He found it even more pleasant than he had thought.
The door opened uninvited. "Welcome," said Waden's voice from behind him.
He turned, raised brows. "Well. It's splendid hospitality, First Citizen."
"It's nothing too good for you, is it?
"Of course not."
Waden laughed softly. "Breakfast?"
"Gladly."
"You choose strange hours for moving."
"Convenient to my schedule."
Waden's eyes traveled over him minutely. "You worked all night? Zeal, Artist."
"I enjoy my work."
"Doubtless you do."
Waden walked to the window, turned, wiped a finger across the brooch he wore on his collar, smiled quizzically. "Bizarre ornament."
Herrin smiled, said nothing, which brought a spark of amusement to Waden's eyes. Herrin laid a hand on Waden's back, turned him toward the door. "Fellows' Hall?"
Waden agreed. They walked together, ate together; Waden went back to his offices and his work; Herrin went back to his, in the studio, at peace with his reality. He gathered up his own cutter for the first time since the project began, selected his tools, went out to the Square on the nervous energy which had fired him since midway through the night.
The cranes groaned and ground their way about their business. Leona Pace came up with her checklist to see if there was anything that wanted doing; he refused her, waved off a question about the plaque and the proposal of the names to be engraved there.
"True," he said simply, and knelt down and began unwrapping his tools, his own, which were the finest available, before the pillar which would be the central sculpture. He was sure now. That had been the reason for the lack of sleep, the anxiety, the energy which had suffused him and dictated so many shiftings and changes and readjustments in recent days.
He focused himself now on his own phase of the work. The cranes hefted enormous weights which sailed like clouds overhead, any one of which, slipping, could have crushed him to grease, but he refused even the slight concern the possibility suggested.
He focused the beam, and began, oblivious to all else.
XVI
Student: Is there reality outside Freedom?
Master Law: I imagine that there is.
He dropped the cutter, finally—saw his hand was wobbling and jerked it away from the stone before disaster could happen. It fell, and he sank down where he was, dropped head into arms and arms onto knees and sat there, aware finally that he was getting wet, that rain was splashing onto his shoulders and beginning to slick all the exposed stonework. He was not cold yet, but he was going to be. His joints felt as if the tendons had all been cut and there was fire in his shoulders and his arms and his legs.
A plastic wrap fell about his shoulders. Leona Pace was there, her plump freckled face leaning down to look at him sideways. "All right, sir?"
He drew a breath, massaged his hands, nodded, looked up past Pace to the Shape which had begun in recent days to emerge from the stone, which had begun, with the beam-cutter's swift incisions, to be Waden Jenks. He sat there, with the rain slicking down his forehead and into his eyes, and stared at what he had done, numb already in the backside and with a grateful numbness creeping into his exposed hands.
Leona Pace followed his stare, looked down again. "It's amazing, sir."
"I should have rested." He tried for his feet, wrapping the plastic about him, and Pace made a timid effort to steady him; it gave him equilibrium. Other workers and apprentices had sheltered in the curve of an arch. The lights had come on as the clouds darkened. He turned full about, saw a dry spot under a curve and went to it, thinking Pace was following. But when he looked back she was walking away, her brown hair straggling as usual, her bearing matter-of-fact and lonely-looking.
He was spent, as from a round of sex. He felt the same melancholia as encounters with Keye tended to give him; he looked reflexively toward the window where Keye might be, and saw nothing because of the curve. The new reality was closing in. Permanent. Strangely he felt no more desire for Keye, for anyone, for anything.
And as after sex, it would return. He leaned against the stone, watching the sheen of water flow this way and that. It was the first time the work had stopped, the only circumstance which could delay it. He looked up at the sky, which was already showing signs of breaking sunlight. Such storms came and left again with suddenness in this season. The stone would dry within a short time when the rain had stopped.
The hot-drink cart made the rounds; an hour's rest became holiday. Laborers tucked up in plastics, drinking the steaming cups which splashed with raindrops, came from their shelters to stand and stare at the central sculpture, and Herrin, his own hands clasped about warm ceramic and his belly warmed by the drink, watched with vast satisfaction.
Laborers asked questions; apprentices swelled with importance and answered, pointing to the imaginary vault of the roof, the future placement of curtain-columns, and laborers explained to other laborers . . . Herrin watched the whole interchange and drank in the excitement which suffused the whole crew.
Pride. They were proud of what they were doing. They had come here diverse, and something strange had begun to happen to all of them in this shell, contained in this sculpture of his devising.
And then the Others came.
They filed in through the gateways and stood about, four at first and then more, midnight-robed. Ten, twelve, fifteen.
The workers saw them. The excitement which had been palpable before their coming tried to maintain itself, but there was an erosion, a silence, an unease. Men and women tried to maintain equilibrium, realities, choice. Herrin leaned against the stone and looked elsewhere, trying to ignore all of it, but they came from the other side as well.
"Out!" Leona Pace cried, shocking the almost-silence. Shocking every reality into focus.
She had seen. Admitted seeing. Her reality had slipped, and Herrin stood transfixed and helpless.
The same look was on Leona Pace—rigidity, panic. Suddenly she cast off the plastic mantle and left, running.
He kept staring at the hole where Pace had been when she passed the gateway; and the cold from the rain crept inward. He recovered after a breath, walked out casually among the workers and the invisibles, ignored what they should not see, and quietly dismissed them.
"The rain may continue," he said. "Things will have to dry. Secure the area and go home. Come back at your next regular shift."
Tools were put away against invisible pilferage; the cranes were shut down and locked; and one by one and several at a time, the workers and the apprentices drifted away.
"Andrew Phelps." He hailed the senior apprentice. "You have a responsibility next shift, to be here early, to keep accounts, to direct."
"Sir," the man said, youngish, dark and thin, his eyes still showing distress, which rapidly yielded to surprise. "Yes, sir."
So he replaced Leona Pace.
He had no illusions that she would return. It happened, he reasoned, because of the sculpture; for that moment, humans and Others had had a common focus, had gathered within the same Reality, and Leona Pace had been thrust into the center of it, responsible.