Jane Howard, normally utterly neat, clean, and presentable, stood there in the Atrium drenched with water front and back, clothes dripping, hair coming down over one eye, and utterly dumbfounded. Though her Dept. of Mysteries colleague, Adam was normally a little...eccentric, she had never seen him so out of control of this. Something was obviously wrong and he needed seeing to. But the first step was to get him out of the Fountain.
"Adam," she began, in her most reasonable tone of voice, "I understand that you're thirsty. But drinking out of this Fountain is no good--that's not what it's meant for. Why don't you come with me down to the Dept. of Mysteries? We have all that bottled water in the Decompression Chamber, you know--I'll get you some while you dry yourself off. And then we can go find Airey, I'll bet he knows where there's lots of water." Jane knew from a recent memo that their Dept. Head was down in the Chamber of Codes--that's where she had been heading when she was interrupted. She felt he needed to see Adam, that this odd behavior might be something more serious than just an illness.
"Come on, Adam--what do you say?" she said coaxingly, and held out a hand to him. |