Well, he wasn’t going to get nearer any answers by standing here, he decided. The door looked normal enough, and there was only one way to find out whether it was locked or not. He was halfway toward it when it opened and Lyn walked in, looking cool and comfortable in a short-sleeved pullover top and slacks. He stopped dead and stared at her while part of him braced itself instinctively for her to hurl herself across the room and throw her arms around his neck while sobbing in true heroine tradition. Instead she stopped just inside the door and stood casually inspecting the room.
“Not bad,” she commented. “The carpet’s too dark, though. It should be a more red rust.” The carpet promptly changed to a more red rust.
Hunt stared at it for a few seconds, blinked, and then looked up numbly. “How the hell did you do that?” he asked, looking down again to make sure that he hadn’t imagined it. He hadn’t.
She looked surprised. “It’s VISAR. It can do anything. Haven’t you been talking to it?” Hunt shook his head. Lyn’s face became puzzled. “If you didn’t know, how come you’re wearing different clothes? What happened to your Nanook outfit?”
Hunt could only shake his head. “I don’t know. I don’t know how I got here, either.” He stared down at the red rust carpet again. “Amazing. . . I think I could use a drink.”
“VIsAR,” Lyn said in a slightly raised voice. “How about a Scotch, straight, no ice?” A glass half filled with an amber liquid materialized from nowhere on the table beside Hunt. Lyn picked it up and offered it to him nonchalantly. He reached out hesitantly to touch it with a fingertip, at the same time half hoping that it wouldn’t be there. It was. He took the glass unsteadily from her hand and tested it with a sip, then downed a third of the remainder in one gulp. The warmth percolated smoothly down through his chest and after a few moments had worked a small miracle of its own. Hunt drew a long breath, held it for a few seconds, then exhaled it slowly but still shakily.
“Cigarette?” Lyn inquired. Hunt nodded without thinking. A cigarette, already lit, appeared between his fingers. Don’t even ask about it, he told himself.
It all had to be some kind of an elaborate hallucination. How, when, why, or where he didn’t know, but it seemed that he had little choice for the moment but to go along with it. Perhaps this whole preliminary interlude had been staged by the Thuriens to provide a period of adjustment and famfflarization or something like that. If so, he could see their point. This was like dumping an alchemist from the Middle Ages into the middle of a computerized chemical plant. Thurien, or wherever this was, was going to take some getting used to, he realized. Having decided that much, he felt that probably he was over the biggest hurdle already. But how had Lyn managed to adapt so quickly? Maybe there were disadvantages to being a scientist that he hadn’t thought about before.
When he looked up and studied her face, he could see now that her superficial calm was being forced in order to control an underlying bemusement not far short of his own. Her mind was temporarily blocking itself off from the full impact of what it all meant, probably in a way similar to the delayed shock that was a common reaction to exceptionally painfui news such as the death of a close relative. He could detect no sign of her having been through anything as traumatic as he had. At least that was something to be thankful for.
He moved over to one of the chairs and turned to perch himself on an arm. “So. . . how did you get here?” he asked.
“Well, I was right behind you on the gravity conveyor, or whatever you’d call it, from that crazy place that we all walked out into from the plane, and then. . .” She broke off as she caught the
perplexed expression creeping across Hunt’s face. “You don’t know what I’m talking about, do you?”