Brought it ont. And laid it into the outstretched palm. The price was cheap – it
was as if a voice inside him spoke his acceptance of that truth.
For a while after Stulwig left Jubal’s grounds, his feeling was that he had now
done what there was to do. He had the information he had craved. So what else
was there? Go home and – and -Back to normalcy.
It was an unfortunate way of describing the reality to himself. It brought a
mental picture of a return to his daily routine as if no warning had been given.
His deep, awful feeling was that something more was expected of him. What could
it be?
It was noon. The glowing orb in the sky burned down upon Stulwig. His already
miserably sunburned face itched abominably, and he kept scratching at the scabs;
and hating himself because his sun-sensitive skin was his one disaster that no
herb or ointment seemed to help. And here he was stumbling in the direct rays,
making it worse.
He was walking unsteadily, half-blinded by his own inner turmoil and physical
discomfort, essentially not heeding the crowds around him when … the part of
him that was guiding him, holding him away from collisions, helping him find a
pathway through an everchanging river of people – that part, still somehow
observant, saw a familiar man’s face.
Stulwig stopped short. But already the man was gone by; his feet scraping at the
same dusty street as were the feet of a dozen other passers of the moment;
scraping dust and breathing it in.
Normally, Stulwig would have let him go. But this was not a normal time. He spun