we’d all have noticed the flashing blue telltale. For that matter, I’d have noticed it when I
looked back at the Ghostgirls—if it worked as Sid claimed, and he said he had never seen it in operation, just read in the manual—oh, ‘sdeath!
But Bruce didn’t need opportunity, as I’m sure all the males in the Place would have told me right off, because he had Lifi to pull the job for him and she had as much opportunity as any of the rest of us. Myself, I have large reservations to this woman-isputty-in-the-hands-of-the-man-she-loves-madly theory, but I had to admit there was something to be said for it in
this case, and it had seemed quite natural to me when the rest of us had decided, by unspoken agreement, that neither Lili’s nor Bruce’s checks counted when we were hunting for the
Maintainer.
That took care of all of us and left only the mysterious stranger, intruding somehow through a Door (how’d he get it without using our Maintainer?) or from an unimaginable hiding place or straight out of the Void itself. I know that last is impossible— nothing can step out of nothing—but if anything ever looked like it was specially built for something not at all nice to come looming out of, it’s the Void—misty, foggily churning, slimy gray …
“Wait a second,” I told myself, “and hang onto this, Greta. It should have smacked you in the face at the start.”
Whatever came out of the Void, or, more to the point, whoever slipped back from our crowd to the Maintainer, Bruce would have seen them. He was looking at the Maintainer past our heads the whole time, and whatever happened to it, he saw it.
Erich wouldn’t have, even after he was on the bomb, because he’d been stagewise enough to face Bruce most of the time to build up his role as tribune of the people.
But Bruce would have—unless he got so caught up in what he was saying …
No, kid, a Demon is always an actor, no matter how much he believes in what he’s saying, and there never was an actor yet who wouldn’t instantly notice a member of the audience starting to walk out on his big scene.
So Bruce knew, which made him a better actor than I’d have been willing to grant, since it didn’t look as if anyone else had thought of what had just occurred to me, or they’d have gone over and put it to him.
Not me, though—I don’t work that way. Besides, I didn’t feel up to it—Nervy Anna enfold me, I felt like pure hell.
“Maybe,” I told myself encouragingly, “the Place is Hell,” but added, “Be your age, Greta—be a real rootless, ruleless, ruthless twenty-nine.”
11
The barrage roars and lifts. Then, clumsily bowed
With bombs and guns and shovels and battle gear, Men jostle and climb to meet the bristling fire.
Lines of gray, muttering faces, masked with fear, They leave their trenches, going over the top, While time ticks blank and busy on their wrists
—Sassoon
THE WESTERN FRONT, 1917
“Please don’t, Lili.”
“I shall, my love.”
“Sweetling, wake up! Hast the shakes?”
I opened my eyes a little and lied to Siddy with a smile locked my hands together tight and watched Bruce and Lili quarrel nobly near the control divan and wished I had a great love to blur my misery and provide me with a passable substitute for Change Winds.
Lili won the argument, judging from the way she threw her head back and stepped away from Bruce’s arms while giving him a proud, tender smile. He walked off a few steps;
praise be, he didn’t shrug his shoulders at us like an old husband, though his nerves were showing and he didn’t seem to be standing Introversion well at all, as who of us were?
Lili rested a hand on the head of the control divan and pressed her lips together and looked around at us, mostly with her eyes. She’d wound a gray silk bandeau around her bangs. Her short gray silk dress without a waistline made her look, not so much like a flapper, though she looked like that all right, as like a little
looked back at the Ghostgirls—if it worked as Sid claimed, and he said he had never seen it in operation, just read in the manual—oh, ‘sdeath!
But Bruce didn’t need opportunity, as I’m sure all the males in the Place would have told me right off, because he had Lifi to pull the job for him and she had as much opportunity as any of the rest of us. Myself, I have large reservations to this woman-isputty-in-the-hands-of-the-man-she-loves-madly theory, but I had to admit there was something to be said for it in
this case, and it had seemed quite natural to me when the rest of us had decided, by unspoken agreement, that neither Lili’s nor Bruce’s checks counted when we were hunting for the
Maintainer.
That took care of all of us and left only the mysterious stranger, intruding somehow through a Door (how’d he get it without using our Maintainer?) or from an unimaginable hiding place or straight out of the Void itself. I know that last is impossible— nothing can step out of nothing—but if anything ever looked like it was specially built for something not at all nice to come looming out of, it’s the Void—misty, foggily churning, slimy gray …
“Wait a second,” I told myself, “and hang onto this, Greta. It should have smacked you in the face at the start.”
Whatever came out of the Void, or, more to the point, whoever slipped back from our crowd to the Maintainer, Bruce would have seen them. He was looking at the Maintainer past our heads the whole time, and whatever happened to it, he saw it.
Erich wouldn’t have, even after he was on the bomb, because he’d been stagewise enough to face Bruce most of the time to build up his role as tribune of the people.
But Bruce would have—unless he got so caught up in what he was saying …
No, kid, a Demon is always an actor, no matter how much he believes in what he’s saying, and there never was an actor yet who wouldn’t instantly notice a member of the audience starting to walk out on his big scene.
So Bruce knew, which made him a better actor than I’d have been willing to grant, since it didn’t look as if anyone else had thought of what had just occurred to me, or they’d have gone over and put it to him.
Not me, though—I don’t work that way. Besides, I didn’t feel up to it—Nervy Anna enfold me, I felt like pure hell.
“Maybe,” I told myself encouragingly, “the Place is Hell,” but added, “Be your age, Greta—be a real rootless, ruleless, ruthless twenty-nine.”
11
The barrage roars and lifts. Then, clumsily bowed
With bombs and guns and shovels and battle gear, Men jostle and climb to meet the bristling fire.
Lines of gray, muttering faces, masked with fear, They leave their trenches, going over the top, While time ticks blank and busy on their wrists
—Sassoon
THE WESTERN FRONT, 1917
“Please don’t, Lili.”
“I shall, my love.”
“Sweetling, wake up! Hast the shakes?”
I opened my eyes a little and lied to Siddy with a smile locked my hands together tight and watched Bruce and Lili quarrel nobly near the control divan and wished I had a great love to blur my misery and provide me with a passable substitute for Change Winds.
Lili won the argument, judging from the way she threw her head back and stepped away from Bruce’s arms while giving him a proud, tender smile. He walked off a few steps;
praise be, he didn’t shrug his shoulders at us like an old husband, though his nerves were showing and he didn’t seem to be standing Introversion well at all, as who of us were?
Lili rested a hand on the head of the control divan and pressed her lips together and looked around at us, mostly with her eyes. She’d wound a gray silk bandeau around her bangs. Her short gray silk dress without a waistline made her look, not so much like a flapper, though she looked like that all right, as like a little
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