Part 3 (1/2)
He put his hands behind his back and began pacing. Lusine continued staring at him through the bars. Despite the fact that her face was in the shadows, he could see--or feel--her smile. He had humiliated her, but she had won in the end.
Rastignac quit his limited roving and called up to the guard.
”_Shoo l'footyay, kal u ay tee?_”
The guard leaned over the grille. His large hat with its tall wings sticking from the peak was green in the daytime. But now, illuminated only by a far off torchlight and by a glowworm coiled around the band, it was black.
”_Ah, shoo Zhaw-Zhawk W'stenyek_,” he said, loudly. ”What time is it?
What do you care what time it is?” And he concluded with the stock phrase of the jailer, unchanged through millenia and over light-years.
”You're not going any place, are you?”
Rastignac threw his head back to howl at the guard but stopped to wince at the sudden pain in his neck. After uttering, ”_Sek Ploo!_”
and ”_S'pweestee!_” both of which were close enough to the old Terran French so that a language specialist might have recognized them, he said, more calmly, ”If you would let me out on the ground, _monsieur le foutriquet_, and give me a good epee, I would show you where I am going. Or, at least, where my sword is going. I am thinking of a nice sheath for it.”
Tonight he had a special reason for keeping the attention of the King's mucketeer directed towards himself. So, when the guard grew tired of returning insults--mainly because his limited imagination could invent no new ones--Rastignac began telling jokes. They were broad and aimed at the mucketeer's narrow intellect.
”Then,” said Rastignac, ”there was the itinerant salesman whose _s'fel_ threw a shoe. He knocked on the door of the hut of the nearest peasant and said....” What was said by the salesman was never known.
A strangled gasp had come from above.
IV
Rastignac saw something enormous blot out the smaller shadow of the guard. Then both figures disappeared. A moment later a silhouette cut across the lines of the grille. Unoiled hinges screeched; the bars lifted. A rope uncoiled from above to fall at Rastignac's feet. He seized it and felt himself being drawn powerfully upwards.
When he came over the edge of the well, he saw that his rescuer was a giant Ssa.s.saror. The light from the glowworm on the guard's hat lit up feebly his face, which was orthagnathous and had quite humanoid eyes and lips. Large canine teeth stuck out from the mouth, and its huge ears were tipped with feathery tufts. The forehead down to the eyebrows looked as if it needed a shave, but Rastignac knew that more light would show the blue-black shade came from many small feathers, not stubbled hair.
”Mapfarity!” Rastignac said. ”It's good to see you after all these years!”
The Ssa.s.saror giant put his hand on his friend's shoulder. Clenched, it was almost as big as Rastignac's head. He spoke with a voice like a lion coughing at the bottom of a deep well.
”It is good to see you again, my friend.”
”What are you doing here?” said Rastignac, tears running down his face as he stroked the great fingers on his shoulder.
Mapfarity's huge ears quivered like the wings of a bat tied to a rock and unable to fly off. The tufts of feathers at their ends grew stiff and suddenly crackled with tiny sparks.
The electrical display was his equivalent of the human's weeping. Both creatures discharged emotion; their bodies chose different avenues and manifestations. Nevertheless, the sight of the other's joy affected each deeply.
”I have come to rescue you,” said Mapfarity. ”I caught Archambaud here,”--he indicated the other man--”stealing eggs from my golden goose. And....”
Raoul Archambaud--p.r.o.nounced Wawl Shebvo--interrupted excitedly, ”I showed him my license to steal eggs from Giants who were raising counterfeit geese, but he was going to lock me up anyway. He was going to take my Skin off and feed me on meat....”
”Meat!” said Rastignac, astonished and revolted despite himself.
”Mapfarity, what have you been doing in that castle of yours?”
Mapfarity lowered his voice to match the distant roar of a cataract.
”I haven't been very active these last few years,” he said, ”because I am so big that it hurts my feet if I walk very much. So I've had much time to think. And I, being logical, decided that the next step after eating fish was eating meat. It couldn't make me any larger. So, I ate meat. And while doing so, I came to the same conclusion that you, apparently, have done independently. That is, the Philosophy of....”
”Of Violence,” interrupted Archambaud. ”Ah, Jean-Jacques, there must be some mystic bond that brings two Humans of such different backgrounds as yours and the Ssa.s.saror together, giving you both the same philosophy. When I explained what you had been doing and that you were in jail because you had advocated getting rid of the Skins, Mapfarity pet.i.tioned....”