'No,' she said. 'I'm going downstairs.'
The cheers were over, the congratulations, but the party would last until dawn. Dumarest, neat in his normal clothing, his wounds dressed, lifted the glass in his hand as she entered the room in which he held court.
'My lady!' He sipped and added, 'It is a pleasure to see you again. How may I know you?'
She smiled at the formal mode of address. 'My name? Karlene.'
'Just that?'
'Karlene vol Diajiro. Karlene will do.' As he handed her a glass of wine she said, 'Do I remind you of someone?'
'Why do you ask?'
'You smiled when you first saw me as if-well, it doesn't matter. But I was curious. May I add my congratulations to the rest? If anyone deserved to win the trophy it was you. I assume you are a skilled hunter? None other would have stood a chance. A fighter too, no doubt, it took skill to dispatch those men as you did.'
Small talk, flattery, empty words to fill out silence. The ritual used by strangers when meeting other strangers. She felt irritated at herself for emulating the harpies clustered around; painted matrons eager to taste a new delight, others eager to boast of having conquered the conqueror. Why was she acting so awkwardly? A young girl meeting her first man could not have been worse.
Dumarest said, 'I had help.'
'What?' She blinked then realized he was answering her babble. A man discerning as well as polite. 'Help? From whom?'
From those she had never known and would never meet; men who had taught him the basic elements of survival, women who had taught him how to read the unspoken messages carried in gestures and eyes. Others closer to the present; Vellani, the guard, herself.
She shook her head as he mentioned it. 'Me? No, you must be mistaken.'
'Of course.' Dumarest didn't press the point. 'Would you care to sit?'
She was tall, her head almost level with his own as he guided her from the room, her flesh cool beneath his hand. Outside a niche held a table and three chairs. Seating her, Dumarest removed the extra chair, setting it well to one side before taking the other. As he settled, a man came bustling toward him, a bottle in his hand.
'Earl! You'll share a drink with me?'
'Not now.'
'But-' The man broke off as he saw Dumarest's expression. 'I-well, at least accept the wine.'
A woman was less discreet.
'Earl, you have my room number. Don't forget it. I'll be expecting you-don't keep me waiting.'
As she left, Karlene said, dryly, 'To the victor the spoils. I hope you're enjoying them.'
'I'm enjoying this.' His gesture took in the table, the seclusion, herself. 'You were right when you thought you reminded me of someone. You do.' He poured wine for them both. 'Someone who died a long time ago. I drink to her memory.'
'Her name?'
'Derai.'
'To Derai!' She sipped and then, following a sudden impulse, drained the glass. 'The dead should not be stinted.'
'No.'
'Nor ever forgotten.' Her hand shook a little as she poured herself more wine. 'What are we if none remember us when we are gone? Less than the wind. Less than the rain, the sea, the fume of spray. Less than the shift of sand. Nothingness lost on the fabric of time. All ghosts need an anchor.'
Friends, a family, children, those who cared. Looking at her, Dumarest saw a lonely woman- haunted by the fear of death.
He said, 'You have a way with words. Are you a poet?'
'No, just someone who likes old things. As you do.' She smiled at his puzzlement. 'The book,' she said. 'The one you were reading before the game. It looked very old. Did it give you comfort?'
'This?' He took it from his pocket and placed it in her hand. 'I found it more a puzzle than anything else. Can you make sense of it?'
She riffled the pages, frowning, shaking her head as she tried to decipher the script.
'It's so faded. Chemicals could restore much of the writing and there are other techniques which could help. Computer analysis,' she explained. 'Light refraction from the pages-pressure of the stylo would have left traces even though the ink may have vanished. Machines could scan and reconstruct each page to its original content. Later wear could be eliminated.' She turned more pages. 'This seems to be a personal notebook. I had one when a child. I used to jot down all manner of things: names, places of interest, things I had done. Income and outlay, equations, poetry, all kinds of things. Even secrets.' She laughed and reached for her wine. 'How petty they seem now.'
'The price we pay for growing up. What we thought were gems become flecks of ice. Castles in the sky turn into clouds. The magic in the hills becomes empty space. The secret we thought our own becomes shared by all.'
'And childhood dies-as all things must die.' She shivered as if with cold and drank some wine. 'Why does it have to be like that?'
'Perhaps because we are in hell,' said Dumarest. 'What better name to give a universe in which everything lives by devouring everything else? Death is the way of life. Only the strong can hope to survive.'
'For what? To die?' She sipped again at the wine, feeling suddenly depressed, overwhelmed by the futility of existence. The book moved in her hand and she opened it at random, studying a page with simulated interest. Light, slanting at an angle, enhanced faded script. ' 'Earth,' ' she said. ' 'Up to Heaven's'-something-'door. You gaze'-' Irritably she shook her head. 'I can't make it out.'
'Try!' Dumarest controlled his impatience. 'Please try,' he said more gently. 'Do what you can.'
The wine quivered in the glass he held, small vibrations of nerve and muscle amplified to register in dancing patterns of light. He set it down as the woman frowned at the book.
'It's a poem of some kind. A quatrain, I think. That's a stanza of four lines. You know about poetry?'
'What does it say?'
'The first line is illegible but it must end in a word to rhyme with the last word in the second. My guess is that it goes one-two-four. The third line-'
'What does it say!'
'Give me a minute.' She dabbed a scrap of fabric in the wine, wet the page, held it up so as to let the light shine through it. 'That's better. Listen.' Her voice deepened a little. ' 'But if in vain down on the stubborn floor. Of Earth and up to Heaven's unopening door. You gaze today while you are you-how then. Tomorrow when you shall be no more.' No, wait!' She lifted a hand as she corrected herself. That last line reads, 'Tomorrow when you shall be you no more.'
'Is that all?'
'Yes.' She sensed his disappointment. 'It would look better set out in lines. It's probably something the owner of the book copied from somewhere. Earth,' she mused. 'Earth.'
He waited for her to say more; to tell him Earth was just a legendary world along with Bonanza and Jackpot, Lucky Strike and El Dorado and Eden and a dozen others. Planets waiting to be found and holding unimaginable treasure. Myths which held a bright but empty allure.
Instead she said, wistfully, 'Earth-it has a nice sound. Is there really such a world?'
'Yes.' He added, bluntly, 'I was born on it. I left it when I was young.'
He had been little more than a child, stowing away on a ship, being found, the captain merciful; allowing him to work instead of evicting him as was his right. Together they had delved deeper and deeper into the galaxy when, the captain dead, he had been left to fend for himself on strange worlds beneath alien suns. Regions where the very name of his home world had become a legend, the coordinates nowhere to be found.
'You're lost,' said Karlene, understanding. 'You want to go home. That is why the book is so important to you. You think it might hold the answer you want.'
'The coordinates. Yes.'
'Did you really come from Earth?' She leaned toward him, her eyes searching his face. 'Would you swear to it?
