'Chenille?'
He was about to turn away when her head burst through from a wave. 'I'll meet you, ' she called, 'there.' An arm that for an instant seemed but one of many pointed down the rocky beach toward the scattered lights of Limna. 'Arms?' The question was Oreb's, and had come from a clump of straggling bushes to Auk's right.
He sighed, glad of any company and ashamed to be glad. 'Yeah. Too many arms.' He mopped his sweating face again. 'No, that's gammon. It was like in a mirror, see? Chenille held her arms up out of the water, and it reflected 'em so it looked like there was more underneath, that's all. You find Patera?'
'Shrine eat.'
'Sure. Come over and I'll give you a lift to Limna.'
'Like bird?'
'I guess. I won't hurt you if that's what you mean, but you're Patera's, and I'm going to give you back to him if we ever find him.'
Oreb fluttered up from the bushes to a landing on Auk's shoulder. 'Girl like? Now like?''Chenille? Sure.' Auk paused. 'You're right. That's not her, is it?'
'No, no!'
'Yeah, right.' Auk nodded to himself. 'It's some kind of devil that only looks like Chenille. Shag, I don't know whether it likes birds or not. If I had to guess, I'd say it probably likes 'em for breakfast and lunch, but maybe it'd like something a little more solid for dinner. Anyhow, we'll dodge it if we can.'
Worn out though he was, it seemed to him that his lagging feet flew over the next hill and all the rest, when he would have preferred that entire months be consumed in climbing and descending each. An hour passed in weary walking seemed less than a minute to him; and though Oreb kept him company on his shoulder, he had seldom felt so alone.
'I've found it!' Chenille's voice sounded practically at his ear; he jumped and Oreb squawked. 'Can you swim? Are you carrying valuables that would be damaged by water?'
'A little,' Auk admitted. He had stopped in his tracks to look for her; it was difficult to keep his hand away from his needler. When he spoke again, he was afraid that he might stammer. 'Yeah, I am. Couple things.'
'Then we must have a boat.' Like mist from the lake, she rose between him and the rocky beach-he had been looking in the wrong direction. 'You don't comprehend the littlest part of this, do you? I'm Scylla.' It was, to Auk's mind, an assertion of such preeminent significance that no being of which he could conceive would have the audacity to make it falsely. He fell to his knees and mumbled a prayer.
'It's 'lovely Scylla,' ' his deity told him, ' 'wonderful of waters', not 'woman of the water.' If you must mouth that nonsense, do it correctly.'
'Yes, Scylla.'
She caught him by the hair. 'Straighten up! And stop whining. You're a burglar and a thug, so you may be useful. But only if you do precisely as I direct.' For a moment she glared at him, her eyes burning into his. 'You still don't understand. Where can we find a boat? Around that village, I suppose. Do you know?'
Standing, he was a head taller than she, and felt that he ought to cower. 'There's boats there for rent, lovely Scylla. I've got some money.' 'Don't try to make me laugh. It will do you no good, I warn you. Follow me.'
'Yes, Scylla.'
'I don't care for birds.' She did not trouble to look back at Oreb as she spoke. 'They belonged to Daddy, and now to Moipe and ones like that to little Hierax. I don't even like having my people named for them. You know I'm oldest?'
'Yes, I sure do, lovely Scylla.' Auk's voice had been an octave too high; he cleared his throat and made an effort to regain his self-possession. 'That's the way Patera Pike always told it at the palaestra.'
'Pike?' She glanced back at him. 'That's good. Is he particularly devoted to me?'
'Yes, lovely Scylla. Or anyhow he was. He's dead.'
'It doesn't matter.'
Already they had reached the beginning of the Pilgrims' Way; the glowing windows of cookshops and taverns illuminated the street; late diners bound for rented beds stared rudely at Chenille's nakedness, or resolutely did not stare.
'Six children after me! Daddy had this thing about a male heir, and this other thing about not dying.' A drunken carter tried to tweak her nipple; she gouged his eyes with both thumbs and left him keening in the gutter. 'Moipe was just another girl, but you would have thought Tartaros would do it. Oh, no. So along came little Hierax, but even Hierax wasn't enough. So then three more girls, and after that-I suppose you already knew we could take you over like this?'
Oreb croaked, 'Girl?' But if she heard him she gave no sign of it.
Auk muttered, 'I didn't know it could still happen now, lovely Scylla.'
'It's our right, but most of us have to have a glass or a Window. That's what you call them. A terminal. But this whole lake's my terminal, which gives me lots of power around here.'
She was not looking at him, but Auk nodded.
'I haven't been here for a while, though. This woman's a whore. No wonder Kypris went for her.' Auk nodded again, weakly.
'In the beginning we chose up, with Daddy to be the god of everything-that's what his name meant-and boss over everybody. You see? Where are the boats?'
'If we turn the next corner and go down a ways we might find some, lovely Scylla.'
'He's dead now, though. We wiped him out of core thirty years ago. Anyway, Mama got to pick next, and she grabbed the whole inner surface. I knew she'd stay on land, mostly, so I took the water. I was doing lots of diving back then. Moipe took the arts, like you'd expect.' As Chenille rounded the corner, she caught sight of a fishing boat moored at the end of the alley; she pointed. 'That one's already got a man on it. Two, and one's an augur. Perfect! Can you sail? I can.'
Pas was dead! Auk could think of nothing else. 'No? Then don't kill them. I was going to say that we took new names that would fit. Daddy was Typhon the First, back home. What none of us knew was that he'd let her choose, too. So she picked love, what a surprise. And got sex and everything dirty with it. She didn't meddle very much in the beginning, knowing that-'
Hearing her voice, Patera Incus had looked up. 'You! Augur! Prepare to cast off.' Chenille herself was off like a sprinter, disappearing in the dense shadow of a salting shed. A moment later Auk saw her leap-flying in away that he knew would have been impossible had she not been possessed-to land with a roll upon the deck of. The fishing boat.
'I said prepare to cast off. Are you deaf?' She struck the augur with her left hand and the fisherman with her right, and the sounds of the blows might almost have been the slamming of double doors. Auk drew his needler and hurried after her.
Another hot-another scorching-morning. Maytera Marble fanned herself with a pamphlet. There were coils in her cheeks; their plan no longer appeared at her call, but she was almost sure of it. Her main coils were in her legs, with an auxiliary coil in each cheek; there the fluid that carried such strength as she still possessed was brought (or at least ought to have been brought) into intimate contact with her titanium faceplate, which was in turn in intimate contact with the air of the kitchen.
And the air was supposed to be cooler.
But no, that couldn't be right. She had once looked- she was almost sure she had looked-distinctly like a bio. Her cheeks had been overlaid with . . . with some material that would very likely have impeded the transfer of heat. What had she told dear Patera Silk the other day? Three centuries? Three hundred years? The decimal had slipped, must certainly have slipped to the left.
It had to have. She had looked like a bio then-like a bio girl, with black hair and red cheeks. Like a somewhat older Dahlia in fact, and Dahlia had always been so bad at arithmetic, forever mixing up her decimals, multiplying two decimal numbers and getting one with two decimal points, mere scrambled digits that meant not even His Cognizance could have said what.
With her free hand, Maytera Marble stirred the porridge. It was done, nearly overcooked. She lifted it from the stove and fanned herself again. In the refectory on the other side of the doorway, little Maytera Mint waited for her breakfast with exemplary patience. Maytera Marble told her, 'Perhaps you'd better eat now, sib. Maytera Rose
