As for my friend, she ended spread-eagled face up on the jet black carpet. The carpet sank beneath her, molding itself into a Festina-shaped hollow… as if she had struck the floor after falling from a great height. Festina lay in this personalized gully for nearly a minute, all the time making loud congested grunts and wheezes that were most undignified. I knelt beside her, cradling her head and offering words of encouraging comfort: "Stop those ugly sounds at once, you foolish one! You must not be ill or dying, because that is not how a proper sidekick behaves."

As I held her, more mist trickled out of her nose. The bits did not stay outside; whenever she inhaled, all the mist went back in again. After one exhalation, I waved my hand through the fog around her face in an effort to disperse it… but the tiny particles simply swirled past my fingers and returned inside with the next breath. Of course, I could have prevented this by squeezing Festina’s nostrils shut. However, I did not wish to asphyxiate my friend, so I stayed my hand.

Suddenly, Festina let loose a colossal sneeze. The sneeze was remarkable in several regards: volume of sound, volume of air, and volume of sputum discharged into my face. I wiped off the moisture with great dispatch (or more precisely, with the sleeve of my jacket); and as I was doing so, a burst of fog exploded from my friend, streaming out her nose and mouth, and even little wisps from her ears. In seconds, Nimbus floated before me… while in my arms, Festina opened her eyes and said, "Christ, I feel like shit."

"That is because you had a cloud man in your head," I told her. "It seems he saw you unconscious and succumbed to penetrative urges."

Festina stared at me a moment, then closed her eyes, murmuring, "This is all a dream, this is all a dream, this is all a dream." She opened her eyes, looked at me, and said, "Damn. So much for that theory."

The Cloud Man Gets Huffy

I helped my friend sit up — which was not as easy as it sounds. First, I still held the gooey infant Starbiter in one hand and was attempting not to hurt her (or get too much of her ickyness on me). Second, the floor kept shifting, trying to reshape itself to Festina’s body the moment she moved in any direction. It made me wonder how many people died because of these foolish floors; one could easily sink into a customized crater and starve to death because one could not get out.

Starvation was a subject much on my mind.

When Festina finally reached the vertical, she shook her head as if trying to clear her wits. Then with a groan she said, "Shit… what’s happened since I went down?"

"Very little. The Shaddill have seized the Hemlock and have begun to capture smaller ships."

"That’s all they’ve done in six hours?"

"It has not been six hours," I told her. "It has been less than five minutes."

"But I thought… the first time the Shaddill flashed you, Uclod and Lajoolie were unconscious for… I shouldn’t be awake yet."

Nimbus drifted closer — which is to say, closer to Festina. His tiny bits avoided me, as if his whole body were leaning back from my presence. "I thought it advisable to wake you," he told my friend. "Stimulate your glands and nervous system; get some adrenaline pumping; counteract the effects of the beam."

"You can do that?" Festina asked.

"Apparently," he said. "I haven’t had much practical experience with Homo sapiens, but my medical training covered first aid on familiar alien species. Apologies if my methods lacked finesse; how are you feeling?"

"Like crap, but I’ll live. Thanks."

Nimbus fluttered, temporarily losing his human shape. "Then I’ll move on to someone else. The more of us who are conscious, the better we can deal with the Shaddill when they arrive." He swirled above the other bodies as if looking them over one by one; then he coalesced next to Lajoolie. "This one next," he said. "We may need muscle."

"I have muscle," I told him. "I am excellent at feats of strength."

He did not answer. In fact, his body tightened at the sound of my voice. Perhaps he was simply compressing his components in preparation for flying up Lajoolie’s nose; but it occurred to me, he might be upset at certain insinuations I had made about his behavior: specifically, my remarks about penetrative urges. He was, after all, a creature who burned with shame over something as simple as tickling his daughter or seeing through her eyes. Perhaps he felt equally guilty about entering Festina’s body and forcibly rousing her to consciousness. It was much the same, was it not? Invading a woman’s anatomy without permission, even though the act was justified. And a man in such a state of guilt might be sensitive to allegations that he was acting from base motives.

He might be very hurt indeed.

As Nimbus flowed up Lajoolie’s nostrils, I called to him, "I am sorry I suggested you behaved improperly when you entered Festina. I was foolish to jump to such a mistaken conclusion. But it is amusing, is it not, how misjudgments occur? And it is also most traditional. You and I, we are son and daughter of the Shaddill; and as siblings, it is common to fall into ill-founded petty disagreements…"

I stopped speaking because he had disappeared — completely ignoring my words. Pretending I did not exist, because he was fiercely angry at me.

Sometimes it is hard to have a brother. Especially when you both make each other feel bad.

More Arousals

I do not know if Divians are easier to wake than humans, or if Nimbus had simply gained experience in rousing persons from this type of unconsciousness. Whatever the explanation, the cloud man did not take nearly so long to bring Lajoolie around as he had with Festina. As soon as her eyes flickered open, he proceeded immediately into Uclod’s sinuses, not giving me the tiniest opportunity to apologize again.

Watching Nimbus work on the two Divians, I wondered why he had not woken them the previous time they had been shot with the Shaddill’s beam. The probable answer was that invading other people’s bodies truly filled him with abhorrence. On the previous occasion, I had been doing an excellent job of piloting Starbiter so there was no need to rouse the two Divians; now, however, our predicament was so dire that it called for Extreme Resuscitation.

Of course, extreme resuscitation is not pleasant, and neither Festina nor Lajoolie looked to be enjoying their newly regained consciousness. Lajoolie showed a marked preference for lying in a fetal position, occasionally whimpering with pain. Festina remained sitting up, but drooped her head between her knees and muttered unintelligible phrases conspicuously featuring the word "hangover."

In an attempt to divert them from brooding on their pain, I said, "Come, we will soon face the villainous Shaddill, so we must make plans for a fight." But this did not rally their spirits. Lajoolie just groaned and Festina mumbled, "If there is a battle, pray God I get shot."

When Uclod regained consciousness, he was no more eager to spring into action than the other two. Nimbus still would not talk — he went directly into Sergeant Aarhus without an instant’s pause. From Aarhus he moved on to Lady Bell, splitting himself into a dozen small fog patches and seeping into her body through a variety of orifices.

I do not know how he could tell which openings led into lungs, which into stomachs, and so on. However, the cloud man had the lady awake in under a minute… after which she howled most piteously. I opened my mouth to ask why she made such an appalling racket; but I closed it again when her head sank into her body as if being sucked down the neckhole. The skull fit exactly into her tiny torso.

This was something one did not see every day.