be on the scene within the hour. You can trust in me absolutely, Your Eminence. As always.'
He shut the door slowly and almost noiselessly, bowing all the while, and made certain that the latchbar had dropped before he spat. The Circle was to convene after a dinner at Fulmar's, and Bittersweet had promised to show everyone the wonders she claimed to have achieved with an old porter, who would-as she reportedly had confided to Patera Tussah-adore her as Echidna, Scylla, Moipe, Thelxiepeia, Phaea, or Sphigx on command, all of it supposedly executed in compiler. Incus had wanted (never more than now) to see that. He had wanted very much to see the porter with his skullplate and faceplate removed. He had been (as he told himself angrily) more than merely anxious to witness at first hand an actual demonstration of Bittersweet's technique in order that he might compare it to his own.
Was it actually possible for anyone to download-or was the whole thing, perhaps, a great deal simpler than he had imagined? Ideally, one subverted the art of the Short Sun programmers, utilizing it to one's own advantage, as an expert wrestler threw an opponent too heavy to lift by enlisting his opponent's strength in his own cause.
Clenching his teeth and slamming his small fist into his palm, Incus sought to convince himself that there would be a raid tonight and that some well-disposed god had maddened old Remora so that he might be spared; but it was nonsense, and he knew it. He was entitled to go tonight. The Circle would not meet again until next month, and no one had toiled harder at black mechanics than he-no one had shared all that he had learned more willingly, earning this night a dozen times over. There was no fairness, no justice in the whorl. The gods did not care-or rather, were inimical. Beyond question, they were inimical to him.
Dropping angrily into his chair, he jammed the nearest quill into the inkwell.
My Dear Friend Fulmar:
It is with deep regret that I must tell you that the old fool has cooked up another perfectly ridiculous piece of busywork for me. I am to go to Limna tonight, and no other night will do. I am to consort with fishermen in search of a woman (yes, I write a woman) I have never seen, who may not be there at all, all because his worthless spies have failed him again.
So grieve, my dear friend, for your poor coworker Myself, who would be with you this night if he could.
Myself standing for 7, as even that fool Fulmar could not help but understand. Briefly but satisfyingly, Incus reread, admired, amended mentally, and at last approved the note before ripping it in two, wadding it up, and flinging the wad into the incineratium. The chances that old Remora would ever see what he had written and identify him as the writer were slight, but not so slight that prudence did not forbid him to write his mind in any such fashion. A fresh sheet, in that case, and more ink-with the quill grasped wrongly.
My Dear Friend,
Pressing duties constrain me to forebear the pleasant social meal to which you were so very kind as to invite me tonight.
His characteristic spiky M had been replaced by a new character remarkably like a double E upside down. Good-good!
You know, my friend, yet it might more thoughtfully be said that you cannot know, how much I have been looking forward to a plain firsthand account of the marvelous adventures of our mutual acquaintance Bee. Bee himself -
No, it would not do. Fulmar would be utterly thrown off the scent by the male pronoun; it would be necessary to stop at his house and leave a clear, straightforward message with his valet. Nor would the trouble and loss of time go entirely unrecompensed; he, Incus, would at least have the satisfaction of inquiring just how long it had been since the unfortunate valet had received his wages, and observing the chem's baffled incomprehension. The valet had been a most creditable little project, and one Fulmar could never have brought to its wholly successful conclusion without his help.
Rising from his chair, Incus whistled shrilly and told the fat and worried-looking boy who answered his summons, 'I need a fast litter with eight bearers to take me to the lake. Some fool woman- Never mind. His Eminence won't authorize renting a floater, although he insists upon speed. Tell the men that there will be only one passenger, myself. You might well describe me, I'm not weighty. They'll receive double pay at Limna and be dismissed there. Do the best you can, but hurry. Meanwhile I've got a hundred urgencies that must- Go, I say! Hurry! Is your bottom still sore? I'll make it sorer if you don't fly.'
'Yes, Patera. At once, Patera. Immediately.' Bowing, the fat boy shut the door, made sure the latchbar had dropped, and spat expertly into a corner.
Fascinated, Silk watched as the door opened in a swirl of petals, seeming to create the lofty green corridor beyond it. 'It took me a while to identify the sensation,' he confided to Mamelta, 'but I placed it eventually. It was the feeling I'd had as a small boy when my mother had been holding me and put me down.' He paused, musing.
'And now we're in another place altogether, much deeper underground. Truly extraordinary! Is there a way to prevent Hammerstone's following us down in this thing?'
Mamelta shook her head, whether in negation or merely to clear it, Silk could not have said. 'So strange . . . Is this another dream?' 'No,' he assured her. He rose from his seat. 'No, it isn't. Put that thought from your mind entirely. Did you dream much, up there?'
'I don't know how long it was. Suppose I dreamed once each hundred years . . . ?'
Silk stepped out into the corridor. There was a well in it not far from the petaled door: a twilit shaft descended by spiraling steps. He set off down the corridor to examine it, felt something through the worn sole of one shoe, and stopped to pick it up.
It was a card.
'Look at this, Mamelta!' He held it up. 'Money! My luck's certainly changed since I met you. Some god smiles on you, and smiles on me, too, because I'm with you.'
'That is not money.'
'Yes, it is,' he told her. 'Did you have money of some other kind on the Short Sun Whorl? This is the sort we use in Viron, and traders from foreign cities accept it, so I suppose they must use cards, too. This would buy a nice goat for Pas, for example-even a white ewe, if the market were depressed. Chop it into a hundred pieces, and every piece is one bit. A bit will buy two large cabbages or half a dozen eggs. Aren't you going to come out? I don't believe that the moving room is going to sink any farther.'
She rose and followed him into the corridor.
'Maytera Marble remembers the Short Sun. I'll try to introduce you to her. You'll have a great deal in common, I'm sure.'
When Mamelta did not reply, he asked, 'Do you want to tell me about your dreams? That might help. What did you dream about?'
'People like you.'
Silk leaned over the coping of the shaft to peer down. The first six steps bore six words:
HE WHO DESCENDS SERVES PAS BEST
'Look at this,' he said; she did not, and he asked, 'Who were these people in your dreams?'
She was silent so long that he thought she was not going to reply; he went through a gap in the coping and down to the first step. 'There's writing on all of these,' he told her. 'The next series says, 'I will teach my children how I carried out the Plan of Pas.' There must be a shrine of Pas's at the bottom. Would you care to see it?'
'I am trying to ... think of a way to tell you. We did not speak. Words. I have to remember to speak words now. I say something. But you do not hear me unless I move my lips. To move my lips and my tongue .. . while I make this noise in my throat.'
'You're doing very well,' Silk told her warmly. 'Soon we'll have to go back up again, but not in that same little room since I'd assume it would take us to the place we left. I have to get back into the tunnels under Limna, however, and find the ashes from the manteion there. I'm not at all sure that we ought to take the time to look around this shrine and recite prayers and so forth. What do you think?'
'I . . .' Mamelta fell silent, staring.
