"Back from the station, good," Pimli said. "And what did you find?"
"A maintenance drone. Looks like it went rogue on the Arc 16 side and-"
"Wait," Prentiss said. "If you will, if you will, thanks."
Finli waited. Prentiss leaned even closer toward the mirror, face frowning in concentration. The Master of Blue Heaven was tall himself, about six-two, and possessed of an enormous sloping belly supported by long legs with slab diighs. He was balding and had the turnip nose of a veteran drinker. He looked perhaps fifty. He felt like about fifty (younger, when he hadn't spent the previous night tossing them back with Finli and several of the can-toi). He had been fifty when he came here, a good many years ago; at least twenty-five, and that might be a big underestimation. Time was goofy on this side, just like direction, and you were apt to lose both quickly. Some folken lost their minds, as well. And if they ever lost the sun machine for good-
The top of the pimple bulged... trembled... burst. Ah!
A glut of bloody pus leaped from the site of the infection, splattered onto die mirror, and began to drool down its slighdy concave surface. Pimli Prentiss wiped it off with the tip of a finger, turned to flick it into the jakes, then offered it to Finli instead.
The taheen shook his head, then made the sort of exasperated noise any veteran dieter would have recognized, and guided the Master's finger into his mouth. He sucked the pus off and then released the finger with an audible pop.
"Shouldn't do it, can't resist," Finli said. "Didn't you tell me that folken on the other side decided eating rare beef was bad for them?"
"Yar," Pimli said, wiping the pimple (which was still oozing) with a Kleenex. He had been here a long time, and there would never be any going back, for all sorts of reasons, but until recently he had been up on current events; until the previous-could you call it a year?-he'd gotten The New York Times on a fairly regular basis. He bore a great affection for the Times, loved doing the daily crossword puzzle. It was a little touch of home.
"But they go on eating it, just the same."
"Yar, I suppose many do." He opened the medicine cabinet and brought out a botde of hydrogen peroxide from Rexall.
"It's your fault for putting it in front of me," Finli said.
"Not that such stuff is bad for us, ordinarily; it's a natural sweet, like honey or berries. The problem's Thunderclap." And, as if his boss hadn't gotten the point, Finli added: "Too much of what comes out of it don't run the true thread, no matter how sweet it might taste. Poison, do ya."
Prentiss dampened a cotton ball with the hydrogen peroxide and swabbed out the wound in his cheek. He knew exactly what Finli was talking about, how could he not? Before coming here and assuming the Master's mantle, he hadn't seen a blemish on his skin in well over thirty years. Now he had pimples on his cheeks and brow, acne in the hollows of his temples, nasty nests of blackheads around his nose, and a cyst on his neck that would soon have to be removed by Gangli, the compound doctor.
(Prentiss thought Gangli was a terrible name for a physician; it reminded him both of ganglion and gangrene.) The taheen and the can-toi were less susceptible to dermatological problems, but their flesh often broke open spontaneously, they suffered from nosebleeds, and even minor wounds-die scrape of a rock or a thorn-could lead to infection and deadi if not promptly seen to. Antibiotics had worked a treat on such infections to begin with; not so well anymore. Same with such pharmaceutical marvels as Accutane. It was the environment, of course; death baking out of the very rocks and eartfi that surrounded them. If you wanted to see things at their worst you only had to look at the Rods, who were no better than slow mutants these days. Of course, they wandered far to the... was it still the southeast?
They wandered far in the direction where a faint red glow could be seen at night, in any case, and everyone said things were much woi"se in that direction. Pimli didn't know for sure if that was true, but he suspected it was. They didn't call the lands beyond Fedic the Discordia because they were vacation spots.
"Want more?" he asked Finli. "I've got a couple on my forehead that're ripe."
"Nay, I want to make my report, double-check the videotapes and telemetry, go on over to The Study for a quick peek, and then sign out. After that I want a hot bath and about three hours with a good book. I'm reading The Collector."
"And you like it," Prentiss said, fascinated.
"Very much, say thankya. It reminds me of our situation here. Except I like to think our goals are a little nobler and our motivations a little higher than sexual attraction."
"Noble? So you call it?"
Finli shrugged and made no reply. Close discussion of what was going on here in Blue Heaven was generally avoided by unspoken consent.
Prentiss led Finli into his own library-study, which overlooked the part of Blue Heaven they called the Mall. Finli ducked beneath the light fixture widi the unconscious grace of long practice. Prentiss had once told him (after a few shots of graf) that he would have made a hell of a center in the NBA.
"The first all-taheen team," he'd said. "They'd call you The Freaks, but so what?"
"These basketball players, they get the best of everything?"
Finli had inquired. He had a sleek weasel's head and large black eyes. No more expressive than dolls' eyes, in Pimli's view.
He wore a lot of gold chains-they had become fashionable among Blue Heaven personnel, and a brisk trading market in such things had grown up over the last few years. Also, he'd had his tail docked. Probably a mistake, he'd told Prentiss one night when they'd both been drunk. Painful beyond belief and bound to send him to die Hell of Darkness when his life was over, unless...
Unless there was nothing. This was an idea Pimli denied widi all his mind and heart, but he'd be a liar if he didn't admit (if only to himself) that the idea sometimes haunted him in the watches of the night. For such thoughts there were sleeping pills. And God, of course. His faith diat all tilings served the will of God, even the Tower itself.
In any case, Pimli had confirmed that yes, basketball players-American basketball players, at least-got the best of everything, including more pu**y than a fackin toilet seat. This remark had caused Finli to laugh until reddish tears had seeped from the corners of his strangely inexpressive eyes.
"And the best thing," Pimli had continued, "is this: you'd be able to play near forever, by NBA standards. For instance, do ya hear, the most highly regarded player in my old country (although I never saw him play; he came after my time) was a fellow named Michael Jordan, and-"
"If he were taheen, what would he be?" Finli had interrupted.
This was a game they often played, especially when a few drinks over the line.
"A weasel, actually, and a damned handsome one," Pimli had said, and in a tone of surprise that had struck Finli as comical.
Once more he'd roared until tears came out of his eyes.
"But," Pimli had continued, "his career was over in hardly more than fifteen years, and that includes a retirement and a comeback or two. How many years could you play a game where you'd have to do no more than run back and forth the length of a campa court for an hour or so, Fin?"
Finli of Tego, who was then over three hundred years old, had shrugged and flicked his hand at the horizon. Delah. Years beyond counting.
And how long had Blue Heaven-Devar-Toi to the newer inmates, Algul Siento to the taheen and the Rods-how long had this prison been here? Also delah. But if Finli was correct (and Pimli's heart said that Finli almost certainly was), then delah was almost over. And what could he, once Paul Prentiss of Rahway, New Jersey, and now Pimli Prentiss of the Algul Siento, do about it?
His job, that was what.
His fackin job.
TWO
"So," Pimli said, sitting down in one of the two wing chairs by the window, "you found a maintenance drone. Where?"
"Close to where Track 97 leaves the switching-yard," said Finli. "That track's still hot-has what you call 'a third rail'-and so that explains that. Then, after we'd left, you call and say there's been a second alarm."
"Yes. And you found-?"
"Nothing," Finli said. "That time, nothing. Probably a malfunction, maybe even caused by the first alarm." He shrugged, a gesture that conveyed what they both knew: it was all going to hell. And the closer to the end they moved, the faster it went.
"You and your fellows had a good look, though?"
"Of course. No intruders."
But both of them were thinking in terms of intruders who were human, taheen, can-toi, or mechanical. No one in Finli's search-party had thought to look up, and likely would not have spotted Mordred even if they had: a spider now as big as a medium-sized dog, crouched in the deep shadow under the main station's eave, held in place by a little hammock of webbing.
"You're going to check the telemetry again because of the second alarm?"
"Pardy," Finli said. "Mostly because things feel hinky to me." This was a word he'd picked up from one of the many other-side crime novels he read-they fascinated him-and he used it at every opportunity.
"Hinky how?"
Finli only shook his head. He couldn't say. "But telemetry doesn't lie. Or so I was taught."
"You question it?"