"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.
I finished the beer. I would have a long bus ride during which I could consider the phenomenon in more detail. In the meantime, it seemed prudent to dodge around a bit and make certain whether or not I was being followed again. I went out and did this for the next fifteen or twenty minutes, but was unable to detect anyone trailing me. I moved on to the station, then, to catch my stereoisobus back home.
Drifting drowsy across the countryside, I paraded my troubles through the streets of my mind, poking occasional thoughts between the bars of their cages, hearing the clowns beat drums in my temples, I had performed my assigned task. Assigned by whom? Well, he had said he was a recording, but he had also furnished me with Article 7224, Section C, in a time of need-and anyone who helps me when I need help is automatically on the side of the angels until further notice. I wondered whether I was supposed to get drunk again for additional instructions or whether he had something else in mind for our next contact. There had to be one, of course. He had indicated that my cooperation on this venture would lead to all manner of clarification and untanglement. All right. I bought it. I was willing to take, on faith in that promise, the necessity for my reversal. Everyone else bad wanted something I could not provide and offered nothing in return.
If I drifted off to sleep, would there be another message? Or was my alcohol level too low? And what was the connection there, anyway? If Sibla was to be believed, alcohol acted as a dampener rather than an exciter of telepathic phenomena. Why had my correspondent come through most clearly on the two occasions when I had been intoxicated? It occurred to me at that moment that if it were not for the obvious effect of Article 7224, Section C, I would have no way of really knowing that the communications were not simply drunken hallucinations, perhaps the best efforts to date of a highly imaginative death wish. But it had to be more than that. Even Charv and Ragma now suspected the existence of my supersensory accomplice. I felt a sense of urgency, a need to do whatever had to be done quickly, before the aliens caught on to the pattern-whatever it might be. I was certain that they would disapprove, probably attempt to interfere.
How many of them were there, pursuing or watching me? Where were Zeemeister and Buckler? What were Charv and Ragma up to? Who was the man in the dark coat Merimee had spotted? What was the State Department representative doing? Since I had answers for none of these questions, I devoted some time to planning my own actions so as to allow for the worst of everything. I would not go back to my apartment, for obvious reasons. Hal's place seemed a bit risky, with all the activity he had described. I decided that Ralph Warp ought to be able to put me up for a time in an appropriately surreptitious fashion. After all, I owned half of the Woof & Warp, his arts-and-crafts shop, and had sacked out in the back room in the past. Yes, that was what I would do.
Steinway-like, the ghost of exertions past fell upon me then, as from a great height, and I was crumpled. Hoping for further enlightenment, I did not fight the crush. But drowsing there in my seat, I was not rewarded with another message. Instead, a nightmare encompassed me.