“I shall be making periodic trips to North America very soon, I think. I could even request doing coverage of Norwood’s US tour. It starts in a few days. It’s only an overnight wonder, but if we move it quickly, there will still be interest.” She cocked an eyebrow. “Eh? What do you think? We could be together in a matter of days.”
He thrust back convulsively in his chair. “I—ah—call me,” he managed. “Call me when it’s definite. If I can…” He squirmed. She began to frown and to tilt her head the slightest bit to one side, as if gazing through a shop window at a hat that had seemed more cunning from a little farther away. “… if I’m here,” he was saying, he realized.
“Yes, Laurent,” she said sadly. “We must keep in touch.”
In the night for many years, he would from time to time say the word touch distinctly, without preamble, and thrust up his arms towards his head, but this was not reported to him.
“Au 'voir.”
“Au revoir, Clementine.” He ended the call, and sat for a while.
“Well,” Domino said, “now you know how you feel.”
Michaelmas nodded. “She may readily have been given only conventional treatment at the sanatorium. But, yes, now we know how I feel.”
“I could check the records.”
“Like you checked their inventories.”
“Now that I’m situated in their covert hardware, I’m quite confident I can assimilate any tricks in their soft mechanisms. I can run a real check.”
“Yes,” Michaelmas said sadly. “Run a real check on infinity.”
“Well…”
“Life’s too short,” Michaelmas said.
“Yours?”
“No.” Michaelmas stretched painfully, feeling the knotted muscles and grimacing at the swollen taste of his tongue. He worked the bed and began undressing. Somewhere out beyond his windows, a helicopter buffeted by on some emergency errand. He shook his head and closed his eyes momentarily. He opened them long enough to pull back the coverlet. “No calls,” he said, darkening the windows. “Not for eight hours; longer if possible.” He lay down, pulling the cover up over the hunch of his shoulder, putting his left hand on his right wrist and his right hand under his cheek. He settled himself. “It’s one good feature of this occupation,” he remarked in a voice that trailed away. “I never have any trouble getting to sleep.”