nondescript chamber neither spacious nor elegant. He approached the reception counter where sat a dapper young clerk, engaged in an animated telephone conversation, He was two or three years older than Glawen, with plump shoulders, full jowls, sleek black hair, limpid brown eyes under fine expressive black eyebrows. He wore dark green pantaloons, a yellow blouse decorated with two panels of intricate designs in black and red. On his head he wore a jaunty black toque, evidently the last cry in fashion. After a single swift glance toward Glawen from the corner of his eye, he turned away from the counter and continued to talk into the telephone. On the screen Glawen glimpsed the face of another young dandy, wearing a similar toque, also rakishly aslant.
A moment passed. Glawen waited, his patience slowly eroding. The clerk spoke on, with an occasional chuckle. Glawen became restive. He began to tap his fingers on the counter. Time was passing; every minute might be important! The clerk creased his eyebrows in annoyance, then looked over his shoulder and brought the conversation to an end. He swung about and asked: “Well, sir? What are your needs?”
Glawen composed his voice. “Lodging, naturally.'
“Unfortunately, sir, the hotel is complete. You must go elsewhere.”
“What! The tourist office only just made my reservation!'
“Really?' The clerk shook his head. “Why am I not told of these things? They must have called elsewhere. Have you tried the Bon Felice?'
“Of course not. I was booked into the Novial; I came to the Novial. Does that sound at all unreasonable to you?”
“I am not the unreasonable one,' said the clerk. 'That word best describes the person who, when notified that no accommodation exists, continues to wheedle and argue. It is this conduct I define as unreasonable.'
'Just so,' said Glawen. “When the Tourist Information Office telephones down a booking, what is the procedure?'
“It is simple enough. The official on duty, which is to say, myself, carefully inscribes the name upon this board, and there is no scope for mistake.”
Glawen pointed to the board. 'What is the name in that blue square to the side?”
The clerk rose wearily to his feet. “This square? It reads: ‘Glawen Clattuc.' So then?”
“I am Glawen Clattuc.'
For a few seconds the clerk stood silent. Then he said: “You are lucky. That is our Grand Suite. In the future you should take pains to explain your arrangements more carefully; we cannot function in the absence of facts.'
“Yes, of course,” said Glawen. “You are a marvel of efficiency. Now show me to the 'Grand Suite’.”
The clerk flashed Glawen a glare of astounded outrage. “My rank is high! I am office manager and deputy executive vice-president! I do not lead lodgers here and there about the hotel!”
”Who does so, in that case?'
“At the moment, no one. The porter has not yet arrived, and I have no idea as to how the housekeepers have arranged their schedules. You may either wait here until the proper employee reports for duty, or you may walk down yonder corridor to the end, and pass through the last door on the left. The lock code is ta-ta ta.”
Glawen went to the specified door tapped ta-ta-ta upon the lock panel. The door slid ajar Glawen stepped through the opening. He found himself in a room of no great size, with a table to the right and a bed along the left wall. The bathroom occupied an alcove. Glawen stood looking about the room in wonder. Had there been some sort of mistake? Could this truly be the 'Grand Suite’?
For the moment it must serve; other concerns pressed upon him. Journey's end was at hand, and Destiny was waiting somewhere along Crippet Alley. He tossed his travel bag upon the bed and left the room.
In the lobby the clerk watched his approach sidelong; then, raising his fine black eyebrows, ostentatiously turned away, so that when Glawen came to make the customary complaints, he could look about with an air of indifference which, by infuriating off-world patrons, served to enhance his self-esteem.
Glawen paid him no heed. Looking neither right nor left he crossed the lobby and departed the hotel. The clerk looked after him glumly, his self-esteem deflated to its original condition.
Out on the avenue, Glawen paused to take stock of his surroundings. Pharisse had moved no great distance across the sky; eight hours, perhaps, of daylight remained before what would be a long slow dusk. Low in the sky floated a number of pale wraiths: some of Nion’s numerous satellites, in phases, crescent to half-full. At the moment the air was still, and the lake reflected the low white domes and minarets of Old Tanjaree on the opposite shore.
Glawen set off on his fateful mission, trying to insulate his mind against both foreboding and hope-a task complicated by uneasy speculations regarding the man who had beguiled Miss Shoup: where was he now?
Glawen came to Crippet Alley and turned aside, passing instantly from the enclave of the off-worlders into an environment where the local population pursued its own quiet purposes. They seemed a sedate gentle folk, loving a languid pace perhaps influenced by the long thirty-seven hour day of Tanjaree. Like Pink and Blue, they were of no great stature, with chestnut hair, delicate features and gray eyes. The alley itself was irregular and crooked, sometimes narrow and overhung by the upper stories of houses along the way, at times expanding into a small irregular plaza, perhaps with a thick-trunked dendron at the center.
It gradually came upon Glawen that there was something strange about Crippet Alley: it was unnaturally quiet. There were no loud voices or music or clangor; only the slide of soft footsteps and a muted whisper from the stalls and shops.
Glawen arrived at the Argonaut Art Supply Company: a two-story structure, somewhat more imposing than others along the alley. A pair of windows to either side of the door displayed on the left a number of small mechanical toys; to the right, a sampling of the art supplies offered for sale within the shop, modeling tools; waxes, plasters and clays; equipment for the decoration of fabric, along with dyes and mordants; pigments, stains and solvents; kits of graduated andromorphs. The merchandise had a settled look, as if it had not been shifted for a long time.
Glawen entered the shop: a dim cluttered chamber with the high ceiling and walls stained dark brown. The room was very silent Glawen saw that he was alone save for a middle-aged woman with short blonde-gray hair who sat behind a counter reading a journal. Her complexion was fair; she wore a neat blue smock.
Glawen approached the counter; the woman looked up from her journal with an amiable, if incurious, expression. 'Yes, sir?”
Glawen found that his mouth was dry. The moment had come and he was nervous. He found his voice: 'Is Mr. Keebles at hand?”
The woman looked off across the room, frowning as if pondering the question. She decided upon a reply. 'Mr. Keebles? He is not here.'
Glawen’s heart sank. The woman added: 'Not at the moment.” Glawen released his pent breath.
Having responded to the question, the woman returned to her Journal. Glawen spoke patiently: “When will he be back?'
The woman looked up again. “Before long, or so I should think.”
“In minutes? Hours? Days? Months?”
The woman showed a dutiful smile. “Really now! What a funny thing to say! Mr. Keebles has only just gone off to the bathroom!”
“Then we are thinking in terms of minutes,' said Glawen. “Am I right?”
“Certainly not days, nor months,” said the woman primly. “Not even hours.”
“In that case, I will wait.”
The woman nodded and went back to her reading. Glawen turned and gave the room a more detailed inspection. At the back was a flight of rickety stairs and, to the side, a shipping counter, where his eye was caught by a glint of green. Approaching the counter, he saw a tray half a dozen green jade clasps, three inches in diameter much like those he had noticed In Ma Chilke’s sitting room, Though these were chipped and cracked, or otherwise damaged. Odd! thought Glawen. He looked toward the woman and spoke: 'What are these jade pieces?'
The woman tilted her head to look. She reflected a moment. “Ah, yes! The jade buckles! They are 'tanglets,' from the Plain of Standing Stones, around the other side of the world.”
“Are they valuable?”
“Oh yes! But it is dangerous to collect them, unless one is an expert.”
“Is Mr. Keebles such an expert?”
