as usual. It was a holiday in
full swing. The glorious reunion! No one was working. No one was
willing to put in a lot of time at the communications center talking to
Julia and me. They were too busy talking to each other. I was right.
The other ship.

Of course, since the other ship's landfall had been a little girl then,
the early movements of the group had been restricted. Expansion was
delayed. She grew up. She came to the city. Then--well, I didn't have
to think about that.

We looked at each other, Julia and I. A doll she was in the first place
and a doll she still was. And then on top of that was the feeling of
community, of closeness coming from our people. There was a sympathy.
The two of us were in the same fix. And it may be that there was a
certain sense of jealousy and resentment too--like the feeling, say,
between North and South America. How did we feel?

"I feel like a drink."

We said it together and laughed. Then we got up and got the drinks. I
was glad to find that Julia's absent roommate, an actress, had a pretty
fair bar stock.

We had a drink. We had another. And a third.

Maybe nobody at all was manning the inner duty stations. Or maybe they
were visiting back and forth, both populations in a holiday mood. They
figured this was a once in a millennium celebration and, for once, the
limits were off. Even alcohol was welcome. That's a line of thought
that kills plenty of people every day out on the highway.

We had a couple more in a reckless toast. I kissed Julia. She kissed
me. Then we had some more drinks.

Naturally it hit us hard; we weren't used to it. But still we didn't
stop drinking. The limits were off for the first time. Probably it
would never happen again. This was our chance of a lifetime and there
was a sort of desperation in it. We kept on drinking.

"Woosh," I said, finally, "wow. Let's have one more, wha' say? One more
them--an' one more those."

She giggled. "Aroun' an aroun', whoop, whoop! Dizzy. Woozy. Oughta have
cup coffee."

"Naw. Not coffee. Gonna have hangover. Take pill. Apsirin."

"Can-_not_! Can-_not_ take pill. Won' lemme. 'Gains talla rules."

"Can."

"Can-_not_."

"Can. No rules. Rule soff. Can. Apsirin. C'mon."

Clinging to each other, we stumbled to the bathroom. Pills? The
roommate must have been a real hypochondriac. She had rows and
batteries of pills. I knocked a bottle off the cabinet shelf. Aspirin?
Sure, fancy aspirin. Blue, special. I