“No, there’s more. She started talking about Goddesses, I remember. About how they were hidden away. . ..”
“And you think Huzzah’s found one?”
“We saw acolytes in the mountains, didn’t we? Why not a Deity? Maybe Huzzah did go dreaming for her mother. . .”
”. . . but instead she found a Goddess.”
“Yes. Tishalulle, out there in the Cradle, waiting to rise.”
“You like the idea, don’t you?”
“Of hidden Goddesses? Oh, yes. Maybe it’s just the woman chaser in me. Or maybe I’m like Huzzah, waiting for someone I can’t remember, wanting to see some face or other, come to fetch me away.”
“I’m already here,” Pie said, kissing the back of Gentle’s neck. “Every face you ever wanted.”
“Even a Goddess?”
“Ah—”
The sound of the bolts being drawn aside silenced them. The guard had returned with the news that Captain N’a-shap had consented to see the mystif.
“If you see Aping,” Gentle said as it left, “will you tell him I’d love to sit and talk painting with him?”
“I’ll do that.”
They parted, and Gentle returned to the window. The clouds had thickened their defenses against the suns, and the Cradle lay still and empty again beneath their blanket. Gentle said again the name Huzzah had shared with him, the word that was shaped like a breaking wave.
“Tishalulle.”
The sea remained motionless. Goddesses didn’t come at a call. At least, not his.
He was just estimating the time that Pie had been away— and deciding it was an hour or more—when Aping appeared at the cell door, dismissing the guard from his post while he talked.
“Since when have you been under lock and key?” he asked Gentle.
“Since this morning.”
“But why? I understood from the captain that you and the mystif were guests, after a fashion.”
“We were.”
A twitch of anxiety passed over Aping’s features. “If you’re a prisoner here,” he said stiffly, “then of course the situation’s changed.”
“You mean we won’t be able to debate painting?”
“I mean you won’t be leaving.”
“What about your daughter?”
“That’s academic now.”
“You’ll let her languish, will you? You’ll let her die?”
“She won’t die.”
“I think she will.”
Aping turned his back on his tempter. ‘The law is the law,” he said.
“I understand,” Gentle replied softly. “Even artists have to bow to that master, I suppose.”
“I understand what you’re doing,” Aping said. “Don’t think I don’t.”
“She’s a child, Aping.”
“Yes. I know. But I’ll have to tend to her as best I can.”
“Why don’t you ask her whether she’s seen her own death?”
“Oh, Jesu,” Aping said, stricken. He began to shake his head. “Why must this happen to me?”
“It needn’t. You can save her.”
“It isn’t so clear-cut,” Aping said, giving Gentle a harried look. “I have my duty.”
He took a handkerchief from his trouser pocket and wiped hard at his mouth, back and forth, as though a residue of guilt clung there and he was afraid it would give him away.
“I have to think,” he said, going back to the door. “It seemed so easy. But now. . . I have to think.”
The guard was at his post again when the door opened, and Gentle was obliged to let the sergeant go without having the chance to broach the subject of Scopique.
There was further frustration when Pie returned. N’a-shap had kept the mystif waiting two hours and had finally decided not to grant the promised interview.
“I heard him even if I didn’t see him,” Pie said. “He sounded to be roaring drunk.”
“So both of us were out of luck. I don’t think Aping’s going to help us. If the choice is between his daughter and his duty he’ll choose his duty.” “So we’re stuck here.” “Until we plot another plot.” “Shit.”
Night fell without the suns appearing again, the only sound throughout the building that of the guards proceeding up and down the corridors, bringing food to the cells, then slamming and locking the doors until dawn. Not a single voice was raised to protest the fact that the privileges of the evening—games of Horsebone, recitations of scenes from Quexos, and Malbaker’s Numbubo, works many here knew by heart—had been withdrawn. There was a universal reluctance to make a peep, as if each man, alone in his cell, was prepared to forgo every comfort, even that of praying aloud, to keep themselves from being noticed.“N’ashap must be dangerous when drunk,” Pie said, by way of explanation for this breathless hush.