Crompton Divided by Robert Sheckley

Author:Robert Sheckley [Sheckley, Robert]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Open Road Media
Published: 2014-04-01T00:00:00+00:00

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.

Crompton tottered to his feet. He felt pain in his left thigh. Looking down, he saw tooth-marks. He also noticed a smear of feminine cosmetics on his chest.

There were other signata of sexual incontinence too embarrassing for Crompton even to acknowledge.

‘Loomis,’ he said, ‘you drugged me and perpetrated a nauseating debauch using my body last night. What do you have to say for yourself?’

‘Only that I am through taking orders from you,’ Loomis declared spunkily. ‘What gives you the right to tell me what to do or not

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