Part 11 (1/2)

Chip thought, Making use of one of the beds-as the three of them went on through the museum.

He had thought about King and Lilac a good deal since seeing King and seeing how old he was-fifty-two or -three or even more. He had thought about the difference between the ages of the two-thirty years, surely, at the very least-and about the way King had told him to stay away from Lilac; and about Lilac's large less-slanted-than-normal eyes and her hands that had rested small and warm on his knees as she crouched before him urging him toward greater life and awareness.

They went up the steps of the unmoving central escalator and across the museum's second floor. The two flashlights, Snowflake's and Leopard's, danced over the guns and daggers, the bulbed and wired lamps, the bleeding boxers, the kings and queens in their jewels and fur-trimmed robes, and the three beggars, filthy and crippled, parading their disfigurements and thrusting out their cups. The part.i.tion behind the beggars had been slid aside, opening a narrow pa.s.sageway that extended farther into the building, its first few meters lit by light from a doorway in the left-hand wall. A woman's voice spoke softly. Leopard went on ahead and through the doorway, while Snowflake, standing beside the beggars, sprung pieces of tape from a first-aid-kit cartridge. ”Snowflake's here with Chip,” Leopard said inside the room. Chip laid a piece of tape over his bracelet plaque and rubbed it down firmly.

They went to the doorway and into a tobacco-smelling stuffiness where an old woman and a young one sat close together on pre-U chairs with two knives and a heap of brown leaves on a table before them. Hush and Sparrow; they shook Chip's hand and congratulated him. Hush was crinkle-eyed and smiling; Sparrow, large-limbed and embarra.s.sed-looking, her hand hot and moist. Leopard stood by Hush, holding a heat coil in the bowl of a curved black pipe and blowing out smoke around the sides of its stem.

The room, a fairly large one, was a storeroom, its farther reaches filled with a ceiling-high ma.s.s of pre-U relics, late and early: machines and furniture and paintings and bundles of clothing; swords and wood-handled implements; a statue of a member with wings, an ”angel”; half a dozen crates, opened, unopened, stenciled IND26110 and pasted at their corners with square yellow stickers. Looking around, Chip said, ”There are enough things here for another museum.”

”All genuine too,” Leopard said. ”Some of the things on display aren't, you know.”

”I didn't.”

A varied lot of chairs and benches had been set about the forward part of the room. Paintings leaned against the walls, and there were cartons of smaller relics and piles of moldering books. A painting of an enormous boulder caught Chip's eye. He moved a chair to get a full view of it. The boulder, a mountain almost, floated above the earth in blue sky, meticulously painted and jarring to the senses. ”What an odd picture,” he said.

”A lot of them are odd,” Leopard said.

”The ones of Christ,” Hush said, ”show him with a light around his head, and he doesn't look human at all.”

”I've seen those,” Chip said, looking at the boulder, ”but I've never seen anything like this. It's fascinating; real and unreal at the same time.”

”You can't take it,” Snowflake said. ”We can't take anything that might be missed.”

Chip said, ”There's no place I could put it anyway.”

”How do you like being undertreated?” Sparrow asked.

Chip turned. Sparrow looked away, at her hands holding a roll of leaves and a knife. Hush was at the same task, chopping rapidly at a roll of leaves, cutting it into thin shreds that piled before her knife. Snowflake was sitting with a pipe in her mouth; Leopard was holding the heat coil in the bowl of it. ”It's wonderful,” Chip said. ”Literally. Full of wonders. More of them every day. I'm grateful to all of you.”

”We only did what we're told to,” Leopard said, smiling. ”We helped a brother.”

”Not exactly in the approved way,” Chip said.

Snowflake offered him her pipe. ”Are you ready to try a puff?” she asked.

He went to her and took it. The bowl of it was warm, the tobacco in it gray and smoking. He hesitated for a moment, smiled at them watching him, and put the stem to his lips. He sucked briefly at it and blew out smoke. The taste was strong but pleasant, surprisingly so. ”Not bad,” he said. He did it again with more a.s.surance. Some of the smoke went into his throat and he coughed.

Leopard, going smiling to the doorway, said, ”I'll get you one of your own,” and went out.

Chip returned the pipe to Snowflake and, clearing his throat, sat down on a bench of dark worn wood. He watched Hush and Sparrow cutting the tobacco. Hush smiled at him. He said, ”Where do you get the seeds?”

”From the plants themselves,” she said.

”Where did you get the ones you started with?”

”King had them.”

”What did I have?” King asked, coming in, tall and lean and bright-eyed, a gold medallion chain-hung on his coveralled chest. He had Lilac behind him, his hand holding hers. Chip stood up. She looked at him, unusual, dark, beautiful, young.

”The tobacco seeds,” Hush said.

King offered his hand to Chip, smiling warmly. ”It's good to see you here,” he said. Chip shook his hand; its grip was firm and hearty. ”Really good to see a new face in the group,” King said. ”Especially a male one, to help me keep these pre-U women in their proper place!”

”Huh,” Snowflake said.

”It's good to be here,” Chip said, pleased by King's friendliness. His coldness when Chip left his office must have been only a pretense, for the sake, of course, of the onlooking doctors. ”Thank you,” Chip said. ”For everything. Both of you.”

Lilac said, ”I'm very glad, Chip.” Her hand was still held by King's. She was darker than normal, a lovely near-brown touched with rose. Her eyes were large and almost level, her lips pink and soft-looking. She turned away and said, ”h.e.l.lo, Snowflake.” She drew her hand from King's and went to Snowflake and kissed her cheek.

She was twenty or twenty-one, no more. The upper pockets of her coveralls had something in them, giving her the breasted look of the women Karl had drawn. It was a strange, mysteriously alluring look.

”Are you beginning to feel different now, Chip?” King asked. He was at the table, bending and putting tobacco into the bowl of a pipe.

”Yes, enormously,” Chip said. ”It's everything you said it would be.”

Leopard came in and said, ”Here you are, Chip.” He gave him a yellow thick-bowled pipe with an amber stem. Chip thanked him and tried the feel of it; it was comfortable in his hand and comfortable to his lips. He took it to the table, and King, his gold medallion swinging, showed him the right way to fill it.

Leopard took him through the staff section of the museum, showing him other storerooms, the conference room, and various offices and workrooms. ”It's a good idea,” he said, ”for someone to keep rough track of who goes where during these get-togethers, and then check around later and make sure nothing is conspicuously out of place. The girls could be a little more careful than they are. I generally do it, and when I'm gone perhaps you'll take over the job. Normals aren't quite as un.o.bservant as we'd like them to be.”

”Are you being transferred?” Chip asked.

”Oh no,” Leopard said. ”I'll be dying soon. I'm over sixty-two now, by almost three months. So is Hush.”

”I'm sorry,” Chip said.

”So are we,” Leopard said, ”but n.o.body lives forever. Tobacco ashes are a danger, of course, but everyone's good about that. You don't have to worry about the smell; the air conditioning goes on at seven-forty and whips it right out; I stayed one morning and made sure. Sparrow's going to take over the tobacco growing. We dry the leaves right here, in back of the hot-water tank; I'll show you.”

When they got back to the storeroom, King and Snowflake were sitting opposite each other astride a bench, playing intently at a mechanical game of some kind that lay between them. Hush was dozing in her chair and Lilac was crouched at the verge of the ma.s.s of relics, taking books one at a time from a carton, looking at them, and putting them in a pile on the floor. Sparrow wasn't there.

”What's that?” Leopard asked.

”New game that came in,” Snowflake said, not looking up.

There were levers that they pressed and released, one for each hand, making little paddles. .h.i.t a rusted ball back and forth on a rimmed metal board. The paddles, some of them broken, squeaked as they swung. The ball bounded this way and that and came to a stop in a depression at King's end of the board. ”Five!” Snowflake cried. ”There you are, brother!”

Hush opened her eyes, looked at them, and closed them again.

”Losing's the same as winning,” King said, lighting his pipe with a metal lighter.

”Like hate it is,” Snowflake said. ”Chip? Come on, you're next.”

”No, I'll watch,” he said, smiling.

Leopard declined to play too, and King and Snowflake began another match. At a break in the play, when King had scored a point against Snowflake, Chip said, ”May I see the lighter?” and King gave it to him. A bird in flight was painted on the side of it; a duck, Chip thought. He had seen lighters in museums but had never worked one. He opened the hinged top and pushed his thumb against the ridged wheel. On the second try the wick flamed. He closed the lighter, looked at it all over, and at the next break handed it back to King.

He watched them play for another few moments and then moved away. He went over to the ma.s.s of relics and looked at it, and then moved nearer to Lilac. She looked up at him and smiled, putting a book on one of several piles beside her. ”I keep hoping to find one in the language,” she said, ”but they're always in the old ones.”