Larry was having fits again, so we kicked him in the head a few times until he calmed down. Third time this week, and I was beginning to get sick of it.
I was feeling pretty good. I hadn't had a screamjag in about four days and the hallucinations seemed to be over. Although, I thought, staring out the window at the flat landscape of green plants, blue dust, and purple sky, you never can be sure, can you?
"Hey, Tom," Marylu shouted at me. "Get me some lunch." She wore a shimmering pink blouse and tattered pants, ones that even the squidfaces couldn't stand.
"Get your own," I said, amused at my witty riposte. Sprice does that to you, among other things, making you think the entire universe is a situation comedy.
"I have my own," said Marylu, and if the logic escaped me, I didn't let that concern me. Marylu hadn't been sober in ages. She left the room angry, but that would no doubt dissipate as soon as she ate.
In the corner, Larry began to moan. Served him right, I decided. You have to use this stuff carefully; you don't mix sprice with albion root, not if you want to keep from your brain from turning into something akin to a carrot.
Which, I reflected, was probably why he used the damn stuff. At least a carrot doesn't have to think about things.
"Safe sex," Sharon murmured, so I knew she was coming down. It was about time. It really bothered me that she used wowie so much. She should have had more self-respect than that.
Of course, I shouldn't talk.
The shop bell rang. "Tinkle, tinkle, little bell," I muttered.
"The squidfaces can go to hell." Larry was at least coherent enough to reply. He lay on the floor, coughing in the bluish dust.
I looked around. Marylu was too far gone to be any good, and Larry probably couldn't stand up yet. Sharon would probably offer to screw a dead bruiserbug, male or female, if one were available, and that had gotten Dwain in enough trouble.
I supposed I was the sanest of us all right then. I went through the curtain and into the shop.
The darkness of the store was a relief, its long aisles filled with junk soothing. Dwain was by his window, quiet as usual.
A fat squidface was pawing among the scraps of metal, plastic, and toenail parings on the sale table, plunging his left grabber arm deep into the boxes. His central eyestalk stiffened the instant I entered.
"Put it back, creature with arthritic earflaps," I said in glorpan, or at least in the pidgin we'd developed the past three years. "Or your descendants will suffer from generosity." Damn aliens would try to steal anything not properly guarded. It was considered impolite not to try.
He snuffled several times through his right nostril and his eyestalks nearly turned themselves into knots, but I ignored the protestations of innocence.
"We don't take any bullshit here," I said. "Put it back."
The glorp stopped the gestures, then put a piece of blue plastic, the top of a pen or stylus most likely, back on the sale table. They are attracted to plastic. Their civilization, such as it was, had never developed anything like it. It was like landing in America in 1900--advanced enough so we weren't treated as gods, yet without the technology to be any help at all.
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