Part 8 (1/2)

”Why?”

”We don't know. It happened almost eight thousand years ago. I suspect they ran out of game because of overhunting, and no doubt the climate had something to do with it.”

”I don't like that one,” Veg said. ”These builders didn't have to hunt for a living. If something happened to them, it sure could happen to us.”

”On the other hand, they could be here now, sleeping -- or watching us.”

”I don't like that, either,” Veg said.

”Or perhaps this is a prison city, made for the confinement of enemies or undesirables until sentence is p.r.o.nounced.”

”You get worse as you go,” Veg said, grimacing. ”You try it, 'Quilon.”

Aquilon smiled. That still gave him a nervous thrill, for he remembered when she could not smile back on Planet Nacre. In certain ways things had been better then. ”How about a vacation resort for honored guests?”

”Stop there,” he said. ”I like it.”

”At any rate,” Cal concluded, ”whatever brought us can certainly remove us -- and will when it so chooses. We would do well to conduct ourselves decorously.”

”Segregation of the s.e.xes?” Aquilon asked mischievously.

”He means not to break anything,” Veg said -- and realized too late that no one had needed any interpretation. Neither girl was stupid; Veg himself was the slow member of the group. It had never bothered him when they were three; now that they were four, it somehow did.

”You understand that, mantas?” Aquilon asked. ”We don't want trouble.”

The two fungoids agreed with token snaps of their tails. Aquilon had, in her way, taken the sting from his verbal blunder, for the mantas did need to have human dialogue clarified on occasion. Still the sweet girl, 'Quilon, and he loved her yet -- but not in the same way as before. Oh, if certain things could be unsaid, certain mistakes taken back... but what was the use in idle speculation? In time love would diminish into friends.h.i.+p, and that was best.

”For now, let's rest,” Tamme said.

Rest! Veg knew Tamme didn't need it half as much as the others did. The agents were tough, awfully tough. And in their fas.h.i.+on, intriguing.

Cal nodded agreement. He would be the most tired. He was much stronger than he had been when Veg met him back in s.p.a.ce before Nacre, and now he could eat ordinary foods, but still his physical resources were small. ”The mantas will stand guard,” Cal said.

Tamme gave no indication, but somehow Veg knew she was annoyed. She must have planned to scout around alone while the others slept; maybe she had some secret way to contact the agents back on Paleo. But she could not conceal it from the mantas!

Then Tamme looked directly at him, and Veg knew she knew what he was thinking. Embarra.s.sed, he curtailed his conjectures. And Tamme smiled faintly. b.i.t.c.h! he thought, and her smile broadened.

They found places around the chamber. The benches were surprisingly comfortable, as though cus.h.i.+oned, yet the material was hard. Another trick of the city's technology? But there was one awkward problem.

”The john,” Aquilon said. ”There has to be one!”

”Not necessarily,” Cal replied, smiling in much the way Tamme had. ”Their mores may differ from ours.”

”If they ate, they sat,” Veg said firmly. ”Or squatted. Sometime, somewhere, somehow. No one else could do it for them.”

”They could have designed machines to do it for them.”

Veg had a vision of a machine slicing a person open to remove refuse. ”Uh-uh! I wouldn't tell even a machine to eat -- ”

”A variant of dialysis,” Cal continued. ”I have been dialyzed many times. It is simply a matter of piping the blood through a filtration network and returning it to the body. Painless, with modern procedures. It can be done while the subject sleeps.”