She closed her eyes again. "If some cully wants to rape me, that's dimber with me, just as long as he's not you and he doesn't want me to wiggle around while he's doing it. If he'd like to vent my pipe, that'll be dimber, too." She sighed. "Long as he doesn't want me to help."
Distinctly, she heard the scraping of Auk's boots as he left the shrine, and after what seemed to her a very short time she struggled to her feet. The night was clear; eerie skylight glimmered on the rolling lake and illuminated every harsh, bare point of rock. On the horizon, distant cities wrapped with Viron in the night appeared as tiny smears of fox fire, not half so desirable as the icy sparkles that had deserted her wrists.
"Hackum?" she called, lifting her voice. "Hackum?"
Almost at once he emerged from the shadows of the rocks to stand upon that very outthrust point of rock from which Silk had watched the spy vanish from the shrine, and from which she had imagined herself pushing him. "Jugs? Are you all right?"
Something invisible tightened around her throat. "No. But I will be. Hackum?"
"What is it?" The flooding skylight that rendered every bush and outcrop far and fey prevented her from reading his posture (she was good at that, although she was unaware of it), even while it revealed it; and his tone was flat and devoid of emotion, though perhaps it was only made to sound so by distance.
"I'd like to start over. I thought maybe you'd like to start over, too."
He was silent while she counted seven thuddings of her pulse. At last: "You want me to come back?"
"No," she called, and he seemed to have become minutely smaller. "What I mean is ... I want you to come to Orchid's some night. All right?"
"All right." It was not the echo.
"Maybe next week. And I don't know you. And you don't know me. Start over."
"All right," he called again. And then, "Sometime I'd like to meet you."
She intended to say we will, but the words stuck in her throat; she waved instead, and then, realizing that he could not see her, stepped from under the dome so that she too was in the clear, soft skylight and waved again, and watched him disappear where the Pilgrims' Way bent inland.
That was it, she thought.
She was tired and her feet hurt, and for some reason she did not want to step back under the dome again; she sat down on the smooth, flat rock outside the entrance to the shrine instead, kicked off her shoes, and comforted her blisters.
It was funny how you knew. That was it, and this's him, and I never knew till he said that: Someday I'd like to meet you. He'd want her to leave Orchid's, and quite unexpectedly she realized she'd be glad to leave shaggy Orchid's to live anywhere, even under a bridge, with him.
Funny.
There was a brass plate thing let into the smooth stone of the shrine; she fingered its letters idly, naming the ones she knew. The plate seemed to move, ever so slightly, as if it was not. solidly fastened but hinged at the top. She got her nails under it, lifted it, and saw swirling colors: reds and blues and pinks and yellows and golden browns and greens and greenish blacks and others for which she had no names.
"Immediately, Your Eminence," Incus said, bowing again. "I understand entirely, Your Eminence, and I shall be on the scene within the hour. You can trust in me absolutely, Your Eminence. As always."
He shut the door slowly and almost noiselessly, bowing all the while, and made certain that the latchbar had dropped before he spat. The Circle was to convene after a dinner at Fulmar's, and Bittersweet had promised to show everyone the wonders she claimed to have achieved with an old porter, who would-as she reportedly had confided to Patera Tussah-adore her as Echidna, Scylla, Moipe, Thelxiepeia, Phaea, or Sphigx on command, all of it supposedly executed in compiler. Incus had wanted (never more than now) to see that. He had wanted very much to see the porter with his skullplate and faceplate removed. He had been (as he told himself angrily) more than merely anxious to witness at first hand an actual demonstration of Bittersweet's technique in order that he might compare it to his own.
Was it actually possible for anyone to download-or was the whole thing, perhaps, a great deal simpler than he had imagined? Ideally, one subverted the art of the Short Sun programmers, utilizing it to one's own advantage, as an expert wrestler threw an opponent too heavy to lift by enlisting his opponent's strength in his own cause.
Clenching his teeth and slamming his small fist into his palm, Incus sought to convince himself that there would be a raid tonight and that some well-disposed god had maddened old Remora so that he might be spared; but it was nonsense, and he knew it. He was entitled to go tonight. The Circle would not meet again until next month, and no one had toiled harder at black mechanics than he-no one had shared all that he had learned more willingly, earning this night a dozen times over. There was no fairness, no justice in the whorl. The gods did not care-or rather, were inimical. Beyond question, they were inimical to him.
Dropping angrily into his chair, he jammed the nearest quill into the inkwell.
My Dear Friend Fulmar:
It is with deep regret that I must tell you that the old fool has cooked up another perfectly ridiculous piece of busywork for me. I am to go to Limna tonight, and no other night will do. I am to consort with fishermen in search of a woman (yes, I write a woman) I have never seen, who may not be there at all, all because his worthless spies have failed him again.
So grieve, my dear friend, for your poor coworker Myself, who would be with you this night if he could.
Myself standing for 7, as even that fool Fulmar could not help but understand. Briefly but satisfyingly, Incus reread, admired, amended mentally, and at last approved the note before ripping it in two, wadding it up, and flinging the wad into the incineratium. The chances that old Remora would ever see what he had written and identify him as the writer were slight, but not so slight that prudence did not forbid him to write his mind in any such fashion. A fresh sheet, in that case, and more ink-with the quill grasped wrongly.
My Dear Friend,
Pressing duties constrain me to forebear the pleasant social meal to which you were so very kind as to invite me tonight.
His characteristic spiky M had been replaced by a new character remarkably like a double E upside down. Good-good!
You know, my friend, yet it might more thoughtfully be said that you cannot know, how much I have been looking forward to a plain firsthand account of the marvelous adventures of our mutual acquaintance Bee. Bee himself -
No, it would not do. Fulmar would be utterly thrown off the scent by the male pronoun; it would be necessary to stop at his house and leave a clear, straightforward message with his valet. Nor would the trouble and loss of time go entirely unrecompensed; he, Incus, would at least have the satisfaction of inquiring just how long it had been since the unfortunate valet had received his wages, and observing the chem's baffled incomprehension. The valet had been a most creditable little project, and one Fulmar could never have brought to its wholly successful conclusion without his help.
Rising from his chair, Incus whistled shrilly and told the fat and worried-looking boy who answered his summons, "I need a fast litter with eight bearers to take me to the lake. Some fool woman- Never mind. His Eminence won't authorize renting a floater, although he insists upon speed. Tell the men that there will be only one passenger, myself. You might well describe me, I'm not weighty. They'll receive double pay at Limna and be dismissed there. Do the best you can, but hurry. Meanwhile I've got a hundred urgencies that must- Go, I say! Hurry! Is your bottom still sore? I'll make it sorer if you don't fly."
"Yes, Patera. At once, Patera. Immediately." Bowing, the fat boy shut the door, made sure the latchbar had dropped, and spat expertly into a corner.