She considered this, doubtfully. ‘That’s hard to imagine.’
‘Trust me. It happens. Either it happens, or you get into some other line of work.’
She flushed, thanked him again, and went down the hall to her room. In his own room, Tasmin lay awake, conscious of the towering escarpments all around the town, gathered Presences so quiet that one could hear choruses of viggies singing off in the hills. Echoes of that surge of emotion hitting him that morning were with him still, a welling apprehension, half pleasurable, half terrifying. It had seldom come so strongly. It had seldom lasted so long. He lay there, his body tasting it, listening to the viggies singing until almost midnight.
He had his first-trippers up and traveling as soon as there was enough light. They stared at the Black Tower long enough to be impressed with the sheer impossibility of the thing while Tasmin, Jamieson close behind him, read silently from the prayers for the dead. The remains of Miles Ferrence lay somewhere in that welter of crystal trash at the bottom of the tower. After Miles Ferrence had died, Tasmin had gone back to the original explorer’s notes and done a new Black Tower score, dedicated to the memory of his father. He had really done it to please his mother, and so far no one using it had died. Today he got them through by singing it himself, with Jamieson doing backup.
After the Black Tower, the Far Watchlings seemed minor league stuff, good practice, but with nothing very interesting about them. James asked to be excused. The sense of awe and mystery that Tasmin had been reveling in departed as they came through the last of the Watchlings and saw Deepsoil Five awaiting them at the bottom of the long slope. Back to reality again. Tasmin heaved a deep breath. He would be home in time for supper.
‘How did your boysies do?’ Celcy said, patting his face and reaching up to be kissed. ‘Were they in frightfully good voice.?’
‘All but one, yes.’ He didn’t really want to talk about James. Or, for some reason, Clarin.
‘Oh, poor poopsie, did he get popped off?’
‘Celcy, that’s not funny. And it’s in damn poor taste.’ He snapped at her, regretting it instantly.
Her good spirits were undampened, however. ‘I’m sorry, Tasmin. Really. I just wasn’t thinking. Of course, he didn’t get popped off with you there. That’s what you’re there for, isn’t it? To keep the boysies safe and sound.’
‘Among other things.’
‘I missed you. I missed you a lot.’ She opened his robe and came inside it, against him, pummeling his ribs with her fists. ‘Did you hear me, did you?’
‘I heard you.’ He laughed, suddenly joyous. ‘I heard you, Celcy.’
‘So. Do something about it.’
His weariness left him. The aftertrip letdown was postponed. She was as giddy and playful as a happy child, eager to please him, and the evening passed in a tangle of lovemaking and feasting.
‘I have been cooking dinner all day,’ she announced at one point, pouring him a third glass of wine. ‘All day long, without sur-cease!’
He rubbed his stomach ruefully. If he hadn’t married Celcy for quite other reasons, he might have married her for her cooking. ‘You’re very good to me.’
‘That’s because,’ she said, running her hands under his shirt. ‘Because.’
There was an interlude.
And then, sleepily, ‘Tassy, sweetie, he called.’
‘Who?’ He could not for the moment imagine whom she might be talking about, and then it came to him with a blow of almost physical force. ‘Lim? He’s here?’ He had to be on Deepsoil Five or he couldn’t have called.
‘He’s up at the power station. They’re camping there for a day or two to get some equipment fixed, he said. Then they’ll come on into town. He talked to me for the longest time, and he’s the sweetest man! Tassie, you never told me how wonderful he really is. He wanted to know all about you and me and how we met and everything.’
There was a cold, hard lump at the base of Tasmin’s throat. He tried to swallow it away, but it wouldn’t go.
‘What else did he want?’
‘To give us tickets to the show, of course. To have dinner with us after.’
‘Did he ask about Mother?’ It was the wrong thing to have asked. Her mood changed abruptly.
‘Yes. He asked if she and your father were still living at the same place, and I told him your father died, but she was still there. It’s funny he wouldn’t know that, Tassy, about your father. I imagine he’ll call her, too.’
Tasmin doubted it very much. When Lim had left Deepsoil Five, he had gone without a word. It wasn’t until almost four years later that they had found out he was alive and well on the Deepsoil Coast, doing nightclub concerts of trip songs, moving young women to passionate abandon, making money with both hands. After Tasmin’s father died, his mother could have used some of that money, but Lim had never offered, not even after Tasmin wrote….
Funny. In the letter, he had told Lim that Mother was in need, but he had not said his father was dead. He had supposed Lim knew. And yet, how would he have known?
‘What else did you tell him?’
‘Oh, just that we wanted tickets. I said lots and lots, so we could bring all our friends….’
Your friends, he thought. Your boyfriends and their wives. Celcy had lots of boyfriends, most of them married. Just friends, nothing to get jealous or upset over. Just boyfriends. No girlfriends, though. All women were rivals, no matter how young or old. Poor Celcy. Dear Celcy.
‘You said dinner?’
‘After the show, he said. He wants to talk to you.’
Jaconi caught him at lunch, very full of his newest theory. ‘I’m convinced I’ve found a repetitive sequence, Tas! A similarity that crops up in over ten percent of all successful
