one. Each mouth has a tongue, sometimes known to be over eight inches long, and a rudimentary set of teeth. Kalk claimed that the act of 'kissing stomachs' is merely an intimate greeting, or else a form of foreplay. It is now known to be the most desired and most difficult of the reproductive methods.
The female's stomach-tongue is placed within the male's stomach-mouth. It is believed that the female's 'sperm' is present in her saliva. It is the male that becomes pregnant. A small egg is formed in the stomach, which becomes a kind of male womb for the process. The egg is ejected, again by use of the stomach-tongue, and then taken over by the female, who warms and protects it (outside the body) until the hatching takes place. This can take up to two years. The resulting baby is always male, and takes fully thirty-five years to reach puberty.
This strange sexual process has a 98 per cent failure rate. Of those successfully conceived, many die within the egg. Those managing to be born are always weak and sickly; many more die before becoming fully grown. For these reasons the 'hatched' are considered more precious than the other two kinds of Autogen. Their very existence can bring about intense feelings of jealousy within the more 'normal' children. The hatched often become figures of power and authority, despite the fact that they are the most prone to psychological problems. Then again, they often become criminals or outcasts.
There now seems little doubt that Professor Kalk was such a child.
INSTRUCTIONS FOR THE USE OF
(text begins)
1c. The device is not to be used by children under the age of fourteen, or adults over the age of thirty-nine.
2b. If device is to be handheld, click button B to 'portable'.
2e. If device is to be shared, activate 'protection' mode.
3a. Device to be used only four times a day, unless authorization granted.
3b. Any one session not to exceed sixty minutes, or the onset of auto-shutdown by device, whichever duration is the shorter.
3c. Do not attempt to use device after auto-shutdown, unless a period of at least thirty minutes has passed.
4d. Special dispensation required for use of device in public place.
5b. In case of such breakdown (see 5a), owner of device completely to blame.
5c. In case of legitimate breakdown, device should be removed from body, and returned to point of purchase.
5d. Under no circumstances should corrupted device be left attached to body.
6a. Under no circumstances is device to be left unattended during 'dispersal' procedure.
7c. Unprotected dispersal can lead to infection of receptacle.
(text ends)
PART THREE POISON'S FLIGHT PATH
GETTING HOME SAFELY
It was a Saturday night and the streets were crowded with people trying to get home. When we get to the college, the taxi rank is buzzing. I think there must have been over a thousand people in the queue. Now I don't know if you've ever seen the taxi rank that they've turned the College of Music into? The taxis leave from the basement, and the queue starts on the roof. From there you have to walk around the outside edges of the building, dropping down layer by layer till you. reach the basement level.
I think we're on the second level down, in this long curving snake of people, when I look over the balcony and see my friend Rikki on a lower level. Now Rikki used to live in Manchester, but he moved to London about a year ago and I haven't seen him since then. So I tell the party I'm with that I'm going to go see my friend.
I climb down the side of the building. Eventually I reach him, and we chat for a while. I look over the balcony again, and this time I see Ian, another friend who also moved to London. I haven't seen Ian for at least fifteen years, and he was my best friend way back then. I don't even have his telephone number, so I'm desperate to get down another level to see him.
I set off climbing, but somehow climb too far, so that now he's above me, looking down. He throws a paper towel down towards me. It blows around in the wind a bit, but I catch it easily and it's got his number on it. By now I'm worried that I've lost my original party.
The next thing I know, all eight of us are in a taxi, heading for Levenshulme where I live. We're going very fast, way too fast for a taxi ride. And when I look through the window I see we're going through Droylsden, where I was born. This is wrong, because you don't go through Droylsden to get to Levenshulme.
Then it hits me. I'm in a dream!
I tell my party this news, but they all laugh at me, and say that I'm drunk. So I set out to prove it to them. I tell them that there are eight of us in the taxi, when only five are allowed to travel in one. No way would the driver let eight of us in. This doesn't convince them, so I remind them that the College of Music is not a giant taxi rank, and thousands of people don't queue for taxis all at the same time. I tell them that we're going through Droylsden, which is the wrong way home. I tell them that I've just seen two friends I haven't seen for years, both in the taxi queue. Too much of a coincidence. Then I start to hear voices