One good—or bad, depending on your point of view—thing about an overactive metabolism is that, if it ensures you get drunk extremely quickly, it permits you to sober up with almost equal quickness. Feliz had thrown off the effects of the controller’s liquor by mid-afternoon, although he had an uncomfortable hangover until about sunset.
That night he stayed in a one-room apartment in the same building that housed Taki. The door to Feliz’s apartment, however, was locked. And a guard stood on duty outside it. Nevertheless, a few hours after he had lain down, there was a clicking sound and the door swung inward. By the dim illumination of the moonlight streaming through the room’s single uncurtained window, Feliz caught a glimpse of a small body which slipped through the opening of the door. The door closed and clicked again. Feliz sat up and the bed creaked alarmingly beneath him.
“It’s just me,” said a small, apologetic voice in the darkness.
“Kai!” said Feliz. He fumbled around for the flint and steel they had left him to light the candle by his bedside.
“Yes,” said Kai, from the darkness. “Don’t put on a light. I look awful. I’ve been crawling in all sorts of dirty, dusty places, and I haven’t had a chance to get clean clothes since I first met you.”
She had been feeling her way toward him in the darkness as she talked and now her outstretched fingers suddenly came into contact with Feliz’s bare arm! She gave a sudden, stiffled shriek and started to jerk away, but Feliz caught her wrist.
“Let me go!” she pleaded in a terrified whisper. “You haven’t got any clothes on!”
“Certainly. Got a T-shirt!” muttered Feliz annoyedly. “Feel.” He shoved her captive hand against the cloth covering his chest and felt her go limp.
“Oh! ” she said, sitting down on the bed. “I was so scaredthere for a minute.”
"Where’ve you been?” said Feliz. “Had enough to eat?”
"I’ve been back in the stacks.”
“Stacks?” He waited for her to explain. She did not. He tried again. “Steaks?”
"Stacks," she said. “At the library. You know, where the library keeps its books and microfilms and everything: The machinery’s supposed to deliver the films of books you want, but it doesn’t work of course. I had to crawl back in the stacks with candles and find the spools right in their racks.”
“What were you—”
“Oh, Feliz!” she broke in, without letting him finish. “You were right. They aren’t hallucinations. They’re just as real as we are.” Her voice shook. “They’re even some of them d-distant relatives!”
Feliz attempted to pat her unseen back consolingly, and did fairly well. She responded by creeping into his arms like a lost puppy.
"Hold me," she said. Feliz held her. It was a not unpleasant occupation.
After a while she stopped shivering and began to talk again.
“After I left you,” she sniffed into Feliz’s T-shirt front, "I just ran and hid for a long time. I wanted to get away from everything. From my people, from the hallucinations, but mostly from you. I didn’t care if I lived or died.T just wanted to find a hole to crawl into, and crawl into it, and never come out again.”
“Ah well . . . ” said Feliz, clearing his throat gruffly in the darkness.
“Oh, that’s all right,” she said, snuggling closer in his arms. “I realize now you were just trying to make me see things for my own good." She rubbed her nose in a friendly way against his chest, and Feliz found himself making a deep-chested bearlike sound in response. Her nose almost tickled. She is, thought Feliz, a feather-brained young nut, but you can’t help feeling protective toward her. Even me. Here I hardly know her, and I already feel like her father. Like her uncle, I mean.
“Well, I found a hole finally,” Kai said. “A building we don’t use, and they don’t either. And I lay there almost a day feeling sorry for myself. But finally I kind of reached a limit on that. Besides, I began to get awfully hungry. So I got up and went out again.”
A young uncle, Feliz was thinking, as he beamed into the darkness above her head.
“Well, the only place where I was sure I could get food easily was your ship. So I went there.”
A cousin? Feliz was thinking.
“And, my, that cupboard you keep food in is marvelous. You know, it never seems to get empty!”
“Yes,” said Feliz, “automatic processing.” No, just an old friend of the family. A young old friend of the family; that’s what Kai makes me feel like.
“Uh,” said Kai. “I’m sorry about drawing some more in that book of yours. I wasn’t really understanding things yet, and—”
“Yes, yes,” said Feliz, beaming into the darkness, “it was beautiful.”
“Beautiful?”
He felt her head come up, and returned quickly to his senses.
“The art of it, I mean. Uh—such line. Such control.”
“Oh!” Pleasure thrilled in Kai’s voice. “Does my art really reach through to you?”
“It’s magnificent!”
“Oh!” said Kai. “Oh! Do you really think so? What first struck you about it? How did you feel when you first saw it? Were you really impressed, right from the start?”
“Yes,” said Feliz.
“You said it was magnificent. Did you mean magnificent?Or just magnificent? I mean, did you really mean magnificent?”
“I said it, didn’t I?”
“Oh!” said Kai. And hugged him. Feliz hugged her back, cautiously. Suddenly, he woke up to what he was doing.Whoops, he thought.
“Now is not the time,” he said aloud.
"Now? What?” He could feel Kai staring at him suddenly through the darkness. “Not the time for what?”
“Never mind. I’ll tell you later,” he said. “Go on with your story.”
“But I thought we were talking about my art.”
“There will be time for such a—” What am I talking about? wondered Feliz. He cleared his throat. “We will talk about your art. Later," he said. "Right now, the situation is urgent." I'm not making much sense, he thought. Oh, well.“Go on,” he said.
“Well,” said Kai reluctantly. She took a deep breath. “Well,” she said, “after I’d eaten, I began to think over what you said. And I decided to.get it straightened out, one way or another. So I went to the library.”
“Good for you.”
“Well, I did think myself that it was high time somebody did. But, Feliz! It was awful. There’s all sorts of spiders and things crawling around in there, and it’s dark. Nobody’s been there for a hundred years! And the dust is so thick that you can’t see where you’re going, and you can’t breathe. And I got l-lost—” She was shaking again.
Feliz held her cautiously.
“But," he prompted, "after you found out what you went after . . .”
“Yes. After all, I found it,” she said. “And it’s all true. First we started out not having anything to do with them. And then we began the acting and dressing differently. And then we started pretending they really weren’t there at all. And all the time they were doing the same things. Feliz! You’ve got to let me stay with you always, from now on.”
Feliz shivered slightly.
“Well, we’ll see,” he said.
“I don’t have any people but you any more.” She clung to him. “Can’t we go away from here and live by ourselves, somewhere where they’ll never find us? They wouldn’t follow us back into the hills; I know they wouldn’t.”
“Well,” said Feliz. “Going into the hills isn’t always the solution. I mean, there’s things about me you don’t know.”
“I don’t care!” she said.
“Well, that’s nice. But I’m still a prisoner here, and there’s various things to think of," said Feliz. "What I really need right at the moment is to know everything you can tell me, both about your people and these others.”
“Just ask me!” said Kai.
“Well—uh,” said Feliz. “What would happen if you saw somebody with his clothes off? I mean—” he broke off. Kai had just given a soft little shriek.
“Oh, how terrible!” she said.
“Terrible?”
"Any decent person,” said Kai primly, "wears clothes allthe time.”
“Night and day? Alone as well as in company?”
“I should think so! Why, even if you were alone, you could never be sure who might be look—oh!" She broke off suddenly. There was a little silence. “I see what you mean,” she said.
"One of the other group might be present or watching; and even though you couldn’t admit to yourself that they were there, you couldn’t be sure that their conditioning was as strong as yours,” said Feliz. “They might be letting themselves see you.”
“Yes,” said Kai unhappily.
“Also," said Feliz thoughtfully, “it might be a matter of violating the basic taboo, since someone without clothes one could not be identified as a member of a particular party.”
“Taboo?” said Kai. “What’s a taboo?”
"Tell you later. When did you really first start admitting to yourself that you saw these other people?”
He heard the sharp hiss of her breath, indrawn in the darkness.
“I always did!” she burst out suddenly. “I always knew they were there. I just pretended I didn’t.”
“And I’ll bet,” said Feliz grimly, “everybody else, or nearly everybody else, was in the same boat. A few might have been so good at autohypnosis—El Hoska, for example—that they actually couldn’t see the others. But I’ll bet most are just like you were.”
“Yes,” said Kai. “But what good does knowing that do? They won’t admit it!”
“No,” said Feliz. “But that’s not important.”
“What is important?”
“If l told you, you wouldn’t believe it," said Feliz. “Both your groups here, like all social ideas carried to extremes, are starting to break down of their own weight. El Hoska has become a strong central authority out of sheer necessity, and Taki—”
“Who?”
“Taki Manoai, head of the black-dressed people. He’s reached the stage of wanting to give half of his authority away.”
“He has?”
“And still the Malvar don’t dare land.”
“The who?”
“There are many things,” said Feliz, “I’m going to have to explain to you. But now now. Right now, I want you to go back to the ship and wait for me there. I’11 sneak away right after the ceremony tomorrow, when that deal in the square gets dedicated. You go back to the ship and wait for me. And stay inside it.”
“All right, but—”
“No buts. Stay inside.”
“Oh, I will. But—” Kai yawned suddenly. “I’ve been going steadily since yesterday, and I’m so tired. Can’t I just close my eyes here for five minutes?”
“Well. . ." said Feliz.
“Please.”
“Well,” growled Feliz, “all right.” He started to move out from under her so she could lie down; but Kai merely sighed comfortably and curled up a little tighter in his arms.
“Just five minutes. . .” she murmured, and began to breathe slowly and steadily.
“Five minutes,” said Feliz helplessly. He looked around the dark room, and out the dim window. In the moonlight, he could see the edge of the rooftop of the room adjoining. As he watched, the dark silhouette of a rabbit hopped into view and paused there, outlined against the night sky like a black paper kindergarten cut-out of itself. It barked.
“That reminds me,” said Feliz suddenly. “Something I particularly wanted to ask you, Kai . . . Kai?”
He looked down. Kai breathed on, unconscious. For a second he debated waking her, then gave up the idea. He sighed, and looked back out the window.
The rabbit barked softly at the moon.