Nice Girl and 5 Husbands by Fritz Leiber Read Free Book Online Page B

twinge of uneasiness. There was something about this girl, more than her strange clothes and the odd words she used now and then, something almost — though ghosts don't wear digitals — spectral.
    They scrambled up a little rise, digging their foot-gear into the sand, until they stood on a long flat. And there, serpentining around two great clumps of rock, was a many-windowed adobe ranch house with a roof like fresh soot.
    "Oh, they've put on their clothes," his companion exclaimed with pleasure. "They've decided to make it a holiday after all."
    Tom spotted a beard in the group swarming out to meet them. Its cultish look gave him a momentary feeling of superiority, followed by an equally momentary apprehension — the five husbands were certainly husky. Then both feelings were swallowed up in the swirl of introduction.
    He told his own name, found that his companion's was Lois Wolver, then smiling faces began to bob toward his, his hands were shaken, his cheeks were kissed, he was even spun around like blind man's buff, so that he lost track of the husbands and failed to attach Mary, Rachel, Simone and Joyce to the right owners.
    He did notice that Jokichi was an Oriental with a skin as tight as enameled china, and that Rachel was a tall slim Negro girl. Also someone said, "Joyce isn't a Wolver, she's just visiting."
    He got a much clearer impression of the clothes than the names. They were colorful, costly-looking, and mostly Egyptian and Cretan in inspiration. Some of them would have been quite immodest, even compared to Miss Tosker's famous playsuits, except that the wearers didn't seem to feel so.
    "There goes the middle-morning rocket!" one of them eagerly cried.
    Tom looked up with the rest, but his eyes caught the dazzling sun. However, he heard a faint roaring that quickly sank in volume and pitch, and it reminded him that the Army had a rocket testing range in this area. He had little interest in science, but he hadn't known they were on a daily schedule.
    "Do you suppose it's off the track?" he asked anxiously.
    "Not a chance," someone told him — the beard, he thought. The assurance of the tones gave him a possible solution. Scientists came from all over the world these days and might have all sorts of advanced ideas. This could be a group working at a nearby atomic project and leading its peculiar private life on the side.
    AS THEY eddied toward the house he heard Lois remind someone, "But you finally did declare it a holiday," and a husband who looked like a gay Pharaoh respond, "I had another see at the mood charts and I found a subtle surge I'd missed."
    Meanwhile the beard (a black one) had taken Tom in charge. Tom wasn't sure of his name, but he had a tan skin, a green sarong, and a fiercely jovial expression. "The swimming pool's around there, the landing spot's on the other side," he began, then noticed Tom gazing at the sooty roof. "Sun power cells," he explained proudly. "They store all the current we need."
    Tom felt his idea confirmed. "Wonder you don't use atomic power," he observed lightly.
    The beard nodded. "We've been asked that. Matter of esthetics. Why waste sunlight or use hard radiations needlessly? Of course, you might feel differently. What's your group, did you say?"
    "Tosker-Brown," Tom told him, adding when the beard frowned, "the Fellowship people, you know."
    "I don't," the beard confessed. "Where are you located?"
    Tom briefly described the randi house and cabins at the other end of the valley.
    "Comic, I can't place it." The beard shrugged. "Here come the children."
    A dozen naked youngsters raced around the ranch house, followed by a woman in a vaguely African dress open down the sides.
    "Yours?" Tom asked.
    "Ours," the beard answered.
    " C'est un homme! "
    " Regardez des vetements! "
    "No need to practice, kids; this is a holiday," the beard told them. "Tom, Helen," he said, introducing the woman with the air-conditioned garment. "Her turn today to companion die Kinder ."
    One of