I screamed and threw the soft, brown, fuzzy, squirming puppy-thing that
had been a razor into the advancing tide of blood.
The fuzzy thing shattered when it hit the blood, and each of the
thousand pieces became another tiny puppy-thing that grew and grew,
yapping and swimming in the blood. The tide was now rising about my
shoes.
I backed away from the mirror, trembling violently. I forced myself to
slosh through the thick blood into the bedroom, groping for a bottle of
whisky on the bureau.
* * * * *
"What the hell are you doing here?" the boss asked when I opened his
office door and peeked in. "You're supposed to be in Palm Beach. Well,
damn it, come on in!"
I clung to the door firmly as I maneuvered myself through the opening.
And when I closed the door, I leaned back against it heavily.
I could see the boss--Carson Newell, managing editor of Intergalaxy News
Service--half rising from behind his big desk across the room; but he
was pretty dim and I couldn't get him to stay in one place. His voice
was clear enough, though:
"Must be mighty important to bring you back from.... Damn it, Langston,
are you drunk?"
I grinned then, and said, "Carshon. Carton. Old boy. Do you know that
telenosis therapy is no sonofabitchin' good on alcoholics?"
Carson Newell sat back down, frowning.
I stumbled to a chair by the corner of his desk and gripped the arms
tightly.
"Telenosis therapy," I repeated, "is just no--"
"Snap out of it," Newell barked. "It's no good on dumb animals, either,
and you're probably out of range by now, anyway."
He took a small bottle from his desk and tossed a yellow Anti-Alch pill
across the desk to me. I popped it into my mouth.
It didn't take long to work. A few minutes later, still weak and a
little trembly, I said, "Would have thought of that myself, if I hadn't
been so damn drunk."