[ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]
eyes opened a few inches from his own--neither brown nor quite black,
but a questioning, elusive darkness that he associated with no one
else. "Do you remember that I was counting?"
"What?" he said. "What counting?"
"In the car, writing on the window. One, two, three, four, like
that. Remember?"
"No. I mean, I do now, because you tell me, but not really. Move
that cat and come see me."
Julie reached up suddenly and switched off the bed-lamp.
Farrell's retinas, long accustomed to hurry calls, did the best they
could, filing away the high contrast of black hair slashing across a
shoulder the color of weak tea, the small breast drawn almost flat by
her movement, and the shadow of tendons in her armpit. He reached for
her.
"Wait," she said. "Listen, I have to tell you this in the dark. I
was counting me. Counting my cycle. I was trying to figure if it would
be safe for me to take you back to my room with me. You looked so bad."
The white cat had fallen asleep, but he was still purring with
each breath. There was no other sound in the room. Julie said, "It was
a matter of a day, one way or the other. I remember that very clearly.
You don't remember anything?"
The lights of a car slid over the far wall and part of the
ceiling of Farrell's hotel room, making the bidet glow like a pearl and
turning the half-empty suitcase at the foot of the bed into a raw
grave. Beside him, across the snowdrift of the cat--_Paris winters are
dirty, the air gets sticky and old_-- Julie's round, tumbly-soft Eskimo
face came and went again, as Julie herself came and went up and down in
the world; as he would learn to come and go lightly too, if he didn't
die, if he made it through this long, dirty winter. He said, "I was
twenty-one years old, what did I know?"
For a moment he could not feel Julie's breath on his face. Then
she said, "I just told you that to show you that I did think about you,
even that long ago."
"That's nice," he said, "but I wish you hadn't told me. I don't
remember a damn thing about the counting, or whatever, but I remember
that winter. I think you could probably have changed the course of
world history by taking me home with you. All that dumb misery would
have had to go somewhere."
"Aw," she said. "Aw, poor topcoat." She picked up the cat and
poured him gently off the bed. "Well, come here right away," she said.
"This is for then. Officially. Old friend. Old something. This is for
then."
In the morning he woke in bed with a suit of armor. Actually it
was chain mail, slumped empty next to him like the gleaming husk of
some steel spider's victim; but the great helm that shared his pillow
dominated his waking completely. The helm looked like a large black
wastebasket with the bottom reinforced by metal struts and with most of
one side cut away and covered by a slotted steel plate, riveted in
place. Farrell had his arm over it, and his nose pressed into the face
plate--it was the cold, rough, painty smell that had awakened him. He
blinked at the helm several times, rubbed his nose, then rolled onto
a
a
T
T
n
n
s
s
F
F
f
f
o
o
D
D
r
r
P
P
m
m
Y
Y
e
e
Y
Y
r
r
B
B
2
2
.
.
B
B
A
A
Click here to buy
Click here to buy
w
w
m
m
w
w
o
o
w
w
c
c
.
.
.
.
A
A
Y
Y
B
B
Y
Y
B
B
r r
one elbow, looking around for Julie.
She was standing in the doorway, dressed and laughing silently,
fingers at her lips in one of the few echoes of classical Japanese
manners that he had ever noticed in her. "I wanted to see what you'd
do," she gasped. "You were so sweet to it. Were you scared?"
Farrell sat up, feeling grumpy and ill-used. "Should see some of
the artifacts I've waked up with, the last ten years." He lifted a fold
of the mail shirt, finding it surprisingly fluid for all its weight.
"All right, I'll say it. What the hell is this?"
Julie came and sat on the bed. She smelled of the shower and of
sunlight, and there was still a fuzzy bloom of water on her hair.
"Well, this is a hauberk and this is the camail, to guard your throat,
and these are for your legs, the chauses. It's a complete suit, except
for the gauntlets and the arming coat, the padding. And the surcoat.
Most people generally wear some kind of surcoat over their mail."
"Nobody I know does," he said. He thumped the helm, which
responded softly in the tense, eager way that his lute did when he
spoke to it. Julie said, "That's not part of the suit. I made that one
a long time ago. I just threw it in for effect." She smiled as Farrell
blinked from her to the helm and back. "I made the chain mail, too,"
she said. "Guess what I used."
"Feels like coathangers. What I want to know is why. I know you
can do anything, but it seems like a limited field." He fingered the
silver-enameled links again; then peered at them more closely. "My God,
these things are all welded shut. Did you do that?"
Julie nodded. "They aren't coathangers, though." She stood up,
deftly taking the blankets with her. "Did anyone ever tell you that
there's no bottom to your navel? It just goes on forever, like a black
hole or something. Come on and get dressed, I have to go to work."
In the shower he guessed that she had cut springs apart to make
the rings; over oranges and English muffins, she talked freely about
interweaving them in a four-to-one pattern and about being taught to
weld by a friend whose house she had decorated. But she would not say
why she had made the armor, or for whom. "It's a long story, I'll tell
you when we've got more time." Farrell could tease nothing further out
of her. He let it go, saying deliberately, "Doesn't look nearly as much
fun as throwing pots," so that she could escape into her favorite
[ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]