Paul looked at the World Engineer sharply. With his last words something had come and gone so swiftly in the other man that it was impossible now to say what it might have been. It was as if a metal edge had shown itself for a moment.
"I'll look forward to it, then," said Paul. And Eaton led him out
Outside the World Engineer Complex Headquarters they parted. Eaton went back in to work. Paul went on to Jase's.
As he stepped through the entrance to Jase's apartment and put his key back in his pocket, he heard voices. One was Jase's. But the other - he stopped at the sound of it - was the deep, resonant, and sardonic voice of Blunt
"I realize, Jase," the voice of Blunt was saying, "that you find me a little too much of a playboy at times. It's something you'll just have to bear with, however."
"I don't mean that at all, Walt!" The younger man's voice was charged and grim. "Who's going to lay down rules for you, of all people? It's just that if I find myself having to take over, I want to know what you had in mind."
"If you take over, it's your own mind you'll follow, and that's the way it should be," said Blunt "Let's cross such bridges when we come to them. You may not have to take over. Who just came in?"
The last words coincided with Paul's stepping around the corner from the entrance hall into the main lounge of Jase's apartment The wall entrance to the office in Kantele's apartment next door was open, and through it Paul now saw the wide shoulders and back of Blunt, with the dark, startled visage of Jase beyond.
"Me. Formain," answered Paul, and he walked toward the office. But Jase stepped swiftly past Blunt and came down into his own lounge, closing the office entrance behind him.
"What is it?" asked Jase.
"It seems I'm now on the immediate staff of the World Engineer," said Paul. He looked past Jase at the closed wall. "That's Walter Blunt in there, isn't it? I'd like to speak to him."
He stepped around Jase, went to the wall, and opened it. Within, the office was empty. He turned back to Jase.
"Where did he go?"
"I imagine," said Jase, dryly, "if he'd wanted to stay and talk to you, he'd have stayed."
Paul turned again and went on into the office. He went through it into the farther reaches of Kantele's apartment It was a feminine dwelling, but empty. Paul paused by its front door, but there was no clue about it to signal whether Walter Blunt had walked out through it in the last few minutes.
He went back to the office, and through it. Jase was no longer in his own lounge. He seemed to have left the apartment. Paul was about to leave, too, in a mood of puzzled disturbance, when the entrance to Jase's apartment clicked open - he heard it - and someone came in.
Expecting Jase, Blunt, or both, he was turning toward the entrance hall when Kantele came out of it, carrying some sort of package, and stopped.
"Paul!" she said.
It was not a happy, or even pleased, sounding of his name. Rather, it was on a note of dismay that she said it.
"Yes," he said, a little sadly.
"Where's" - she hesitated - "Jase?"
"And Walter Blunt," he said. "I'd like to know where they disappeared to, and why, myself."
"They probably had to go someplace." She was ill-at-ease. It showed in the way she held the package to her.
"I hadn't realized," he said, reaching for a neutral topic, "that Blunt wrote that 'apple comfort' song of yours. Jase told me."
She looked abruptly a little sharply at him. Almost challengingly.
"That surprised you, did it?" she asked.
"Why-" he said. "No."
"It didn't?"
"I don't know," he said, "exactly whether to call it 'surprise.' I didn't know the Guildmaster wrote songs, that was all. And-" He stopped, feeling her bristle.
"And what?"
"Nothing," he said, as peaceably as he could, "I only heard the first verse before you came in that day, and the one time I heard it before. But it seemed to me more a young man's song."
She strode angrily past him. He got the impression that she was rather pleased than otherwise to find something to get angry about. She punched buttons on Jase's music player and swung about with her back to it.
"Then it's time you heard the second verse, isn't it?" she asked. A second later her own voice swelled from the player behind her.
In apple comfort, long I waited thee And long 1 thee in apple comfort waited.
"Young man's song," she said bitingly.
In lonely autumn and uncertain springtime
My apple longing for thee was not sated.
The clear, mountain rivulet of her recorded voice paused, and then went on into the second verse. She looked across at him with her eyes fixed and her lips together.
Now come thee near anigh my autumn winding.
In cider-stouted jugs, my memories
Shall guard thee by the fireside of my passion,
And at my life's end keep thy gentle lees.
The music shut off. He saw that she was profoundly moved by it and deeply unhappy. He went to her.
"I'm sorry," he said, standing before her. "You mustn't let what I think disturb you. Forget I had any opinion at all."
She tried to take a step back from him and found the wall behind her. She leaned her head back against the wall, and he put out his long hand to the wall beside her, half-convinced for a moment that she was about to fall. But she stood with her shoulders against the wall and closed her eyes, turning her face away to one side. Tears squeezed from under her closed eyelids and ran down her cheeks.
"Oh," she whispered, "why won't you leave me alone?" She pressed her face against the wall. "Please, just leave me alone!"
Torn by her unhappiness, he turned and left, leaving her still standing there, pressed in sorrow against the wall.
Chapter 16
In the days that followed, Paul did not see her again. It was more than obvious that she was avoiding him, and she must at least have spoken to Jase about him, for the Necromancer made it a point one day to speak about her.
"You're wasting your time, there," Jase said bluntly. "She's Walt's."
"I know that," said Paul. He glanced across the table at Jase. The other man had met him for lunch near World Engineering Headquarters, bringing him a long and curious list of cults and societies with which, as Jase put it, the Guild had some "influence." Paul was supposed to learn the names and habits of these groups against some future date when the Guild might want to cultivate them. Paul accepted the list without protest. In spite of the fact that he was theoretically supposed to take orders only from the Guildmaster, he had yet to meet Blunt. Jase brought him all his instructions. Paul had decided not to make an issue of this for the moment. There was too much to be learned even as things were.
There were about sixty thousand members in the Chantry Guild. Of these, perhaps fifteen hundred had dramatic parapsychological talents. Even in a world which accepted such things - even though mostly as interesting parlor tricks or talents on a par with wiggling one's ears - fifteen hundred people represented a pretty remarkable pool of potential ability. Paul was supposed to learn all about each one of the fifteen hundred odd: who could do what, and when, and, most important, who was improving his powers by exploring them in the curious, mystical, long-way-around light of the Alternate Laws.
In addition, there were other aspects of the Guild for . Paul to learn, like the list Jase had just brought over on Paul's lunch hour. And all the work connected with the World Engineering Complex, where Tyne had Paul studying procedure like any executive trainee.
Weather all over the world had been freakishly bad. In the southern hemisphere the winter had been stormy and cold. Here, the summer days were muggy and sweltering, but no rain fell. The Weather Control Complex found itself in the position of having to rob Peter to pay Paul - moisture diverted to one needy section of the Earth left other sections either twice as arid or drowned in torrential, flooding rains that caused widespread damage. It was no crisis, but it was annoyingly uncomfortable. The internal climate of the great city Complexes held the outside weather at arms length, but the emotional impact of the season's aberrancies came through even into air-conditioned interiors like this one where Paul and Jase sat at lunch.