Awkwardly, with his free hand, but hungrily, he gobbled down the fish, even gnawing on the bones. It was an unfamiliar fish and had a strange tang, but he was too hungry to be particular. He leaned back, sipping the drink slowly. He wondered about the change. Perhaps Cyrillon—who obviously was somewhat afraid of him since the episode with the crystal—considered him valuable as a hostage and, seeing the coarser food left uneaten, had decided he had to feed him better, and keep him in good health and good spirits.
The light from the high window crept across the floor. The shadows were pale purple, the light pink and sparkling. Strange motes danced in the pink beam.
Larry, feeling full and comfortably sleepy, leaned back, watching the motes. He realized suddenly that on each of the motes a tiny man rode, pink and purple and carrying an infinitesimal spear that looked like a fiber of saffron. Fascinated, incurious, he watched the tiny men slide down the sunbeam and mass on the floor. They formed into regiments, and still they kept sliding down the beam of pink light, until their small forms covered the floor. Larry blinked and they seemed to merge and melt away.
A huge black insect, almost the width of Larry’s hand, stuck his quivering head from a hole in the floor. He waggled huge phosphorescent whiskers at Larry and spoke and to Larry’s listless interest, the bug was speaking perfect Terran.
“You’re drugged, you know,” the bug said in a high, shaky voice. “It must have been in the food. Of course, that’s why it was so much better than usual this time, so you’d be sure to eat it.”
The pink and purple men reappeared on the floor and swarmed over the bug, shrilling in incomprehensible voices, nonsense syllables: “An chrya morgobush! Travertina fo mibbsy!”
As each little man touched the bug’s phosphorescent tendrils, he burst into a puff of green smoke.
The door swung open, invitingly. Someone said in the distance, “No tricks this time, hah?”
The man was standing there, and the twilight in the room darkened, brightened again into dawn. The man with the whip jeered from a corner. The little pink and purple men were crawling all over him and Larry laughed aloud to see his jailer covered with the swarming creatures; one of them disappeared into his pocket, another did a hornpipe on the man’s bald head. Dimly he felt someone bend over him, shove up his closed eyelid. How could he see with closed eyes? He laughed at the absurdity of it.
“No tricks,” said the jailer again; and all the little pink and purple men shouted in chorus ” ‘No tricks,’ he said!”
Behind the man the door opened and Kennard Alton, in dark-green cloak and a drawn dagger in his hand, stood there. The little pink and purple men swarmed up his legs and nearly blotted out his figure. He raised the dagger and it turned into a bunch of pink tulips as he brought it down toward the old bandit’s back. Larry heard himself laugh, but the laugh came out like a trumpetblast as the pink tulips plunged into the man’s back and a great flight of blackbirds gushed out, screaming wildly. Kennard kicked the fallen man, who disappeared into a swarming regiment of little pink and purple men laughing in isolated notes like small bells. Then Kennard strode across the room. The purple men swarmed up him, sat astride his nose, soared down the sunbeams, as Kennard stood over Larry.
“Come on! Every minute we’re here, there’s danger! Somebody might come. I’m not sure that old fellow’s the only guard in the castle!”
Larry looked up at him and laughed idly. The little pink and purple mannikin on Kennard’s nose was climbing up, digging footholds in Kennard’s chin with a tiny ax of green light. Larry laughed again.
“Brush the gremlins off your chin first.”
“Zandru!” Kennard bent over, pink tulips cascading from the front of his shirt. His hands clasped on Larry’s shoulders like nutcrackers. “I want some nuts,” Larry said, and giggled.
“Damn you, get up and come with me.”
Larry blinked. He said clearly, in Terran, “You’re not really here, you know. Any more than the little pink and purple gremlins are here. You’re a figment of my imagination. Go away, figment. A figment with purple pigment.”