A couple of heartbeats later the vuset miraculously reverted to proper synchronization. Beaming and gesthe man in the screen resumed his unheard diatribe.
Lyla sat up and cradled her stinging arm across her bosom, rubbing it with the tips of her opposite fingers. “Why don’t you make a mark on the wall there so you don’t have to feel around for it next time?” she said, not looking at Dan but allowing her eyes to rove distractedly over the contents of the room. In the Benares brassware tray before the Lar’s shrine there was a sludgy pile of pseudorganics; clearly someone had remembered just in time to dump in it the books whose expiry date was approaching, and since she didn’t recollect doing so it must have been Dan. There was a thread of dried red wine running down the wall from the corner of the table, which had been folded back without being wiped. The shelf which held their genuine twentieth-century seven-branched candlestick was covered in powdery ashes, because she had insisted on burning seven different types of agarbati in it all at once-her nose wrinkled at the memory.
In short, the place was a mess.
Dan paused in his task of applying, strand by strand, synthetic hair to the adhesive he had smeared on his cheeks. “You finally woke up, hm? I was just about to start shaking you. Don’t you know what the time is?” He gestured towards his new acquisition, the vuset, as though it were a clock.
Lyla stared at him blankly.
“Don’t you recognize Matthew Flamen? Hell, how many spoolpigeons are there left on three-vee? That’s his noon slot, and it’s better than halfway through. LisHe raised one bare leg and jabbed it towards the sound control on the low-built cabinet from which the centimeter-thick holographic screen jutted up like a sail from the hull of a yacht. Misjudging his balance, he sat down plump on the corner of the bed. The sudload was too much for the worn mechanism, and Lyla found herself deposited on the baseboard to the accompaniment of a whine of escaping gas.
Flamen’s ingratiating voice said, “In this world which is so often terrifying, aren’t you envious of the security people feel when they’ve installed Guardian traps at their doors and windows? You can’t buy better, and you’d be a fool to buy anything less good.”
He vanished. A tall scowling kneeblank marched forward in his place, and before Lyla had had time to re-she was still not awake enough to have convinced herself that the three-dimensional full-color image was going to stay buried in the screen-spiked metal bands had clamped on him at neck-, waist- and knee-height Blood began to ooze from the points where the cruel metal prongs had sunk in. He looked briefly bewildered, then slumped unconscious.
“Guardian!” sang an eldritch castrato voice. “Guar-dee-ann!”
“I guess maybe we ought to invest in some of those,” Dan said.
“What in the world do you think we’re going to have left that’s worth stealing if you go on like this?” Lyla demanded crossly. “Don’t you realize you just broke the bed?” Jumping to her feet, she hit the off switch of the vuset Nothing happened.
“Forgot to tell you,” Dan muttered. “The off switch doesn’t work. That’s why Berry gave it to us.”
“Oh, for-!” Lyla sought the power-cord with her eyes; finding it, she yanked the leech free of the wall and the renewed image of Matthew Flamen collapsed into a welter of blues and greens. “Do you want to sleep on a hard plain board tonight? Because I don’t!”
“I’ll call someone and get it fixed,” Dan sighed. “Right now you get a move on, hm? Have you forgotten we’re booked for the Ginsberg this afternoon?”
Sulkily Lyla picked up the clothes she had discarded last night: gray and olive Nix and a pair of Schoos. “Any calls or mail?” she asked as she began to put them on.
“Go look if you’re that interested.” Dan touched the flock on his face gingerly; satisfied that it was presentahe detached the rozar from the wall and returned it to its case. “But you’re supposed to do duty to the Lar first, aren’t you?”