A Time of Changes

34

We needed seclusion. The Port Justiciary maintains a country lodge in the hills two hours northwest of the city of Manneran, where visiting dignitaries are entertained and treaties of trade negotiated. I knew that this lodge was not currently in use, and I reserved it for myself for a three-day span. At midday I picked Schweiz up in a Justiciary car and drove quickly out of the city. There were three servants on duty at the lodge — a cook, a chambermaid, a gardener. I warned them that extremely delicate discussions would be taking place so that they must on no account cause interruptions or offer distractions. Then Schweiz and I sealed ourselves in the inner living quarters. “It would be best,” he said, “to take no food this evening. Also they recommend that the body be absolutely clean.”

The lodge had an excellent steambath. We scrubbed ourselves vigorously, and when we came out we donned loose, comfortable silken robes. Schweiz’s eyes had taken on the glassy glitter that came over them in moments of high excitement. I felt frightened and uneasy, and began to think that I would suffer some terrible harm out of this evening. Just then I regarded myself as one who was about to undergo surgery from which his chances of recovery were slight. My mood was sullen resignation: I was willing, I was here, I was eager to make the plunge and have done with it.

“Your last chance,” Schweiz said, grinning broadly. “You can still back out.”

“No.”

“You understand that there are risks, though? We are equally inexperienced in this drug. There are dangers.”

“Understood,” I said.

“Is it also understood that you enter this voluntarily, and under no coercion?”

I said, “Why this delay, Schweiz? Bring out your potion.”

“One wishes to assure himself that your grace is fully prepared to meet any consequences.”

In a tone of heavy sarcasm I said, “Perhaps there should be a contract between us, then, in the proper fashion, relieving you of any liability in case one wishes later to press a claim for damage to the personality—”

“If you wish, your grace. One does not feel it necessary.”

“One wasn’t serious,” I said. I was fidgety now. “Can it be that you’re nervous about it too, Schweiz? That you have some doubts?”

“We take a bold step.”

“Let’s take it, then, before the moment goes by. Bring out the potion, Schweiz. Bring out the potion.”

“Yes,” he said, and gave me a long look, his eyes to mine, and clapped his hands in childlike glee. And laughed in triumph. I saw how he had manipulated me. Now I was begging him for the drug! Oh, devil, devil!

From his traveling case he fetched the packet of white powder. He told me to get wine, and I ordered two flasks of chilled Mannerangi golden from the kitchen, and he dumped half the contents of the packet into my flask, half into his. The powder dissolved almost instantly: for a moment it left a cloudy gray wake, and then there was no trace of it. We gripped our flasks. I remember looking across the table at Schweiz and giving him a quick smile; he described it to me later as the pale, edgy smirk of a timid virgin about to open her thighs. “It should all go down at once,” Schweiz said, and he gulped his wine and I gulped mine, and then I sat back, expecting the drug to hit me instantly. I felt a faint giddiness, but that was only the wine doing its work in my empty gut. “How long does it take to begin?” I asked. Schweiz shrugged. “It will be some while yet,” he replied. We waited in silence. Testing myself, I tried to force my mind to go forth and encounter his, but I felt nothing. The sounds of the room became magnified: the creak of floorboards, the rasping of insects outside the window, the tiny hum of the bright electric light. “Can you explain,” I said hoarsely, “the way this drug is thought to operate?” Schweiz answered, “One can tell you only what was told to him. Which is, that the potential power to link one mind to another exists in all of us from birth, only we have evolved a chemical substance in the blood that inhibits the power. A very few are born without the inhibitor, and these have the gift of reaching minds, but most of us are forever blocked from achieving this silent communication, except when for some reason the production of the hormone ceases of its own accord and our minds open for a while. When this occurs it is often mistaken for madness. This drug of Sumara Borthan, they say, neutralizes the natural inhibitor in our blood, at least for a short time, and permits us to make contact with one another, as we would normally do if we lacked the counteracting substance in the blood. So one has heard. To this I answered, “We all might be supermen, then, but we are crippled by our own glands?” And Schweiz, gesturing grandly, said, “Maybe it is that there were good biological reasons for evolving this protection against our own powers. Eh? Or maybe not.” He laughed. His face had turned very red. I asked him if he really believed this story of an inhibitory hormone and a counterinhibitory drug, and he said that he had no grounds for making judgment. “Do you feel anything yet?” I asked. “Only the wine,” he said. We waited. Perhaps it will do nothing, I thought, and I will be reprieved. We waited. At length Schweiz said, “It may be beginning now.”