“You’ve had enough for a while,” Farris told her. “I’ll watch him tonight.”
Farris watched. Not only that night but for many nights. The days went into weeks, and the natives still shunned the house, and he saw nobody except the pale girl and the man who was living in a different way than other humans lived.
Berreau didn’t change. He didn’t scan to sleep, nor did he seem to need food or drink. His eyes never closed, except in that infinitely slow blinking.
He didn’t sleep, and he did not quit moving. He was always moving, only it was in that weird, utterly slow-motion tempo that one could hardly see.
Lys had been right. Berreau wanted to go back to the forest. He might be living a hundred times slower than normal, but he was obviously still conscious in some weird way, and still trying to go back to the hushed, forbidden forest up there where they had found him.
Farris wearied of lifting the statue-like figure back into bed, and with the girl’s permission tied Berreau’s ankles. It did not make things much better. It was even more upsetting, in a way, to sit in the lamplit bedroom and watch Berreau’s slow struggles for freedom.
The dragging slowness of each tiny movement made Farris’ nerves twitch to see. He wished he could give Berreau some sedative to keep him asleep, but he did not dare to do that.
He had found, on Berreau’s forearm, a tiny incision stained with sticky green. There were scars of other, old incisions near it. Whatever crazy drug had been injected into the man to make him hunati was unknown. Farris did not dare try to counteract its effect.
Finally, Farris glanced up one night from his bored perusal of an old L’Illustration and then jumped to his feet.
Berreau still lay on the bed, but he had just winked. Had winked with normal quickness, and not that slow, dragging blink.