oxide trip. What James had written down, in trying to verbalize his insight, was OVERALL THERE IS A SMELL OF FRIED ONIONS. Chaney wanted to know what it was like to be in the state where fried onions would explain everything. He sniffed deeply and expectantly as the mask was placed over his nose, and waited.
No illumination came at first, but the room seemed to be getting bigger and bigger, and then it was getting smaller and smaller, and then he became aware that the dentist, as was typical of his species, was making remonstrating noises as he gazed into Chaney’s mouth, saying that brushing was not enough and that everybody should be more conscious of dental hygiene and so on, all the usual craperoo, and then he, Chaney, wasn’t there anymore, he wasn’t anywhere; it was just like what he had heard about quantum jumping in physics, because he was there again, having gone from 0 to 1, and then going back to 0 again, not being there, and then back to 1 again and the dentist said somberly, like a very wise old wizard:
“Flossing is the answer.”
And Chaney felt like he might giggle or weep, but was too dazed to do either, having found it at last, the Answer. And it was so simple, as all the mystics said; it was right out in the open and we didn’t notice it because we weren’t conscious of the details. And he stared up, awed, at the wise face of the great sage who had given it to him, at last, the Answer.
Flossing.
And the damnedest part of it was that for weeks after he still had flashes when he thought that was it, the Answer. Flossing.
After Kyoto, Chaney went to Yokohama to see the infamous Sex Shops, as was inevitable.
In the first Sex Shop he purchased an artificial vagina which seemed vastly superior, in both realism and pneumatic grip, to the model he had at home.
In the second Sex Shop he bought a box of pornographic Easter Eggs.
By then he was feeling the surging despair again, knowing that these substitutes were not what he really wanted, knowing his loneliness and his exile with that bitterness that he usually kept at bay by concentrating on the absurdity of everything-in-general, experiencing the terrible isolation of being out there on the moon separated from the ridiculous oversized clods by 250,000 miles and sizeist prejudice.
And then, in the third Sex Shop, he found it.
The Answer.
And it wasn’t flossing at all.
Dr. Glopberger had worked in the Sex Change department of Johns Hopkins for a long time, and thought that nothing could surprise him any longer.
Markoff Chaney surprised him.
“No,” Chaney said, in answer to the first question Glopberger always asked, “I’ve never felt like a woman trapped in a man’s body.”
“Um,” Glopberger said. “Well, sir, what do you want here?”
Chaney opened the box in his lap.
“Good God,” Glopberger said. “I’ve only seen one that big once in my life.” What was that character’s name—Wildebeeste? Strange one: he had kept it after the operation, had it mounted on a plaque or something like that.
“You see,” Chaney explained, “I don’t want to become a woman. I want to become more of a man.”
“Well,” said Dr. Glopberger, professionally. “Well, well.” It was an ingenious challenge, even with the advances in Sex Surgery in the past three years, but it could be done…. My word, it would be a Medical First.
The stocks in Blue Sky were now paying eight thousand dollars to ten thousand dollars a month.
“Name your price,” Chaney said with a steely glint.
Justin Case heard about the man with no name at one of Mary Margaret Wildeblood’s wild, wild parties. Joe Malik, the editor of Confrontation, told the story. It was rather hard for Case to follow because the party was huge and noisy—a typical Wildeblood soirée. All the usual celebrities were there—Blake Williams, the most boring crank in the galaxy; Juan Tootrego, the rocket engineer responsible for the first three space-cities; Carol Christmas, the man who had invented the first longevity drug, Ex-Tend; Natalie Drest, the fiery feminist; Bertha Van Ation, the astronomer who had discovered the first real Black Hole, in the Sirius double-star system; Markoff Chaney, the midget millionaire who owned most of Blue Sky, Inc. Hordes of other names—maxi-, midi-, and mini-celebrities— swarmed through Mary Margaret’s posh Sutton Place pad as the evening wore on. There was a lot of booze, a lot of hash, and—due to Chaney—altogether too much coke.
“The town was called