Smoke

'Impossible!' Peter cried.

'Peter,' David whispered. 'Can he fly?'

'I'm never gonna get myself back?'

All the faces in the room were now ashen. Hair stood up on the backs of necks, throats grew dry, eyes grew wide. Everybody stared all around, even though everybody knew there would be nothing to see.

Martin leaned toward Peter. 'Speak to him,' he whispered.

Those first two shouts had seemed to come from over by the fireplace, but the next one sounded from the vicinity of the hall doorway: 'You dirty bastards! You can't bring me back!'

Everyone was afraid to move. With nothing else to gape at, they gaped at Peter and David. Turning to gape toward the doorway, Peter said, 'You shouldn't have taken the other formula, Freddie. You should have been honest with us, and none of—'

'What other formula?' The loud angry voice came now from near the front windows. 'I didn't take any formula! All I took was that goddam useless antidote!'

'There is no antidote!'

'Now you tell me? You said it was the antidote!'

'I'm sorry, Freddie,' David said, and Peter said, 'We did lie to you, we're both sorry, but we had no idea you'd be in a position to take that other formula.'

'You said it was the antidote.'

'To calm you down,' David said, and Peter said, 'You said it first, remember? It was your idea. 'Oh, yeah, the formula's the shot and the antidote's the thing you swallow.' Remember?'

'You lied to me.'

'We were wrong to do that, Freddie,' Peter agreed, 'but you were wrong, too. You promised you'd stay, and you didn't stay.'

'So what was that other thing, if it wasn't the antidote?'

'We had two formulae,' Peter said, and David said, 'You took them both,' and Peter said, 'If you'd just taken the one, none of this would have happened,' and David said, 'You'd be your old self now.'

'I can't believe it,' the bodiless voice said. It seemed to be moving steadily around the room, like a lion in a cage. 'My girlfriend's leaving me because it's driving her nuts I'm like this, and now I have to tell her I'm always gonna be like this?'

'I imagine,' said the other William, the screenwriter, 'sex is rather odd, the way you are now.' He managed to sound at the same time both sympathetic and prurient.

'We keep the lights out.'

'Oral, in particular,' the other William mused.

Peter said, 'Freddie, if you'll come back to the lab with us, we'll work on it, I swear we'll work on it day and night. We'll devote our entire lab time to finding an antidote. I'm sure, if you'll just give us some time—'

Edmond said, 'I could draw up a preliminary agreement for you all right now. There'd be profit in it, too, of course, for all of you. Film and television rights, a sort of super magic act onstage—'

'You're gonna make a freak show outta me?'

'Oh, hardly anything that tasteless,' Edmond assured him.

'The rose room was nice, wasn't it?' David asked. 'You wouldn't mind staying there again, would you?'

'You could put the door back on,' Peter said.

'Your girlfriend could come visit you all you wanted,' David said.

'We'll study you,' Peter said, 'we'll show you to the scientific community and we'll all study you, we'll study the effects, and I'm sure we'll find the antidote in no time.'

'That's right,' David said, blinking, looking hangdog.

'You're lying, aren't you?'

'Freddie, what else are you going to do?' Peter demanded.

'Stay the way I am.' The bravado obvious in that voice, he went on, 'I'm doing okay, don't worry about me.'

David said, 'The policeman will get you, the really nasty one,' and Peter said, 'They know about the robberies you did.'

'What robberies?'

'The fur place, and the diamond place. You can't wear gloves, Freddie, you leave fingerprints wherever you go.'

'What?' The discorporate voice sounded more exasperated than ever. 'Invisible hands leave prints?'

'I'm afraid so, yes,' Peter said.

'Goddam it!'

A champagne bottle lifted itself out of its icer, rose into the air, and tilted itself upside down. They all heard the glug-glug-glug, and they all watched in astonishment as the amber fluid flowed down a twisty curvy route through the air and made a bowl of itself three feet from the ground.

The bottle lowered, and waved around. The swallowed champagne moved tidally, like the sea. 'Son of a bitch!' Freddie cried, and the bottle leaped crash back into the water and ice, without breaking. 'You are some goddam guys,' Freddie snarled.

Peter said, 'Freddie, for your own good, please don't leave,' and David said, 'We're on your side, honest we are.'

Everybody watched the bowl of champagne.

'With friends like you . . .' said the bitter voice. The bowl moved toward the door. 'Good-bye.'

'Wait!' cried David, and Peter cried, 'Stop him!'

'Harvey!' shouted Martin. 'Har — wait! That's very very valuable!'

A Ming vase had just jumped up from its stand and hung in midair over by the door. The visible people in the room were all frozen in odd postures, half-seated and half-standing. Martin's hand was out imploringly toward the vase.

This tableau lasted one second, two seconds, and then the voice cried, 'You'll want to catch it, then!' and the vase went arching up into the air in the middle of the room.

Everybody ran for it, arms outstretched. Everybody crashed into everybody else, and the vase crashed into the floor. Everybody stared at four hundred thousand dollars in tiny pieces, and the front door slammed.

45

Roving the outside of the house, while the thirteen pursuers went haring off in all directions — or, hounding off in all directions, since they kept baying at one another — Freddie felt a deep and total bitterness, very unlike his normally sunny personality. He had to keep reminding himself that violence wasn't part of his MO. Right now, he wanted to bust up a lot more than some stupid vase that wasn't good for anything but to throw your old pennies in.

He couldn't leave here, not yet; he was stuck in this place for a while. They were all running around, hither and yon, beating the bushes with brooms and cue sticks, looking for that telltale bowl of champagne, and every once in a while finding it: 'There he is! There he is!' And off he would bound once more.

He shouldn't have drunk the champagne. The news had just been so sudden and so bad, that was all. The realization of what had been done to him, and why.

In the first place, and he couldn't really articulate this very well, but he instinctively understood it, in the first place, this was a matter of class. Not sexual orientation, that wasn't the issue here. What they'd done to Freddie, those two doctors, they would not have done to anybody they considered their equal, and it wouldn't matter if the guy swung this way or that way or both ways or no way at all. They had looked upon Freddie as being underclass or lower class or working class or however they might choose to phrase it, and therefore they could treat him any damn way they wanted because the civilized rules didn't apply.

That's right. The civilized rules only applied to people who talked like them, had their kind of education, read the same newspapers and magazines, had the same attitudes toward things, including the attitudes toward people like Freddie. To know that you've been fucked over not because science needed it, or