Michaelmas by Algis Budrys Page B

first. Another time, it would be a very pleasant thing."
    "Dommage," Clementine said. Then she smiled. "Well, it will be very nice when it happens, don't you think so?"
    "Of course." He smiled. Smiling, they reached the front of the Excelsior and he thanked her and got out. As the car drew away, she turned to wave to him a little through the rear window, and he waved back. "Very nice," Domino said in his ear. "Very sophisticated, you two."
    "I will speak to you in the suite," Michaelmas sub-vocal-ized, smiling to the doorman, passing through the lobby, waiting for the elevator, holding up his eyelids by force of the need to never show frailty.
    In the cool suite, Michaelmas took off his suitcoat with slow care and meticulously hung it on the back of a chair beside the drawing-room table. He put the terminal down and sat, toeing off his shoes and tugging at the knot of his tie. He rested his elbows on the table and undid his cuff-links, pausing to rub gently at either side of his nose. "All right," he said, his eyes unfocused. "Speak to me."
    "Yes. We're still secure here," Domino said. "Nothing's tapping at us."
    Michaelmas's face turned involuntarily towards the ter-minal. "Is that suddenly another problem to consider? I've always thought I'd arranged you to handle that sort of thing automatically."
    There was a longish pause. "Something peculiar happened at the sanatorium."
    Michaelmas tented his fingertips. "I'd gathered that. Please explain."
    Domino said slowly: "I'm not sure I can."
    Michaelmas sighed. "Domino, I realize you've had some sort of difficult experience. Please don't hesitate to share it with me."
    "You're being commendably patient with me, aren't you?"
    Michaelmas said: "If asked, I would say so. Let's pro-ceed."
    "Very well. At the sanatorium, I was maintaining excel-lent linkages via the various commercial facilities available. I had a good world scan, I was monitoring the comm cir-cuits at your terminal, and I was running action pro-grammes on the ordinary management problems we'd dis-cussed earlier. I was also giving detail attention to Cikoumas et Cie, Hanrassy, UNAC, the Soviet spaceflight command, Papashvilly, the Watson crash, and so forth. I have reports ready for you on a number of these topics. I. really haven't been idle since cutting away from your terminal."
    "And specifically what happened to make you shift out?"
    There was a perceptible diminution in volume. "Some-thing."
    Michaelmas raised an eyebrow. He reached forward gently and touched the terminal. "Stop mumbling and digging your toe in the sand, Domino," he said. "We've all filled our pants on occasion."
    "I'm not frightened."
    "None of us are ever frightened. Now and then, we'd just like more time to plan our responses.
    Go on."
    "Spare me your aphorisms. Something happened when I next attempted to deploy into Limberg's facilities and see what there was to learn. I learned nothing. There was an anomaly."
    "Anomaly."
    "Yes. There is something going on there. I linked into about as many kinds of conventional systems as you'd expect, and there was no problem; he has the usual assort-ment of telephones, open lines to investment services and the medical network, and so forth. But there was some-thing—something began to happen to the ground under-foot."
    "Underfoot?"
    "I have to anthropomorphize if I'm going to make sense to you. It was as if I'd take a stride of normal length and discover that my leg had become a mile long, so that my foot was set down out of sight far ahead of me. And my next step, with my other foot, might be done with a leg so short that the step was completed with incredible swiftness. Or it might again be one of the long steps
    — somewhat shorter or longer than other long steps. Yet I didn't topple. But I would be rushing forward one moment and creeping the next. Nevertheless, I proceeded at an even pace. The length of my leg was always appropriate to the dimensions of the square on which I put down my foot, so