"Well, why not wait for that goddess to come back? She'll have a report
on what's going on and you can make up your mind then. She can give you
better advice than I could." The shock-headed Saem set his empty cup
down on the desk with a smack. "Got another of those?" he gestured at
the cup.
"Blast the haffy, man! This calls for something better than that." Herl
jumped down from the table. "I've got a bottle of bonded thiska for
medicinal purposes. That'll shorten the wait!" He bounded past Saem
through the galley door.
The towerman looked after him bewildered, watched him reach into a
locker and bring out the plastic flask, saw him take down two small
plastic beakers and come back past the doorway to perch jubilantly on
the desk again holding out the flask invitingly. Saem looked at him
questioningly.
"She said she wouldn't leave us as long as we're not sorry," Herl
announced. "So let's get just as unsorry as this bottle will let us."
Saem approached the desk hesitantly. "What is that stuff," he asked,
"something like beer?"
"Something like beer, the man says!" chuckled Herl. "Yes, boy,
something like beer. Here." He poured out a beaker full of amber
thiska and handed it to Saem. "One for me." He poured out another
beaker full. "To not being sorry," he raised his beaker and drained it.
Saem tasted his, then gulped also. "Whooeee! Something like beer, the
man says," he echoed and passed back his beaker. "Did you offer _this_
stuff to the commissioners?" he wanted to know.
"Silly old commissioners," Herl remarked archly, slopping out two more
drinks. "Didn't want girlie shows ... don't like people to get mixed
up with goddesses ... couldn't possibly appreciate bonded thiska.
Didn't even offer them any." He drew a deep breath. Thiska couldn't
work this fast on only one drink unless he were tired or upset. It must
be thinking about Abigail that made him feel he had an antigravitor
attached to his ears. Abigail!
"Here's to Abigail. May she never be sorry either!" he announced.
"Here's to Abby ... knows all, sees all, tells 'em nothing!" Saem
downed his drink and moved over to the swivel chair, sat, held out his
beaker.
"Say, Saem," Herl filled the extended beaker with deliberate care,
"what kind of a wife would a girl make if a man never knew where she'd
be next?"
"I dunno, son. Maybe you could anchor her at home with a pair of
electro-magnets." Saem laughed longer and louder than Herl expected,
downed his beaker and held it out again.
Herl looked at the proffered container, narrowed his eyes and looked at
Saem suspiciously. "That's about enough for you, Saem. You're beginning
to get blurry."
Saem looked down at his extended arm. Sure enough, a golden haze was
starting to form around the limb, a naked, ripplingly muscular arm.
He set his beaker with exaggerated precision on the edge of the desk
and slapped at the offending haze. "Get back in there," he commanded.
The haze cleared, the brown shirt sleeve regained complete opacity.
"Nothing wrong with me," he announced firmly. "You must be seeing
things. Give me another." He held up the beaker.
Herl shook his head and poured himself another. "I need this worse
than you do. I'm the one that I ... need Abigail not to leave me ...
myself and not you. You can get just as sorry as you like because then
when she comes back she'll leave you and not me and that means she'll
put you somewhere else. If I don't give you another drink, you'll be
sorry and I'll have her all to myself ... do you follow me? Hurry up,
Abigail!"
* * * * *
A flare exploded brilliantly by the galley door and it was Abigail. Her
cloud of golden haze was forming into swirling tendrils which snapped
into sparks at the ends.
Herl widened his eyes at the frequent revelation of thigh, of bosom.
Her voice was an angry pizzicato of steel strings. "Saem Berry! Dad!
You're drunk! Get out of that matter this instant! The idea, Herl
Hofner, getting Saem drunk when he was supposed to be keeping _you_ out
of trouble!"
Her slender arm pointed accusingly at Saem. "Out of it!" she jangled,
"or I'll leave you to do all the explaining."
Herl's gaze followed her gesture and he watched, trancelike, as the
clothes of the transfiguring towerman disintegrated into wreaths of
shining golden smoke which clung around a superb sculptured torso
and swirled to leave a benign and thoughtful face regarding him with
sympathetic, almost regretful amusement.
Saem's voice was the pedal tones of a great organ improvising in a
minor key. "All that alcohol wasted when I put off the flesh," he sang
at Abigail. "A new sensation, and you take it from me."
"You can go back to your tower and re-materialize with all that poison
inside you, as soon as you've explained us and the rebellion to Herl.
He doesn't trust me very much, yet," she chimed.
Herl shook his head and looked at Abigail and back at Saem. He blinked
and straightened his spine and breathed deeply; but they didn't change
or go away.
Saem looked at him intently and, to Herl, the interior of the room was
filled with the liquid blue of his first tete-a-tete with Abigail ...
blue and green waves of coolness washing through him and then complete
clarity and sharpness of outline of everything about him.
"I'll synthesize you another flask of thiska," Saem apologized, "later."
Abigail relaxed her accusatory attitude, crossed her perfect legs and
sat in the air at the level of the desk. "Now tell him quickly," she
requested, "so he can leave if he wants to."
"Abby took one look at you and made up her mind," Saem said
matter-of-factly, "partly because she'd like to travel and partly
because most of us god-boys are younger than she and not ready to
materialize and settle down ... and partly because ... well, she can
tell you that herself."
"Oh?" Herl's clarity of mind did not prevent bewilderment at this
sudden revelation. He looked at Abigail who smiled seraphically back.
"But she didn't want to miss the fun of the Eyefer revolution she'd
been conniving at for years, so she had to precipitate that at once and
get it over with."
"I see," said Herl, "what kind of catalyst I was." And he was beginning
to.
"She was being quite literal when she told you she couldn't tell you
what you ought to do. Your own morals and ethics are so far inside that
she couldn't get at them without your full consent or hypnosis. But of
course, like any other gal, she knew perfectly what she wanted you to
do; and she did it."
"Aha," said Herl, whose grasp of the idea was sudden and complete.
"We can read formulated thoughts, of course, but not basic postulates
unstated ... as long as we are composed of space, time, and energy and
don't dabble in the slow stuff you call matter too much."
Herl looked at the shimmering Abigail keenly. "You mean to tell me that
you can take on a matter body and give up sliding through my mind?" he
demanded.
Abigail straightened her already straight posture. "If I want to," she
replied coolly.
Saem chuckled in bull-fiddle tones. "If she wants a family she'll have
to," he informed Herl. "The best babies are like the worst ... they all
have to be made out of matter."