ONE
Pimli Prentiss, the Algul Siento Master, was in the bathroom when Finli (known in some quarters as The Weasel) knocked at the door. Prentiss was examining his complexion by the unforgiving light of the fluorescent bar over the washbasin. In the magnifying mirror, his skin looked like a grayish, crater-pocked plain, not much different from the surface of the wastelands stretching in every direction around the Algul. The sore on which he was currently concentrating looked like an erupting volcano.
"Who be for me?" Prentiss bawled, although he had a pretty good idea.
"Finli O'Tego!"
"Walk in, Finli!" Never taking his eyes from the mirror. His fingers, closing in on the sides of the infected pimple, looked huge. They applied pressure.
Finli crossed Prentiss's office and stood in the bathroom door. He had to bend slightly in order to look in. He stood over seven feet, very tall even for a taheen.
"Back from the station like I was never gone," said Finli. Like most of the taheen, his speaking voice reeled wildly back and forth between a yelp and a growl. To Pimli, they all sounded like the hybrids from H. G. Wells's The Island of Dr. Moreau, and he kept expecting them to break into a chorus of "Are we not men?" Finli had picked this out of his mind once and asked about it. Prentiss had replied with complete honesty, knowing that in a society where low-grade telepathy was the rule, honesty was ever the best policy. The only policy, when dealing with the taheen. Besides, he liked Finli O'Tego.
"Back from the station, good," Pimli said. "And what did you find?"
"A maintenance drone. Looks like it went rogue on the Arc 16 side and-"
"Wait," Prentiss said. "If you will, if you will, thanks."
Finli waited. Prentiss leaned even closer toward the mirror, face frowning in concentration. The Master of Blue Heaven was tall himself, about six-two, and possessed of an enormous sloping belly supported by long legs with slab diighs. He was balding and had the turnip nose of a veteran drinker. He looked perhaps fifty. He felt like about fifty (younger, when he hadn't spent the previous night tossing them back with Finli and several of the can-toi). He had been fifty when he came here, a good many years ago; at least twenty-five, and that might be a big underestimation. Time was goofy on this side, just like direction, and you were apt to lose both quickly. Some folken lost their minds, as well. And if they ever lost the sun machine for good-
The top of the pimple bulged... trembled... burst. Ah!
A glut of bloody pus leaped from the site of the infection, splattered onto die mirror, and began to drool down its slighdy concave surface. Pimli Prentiss wiped it off with the tip of a finger, turned to flick it into the jakes, then offered it to Finli instead.
The taheen shook his head, then made the sort of exasperated noise any veteran dieter would have recognized, and guided the Master's finger into his mouth. He sucked the pus off and then released the finger with an audible pop.
"Shouldn't do it, can't resist," Finli said. "Didn't you tell me that folken on the other side decided eating rare beef was bad for them?"
"Yar," Pimli said, wiping the pimple (which was still oozing) with a Kleenex. He had been here a long time, and there would never be any going back, for all sorts of reasons, but until recently he had been up on current events; until the previous-could you call it a year?-he'd gotten The New York Times on a fairly regular basis. He bore a great affection for the Times, loved doing the daily crossword puzzle. It was a little touch of home.
"But they go on eating it, just the same."
"Yar, I suppose many do." He opened the medicine cabinet and brought out a botde of hydrogen peroxide from Rexall.
"It's your fault for putting it in front of me," Finli said.
"Not that such stuff is bad for us, ordinarily; it's a natural sweet, like honey or berries. The problem's Thunderclap." And, as if his boss hadn't gotten the point, Finli added: "Too much of what comes out of it don't run the true thread, no matter how sweet it might taste. Poison, do ya."