A Time of Changes

“Today,” I said. “Now.”

34

We needed seclusion. The Port Justiciary maintains a country lodge in the hills two hours northwest of the city of Ma

The lodge had an excellent steambath. We scrubbed ourselves vigorously, and when we came out we do

“Your last chance,” Schweiz said, gri

“No.”

“You understand that there are risks, though? We are equally inexperienced in this drug. There are dangers.”

“Understood,” I said.

“Is it also understood that you enter this voluntarily, and under no coercion?”

I said, “Why this delay, Schweiz? Bring out your potion.”

“One wishes to assure himself that your grace is fully prepared to meet any consequences.”

In a tone of heavy sarcasm I said, “Perhaps there should be a contract between us, then, in the proper fashion, relieving you of any liability in case one wishes later to press a claim for damage to the personality—”

“If you wish, your grace. One does not feel it necessary.”

“One wasn’t serious,” I said. I was fidgety now. “Can it be that you’re nervous about it too, Schweiz? That you have some doubts?”

“We take a bold step.”

“Let’s take it, then, before the moment goes by. Bring out the potion, Schweiz. Bring out the potion.”

“Yes,” he said, and gave me a long look, his eyes to mine, and clapped his hands in childlike glee. And laughed in triumph. I saw how he had manipulated me. Now I was begging him for the drug! Oh, devil, devil!

From his traveling case he fetched the packet of white powder. He told me to get wine, and I ordered two flasks of chilled Ma

35

I was at first greatly aware of the functioning of my own body: the thud-thud of my heart, the pounding of the blood against the walls of arteries, the movements of fluids deep within my ears, the drifting of corpuscular bodies across my field of vision. I became enormously receptive to external stimuli, currents of air brushing my cheek, a fold of my robe touching my thigh, the pressure of the floor against the sole of my foot. I heard an unfamiliar sound as of water tumbling through a distant gorge. I lost touch with my surroundings, for as my perceptions intensified the range of them also narrowed, and I found myself incapable of perceiving the shape of the room, for I saw nothing clearly except in a constricted tu