’em, Elegy? As soon as it hits one, he’ll know it’s a – what would Eisen say? – a wrongness.’

Still squatting, Elegy ignored me. She pulled the metal pin lost somewhere in the huri’s multifoliate pleats, and the creature bloomed in her hands.

‘The other possibility,’ I went on, crouching beside her, ‘is that they’ll accept whichever Asadi it strikes as their new chieftain – after which our torchbearers up there’ – nodding emphatically in their direction – ‘will put the green flame to Kretzoi. Is that what you want?’

‘Just shut up and watch, Ben.’ Elegy handed the huri to me and I took it because I had no other choice.

We watched. The Asadi’s movements grew sluggish, perfunctory. They’d been at it, this abortive ritual, for hours, and they were nearly as weary as we were. In fact, Elegy and I were still running on curiosity and adrenalin, whereas the aliens looked to have exhausted both. The flames in the heavy iron sconces on either side of the pagoda’s doors had guttered almost to extinction . . .

A faint buzz sounded in my ears. ‘Elegy,’ said a voice imploringly, ‘Elegy, are you there?’

‘He does know your first name, doesn’t he?’

‘Give him coordinates, Ben,’ Elegy commanded me with steely self-possession. ‘He may need them. We may need for him to have them.’

I gave Jaafar the coordinates.

‘Do you want me to come?’ Jaafar’s thin voice inquired. ‘Is there room for me to land the Dragonfly?’

‘There’s room for you to land,’ I responded, ‘but we don’t want you to come. Besides, even with coordinates, you might have a helluva time finding this place. The pagoda disguises itself, and from the air the clearing probably presents an illusion of continuous jungle. Stay where you are.’

‘Until we call,’ Elegy qualified my command, and it was the first time in the Wild, away from the drop point, she had allowed herself to speak to Jaafar directly. Three words; no more. They ended the conversation, and Jaafar receded into the radio white noise of the rising dawn.

‘Do you know what’s wrong with you, Thomas Benedict?’

I looked at Elegy as if she had struck me. Good lord, I thought, staring at her in numb fascination.

‘You’re trapped in your left brain,’ she informed me. ‘You’re a prisoner of your “rational” self. You’re dying of a disease called formulaic digital logic – which doesn’t prevent you from behaving like an animal in moments of intuitive sanity.’ Her anger was even more palpable than the blown-up huri in my hands.

‘What are you talking about, Elegy?’ I nodded toward the pagoda. ‘In no time at all they’re going to be cremating Kretzoi alive and you’re subjecting me to an off-the-wall character analysis.’

‘Your archaic jealousy’s one of the few signs the disease may not be as far along as it sometimes appears.’

‘Elegy—’

‘How many times have you and I . . . copulated?’ she challenged me, settling on the final word with a deliberate but opaque irony.

I stared at her in disbelief, but my mind raced to compute, to tally, to come up with an answer. ‘Twelve or so. Less than fifteen.’

‘Which is it, Ben? Tell me exactly.’

‘Fourteen,’ I hazarded.

‘Are you sure?’ she pressed.

‘Positive,’ I said in exasperation, believing Kretzoi mortally imperiled by our argument and our inattention.

‘How many times must we copulate before you stop counting?’

‘What?’ I waved helplessly at the temple.

She grabbed my gesturing hand and pinioned it to the mock-huri clutched awkwardly against my chest. ‘Your left brain’s keeping score,’ she whispered hatefully. ‘It counts off its ticks like a clock. There hasn’t been a time we lay naked together, Thomas Benedict, you didn’t start intellectualizing the experience from the perspective of an anthropologist, or a sociobiologist, or maybe even a fucking Komm-galen with a minor in psychosexual angst. Your mind’s like a mirror on the ceiling. It records but doesn’t participate. That’s what’s wrong with you.’

‘Much obliged,’ I raged. ‘Holy goddamn fucking obliged!’

‘And that’s why Jaafar and I had our way with each other last night, or the night before last, or whenever the hell it was!’

‘Because he doesn’t intellectualize the act?’ I raged, glancing in harried disbelief back and forth between Elegy’s face and the Asadi temple.

‘Not in the least.’

‘Listen,’ I hissed, aching with both jealousy and chagrin, ‘I’ll tell you what’s wrong with me – if, incredibly enough, that’s all that’s on your mind.’

‘Go ahead.’

‘I’ve been living for six years in the shadow of a dead man. I’ve made his work my own, I’ve pursued his ghost as if it were a grail, I’ve even allowed his doubly obsessed daughter to dictate the terms of that pursuit. That’s what’s wrong with me. I’ve put my identity in an equation with Egan Chaney’s and then factored myself totally out of the picture.’ I saw quite clearly that the two Asadi torchbearers were lifting the heavy iron flambeaux from their sconces and moving toward the bier on which Kretzoi lay. At last, half panicked, I stood up and stepped from our hiding place. ‘Maybe that’s what’s wrong with you, too, Elegy – you’ve lost yourself in your obsession to find a dead man! A dead man!’

I was naked in the clearing. My last angrily declaimed accusation had drawn the eyes of the Asadi. But for the jungle at my back, I was beset and surrounded.

Elegy shouted, ‘Goddamn it, Ben, do something!’

I raised the mock-huri and shook it violently. Then, taking it by one tarry wing, I whirled it about over my head like a child flying some sort of strange toy aircraft. Dawn was almost upon us. Swinging the artificial huri, I advanced through the Asadi toward the pagoda. Elegy came with me. On every side, the beasts retreated from us in fear and bewilderment.

The corpsebearers and torchlighters on the pagoda’s highest tier observed our approach with puzzlement and alarm. To save themselves they would either have to flee or fight. Those seemed the only options available to them; and when the creatures failed to show any readiness to flee –

Вы читаете Transfigurations
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