Friend smiled tooâall this was so much easier here than it had been back in the eastern hemisphereâand then he turned to Elizabeth Hurwood. âWe can return to the fort now,â he told her.
She stared at him. âThatâs all? You ran down here, so fast I thought your heart was going to burst, just to see that man throw up and get hit?â
âI wanted to make sure that was all that did happen,â said Friend impatiently. âNow come on.â
âNo,â she said. âAs long as weâre here, Iâll say hello to John.â
Friend turned on her furiously, then caught himself. He smirked and raised his eyebrows. âThe keel-scraper and brigand chef? I believe heâs here,â he said, simpering, âunless what I smell is a wet dog.â
âGo back to the fort,â she said wearily.
âSo you c-canâ¦have c-c-congress with him, I suppose?â sputtered Friend, his voice shrill with scorn. He wished he could refer to sexual matters without stuttering. âB-banish that thought, my d-d-dâElizabeth. Your father commanded me not to let you out of my sight.â He nodded virtuously.
âDo as you please then, you damned wretch,â she said softly, and with a flash of uncharacteristic and unwelcome insight Friend realized she wasnât using
damned
as a mere adjective of emphasis. âIâm going to go and speak to him. Follow or not.â
âIâll watch you from here,â said Friend, and he raised his voice as she walked away from him: âFear not Iâd follow! Iâd not subject my nostrils to proximity to the fellow!â
The confrontation by the fire being over and more or less settled, some of the pirates and prostitutes nearby looked toward Friend for further amusementâand evidently found some, for there were whisperings and guffaws and giggling behind jewel-studded hands.
Friend scowled and raised his hand, but already he could feel the strain in his mind, so he lowered his hand and made do with just saying, âVermin!â and striding away to stand on a slight rise, his arms crossed dramatically, and staring at Hurwoodâs daughter. She had found the Shandy fellow, and theyâd moved a dozen yards away to talk.
Despise me, he thought, all of youâyouâve only got about a week left to do it in.
For the first time in years, Friend thought about the old man who had started him on theâ¦he paused to savor the phraseâ¦the road to godhood. How old had Friend been? About eight years oldâbut already he had learned Latin and Greek, and had read Newtonâs
Principia
and Paracelsusâ
De Sagis Earumque Operibus
â¦and already, he now recalled, envy of his intellect and his sturdy physique had begun to cause small-minded people to dislike and fear him. Even his father, sensing and resenting a greatness he could never hope to comprehend, had abused him, tried to make him take up pointless physical exercises and reduce his daily allotment of the sweets that provided him with the blood sugar his body required; only his mother had truly recognized his genius, and had seen to it that he didnât have to go to school with other children. Yes, heâd been about eight when heâd seen the ragged old man leaning in the back window of the pastry shop.
The old fellow was obviously simple-minded, and drawn to the window by the smell of fresh-cooked fruit pies, but he wasgesturing in an odd way, his hands making digging motions in front of him as if they were encountering resistance in the empty air; and for the first time in his life Friendâs nose was irritated by that smell that was like overheated metal.
Already graceful and sure-footed despite what everyone thought about his bulk, Friend had silently climbed onto a box behind the old man to be able to see in through the windowâand what he saw set his young heart thumping. A fresh pie was moving jerkily through
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