Black Gondolier and Other Stories by Fritz Leiber

because it would make me conspicuous.”
    â€œEspecially at the present moment,” Burton agreed, “though it would be a grand sight. Why are you here, by the way, and not behaving yourself on your home planet?”
    â€œI’m on vacation,” she grinned. “Oh yes, we use your rather primitive planet for vacations—like you do Africa and the Canadian forests. A little machine teaches us during one night’s sleep several of your languages and implants in our brains the necessary background information. My husband surprised me by giving me the money for this vacation—same time he gave me the lighter. Usually he’s very stingy. But perhaps he had some little plot—an affair with his chief nuclear chemist, I’d guess—of his own in mind and wanted me out of the way. I can’t be sure though, because he always keeps his mind quadruple-shielded, even from me.”
    â€œSo you have husbands on your planet,” Burton observed.
    â€œYes indeed! Very jealous and possessive ones, too, so watch your step, Baby. Yes, although my planet is much more advanced than yours we still have husbands and wives and a very stuffy system of monogamy— that seems to go on forever and everywhere—oh yes, and on my planet we have death and taxes and life insurance and wars and all the rest of the universal idiocy!”
    She stopped suddenly. “I don’t want to talk about that any more,” she said. “Or about my husband. Let’s talk about you. Let’s play truths, deep-down truths. What’s the thing you’re most afraid of in the whole world?”
    Burton chuckled—and then frowned. “You really want me to give you the honest answer?” he asked.
    â€œOf course,” she said. “It’s the first rule of the game.”
    â€œWell,” he said, “I’m most afraid of something going wrong with my brain. Growing wrong, really. Having a brain tumor. That’s it.” He had become rather pale.
    â€œOh Poor Baby,” Sonya said. “Just you wait a minute.”
    Still uneasy from his confession, Burton started nervously to pick up Sonya’s black lighter, but its black pistol-look repelled him.
    Sonya came bustling back with something else in her right hand. “Sit up,” she said, putting her left arm around him. “No, none of that— this is serious. Pretend I’m a very proper lady doctor who forgot to get dressed.”
    Burton could see her slim back and his own face over her right shoulder in the wide mirror of the dresser. She slipped her right hand and the small object it held behind his head. There was a click.
    â€œNo,” said Sonya cheerily. “I can’t see a sign of anything wrong in your brain or likely to grow wrong. It’s as healthy as an infant’s. What’s the matter, Baby” “
    Burton was shaking. “Look,” he gasped reproachfully, “it’s wonderful to play nonsense games, but when you use magic tricks or hypnotism to back them up, that’s cheating.”
    â€œWhat do you mean?”
    â€œWhen you clicked that thing,” he said with difficulty, “I saw my head turn for a moment into a pinkish skull and then into just a pulsing blob with folds in it.”
    â€œOh, I’d forgotten the mirror,” she said, glancing over her shoulder. “But you were really just imagining things. Or having a mild optical spasm and seeing colors.”
    â€œNo,” she added as he reached out a hand, “I won’t let you see my little XYZ-ray machine.” She tossed it across the room into her traveling case. “It would spoil our nonsense game.”
    As his breathing and thoughts quieted, Burton decided she was possibly right—or at least that he’d best pretend she was right. It was safest and sanest to think of what he’d glimpsed in the mirror as an illusion, like the faint colors he’d