Vacuum abhors a nature . . the hilarity hisses into Zack — he feels his space-hopper head swelling dangerously. Yeah, well, he says, Podge. . she’s hors de combat, isn’t she. Lesley says, Whore’s too much, man — she’s just a liberated chick. . And the space-hopper. . that’s me is punctured: Zack sees the orange rubber afterbirth lying on the floor of the bathroom in 119. . covered in a fine sifting of talcum powder — he senses evil gurgling up from the plugholes. . slime of soap and shed hair. — Claude leads the way into the kitchen, scoping it out through the triangular slot in his tin opener. The kitchen, Zack realises, is a cave cluttered with objects of a profound uselessness: a white-enamelled cabinet you can light four small fires on, a second one full of stupidly cooled air, and beside this a steely hull that can be. . filled from within. He sees the film of grease on pots and pans — the scuzz pimpling the window and the slop carpeting the lino. The world is this skin: a dirty dermis a fraction of an inch thick puckering about mere phenomenal things. Revolted, Zack tightens his hold on Claude and Roger, struggling also to hang on to this insight — brought back from previous trips. . through the rainbow door — that: Love is the fundamental and the primary cosmic fact. It’s hard, though, because ever since Lesley said the bad thing about poor Podge his spots have swelled, leaking a mucous substance, the love-juice. . of all those chicks he’s. . liberated with his penis. — Kit’s rescue party reaches the hallway. The early-afternoon sun machine-guns photons through the transom, hitting dust motes that. . explode into a parallel universe, where jazzy lino and blizzarding wallpaper. . are the fabric of space-time. Awed, Zack whispers to Claude, Each is each, and Claude responds, All is all. Profoundly grateful for this cosmic understanding — although simultaneously aware that the conceptual basis of the language expressing it is wholly redundant — Zack captures a handful of stardust and holds it out. . shimmering on my palm . . to his new mentor. You see, he emphasises. I see, Claude raps back, that some shit has walked away with my censoring pen — you can’t leave anything lying round in this lousy tub for five minutes without some goldbricking louse lifting it! Impetuously he kicks open the door to the living room and shouts at the Kid’s prone form, Didja take my pen? Didja? ’Cause the second post might come any sec’, and I don’t wanna be responsible for some shave-tail getting a green-fuckin’-banana —. He stops. The rescue party have entered the room behind him and now they stand gawping. It isn’t the Kid they’re fixated on, but the man who’s slumped against the wall by the door. His suit trousers have risen up — hairless calves parenthesise a plate coagulated . . with last night’s ketchup and. . cauterised by today’s cigarette ends. The man’s face — which is long, and has fine features graven by suffering, is being. . held out to us, cupped in his open hands. All the light pouring through the bow window is concentrated on this man’s face, bestowing an unearthly radiance! Zack wine-burps, Oh — but Roger says, Mister Lincoln, right? So sorry, we kinda forgot you were here, it’s been — he pinches the foreskin of his rollneck — quite a morning. — Michael, Michael says, please call me Michael. He looks from one pair of bug-eyes to the next, then continues: I hardly think formalities are called for, given the state you’re all in — given the state Christopher is in. — Put like this — calmly and imbued with all his therapeutic experience — Michael’s words have an odd eff ect, at once setting the tripping residents at ease — and galvanising them. We gotta get things mellower in here, Gourevitch says — and Busner echoes him: Mellower, yes, mellower would be good — yellower too. Gourevitch strides to the window and pulls the curtains half shut. Busner, a queer little moue playing about his plump lips, pushes the ugly sofa against the wall, then tink-tonks a pile of dirty crocks and empty beer tins together in the middle of the room. Christopher remains face down on the mattress, his mumbled self-negation. . I, not-I, I, not-I, I, not-I. . rumbling around the room. When Busner has assembled his rubbish heap, he stands before it, seemingly believing that. . Sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof. Michael finds the psychiatrist. . really rather repellent, what with his womanish hips, gingerish hair and fleshy Semitic features. Worse is the lank-haired and spotty fellow wearing a leather waistcoat. . like Trampas in The Virginian . . whom Busner now directs high-handedly to: Be a good chap and sort out some music, will you, John? I think if we can only play the right sort of music, it might sort of. . bring Kit back. . Put his feet on the ground. The one called John exits the room and returns a few moments later bearing a single stereo speaker cabinet that he places at Busner’s feet. What d’you reckon, Zack, he says, a little Jimi, axis bold as — or p’raps some doors. . of, y’know, perception? But the psychiatrist mutters distractedly, Oh, a little, um, heavy all that stuff, John — if you look up in my room you’ll see a few LPs by the bedside table. . classical ones — take your pick, they’re all pretty. . classical — my vote’s for old J. S. . — Michael watches the spider’s leg of his second hand tickle the dial. Three minutes pass until the oddwobbly sound globules of Ich ruf ’ zu Dir, Herr Jesu Christ begin floating up to the fire-resistant ceiling tiles. . they burst — showering us in melancholy and . . mystery . . John joins the other two, who are collapsed on the sofa facing him. Michael thinks again of that all-night vigil in Winchester Cathedral — the sharp chill of the stone flags. . eating into my vitals . . Bite into my heart, three person’d God! Consume me! is what he’d wanted to happen — but there’d been none of that. . because I’m too unsavoury, even for Him. Christopher’s moaning is now counterpointed by thrashing about, as his arms and legs swim in the elemental prelude. I must, Michael berates himself, pull myself together and get this man Busner — no matter how intoxicated he may be — to face up to his responsibilities. . — But Michael remains swamped in the music, staring through its warm coloratura to where, at the back of the room, he notices something, or. . someone, bobbing about in it: Claude, who’s been there the entire time, leaning against the Indian wall hanging by the dormant lump of the television. Claude is there, apparently lost in thought, and NOT SAYING A WORD! Zack pans from the Creep’s narrowed eyes to Roger’s enlarged ones, beaming this message: HAVE YOU NOTICED? Roger beams back: I HAVE! I HAVE! Zack thinks quietly: On the brink of something, we are — a breakthrough of some kind. . He’d like to pursue this butterfly insight further as it flits from the sofa’s arm to the Creep’s baggy khaki knee, to the television aerial’s robotic antlers, to . . But the Kid’s face rises up. . dripping from the blue-and-white ticking and he says TO ME AND ME ALONE! I’m inside a spire and it’s made of mouths. . and the mouths’re all open, and the mouths’re all screaming. . d’you know what they’re screaming? They’re screaming nothing — over and over again: nothing, no-thing. . The Kid’s frighteningly blanched face submerges and his whimpering resumes, No-thing, no-thing, no-thing. . A snick! A yawp! an agonised slide as the needle, having hit some obstruction,