Mirror Dance

“There is a drug called fast-penta. One of its derivatives is a psychiatric sedative, but its usual use is as an interrogation drug. It’s actually a misnomer to call it a truth serum, though laymen insist on doing so.”

“I … know fas’pent’.” His brows drew down. He knew something important about fast-penta. What was it?

“It has some extremely relaxing effects, and sometimes, in cryo-revival patients, it can trigger memory cascades.”

“Ah!”

“However, it can also be embarrassing. Under its influence people will happily talk about whatever crosses their minds, even their most intimate and private thoughts. Good medical ethics requires me to warn you about that. Also, some people are allergic to the drug.”

“Where’d … you learn … goo’ med’cal ethics?” he asked curiously.

Strangely, she flinched. “Escobar,” she said, and eyed him.

“Where we now?”

“I’d rather not say, just yet.”

“How could that contam’nate m’ mem’ry?” he demanded indignantly.

“I can tell you soon, I think,” she soothed. “Soon.”

“Mm,” he growled.

She pulled a little white packet from her coat pocket, opened it, and peeled off a plastic-backed dot. “Hold out your arm.” He obeyed, and she pressed the dot against the underside of his forearm. “Patch test,” she explained. “Because of what I theorize about your line of work, I think you have a higher than normal chance of allergy. Artificially-induced allergy.”

She peeled the dot away again—it prickled—and gazed closely at his arm. A pink spot appeared. She frowned at it. “Does that itch?” she asked suspiciously.

“No,” he lied, and clenched his right hand to keep from scratching at the spot. A drug to give him his mind back—he had to have it. Turn white again, blast you, he thought to the pink splotch.

“You seem to be a little sensitive,” she mused. “Marginally.”

“Pleassse …”

Her lips twisted in doubt. “Well … what do we have to lose? I’ll be right back.”

She exited, and returned shortly with two hyposprays, which she laid on the tray table. “This is the fast- penta,” she pointed, “and this is the fast-penta antagonist. You let me know right away if you start to feel strange, itch, tingle, have trouble breathing or swallowing, or if your tongue starts to feel thick.”

“Feels th’ck now,” he objected, as she pushed up both his sleeves on his thin white arms and pressed the first spray to the inside of his elbow. “How d’l tell?”

“You’ll be able to tell. Now just lie back and relax. You should start to feel dreamy, like you’re floating, by the time you count backward from ten. Try it.”

“Te”. Nan. Ei’. Seben. Si’, fav, fo’, tree-two-wun.” He did not feel dreamy. He felt tense and nervous and miserable. “You sure yo’ go’ rat one?” His fingers began to drum on the tray table. The sound was unnaturally loud in his ears. Objects in the room were taking on hard, bright outlines with colored fringes. Rowan’s face seemed suddenly drained of personality, an ivory mask.

The mask loomed threateningly toward him. “What’s your name?” it hissed.

“I … I … yiyi …” His mouth clogged with stutters. He was the invisible eye, nameless… .

“Strange,” the mask murmured. “Your blood pressure should be going down, not up.”

Abruptly, he remembered what was so important about fast-penta.

’Fas’pent’—maksmeyper.” She shook her head in non-comprehension.

’Yiper,” he reiterated, out of a mouth that seemed to be seizing up in spasms. He wanted to talk. A thousand words rushed to his tongue, a chain-collision along his nerves. “Ya. Ya. Ya.”

“This isn’t usual.” She frowned at the hypospray, still in her hand.

“No sh’t.” His arms and legs drew up like coiled springs. Rowan’s face grew charming, like a doll’s. His heart raced. The room wavered, as if he were swimming underwater. With an effort, he uncoiled. He had to relax. He had to relax right now.

“Do you remember anything?” she asked. Her dark eyes were like pools, liquid and beautiful. He wanted to swim in those eyes, to shine in them. He wanted to please her. He wanted to coax her out of that green cloth armor, to dance naked with him in the starlight, to … his mumbles to this effect suddenly found voice in poetry, of a sort, actually, it was a very dirty limerick playing on some obvious symbolism involving wormholes and jumpships. Fortunately, it came out rather garbled.

To his relief, she smiled. But there was some un-funny association… . “Las’ time I recited that, som’bod’ beat shit outta me. Wuz i fas’pent’ then, too.”

Alertness coursed through her lovely long body. “You’ve been given fast-penta before? What else do you remember about it?”

“ ’Is name wuz Galen. Angry wi’ me. Doan’ know why.” He remembered a reddening face wavering over him, radiating an implacable, murderous hatred. Blows raining on him. He searched himself for remembered fear, and found it oddly mixed with pity. “I doan’ unnerstan’.”

“What else did he ask you about?”

“Doan’ know. Told ’im ’nother poem.”

“You recited poetry at him, under fast-penta interrogation?”

“Fer hours. Made ’im mad as hell.”

Her brows rose; one finger touched her soft lips, which parted in delight. “You beat a fast-penta interrogation? Remarkable! Let’s not talk about poetry, then. But you remember Ser Galen. Huh!”

“Galen fit?” He cocked his head anxiously. Ser Galen, yes! The name was important; she recognized it. “Tell me.”

“I’m … not sure. Every time I think I’m taking a step forward with you, we seem to go two sideways and one back.”

“Lak to step out wi’ you,” he confided, and listened to himself in horror as he went on to describe, briefly and crudely, what else he would like to do with her. “Ah. Ah. Sorry, m’lady.” He stuffed his fingers into his mouth, and bit them.

“It’s all right,” she soothed. “It’s the fast-penta.”

“No—izza testost’rone.”

She laughed outright. It was most encouraging, but his momentary elation was drowned again in a new wash of tension. His hands plucked and twisted at his clothing, and his feet twitched.

She frowned at a medical monitor on the wall. “Your blood pressure is still going up. Charming as you are under fast-penta, this is not a normal reaction.” She picked up the second hypospray. “I think we’d better stop now.”

“M’ not a normal man,” he said sadly. “Mutant.” A wave of anxiety rushed over him. “You gonna tak’ my brain out?” he asked in sudden suspicion, eyeing the hypospray. And then, in a mind-blinding blast of realization, “Hey! I know where I am! I’m on Jackson’s Whole!” He stared at her in terror, jumped to his feet, and bolted for the door, dodging her lunge.

“No, wait, wait!” she called, running after him with the glittering hypospray still in her hand. “You’re having a drug reaction, stop! Let me get rid of it! Poppy, grab him!”

He dodged the horse-tail-haired Dr. Durona in the lab corridor, and flung himself into the lift tube, boosting himself up with yanks on the safety ladder that sent bolts of searing pain through his half-healed chest muscles. A whirling chaos of corridors and floors, shouts and running footsteps, resolved at last into the lobby he had found before.

He shot past some workmen maneuvering a float-pallet stacked with cases through the transparent doors. No force screen shocked him backward this time. A green-parka’d guard turned in slow motion, drawing a stunner, mouth open on a shout that emerged as thickly as cold oil.

He blinked in blinding grey daylight at a ramp, a paved lot for vehicles, and dirty snow. Ice and gravel bit his