‘How incredibly disappointing and petty,’ Elegy said, her voice scarcely more than a quiet hum. ‘My recompense for failing to give over my person. A little practical joke, in reward for my recalcitrance. I would have thought de Lambant above that sort of smallness.’ She shook her head.
‘Isn’t Captain de Lambant a woman?’ Moses asked, trying to orient himself and crimsoning only faintly in the attempt.
‘Yes, sir. Very much so. In the prime.’
‘Well, then—’ The Governor ran down, stymied and flustered. His jowls gleamed fiercely, and the top of his head might have been the globe of one of Frasierville’s streetlamps. He had forgotten that although pairbonding by members of opposite sexes is commonplace everywhere, it truly dominates human relationships only on frontier worlds like BoskVeld. A great many vestigial assumptions about sex and procreation haunt the old man, and at last I did laugh at him, rather loudly.
‘Shut up, Ben!’
‘At least we’re back on a first-name basis,’ I said, still laughing in spite of his warning.
Moses cut his eyes away from me and looked at Elegy Cather. ‘In any case, you’re here. Even though you’re on a research grant permitting you a good deal of personal autonomy, Civ Cather, I hope you’ll have sufficient wisdom to take the advice of old-timers like myself and Ben. The Calyptran Wild isn’t going to go anywhere for a few thousand years yet, and there’s a lot in Frasierville to see and learn.’
‘My father isn’t in Frasierville, however,’ said Elegy pointedly, ‘and I’ve studied so many street maps and holographic constructs and eyewitness histories of your capital that I feel – maybe a little cockily – that I already know it firsthand.’
This declaration did nothing to pacify Moses’s fear that we would soon have another lost soul spooking us from undiscoverable recesses in the Wild. He turned his peevish gaze on Kretzoi, but addressed the young woman.
‘I take it – from your familiarity with Frasierville and the appearance of your quasi-simian friend here – that you intend to seek out the Asadi even before you unpack your bags.’
‘Almost that soon. Yes, sir.’
‘Look. You’ve waited quite a long time for this opportunity. You can wait two or three more days. Give Dr Benedict a little time to outfit your expedition, find out something about your plans, and work up an official prospectus for my perusal and peace of mind. I don’t like to say hello and goodbye to visitors to BoskVeld all on the same day.’
Elegy Cather inclined her head a degree or two to express her grudging consent. Then she resumed grooming Kretzoi’s great tawny mane, and Moses and I silently watched her.
After I had enticed him away from the three young civki sirens who had enchanted him in the Chaney Field terminal, Bahadori drove us back to Frasierville. Elegy and I rode in the veldt-rover’s wide backseat, on split and sagging imitation-leather upholstery of a faded carrot color, while Kretzoi kept poor Jaafar company up front.
I had no iron-clad notions about the young Iranian’s mood, for he said nothing at all on either our trip across the sizzling polymac or our swing along the liver-jouncing length of Aphasia Alley. Nevertheless, the rigid set of his head and the impenetrability of his silence gave me to believe he considered himself the victim of a terrible insult. He had taken Kretzoi for a genuine Asadi, and he completed our trip back into town only by submerging his outrage in the corrosive acid of ‘duty.’ I resolved to explain nothing to him, however, until later – for I was no more inclined to talk than he was. Even Elegy, whose vivacity and spirit had seemed so unquenchable in the probeship shuttle, was silent.
But as we rode, my silent wish for Jaafar was that in one of the enlisted-grade bars on Night Drag Boulevard that night he would find a wide-eyed female civki on his arm and a healthily requitable passion in his heart. My wish – sincere as it was – failed to get through to him telepathically, and his mood remained sour and uncommunicative. Only Kretzoi, of all of us, seemed unaffected by it.
Eventually Jaafar dropped the three of us off at the hospital, where I went in to arrange guest accommodations for Elegy and Kretzoi in one of the first-floor wings. The two of them nearly bollixed this operation by following me inside to the admissions desk. As soon as the three of us appeared, an astonished Kommgalen tried, altogether peremptorily, to order us off the premises. I forestalled him with an official communication from Governor Eisen and a poker-faced testimonial to Kretzoi’s complete mastery of human toilet facilities. Reluctantly, the man installed them in adjacent rooms down the appropriate corridor and retreated back to the admissions desk wearing a look of haggard, hunch-shouldered resignation.
The Komm-galens didn’t like it. Janitorial personnel were scandalized. And one of the residents of the guest wing slammed his door in our faces as we first strolled down the corridor in search of the Cather-Kretzoi suite. So be it, I told myself, thoroughly enjoying the experience. So be it. And after bidding them both good day, I left the hospital and walked leisurely back to my quonset and took a quiet lunch.
CHAPTER THREE
Once, Upon the Japurá River
I called for Elegy at the hospital the following morning, but waited for her at the first-floor admissions desk rather than going directly to her room. Interns and orderlies regarded me sourly, I thought, as if they’d been informed of the outrage I had helped effect against their institution. I didn’t relish swaggering past them with Kretzoi in tow. The new day had sapped me of both my bravado and my humor. Nothing but business lay ahead, the dismaying and tedious logistics of adventure, and I feared what Elegy was going to make me do.
In a moment she was coming toward me from her room, and Kretzoi was conspicuous by his absence. She wore cream-colored jodhpurs, lightweight calf-high boots, and a
