The word somehow leaked out that the capsule had come back from time/universe Earth2 and the Russians rattled swords—suggesting that the decadent American filth had brought back a decimating plague that was even now oozing toward Minsk. (TimeSep Central quarantined anyone even remotely privy to the truth.) The OPEC nations announced that the Americans, in league with Zionist Technocrats, had found a way to siphon off crude oil from the time/universe next to our own, and promptly raised the price of gasoline another forty-one cents a gallon. (TimeSep Central moved Enoch Mirren and the disgusting thing to its supersecret bunker headquarters sunk beneath the Painted Desert.) The Pentagon demanded the results of the debriefing and threatened to cut throats; Congress demanded the results and threatened to cut appropriations. (TimeSep Central bit the bullet—they had no other choice, there had been no debriefing—and they stonewalled: we cannot relay the requested data at this time.)
Temponaut Enoch Mirren continued coitusing.
The expert from Johns Hopkins, a tall, gray gentleman who wore three-piece suits, and whose security clearance was so stratospheric ally high the President called him on the red phone, sequestered himself with the temponaut and the disgusting thing for three days. When he emerged, he called in the TimeSep Central officials and said, “Ladies and gentlemen, quite simply put, Enoch Mirren has brought back from Earth2 the most perfect fuck in the universe.”
After they had revived one of the women and four of the men, the expert from Johns Hopkins, a serious, pale gentleman who wore wing-tip shoes, continued… As best I can estimate, this creature—clearly an alien life-form from some other planet in that alternate time/universe—has an erotic capacity that, once engaged, cannot be neutralized. Once having begun to enjoy its, uh, favors… a man either cannot or will not stop having relations.”
“But that’s impossible!” said one of the women. “Men simply cannot hold an erection that long.” She looked around at several of her male compatriots with disdain.
“Apparently the thing secretes some sort of stimulant, a jelly perhaps, that re-engorges the male member,” said the expert from Johns Hopkins.
“But is it male or female?” asked one of the men, an administrative assistant who had let it slip in one of their regular encounter sessions that he was concerned about his own sexual preferences.
“It’s both, and neither,” said the expert from Johns Hopkins. “It seems equipped to handle anything up to and including chickens or kangaroos with double vaginas.” He smiled a thin, controlled smile, saying, “You folks have a problem,” and then he presented them with a staggering bill for his services. And then he departed, still smiling.
They were little better off than they had been before. But the women seemed interested.
Two months later, having fed temponaut Enoch Mirren intravenously when they noticed that his weight had been dropping alarmingly, they found an answer to the problem of separating the man and the sex object. By setting up a random sequence sound wave system, pole to pole, with Mirren and his paramour between, they were able to disrupt the flow of energy in the disgusting thing’s metabolism. Mirren opened his eyes, blinked several times, murmured,.. Oh, that was good!” and they pried him loose.
The disgusting thing instantly rolled into a ball and went to sleep.
They immediately hustled Enoch Mirren into an elevator and dropped with him to the deepest, most tightly secured level of the supersecret underground TimeSep Central complex, where a debriefing interrogation cell waited to claim him. It was 10’x10’x20’, heavily padded in black Naugahyde, and was honeycombed with sensors and microphones. No lights.
They put him in the cell, let him stew for twelve hours, then fed him, and began the debriefing.
“Mirren, what the hell is that disgusting thing?”
The voice came from the ceiling. In the darkness Enoch Mirren belched lightly from the quenelles of red snapper they had served him, and scooted around on the floor where he was sitting, trying to locate the source of the annoyed voice.
“It’s a terrific little person from Cissalda,” he said.
“Cissalda?” Another voice; a woman’s voice.
“A planet in another star-system of that other time/universe,” he replied politely. “They call it Cissalda.”
“It can talk?” A third voice, more studious.
“Telepathically. Mind-to-mind. When we’re making love.”
“All right, knock it off, Mirren!” the first voice said.
Enoch Mirren sat in darkness, smiling.
“Then there’s life in that other universe, apart from that disgusting thing, is that right?” The third voice.
“Oh, sure,” Enoch Mirren said, playing with his toes. He had discovered he was naked.
“How’s the night life on Cissalda?” asked the woman’s voice, not really seriously.
“Well, there’s not much activity during the week,” he answered, “but Saturday nights are dynamite, I’m told.”
“I said knock it off, Mirren!”
“Yes, sir.”
The third voice, as if reading from a list of prepared questions, asked, “Describe time/universe Earth2 as fully as you can, will you do that, please?”
“I didn’t see that much, to be perfectly frank with you, but it’s really nice over there. It’s warm and very bright, even when the frenzel smelches. Every nolnek there’s a vit, when the cosmish isn’t drendeling. But I found…”
“Hold it, Mirren!” the first voice screamed.
There was a gentle click, as if the speakers were cut off while the interrogation team talked things over. Enoch scooted around till he found the soft wall, and sat up against it, whistling happily. He whistled “You and the Night and the Music,” segueing smoothly into “Some Day My Prince Will Come.” There was another gentle click and one of the voices returned. It was the angry voice that spoke first; the impatient one who was clearly unhappy with the temponaut. His tone was soothing, cajoling, as if he were the Recreation Director of the Outpatient Clinic of the Menninger Foundation.
“Enoch… may I call you Enoch…” Enoch murmured it was lovely to be called Enoch, and the first voice went on, “We’re, uh, having a bit of difficulty understanding you.”
“How so?”
“Well, we’re taping this conversation… uh, you don’t mind if we tape this, do you, Enoch?”
“Huh-uh.”
“Yes, well. We find, on the tape, the following words: ‘frenzel,’ ‘smelches,’ ‘nolneg’…”
“That’s nolnek,” Enoch Mirren said. “A nolneg is quite another matter. In fact, if you were to refer to a nolnek as a nolneg, one of the tilffs would certainly get highly upset and level a renaq…”
“Hold it!” The hysterical tone was creeping back into the interrogator’s voice. “Nolnek, nolneg, what does it matter—”
“Oh, it matters a lot. See, as I was saying—”
“—it doesn’t matter at all, Mirren, you asshole! We can’t understand a word you’re saying!”
The woman’s voice interrupted. “Lay back, Bert. Let me talk to him.” Bert mumbled something vaguely obscene under his breath. If there was anything Enoch hated, it was vagueness.
“Enoch,” said the woman’s voice, “this is Dr. Arpin. Inez Arpin? Remember me? I was on your training team before you left?”
Enoch thought about it. “Were you the black lady with the glasses and the ink blots?”
“No. I’m the white lady with the rubber gloves and the rectal thermometer.”
“Oh, sure, of course. You have very trim ankles.”
“Thank you.”
Bert’s voice exploded through the speaker. “Jeezus Keerice, Inez!”
“Enoch,” Dr. Arpin continued, ignoring Bert, “are you speaking in tongues?”
Enoch Mirren was silent for a moment, then said, “Gee, I’m awfully sorry. I guess I’ve been linked up with the Cissaldan so long, I’ve absorbed a lot of how it thinks and speaks. I’m really sorry. I’ll try to translate.”