think I’m doing? IfI’d’ve meant to shoot you I’d have hit you, dammit!”
Strat wanted to think that. He wanted to believe every word of it. It was all
tangled, Kama with Crit-that was old business; but maybe not so old to either of
them. And Kama the Riddler’s daughter. He saw the trouble in Crit’s eyes, saw
the pain which was the real Crit, behind the nothing-mask. “I guess you
would,” he said hoarsely. It was not so easily patched up. There was
nothing mended but maybe the roughest of the edges. “I guess that was what
set me to thinking. It didn’t feel right.”
“Dammit, wake up! What does it take? Tempus is going to have your guts for
string if you don’t solve it, hear me? He’s given you more room than you’ve got
a right to, he’s left you your rank, he’s left you in titular command, for
godssake, how long is he going to be patient, waiting for you? You know how
patient he’s being? You know what he’d have done with another man?”
“He left me in command. I still am. Till he takes it.” The last came out hard,
and left a dull shock behind. Tempus could ask. And get nothing from him. He
knew that, the way he knew rain fell down and sun came up. He was hollow inside.
Crit could have shot him. That would have been all right. That would have solved
things. As it was, he failed to care. He walked over to the table and the cheap
bottles of wine they had here because it kept and the water here tasted like lye
and copper. He pulled a loose cork and poured a little glass, knowing it was a
deadly man at his back and matters were no more resolved now than they had been.