Robert Sheckley, `Down the Digestive Tract and into the Cosmos with Mantra, Tantra, and Specklebang'.
`But will I really have hallucination?' Gregory asked.
`Like I said, I guarantee it,' Blake answered. `You should be into something by now.'
Gregory looked around. The room was dismayingly, tediously familiar: narrow blue bed, walnut dresser, marble table with wrought-iron base, double-headed lamp, turkey-red rug, beige television set. He was sitting in an upholstered armchair. Across from him, on a white plastic couch, was Blake, pale and plump, poking at three speckled irregularly shaped tablets.
`I mean to say,' Blake said, `that there's all sorts of acid going around - tabs, strips, blotters, dots, most of it cut with speed and some of it cut with Drano. But lucky you have just ingested old Doc Blake's special tantric mantric instant freakout special superacid cocktail, known to the carriage trade as Specklebang, and containing absolutely simon-pure LSD-25, plus carefully calculated additives of STP, DMT, and THC, plus a smidgen of Yage, a touch of psilocybin, and the merest hint of oloiuqui; plus Doc Blake's own special ingredient - extract of foxberry, newest and most potent of the hallucinogenic potentiators.'
Gregory was staring at his right hand, slowly clenching and unclenching it.
`The result,' Blake went on, `is Doc Blake's total instantaneous many-splendoured acid delight, guaranteed to make you hallucinate on the quarter-hour at least, or I return your money and give up my credentials as the best free-lance underground chemist ever to hit the West Village.'
`You sound like you're stoned,' Gregory said.
`Not at all,' Blake protested. `I am merely on speed, just simple, old-fashioned amphetamines such as truck drivers and high school students swallow by the pound and shoot by the gallon. Speed is nothing more than a stimulant. With its assistance I can do my thing faster and better. My thing is to create my own quickie drug empire between Houston and 14th Street, and then bail quickly, before I burn out my nerves or get crunched by the narcs or the Mafia, and then split for Switzerland where I will freak out in a splendid sanatorium surrounded by gaudy women, plump bank accounts, fast cars, and the respect of the local politicos.'
Blake paused for a moment and rubbed his upper lip. `Speed does bring on a certain sense of grandiloquence, with accompanying verbosity . . . But never fear, my dear newlymet friend and esteemed customer, my senses are more or less unimpaired and I am fully capable of acting as your guide for the superjumbotripout upon which you are now embarked.'
`How long since I took that tablet?' Gregory asked.
Blake looked at his watch. `Over an hour ago.'
`Shouldn't it be acting by now?'
`Is should indeed. It undoubtedly is. Something should be happening.'
Gregory looked around. He saw the grass-lined pit, the pulsing glow-worm, the hard-packed mica, the captive cricket. He was on the side of the pit nearest to the drain pipe. Across him, on the mossy stone, was Blake, his cilia matted and his exoderm mottled, poking at three speckled irregularly shaped tablets.
`What's the matter?' Blake asked.
Gregory scratched the tough membrane over his throax.
His cilia waved spasmodically in clear evidence of amazement, dismay, perhaps even fright. He extended a feeler, looked at it long and hard, bent id double and straightened it again.
Blake's antennae pointed straight up in a gesture of concern. `Hey, baby, speak to me! Are you hallucinating?'
Gregory made an indeterminate movement with his tail. `It started just before, when I asked you if I'd really have any hallucinations. I was into it then but I didn't realize it, everything seemed so natural, so ordinary . . . i was sitting on a chair, and you were on a couch, and we both had soft exoskeletons like - like mammals!'
`The shift into illusion is often imperceptible,' Blake said. `One slides into them and out of them. What's happening now?'
Gregory coiled his segmented tail and relaxed his antennae. He looked around. The pit was dismayingly, tediously familiar. `Oh, I'm back to normal now. Do you think I'm going to have more hallucinations?'
`Like I told you, I guarantee it,' Blake said, neatly folding his glossy red wings and settling comfortably into a corner of the nest.
--------THE END--------