A Time of Changes

36

Later I said, “Did you get from the drug what you were looking for, Schweiz?”

“Partially.”

“How so, partially?”

“I was looking for God, Kinnall, and I didn’t quite find him, but I got a better idea of where to look. What I did find was how not to be alone any more. How to open my mind fully to someone else. That’s the first step on the road I want to travel.”

“One is happy for your sake, Schweiz.”

“Must you still talk to me in that third-person lingo?”

“I can’t help myself,” I said. I was terribly tired. I was beginning to feel afraid of Schweiz again. The love I bore for him was still there, but now suspicion was creeping back. Was he exploiting me? Was he milking a dirty little pleasure out of our mutual exposures? He had pushed me into becoming a selfbarer. His insistence on my speaking in “I” and “me” to him — was that a token of my liberation, was it something beautiful and pure, as he claimed, or was it only a reveling in filth? I was too new to this. I could not sit placidly while a man said, “I love you.”

“Practice it,” Schweiz said. “I. I. I. I.”

“Stop. Please.”

“Is it that painful?”

“It’s new and strange to me. I need — there, you see? — I need to slide into this more gradually.”

“Take your time, then. Don’t let me rush you. But don’t ever stop moving forward.”

“One will try. I will try,” I said.

“Good.” After a moment he said, “Would you try the drug again, ever?”

“With you?”

“I don’t think there’s any need for that. I mean with someone like your bondsister. If I offered you some, would you use it with her?”

“I don’t know.”

“Are you afraid of the drug now?”

I shook my head. “That isn’t easy for me to answer. I need time to come to terms with the whole experience. Time to think about it, Schweiz, before getting involved again.”

“You’ve tasted the experience. You’ve seen that there’s only good to be had from it.”

“Perhaps. Perhaps.”

“Without doubt!” His fervor was evangelical. His zeal tempted me anew.

Cautiously I said, “If more were available, I would seriously consider trying it again. With Halum, maybe.”

“Good!”

“Not immediately. But in time. Two, three, four moontimes from now.”

“It would have to be farther from now than that.”

“Why?”

Schweiz said, “This was my entire stock of the drug that we used this evening. I have no more.”

“But you could get some, if you tried?”

“Oh, yes. Yes, certainly.”

“Where?”

“In Sumara Borthan,” he said.