Beside him, Lyla was fidgeting with something. Out of the corner of his eye he saw her remove from the pocket of her Nix the small flat bottle he had caught a glimpse of earlier and make to slip it into the pouch of her yash.
“What’s in those things?” he demanded.
“You mean the sibs?”
“Sibs?”
“Short for’sibyl-pills.’ Here you are.” She handed him the bottle. It bore a gaudy yellow label on which was printed the name of a famous pharmaceutical company.
Flamen read the wording slowly.
“My God! If that’s what I think it is-! You honestly mean you took two-fifty mg’s of this stuff less than an hour ago and you walked out on your own two feet?”
“It sort of gets burned up during the trance, I guess. But it is pretty fierce for someone who isn’t used to it. Dan tried one once and went into such a high orbit I thought he’d never come down. Maybe he didn’t Slapme out of trance-the damned fool!”
“And you buy this stuff at the drugstore?”
“Well, it’s not something I’d care to home-brew on the kitchen stove!” Lyla said tartly. “It’s supposed to have been made up to the formula of Diana Spitz, the first of the great pythonesses-back before the turn of the century, someone told me.”
Genuinely awed, Flamen passed the bottle back, “Okay, I believe you. You don’t know what you’re saywhen you’re in trance. Nobody could stay conscious under a load like that.”
“So tell me what I’m supposed to have said about your wife. And why should I have mentioned her, any
“She was right there in the audience.”
“You mean the doctor who.? Oh, no!” Lyla’s eyes rounded enormously. “Oh, Lord! I’m dreadfully sorry, Mr. Flamen. I was-uh-distracted. It simply didn’t register. Is it something very serious?”
“When they took her in, they assured me it wasn’t. But-but damn it! I know my own wife better than any doctor ever could, and experts or no experts I say she’s not better since she went into the Ginsberg, but worse. Come to think of it.”
Now what would be the consequences if it were shown that one of Mogshack’s patients had actually deteriorated as a result of his treatment? A rising tide of excitement filled Flamen’s mind. He hadn’t tackled a sacred cow of that size since-well, perhaps since the affair which had secured him promotion from local station work to network transmissions, five years ago.
“Yes,” he said aloud. “Yes, I’m going to do that! It’s high time someone tore the beard off Dr. Mogshack!”
“Then you can start by telling people there’s a man in the Ginsberg who’s more rational than the director.”
“What? Who?” Flamen jerked his head around.
Lyla had put her hands to her temples and was swaygiddily. “I-I don’t know. I guess maybe this time I didn’t bum the sib up, what with Dan slapping me awake. I heard myself say that, but I don’t know why I said it and I don’t know who I meant.”
“One of the patients?”
“I. Yes.” Lyla tried to rub her forehead, through the encumbering hood of the yash, found she couldn’t, and in a fit of rage tore the clumsy garment off. “Oh, stuff this thing! Dan says I have to wear it all the time because otherwise the insurance on me isn’t valid, but he doesn’t have to walk around half suffocated! Christ, I’m so frightened all of a sudden. I never had a hangover after a trance before. Do you have a trank on board?”
“Sure!” Flamen punched the dispenser key. She seized tile pill and choked it down.
“Gone,” she said eventually. “Sorry. I’d have liked to tell you more but I couldn’t stand the pressure.”
Flamen hesitated. “You disliked the Ginsberg, that’s obvious,” he said at length.
“It makes my guts churn.”
“Why?”
“I don’t know.” Lyla’s voice was steady again now, and she considered the question dispassionately. “I didn’t like the atmosphere there when I arrived. Dan said it had something to do with the patients’ skin-secretions, but it wasn’t so much something I could smell as. Oh, I can’t define it.”
“Are pythonesses sensitive to things other people don’t notice, even without going into trance?”