Crompton Divided (13 page)

‘I am well aware of that,’ Crompton said. ‘But I happen to believe that the act of intercourse with a beloved person goes beyond the merely physical, that it is indeed a holy thing, the epitome of caring, and therefore must be – ah –
performed
only in circumstances of beauty and tranquility.’

‘Alistair,’ Loomis asked, ‘are you by any chance a virgin?’

‘What has that to do with it?’ Crompton demanded furiously.

‘I thought so,’ Loomis said sadly. ‘I believe we should have a little talk about sex. It is indeed a splendid and spiritual thing, just as you have always pictured it. But you left something out.’

‘What?’

‘The fact that sex is also fun. You have heard about fun, haven’t you?’

‘I’ve always wanted to have some,’ Crompton said wistfully.

‘Then don’t give it another thought. Just let me take over for a while. Fun happens to be my best area. Did you check out that little blonde at lunch? Or maybe you’d prefer to shop around a little more first?’

‘What you are intimating is completely out of the question!’ Crompton cried.

‘But Al! My health and mental stability require –’

‘My decision is final,’ Crompton said. ‘It
is
my body, you know. I will try to make this up to you in other ways. But the subject of sex is closed.’

Loomis made no further comment, and Crompton thought that the delicate subject had been disposed of. Several hours later he was disabused of this notion when they sat down to dinner in the ship’s main restaurant.

‘Don’t eat the shrimp,’ Loomis said as the appetizer was served.

‘Why not? You like shrimp. We both like shrimp.’

‘It doesn’t matter. We’re not eating it.’

‘Why not?’

‘Because it’s
trayf.
’

‘Beg pardon?’

‘
Trayf
is a Jewish word that means that it is unclean food and is unfit for a Jewish person.’

‘But Edgar, you aren’t Jewish.’

‘I have just converted.’

‘You’ve what? What are you talking about?’

‘I have just become a Jew. An Orthodox Jew, as a matter of fact – none of your slipshod modern shortcuts for me, thank you very much.’

‘Edgar, this is ridiculous! It’s impossible! You can’t simply become a Jew just like that!’

‘Why not? You think I’m incapable of having a religious revelation?’

‘I’ve never heard anything so insane in my life,’ Crompton said. ‘Damn you! Why are you doing this?’

‘To give you trouble, or
tsuris
, as we say in the ancestral language of my new religion. Frankly, I don’t think we can eat any of this food.’

‘Why not?’

‘It’s obviously not kosher. I think we’d better speak to the steward. They must make some arrangement for people of my persuasion.’

Crompton said, ‘We are not going to speak to anyone about this insane and blasphemous notion of yours! The whole thing is simply too absurd.’

‘Sure it’s absurd, for a
goy
like you. Listen, do you think they’ve got a
shul
aboard this bucket? If I’m going to keep the dietary laws, I might as well pray, too. It couldn’t hurt, right? And I want to ask the captain have we got any other
landslent
aboard, maybe we could get up a
minyan
, or at least a game of bridge.’

‘We’re not going to speak to anyone! I refuse to go along with this!’

‘You’re prohibiting me from practicing my faith?’

‘I am not going to let you make a fool of me and a mockery of religion!’

‘So suddenly you’re the big judge of religious feeling?’ Loomis said. ‘I know what you are, Crompton – you’re nothing but a redneck Cossack!
Oy
, it would be just my
mazel
go get stuck in the head of a bigot! Would it offend your sensibilities if I got a Bible from the ship’s library and read it quietly to myself? I’ll do it in the cabin so it won’t embarrass you.’

‘Loomis, please! You’re making me very nervous. People are starting to look at me.’ (Loomis and Crompton’s conversation was silent, of course, but something of its dialogic nature was inevitably displayed by the facial muscles, especially those around the eyes. When the talk really got going, Crompton looked like a
ticquer
on speed.) ‘Couldn’t we eat our dinner quietly and then discuss – ah – the entire situation?’

‘Do you mean the
entire
situation?’

‘That’s what I said.’

‘Crompton, are you trying to bribe me away from my newly found religion?’

‘Certainly not. I just think we can work out some sort of adult solution to … everything. Come on, have some soup.’

‘Well, what kind is it?’

‘Chicken barley. Just have a taste.’

‘Maybe a
bissel.
But if you think that means –’

‘Later, we’ll talk,’ Crompton said. ‘Now eat your soup,
please.
’

The dinner proceeded quietly, though Loomis did insist upon humming ‘My Yiddische Mamma’ between courses. After they had finished, without discussion, Crompton lapsed into a passive, dreamy, blurry state in which he absent-mindedly relinquished control of the body.

With deft casualness Loomis took over and made conversation with the giggly red-haired woman at the next table. She turned out to be the wife of a lockwheel configurator from Druille V, taking a brief holiday to see her parents on Ygga. Her name was Alice-June Neti. She was small, bright-eyed and vivacious. She had a slender though sumptuous figure. She was bored by the long journey through space.

Detached, floating free from it all, Crompton watched with muzzy interest as intimacy progressed through winks and nods and gestures and little suggestive comments not always in the best of taste. Soon they were dancing, and then Loomis generously receded, leaving Crompton in command of the body’s volition – nervous, flushed, tangle-footed, and enormously pleased with himself. And it was
Crompton
who led her back to the table,
Crompton
who made small talk with her, and
Crompton
who touched her hand, while the complacent and Machiavellian Loomis looked on.

At 3:00 A.M., ship’s time, the ship’s bar closed. After a final exchange of pleasantries with Alice-June, Crompton reeled back to his cabin on B deck and collapsed happily on the bed. This evening had been the most fun he had ever had in his whole life. He wanted to lie on the bed now and savor it. But this was not Loomis’s idea at all.

‘Well?’ Loomis asked.

‘Well what?’

‘Let’s have a quick piss and get going. The invitation was clear enough.’

‘I didn’t hear any invitation,’ Crompton said, puzzled.

‘She told you her room number rather pointedly,’ Loomis said. ‘That, together with the events of the evening, constitutes more a demand than an invitation.’

‘Is that really how this sort of thing works?’ Crompton asked.

‘It’s one of the more typical ways.’

‘I just can’t believe it!’

‘Take my word for it, Alistair, I do have some slight degree of expertise in these matters. Let’s get going.’

Crompton struggled to his feet, then collapsed across the bed again. ‘No, I wouldn’t … I couldn’t … I mean to say, I haven’t …’

‘Lack of experience is no problem whatsoever,’ Loomis said, firmly pulling them to a sitting position. ‘Nature is exceedingly generous in helping one to discover how to do what She considers important for creatures to do together. I will bring to your attention the fact that beavers, racoons, rattlesnakes, scarab beetles, and other creatures without a hundredth of your intelligence manage to perform what you find so baffling. You mustn’t let down the species, Al!’

Crompton got to his feet, wiped his glowing forehead, and took two tentative steps toward the door. Then he walked back and sat down once again on the bed.

‘I’m afraid it’s out of the question,’ he said.

‘But why?’

‘It would be unethical. The young lady is married.’

‘Marriage,’ Loomis said patiently, ‘is a human invention of very recent origin, considering the history of
homo sapiens.
But before marriage there were men and women, and certain sexual modes between them. Natural law always takes precedence over human legislation.’

‘I still think it’s immoral,’ Crompton said, without much vigor.

‘But how could you possibly think that?’ Loomis asked, astonished. ‘You are unmarried, so no possible blame can attach to
you
for your actions.’

‘But the young lady is married.’

‘Of course she is. That’s her responsibility, not yours. She is first and foremost a human being, not some mere chattel of her husband. She has the God-given right to make her own decisions, and I believe that we must respect that.’

‘I never thought of it that way,’ Crompton said.

‘So that takes care of her. Finally, there is the husband. He will know nothing of this, and therefore will not be injured by it. In fact, he will gain. For Alice-June, in recompense, will be much nicer to him than she’s been in some time. He will assume that this is because of his forceful personality, and his ego will be beneficially bolstered thereby. So you see, Al, it’s one of those situations that comes along every once in a while in which everyone gains and nobody loses. Isn’t that nice for us?’

‘It’s all a lot of sophistry,’ Crompton grumbled, standing up again and walking toward the door.

‘Right on, baby,’ said Loomis.

Crompton grinned idiotically and opened the door. Then a thought struck him with invincible compunction and he slammed the door shut and lay down again on the bed.

‘What’s the matter now?’ Loomis asked.

‘Those reasons you gave me,’ Crompton said, ‘may or may not be sound. I don’t have enough experience of this sort of thing to know. But there is one thing I do know.
I will not engage in anything of this sort while you are watching!
’

Loomis was taken aback. ‘But damn it, Al, there is no you or me. I’m you! You’re me! We’re two parts of the same personality!’

‘Not yet we aren’t,’ Crompton said. ‘At present we exist as separate schizoid parts, two different people in a single body. Later, after we’ve taken in Dan Stack and the three of us go into true Reintegration … Well, it will be different then. But under the present circumstances, my sense of decency forbids me from doing what you suggest. It is simply unthinkable and I do not wish to discuss it any further.’

Loomis lapsed into furious silence. Crompton undressed, put on his pajamas, and went to bed.

22

‘It seems to me,’ Crompton said the following morning over coffee, ‘that you and I must have a serious discussion.’

‘What’s on your mind, buddy?’ Loomis asked with offensive cheerfulness.

‘I wish to remind you that we are engaged in an important and dangerous enterprise. We must find and incorporate Dan Stack, and do it quickly, for our own situation is delicate and precarious in the extreme. We have no time for drunkenness and fun; all that will be possible in due time. But for now there is work to be done. There must be no repetition of last night. Do I make myself clear?’

Loomis’s thoughtform expressed a civilized and rueful weariness. ‘Alistair, you really are difficult to get along with. I know it’s all terribly serious, but right now we’re sitting in a spaceship without anything to do.’

‘I have thought about that,’ Crompton said. ‘We can employ our time most usefully at present by learning haut-Yggal, the main language of the planet we are going to.’

‘Learn a
language
, just like that? I have no aptitude for that sort of thing.’

‘Then you can watch quietly while I learn.’

In the ship’s library, Crompton found a copy of Bender’s
Dialectical Variations of Various Common Expressions in Haut-Yggal.
He began to study. Loomis amused himself by rerunning his memories of the previous night until Crompton asked him him to desist, as it interfered with his concentration.

After lunch, Crompton took a nap, then exercised for an hour, then worked on a crossword puzzle. Loomis made no objections. But in the early evening he did request a glass of beer. Crompton was glad to comply with this request. He was not entirely prudish.

The beer tasted just a little strange. Crompton commented on this to Loomis. Loomis said something, but Crompton lost the words in the vast and shuddering emptiness that had just opened around him. Tables, chairs, dust motes, and bright yellow napkins had begun a stately procession around him as he passed out.

The next thing Crompton knew it was morning. Puffy-eyed, flatulent, and with an unbelievable headache, he dragged himself out of bed. His cabin looked as if Tamerlane and a regiment of the Golden Horde had held a victory celebration there last night. The floor was littered with bottles, and the ashtrays were filled with skinny little butts. Various garments were still strewn around, and some of them were unmistakably feminine. Cheap perfume filled his nostrils, and it was mingled with the acrid chemical odor of illegal stupefacients.