Eddie began to feel dizzy but he reasoned that was because George had punched him in the nose not once but twice. Soon the floor came up to meet him because he no longer could keep his balance and then, as he sat there, everything began to grow hazy, foggy, unreal. Soon the room was only a shadow of a room and he could not even tell that the rug was blue. Less than a shadow, it seemed to dissolve in water—in very hot water, because it dissolved quickly.
This Eddie did not know—but he dissolved with it....
"Edam Hurst! Wake up!"
Eddie sat up groggily. He was on a big comfortable couch and the voice came out of a loudspeaker on the wall. There were the couch and the loudspeaker, a closed door and Eddie—and outside of that the room, a small one, was empty.
"You got it wrong," Eddie said. "Just a matter of pronouncing. Not Edam Hurst. Ed Amhurst. Get the difference?"
"Subtle," the voice said. "It doesn't matter. There isn't another Edam Hurst or Ed Amhurst here. No confusion."
"Well, where's the other voice? The woman."
"Early cultural trait," the voice mused. "High sex-identification. Eeb did nothing to assert her femininity, yet he knew the voice for a woman's. Interesting, extremely interesting."
"Of course she's a woman."