Part 13 (1/2)

The following night Chip was sitting in the storeroom reading and smoking when ”h.e.l.lo, Chip,” Lilac said, and was standing in the doorway with a flashlight at her side.

Chip stood up, looking at her.

”Do you mind my interrupting you?” she asked.

”Of course not, I'm glad to see you,” he said. ”Is King here?”

”No,” she said.

”Come on in,” he said.

She stayed in the doorway. ”I want you to teach me that language,” she said.

”I'd like to,” he said. ”I was going to ask you if you wanted the lists. Come on in.”

He watched her come in, then found his pipe in his hand, put it down, and went to the ma.s.s of relics. Catching the legs of one of the chairs they used, he tossed it right side up and brought it back to the table. She had pocketed her flashlight and was looking at the open pages of the book he had been reading. He put the chair down, moved his chair to the side, and put the second chair next to it.

She turned up the front part of the book and looked at its cover.

”It means A Motive for Pa.s.sion,” he said. ”Which is fairly obvious. Most of it isn't.”

She looked at the open pages again. ”Some of it looks like Italiano,” she said.

”That's how I got onto it,” he said. He held the back of the chair he had brought for her.

”I've been sitting all day,” she said. ”You sit down. Go ahead.”

He sat and got his folded lists out from under the stacked Francais books. ”You can keep these as long as you want,” he said, opening them and spreading them out on the table. ”I know it all pretty well by heart now.”

He showed her the way the verbs fell into groups, following different patterns of change to express time and subject, and the way the adjectives took one form or another depending on the nouns they were applied to. ”It's complicated,” he said, ”but once you get the hang of it, translation's fairly easy.” He translated a page of A Motive for Pa.s.sion for her. Victor, a trader in shares of various industrial companies-the member who had had the artificial heart put into him-was rebuking his wife, Caroline, for having been unfriendly to an influential lawmaker.

”It's fascinating,” Lilac said.

”What amazes me,” Chip said, ”is how many non-productive members there were. These share-traders and lawmakers; the soldiers and policemen, bankers, tax-gatherers . . .”

”They weren't non-productive,” she said. ”They didn't produce things but they made it possible for members to live the way they did. They produced the freedom, or at least they maintained it.”

”Yes,” he said. ”I suppose you're right.”

”I am,” she said, and moved restlessly from the table.

He thought for a moment. ”Pre-U members,” he said, ”gave up efficiency-in exchange for freedom. And we've done the reverse.”

”We haven't done it,” Lilac said. ”It was done for us.” She turned and faced him, and said, ”Do you think it's possible that the incurables are still alive?”

He looked at her.

”That their descendants have survived somehow,” she said, ”and have a-a society somewhere? On an island or in some area that the Family isn't using?”

”Wow,” he said, and rubbed his forehead. ”Sure it's possible,” he said. ”Members survived on islands before the Unification; why not after?”

”That's what I think,” she said, coming back to him. ”There have been five generations since the last ones-”

”Battered by disease and hards.h.i.+p-”

”But reproducing at will!”

”I don't know about a society,” he said, ”but there might be a colony-”

”A city,” she said. ”They were the smart ones, the strong ones.”

”What an idea,” he said.

”It's possible, isn't it?” She was leaning toward him, hands on the table, her large eyes questioning, her cheeks flushed to a rosier darkness.

He looked at her. ”What does King think?” he asked. She drew back a bit and he said, ”As if I can't guess.”

She was angry suddenly, fierce-eyed. ”You were terrible to him last night!” she said.

”Terrible? I was? To him?”

”Yes!” She whirled from the table. ”You questioned him as if you were- How could you even think he would know about Uni killing us and not tell us?”

”I still think he knew.”

She faced him angrily. ”He didn't!” she said. ”He doesn't keep secrets from me!”

”What are you, his adviser?”

”Yes!” she said. ”That's exactly what I am, in case you want to know.”

”You're not,” he said.

”I am.”

”Christ and Wei,” he said. ”You really are? You're an adviser? That's the last cla.s.sification I would have thought of. How old are you?”

”Twenty-four.”

”And you're his?”

She nodded.

He laughed. ”I decided that you worked in the gardens,” he said. ”You smell of flowers, do you know that? You really do.”

”I wear perfume,” she said.

”You wear it?”

”The perfume of flowers, in a liquid. King made it for me.”