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… THE BUFFET LOOKED AS if it had been attacked by sharks.
'Daddy's pride and joy-look at it now,' lamented Ari. She handed Spence a plate and took one herself. 'Oh, well, we might as well join in the plunder. Let's dig in.'
They inched their way along the table laden with platters and serving dishes containing a varied and exotic fare: shrimp on ice, salmon aspic, sweet and sour meatballs, soufflйs of several kinds, quiches, a great cheddar wheel, cold roast beef and ham, baby lobster tails, relishes and pickles, brandied pears, deviled crabs, avocados stuffed with chicken and tuna salad, petits fours, cakes, and many other delicacies, some of which Spence did not readily recognize.
Not that it made a difference whether he recognized any particular dish. Ari adroitly ushered them through the snarl of elbows and reaching hands and filled both plates while Spence tagged after her trying not to spill anything.
'Oh, no,' sighed Ari as they arrived at a great empty bowl; the cut glass vessel appeared to have been recovered from a mud wallow. 'Just as I feared. The mousse is gone. Too bad. But I think I know where there may be some more. Follow me.'
They edged through the crowd and dodged diners who stood on the periphery holding their plates to their mouths. She led him away from the confusion of the gathering, through a dim passageway, and into a room which had been transformed into a makeshift kitchen; it looked more like the staging area for a major battle. Several employees of Gotham's food service worked over platters, valiantly attempting to reconstruct beauty from the spoils on the plates before them, replacing wilted lettuce and replenishing depleted items. They worked deftly and quickly, shouldered their trays, and faced once more into the fray.
'We should have come here first,' murmured Ari. 'It's quieter. Here's the mousse, or what's left of it.' She picked up a spoon and shook a healthy dollop onto his already overflowing plate.
'It will take me a week to eat all this.'
'Nonsense. I've seen you eat. Remember?'
He looked around for a place to sit. There were no chairs in the room at all.
'Shall we join the others?' asked Ari. 'I would rather face lions.'
She raised an eyebrow. 'That was the right answer. I know a place that may not have been discovered. Come along.'
They ducked out through a side door and across the hallway into a small vestibule. He gathered the room was a sort of private sitting room. Bookshelves lined the walls on three sides; on the fourth there was a large, abstract green painting above a low couch. A table in front of the couch bore the telltale traces of diners who had eaten and departed, leaving behind the litter of their repast.
'Daddy calls this his reading room. He says it's cozier than his library or office. Most often he just comes in here to nap.'
They sat down on the couch and fell to eating at once. Spence sampled a bite of each of the items on his plate in turn before devouring them one at a time.
'It's very good,' he mumbled around a mouthful. 'Only the best for our guests.'
He regarded her with a look of genuine gratitude. 'Thanks for inviting me. I don't usually-' He stopped, 'I'm glad I came.'
She looked down at her plate. 'I'm glad you came, too. I guess I didn't think you would.'
'To tell you the truth, I didn't either.' 'What changed your mind?'
'I don't know. Maybe I'm just a pushover for chocolate mousse.'
'Then we'll have to serve it more often,' she said gaily. 'But you're not eating yours.'
He glanced down at his plate. It had become a muddied palette of confused colors and textures. He put it down on the table in front of him. 'I don't like mousse,' he admitted.
She laughed then, and to Spence it seemed as if the room suddenly brightened. 'Silly, then why did you let me give it to you?'
'I don't know, you seemed to be enjoying yourself.'
Ari blushed slightly and lowered her head. 'Well, I am.' She seemed to become flustered then and said no more.
Silence reclaimed the room and laid a gulf between them. It grew until neither one wanted to cross it. The atmosphere became sticky.
'Ari, I'm not too good at this sort of thing.' Spence was surprised to hear his own voice bleating uncertainly into the vacuum.
'You don't have to say anything,' said Ari. She raised her blue eyes to his. 'I understand.'
'It's just that I…' Words failed him.
'Please, it isn't important.' She smiled at him and cocked her head to one side. 'I think we should rejoin the party. Daddy will wonder what happened to me.'
'You're right.' Spence stood slowly. Ari remained seated, and he looked down on her and then offered his hand and helped her to her feet.
'Thanks,' he said softly.
They crossed the room and Ari turned, putting on her jaunty demeanor again, once more the vivacious hostess. 'We'll be lucky if they don't eat the tablecloth as well,' she said as they passed the buffet.
'Well, next time I get hungry for mousse, I know where to come,' said Spence.
She turned to him and placed her hand on his arm. 'I hope you won't wait that long.' Before he could answer she whirled away into the crowd and was gone. …
SPENCE WALKED BACK To his quarters alone in a mood of fluttery anticipation, almost wonder. He had forgotten his anxiety of only hours before; in fact, he had forgotten a great many things. What had taken possession of him now left no room for those darker thoughts. Though he had no name for what he felthaving never felt it before-he knew it to be in no small way connected with the person of Ariadne Zanderson.
The warmth of the feeling surprised and confused him. It was wholly beyond his rational ability to describe. It seemed to defy objective analysis, leaving him fumbling for an explanation like a man groping for a light switch in a dark room. That the elusive feeling might be love did not occur to him.
He punched in his code and the panel whispered back, admitting him into the darkened lab. Neither Tickler nor Kurt were to be seen; he guessed they had finished and gone long ago. That suited him. He did not care to think about the project, Tickler, or the scans. All he wanted was to throw off his jumpsuit and flop into bed-which he did, after leaving an alarm call with MIRA. …
SPENCE PEERED INTO THE depths of a vast chasm as the rumble of underground thunder shook the rocks he clung to fearfully. His inward parts trembled to the awesome roar. Below him, whirling in the seething darkness, he could see strange shapes churning and grinding, sending up a fine blue powder like a velvet mist.
Great jagged flashes of blue lightning rent the air and peeled away the darkness of the pit. He looked down and saw clearly into the tumbling mass below. In the fleeting illumination of the lightning he saw the groaning, shuddering, grinding contents of the pit: bones. The enormous skeletal remains of gigantic prehistoric creatures, thrashing in perpetual motion.
A bolt of lightning raked the rock on which he perched and he felt his hands torn away as he fell backward into the chasm. He twisted in the air, his fingers clawing empty space for a hold on the rock. It was too late.
Spence plunged screaming into the whirling dance of the bones.
Down and down he spun, turning and turning. The fine blue grit ascending on the warm updrafts stung his eyes and filled his nose and mouth, choking him. He squirmed and gasped as black mists closed around him.
The sound of the terrible rumbling thunder gradually died away. He dropped like a stone through formless space. He felt nothing and heard nothing-only the beating of his own heart and the thump of his blood as it pounded in his ears. He felt as if he would fall forever. He told himself the notion was absurd.
Perhaps, thought Spence, I am not falling at all. But what else could it be? All at once a new terror seized his mind: he was shrinking. Instantly he could feel himself becoming smaller -dwindling by fine degrees, becoming ever smaller. Though he had no point of reference by which to gauge himself, he felt that by now he must be very
