Herl looked at the proffered container, narrowed his eyes and looked at Saem suspiciously. "That's about enough for you, Saem. You're beginning to get blurry."
Saem looked down at his extended arm. Sure enough, a golden haze was starting to form around the limb, a naked, ripplingly muscular arm. He set his beaker with exaggerated precision on the edge of the desk and slapped at the offending haze. "Get back in there," he commanded. The haze cleared, the brown shirt sleeve regained complete opacity. "Nothing wrong with me," he announced firmly. "You must be seeing things. Give me another." He held up the beaker.
Herl shook his head and poured himself another. "I need this worse than you do. I'm the one that I ... need Abigail not to leave me ... myself and not you. You can get just as sorry as you like because then when she comes back she'll leave you and not me and that means she'll put you somewhere else. If I don't give you another drink, you'll be sorry and I'll have her all to myself ... do you follow me? Hurry up, Abigail!"
A flare exploded brilliantly by the galley door and it was Abigail. Her cloud of golden haze was forming into swirling tendrils which snapped into sparks at the ends.
Herl widened his eyes at the frequent revelation of thigh, of bosom.
Her voice was an angry pizzicato of steel strings. "Saem Berry! Dad! You're drunk! Get out of that matter this instant! The idea, Herl Hofner, getting Saem drunk when he was supposed to be keeping you out of trouble!"
Her slender arm pointed accusingly at Saem. "Out of it!" she jangled, "or I'll leave you to do all the explaining."
Herl's gaze followed her gesture and he watched, trancelike, as the clothes of the transfiguring towerman disintegrated into wreaths of shining golden smoke which clung around a superb sculptured torso and swirled to leave a benign and thoughtful face regarding him with sympathetic, almost regretful amusement.
Saem's voice was the pedal tones of a great organ improvising in a minor key. "All that alcohol wasted when I put off the flesh," he sang at Abigail. "A new sensation, and you take it from me."