administer so much of the prepared paste as will cover a thumb’s end in food or drink to the desired. Sunset is the best time. Speak consequently to him or her in terms flattering to the speaker. Indulge in all pleasant actions concomitantly. Five to ten administrations will secure a lasting result dependent upon the precise terms used.
What in-?
I turned the paper over, and began to understand. The other side bore what the uneducated among the Vorra might well take for a magical symbol of some kind—especially if they had been suitably primed beforehand by some of Kramer’s mumbo-jumbo. But I had had a pretty good education myself, and I instantly recognized diagrams of molecular structure. Two of them, side by side.
Rather hesitantly, I tried to work out their significance. The first one, in particular, looked as though I ought to know it—got it! Aside from one branching chain springing off the main structure, this was a diagram of a drug called credulin, used to heighten suggestibility. Credulin was, in fact, a chemical equivalent of a course of hypnosis. It could also act as a truth serum under the right circumstances.
Assuming that the altered side branch of the molecule was due to the drug having been tailored to the Vorrish metabolism instead of the human, apparently Kramer wasn’t just a phony.
I had much more trouble working out the second diagram, and my assumption that it was a hormone derivative no better than an enlightened guess. Certainly the two drugs combined must have the effect Kramer claimed for them; I could stop thinking ‘love potion” in quotation marks and think of a love potion that actually worked. For instance: as among the majority of Earthly cultures, a mans virility was a kind of badge of honor to the Vorra. Properly employed, this potion could ensure that Shavarri became the wife to whom Pwill most readily responded. Perhaps it could be used to make certain he did not respond at all to the other wives! In which case Shavarri was going to have a tremendous stranglehold on her lord and master.
There was a rapping at the door. I swallowed the last few mouthfuls of my meal and answered the knock. This time Shavarri had not merely sent one of her maids. Despite my good resolutions, I felt my stomach cartwheel inside me.
I had had as little truck as I could manage with Dwerri, the whipmaster, since my arrival, partly because he hated me on principle—but then, he hated everyone!—and partly because I detested his position on the estate. Pwill was absolutelord of his tenantry and retinue, and his wives’ also, of course. Dwerri was the instrument of his authority: a brick-colored man with carefully dressed whiskers shading between dull gingery-red and brown, pale narrow eyes, arms and legs like sections cut from the bole of a tree. He stood now, eyes glinting, in the narrow passageway outside my room, passing the lash of the whip he carried as symbol of his authority between his stubby fingers. Behind him waited two of his aides, almost as stocky as himself.
“You disobeyed an order from the Under-lady Shavarri,” he said in a purring voice. “You did not go with her maid as you were commanded.”
Putting the boldest possible face on things, I looked him straight in the eye. “It’s taken you quite a long time to bring the maid’s message again,” I said.
He was unperturbed. “I was engaged in beating a field-hand found sleeping by a hedgerow,” he answered, and wet his thumb against his lower lip. He touched it to the lash of his whip. The moisture brought the reddish stain of old dried blood to view on his skin. Waiting until he was sure I had seen and understood, he smiled broadly.
Behind him his aides shifted from foot to foot.
Officially, of course, there was nothing Dwerri could do to me. I was not a member of Shavarri’s personal retinue; an order from her was not automatically to be obeyed like one from Llaq or Pwill. But she could give orders to Dwerri, and it
What in-?
I turned the paper over, and began to understand. The other side bore what the uneducated among the Vorra might well take for a magical symbol of some kind—especially if they had been suitably primed beforehand by some of Kramer’s mumbo-jumbo. But I had had a pretty good education myself, and I instantly recognized diagrams of molecular structure. Two of them, side by side.
Rather hesitantly, I tried to work out their significance. The first one, in particular, looked as though I ought to know it—got it! Aside from one branching chain springing off the main structure, this was a diagram of a drug called credulin, used to heighten suggestibility. Credulin was, in fact, a chemical equivalent of a course of hypnosis. It could also act as a truth serum under the right circumstances.
Assuming that the altered side branch of the molecule was due to the drug having been tailored to the Vorrish metabolism instead of the human, apparently Kramer wasn’t just a phony.
I had much more trouble working out the second diagram, and my assumption that it was a hormone derivative no better than an enlightened guess. Certainly the two drugs combined must have the effect Kramer claimed for them; I could stop thinking ‘love potion” in quotation marks and think of a love potion that actually worked. For instance: as among the majority of Earthly cultures, a mans virility was a kind of badge of honor to the Vorra. Properly employed, this potion could ensure that Shavarri became the wife to whom Pwill most readily responded. Perhaps it could be used to make certain he did not respond at all to the other wives! In which case Shavarri was going to have a tremendous stranglehold on her lord and master.
There was a rapping at the door. I swallowed the last few mouthfuls of my meal and answered the knock. This time Shavarri had not merely sent one of her maids. Despite my good resolutions, I felt my stomach cartwheel inside me.
I had had as little truck as I could manage with Dwerri, the whipmaster, since my arrival, partly because he hated me on principle—but then, he hated everyone!—and partly because I detested his position on the estate. Pwill was absolutelord of his tenantry and retinue, and his wives’ also, of course. Dwerri was the instrument of his authority: a brick-colored man with carefully dressed whiskers shading between dull gingery-red and brown, pale narrow eyes, arms and legs like sections cut from the bole of a tree. He stood now, eyes glinting, in the narrow passageway outside my room, passing the lash of the whip he carried as symbol of his authority between his stubby fingers. Behind him waited two of his aides, almost as stocky as himself.
“You disobeyed an order from the Under-lady Shavarri,” he said in a purring voice. “You did not go with her maid as you were commanded.”
Putting the boldest possible face on things, I looked him straight in the eye. “It’s taken you quite a long time to bring the maid’s message again,” I said.
He was unperturbed. “I was engaged in beating a field-hand found sleeping by a hedgerow,” he answered, and wet his thumb against his lower lip. He touched it to the lash of his whip. The moisture brought the reddish stain of old dried blood to view on his skin. Waiting until he was sure I had seen and understood, he smiled broadly.
Behind him his aides shifted from foot to foot.
Officially, of course, there was nothing Dwerri could do to me. I was not a member of Shavarri’s personal retinue; an order from her was not automatically to be obeyed like one from Llaq or Pwill. But she could give orders to Dwerri, and it
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