Suddenly a harsh voice in the distance: “And what do you think you’re doing?”
Dunderhead rides again. “Nothing, sir,” as metal and scraps and wires fly frantically into the paper bag.
The voice: “All novices under twenty must report to afternoon services without fail!”
“Yes, sir. Coming right along, sir.” Paper bag jammed equally frantically into the folds of my robe. Not a moment’s peace. Not a moment’s! Through the garden with lowered eyes, past a dour-looking priest with a small paunch. There are mirrors along the vestibule, huge slabs of glass that rise thirty feet, reflecting the blue and yellow light back and forth from the colored windows of the temple. In the mirror I see pass: a dour-looking priest, proceeded by a smaller figure with short red hair and a spray of freckles over a flattish nose. And as we pass into prayer, there is the maddening, almost inaudible jingling of metal scraps, muffled by the dark robe.
Geo woke up, and almost everything was white.
VIII
The pale woman with the tiny eyes rose from over him. Her hair dropped like white silk threads over her shoulders. “You are awake?” she asked. “Do you understand me?”
“Am I at—at Hama’s temple?” he asked, the remnants of the dream still blowing in at the edges of his mind, like shredding cloth. “My friends, where are they?”
The woman laughed. “Your friends are all right. You came out the worst.” Another laugh. “You ask if this is Hama’s temple? But you can see, can you not? You have eyes. Don’t you recognize the color of the White Goddess Argo?”
Geo looked around the room. It was white marble, and there was no direct source of light. The walls simply glowed.
“My friends. …” Geo said again.
“They are fine. We were able to completely restore their flesh to health. They must have exposed their hands to the direct beam of the radiation for only a few seconds. But the whole first half of your arm had apparently lain in the deadly rays for some minutes. You were not as lucky as they.”
Another thought rushed Geo’s mind now. “The jewels …” he started to say, but instead of sounding the words, he reached to his throat with both hands. One fell on his naked chest. And there was something very wrong with the other. He sat up in the bed quickly, and looked down. “My arm,” he said.
Swathed in white bandages, the limb ended some foot and a half short of where it should have.
“My arm … ?” he asked again, with a child’s bewilderment. “What happened to my arm?”
“I tried to tell you,” the woman said, softly. “We had to amputate half of your arm. If we had not, you would have died.”
“My arm,” Geo said again, and lay back in the bed.
“It is difficult,” the woman said. “It is only a little consolation, I know, but we are blind here. What burned your arm away, took our sight from us when it was much stronger, generations ago. We learned how to battle many of its effects, and had we not rescued you from the river, all of you would have died. You are men who know the religion of Argo, and adhere to it. This another of your party has told us. Be thankful then that you have come under the wing of the Mother Goddess again, for this is a hostile country.” She paused. “Do you wish to talk?”
Geo shook his head.
“I hear the sheets rustle,” the woman said, smiling, “which means you either shook or nodded your head. I know from my study of the old customs that one means ‘yes’ and the other ‘no.’ But you must have patience with us who cannot see. We are not used to your people. Do you wish to talk?” she repeated.
“Oh,” said Geo. “No. No, I don’t.”
“Very well,” the woman said. She rose, still smiling. “I will return later.” She walked to a wall in which a door slipped open, and then it closed again, behind her.
He lay still on the bed for a long time. Then he turned over on his stomach. Once he brought the stump under his chest and held the clean bandages in his other hand. Very quickly he let go, and stretched the limb sideways, as far as possible away from him. That didn’t work either, so he moved it back down to his side, and let it lay by him under the white sheet.
After a long while, he got up, sat on the edge of the bed, and looked around the room. It was completely bare, with neither windows nor visible doors. He went to the spot through which she had exited, but could find not seam or crack. His tunic, he saw, had been washed, pressed, and laid on the foot of the bed. He slipped it over his head, fumbling with only one arm. Getting the belt together started out to be a problem, but he hooked the buckle around one finger and maneuvered the strap through with the other. He adjusted his leather purse, now empty, on his side. Then he saw that the sword was gone.
An unreal feeling, white like the walls of the room, was beginning to fill him up like a pale mixture of milk and water. He walked around the edge of the room once more, looking for some break.
There was a sound behind him and the tiny-eyed woman in her white robe stood in a triangular doorway. “You’re dressed,” she smiled. “Good. Are you too tired to come with me? You will eat and
