‘Tripsinger trouble?’ Tasmin asked, disbelievingly. ‘I haven’t heard that we’ve got any troublemakers, currently.’
‘Naah, the Tripmaster was all right, him and his assistant. Wagon men was all right, too. The cook even helpt me fix a meal for the lot of ’em. No, it was those others with ’em.’
‘Passengers?’
The fat man shook his head, first chins then bellies swaying like waves generated from a common source somewhere around the ears. ‘Don’t think so, no. Four men with mules o’ their own, come along after the caravan lookin’ for some woman and baby. Tripmaster sait the woman left ’en back outsite o’ Twelve. Crazy, if she went that way. Lots longer that way. Have to go through Thirteen and Fourteen on yer way up to Six, then come the way you come from there. Take almost twice’t as long.’
‘You didn’t happen to hear who it was they were looking for, did you?’ asked Tasmin, dry-mouthed.
‘Woman’s name was Terree. Same’s that Soilcoast singer got himself kilt on the Enigma …’
‘These men didn’t happen to say who they were, did they?’ Donatella asked.
‘Oh, no neet to tell me the name o’ the one of ’em. Bins, he was. Chantiforth Bins. My wife buys ever cube those tamnt Crystals put out. True believer, she is, just so long as she won’t have to get up off her lollyfalooz to do nothin’ abou tit. Ever time I come in the room, it’s that cube rantin’ and ravin’ like some bantigon with a buttache. I’ve seen him till I’m sick of him. Heart him, too, and he toesn’t make any more sense up clost than on the cube. I knew he was lyin’ the minute he startit talkin’.’
‘But he didn’t find the woman.’
‘Nah. She was long gone. Way I think, that Tripmaster he hit her somewheres.’
‘Hit her!’
‘Right. Like hit her in the trees or hit her in a hole in the ground so’s those fella’s cuttn’t hurt her none. Her’n the baby.’
‘The answer to all our problems,’ said Jamieson, sotto voce, leaning heavily on Clarin. ‘Hit ’em in a hole in the grount.’
‘I’ll hit you in a hole in the grount if you’re not careful,’ murmured Clarin, smiling at him.
‘Where’s the Tripmaster now?’ Tasmin asked, trying to glare at them and succeeding only in looking weary.
‘Gone on t’Five. ’Forn he went, he ast me to get ’long there and help her out. Whispert it, kind of. The Tripmaster that was.’
‘When was this?’ Tasmin said, dangerously patient.
‘Was yesterday since. Trouble was, I can’t go til these ones go away.’
‘Did the Tripmaster say where they came up to the wagon train? Bins and his bunch?’
‘Oh, yes. Come up on it down at the turn off where one roat comes up here t’Harmony and one goes east to nothin’ much. I think that’s right. Course, you might ask ’em. They’re all of ’em asleep in there.’ And he pointed to one of the dormitory rooms, halfway down the long hall. ‘They lookt for her but din’t fint her. Sait they’re goin’ on t’Teepsoil Five, first thin’ tomorrow.’
‘Armed?’ asked Jamieson.
The caravansery manager shook his head. ‘Don’t think so. No arms I saw.’
‘I guess we don’t sleep?’ Donatella asked, only half a question.
‘I guess you’re right,’ said Tasmin. ‘Do you have any Bormil tea?’ he asked the caravansery manager. ‘Or Tsamp? Something that will keep us awake for a while?’
‘Now, what kint o’ caravansery wuttn’t have Tsamp,’ the manager nodded. ‘Sure I got Tsamp. You want it powdert or cookt in somethin’?’
They settled on Tsamp in broth, drinking enough of it that their nerves were screamingly alert when they left Harmony, headed south.
When the sun came up, they found themselves at the fork of the trail, a long ridge leading away to the east, groves of trees speckling the shallow soil between the westward trail and the Presences, and not a sign of Vivian or the baby. They called and searched for an hour, then spent some time hailing with the machines, and then, in a mood of fatalistic exhaustion, turned east and rode for the Enigma.
Tasmin had seen it before, from the north side, from between the twin needles, between the two insolent daggers of bloody ice. He had looked down onto the little flat that lay between those daggers like a stained handkerchief between two gory swords, and he had seen that handkerchief fold away around Celcy, around Lim, wrapping away those arrogant enough to test the Enigma.
Now he saw the same place from below.
A polished ramp of crystal wound upward toward that same little flat. All the shards and shattered fragments had been cleared away. It gleamed like cut glass, like ruby or dark garnet with paler edges, as though its blood had coagulated in some places and had run with water in others, dark clots and pale tints intermingled where something bled into the sea of that great crystal, bled forever and was forever washed away.
Within the bloody traceries glinted the web of fracture, the delicate tracery of dislocation, of tilted planes and vacant edges, shivering with dawn light.
‘Where did you go before, Don?’ Tasmin asked. ‘When you talked to it?’
‘Up there,’ Donatella answered. ‘It was a dim, gray day, with fog in the air. Not like today. I … I don’t recall being afraid then.’
‘Are you now?’
‘Lord, yes, aren’t you? That thing is glaring at us.’
‘I expected to be afraid. But then I’ve only been here once, and my experience was a different one from yours.’
‘What do we do?’ Clarin asked. ‘Now you can tell us, Donatella. What was your clue? What did Erickson give you that took you up there?’
Donatella turned and adjusted her music box, finding a particular setting and playing it so softly they barely heard it, a haunting melody, rising and falling in quiet repetition, as though water ran upon stone, eating it away. ‘An-dar-ououm, an-dar-ououm.’ It was the Enigma score, and
