In the Algul Siento, summer was almost over.
FOUR
The Master's home was a tidy Cape Cod at one end of the Mall. It was called Shapleigh House (Pimli had no idea why),
and so of course the Breakers called it Shit House. At the other end of the Mall was a much larger dwelling-a gracefully rambling Queen Anne called (for equally obscure reasons) Damli House. It would have looked at home on Fraternity Row at Clemson or Ole Miss. The Breakers called this one Heartbreak House, or sometimes Heartbreak Hotel. Fine. It was where the taheen and a sizable contingent of can-toi lived and worked. As for the Breakers, let them have their little jokes, and by all means let them believe that the staff didn't know.
Pimli Prentiss and Finli O'Tego strolled up the Mall in companionable silence … except, that was, when they passed offduty Breakers, either alone or in company. Pimli greeted each of them with unfailing courtesy. The greetings they returned varied from the completely cheerful to sullen grunts. Yet each made some sort of response, and Pimli counted this a victory. He cared about them. Whether they liked it or not-many didn't-he cared about them. They were certainly easier to deal with than the murderers, rapists, and armed robbers of Attica.
Some were reading old newspapers or magazines. A foursome was throwing horseshoes. Another foursome was on the putting green. Tanya Leeds and Joey Rastosovich were playing chess under a graceful old elm, the sunlight making dapples on their faces. They greeted him with real pleasure, and why not?
Tanya Leeds was now actually Tanya Rastosovich, for Pimli had married them a month ago, just like the captain of a ship. And he supposed that in a way, that was what this was: the good ship Algul Siento, a cruise vessel that sailed the dark seas of Thunderclap in her own sunny spotlight. The sun went out from time to time, say true, but today's outage had been minimal, only forty-three seconds.
"How's it going, Tanya? Joseph?" Always Joseph and never Joey, at least not to his face; he didn't like it.
They said it was going fine and gave him those dazed, fuckstruck smiles of which only newlyweds are capable. Finli said nothing to the Rastosoviches, but near the Damli House end of the Mall, he stopped before a young man sitting on a faux marble bench beneath a tree, reading a book.
"Sai Earnshaw?" the taheen asked.
Dinky looked up, eyebrows raised in polite enquiry. His face, studded with a bad case of acne, bore the same polite noexpression.
"I see you're reading The Magus," Finli said, almost shyly. "I myself am reading The Collector. Quite a coincidence!"
"If you say so," Dinky replied. His expression didn't change.
"I wonder what you think of Fowles? I'm quite busy right now, but perhaps later we could discuss him."
Still wearing that politely expressionless expression, Dinky Earnshaw said, "Perhaps later you could take your copy of The Collector-hardcover, I hope-and stick it up your furry ass.
Sideways."
Finli's hopeful smile disappeared. He gave a small but perfectly correct bow. "I'm sorry you feel that way, sai."
"The fuck outta here," Dinky said, and opened his book again. He raised it pointedly before his face.
Pimli and Finli O'Tego walked on. There was a period of silence during which the Master of Algul Siento tried out different approaches to Finli, wanting to know how badly he'd been hurt by the young man's comment. The taheen was proud of his ability to read and appreciate hume literature, that much Pimli knew. Then Finli saved him the trouble by putting both of his long-fingered hands-his ass wasn't actually furry, but his fingers were-between his legs.
"Just checking to make sure my nuts are still there," he said, and Pimli thought the good humor he heard in the Chief of Security's voice was real, not forced.
"I'm sorry about that," Pimli said. "If there's anyone in Blue Heaven who has an authentic case of post-adolescent angst, it's sai Earnshaw."
"'You're tearing me apart!'" Finli moaned, and when the Master gave him a startled look, Finli grinned, showing those rows of tiny sharp teeth. "It's a famous line from a film called Rebel Without a Cause," he said. "Dinky Earnshaw makes me think of James Dean." He paused to consider. "Without the haunting good looks, of course."
"An interesting case," Prentiss said. "He was recruited for an assassination program run by a Positronics subsidiary. He killed his control and ran. We caught him, of course. He's never been any real trouble-not for us-but he's got that pain-inthe-ass attitude."
"But you feel he's not a problem."
Pimli gave him a sideways glance. "Is there something you feel I should know about him?"
"No, no. I've never seen you so jumpy as you've been over the last few weeks. Hell, call a spade a spade-so paranoid."
"My grandfather had a proverb," Pimli said. "'You don't worry about dropping the eggs until you're almost home.' We're almost home now."
And it was true. Seventeen days ago, not long before the last batch of Wolves had come galloping through the door from the Arc 16 Staging Area, their equipment in the basement of Damli House had picked up the first appreciable bend in the Bear-Turtle Beam. Since then the Beam of Eagle and Lion had snapped. Soon the Breakers would no longer be needed; soon the disintegration of the second-to-last Beam would happen with or without their help. It was like a precariously balanced object that had now picked up a sway. Soon it would go too far beyond its point of perfect balance, and then it would fall. Or, in the case of the Beam, it would break. Wink out of existence. It was the Tower that would fall. The last Beam, that of Wolf and Elephant, might hold for another week or another month, but not much longer.
Thinking of that should have pleased Pimli, but it didn't.
Mostly because his thoughts had returned to the Greencloaks.
Sixty or so had gone through Calla-bound last time, the visual deployment, and they should have been back in the usual seventy-two hours with the usual catch of Calla children.
Instead … nothing.
He asked Finli what he thought about that.
Finli stopped. He looked grave. "I think it may have been a virus," he said.
"Cry pardon?"
"A computer virus. We've seen it happen with a good deal of our computer equipment in Damli, and you want to remember that, no matter how fearsome the Greencloaks may look to a bunch of rice-farmers, computers on legs is all they really are." He paused. "Or the Calla-/o/fen may have found a way to kill them. Would it surprise me to find that they'd gotten up on their hind legs to fight? A little, but not a lot. Especially if someone with guts stepped forward to lead them."
"Someone like a gunslinger, mayhap?"
Finli gave him a look that stopped just short of patronizing.
Ted Brautigan and Stanley Ruiz rode up the sidewalk on tenspeed bikes, and when the Master and the Security Head raised hands to them, both raised their hands in return. Brautigan didn't smile but Ruiz did, the loose happy smile of a true mental defective. He was all eye-boogers, stubbly cheeks, and spitshiny lips, but a powerful bugger just the same, before God he was, and such a man could do worse than chum around with Brautigan, who had changed completely since being hauled back from his little "vacation" in Connecticut. Pimli was amused by the identical tweed caps the two men were wearing-their bikes were also identical-but not by Finli's look.
"Quit it," Pimli said.
"Quit what, sai?" Finli asked.
"Looking at me as if I were a little kid who just lost the top off his ice cream cone and doesn't have the wit to realize it."
But Finli didn't back down. He rarely did, which was one of the things Pimli liked about him. "If you don't want folk to look at you like a child, then you mustn't act like one. There've been rumors of gunslingers coming out of Mid-World to save the day for a thousand years and more. And never a single authenticated sighting. Personally, I'd be more apt to expect a visit from your Man Jesus."
"The Rods say-"
Finli winced as if this actually hurt his head. "Don't start with what the Rods say. Surely you respect my intelligence-and your own-more than that. Their brains have rotted even faster than their skins. As for the Wolves, let me advance a radical concept: it doesn't matter where they are or what's happened to them. We've got enough booster to finish the job, and that's all I care about."
The Security Head stood for a moment at the steps that led up to the Damli House porch. He was looking after the two men on the identical bikes and frowning thoughtfully. "Brautigan's been a lot of trouble."
"Hasn't he just!" Pimli laughed ruefully. "But his troublesome days are over. He's been told that his special friends from Connecticut-a boy named Robert Garfield and a girl named Carol Gerber-will die if he makes any more trouble. Also he's come to realize that while a number of his fellow Breakers regard him as a mentor, and some, such as the softheaded boy he's with, revere him, no one is interested in his … philosophical ideas, shall we say. Not any longer, if they ever were.
And I had a talk with him after he came back. A heart-toheart."
This was news to Finli. "About what?"
"Certain facts of life. Sai Brautigan has come to understand that his unique powers no longer matter as much as they once did. It's gone too far for that. The remaining two Beams are going to break with him or without him. And he knows that at the end there's apt to be … confusion. Fear and confusion." Pimli nodded slowly. "Brautigan wants to be here at the end, if only to comfort such as Stanley Ruiz when the sky tears open.