cry without a word, without even a glance of contempt, but with an unexpected patience.
'I have left you alone for some time,’ he said reasonably, ‘but now we have to go.'
Drenched in rain and miserable, Paama got up from the doorstep, keeping her back turned to the house with its two bodies and its broken mirror. She scrubbed wearily at her ears, feeling as if she would never rid them of the echoes of the woman's screams.
'I didn't think she was strong enough to stand, far less reach for the mirror,’ she mumbled, shuddering as her unrelenting memory stopped yet again at the moment when the woman used the shard of mirror glass to slice her own jugular.
Then her eyes widened in realisation and she turned on him with fresh energy.
'You knew. You could have told me,’ she accused.
'Could I? There were many outcomes. There was a chance—a very slender one, I grant you—that they could survive here until the plague died out and the quarantine was lifted. There was a chance that she would recover and he would die later—such twists may seem cruel, but they exist. There was even a chance that they would both live and find a way past the quarantine barrier into freedom. There were thousands of chances. How was I to know that the one chance you needed to know about was the chance that she would see her reflection in the mirror and prefer death to a life of disfigurement, and that he would prefer death to a life without her?'
'So, your lesson is that one should do nothing without the knowledge of every possibility?’ she asked bitterly.
'No. I only mean to show you that there are some chances that even the Stick cannot control—chances that involve the free will of a human soul.'
She thought about this for a while and then said sorrowfully, ‘Then I might as well have done nothing.'
He flexed his hands uncomfortably in a manner that she was beginning to recognise. There was something he was not telling her.
'Was there something I could have done? Is there something I can do now?’ she pressed.
He briefly clenched his hands into fists and then opened them in surrender. ‘Before I??etired?? was assigned to burn this town.'
'Burn it!’ Paama exclaimed.
He shook his head at her horrified look. ‘It is the only way to stop the plague. Otherwise so many will die that the survivors will be forced to abandon the town entirely.'
'Then let us do it!’ She did not even notice, in her enthusiasm, that she had said ‘us’ and not ‘me'.
He shook his head again. ‘It is too late. The rainy season has begun. Any fire I try to start will find sodden thatch above, soaked timbers and filled gutters below. It is too late.'
There was a strange expression on his face. It took her a few moments to identify it as guilt.
'Are you sorry that you did not do your duty?’ she asked gently.
His eyes narrowed coldly. ‘I am still not convinced that humanity is worth the effort at all.'
She looked hurt. Cold, wet, tearstained, she must have made a pitiable figure, for he looked away from her uncomfortably.
'We must go now.'
She stood and stared at him, knowing he would feel not only the look, but everything behind it. It did more than she expected. It wore him down.
'There might be a chance, if the weather were dry for a few days, that a fire might still work,’ he hinted.
'If I choose that chance, the chance of unseasonal weather, will you bring me back here in a few days?’ she asked tentatively.
He nodded and then frowned as if annoyed at himself. Seizing her wrist again, he made an impatient motion with his hand. They vanished, leaving the street of the tragic plague town empty once more.
16
a rare and beautiful thing
The djombi remembered that Paama had to eat, so they stopped in a busy, confusing, colourful metropolis where he could make himself visible without attracting very much attention. Paama found it necessary to pawn a gold coin to obtain the city's peculiar legal tender—colourful banknotes and dull coinage—before she could buy food at a small restaurant. While she ate, the djombi read from a newspaper and absently snacked on portions of her dessert ... ‘just for the taste', he said. Paama recalled how fond another djombi had been of her sugar sweets and cakes, and she smiled slightly.
'We have a ship to catch,’ he said at last, folding up the paper.
Paama found the statement interesting, but not as interesting as his action.
'Why do you read that? I thought that you knew everything,’ she asked.
He seemed surprised. ‘Where did you get the impression that I know everything? I do not know what you are thinking. I certainly do not know what you will choose to do next.'
'Except for my giving you the Stick. You seem very certain about that,’ she said dryly.
He gave her one of his unfathomable, blank looks. ‘I like to read the paper for the same reason that I like the occasional bit of food—to sample human tastes.'
'I thought you despised us,’ she said quietly.
His hands squirmed on the folded newspaper. ‘Not
'Like chocolate cake and comic strip humour?’ she murmured, eyes downcast, sarcasm mild.
'Are you eating that last piece of cake?’ he asked, unmoved by her criticism.
'That depends on what horrible thing you are going to show me next. I might need to fortify myself. Wouldn't it be more fair and balanced if you showed me something good about chance and human choice?'
'There is this ship—’ he began.
'Please!’ Paama cried, daring to interrupt. ‘Answer me! Will you be fair?'
He seemed offended. ‘I have every intention of being fair. I was trying to tell you, this ship will not be much to see at first glance, but there is something worth seeing, something rare. The point is, will
She pushed the remainder of the cake over the table towards him. ‘Eat. I have lost my appetite. I forgot that this exercise of yours is not simply to show me how unworthy humanity is, but how unworthy I am.'
'There's no need to take it so personally,’ he said, but he took the cake without any sign of remorse.
'No women on board,’ he noted. ‘I have given you a kind of invisibility. They will see you, but they will immediately forget who and what they have seen.'
He watched Paama struggling to stay upright on the surging deck.
'Try not to stumble into anyone,’ he remarked. ‘That's a little harder to forget.'
Paama doubted it. The crew members were busy. They moved quickly with the purposefulness of cogs who know precisely what is their place and function in the larger machine, but there was a touch of nervous exhilaration in their enthusiasm and preoccupation on every face.
'A storm is coming?’ she guessed.
He nodded. ‘Are you afraid?'
She set her face sternly and replied, ‘I choose not to be, thank you. Are they all going to die?'
'Not all. Not even many. Watch.'
He found her a semi-sheltered spot, and she settled in with her back braced against the boards and her feet pressed against thick coils of rope. It was better to be seated, for now even the sailors stumbled from the motion of the turbulent waves.
Paama began to hate the djombi for his talent at keeping dry. For the second time in twenty-four hours she
