said, 'What happened next?'
'I knew Dorland could be the greatest player the stream had ever seen. And I wanted to be his manager worse than I'd ever wanted anything in my life. At first he resisted the idea of expanding his show, but I kept at him.' Ironically, it was the new self-confidence instilled by Dorland himself that had made Paul approach him and had given Paul the drive to see that Dorland became the most famous psi-player in the Omega Sector.
'Why is he so good?'
'There are a lot of reasons,' Paul said. News service reporters often asked the same question.
'Natural taient, for one. His timing and creative technique with the lights and music are perfect. There's never a distracting glitch. And he has a real sense of drama in his facial expressions and body movements. Dorland's show is like a symphony of sight and sound, and all the time he's measuring responses, watching for reactions, molding his performance around what he can see in the audience. He can bring them to whatever mood he wants. He—' Paul stopped suddenly as something struck him: the image of High Elder Brill in the sacred chamber, moving his arms and swaying as he called Lord Tern, and in the background the odd music of the deacons' tubelike instruments. The image had seemed familiar to Paul at the time, but he hadn't fitted it together. Now he realized that in calling Lord Tern, High Elder Brill had gone through much the same sequence of actions that Dorland used during his performance.
Coincidence?
Selmer Ogram had said something, too: It's too bad High Elder Brill couldn 't see your show. Actually, it's not too different from his own Godsday service.
Paul felt a slight chill, looked up and found Karyn's eyes on him. He cleared his throat and went on. 'Anyway, I'm convinced Dorland didn't believe that he would become so popular; otherwise he wouldn't have gone along with me. I've had to talk him out of quitting more than once.'
'Maybe you should have let him.'
He didn't reply to that because it struck too close to doubts that had surfaced in his own mind. Dorland was vulnerable to the needs of others and would do almost anything to avoid hurting someone. Paul often suspected that Dorland had agreed to become a psi-player only because he knew Paul needed it so badly.
'Do you think he'll stay here when this is over?' Karyn asked.
Paul looked at her in surprise. He hadn't even
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considered the possibility. 'Why should he? He has a life outside now.'
'Is it a life he wants?'
'You'll have to ask him about that.' Paul pushed himself to his feet, suddenly weary of the conversation. 'Guess I'll try to get some sleep now.' The next morning they ate a breakfast of dried poca and water, then bundled the gear back into their packs.
The tube still held the chill of the night, and Paul fastened the jacket tight around him. He felt distanced from his surroundings. Karyn's question kept surfacing in his mind: Do you think he'll stay here when this is over? He had slept little. When he did fall asleep he'd had bad dreams. Some were about Lord Tern. Others were like bittersweet memories of a woman and a young girl he'd never met. They walked the short distance to the access port where Tube Four intersected with Fara's Tube. Jacque got out his rope ladder and they pulled themselves up, one by one, to the platform. When they descended the spiral tube, they found themselves in an area of vegetation that was so heavy it all but obliterated the ruins. The sound of rushing water was close. The air was crisp.
Dorland stood beside Paul, looking around.
'See anything familiar?' Paul asked. Dorland shook his head. 'It was a long time ago.'
'Let's move down closer to the river,' Karyn suggested.
They spent a few minutes looking for an opening in the dense growth, and it took them another half hour to hack their way through to the river. The water ran fast enough to form little frosted crests as it rushed over hidden boulders. Paul looked closer and realized that not all the obstructions under the water were boulders—he could see a large curved section of pink wall, and piles of pink rubble. The river had changed its course after the city was abandoned, and had driven a channel through an area that had once been populated.
