weeks.
"But ... but what am I to do now?" I stammered.
"Vacate forthwith," I was told. "A hopper now fetches your baggage."
"But ... but I'm entirely without funds! Where will I sleep? Row will I eat?"
"By your wits, ne, assuming you possess them. Any venue of commerce will credit your chip in return for ruegelt."
"Ruegelt?"
"Ruegelt," the domo affirmed, displaying for my enlightenment three small discs of silvery metal. "Each 'coin,' so-called, represents a unit of credit. "
"But how do I secure this ruegelt?"
The domo shrugged. "Usual means," he said.
"The usual means?"
"Hai," he said more crossly. "Gainful employment, mendicancy, or theft. I am aware of no others."
As I stood there shaking in a state of absolute despair and terror, a hopper arrived and presented me with my pack. Such was my state of chagrin and helplessness that I imagined that this little creature too was regarding me with contemptuous amusement.
Desperately, and without regard for the folly of the at- tempt, I presented my other chip to the domo. "I can pay with this, " I told him.
"So?" he inserted the chip into his slot, perused the read-out, and returned it to me with a moue of contempt. "Valid only for passage to Glade for one Moussa Shasta Leonardo. Sans value on the surface of any planet." His expression softened somewhat. "Naturellement, you can use it now to return home forthwith without having to brave the vie of the indigent Child of Fortune, ne ..." he suggested.
At this, my spirit was sufficiently roused from the timidity induced by its state of helpless despair to vow "Never!"
"Never?"
"Well at least not without trying ..." I said in a much
tinier voice.
"Well spoken, child," the domo replied. "Bonne chance, buena suerte, vaya con gluck, und so weiter. But now you must leave the premises tout suite."
And so I was constrained to shoulder my pack and slink out of the lobby of the Yggdrasil, through the porchways where guests more fortunate than I were taking their ease, and across the rainbow bridge which led, as it were, from the safety and security of lost Eden into the harsh and unknown world of trial and toil, and while there were no angels with flaming swords to bar my return, I knew that from here on in it would be a road of my own making that I must travel.
Chapter 6
I know not how long I wandered in a state of numb dread and formless sullen anger, nor even whether I traversed any great distance from the Yggdrasil or staggered in rough circles, for this was Edoku, where the hour of the day in any given locus gave no clue to time's passage, and the random landscape gave no clue as to vector. Moreover, if Edoku had daunted my spirit entirely before I had found the Yggdrasil, and had seemed impossible to encompass in any coherent fashion before I had discovered the Rapide, now I was reduced to an even more discombobulated state than that of the naif who had first set foot on the planet, for I was cursed with the knowledge of what I had lost, and while the little girl I had been might rail against the outrageous prices which had been her downfall, the nascent Child of Fortune could not entirely escape the perception that she really had no one to blame for this disaster but herself.
Vraiment, what a catastrophe it was! Immediately upon being expelled from the Yggdrasil, the fact that I no longer had funds to secure food and shelter, horrendous though it was to a girl who had never been forced to miss a meal in her life, had seemed to be the full extent of the dilemma. But when I reflexively started for the nearest familiar Rapide station and then suddenly realized that I had no funds even for transport, I began to perceive that the vie of a total pauper in a venue such as Edoku was likely to present difficulties beyond even starvation and exposure.
For one thing, my sphere of operations was now limited to the range of my feet, and
"But ... but what am I to do now?" I stammered.
"Vacate forthwith," I was told. "A hopper now fetches your baggage."
"But ... but I'm entirely without funds! Where will I sleep? Row will I eat?"
"By your wits, ne, assuming you possess them. Any venue of commerce will credit your chip in return for ruegelt."
"Ruegelt?"
"Ruegelt," the domo affirmed, displaying for my enlightenment three small discs of silvery metal. "Each 'coin,' so-called, represents a unit of credit. "
"But how do I secure this ruegelt?"
The domo shrugged. "Usual means," he said.
"The usual means?"
"Hai," he said more crossly. "Gainful employment, mendicancy, or theft. I am aware of no others."
As I stood there shaking in a state of absolute despair and terror, a hopper arrived and presented me with my pack. Such was my state of chagrin and helplessness that I imagined that this little creature too was regarding me with contemptuous amusement.
Desperately, and without regard for the folly of the at- tempt, I presented my other chip to the domo. "I can pay with this, " I told him.
"So?" he inserted the chip into his slot, perused the read-out, and returned it to me with a moue of contempt. "Valid only for passage to Glade for one Moussa Shasta Leonardo. Sans value on the surface of any planet." His expression softened somewhat. "Naturellement, you can use it now to return home forthwith without having to brave the vie of the indigent Child of Fortune, ne ..." he suggested.
At this, my spirit was sufficiently roused from the timidity induced by its state of helpless despair to vow "Never!"
"Never?"
"Well at least not without trying ..." I said in a much
tinier voice.
"Well spoken, child," the domo replied. "Bonne chance, buena suerte, vaya con gluck, und so weiter. But now you must leave the premises tout suite."
And so I was constrained to shoulder my pack and slink out of the lobby of the Yggdrasil, through the porchways where guests more fortunate than I were taking their ease, and across the rainbow bridge which led, as it were, from the safety and security of lost Eden into the harsh and unknown world of trial and toil, and while there were no angels with flaming swords to bar my return, I knew that from here on in it would be a road of my own making that I must travel.
Chapter 6
I know not how long I wandered in a state of numb dread and formless sullen anger, nor even whether I traversed any great distance from the Yggdrasil or staggered in rough circles, for this was Edoku, where the hour of the day in any given locus gave no clue to time's passage, and the random landscape gave no clue as to vector. Moreover, if Edoku had daunted my spirit entirely before I had found the Yggdrasil, and had seemed impossible to encompass in any coherent fashion before I had discovered the Rapide, now I was reduced to an even more discombobulated state than that of the naif who had first set foot on the planet, for I was cursed with the knowledge of what I had lost, and while the little girl I had been might rail against the outrageous prices which had been her downfall, the nascent Child of Fortune could not entirely escape the perception that she really had no one to blame for this disaster but herself.
Vraiment, what a catastrophe it was! Immediately upon being expelled from the Yggdrasil, the fact that I no longer had funds to secure food and shelter, horrendous though it was to a girl who had never been forced to miss a meal in her life, had seemed to be the full extent of the dilemma. But when I reflexively started for the nearest familiar Rapide station and then suddenly realized that I had no funds even for transport, I began to perceive that the vie of a total pauper in a venue such as Edoku was likely to present difficulties beyond even starvation and exposure.
For one thing, my sphere of operations was now limited to the range of my feet, and
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