momentary blurring of vision. This did not prevent my unfolding the dollar I had palmed, however, so that I emerged clenching it on high. I immediately rolled from the belt and, despite a wave of dizziness, jumped down from the platform and rushed back toward the crowd, trying to seem as if I still pursued my errant money, though none was then in sight.
'My money ... ' I said as I climbed back over the rail and dropped to all fours.
'Here's some,' an honest soul remarked, thrusting a fistful of bills down before my face.
ENO by ENO, a number of others were handed to me. Fortunately, the anticipation of this effect had been part of my earlier meditations, so that my reversed face showed no signs of surprise as I rose and thanked them. The only bill that looked normal to me was the one I had carried in my hand.
'Did you go through that thing?' a man asked.
'No. I went around behind it.'
'Sure looked like you went through.'
'No. I didn't.'
As I accepted money and pretended to look for more, I did a rapid scan of the entire hall. The less honest folks with a few of my dollars in their pockets were heading out the doors, which were now in positions opposite those they had occupied when I had entered. But for this, too, had I prepared myself-at least intellectually. Now, though, I wondered. If was emotionally disconcerting, seeing the whole hall in reverse like that. And those departing were getting out without difficulty, for the guards were otherwise occupied: two were stuck in the crowd and two were collecting bills. I debated making a run for it.
At first, I had been all set to brazen it out with the guards or anyone else involved, matching nastiness or officiousness with a greater obnoxiousness over my missing money and an insistence that I had gone around rather than through the device. I had decided that I could stick to that format and sit out any consequences. After all, I did not believe that I had done anything grossly illegal- and no matter what happened, they could not take back the reversal.
Instead, they were nice about it. One of them got the alarm shut off and another shouted at everyone to turn in any money they had recovered as they departed the hall. Then two of them moved to cover the doors again, and the one who had done the hollering sought me with his eyes, found me and raised his voice once more: 'Are you all right?'
'Yes,' I said,
'I'm all right. But my money-'
'We're getting it! We're getting it!'
He plowed his way through to my side, laid his hand on my shoulder. I hastily pocketed the one bill that looked normal to me.
'Are you sure you're okay?'
'Of course. But I'm missing-'
'We are trying to recover it,' he said. 'Did you go through the center part of that machine?'
'No,' I said. 'A bill blew past it, though, and I chased it.'
'It looked like you went through the center unit.'
'He went around behind it,' said one of the men I had told that to, as neatly timed as if he had been sitting on my knee with a monocle in one eye, bless him.
'Yes,' I said.
'Oh. You didn't get any shocks or anything like that, did you?'
'No, but I got my dollar.'
'That's good.' He sighed. 'Glad we don't have to fill out an accident report. What happened, anyway?'
'A guy bumped me and my bag tore. I had the morning's receipts in it. My boss will take it out of my pay if-'
'Let's go see how much has been collected.'
We did, and I got back ninety-seven dollars, almost enough to let me think a good thought about my fellow man and throw in a brass button for providence for having run a very tight ship so far that day. I left a phony name and address for them to contact, should any other bills turn up, thanked them several times, apologized for the disturbance and got out.
Traffic, I noticed immediately, was proceeding up and down the wrong sides of the street. Okay, I could live with that. The signs in store windows were all backward. Okay. That, too.
I started out for the bench where I had stashed my coat receipt. I drew up short after a dozen paces.
It had to be the wrong direction, because it felt right.
I stood there then and tried to visualize the whole city as reversed. It was more difficult than I had thought it would be. My roast beef and beer-now reversed-churned in my innards, and I wanted to grab hold of something and hang on. I fought everything back into place, or what seemed like place, and turned. Yes. Better. The trick was to navigate by landmarks and pretend I was shaving. Think of it all as in a mirror. I wondered whether a dentist would have an advantage at something like this, or if his ability only extended to the insides of mouths. No matter. I had figured out where the bench was.
I got to it, panicked when I could not locate the receipt, then remembered to go over to the opposite end. Yes. Right there ...
I had, of course, planted the receipt so that it would not be reversed and cause me difficulty in getting my coat back. And I had checked the coat so the ticket would not be reversed, causing me difficulty in boarding my bus.
I mapped out the route image in my mind and found my way back to the restaurant. I was prepared for its situation on the opposite side of the street but still fumbled the door by reaching to the wrong side for its handle.
The girl fetched me my coat promptly, but 'It ain't April Fool's Day,' she said as I turned to leave.
'Huh?'
She waved a bill at me. Lacking change, I had decided to leave a dollar tip. I realized at that moment that I had pulled out my one normal-looking bill, the dollar I had carried through the mobilator.
'Oh,' I said and added a quick-grin. 'That was for the party. Here, I'll trade you.'
I gave her a ENO for it and she decided she could smile, too.
'It felt real,' she said. 'I couldn't tell what was wrong with it for a second.'
'Yeah. Great gag.'
I stopped to buy a pack of cigarettes, then headed off to relocate the bus station. In that I still had plenty of time before departure, I decided that a little more anti-telepath medicine might be in order. I entered an undistinguished looking bar and got me a mug of beer.
It tasted strange. Not bad. Just very different. I backspelled the name on the tap and asked the bartender if that was what was really under it. He said that it was. I shrugged and sipped it. It was actually pretty good. Then the cigarette that I lit tasted peculiar. At first, I attributed this to the aftertaste of the beer. A few moments later, though, a half-formed thought caused me to call the bartender back again and have him pour me a shot of bourbon.
It had a rich, smoky taste, unlike anything I had ever had out of a bottle bearing that label. Or any other label, for that matter.
Then some recollections from Organic Chem I and II were suddenly with me. All of my amino acids, with the exception of glycine, had been left-handed, accounting for the handedness of my protein helices. Ditto for the nucleotides, giving that twisting to the coils of nucleic acid. But that was before my reversal. I thought madly about stereoisomers and nutrition. It seemed that the body sometimes accepted substances of one handedness and rejected the reversed version of the same thing. Then, in other cases, it would accept both, though digestion would take longer in the one case than the other. I tried to recall specific cases. My beer and the shot contained ethyl alcohol, C2H5OH ... Okay. It was symmetrical, with the two hydrogen atoms coming off the central carbon atom that way. Reversed or unreversed, then, I would get just as stoned on it. Then why did it taste different? The congeners, yes. They were asymmetrical esters and they tickled my taste buds in a different way. My olfactory apparatus had to be playing backward games with the cigarette smoke also. I realized that I would have to look some things up in a hurry when I got home. Since I did not know how long I would be a Spiegelmensch, I wanted to provide against malnutrition, if this were a real danger.
