“I do not sulk,” Shima growled. “I am not a baby.”
Ind’dni sighed. “But perhaps I am, doctor. Sad to confess I also am not armored against possible outcome of this extraordinary venture of Miz Nunn, but… so be it. Let us launch her on her lonely trip into the unknown. The Promethium injection…?”
* * *
“STOP IT! STOP IT! STOP IT!” Gretchen screamed. “For God’s sake, what are you doing?” She lurched out of the quilted corner where she had recovered consciousness, stumbled across the padded cell-floor, and tried to separate the two men. Shima had his hands around Ind’dni’s throat and was trying to throttle him and batter his head against the wall. The Subadar was gripping Shima’s wrists. Gretchen flung her arms around Shima’s neck and let her dead weight tear him away from Ind’dni.
“You bitch!” Shima was panting like a tiger on the attack. “You black bitch’s bastard! And this skog’s your yancyman!”
“For God’s sake, Blaise!”
“God damn you. Damn the day I ever met you.”
“What are you talking about?”
Ind’dni massaged his throat. “Evidently Dr. Shima is less than unarmored, madame; he is vulnerable. All of his educated responses betrayed him, and he attacked when he should have withdrawn.”
“From what? What happened?”
“Describing event delicately, Miz Nunn, it became apparent that it would be Dr. Shima who would be required to close his eyes.”
“What?”
“Your unconscious body accosted the wrong man.”
“You mean I—? You—?”
“Yes, you, him,” Shima shouted. “And for how long?”
“Blaise! Never!”
“Yeah. Sure. In physical fact, never… Maybe… But how long have you been wanting, eh?”
“No, Blaise. Never.”
“Have you patience for friendly counseling, doctor?” Ind’dni said gently.
“You God-damned yancy skog, smiling and sneaking—”
“Shima!” the Subadar’s voice was not raised, but it had the piercing thrust of cold iron. “Do not ever use that word ‘skog’ to me again.”
Shima was frightened into silence.
“Your rage bases itself on your assumed knowledge of Miz Nunn’s manner of acting, yes?” Ind’dni’s tone was gentle again. “She feels first and then proves it. I have sometimes heard you tease madame for thinking with her gut. Yes?”
“Yes,” Shima muttered.
“Then how could you take this naughty prank of her unconscious body seriously, when internally she has known all along that I am homosexual?”
“Wh-what?”
“But of course,” Ind’dni smiled. “I neither conceal nor parade it, yet Madame has felt the truth since first we met. At best, she merely accosted another wrong poster. At worst, her body was guilty of another childish practical joke, since it knew that her challenge could not and would not be accepted.”
Shima was aghast. “Oh Jesus! Christ Jesus! What a damned idiot I’ve been. Suspecting. Watching how she looks at you. I’m a clown!” He burst into hysterical laughter, began to cry, then turned and buried his shamed face in a quilted wall.
Gretchen looked hard at Ind’dni. He lifted a brow and smiled at her. She shook her head emphatically. His smile never altered.
Shima turned abruptly. “I want to apologize.”
“Not necessary, doctor.”
“Damn it, I’ve got to apologize.”
“And you have already.”
“So cool it, baby,” Gretchen soothed. “You’ve reached the bottom of your barrel. There’s no lower to go. You can start climbing up, now.”
“Most mixed metaphor, but most apt nevertheless.” Ind’dni laughed. “The worst is over, and there is no cause for guilt or shame. We must not permit the insanity of the internal inferno to bleed into our civilized lives. We will leave this unpleasant scene and visit a more grateful atmosphere… my own apartment. You will find it healing and restorative. And we must hear madame’s account of her expedition into the Phasmaworld while it is still fresh in her memory.”
As they filed out of the padded cell, Gretchen silently mouthed to Ind’dni, “You. Are. A. Great. Good. Man.”
17
There were elegances in Subadar Ind’dni’s apartment appealing only to the elite. Illumination was by clear, filament light bulbs. “Ah yes. For enormous bribe I will make known identity of modern Thomas Alva Edison who crafts them for me.” A two-foot world globe was so ancient that there were blank regions labeled terra incognita. A green fly had died on latitude 47°N. Only close examination revealed that the corpse was composed of jade, jet, and lacy gold. “Brutal blackmail required to force me to disclose modern Fabergé who fashioned same for me. And now, if you are both quite restored and comfortable, let us begin.”
“First, how long was I gone?” Gretchen asked.
“Twenty minutes,” Shima answered. “I reduced your Pm shot to a quarter of what we’d taken the first time around. That skag’s wild. It’s got to be handled with care.”
“And you didn’t reduce it a quarter too much, Blaise. The Phasma scene was a shivery Rorschach world for my crazy primal senses… all murky ink blots, or maybe I should call them id blots. I still can’t understand half of them. First I went to black…
“That would be madame without the advantage of reading your senses, doctor.”
“R.”
“Miz Nunn, as you recall experience, could you possibly sketch perceptions for us? Here is pad and pencil.”
“I’m no artist but I’ll try, Subadar.”
“Many thanks. Will be most helpful for interpretation.”
“Then the dead black became sparkled with stars and lines and whorls and silly symbols. Should I try to draw that? It was complicated…”
“No need, Gretch. That’s simply the way you think you’re seeing your cloud chamber perception of high-energy particles.”
“Then I went to white and some kind of Black Hole that was either a bird in flight, or a helmet, or a Folies Bergere wig by Toulouse-Lautrec. It looked something like this… And it was looking at me…
It got bigger and sort of turned into an urn
or maybe a soup tureen…
… But would you believe a tureen with eyes?
But now, thinking about it, I’m reminded of the Tarot card Le Pendu, “The Hanging Man,” and I’m frightened…
And began to condense and break up into—into I don’t know what, but it was damned ugly.
Look at it…
Then it became a crown or butterfly over a heart, or spade, or plumb bob, like this…
But always there seemed to be two eyes watching me constantly…
Then suddenly I was seeing a snow goose in flight or a stinging bee attacking…
Only the Phasmaworld is a nightmare of transformations and I was seeing id blots without identity. The wings of the goose or the bee turned into an African devil mask, a witch-doctor mask, a voodoo mask, but at the same time it looked like the head of a key to something…
And suddenly it was almost as though the id blots of the Phasmaworld were trying to communicate with me, trying to explain the raison d’être of their culture, but in Chinese or Japanese or Spacetalk. And still the eyes were watching me.
Who so surprised as me when a pretty female-type id began flirting with me and making eyes at me. Eyes. Always eyes. Ink blots or id blots, they’re still eyes. Like so…