to the Pure Land without lesnerizing
anyone they'd just stuff me in a ship back to Earth... or
worse.  So I politely answered her questions as I dressed.
  `Actually, Helen, what you call `Venus' is in one of those
parallel universes Jack likes to talk about.  In a way it's in the
same place where _your_ Venus is, only `Venus' is a different
superspace location.  We don't call it `Venus' though.  We
call it the Pure Land.'
  `But how can the Pure Land be where Venus is without
really being there?' Helen responded.  Jack interrupted impa-
tiently before I could answer.
  `It has a different fourth-dimensional location is all, He-
len.  You can read about it in that _Geometry and Reality_ book I
wrote.'  We were all dressed and on our way out of the
apartment.  Jack turned to me.  `What I want to hear is your
answer to her other question, Simon.  If you `Venusians' are
just here to make friends, then why do you sneak around so
that only the nuts believe in you?'
  I cleared my throat nervously.  `We're scared, Jack. 
Scared of small-minded xenophobic bigots.  We're really a
very weak race.  If we tried to land a ship openly, the pigs
would blast us out of the sky.  We _want_ to come out in the
open, but it's not time yet.  We need to know more about
human psychology first, and we need time to spread the right
kind of rumors about us.'  I smiled self-deprecatingly.
  But Jack seemed to be becoming more hostile.  He was
probably just jealous that I'd gotten more off Helen than him. 
`You say you're weak, Simon, but didn't you threaten to fry
my brain just a little while ago?'
  I generated a chuckle.  `Oh that.  Well, I _could_ fry your
brain... hard-boil it really... but only by converting my
body into pure energy.  That's how we get back to the Pure
Land.  We call it chirping.'  I explained the process to them,
meanwhile trying to put my arm around Helen, but she
shrugged it off.
  Although it was supper time, the restaurant was almost
empty.  I'd never been there before, but Jack seemed to be a
regular.  He stopped to chat with the guy making pizzas in the
front window.
  I steered Helen to a table in the rear...  I was hoping to
lesnerize them after they'd had a good meal and a few beers.  I
was prepared to act forcibly if necessary... at the worst I'd
lose a pseudopod.  I smiled moistly at Helen.  `Did you have a
nice time in my room?'
  `You know I did,'  she said haltingly, `But I'm scared of
what I could become if I keep seeing you.  And I don't know
how I'll be able to stay away.'  She began crying, and
reached out to touch my face.  `One part of me already wants
to do it all again... especially with a man watching and
thinking I'm the lowest kind of slut...'  She hesitated,
then resumed in a strained voice, `But if I kept doing that,
what would happen to the rest of me... to _Helen?'_  She
covered her face with her hands.
  Someone had turned the jukebox on, and over a back-
ground of moans and abrupt guitar chords a voice crooned,
`Well it's _all_ right now, in fact it's a gas...'  Helen was
slipping away from me... but where was Jack?  Surely he
would listen to reason.  I skrenned him walking across the
room.  I started to turn, but then he was already upon me, and
he sank an eight-inch knife into my neck.
  That did it.  No more Mr.  Nice Guy.  Jack Hash was going
to get it.  I relaxed my hold on the knotted spacetime which
made up my body and put everything I had into my chirp
... carefully beaming it at the spot behind me where he
crouched.
  But I should have looked first.  The bastard had an
aluminum pizza pan in front of his face... and I bounced
off it and out through the ceiling.

  It doesn't take long to get to the Pure Land from Earth.  You
get a faster-than-light phase-shift going in your pulse, lock it
real, tear loose, and jump spacetime sheets.  Once you're
back in the home space, it's just a matter of a little simple
tube-surfing.  The only hard thing about it is that the whole
trip seems to happen at once... so you have to know just
what you're going to do before you start.
  I didn't get much of a welcome at home when they found
out I'd screwed up another mission.  They said I could either
go back to Earth or spend fifteen years in the tissue fields.  I
was frantic to revenge myself on Jack, and even more frantic
to get back between Helen's legs, so I would have been
perfectly willing to go back to Earth... except that the trip
back takes so long.
  You can't chirp from the Pure Land to Earth, since there's
no one waiting on Earth to reconstitute you.  You have to go
the long way... around the Horn, as it were.  That is, you
have to take a spaceship out the collapsed star Gouda X-1, fly
in, bounce off the ring singularity into a new universe, and fly
back to Earth.  It's dangerous and the whole trip takes about
ten years proper-time.  So the tissue fields didn't necessarily
sound that bad.
  I asked for a week to think it over.  They gave me two days,
and I went out into the plaza promising to be back.
  It felt good to be flowing across the intricately grooved
stones again with the swarm.  We aren't very big on indi-
vidual personalities, and before long I'd almost forgotten I'd
ever left.  A warm hydro-carbon rain drizzled down, and I
circled around the plaza in the figures of the swarm's never- 
ending dance.
  The pimpled hides of my fellow `Venusians' felt familiar
and comforting... but still I couldn't put the feel of
Helen's breasts and thighs out of my mind... she was so
smooth... so slippery.
  I realized I was horny, and found a willing fellow-citizen
... whom you might as well think of as a girl.  We flowed
away from the plaza together, and our individual conscious-
ness returned.  She told me her name was Pasmit.
  As we passed through a grove of geezel fungi I paused to
pry loose one of the immature spores.  I threw it to Pasmit; she
digested a little of it and threw it back to me.
  We went on for several versts this way, finally stopping
when the singing in our tissues could no longer be ignored. 
We pressed our vents together, guided by the sensitive bris-
tles surrounding them; and then we let our bodymasses
mingle for a timeless interval.  The hydro-carbon drizzle
increased, and the geezel spore rolled stealthily back towards
its mother fungus.  Finally we stopped pulsing and slid apart. 
The gamma-radiation is much stronger out in the country,
and everything was suffused with a kindly glow.
  I must have been mad to want to go back to Earth, I
thought.  Pasmit and I could build a burrow near the tissue
fields.  I'd get strong and green working in the fields, and
every night we'd go dance with the swarm.  It had been good
enough for my ancestors; why shouldn't it be good enough
for me?  There was just one thing...
  `Pasmit,' I vibrated, `Could you do something for me
... something special?'
  She snuggled closer to me.  `What is it, Sibork?'
  `Could you form your bodymass like this, and this, and
this...'  I gestured rapidly, `And then could you rub on
me?  I'll show you how I mean.'
  She burbled, and started to do it.  I sighed and went limp,
images of Helen filling my mind.  Pasmit leaned over me and
began to knead my bodymass with her hands.  Quaveringly I
pulsed my next request, and extruded the appropriate pro-
tuberances.  She started to do it...
  But abruptly she stopped, and her pulsations became
harsh.  `But this is _human_ shape!  You want me to be like a
_human._  Sibork!'  She recoiled and rapidly reassumed
`Venusian' shape.  `You're a filthy H-sexual!' she
shrilled, `Don't come _near_ me!'
  Pasmit delivered her parting shot as she began flowing
back towards the swarm.  `You're not fit to live in the Pure
Land anymore, Sibork.  You're tainted.  You'll have to go
back to Earth tomorrow.'
  I knew she was right.  I couldn't even blame her for feeling
the way she did...  I used to feel the same way about
H-sexuals.

  I spent an uneasy night sleeping under a rock, and the next
morning I shipped out for Earth again.  Despite what I'd told
Jack, we `Venusians' are virtually indestructible.  So our
spaceships do not need any very complex life-support sys-
tems.
  My ship consisted, basically, of one hundred kilos of
geezel and the shell of a nauton, a sort of gigantic fungus- 
snail common in the Pure Land.  I packed tbe geezel into the
front of the cone-shaped spiral shell, crawled in after, and
sealed the back off with a specially thickened section of my
hide.
  During the trip I would feed off the geezel, and propel the
ship by converting some of the food energy into a stream of
ions, to be blown out of an aperture in my hide door.  In
effect, I fart myself through space.  Given the steady force
and the small mass of my ship, I can reach relativistic ve-
locities rather easily... and once one travels close enough
to the speed of light, time dilation sets in.  As far as my
body's aging processes are concerned, the one hundred
light-year trip to Gouda X-1 takes only five years..
  Even five years might seem like a long time to be wadded
up inside a nauton shell, but I have the ability to let my
individual consciousness go totally dormant... turning the
control of my body over to what we call `Big Mind' in the
Pure Land.
  I spent five years in a trance, pooting along towards Gouda
X-1.  When I was not too far from it, the intense gravitational
radiation jolted me back into existence.
  For a few moments I was totally disoriented.  I had no idea
where I was... for a second I didn't even know if I was
`Venusian' or human.  Ahead of me I skrenned a hot bluish
star with a huge tufty horn of flame growing out of it.  The
name Beetroot 322 popped into my mind.  The horn fed an
immense spiral of brightly glowing gas which was twisted
around a region of what seemed to be absolute blackness.
  I was falling... at almost the speed of light... down
towards the collapsed star which nestled in the center of the
spiral of gas it had pulled out of its companion star.  The
collapsed star was Gouda X-1, and at its very center was the
gate which led out of the Pure Land universe.
  As I drew closer I could see the ring singularity that lay at
the heart of this whirlpool of space and time.  If a star such as
Gouda X-1 is rotating fast enough when it collapses to form a
black hole, then the singularity at its center takes the shape of
a ring.  Space is infinitely curved at each point of this ring,
and to venture too close to it is to be torn apart atom from
atom.  But if you manage to go _through_ the ring, something
quite different happens.
  Think of the many parallel universes as being a stack of so
many pieces of cloth.  Now imagine punching a circular hole
through this stack of fabrics, and then sewing all of these
spacetime sheets together along the edges of the circles you
punched out.  That's what a ring singularity is like...
almost.
  But I left out what's _inside_ the ring.  Well, when you go
through the ring you enter an anti-matter, anti-gravity anti- 
universe... which repels you, spits you back like a
squeezed watermelon seed.
  When you come back through the ring, you go onto one of
those many sheets of spacetime which are sewed together
along the ring singularity... and if you're lucky you come
out where and when you wanted to.
  Actually it's not really luck that determines in which
universe and at what time in that universe you come out.  It's
more like you come out where you _expect_ to come out.
  Causality takes a beating when minds and singularities
interact.  But Big Mind doesn't need causality anyway...
every instant of every universe springs into existence to-
gether, and synchronicity is the natural order of things.
  Anyway, there I was in a flexible nauton shell being
sucked down into the heart of Gouda X-1 at something like
the speed of light.  And Jack Flash thought he'd been far out.  I
had to laugh thinking of that jerk sneaking up behind me like
that with his knife and pizza pan.  When I got to Earth this
time things were going to be different.  Because I was plan-
ning to get back there before I'd left.
  The singularity was dead ahead now, a bright ring a few
kilometers in diameter.  Bright isn't the word for it, really. 
You know how a mirror looks when it bounces sun into your
eyes?
  All of Gouda X-1's mass had gone into that circle of light
and, friend, it was a _perfect_ circle.  It was like looking at the
ultimate platonic circle in Big Mind, the circle from which all
other circles derive their feeble and reflected reality.
  As you can imagine, the gravitational force coming off that
ring was incredible.  I was thin as a needle and five kilometers
long when I hit the center of the ring, and I whisked through
without even slowing down.  But as soon as I'd gone through I
was in an anti-universe, and every particle of that universe
wanted me out of there.  This was the most dangerous part of
the trip.  If some piece of anti-matter happened by and
brushed into me I'd be annihilated.  If I didn't steer just right
the anti-universe would throw me against the ring and I'd be
annihilated.  If I panicked and chirped, my energy pulse
would be trapped in an endless pendulum orbit around the
ring and, for all practical purposes, I'd be annihilated.
  There was also the matter of bouncing out into the right
space and time.  I could already see myself looking in through
the pizza-parlor window at Jack Flash getting a knife and a
pan from his friend behind the counter.  Jack looked scared
and I felt a little sorry for him.  Maybe I shouldn't suck his
brain out after all... but how else could I establish a
trans-universal consciousness?
  My attention snapped back to the situation at hand.  The
repulsive force from the anti-universe counterpart of Gouda
X-1's mate, Beetroot 322, had decelerated me from the speed
of light to rest, and had already started forcing me back
towards the ring singularity.  This was the roughest part of the
ride.  One second you're going 99.999 percent the speed of
light one way, and the next instant you're going 99.999
percent the speed of light the other way.  There weren't many
`Venusians' who could handle the ring singularity bounce- 
trip.  I'd been trained for it from budhood, and even so it must
have taken five years off my life every time I did it.
  As I zoomed back through the ring, I struggled to keep
from blacking out, and I kept my mind fixed on frightened
Jack Flash in the pizza-parlor window... and on Helen,
across the table from me with her face in her hands...  I'm
sorry Jack...  I love you Helen...
  I burst out of the ergosphere of Gouda X-1 traveling so fast
that it would have taken a photon a year to gain five meters on
me.  I had some slowing down to do before I got to Earth...
if there was an Earth in this space.
  The ship was traveling rear-end first now, and I began
absorbing geezel and shooting out the ion-stream again.  Five
years of this and I would have decelerated back to rest.  I had
started out with revenge and lust in my mind, but for some
reason I was now suffused with thoughts of peace and love. 
Good old Jack.  Dear sweet Helen.  Even my department
chairman seemed almost `Venusian.'  I drifted into a trance
and let Big Mind take over.

  I was so anxious about missing Earth that I woke up a few
months early.  Those were peaceful months, hurtling towards
the Sun with a speed that I steadily diminished.  There was
plenty of time to think about what I would do on Earth.
  I began to wonder about the wisdom of reproducing by
lesnerization.  The whole idea of reproducing ourselves on
Earth by planting the buds inside people's skulls went back to
Brow, the first `Venusian' who ever survived the ring
singularity bounce-trip to any of the inhabited versions of
Earth.  Disguised as a Dutch mathematician, Brow had ad-
vanced the destructive mathematical philosophy called in-
tuitionism, and he had lesnerized dozens, perhaps hundreds,
of people before chirping back to the Pure Land.  Many of the
`Venusians' now on Earth are Brow's descendants, al-
though every year a few new colonizers, such as myself,
make the ring singularity bounce-trip to one of the Earths.
  But what had made Brow feel that the only safe place to
grow a bud was inside a human skull?  At home we grow buds
in nautons, in geezel plants... sometimes even in the
ground.  What gave Brow, and the rest of us, our conviction
that on Earth we Should only reproduce by the murder of
innocent human beings?
  The power of suggestion, that's what.  A solitary `Venu-
sian' on an alien Earth behaves as humans consciously or
subconsciously _expect_ a blob from outer space to behave.  As
I explain in my article on _Invasion of the Body Snatchers,_
blobs from outer space symbolize the unchecked id.  With
their natural fear that their lower, more bestial desires will
take over their minds, what could be more natural than for
people to expect the `Venusians', to reproduce by lesneriza-
tion.  Nobody had told Jack what lesnerization was... in
his guts he _knew_ I wanted to eat his brain... so he'd come
after me with the knife.
  Why couldn't I break the cycle?  Why couldn't humans and
`Venusians' _really_ be trans-universal allies?  But a less
idealistic part of me was still wondering how to safely repro-
duce myself on Earth if not by lesnerizing.  Would not the
humans hunt out and destroy a bud which was hidden any-
where other than inside a human skull?  And if I failed to
achieve trans-universal consciousness this time I could never
return to the Pure Land.
  The topography of the Earth below me looked familiar, so
I knew I'd bounced into a universe pretty much like the one
where Jack had knifed me.  I splashed down in one of the
Finger Lakes, formed Si Bork's body again, and swam
ashore.  I dido't feel any special need to rush or to stall.  If I
was going to show up at the right time, I would.
  It was around dusk when I reached the highway and stuck
out my thumb.  I'd grown my own clothes this time, and I
looked like any other hitchhiker.  After awhile a pickup truck
stopped.  The driver was an old farmer, bound for Livingston,
my destination.
  I told him I was an English prof at the college there, and we
talked a little about monster movies.  He had a strange way of
putting his fingers under his nose and sniffing them when he
talked about creatures from outer space.  Was he trying to tell
me something?  When I looked closely, I seemed to see
bumps under his faded cotton shirt...
  `Are you `Venusian?'' I asked him, and then added
something that a human would have taken for a cough, but
which was really a Pure Land proverb meaning something
like, `Once you're born, the worst has already happened.'
  Without answering he pulled the pickup off the road and
turned to look directly at me.  His features were flowing with
joy and we embraced.
  We sat there maybe a half hour, pulsing each other's life
stories back and forth.  His name was Roon, and he'd come
from a bud some `Venusian' had lesnerized into the body of
the farmer Roon still impersonated.  The farmer and his wife
had been UFO enthusiasts willing to go along with anything
an alien suggested, and Roon's sib-bud had been planted in
the farmer's wife.  Roon and his sib-bud had agreed that
lesnerizing was wrong, and the sib-bud had gone down to the
Pentagon, trying to tell them the truth.  Roon had never heard
from his sib-bud again, and figured he'd either chirped out or
joined the CIA.
  Roon raised pigs now, and when I asked him why we
couldn't just grow our buds in his pigs'~ bodies, he was
shocked.  `Pigs are lower forms of life, Sibork!'
  `So are humans,' I responded.  `And for that matter, so
are we.'  I told him my theory about why Brow had acted as
he did.  `It doesn't have to be this way,' I concluded.  `If we
stop murdering people, we'll be able to come out in the open
and really befriend them.  I've found it's almost impossible to
lie to a human.'  Which reminded me... if I was going to
stop Jack from knifing me, I'd better get a move on.
  Roon dropped me off near the pizza-parlor, and we agreed
to meet again.  Now to explain what happened next, I'm
going to have to introduce a little notation.  Roon dropped me
off near the pizza-parlor, right?  Now if I had walked down,
looked in the window, and seen a `Venusian' talking with
Helen at the rear table... who would that be?  Me.  But to
keep things from getting too confusing, let's call that `Venu-
sian' _me"*",_ reserving the word _me_ for the `Venusian' look-
ing in the window.
  It was just about night now, maybe seven o'clock, and I
walked down the street towards the pizza-parlor.  Everything
was clicking.  I _knew_ that Jack was going to be standing in that
window.
  And he was.  He'd just turned the jukebox on, and was
picking up a pizza pan and an eight-inch knife from the
counter.  At the back of the room I could see my"*" back and
Helen, her face in her hands.
  I opened the door and walked in.  Jack had paused to
exchange a few last words with the counterman and he didn't
see me.  I walked over to the jukebox and kicked it so hard that
the needle slid across the record and the machine turned itself
off.  He whirled around, knife at the ready.
  `Hi, Jack.'
  I was ready for him, and there was no way in the world he
could get that knife into me.  I could see that realization sink
into him, and he mumbled something about getting the knife
to cut up the pizza.  He hadn't noticed yet that I"*" was still
sitting at the table.
  `Jack,' I began, `I've been through a lot of changes since
the last time I saw you...'
  He laughed nervously, `It's been all of two minutes,
Simon, What kind of...' and then he broke off.  I"*" was
walking across the room towards him.
  I"*" was glad to see that I had made it in time... but I"*" had
always known that I would.  I wondered how I"*" had known
that, since I didn't recall having expected anyone to come
save me the last time around.  I"*" pointed out that that had been
a different universe... and I realized that since things were
happening differently here from the last time, it must be that I
really had bounced out of Gouda X-1 into a universe just a
shade different from the one where I had gotten knifed.
  While Jack was staring at me"*", I deftly took the knife away
from him.  I"*" thought that was nicely done, and we exchanged
a smile.
  `We've got double consciousness,' I and I"*" said to Jack
happily.  He looked confused.
  `Where did _you_ come from?' he said to me, `Are you
Si's twin brother, or what?'
  `Actually I'm the same person as Sibork"*",' I answered,
`Only I come from a different universe.'  And then I began
laughing, `I've finally got it.'
  `Got what?' Jack said, expressionlessly looking from me
to me"*".
  `Trans-universal consciousness,' I"*" answered, and then
added, `So I"*" don't need to lesnerize anyone anymore.  You
were right to be scared of it, and I'm"*" sorry for wanting to do
it to you.'  Finally Jack broke into a smile.
  `Tell me more,' he said.  So I"*" did.
  Meanwhile I walked over to Helen.  She had stopped cry-
ing and was sitting there watching the conversation in
amazement.  `Helen,' I said, `I love you, I can make you
happy.  Just because you love a `Venusian,' doesn't make you
bad.  You have broader horizons than other people is all.'
  She smiled up at me, `And now there's two of you?'.
  I smiled back.  The Pure Land could wait.