A Time of Changes

“And with whom have you played this game?”

I said, “Their names don’t matter. No one you would know. People of Ma

“Loimel?”

Now it was my turn to snort. “Never! She knows nothing of this at all.”

“Halum, then?”

I shook my head. “One wishes one had the courage to approach Halum. So far one has concealed everything from her. One fears she’s too virginal, too easily shocked. It’s sad, isn’t it, Noim, when one has to hide something as exciting as this, as wonderfully rewarding, from one’s bondsister.”

“From one’s bondbrother too,” he observed testily.

“You would have been told in time,” I said. “You would have been offered your chance to experience the communion.”

His eyes flashed. “Do you think I’d want it?”

His deliberate obscenity earned only a faint smile from me. “One hopes one’s bondbrother will share all of one’s experiences. At present the drug opens a gulf between us. One has gone again and again to a place you have never visited. Do you see, Noim?”

Noim saw. He was tempted; he hovered at the edge of the abyss; he chewed his lips and tugged at his earlobes, and everything that passed across his mind was as transparent to me as if we had already shared the Sumaran powder. For my sake he was uneasy, knowing that I had seriously strayed from the Covenant and might soon find myself in grave spiritual and legal trouble. For his own sake he was gnawed by curiosity, aware that selfbaring with one’s bondbrother was no great sin and half-eager to know the kind of communion he might have with me under the drug. Also his eyes revealed a glint of jealousy, that I comprehended these things at that moment, though I confirmed them later when Noim’s soul was open to me.

We said nothing to one another about these matters for several days. He came with me to my office, and watched in admiration as I dealt with matters of the highest national significance. He saw the clerks bowing in and out of my presence, and also the clerk Ulman, who had had the drug, and whose cool familiarity with me touched off suspicious vibrations in Noim’s sensitive ante

He said he felt he could not regard himself as my true bondbrother unless he sampled it. Those words came from him at great cost. His elegant clothes were rumpled by his restlessness, and a fine line of beaded perspiration stood out on his upper lip. We went to a room where no one could intrude, and I prepared the potion. As he took the flask, he briefly flashed at me his familiar grin, impudent and sly and bold, but his hand was shaking so badly he nearly spilled the drink. The drug took effect quickly for both of us. It was a night of thick humidity with a dense greasy mist covering the city and its suburbs, and it seemed to me that fingers of that mist were sliding into our room through the partly opened window: I saw shimmering, pulsating strands of cloud groping at us, dancing between my bondbrother and myself. The early sensations of druggedness disturbed Noim, until I explained that everything was normal, the twi

Also I saw, as I had seen before, my own image refracted through Noim’s sensibility: a far nobler Ki

Not so Noim. He looked depleted and chilled. He could barely lift his eyes to mine. His mood was so frigid that I dared not break in on it, but remained still, waiting for him to recover. At length he said, “Is it all over?”

“Yes.”

“Promise one thing, Ki

“Say it, Noim.”

“That you never do this thing with Halum! Is it a promise? Will you promise it, Ki