“Oh, what is happening in my head?” Gazid stuttered.

As he drew closer, Isaac could feel it too. Snatches of alien sensation slithered like lightning-quick eels through his cerebellum. He blinked and coughed slightly, in thrall suddenly and briefly to the sensation of emotions that were not his clogging up his throat. Isaac shook his head and squeezed his eyes hard shut.

“Gazid,” he snapped. “Walk slowly round it.”

Lucky Gazid did as he was told. The caterpillar toppled over in its eager attempts to right itself, to follow him, to track him down.

“Why does the thing want me?” moaned Lucky Gazid.

“Well I don’t know, Lucky,” said Isaac tartly. “The poor thing’s hurting. Looks like it wants whatever you’ve got, Lucky old son. Empty your pockets slowly. Don’t worry, I’m not going to nick anything.”

Gazid began to pull strips of paper and handkerchiefs from the folds of his soiled jacket and trousers. He hesitated, then reached inside and pulled two fat packets from his inner pockets.

The grub went berserk. The disorienting shards of synaesthetic feeling whirled through Isaac’s and Gazid’s heads again.

“What the fuck’ve you got?” said Isaac through clenched teeth.

“This one’s shazbah,” said Gazid hesitantly and waved the first packet at the cage. The grub did not react. “This one’s dreamshit.” Gazid held the second envelope over the caterpillar’s head, and it all but balanced on its rear end to reach it. Its piteous wails were not quite audible, but they were acutely sensible.

“There we go!” said Isaac. “That’s it! The thing wants dreamshit!” Isaac held out his hand to Gazid and clicked his fingers. “Give it to me.”

Gazid hesitated, then handed over the packet.

“Lot of stuff there, man…that’s a lot of moolah there, man…” he whimpered. “You can’t just take it, man…”

Isaac hefted the pouch. It weighed about two or three pounds, he estimated. He pulled it open. Again the emotional wails burst piercingly up from the caterpillar. Isaac winced at the poignant and inhuman begging.

The dreamshit was a mass of brown, sticky pellets that smelt like very burnt sugar.

“What is this stuff?” Isaac asked Gazid. “I’ve heard of it, but I know arse-all about it.”

“New thing, ‘Zaac. Expensive stuff. Been around a year or so. It’s…heady stuff…”

“What does it do?”

“Couldn’t describe it really. Want to buy some?”

“No!” said Isaac sharply, then hesitated. “Well…Not for me, anyway…How much would this packet cost, Lucky?”

Gazid hesitated, doubtless wondering how much he could exaggerate.

“Uh…about thirty guineas…”

“Oh fuck off, Lucky…You’re such a piss-artist, old son…I’ll buy this off you for…” Isaac hesitated. “For ten.”

“Done,” said Gazid instantly.

Shit, thought Isaac. I’ve been stung. He was about to quibble, when he suddenly thought better of it. He looked carefully at Gazid, who was beginning to swagger again, even with his face slick and ugly with gore and mucus.

“Righto, then. Deal. Listen, Lucky,” said Isaac evenly, “I might want more of this stuff, you know what I mean? And if we stay on good terms, there’s no reason not to keep you on as my…exclusive supplier. Know what I mean? But if anything came up to spread discord in our relationship, distrust and the like, I’d have to go elsewhere. Understand?”

“ ‘Zaac, my man, say no more…Partners, that’s what we are…”

“Absolutely,” said Isaac heavily. He was not so foolish as to think he could trust Lucky Gazid, but at least this way Isaac could keep him vaguely sweet. Gazid was unlikely to bite the hand that fed him, at least not for a while.

This can’t last, thought Isaac, but it’ll do for now.

Isaac plucked one of the moist, sticky lumps from the packet. It was the size of a large olive, coated in a thick and rapidly drying mucus. Isaac pulled back the lid of the caterpillar’s box an inch or two and dropped the nugget of dreamshit inside. He squatted down to watch the larva through the wire front.

Isaac’s eyelids flickered as if static coursed through him. For a moment, he could not focus his vision.

“Woah…” moaned Lucky Gazid behind him. “Something’s fucking with my head…”

Isaac felt briefly nauseous, then aflame with the most consuming and uncompromised ecstasy he had ever felt. After less than half a second the inhuman sensations spewed instantaneously out of him. He felt as if they left by his nose.

“Oh by Jabber…” Isaac yelped. His vision fluctuated, then sharpened and became unusually clear. “This little fucker’s some sort of empath, ain’t it?” he murmured.

He gazed at the caterpillar feeling like a voyeur. The creature was rolling around the drug pellet as if it were a snake crushing its prey. Its mouthpart was clamped hugely onto the top of the dreamshit, and it was chewing it with a hunger that seemed lascivious in its intensity. Its side-split jaws oozed with spit. It was devouring its food like a child eating toffee-pudding at Jabber’s Feast. The dreamshit was rapidly disappearing.

“Hell’s Ducks,” said Isaac. “It’s going to want a lot more than that.” He dropped another five or six little lozenges into the cage. The grub rolled happily around in the sticky collection.

Isaac stood up. He regarded Lucky Gazid, who watched the caterpillar eating and smiled beatifically, swaying.

“Lucky, old son, seems like you might’ve saved my little experiment’s bacon. Very much obliged.”

“I’m a lifesaver, aren’t I, ‘Zaac?” Gazid spun slowly in an ugly pirouette. “Lifesaver! Lifesaver!”

“Yes, that’ll do, that’s what you are, old son, hush now.” Isaac glanced at the clock. “I really have to get a bit more work done, so do the decent thing and push off, eh? No hard feelings, Lucky…” Isaac hesitated and thrust out his hand. “Sorry about your nose.”

“Oh.” Gazid looked surprised. He prodded his bloody face experimentally. “Well…whatever…”

Isaac strode away towards his desk.

“I’ll get your moolah. Hang on.” He rummaged in the drawers, eventually finding his wallet and drawing out a guinea. “Hold on, I’ve more somewhere. Bear with me…” Isaac knelt by the bed and began to throw piles of paper aside, collecting the stivers and shekels he unearthed.

Gazid reached into the packet of dreamshit which Isaac had left on the caterpillar’s box. He looked thoughtfully at Isaac, who was scrabbling under the bed with his face on the floor. Gazid plucked two dreamshit pellets from the sticky morass and glanced over to Isaac, to see if he was watching. Isaac was saying something in a conversational tone, his words muffled by the bed above him.

Gazid sauntered slowly over towards the bed. He took a sweet wrapper from his pocket and twisted it around one of his dreamshit doses, dropped it into his pocket. An idiot grin grew and blossomed across his face as he stared at the second lump.

“Should know what you’re prescribing, ‘Zaac,” he whispered. “That’s ethical…” He giggled with delight.

“What’s that?” shouted Isaac. He began to wriggle his way out from under the bed. “I’ve found it. I knew there was some money in the pocket of one of these trousers…”

Lucky Gazid quickly peeled off the top of the ham roll that lay half-eaten on the desk. He slipped the dreamshit into a mustard-covered space under a lettuce leaf. He replaced the top of the roll and stepped away from the desk.

Isaac stood and turned to him, dusty and smiling. He clutched a fan of notes and some loose change.

“That’s ten guineas. ‘Stail, you bargain like a fucking pro…”

Gazid took the proffered money and backed down the stairs quickly.

“Thanks then ‘Zaac,” he said. “Appreciate it.”

Isaac was somewhat taken aback.

“Right then. I’ll contact you if I need any more dreamshit, all right?”