bad waif from King's Lynn had set the tray on his knees and
started to wolf the food down. The others were finishing up. Erich, Mark
and Kaby were having a quietly furious argument I couldn't overhear at
the end of the bar nearest the bronze chest, and Illy was draped over
the piano like a real octopus, listening in.

Beau and Sevensee were pacing up and down near the control divan and
throwing each other a word now and then. Beyond them, Bruce and Lili
were sitting on the opposite couch from us, talking earnestly about
something. Maud had sat down at the other end of the bar and was
knitting--it's one of the habits like chess and quiet drinking, or
learning to talk by squeak box, that we pick up to pass the time in the
Place in the long stretches between parties. Doc was fiddling around the
Gallery, picking things up and setting them down, still managing to stay
on his feet at any rate.

* * * * *

Lili and Bruce stood up, still gabbing intensely at each other, and Illy
began to pick out with one tentacle a little tune in the high keys that
didn't sound like anything on God's earth. "Where do they get all the
energy?" I wondered.

As soon as I asked myself that, I knew the answer and I began to feel
the same way myself. It wasn't energy; it was nerves, pure and simple.

Change is like a drug, I realized--you get used to the facts never
staying the same, and one picture of the past and future dissolving into
another maybe not very different but still different, and your mind
being constantly goosed by strange moods and notions, like nightclub
lights of shifting color with weird shadows between shining right on
your brain.

The endless swaying and jogging is restful, like riding on a train.

You soon get to like the movement and to need it without knowing, and
when it suddenly stops and you're just you and the facts you think from
and feel from are exactly the same when you go back to them--boy, that's
rough, as I found out now.

The instant we got Introverted, everything that ordinarily leaks into
the Place, wake or sleep, had stopped coming, and we were nothing but
ourselves and what we meant to each other and what we could make of
that, an awfully lonely, scratchy situation.

I decided I felt like I'd been dropped into a swimming pool full of
cement and held under until it hardened.

I could understand the others bouncing around a bit. It was a wonder
they didn't hit the Void