“Yes?” the anthropologist sat up, blinked. “What are the terms?”

  “The Phalids pay an indemnity — a hundred million munits worth of ores and singular goods. We establish a laboratory, ship out a corps of research scientists, identify the substance that stimulates fruit from the trees. We contract to arrange for a stated tonnage of the fruit per year. In other words we farm the forest.”

  The anthropologist was plainly interested and rather pleased. “I wonder, what social effect the treaty will have on the Phalids?” he said. “What will become of their Bza, their homogeneity, their culture patterns? Excuse me,” he said to Wratch and Constance Averill. “I really must apply McDougall’s Theorems to the situation.”

  He trotted away. Wratch and Constance Averill were alone.

  Wratch looked wearily around the room with his two hundred eyes. It was low, ill-proportioned; the colors were harsh and discordant. The men of the crew, the anthropologists, Constance Averill — they were ugly alien things. Their voices rasped his ear-hairs, their movements offended his Phalid sense of esthetics.

  He became aware of Constance Averill’s flow of thoughts. The resolution and stubborn vitality he had first noted and admired in her had lapsed far out of his perception, below the general tenor of her mind, and instead was warmth and eagerness and good humor. And a strange wistfulness too.

  It was now she was wistful and oddly timid.

  “You’re not happy, are you?” she said.

  He wrote: “I was able to pull the job off. I’m glad of that. Beyond that — I’m a museum piece. A freak.”

  “Don’t say that!” Wratch sensed an immense pity. “You’re the bravest man in the world!”

  “I’m no man. My body is dead. I can’t get into another human body. I’m stuck. I don’t like it especially. Nothing looks right or human through these Phalid eyes.”

  “What do I look like?” she asked with interest.

  “Awful. Half-lizard, half-witch-doctor.”

  Wratch felt her brain quirk in quick feminine alarm.

  “I’m really not bad-looking,” she assured him.

  There was a pause.

  “You need someone to look after you,” she said. “And I’m going to do it.”

  Wratch was genuinely surprised. His finger-flaps twitched as he wrote:

  “No! I’m going to get a space-boat and live out in space the rest of my life. I don’t need anyone.”

  “I’ll come too.”

  “You can’t. What of your reputation?”

  “Oh, I think I’m safe with you,” and she laughed. “Anyway I don’t care.”

  “Legally,” wrote Wratch with sardonic emphasis, “I’m a woman. I’ve eaten the Fruit of Life. Eventually this body will become a mother. I hope I don’t develop a maternal instinct.”

  She stood up. She was crying.

  “Don’t! Don’t talk like that! It’s horrible — what they’ve done to you!” She wiped her eyes furiously with her hand.

  “All right!” she said angrily. “I’m crazy. I’m insane. Well, it’s leap year. I think you’re the most wonderful man I know. I love you. I don’t care what you look like. I love what makes you tick, inside. So you’ve got me — and I’m going to make sure that I —”

  Wratch sagged back in the chair.

  The ship’s third officer entered.

  “A message for you, Mr. Wratch. Just arrived over the permophone.”

  Wratch opened the envelope. The note read:

  Dear Mr. Wratch: Good news for you — and you deserve it. We’ve got your body patched up and waiting for you. It was a hard fight. We grafted a new liver, eighteen feet of small intestine, a new left leg from the knee down.

  I didn’t tell you before because I didn’t want to raise false hopes — and it’s been touch and go. As soon as the brain left the body, the best doctors and surgeons in the world worked night and day on it.

  I know you’ll be feeling more cheerful now and I’ll be seeing you within a week.

  Wratch handed the permogram to Constance Averill.

  When he looked back, she was crying again. The two hundred Phalid eyes would not cry.

  It was the waiting room of the Atlantic-Space Combine Hospital. Half a hundred people sat in the lobby, waiting for friends and relatives discharged from the wards in the towers above. These came by the elevator load; five or ten at a time, for the Combine was the largest hospital in the world.

  A slender girl with lustrous dark red hair, a face delicate and lovely as a flower form, but with a clear and sure underlying strength, sat in the waiting room. She was watching the elevator, intently eyeing the men — especially the young sunburned men — as they emerged and came to seek familiar faces in the waiting room. Once or twice she looked closely, then relaxed in her seat.

  The minutes passed. Down came the elevator once more. The doors slid back, the discharged patients stepped out.

  One of these was a young man, rather thin but well-muscled. He had a wide good-humored mouth, a long chin with a scar running up his cheek, a skin burnt almost as dark as his hair — space-tan that won’t come off.

  The girl looked — looked again — slowly stood up, took a few hesitant steps forward. The young man had paused, was looking through the crowd. She stood still. Would there be someone? Was she mistaken? No, she couldn’t be wrong. She stepped forward. He saw her, looked at her. Suddenly he smiled, reached out, took both of her hands.

  “Constance.” It was a declaration, no question. For almost a minute they stared at each other — remembering.

  He held her arm very close as they left the hospital.

  Chateau d’If

  I

  The advertisement appeared on a telescreen commercial, and a few days later at the side of the news-fax. The copy was green on a black background, a modest rectangle among the oranges, reds, yellows. The punch was carried in the message:

  Jaded? Bored?

  Want ADVENTURE?

  Try the Chateau d’If

  The Oxonian Terrace was a pleasant area of quiet in the heart of the city — a red-flagged rectangle dotted with beach umbrellas, tables, lazy people. A bank of magnolia trees screened off the street and filtered out most of the street noise; the leakage, a soft sound like surf, underlay the conversation and the irregular thud-thud-thud from the Oxonian handball courts.

  Roland Mario sat in complete relaxation, half-slumped, head back, feet propped on the spun-air and glass table — in the same posture as his four companions. Watching them under half-closed lids, Mario pondered the ancient mystery of human personality. How could men be identical and yet each completely unique?

  To his left sat Breaugh, a calculator repairman. He had a long bony nose, round eyes, heavy black eyebrows, a man deft with his fingers, methodical and patient. He had a Welsh name, and he looked the pure ancient Welsh type, the small dark men that had preceded Caesar, preceded the Celts.

  Next to him sat Janniver. North Europe, Africa, the Orient had combined to shape his brain and body. An accountant by trade, he was a tall spare man with short yellow hair. He had a long face with features that first had been carved, then kneaded back, blunted. He was cautious, thoughtful, a tough opponent on the handball court.

  Zaer was the quick one, the youngest of the group. Fair-skinned with red cheeks, dark curly hair, eyes gay as valentines, he talked the most, laughed the most, occasionally lost his temper.

  Beside him sat Ditmar, a sardonic man with keen narrow eyes, a high forehead, and a dark bronze skin from Polynesia, the Sudan, or India, or South America. He played no handball, consumed fewer highballs than the others, because of a liver disorder. He occupied a well-paying executive position with one of the television networks.

  And Mario himself, how did they see him? He considered. Probably a different picture in each of their minds, although there were few pretensions or striking features to his exterior. He had nondescript pleasant features, hair and eyes without distinction, skin the average golden-brown. Medium height, medium weight, quiet-spoken, quietly dressed. He knew he was well-liked, so far as the word had meaning among the five; they had been thrown together not so much by congeniality as by the handball court and a common bachelorhood.

  Mario became aware of the silence. He finished his highball. “Anyone go another round?”

  Breaugh made a gesture of assent.

  “I’ve got enough,” said Janniver.

  Zaer tilted the glass down his throat, set it down with a thud. “At the age of four I promised my father never to turn down a drink.”

  Ditmar hesitated, then said, “Might as well spend my money on liquor as anything else.”

  “That’s all money is good for,” said Breaugh. “To buy a little fun into your life.”

  “A lot of money buys a lot of fun,” said Ditmar morosely. “Try and get the money.”

  Zaer gestured, a wide fanciful sweep of the arm. “Be an artist, an inventor, create something, build something. There’s no future working for wages.”

  “Look at this new crop of school-boy wonders,” said Breaugh sourly. “Where in the name of get-out do they come from? Spontaneous generation by the action of sunlight on slime? … All of a sudden, nothing but unsung geniuses, everywhere you look. De Satz, Coley — atomicians. Honn, Versovitch, Lekky, Brule, Richards — administrators. Gandelip, New, Cardosa — financiers. Dozens of them, none over twenty-three, twenty-four. All of ’em come up like meteors.”

  “Don’t forget Pete Zaer,” said Zaer. “He’s another one, but he hasn’t meteored yet. Give him another year.”

  “Well,” muttered Ditmar, “maybe it’s a good thing. Somebody’s got to do our thinking for us. We’re fed, we’re clothed, we’re educated, we work at soft jobs, and good liquor’s cheap. That’s all life means for ninety-nine out of a hundred.”

  “If they’d only take the hangover out of the liquor,” sighed Zaer.

  “Liquor’s a release from living,” said Janniver somberly. “Drunkenness is about the only adventure left. Drunkenness and death.”

  “Yes,” said Breaugh. “You can always show contempt for life by dying.”

  Zaer laughed. “Whiskey or cyanide. Make mine whiskey.”

  Fresh highballs appeared. They shook dice for the tab. Mario lost, signed the check.

  After a moment Breaugh said, “It’s true though. Drunkenness and death. The unpredictables. The only two places left to go — unless you can afford twenty million dollars for a planetary rocket. And even then there’s only dead rock after you get there.”

  Ditmar said, “You overlooked a third possibility.”

  “What’s that?”

  “The Chateau d’If.”

  All sat quiet; then all five shifted in their chairs, settling back or straightening themselves.

  “Just what is the Chateau d’If?” asked Mario.

  “Where is it?” asked Zaer. “The advertisement said ‘Try the Chateau d’If’, but it said nothing about how or where.”

  Janniver grunted. “Probably a new nightclub.”

  Mario shook his head doubtfully. “The advertisement gave a different impression.”

  “It’s not a nightclub,” said Ditmar. All eyes swung to him. “No, I don’t know what it is. I know where it is, but only because there’s been rumors a couple months now.”

  “What kind of rumors?”

  “Oh — nothing definite. Just hints. To the effect that if you want adventure, if you’ve got money to pay for it, if you’re willing to take a chance, if you have no responsibilities you can’t abandon —”

  “If — if — if,” said Breaugh with a grin. “The Chateau d’If.”

  Ditmar nodded. “That’s it exactly.”

  “Is it dangerous?” asked Zaer. “If all they do is string a tight-wire across a snake pit, turn a tiger loose at you, and you can either walk tightrope or fight tiger, I’d rather sit here and drink high-balls and figure how to beat Janniver in the tournament.”

  Ditmar shrugged. “I don’t know.”

  Breaugh frowned. “It could be a dope-den, a new kind of bordello.”

  “There’s no such thing,” said Zaer. “It’s a haunted house with real ghosts.”

  “If we’re going to include fantasy,” said Ditmar, “a time machine.”

  “If,” said Breaugh.

  There was a short ruminative silence.

  “It’s rather peculiar,” said Mario. “Ditmar says there’ve been rumors a couple months now. And last week an advertisement.”

  “What’s peculiar about it?” asked Janniver. “That’s the sequence in almost any new enterprise.”

  Breaugh said quickly, “That’s the key word — ‘enterprise’. The Chateau d’If is not a natural phenomenon; it’s a man-created object, idea, process — whatever it is. The motive behind it is a human motive — probably money.”

  “What else?” asked Zaer whimsically.

  Breaugh raised his black eyebrows high. “Oh, you never know. Now, it can’t be a criminal enterprise, otherwise the ACP would be swarming all over it.”

  Ditmar leaned back, swung Breaugh a half-mocking look. “The Agency of Crime Prevention can’t move unless there’s an offense, unless someone signs a complaint. If there’s no overt offense, no complaint, the law can’t move.”

  Breaugh made an impatient gesture. “Very true. But that’s a side issue to the idea I was trying to develop.”

  Ditmar grinned. “Sorry. Go on.”

  “What are the motives which prompt men to new enterprises? First, money, which in a sense comprises, includes, all of the other motives too. But for the sake of clarity, call this first, the desire for money, an end in itself. Second, there’s the will for power. Subdivide that last into, say, the crusading instinct and call it a desire for unlimited sexual opportunity. Power over women. Then third, curiosity, the desire to know. Fourth, the enterprise for its own sake, as a diversion. Like a millionaire’s race-horses. Fifth, philanthropy. Any more?”

  “Covers it,” said Zaer.

  “Possibly the urge for security, such as the Egyptian pyramids,” suggested Janniver.

  “I think that’s the fundamental motive behind the first category, the lust for money.”

  “Artistic spirit, creativeness.”

  “Oh, far-fetched, I should say.”

  “Exhibitionism,” Ditmar put forward.

  “Equally far-fetched.”

  “I disagree. A theatrical performance is based solely and exclusively, from the standpoint of the actors, upon their mania for exhibitionism.”

  Breaugh shrugged. “You’re probably right.”

  “Religious movements, missions.”

  “Lump that under the will to administer power.”

  “It sticks out at the edges.”

  “Not far … That all? Good. What does it give us? Anything suggestive?”

  “The Chateau d’If!” mused Janniver. “It still sounds like an unnecessarily florid money-making scheme.”

  “It’s not philanthropy — at least superficially,” said Mario. “But probably we could fabricate situations that would cover any of your cases.”

  Ditmar made an impatient gesture. “Talk’s useless. What good is it? Not any of us know for sure. Suppose it’s a plot to blow up the city?”

  Breaugh said coolly, “I appoint you a committee of one, Ditmar, to investigate and report.”

  Ditmar laughed sourly. “I’d be glad to. But I’ve got a better idea. Let’s roll the dice. Low man applies to the Chateau d’If — financed by the remaining four.”

  Breaugh nodded. “Suits me. I’ll roll with you.”

  Ditmar looked around the table.

  “What’s it cost?” asked Zaer.

  Ditmar shook his head. “I’ve no idea. Probably comes high.”

  Zaer frowned, moved uneasily in his seat. “Set a limit of two thousand dollars per capita.”

  “Good, so far as I’m concerned. Janniver?”

  The tall man with the short yellow hair hesitated. “Yes, I’ll roll. I’ve nothing to lose.”

  “Mario?”

  “Suits me.”

  Ditmar took up the dice box, cupped it with his hand, rattled the dice. “The rules are for poker dice. One throw, ace high. In other words, a pair of aces beats a pair of sixes. Straight comes between three of a kind and a full house. That suit everybody? … Who wants to roll first?”

  “Go ahead, shoot,” said Mario mildly.

  Ditmar shook, shook, shook, turned the dice out. Five bodies leaned forward, five pair of eyes followed the whirling cubes. They clattered down the table, clanged against a highball glass, came to rest.

  “Looks like three fives,” said Ditmar. “Well, that’s medium good.”

  Mario, sitting on his left, picked up the box, tossed the dice in, shook, threw. He grunted. A two, a three, a four, a five, a four. “Pair of fours. Ouch.”

  Breaugh threw silently. “Three aces.”

  Janniver threw. “Two pair. Deuces and threes.”

  Zaer, a little pale, picked up the dice. He flashed a glance at Mario. “Pair of fours to beat.” He shook the dice, shook — then threw with a sudden flourish. Clang, clatter among the glasses. Five pairs of eyes looked. Ace, deuce, three, six, deuce.

  “Pair of deuces.”

  Zaer threw himself back with a tight grin. “Well, I’m game. I’ll go. It’s supposed to be an adventure. Of course they don’t say whether you come out alive or not.”

  “You should be delighted,” said Breaugh, stuffing tobacco in his pipe. “After all it’s our money that’s buying you this mysterious thrill.”

  Zaer made a helpless gesture with both hands. “Where do I go? What do I do?” He looked at Ditmar. “Where do I get this treatment?”

  “I don’t know,” said Ditmar. “I’ll ask at the studio. Somebody knows somebody who’s been there. Tomorrow about this time I’ll have the details, as much as I can pick up, at any rate.”

  Now came a moment of silence — a silence combined of several peculiar qualities. Each of the five contributed a component, but which the wariness, which the fear, which the quiet satisfaction, it was impossible to say.

  Breaugh set down his glass. “Well, Zaer, what do you think? Ready for the tightrope or the tiger?”