Freudian Slip, Page 2

girders. In the Village the old brick houses wereworse. No brick; no mortar; nothing but the grotesque shells of roomsin lath and a paper-thickness of paint.

  The wrought-iron railings were gone, too.

  On Fourth Avenue, bookseller's row, you could almost persuade yourselfthat nothing had happened, provided you did not look down. Thebuildings had been made of wood, and wood they remained. Thesecond-hand books in their wooden racks would have been comfortingexcept that they were so clean. There was not a spot of dirt anywhere;the air was more than country-pure.

  There was an insane selective principle at work here, Herman realized.Everything from bedrock to loam that belonged to the Earth itself haddisappeared. So had everything that had a mineral origin and beenchanged by refinement and mixture: concrete, wrought iron, brick, butsteel and glass, porcelain and paint remained. It looked as if theplanet had been the joint property of two children, one of whom didn'twant to play any more, so they had split up their possessions--this isyours, this is yours, this is _mine_....

  The two little men popped into view not six feet in front of Herman ashe was passing a sidewalk bookstall. Both were dressed in what lookedlike workmen's overalls made of lucite chain-mail, or knittedglow-worms. One of them had four eyes, two brown, two blue, withspectacles for the middle pair. Ears grew like cabbages all over hisbald head. The other had two eyes, the pupils of which werecross-shaped, and no other discernible features except when he openedhis gap-toothed mouth: the rest of his head, face and all, wascompletely covered by a dense forest of red hair.

  As they came forward, Herman's control of his body suddenly returned.He was trying his best to turn around and go away from there, and thatwas what his body started to do. Moreover, certain sounds of aprayerful character, namely "Oh dear sweet Jesus," which Herman wasforming in his mind, involuntarily issued from his lips.

  Before he had taken the first step in a rearward direction, however,the hairy little man curved around him in a blur of motion, barringthe way with two long, muscular, red-furred arms. Herman turned. Thefour-eyed little man had closed in. Herman, gasping, backed up againstthe bookstall.

  People who were headed directly for them, although showing norecognition that Herman and the little men were there, moved stifflyaside like dancing automatons, strode past, then made another stiffsidewise motion to bring them back to the original line of marchbefore they went on their way.

  "Olaph dzenn Harm Rai gjo glerr-dregnarr?" demanded Hairy.

  Herman gulped, half-stunned. "Huh?" he said.

  Hairy turned to Four-Eyes. "Grinnr alaz harisi nuya."

  "Izzred alph! Meggi erd-halaza riggbord els kamma gredyik. Lukhhal!"

  Hairy turned back to Herman. Blinking his eyes rapidly, for theyclosed like the shutter of a camera, he made a placating gesture withboth huge furry hands. "Kelagg ikri odrum faz," he said, and, reachingout to the bookstall, he plucked out a handful of volumes, fanned themlike playing cards and displayed them to Four-Eyes. A heateddiscussion ensued, at the end of which Hairy kept _For Whom the BellTolls_, Four-Eyes took _The Blonde in the Bathtub_, and Hairy threwthe rest away.

  Then, while Herman gaped and made retching sounds, the two disgustinglittle men tore pages out of the books and stuffed them in theirmouths. When they finished the pages, they ate the bindings. Thenthere was a rather sick pause while they seemed to digest the contentsof the books they had literally devoured. Herman had the wild thoughtthat they were blurb writers whose jobs had gone to their heads.

  The one with the four eyes rolled three of them horribly. "That's morelike it," he said in nasal but recognizable English. "Let's startover. Are you Herman Raye, the skull doc?"

  Herman produced a series of incoherent sounds.

  "My brother expresses himself crudely," said Hairy in a rich, fruitybaritone. "Please forgive him. He is a man of much heart."

  "Uh?" said Herman.

  "Truly," said Hairy. "And of much ears," he added with a glance at hiscompanion. "But again, as to this affair--tell me true, are you HermanRaye, the analyst of minds?"

  "Suppose I am?" Herman asked cautiously.

  Hairy turned to Four-eyes. "Arghraz iktri 'Suppose I am,' Gurh? Olaphiktri erz ogromat, lekh--"

  "Talk English, can't you?" Four-eyes broke in. "You know he don'tunderstand that caveman jabber. Anyhow, yeah, yeah, it's him. He justdon't want to say so." He reached out and took Herman by the collar."Come on, boy, the boss is waitin'."

  There were two circular hair-lines of glowing crimson where Hairy andFour-eyes had originally appeared. They reached the spot in one jump,Hairy bringing up the rear.

  "But tell me truly," he said anxiously. "You _are_ that same HermanRaye?"

  Herman paid no attention. Below, under the two glowing circles, wasthe terrifying gulf that had replaced the Earth; and this time, Hermanwas somehow convinced, it was not going to hold him up.

  "Let go!" he shouted, struggling. "Ouch!" He had struck Four-eyessquarely on the flat nose, and it felt as if he had slugged an anvil.

  Paying no attention, Four-eyes turned Herman over, pinned his arms tohis sides, and dropped him neatly through the larger of the twocircles.

  Herman shut his eyes tightly and despairingly repeated themultiplication table up to 14 x 14. When he opened them again, he wasapparently hanging in mid-space, with Hairy to his left and Four-eyesto his right. The visible globe around them was so curiously tintedand mottled that it took Herman a long time to puzzle it out. Ahead ofthem was the darkest area--the void he had seen before. This was ovalin shape, and in places the stars shone through it clearly. In others,they were blocked off entirely or dimmed by a sort of haze.

  Surrounding this, and forming the rest of the sphere, was an area thatshaded from gold shot with violet at the borders, to an unbearableblaze of glory at the center, back the way they had come and a littleto the right. Within this lighted section were other amorphous areaswhich were much darker, almost opaque; and still others where thelight shone through diluted to a ruddy ghost of itself, likecandlelight through parchment.

  Gradually Herman realized that the shapes and colors he saw were thelighted and dark hemispheres of Earth. The dark areas were the oceans,deep enough in most places to shut out the light altogether, and thoseparts of the continents, North and South America behind him, Europeand Asia ahead, Africa down to the right, which were heavily forested.

  Herman's earlier conviction returned. Things like this just did nothappen. _Physician, heal thyself!_

  "You're not real," he said bitterly to Four-eyes.

  "Not very," Four-eyes agreed. "I'm twice as real as that jerk,though," he insisted, pointing to Hairy.

  Ahead of them, or "below," a point of orange light was slowlyswelling. Herman watched it without much interest.

  Hairy broke out into a torrent of cursing. "I this and that in themilk of your this!" he said. "I this, that and the other in the thisof your that. Your sister! Your cousin! Your grandmother's uncle!"

  Four-eyes listened with awed approval. "Them was good books, hah?" heasked happily.

  "Better than those scratchings in the caves," Hairy said.

  "Something to think about till they haul us out again. Well," saidFour-eyes philosophically, "here we are."

  * * * * *

  The orange spot had enlarged into the semblance of a lighted room,rather like a stage setting. Inside were two enormous Persons, onesitting, one standing. Otherwise, and except for three upholsteredchairs, the room was bare. No--as they swooped down toward it, Hermanblinked and looked again. A leather couch had appeared against the farwall.

  At the last moment, there was a flicker of motion off to Herman'sleft. Something that looked like a short, pudgy human beingaccompanied by two little men the size of Hairy and Four-eyes whooshedoff into the distance, back toward the surface of the planet.

  Herman landed. Hairy and Four-eyes, after bowing low to the standingPerson, turned and leaped out of the room. When Herman, feelingabandoned, turned to see whe
re they had gone, he discovered that theroom now had four walls and no windows or doors.

  The Person said, "How do you do, Doctor Raye?"

  Herman looked at him. Although his figure had a disquieting tendencyto quiver and flow, so that it was hard to judge, he seemed to beabout eight feet tall. He was dressed in what would have seemed anordinary dark-blue business suit, with an equally ordinary white shirtand blue tie, except that all three garments had the sheen of polishedmetal. His face was bony and severe, but not repellently so; he lookedabsent-minded rather than stern.

  The other Person, whose suit was brown, had a broad, kindly and ratherstupid face; his hair was white. He sat quietly, not looking atHerman, or, apparently, at anything else.

  Herman sat