Like going down the stairs into the darkened cellar, and wondering what it could have been that you had been so afraid of.
And then, in the middle of the night, waking with the fear fresh again, all around you.
Carmen looked asleep. Carefully, trying not to wake her, he unfastened the loop around her wrist. He stroked the silk: it was, indeed, undamaged.
She wrapped both arms around him. 'Hello, Doctor Hallow-night.'
'Are you okay?'
'Great. You wanna continue the therapy anyway?'
'I, uh-'
'Uh-huh. I'd better fly.'
'What time is it?'
'Almost five. Same morning.' She stood up, wound the black scarf around her throat, picked up her gold slip. 'I should go. Really.'
'Well, do you-shall I drive you?'
'No. Jesse'll get me a ride back. Or I might just walk.' She began dressing. 'Safest night of all for it: all the mortals are afraid of the haunts, and who fears the devil? Not I. Not I, says Carmen alone.'
He sat up, pulling the sheet to cover himself. 'Well, shall I at least-'
'Don't do anything,' she said. 'I want to remember you just like that.'
'Will I see you again?'
She laughed. 'You see me all the time; figure that'll change?'
'I mean-'
'I know what you mean. No, I don't think like this. Not for a while, anyway.' Quickly, she said, 'It wasn't anything you did, okay? You were fine. You were good. I'm just kind of… well. My birthday's in June. Maybe you can wrap me up a present. But I'll bet two silver Georges and a Trueblood's lock you're in love by then.'
The same pain in her voice, still there as before. Nothing at all might have happened. 'Maybe you 7/ be in love by then.'
'You're very kind, Doc.' She came over, bent down and kissed him on the forehead. 'You are kind. I mean that.'
'Maybe,' he said, his mind's bearings grinding off-balance, 'at the poker game-'
'No. Please, don't do that. It wouldn't make you happy. Even if you got me.' She leaned very close. 'Remember: no guilt. I made you do it. You were helpless.' Then she tossed her coat over her shoulders, snatched up her shoes and stockings and walked out of the bedroom without stopping to put them on. He heard the hall door close.
He sat there for a while, wrapped naked in the damp bedclothes, all that had happened lingering thick in his senses. No guilt, Carmen had said. He had been Then he thought of the one other time he had said Will I see you again? and his heart fell, and fell, and fell. one piece?' He thought of the drape of a shoulder, joining a sleeve. 'What kind of loom?'
Cloud looked up at Doc. He pressed the heels of his hands together, arched the fingers. 'Eight legs, same as spin it.'
'Oh.' Suddenly the beautiful cloth made him uneasy. 'Thanks, Cloud.'
'Always.' He tucked the scarf around his throat. 'May I ask you a favor, Doc? In return, if you please?'
'Of course.'
'There is a hall of relics-a museum-in the city, just beyond the Shadow line. It is called the Field, though I believe that is a person's name.'
'Yeah. The natural history museum. I've heard of it.'
'Have you ever visited it?'
'No.'
'Then would you like to do so with me?'
'Now?'
'If you have no other obligations.'
Mr. Patrise assured Doc that he was free for the day. 'Render unto Caesar,' Patrise said.
'Sorry, sir?'
'Have Lisa give you some honest American folding money from the safe. The World has its ways.'
Cloudhunter proposed that they walk, but after consulting a map and guidebook they decided that the museum would be exercise enough. When Cloud stood by Doc's Triumph, it never seemed possible that the Ellyll could fit into the little car, but he folded himself in without apparent effort. Doc drove them south, over the river and into the World. The transition was barely visible in clear daylight, and Doc felt nothing; if Cloud did, he didn't show it. 'I appreciate this,' he said to Doc. 'I have gone with Stagger Lee to the science museum, farther down the coast, bur he has never shown much interest in this one.'
'I always figured Stagger was interested in everything,* 1 Doc said idly.
'Oh, he is by no means impolite. But one sees/'
Doc glanced at Cloudhunter. The silver elf eyes were hidden by the sunglasses.
The museum's columned, white marble front stretched for a block and a half. Broad stairs led up to the doorway. Doc reached for his wallet, but Cloudhunter waved a finger and paid both admissions. The ticket seller loudly and elaborately counted back the change, as if to a small child. Cloud jingled the coins in his hand as they walked past the booth; a few steps on, he showed them to Doc. 'Nickel and tin,' he said, vaguely smiling, and shoved them into a pouch.
They were in a high-ceilinged hall that ran from one side of the building to the other, display halls opening off to either side. 'So,' Doc said, 'what shall we see first?'
Cloud examined a floor-plan brochure. 'Upstairs, I think.' He led the way up a massive staircase. The sign ahead of them read: DINOSAURS.
As they entered the hall, Cloudhunter's eyes blazed-not a twinkle, but a flash like close lightning. 'Dragons,' he said softly.
They were surrounded by the bones of giants. Doc knew Ty-rannosaurus and Stegosaurus by sight, but the variety of shapes and sizes on display here was a surprise. Some stood, some crawled, some ran; one dove on them from above, having apparently leapt from a tall glass case. They were all only bones, of course, except in the paintings that accompanied the displays, and a few surprisingly live-looking clay models. Looking at the skeletons, Doc was suddenly reminded of a fire he'd been to, in the hours before dawn: the sun came up on a blackened stick model of the buildings they'd tried and failed so save. He felt the same sense of Gone, won't come back.
Cloud was moving from display to display, case to case, quiet as a shadow. Across the hall, someone pointed at him. Doc tried to keep up with the tall elf.
Cloud said, 'It isn't allowed to touch…?'
'This one says you can,' Doc said. There was a brown bone, more than a yard long, set in sand-colored concrete. 'I think it's real.
Cloud put his fingertips delicately on the surface. 'It is genuine, Doc. Touch it.'
Doc put a hand on the bone. It felt cold, smoothed by who knew how many hands before.
'Now take my other hand.'
Abruptly the light was slanting and fierce, yellowed by dust in the air. Doc's vision was tilted to the right. His head hurt; so did his back and right hip. There was a heavy, sweetish, boggy stink. Just before his eyes was a clump of fat-stalked plants, bristling with fine green shoots: the fresh scent made his mouth water, and he pressed his head forward, but his body wouldn't follow. He stuck out his tongue, but it did no good. His… tail?… stirred heavily, making his hip hurt even more.
Beyond the plants, blurry in the distance and haze, a mottled tan shape moved. Teeth inches long flashed in an enormous mouth, and the shape stumbled closer. Alarms rang somewhere in Doc's consciousness, pulling at his muscles to move.
Doc knew what was about to happen, and that he couldn't do a thing to stop it. This is bad, he thought idiotically, but could not clearly identify just what was Bad about it, why it filled him with such urgency and rage. The one obvious and understandable thing in his mind was the sight and smell of those green shoots: if he could get a mouthful of those, things would be much better. Everything else would pass.
