Part 50 (2/2)

Zed said, ”You would be, too, if you couldn't even wipe your a.s.s without help.” He held his bandaged hands in front of him. ”I hate being fed.”

”I'm sure you do,” Ku answered. Strolling to a cabinet, he opened it and began to remove pills from slots. ”Domna -- ”

Rhani said, ”I'll go.” She went to Zed and leaned to kiss him. ”Zed-ka, don't be a bully.”

”Excellent advice, but too late,” Ku said. He turned, holding water in a plastic cup. Rhani left, knowing that Zed would hate for her to see him helpless. In the cool bright hallway she hesitated. The big guard grinned at her.

”You can't get lost in this place,” he said. The woman on the other side of the door said, ”Domna, you aren't walking through the city, are you?”

She had come to the Clinic in the Dur bubble. ”No,” she answered.

”Why?”

The woman leaned toward her. One of her canine teeth was gold, and her face was pitted with tiny round scars. ”Same reason we're here.”

”Michel A-Rae?” Rhani said. ”If he can't get offplanet, he'd be a fool to compound what he's done by attacking me.”

The woman shrugged. ”h.e.l.l, Domna, he is a fool.”

The big man said, ”You want an escort, you tell us.”

”Thank you,” Rhani said.

The two guards exchanged glances. The woman said, ”Domna, what's going to happen, now that the Net is gone? You building another one?”

”Another Net?” Rhani said. ”No.” She smiled at them, understanding their concern. ”But don't worry. You haven't lost your jobs.”

They both sighed. ”Thanks,” said the big guard. Inside the room Zed's voice lifted sharply. They both moved reflexively to either side of the door.

”Can't help worrying -- ”

”Kids to feed,” said the woman. ”Family depends on all the income it can get, you know. Abanat's an expensive town.”

”So live somewhere else, it's a big world,” said her companion, grinning.

Walking down the corridor to the hub of the Clinic wheel, Rhani wondered if she had been right to refuse an escort. She was sick of being followed. But she knew the woman with the gold tooth had been right: Michel A-Rae was a fool, and therefore unpredictable. As she climbed into the waiting bubble, she said to the pilot, ”Did anyone ask you who your pa.s.senger is tonight?”

”No, Domna.”

”If anyone does, don't tell them.”

He looked mildly affronted. ”That's Dur business. I don't talk about it.”

”If anyone asks you who I am, or who that visitor to Dur House is, tell me.”

”Right.” The bubble lifted from the ground. The walls were opaque, but through the window strip Rhani saw the city, brilliant with light, laid out decorously below them.

It was beautiful, so beautiful that she almost wanted to weep. The bubble spiraled, and the city seemed to open like a flower. From its center -- Auction Place, now dark -- ganglia of light flowed in all directions. In the northeast they halted at the foot of the Barrens; in the west at the edge of the bay; but elsewhere they flowed like s.h.i.+ning ribbons, and it seemed to Rhani that they, the lights, were the city, not the buildings, which simply reflected the blazing lamps, or the people, whom she could not, at this height, even see. Only the icebergs glowed with a radiance which, though stolen from the city, seemed their own: she leaned into the bubble window to see them pa.s.s below her, and the pilot, at first she a.s.sumed by chance, banked the turning bubble directly west.

She cried out in amazement and delight. Etched upon the southernmost berg was the image of the city. At first she saw no difference between the true city and the imaged one, and then she realized that the city in the ice was upside-down.

Fantastic as a dream, the mirage flamed and s.h.i.+mmered and then vanished, leaving the ice swept clean, except for a few orange pockets of reflected light. ”What was it?” she whispered.

”An optical illusion,” said the pilot. ”It only appears at night, and you have to be at just the right angle to see it. I was lucky to get it right away.”

I want to see it again, Rhani thought. She almost said it, but the bubble was dropping swiftly, and they were almost to Dur House. ”Thank you,” she said.

”That was wonderful.” ”You're welcome, Domna,” the pilot said. The bubble dropped into the hangar. The overhead doors came together like hands folding on each other. Rhani stepped from the bubble. Ferris was waiting for her.

”How was your flight? Is your brother better?”

She gazed at him, and, lightly, touched his lips with her hand. ”Ssh,”

she said. ”Don't talk.” He swallowed, and was silent. Quietly she led the way into the house. As the dazzling memory faded, she sighed. ”All right,” she said.

”What was it?” he asked.

She shook her head. ”An optical illusion,” she said. The smells of food made her mouth water suddenly. ”Ah, I'm hungry.”

”Good. There's dinner waiting for you.” He glanced diffidently at her.

”And I thought maybe, after you eat, you might want to see my models.”

”_His ambition is to have a model of all Abanat in the bas.e.m.e.nt of his house_....” Rhani smiled. ”I'd be delighted, Ferris,” she said.

And after I do that, she said to herself as they walked to the dining chamber, I must call Nialle Hamish and get from her the computer code for the file I asked her to establish on Michel U-Anasi.

The models were more interesting than she'd expected them to be.

They spread out across the great expanse of the Dur cellar, set waist- high on a st.u.r.dy table, lighted by concealed ceiling lamps, remarkably realistic in construction and materials. Proudly Ferris explained that the streets and buildings and even the tiny fences and the intricate bridges were made of the same materials from which the actual streets and houses and bridges had been made. The parks were green plastic, but the fountains spouted real water. The movalongs moved, and within the replica of Landingport East there was even a miniature bubble that flew. The table was twenty meters square. Vacancies marked the districts not yet finished: the Hyper district had streets but no buildings, and where Main Landingport should have been there was a hole. The center of the city, Auction Place, the Barracks, and the homes of the Families looked complete. ”How did you manage the center portion?” Rhani asked.

Ferris said, ”I did it first.”

”But what if you have to change something?”

”The table comes apart.” He touched a b.u.t.ton on the wall; humming, the tables separated into sections. He touched the b.u.t.ton and they joined again.

Rhani squinted, trying to see her house. Looking west from Auction Place she walked two blocks in her mind.... There was Founders' Green. She gazed north. ”My house?” she said.

He coughed. ”I took it out.”

Of course, that was why she had been unable to find it. She had not recognized the ruins because she had seen them only once, at night.... She took a deep breath. Sweet mother, she thought, this thing is seductive. The brown hill of the Barrens loomed in the northeast. There was a figure on it, the only human figure in the city, as far as she could tell -- it was, she realized, a small boy. He held a kite string in his fist. The kite lay fixed above him, dragon head soaring, trapped in a nonexistent breeze.

”Look,” Ferris said. He turned out the ceiling lights. Rhani gasped. The lights of the city sprang to fiery life. She gazed upon the city she had seen from the bubble, Abanat in flower, truncated, miniaturized. Only the Abanat ice was missing. ”Look up,” Ferris said. She gazed up. An illusion of stars drew gleaming whorls on the high ceiling.

Then the lights came back again, and the stars disappeared. ”Do you like it?” Ferris said.

<script>