“I hope that my premature thoughts are of some use to you.” Kallik was still standing in front of Darya, but not looking at her.
“They were exactly what I needed.” Darya followed the rows of watching eyes, and saw to her surprise that half a sandwich lay soggy and forgotten on the console. Even though she was starving, she had been too absorbed to eat. She picked up her food and took a huge bite. “That makes the decision for us,” she said, through a mouthful of bread and salad. “Thank you. Tell J’merlia that we have to visit Jerome’s World before we go to Labyrinth. We have to find out more about Quintus Bloom. I want to know what he was doing before he started work on Builder artifacts.”
Chapter Eleven
The sun was setting on Sentinel Gate, and Louis Nenda was watching it.
Amazing. No outpouring of poisonous gases, which you had to look forward to when the sun went down on Styx. No screaming gale, which marked sunrise and sunset on Teufel. No torrents of boiling rain, like Scaldworld, where anyone outside at the wrong time was brought back in medium-well-done. No mosquitoes the size of your hand, like those on Peppermill, dive-bombers that zoomed in and sank their three-inch probe into any square centimeter of exposed flesh.
Just people laughing in the distance, and bird song, and flowers that faded in the dusk and reserved their most delicate and subtle perfumes for the evening hours.
And, any minute now, Glenna Omar.
Atvar H’sial could think what she liked, but Louis was not looking forward to this. At least, not all that much.
He had protested, perhaps rather more than was justified, in an earlier discussion with Atvar H’sial.
“I do all the work, while you sit here loafing.”
“Are you suggesting that I am a plausible substitute for you in this activity? That my body is an acceptable alternative to yours, in your bizarre human mating rituals?”
“You’d drive her screaming up the wall. But what about me? Am I supposed to be offered up as a sort of human sacrifice to Glenna Omar, on the off-chance that we’ll learn from her where J’merlia went? You just want your interpreter back, that’s all, so you can communicate easily with humans.”
“I am working on alternative communication methods. And if I locate J’merlia, you also locate Kallik, and” — Atvar H’sial’s speech took on sly pheromonal insinuations — “you locate the human female, Darya Lang. I need to discuss with her the changes in the Builder artifacts, but I wonder if your implied rejection of the female Glenna Omar derives from some prior commitment on your part to the Lang person. I wonder if that is the primary cause of your reluctance to meet with Glenna Omar.”
“Did I say I wouldn’t meet with Glenna? Of course I’ll meet with her. Tonight. We already arranged that.” And if a few hectic hours with Glenna Omar was what it took to banish Atvar H’sial’s suspicions about Louis and Darya Lang, it was a small price to pay.
Louis was prepared to pay it now. At sunset, in the third arbor down the hill from where Hans Rebka had been staying.
It was sunset, it was the third arbor, he was here. But where was Glenna?
He heard a woman’s laughter from higher on the hill. Half-blinded by the setting sun, he squinted in that direction. He heard a braying male laugh in reply.
Glenna was approaching; and she was not alone.
Relief and disappointment both seemed premature. Louis stood up and walked toward the couple. Glenna came undulating along the path, her hand laid possessively on the arm of the tall man at her side. She was wearing a long-sleeved, high-necked gown of pale green that left a minimum of exposed skin and made her appear positively virginal.
“Hello, Louis.” She smiled at him warmly. “I hoped we’d find you here. There’s been a change of plans. I was in the middle of a discussion with Professor Bloom—”
“Quintus.”
“Quintus.” Glenna snuggled close to her companion. “And we hadn’t finished talking. So he invited me to continue through dinner. And naturally…”
“No problem.” Louis meant it. He admired real nerve, and there was no hint of apology in Glenna’s manner. “Hello, Professor. I’m Louis Nenda.”
“Indeed?” Bloom removed his arm from Glenna’s grasp and offered a limp-fingered wave of the hand. He regarded Louis with the enthusiasm of a man meeting a Karelian head louse, the sort that popped out of a hole in the rock and nipped your head off with one snip of the mandibles. “And what do you do?”
“Businessman, mostly, for exploration projects. Last trip I was out at the Torvil Anfract, came back via the Mandel system.”
“Indeed?” Bloom had turned to look back up the hill even before Louis answered the question.
Glenna lingered a moment, her fingers on Louis’s bare arm.
“He’s an absolute genius,” she whispered. “I do hope you understand, but given a chance like this…”
“I said, no problem.” I know that game, sweetheart. You take the one you want right now, but be sure to put the other one in cold storage in case you need him later. “Go and enjoy your dinner.”
“Some other time, though, you and me?”
“You bet.”
Glenna squeezed his arm happily. But Quintus Bloom had turned, and was sauntering back with a frown on his face.
“I say. Something you said just now. Did you mention the Torvil Anfract?”
“Sure did. I just came back from there, way out in the Zardalu Communion.”
“That’s the name that the Lang woman mentioned the other evening at dinner.” Bloom was explaining to Glenna, while managing to ignore Louis. “She said that it was a Builder artifact, but of course as Professor Merada pointed out, there is no evidence of that. If it were an artifact, however, that could be a finding of enormous significance.” Bloom at last turned directly to Louis. “Do you know Darya Lang?”
“Certainly.”
“Was she at the Anfract with you, by any chance?”
“At it, and in it. Right in it.”
“Three days ago, after our dinner, she left the institute.” Bloom lifted his gaze above Louis’s head, and stood staring at nothing. “She told no one where she was going. So almost certainly…”
Quintus Bloom didn’t spell out his thought processes to Louis. He didn’t need to. Louis had the answer to the next question ready, even before Bloom asked it.
“If I were to provide you with a ship, could you fly me to the Torvil Anfract?”
“Could, and would. I even have the ship. If the price is right, I mean.”
The last sentence had come out without thinking, but Louis didn’t try to kid himself. The ‘right’ price? Even if Bloom didn’t have more than two cents, it would be enough.
Daybreak on Sentinel Gate was, if anything, more spectacular than sunset. The air was magically clear, the flowers and shrubs touched with fragrant dew. The birds, awake but not yet in motion, sang a dawn chorus from within their hidden roosts.
Glenna, strolling back to her house, noticed none of this. She was frequently heading home in the early daylight hours, and the charms of daybreak’s plant and animal life left her unmoved. She was, in fact, feeling faintly disappointed. Quintus seemed to like her well enough, and to enjoy their long hours together. They had talked, and laughed, eaten and drunk, and talked again. They had wandered arm-in-arm around the Institute, inside and out. They had watched the romantic setting of Sentinel Gate. The touch of his hand on Glenna’s shoulder had set all her juices flowing. And then, when everything seemed ready to go full speed ahead, he had gone back to his own quarters instead.