Tal was there. This did not surprise him. Tal was placed in the universe specifically to make his life complicated. “We’re going for a walk,” said Tal.
“I guess we are,” agreed Spider, and he followed his companion out.
It wasn’t much of a town, out there. The buildings were of old brick and wood, and the sidewalks were made of wooden planks. The streets were muddy. Spider wasn’t disturbed by the enormity of the sky; it was framed on both sides by the buildings fronting the street, and not very different from the illusion of sky over Mercati Boulevard. “Funny smells, here.”
“Vegetation and mud. Unrecycled air.” Tal strode ahead.
“Where are we going?”
“The Dean may lend us some help—they’re deciding now,” said Tal. “We’11 hear within the hour. We have time to kill.”
“I was killing it fine inside the hall.” They passed a field with white stones in it, and Spider said, “That’s an odd-looking place. What is it?”
“A cemetery.”
“What’s a cemetery?”
“For the burial of the dead. The stones mark the places.”
Spider looked appalled. “You’re joking. What, you mean right in the ground?” He shivered. “Dirt in your face and all?”
“More or less. A lot of other humans are disgusted by it, too. I think that’s why they put them inside boxes first, as though that made any difference.”
There was a marble slab by the entrance to the cemetery. Tal sat down on it. “We may as well wait here for a while.”
Spider looked wistfully down the little street. There were three taverns on it, all with friendly yellow-lit windows. The sound of singing came, very far away, from one of them. “This isn’t a bad place,” he said. “The green stuff on the hills looks nice.”
Twilight settled over the town. Streetlamps turned on farther up the road, but the cemetery remained unlit. Spider got up and went over to a large, white granite statue near the cemetery entrance; it was a man in odd historical clothing, with a square hat and a beard, about twice life size. There was no name on the pedestal; instead there was a line in Standard: “Nothing is forgotten or forgiven.” Below it was a date, a single Standard year: 2239. The statue stared impassively out toward the street.
He returned to the marble slab. “It’s almost time to go to the port,” said Tal.
Spider shivered. “Why is it so cold?”
“It’s not, really. You’re not used to temperature variations outside a certain range. Even ‘winter’ on the Diamond doesn’t go below 48 degrees.”
Spider stamped his feet on the ground. “How cold is it now?”
“It’s approximately seven degrees Celsius,” Tal replied, without reference to any apparent instrumentality. “Which would make it 45 Fahrenheit.”
“Faren who? How can it be two things at once? The temperature is the temperature.”
“Two different systems, Spider. Think of it like money.”
Spider’s face registered suddenly enlightenment. “Like dollars and yen! I see what you mean.”
A handful of townspeople had appeared and disappeared across the street while they sat. Now a young couple walked along the sidewalk arm in arm, flushed and well-dressed in scarves and jackets, looking as though they’d just come from the dance. As they passed by the entrance to the cemetery, they turned briefly to the white granite statue. Their faces changed. First the woman, and then the man, spat on the ground. The man said a brief word in another language, and they went on.
Sefill had given Spider a warning, back at the dance, and it was not the sort of thing Spider forgot. The teacher said, of his hosts, “They’re the most informal people in the world, except when they’re talking about their damned contracts. Then they get all stiff and proper. But when they start to call you by all your titles and your full name, and sir and lord and everything—then’s the time to worry. Because then they’re thinking about killing you. They’re very formal with their enemies, Cyr Hastings.”
“Call me Spider,” Spider had replied, and Sefill had laughed; but Spider didn’t feel much like laughing now. These people were serious in their hatreds.
Tal got up and went over to the statue and inspected the pedestal. “He lived four hundred years ago, but they hate him as though they know him personally. He lived before the Graykey even settled here.”
“I suppose he was inconsistent,” said Spider. “Pardon?”
“You know, Sefill told me that the word ‘forgive’ isn’t even in the Graykey vocabulary. I bet that’s why they had to use Standard for the inscription.”
“It’s not in my vocabulary either,” said Tal, “but I didn’t know their memories were so long.”
Spider said, “Let’s not do anything to irritate these people, Tal.”
“No,” agreed Tal, “we’ll try not to.”
A groundcar met them at the foot of the main street. The town dribbled off into nothingness here, the road disappearing in brown scrub and dirt, with tracks of heavier vehicles pointing toward the hills in the distance. A young man sat in the car, a red band tied around his forehead. He wore a gray, sturdy looking jacket and pants, and a leather pack was in the seat beside him.
He smiled politely at Spider and Tal as he opened the doors for them. “Please come in, sirs.”
Tal said, as he seated himself, “You’re one of the team, aren’t you.”
“Yes, sir, I am.”
They turned off onto a side road and left the little town behind in the gathering darkness. Lights disappeared as they drove on. Tal said, “Are we going to the port?” The young man grinned. “And where else would we be going, sir?”
“Let me be more specific in my inquiry. May I take it the voting was in our favor?”
Spider glanced at Tal suspiciously. Voting? Who was voting, and where would they be taken if this
