Star quest

when he thought of the sleek form, the paw-feet, the lips…
    The door opened suddenly. He sat up just as quickly. Seer looked in at him, eyes vacant, watery. "What do you want?" Tohm asked.
    The old man looked at him, nothing more…
    Somewhere in the distance, there was weeping, weeping somewhere far, far down in the guts of Seer, far, far down in his soul…
    Just as suddenly as he had come, the Mutie left, closing the door with a solid thud. His footsteps scraped over the concrete, fading down the hall.
    Tohm was sure he could not sleep now. In only days he had been plucked from a horizontal society of one plane and plunged down into a vertical, horizontal cross-hatch of meanings and purposes, drives and goals, currents and undercurrents. His own purpose was even be-ginning to cloud. He had to think to remember what Tarnilee looked like. At first, he pictured her with green eyes. Was that what the modem world did? Did it squash all love and memories of love? Or was this himself, changed? Ignoring all these doubts, still he would not be able to sleep. The place was crawling with eerie things, eerie people, an illegal operation as it was. He was sure of it. He was certain. But he fell into slumber almost instantly.

Chapter Nine
    HE WOKE and smelled himself.
    It wasn't pleasant. He got up and undressed, went into the bathroom and showered for half an hour, washing away all the things he had covered himself with in the past days, all the things other than dirt and sweat, the things that couldn't be seen or smelled but were nonetheless there.
    The water gurgled, babbled, talked as the sea talked.
    Water, he thought, was like a womb. Water was an aperture in the earth's belly from which Me crawled forth to be spanked by the hands of the Fates and the Furies. And water cleansed Me, washed away the dirt, leaving only the pure things which Nature first brought forth as her own. In the spring, it fell out of the heavens and splashed lightly onto the ground, dribbled away, cleansing the earth of the stain of evils endured. And in the winter, it drifted gentle and white, a virgin mantle to restore the hymen of the land, to make things once again pure and sweet and innocent.
    Listening carefully, he conversed with it for half an hour, laughing at the tales it told, sighing at the confidences it imparted, frowning at the philosophical comments it made on its way to the sewer.
    When he went back to his room, his old clothes were gone and a set of fatigues, olive drab, was waiting for him. This, he recognized, was the uniform dress of the lower class of the Romaghin social structure. He slipped into the rugged yet snug clothes, pressed the ends of the magnetic belt together, slipped into the black boots that were exactly like his old ones except that they broke at mid-calf rather than just below the knee—another sign of the lowest class. It seemed to him, from what history he could remember from Triggy Gop's books, that rebels always identified with the common people—in this case, even though the common people were just as ready, willing, and able as anyone else to blow their heads off.
    He strapped the flybelt on and pocketed the gas pistol that had also been left undisturbed. He was warmed by the realization that these people were trying to show their trust for him. He had forgotten that some people could be trusted. And were trusting. Opening the door, he collided with the catgirl. "Oof!" he managed to gasp.
    "I came to escort you to the dining hall. We didn't expect you to sleep until lunch," she said, laughing.
    "Your accommodations were too good. I think the bed injected me with some sinister narcotic."
    "Dragon blood," she said in a mock whisper. Her eyes were like stars.
    She led him to the end of a side corridor branching off his own and pushed open a door. "This is it"
    He held it. "Ladies first"
    He thought she blushed.
    "Thank you," she said demurely, entering the room.
    They were all at the table. Corgi and Hunk sat side by side at one end. Babe sat across from Fish, and Tohm was shown to a chair next to Mayna. Seer sat in the corner, babbling something to himself, endlessly weeping.
    Oh," Tohm said suddenly, "if I'm taking his seat—"
    "No, no," Corgi said, his eyes rippling with brilliant gold.
    "But after all, I'm just an intruder, and—"
    "He sits in the corner always," Corgi said.
    Everyone seemed to be uneasy.
    "We can draw another table up to this one. I can sit there," Tohm said.
    The cat paw came,