"Were your incisors that long when you awoke?" he asked, peering into Croyd's mouth.
"They looked normal when I brushed them," Croyd replied. "Have they gown?"
"Take a look."
Tachyon held up a small mirror. Croyd stared. The teeth were an inch long, and sharp looking.
"That's a new development," he stated. "I don't know when it happened."
Tachyon moved Croyd's left arm up behind his back in a gentle hammerlock, then pushed his fingers beneath the protruding scapula. Croyd screamed.
"That bad, is it?" Tachyon asked.
"My God!" Croyd said. "What is it? Is something broken back there?"
The doctor shook his head. He examined some of the skin flakes under a miscroscope. He studied Croyd's feet next. "Were they this wide when you woke up?" he asked. "No. What the hell is happening, Doc?"
"Let's wait another minute or so for my machine to finish with your blood. You've been here three or four times in the past…"
"Yes," Croyd said.
"Fortunately, you came in once right after you woke up. Another time, you were in about six hours after you awoke. On the former occasion you possessed a high level of a very peculiar hormone which I thought at the time might be associated with the change process itself. The other time six hours after awakening-you still had traces of the hormone, but at a very low level. Those were the only two times it was evident."
"So?"
"The main test in which I am interested right now is a check for its presence in your blood. Ah! I believe we have something now."
A series of strange symbols flashed upon the screen of the small unit.
"Yes. Yes, indeed," he said, studying them. "You have a high level of the substance in your blood-higher even than it was right after awakening. Hm. You've been taking amphetamines again, too."
"I had to. I was starting to get sleepy, and I've got to make it to Saturday. Tell me in plain words what this damn hormone means."
"It means that the process of change is still going on within you. For some reason you awoke before it was completed. There seems to be a regular cycle of it, but this time it was interrupted."
"Why?"
Tachyon shrugged, a movement he seemed to have learned since the last time Croyd had seen him.
"Any of a whole constellation of possible biochemical events triggered by the change itself. I think you probably received some brain stimulation as a side effect of another change that was in progress at the time you were aroused. Whatever that particular change was, it is completed-but the rest of the process isn't. So your body is now trying to put you back to sleep until it finishes its business."
"In other words, I woke up too soon?"
"Yes."
"What should I do?"
"Stop taking the drugs immediately. Sleep. Let it run its course."
"I can't. I have to stay awake for two more days-a day and a half will do, actually."
"I suspect your body will fight this, and as I said once before, it seems to know what it's doing. I think you would be taking a chance to keep yourself awake much longer."
"What kind of chance? Do you mean it might kill me-or will it just make me uncomfortable?"
"Croyd, I simply do not know. Your condition is unique. Each change takes a different course. The only thing we can trust is whatever accommodation your body has made to the virus-whatever it is within you that brings you through each bout safely. If you try to stay awake by unnatural means now, this is the very thing that you will be fighting."
"I've put off sleep lots of times with amphetamines."
"Yes, but those times you were merely postponing the onset of the process. It doesn't normally begin until your brain chemistry registers a sleep state. But now it is already under way, and the presence of the hormone indicates its continuance. I don't know what will happen. You may turn an ace phase into a joker phase. You may lapse into a really lengthy coma. I simply have no way of telling."
Croyd reached for his shirt.
"I'll let you know how it all turns out," he said.
Croyd did not feel like walking as much as he usually did. He rode the subway again. His nausea returned and this time brought with it a headache. And his shoulders were still hurting badly. He visited the drugstore near his subway stop and bought a bottle of aspirins.
He stopped by the apartment building where the Sarzannos had formerly resided, before he headed home. This time the manager was in. He was unable to help him, however, for Joe's family had left no forwarding address when they departed. Croyd glanced in the mirror beside the man's door as he left, and he was shocked at the puffiness of his eyes, at the deep circles beneath them. They were beginning to ache now, he noted.
He returned home. He had promised to take Claudia and Carl to a good restaurant for dinner, and he wanted to be in the best shape he could for the occasion. He returned to the bathroom and stripped again. He was huge, bloated-looking. He realized then that with all of his other symptoms, he had forgotten to tell Tachyon that he had not relieved himself at all since awakening. His body must be finding some use for everything that he ate or drank. He stepped on the scale, but it only went up to three hundred and he was over that. He took three aspirins and hoped that they would work soon. He scratched his arm and a long strip of flesh came away, painlessly and without bleeding. He scratched more gently in other areas and the flaking continued. He took a shower and brushed his fangs. He combed his hair and big patches of it came out. He stopped combing. For a moment he wanted to cry, but he was distracted by a yawning jag. He went to his room and took two more amphetamines. Then he recalled having heard somewhere that body mass had to be taken into account in calculating doses of medication. So he took another one, just to be safe.
Croyd found a dark restaurant and he slipped the waiter something to put them in a booth toward the rear, out of sight of most of the other diners.
"Croyd, you're really looking-unwell," Claudia had said when she'd returned earlier.
"I know," he replied. "I went to see my doctor this afternoon."
"What did he say?"
"I'm going to need a lot of sleep, starting right after the wedding."
"Croyd, if you want to skip it, I'll understand. Your health comes first. "
"I don't want to skip it. I'll be okay."
How could he say it to her when he did not fully understand it himself? Say that it was more than his favorite relative's wedding?-that the occasion represented the final rending of his home and that it was unlikely he would ever have another? Say that this was the end of a phase of his existence and the beginning of a big unknown?
Instead, he ate. His appetite was undiminished and the food was particularly good. Carl watched with the fascination of a voyeur, long after he had finished his own meal, as Croyd put away two more chateaubriands-for-two, pausing only to call for extra baskets of rolls.
When they finally rose Croyd's joints were creaking again. He sat on his bed later that evening, aching. The aspirins weren't helping. He had removed his clothing because all of his garments were feeling tight again. Whenever he scratched himself now, his skin did more than flake. Big pieces of it came away, but they were dry and pale with no signs of blood. No wonder I look pasty-faced, he decided. At the bottom of one particularly large rent in his chest he saw something gray and hard. He could not figure what it was, but its presence frightened him.
Finally, despite the hour, he phoned Bentley. He had to talk to someone who knew his condition. And Bentley usually gave good advice.
After many rings Bentley answered, and Croyd told him his story.
"You know what I think, kid?" Bentley said at last. "You ought to do what the doctor said. Sleep it off."
"I can't. Not yet. I just need a little over a day. Then I'll be all right. I can keep awake that long, but I hurt so damn much and my appearance-"
"Okay, okay. Here's what we'll do. You come by about ten in the morning. I can't do anything for you now. But I'll talk to a man I know first thing, and we'll get you a really strong painkiller. And I want to have a look at you. Maybe there's some way of playing down your appearance a bit."