enormous building, clutched to the first ramparts of the Mountain of Redemption. To get to a point directly opposite, you took an electric car more than a mile through the solid rock, but for shorter distances there were elevators, and airless stairways, and mirrored passages bright with chandeliers. The apartments of the rich lay behind gaudy doorways; at one of the most impressive, a silver door set with the gilt image of the sun, Thanakar stopped and entered without knocking. The prince was still asleep. His housemaid curtsied. She was a foreign girl, with a wide, flat face. It didn’t matter, said Thanakar; he would write a note. Don’t wake him. And so he sat down at a desk in the hall and took out the notepad that he always carried, but there was no message in his mind. Instead, he drew caricatures in furious, thick lines—the balding prince, grinning queasily. And then, catching a glimpse of himself in a mirror opposite, Thanakar sketched himself, taking no pity on his high forehead and long nose. The housemaid was back, curtseying, with a cup of unrequested tea.
“The commissar would like to see you, sir.”
He took the tea and let it grow cold at the corner of the desk while from memory, he sketched the commissar, Micum Starbridge, Abu’s brother-in-law. His pencil ripped through the paper. The commissar had a big chest, short neck, bristle hair, and a face, at least in caricature, like an old pig.
It was not a fair portrait. Micum Starbridge was a sad, kind man, who had fought his whole life in the eternal war. Now too old for active service, he worked in the Department of Secular Police. Though born in the twelfth phase of winter, he was still vigorous, his face soldierly, brisk, and piglike, except for his eyes. They were large, liquid, and immensely sad, qualities missing from Thanakar’s sketch. They saved his face from ugliness.
When Thanakar entered the commissar’s study, the old man was staring out over the city from the window. Far below, it stretched out to a line of hills, stretched to the horizon in radiating circles of prosperity. New civic ordinances required men to paint the tiles of their rooftops in the colors of their caste. New laws like that exhausted and depressed the commissar, but however much he might have been opposed in principle, he had to admit that the effect was beautiful in practice, at least to the inhabitants of high towers. Below him, the clergy and nobility lived in a speckled bull’s eye of red and gold, and from there, rough concentric circles of magenta, purple, violet, cobalt blue, stretched out to the slums and suburbs, where drab gray and urine yellow mixed well with dust and distance. Sprinkled throughout were mixtures of irregularities—white hospitals, black barracks, red commercial buildings, and the brass belltowers of countless temples. As he watched, one chimed and others joined in, a signal to certain types of workers that their day was over—time to return home.
He turned when the doctor came in, and held out his hands. To Thanakar he seemed, as always, unnecessarily cordial. It irritated him the way the commissar caressed his hands, as if he were trying to impress the fact that though others might reject him for his leg’s sake, Micum Starbridge never would.
“Come in, my boy; come in,” said the commissar. “Why do I never see you? You know you’re always welcome. I knew your father well. My God, but you look just like him when he was a young soldier! Put you in uniform … You know you’re always welcome here,” he repeated, and looked at him out of his melancholy eyes. “Why do I never see you?”
“Perhaps because you never look.” Thanakar had made up his mind to try to be offensive, and it irritated him to see that the commissar didn’t seem to mind. There was no pause, no flicker in his face. It was as if he thought that Thanakar had ample reason to be abrasive, poor boy.
“Ali, well, to tell the truth, we’re not doing so much
“The commissar would like to see you, sir.”
He took the tea and let it grow cold at the corner of the desk while from memory, he sketched the commissar, Micum Starbridge, Abu’s brother-in-law. His pencil ripped through the paper. The commissar had a big chest, short neck, bristle hair, and a face, at least in caricature, like an old pig.
It was not a fair portrait. Micum Starbridge was a sad, kind man, who had fought his whole life in the eternal war. Now too old for active service, he worked in the Department of Secular Police. Though born in the twelfth phase of winter, he was still vigorous, his face soldierly, brisk, and piglike, except for his eyes. They were large, liquid, and immensely sad, qualities missing from Thanakar’s sketch. They saved his face from ugliness.
When Thanakar entered the commissar’s study, the old man was staring out over the city from the window. Far below, it stretched out to a line of hills, stretched to the horizon in radiating circles of prosperity. New civic ordinances required men to paint the tiles of their rooftops in the colors of their caste. New laws like that exhausted and depressed the commissar, but however much he might have been opposed in principle, he had to admit that the effect was beautiful in practice, at least to the inhabitants of high towers. Below him, the clergy and nobility lived in a speckled bull’s eye of red and gold, and from there, rough concentric circles of magenta, purple, violet, cobalt blue, stretched out to the slums and suburbs, where drab gray and urine yellow mixed well with dust and distance. Sprinkled throughout were mixtures of irregularities—white hospitals, black barracks, red commercial buildings, and the brass belltowers of countless temples. As he watched, one chimed and others joined in, a signal to certain types of workers that their day was over—time to return home.
He turned when the doctor came in, and held out his hands. To Thanakar he seemed, as always, unnecessarily cordial. It irritated him the way the commissar caressed his hands, as if he were trying to impress the fact that though others might reject him for his leg’s sake, Micum Starbridge never would.
“Come in, my boy; come in,” said the commissar. “Why do I never see you? You know you’re always welcome. I knew your father well. My God, but you look just like him when he was a young soldier! Put you in uniform … You know you’re always welcome here,” he repeated, and looked at him out of his melancholy eyes. “Why do I never see you?”
“Perhaps because you never look.” Thanakar had made up his mind to try to be offensive, and it irritated him to see that the commissar didn’t seem to mind. There was no pause, no flicker in his face. It was as if he thought that Thanakar had ample reason to be abrasive, poor boy.
“Ali, well, to tell the truth, we’re not doing so much
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