Doorways in the Sand
by Roger Zelazny
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|style="text-align: left;"| You are a playboy and a dilettante, with no real desire ever to work, to hold a job, to repay society for suffering your existence. You are an opportunist. You are irresponsible. You are a drone.
Fred goes to his apartment and finds it ransacked. He examines the apartment, but finds nothing missing. Paul Byler, Fred’s geology teacher comes out of a closet. He slaps Fred around demanding the return of a replica he made of the crystalline star-stone. Byler is a world-renowned expert in crystallography and says he makes copies of the star-stone in order to sell them as novelty items. Fred states that the replica is not in the apartment and maybe his ex-roommate has it. Byler does not believe Fred. After a brief fight Fred escapes through a window to an outside ledge.
Byler visits Hal Sidmore, Fred’s ex-roommate, roughs him up and demands the model of the star-stone. Hal insists he does not have it saying that Fred probably has it in their old apartment. Previously, during a poker game, Byler gives the copy of the star-stone to Hal. However, Hal switches it without Byler's knowledge for what he thinks is a better model, but is in fact the star-stone itself. Arriving home Fred sees a news story on television reporting Byler’s murder and the odd removal of some of his vital organs.
As part of his study plan Fred goes to the desert in Australia to study ancient carvings on a cliff. Zeemeister and Buckler, two professional criminals, arrive and torture Fred for the location of the star-stone. Two alien law officers, Charv and Ragma, disguised as a wombat and a kangaroo respectively save Fred, and they all go into orbit in their spacecraft.
Later, as he comes slowly into consciousness a voice instructs Fred that he should not permit the aliens to take him to another world where they want to telepathically examine his mind for clues to the whereabouts of the star-stone. Fred convinces them that it would be against their alien field regulations to take him without his consent. They return him to Earth.
After being set down on Earth, Fred goes to visit Hal who reports that he receives phone calls from various people trying find Fred. People break into and ransack his apartment several times. And that Ted Nadler, a State Department employee, is looking for him. Finding himself intoxicated Fred stays the night with Hal and hears the voice, now identifying itself as Speicus, that has been talking to him. It tells him to test the inversion program of the alien Rhennius machine and then get intoxicated. It is easier for Speicus to talk to Fred if he is drunk. Fred breaks into the room with the Rhennius machine and, hanging from a rope from the ceiling, puts a penny through the machine three times. The first time Lincoln is looking backwards and the ONE is also backwards. The second time the penny is incised like an intaglio. The third time returns it to normal.
Fred goes bar-crawling to get drunk as Speicus instructs him. He runs into a shady old school adviser named Doctor Mérimée who tells him he is being followed. He joins Mérimée at a party at his apartment, finishes getting drunk, and falls asleep. On waking Fred remembers a communication with Speicus during the night. According to Speicus, reversing himself through the Rhennius machine will put "everything in proper order.” By subterfuge Fred manages to reverse himself by going through the Rhennius machine. Left is right and vice versa, and letters are read backwards from right to left with the letters turned backwards. He remembers his biochemistry and realizes that this reversal can be dangerous to his health. Meanwhile, Ted Nadler convinces the university to award Fred a Ph.D. in Anthropology. This outrages Fred because he loses his uncle’s stipend and has to get a job.
Fred calls Hal and they agree to meet in a secret place. They begin driving, aimlessly Fred thinks. Hal explains that Zeemeister and Buckler have his wife, Mary, and are demanding the star-stone. He has another replica of the stone from Byler’s lab and is going to trade it for Mary. Fred agrees to go along with the plan against his better judgment. They go to a beach cottage where they find Zeemeister, Buckler, a cat and Mary. Zeemeister declares the stone to be a fake and threatens to pull Mary’s fingernails off until they tell him where the star-stone is. Paul Byler, brought back to life by multiple organ transplants, enters through the back of the cottage with a drawn gun. In the ensuing struggle Buckler shoots Fred in the chest, and he blacks out.
Fred awakens in a hospital. He is alive since his heart was on the right side of his body due to the reversal, and he was shot on the left side where the heart is usually found. Everyone else from the cottage survives with minor injuries. Ted Nadler stops by Fred’s hospital room and offers him a position as alien culture specialist for the U.S. legation to the United Nations. Fred says he'll think about it.
Nadler explains the history of the star-stone. The United Nations hires Byler as an expert in synthetics and crystals to make a replica for safety purposes. The loan of the British Crown Jewels to the aliens outrages Byler and some of his fanatical Anglophile friends. Byler and an accomplice exchange the real star-stone for a fake one. Byler hires Zeemeister and Buckler in their capacity as professional criminals to assist in the substitution of the stones, but they really want the original for themselves for a ransom, Nadler believes.
While shaving the next morning Fred remembers a smile that remains with him from his night’s dreams. Ted Nadler and Fred travel to New York to meet with a telepath. As Fred enters his hotel room he is seized and raised into the air by the tentacles of an alien telepathic analyst who practices attack therapy. He attempts to reach into Fred’s subconscious for information about the star-stone. He is stunned to discover that the star-stone, Speicus, is inside Fred, having entered his body through a wound while Fred was asleep. Since he was reversed by the Rhennius machine Speicus is now fully functional and should be able to communicate telepathically directly and easily with Fred, but because Fred is now reversed it cannot. On the way to the Rhennius machine to have him reversed back to his original state, Speicus warns Fred about an unknown enemy by saying, “Our Snark is a Boojum.” In the building housing the Rhennius machine Doctor M’mrm’mlrr, the alien analyst, supervises the removal of the star-stone from Fred’s body. On the wall Fred sees a vision of “massive teeth framed by upward curving lips. . . .Then fading, fading. . . Gone.” Fred looks up and sees a black shape and cries out, “The smile.” Fred chases a telepathic alien disguised as a black cat up to the roof and over girders of the adjacent building. It attacks Fred and falls to its death. During the fight Fred realizes that Zeemeister and Buckler work for the alien agent called a Whillowhim.
Ragma explains that the Whillowhim are one of the oldest, most powerful and entrenched cultures in the galaxy. However, there is an alliance of younger ones that back common policies in conflict with those of the older blocs. The Whillowhim belong to a faction of the galactic coalition that opposes the policies of younger, newer members on major issues. One way to limit the power of the newer, less developed planets is to limit their number. The Whillowhim seeks to steal the star-stone to embarrass Earth and delay its entrance into the coalition of planets thereby weakening the power of the newer planets’ alliance.
Fred’s future is as an alien culture expert for the U.S. legation of the United Nations and as a host for Speicus. Speicus will use Fred’s nervous system as well as his broad knowledge of many subjects to gather information and process it as a kind of sociological computer. It can produce uniquely accurate and useful reports on anything they study together. In the end, Fred sees a beach with doorways leading to unique experiences in exotic places throughout the galaxy.