“Well, do what you want, then,” said Penny, who had finally fixed on slight, red-haired youthfulness. “You’re going to anyway. I don’t see why you even bothered to call us here.”
Fortin began to laugh, because Penny was again perfectly correct. . . .
Rolls waited to meet Eisner in the doorway of North’s palace as they left the assembly. She smiled at him, but the expression went no deeper than her thin lips.
“He sees something in the Matrix,” she said, flicking her head back to indicate their leader and late host. “Do you?”
Eisner’s hair was the color of a gray-draggled mouse; a few wisps which had escaped from her tight bun wobbled abstractedly.
Rolls shrugged. “North plays games,” he said. “If there were something to see, you or I would know it. But still. . . .”
Neither of them spoke for a moment. Their eyes glanced over their fellows leaving the assembly; some of them concerned, some not.
Rao had hitched to his cart a pair of frilled ceratopsians from the plane where the Lomeri ruled. Most of the beasts which whim led others to ride or drive gave the dinosaurs a wide berth, but Saburo’s huge hog-like dinohyid exchanged angry grunts and foot-stampings with Rao’s much larger animals.
Eisner nodded. “Good day,” she said and turned.
“Let me take you back,” Rolls said. “You don’t need to walk.”
“I don’t need to do anything,” the woman corrected crisply. “None of us do.” Eisner was thin and looked small at the moment, but only Rao and North failed to shrink when they stood next to Rolls.
“But yes,” she added. “All right, I don’t need to walk.”
Rolls whickered to his giant stag and let it nuzzle his hand for a moment before he mounted. The beast had cast its horns and looked oddly naked. Still, it was awkward to bridle a creature whose horns spread a meter and a half to either side.
Everything was whim—for Rolls, for all of them since North had discovered the turning of the Matrix which gave them each whatever they most wanted. . . .
Rolls leaned over and lifted Eisner up ahead of him. The stag’s spine was higher and sharper than a horse’s, so the saddleframe had to be built out stiffly to give a comfortable seat. Horses were better adapted as riding animals, aircars were a far more efficient way to get around; but the most practical means of transportation for Rolls, for any of them, was the choice that provided the most amusement—and a practical level of aggravation.
It had been hard at first to imagine that there were any negative aspects to godlike power.
Eisner tried to straddle the spine the way Rolls did, but he turned her side-saddle and put his arm around the small of her waist to support her. She met his eyes and said coolly, “Still your games, Rolls? You might have learned by now.”
Rolls shrugged. “The saddle was designed for me, so you’ll find this more comfortable, Eisner,” he said. “More practical, if you wish.”
He clucked to the stag. It turned obediently and slid by the fourth stride into the long-legged canter that Rolls found its most comfortable pace.
Eisner sniffed, but she didn’t object further to Rolls’ touch. Neither did her abdominal muscles soften beneath his hand.
Rolls kept the contact well within the bounds of what was necessary for the task. His easy-going charm was effective because a real concern for others underlay it.
Rolls smiled to himself. One might almost say that concern for others ruled him.
The grassland swept by beneath the stag’s measured paces. The rounded roofline of Eisner’s palace appeared in the near distance.
“Do you remember,” Rolls said, “when duration had meaning?”
Eisner shifted to meet his eyes; her left thigh slid over his. “Time still has meaning, Rolls,” she said. “Time means everything dies. Even us. . . .”
Eisner had looked older than her years when Rolls’ unit arrived on the planet it was to survey. Power had not given her youth, neither in her face nor in the mind which, more than age, had shaped the lines of that face.