balustrades, from walls, from arches and domes. People on the streets made
pin-pricks of bright color. The thin thump of drums came down from a procession,
up on a higher street, and the brass tang of cymbals. On the promenade, several
black Rats in litters stopped to talk, blocking the way. The sun glinted off the
cuirasses of their bodyguards.
"Play you at Shilling-the-Trump?" a voice offered.
Lucas nodded to the woman in sailor’s breeches and shirt, identifying her as a
transient worker, and so allowed to carry coin. She set down her kitbag and sat
on the carved balustrade beside him. He dealt, businesslike now.
"You’re too good," she said at last. Her yellow eyes
narrowed suspiciously. "You’re not a student, are you?" Lucas, lying only by
implication, said deprecatingly: "Only came in on the Viper two days
ago."
"I’ve been warned about students . . ."
The calm lagoon waters mirrored marble-white
terraces and a clear sky. Gilding glinted from temple columns and dome-friezes.
Far off, where the lagoon opened to the sea, masts were visible, and sailors
loading ships, and merchants outside warehouses.
Here, on the flat-packed sand, immense oval shadows
dappled the ground: airships tugging at mooring-ropes.
"Five shillings you owe me."
The woman paid, and Lucas watched her walk away.
Barely three o’clock, a dozen other students scattered across the promenades,
and already five impromptu cardsharp games since his arrival . . .
None of them the meeting she foretold me.
Still, she did say the station, and the docks, as well as here.
He dealt idly: Page of Scepters, Ten of Coins,
Three of Grails. A breeze whipped the pasteboard off the marble. He made a
sprawling grab for the cards.
A hand the size of a ham slapped down on the stone
balustrade, trapping the Page of Scepters and smearing both card and stone with
heavy streaks of machine-oil.
"Here." A resonant good-natured voice.
"Of all the filthy —"
Lucas straightened up, the sun burning the back of
his neck. On the sand-flats, crews were scurrying about a moored helium-airship;
trolleys and small carriages scored ruts in the sand. Lucas’s voice trailed off
as he realized that all his view was blotted out.
The man wiped the Page of Scepters on the lapel of
his pink satin coat. Black oil smeared the satin. He peered at the card with
china-blue eyes, and dropped a kitbag from his other ham-sized fist. It thudded
on to the sand.
"Nothing wrong with that," he remarked
encouragingly, and handed the pasteboard back to Lucas.
"Just wait a damn minute—!"
"Yes?"
Cropped hair glinted the color of copper wire. As
he looked down over his mountainous stomach at the seated young man, his several
chins creased up into sweaty folds. He beamed. The smell of the distant surf was
overlaid by oil and sweat and garlic.
Lucas opened and shut his mouth several times.
The big man moved and sat down companionably on the
balustrade. The marble shook as his weight hit it. He tugged his oil-stained
silk breeches up, loosened his cravat and belched; and then gazed around at the
surrounding city with immense pleasure.
"Architectonic," he murmured. He scratched
vigorously in his copper hair and examined his fingernails, flicking scurf away.
"Wonderful. Is all the city like this?"
"Uhhrh. No."
"Pity."
The man offered a plump fat-creased hand. His sleeve
was coated in some yellow substance, almost to the elbow. Wet patches darkened
under his arm.
"Casaubon," he said.
Lucas managed to swallow, saliva wetting his dry
mouth. Half-lost in thoughts, he muttered: "You can’t possibly be . . . No! "
"I assure you, my name is Baltazar
Casaubon." The big man inquired with gravity, over the noise of engines, voices
and distant bells, "Who ought I to be?"
"I’m not sure. I don’t know." Lucas closed his fist
over the pack of cards. Badly startled, he began again. "A seer foretold a
meeting for me, here . . . Somehow I hardly think
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