“Stop writhing! Breathe through your nose. It’s not that hot. Not hot enough to blister, anyhow.”
Spar doubted that, but after a bit decided it wasn’t quite hot enough to bake his brain through the roof of his mouth. Besides, he didn’t want to show Doc his cowardice. He held still. He blinked several times and the general blur became the blurs of Doc’s face and the cluttered room silhouetted by the corpse-glare. He tried to smile, but his lips were already stretched wider than their muscles could ever have done. That hurt too; he realized now that the heat was abating a little.
Doc was grinning for him. “Well, you would ask an old drunkard to use techniques he’d only read about. To make it up to you, I’ll give you teeth sharp enough to sever shrouds. Kim, please get away from that bag.”
The black blur of the cat was pushing off from a black blur twice his length. Spar mumbled disapprovingly at Kim through his nose and made motions. The larger blur was shaped like Doc’s little bag, but bigger than a hundred of them. It must be massive too, for in reaction to Kim’s push it had bent the shroud to which it was attached and—the point—the shroud was very slow in straightening.
“That bag contains my treasure, Spar,” Doc explained, and when Spar lifted his eyebrows twice to signal another question, went on, “No, not coin and gold and jewels, but a second transfinite infinitude—sleep and dreams and nightmares for every soul in a thousand Windrushes.” He glanced at his wrist. “Time enough now. Open your mouth.” Spar obeyed, though it cost him new pain.
Doc withdrew what Spar had bitten on, wrapped it in gleam, and clipped it to the nearest shroud. Then he looked in Spar’s mouth again.
“I guess I did make it a bit too hot,” he said. He found a small pouch, set it to Spar’s lips, and squeezed it. A mist filled Spar’s mouth and all pain vanished.
Doc tucked the pouch in Spar’s pocket. “If the pain returns, use it again.”
But before Spar could thank Doc, the latter had pressed a tube to his eye. “Look, Spar, what do you see?”
Spar cried out, he couldn’t help it, and jerked his eye away.
“What’s wrong, Spar?”
“Doc you gave me a dream,” Spar said hoarsely. “You won’t tell anyone, will you? And it tickled.”
“What was the dream like?” Doc asked eagerly.
“Just a picture, Doc. The picture of a goat with the tail of a fish. Doc, I saw the fish’s…” His mind groped, “… scales! Everything had… edges! Doc, is that what they mean when they talk about seeing sharply?”
“Of course, Spar. This is good. It means there’s no cerebral or retinal damage. I’ll have no trouble making up field glasses—that is, if there’s nothing seriously wrong with my antique pair. So you still see things sharp-edged in dreams—that’s natural enough. But why were you afraid of me telling?”
“Afraid of being accused of witchcraft, Doc. I thought seeing things like that was clairvoyance. The tube tickled my eye a little.”
“Isotopes and insanity! It’s supposed to tickle. That’s the field. Let’s try the other eye.”
Again Spar wanted to cry out, but he restrained himself, and this time he had no impulse to jerk his eye away, although there was again the faint tickling. The picture was that of a slim girl. He could tell she was female because of her general shape. But he could see her edges. He could see… details. For instances, her eyes weren’t mist-bounded colored ovals. They had points at both ends, which were china-white… triangles. And the pale violet round between the triangles had a tiny black round at its center.
She had silvery hair, yet she looked young, he thought, though it was hard to judge such matters when you could see edges. She made him think of the platinum-haired girl he’d glimpsed in Crown’s Hole.
She wore a long, gleaming white dress, which left her shoulders bare, but either art or some unknown force had drawn her hair and her dress toward her feet. In her dress it made… folds.
“What’s her name, Doc? Almodie?”
“No. Virgo. The Virgin. You can see her edges?”
“Yes, Doc. Sharp. I get it!—like a knife. And the goat-fish?”
“Capricorn,” Doc answered, removing the tube from Spar’s eye.
“Doc, I know Capricorn and Virgo are the names of lunths, terranths, sunths, and starths, but I never knew they had pictures. I never knew they were anything.”
“You— Of course, you’ve never seen watches, or stars, let alone the constellations of the zodiac.”
Spar was about to ask what all those were, but then he saw that the corpse-light was all gone, although the ribbon of brighter light had grown very wide.
“At least in this stretch of your memory,” Doc added. “I should have your new eyes and teeth ready next Loafday. Come earlier if you can manage. I may see you before that at the Bat Rack, Playday night or earlier.”
“Great, Doc, but now I’ve got to haul. Come on, Kim! Sometimes business heavies up Loafday night, Doc, like it was Playday night come at the wrong end. Jump in, Kim.”
“Sure you can make it back to the Bat Rack all right, Spar? It’ll be dark before you get there.”
“Course I can, Doc.”
But when night fell, like a heavy hood jerked down over his head, halfway down the first passageway, he would have gone back to ask Doc to guide him, except he feared Kim’s contempt, even though the cat still wasn’t talking. He pulled ahead rapidly, though the few running lights hardly let him see the centerline.
The fore gangway was even worse—completely empty and its lights dim and flickering. Seeing by blurs bothered him now that he knew what seeing sharp was like. He was beginning to sweat and shake and cramp from his withdrawal from alcohol and his thoughts were a tumult. He wondered if any of the weird things that had happened since meeting Kim were real or dream. Kim’s refusal—or inability?—to talk any more was disquieting. He began seeing the misty rims of blurs that vanished when he looked straight toward them. He remembered Keeper and the brewos talking about vamps and witches.
Then instead of waiting for the Bat Rack’s green hatch, he dove off into the passageway leading to the aft one. This passageway had no lights at all. Out of it he thought he could hear Hellhound growling, but couldn’t be sure because the big chewer was grinding. He was scrabbling with panic when he entered the Bat Rack through the dark red hatch, remembering barely in time to avoid the new glue.
The place was jumping with light and excitement and dancing figures, and Keeper at once began to shout abuse at him. He dove into the torus and began taking orders and serving automatically, working entirely by touch and voice, because withdrawal now had his vision swimming—a spinning blur of blurs.
After a while that got better, but his nerves got worse. Only the unceasing work kept him going—and shut out Keeper’s abuse—but he was getting too tired to work at all. As Playday dawned, with the crowd around the torus getting thicker all the while, he snatched a pouch of moonmist and set it to his lips.
Claws dug his chest. “Isssiot! Sssot! Ssslave of fffear!”
Spar almost went into convulsions, but put back the moonmist. Kim came out of the slopsuit and pushed off contemptuously, circled the bar and talked to various of the drinkers, soon became a conversation piece. Keeper started to boast about him and quit serving. Spar worked on and on and on through sobriety more nightmarish than any drunk he could recall. And far, far longer.
Suzy came in with a mark and touched Spar’s hand when he served her dark to her. It helped.
He thought he recognized a voice from below. It came from a kinky-haired, slopsuited brewo he didn’t know. But then he heard the man again and thought he was Ensign Drake. There were several brewos he didn’t recognize.
The place started really jumping. Keeper upped the music. Singly or in pairs, somersaulting dancers bounded back and forth between shrouds. Others toed a shroud and shimmied. A girl in black did splits on one. A girl in white dove through the torus. Keeper put it on her boyfriend’s check. Brewos tried to sing.
Spar heard Kim recite:
“Izz a cat.
Killzz a rat.
Greetss each guy.
Thin or ffat.
Saay dolls, hi!”
Playday night fell. The place got hotter. Doc didn’t come. But Crown did. Dancers parted and a whole section of drinkers made way aloft for him and his girls and Hellhound, so that they had a third of the torus to themselves, with no one below in that third either. To Spar’s surprise they all took coffee except the dog, who when asked by Crown, responded, “Bloody Mary,” drawing out the words in such deep tones that they were little more than a low “Bluh-Muh” growl.
“Iss that sspeech, I assk you?” Kim commented from the other side of the torus. Drunks around him choked down chuckles.