"So big that the Girls lost track of its path," Krayhayft sneered.
Skatholtz was saying, "The dance of Jupiter's moons is very complex-"
While Corbell was saying, "You arrogant ball-less idiot-"
Casual, contemptuous, Krayhayft's backhand swipe caught him under the jaw and lifted him and flung him back on the steps. "The bottled memory has given you too much of the Girls' view," Krayhayft said.
"And whose fault is that?"
Skatholtz pulled Corbell to his feet. His elbow hurt furiously, but he thought he hadn't broken anything, and that was fiercely important now. Still, it was just as well he hadn't tried the bannister. Two Boys were waiting below them in the admissions room.
They waited for the leaders to descend. One was young, two or three Jupiter years old by Corbell's estimate. He burst into speech as if he wanted to get it over with: "Gording is still loose. He has not used a prilatsil. The thread he took was mine. He must have brushed against me and taken it from my belt. I didn't notice."
"Where is he?" Skatholtz demanded.
"He went north and east, until we lost his track. Toward the edge of Parhalding."
"It may be he doesn't know about the-" something Corbell couldn't catch. "Search the streets but not the buildings. That way he cannot trap you with thread. He may be trying to reach the Dikta Place on foot. We can stop him then. Or he may try to take a tchiple-" an unfamiliar word. "Look for undamaged tchiples. Damage them. Tell the others now."
The younger Boy ran, eager to be gone.
What was a tchiple? A bubble-car? How did the Boys know whether Gording had used a "phone booth"?
"You must retrace our path," Skatholtz told the other Boy. "Warn all you meet that a dikt is loose. Gording must not return to the Ditka Place." He wheeled suddenly and barked, "You are staring, Corbell. Do we fascinate you?"
"Very much. Couldn't Gording use a prilatsil without your knowing?"
"No." Skatholtz smiled. He pointed at the wall map. "That is a picture of the world, isn't it? An old one, made when ice still covered this land."
"Yes. Can I use your spear?"
That was sheer bravado; he wanted to see what would happen. What happened was that Skatholtz handed Corbell his spear. The younger Boys were gone, but Skatholtz and Krayhayft betrayed no obvious tension. Corbell pointed with the haft. "These are the Himalayas, mountains. There are valleys high up, where it is cooler. From orbit I saw green things growing there. Further north, here on the Sea of Okhotsk, energy is being used for industry. It may be only machines left running, but-"
"It could be Girls. Would it be too hot for them? No, the pole is near enough. But you don't think so, Corbel."
"No. Why would they wait so long? How would they build spaceships?"
"We don't know how spaceships are built." Skatholtz looked through the broken picture window, toward where the new planet would appear at dark. "If Uranus is falling free, we can do nothing. If the Girls are guiding it... what will they do? Smash the world? Make it cold again and take back their land? You knew Girls, Corbell."
"I knew dikta women."
"There may be Girls still in the world. We can threaten them... or can we? Uranus will be upon us before we can reach these places. Krayhayft-"
Far down the street, Corbell caught motion. "Your spear," he said, holding it out.
Skatholtz turned to take the spear. In that position he missed seeing what Corbell saw: a bubble-car skimming trees at ninety miles per hour, dropping and slowing.
Krayhayft must have caught something in Corbell's face. He ran forward, crying, "Alert!"
Startled, Skatholtz glanced back.
Corbell jumped out the window.
The Boys had quick reactions. As Corbell crossed the splinters of glass a spear haft rapped his ankles hard, threw him off balance. He curled tight and hugged his knees. Instead of landing on his head he fell on his shoulders in high corn. Skatholtz was coming through the window in a graceful swan dive. Corbell rolled, found his feet and ran.
Krayhayft threw his machete. It slashed viciously at Corbel's calves as it spun past. Krayhayft screamed, "Stop or die!"
Skatholtz barked from close behind him. "Veto! He knows something!"
Corbell dug in.
The bubble-car had stopped just at the entrance. Through the torn vines that still wrapped it Corbell saw white hair and white beard. Gording reached across to open the door. He was holding a stick against the doorpost. Why?
Hell with it. He threw himself in, thrashed to turn around.
Skatholtz was right there-gaping in horror as he skidded to a panic stop. Corbell slammed the door in his face.
That stick across the door: Gording must have strung thread across the door, and was holding it back with the stick. It could have cut Corbel's hand off. Hell with that, too. "Go!"
"I don't know the codes."
"Oh, for-" Corbell jabbed five times at the compressed hourglass figure. It was the first thing he thought of, and it was good enough: The World Police Headquarters in Sarash-Zillish. The car surged away.
Corbell looked back-straight into Skatholtz's eyes, before the Boy prudently dropped from the car. He'd lost his spear. It should have been lying in the street behind him, but it wasn't.
Blood was running from Corbell's calves into the spongy stuff that lined the car's interior. Nothing he could do about it. He didn't even have clean cloth to bind his cuts. They stung.
Gording said, "Wind the thread around the rock. Do it now, before you cut yourself."
Corbell obeyed. The thread was thin as cobweb, hard to find. He was careful. The car jerked to left and right, dodging bushes, trees, random rubble.
II
He had fled from the Norn in a car that was deathly silent except for the wind. But now he heard a low, almost subliminal whine. "How old is this-tchiple? Was it in good shape? I didn't think to ask."
"I don't repair tchiples. They must have safety devices. The Boys who built them expected to live forever. Where are we going?"
"Sarash-Zillish, where the Boys spend the long night. It's got machines we can use, maybe. Next question is, does it have Boys?"
"Not yet, I think. I don't really know."
"We'll have to risk it. My God!" Corbell was staring at something that could have meant his death by stupidity. The disk- "I never thought of it at all. I didn't have a credit disk. How was I going to run a car?" He asked, "How did you happen to have one?"
"The tales tell that name coins were used when the Girls ruled. I reasoned that when the land thawed, the bodies of the dead would be buried outside the city to make the land fertile. There I fled, and there I dug, and I was right. Boys and Girls must have died by the thousands when the Girls came. I found bones and bones all tangled together, and some wore clothes, and in the clothes I found name coins. I tried them in the slot of a tchiple. One coin still kept its pattern." He regarded Corbell dubiously. "You did not remember that you would need a name coin?"
Corbell flushed. "There was a lot to think about."
"I might have been luckier in my ally."
"I guess. Thanks for coming back for me."
"I had to, because you made another mistake. Does this car guide itself?"
The car's motion had settled down. Now Corbell saw that they had left Parhalding and were skimming across an endless rippling field of wheat. He said, "Unless Skatholtz's spear... yeah, it guides itself."
"Then look at my hair."
There was nothing at all peculiar about Gording's hair. It had grown a little tangled, a little greasy, but it was uniformly white... five days after the cat-tail had bitten Gording.