seem fair either. Tomar, have you ever had things you wanted, had them in your hands, and suddenly have a situation come up that made it look like they might fly out of your grip forever?”
Tomar rubbed his hand across his brush-cut red hair and shook his head. “There was a time once, when I wanted things. Like food, work, and a bed where all four legs touched the ground. So I came to Toron. And I got them. And I got you, and so I guess there isn’t anything else to want, or want that bad.” He grinned, and the grin made her smile.
“I guess,” she started, “…I guess it was just that he looked so much like my brother.”
“Clea,” Tomar said. “About your brother. I wasn’t going to tell you this until later. Maybe I shouldn’t say it now. But you were asking whether or not they were going to draft prisoners into the army; and whether at the end of their service, they’d be freed. Well, I did some checking. They are going to, and I sent through a recommendation that they take your brother among the first bunch. In three hours I got a memorandum from the penal commissioner. Your brother’s dead.”
She looked at him hard, trying to hold her eyes open and to prevent the little snarl of sound that was a sob from loosening in the back of her throat.
“In fact it happened last night,” Tomar went on. “He and two others attempted an escape. Two of their bodies were found. And there’s no chance that the third one could have escaped alive.”
The snarl collapsed into a sound she would not make. She sat for a moment. Then she said, “Let’s go back to the party.” She stood up, and they walked across the white rug to the door. Once she shook her head and opened her mouth. Then she closed it again and went on. “Yes. I’m glad you said it. I don’t know. Maybe it was a sign…a sign that he was dead. Maybe it was a sign…” She stopped. “No. It wasn’t. It wasn’t anything, was it? No.” They went down the steps to the ballroom once more. The music was very, very happy.
CHAPTER V
A few hours earlier, Geryn gave Tel a kharba fruit. The boy took the bright-speckled melon around the inn, looking for Alter. Unable to find her, he wandered onto the street and up the block. Once a cat with a struggling gray shape in its teeth hurtled across his path. Later he saw an overturned garbage can with a filigree of fish bones ornamenting the parti-colored heap. Over the house roofs across the street, the taller buildings and towers of Toron paled to blue, with sudden yellow rectangles of window light scattered unevenly over their faces.
Turning down another block, he saw Rara standing on the corner, stopping the occasional passers-by. Tel started up to her, but she saw him and motioned him away. Puzzled, he went to a stoop and sat down to watch. As he ran his thumbnail along the orange rind, and juice oozed from the slit, he heard Rara talking to a stranger.
“Your fortune, sir. I’ll spread your future before you like a silver mirror…” The stranger passed. Rara turned to a woman now coming toward her. “Ma’am, a fragment of a unit will spread your life out like a patterned carpet where you may trace the designs of your fate. Just a quarter of a unit…” The woman smiled, but shook her head. “You look like you come from the mainland,” Rara called after her. “Well, good luck here in the New World, sister, the Island of Opportunity.” Immediately she turned to another man, this one in a deep green uniform. “Sir,” Tel heard her begin. Then she paused as she surveyed his costume. “Sir,” she continued, “for a single unit I will unweave the threads of your destiny from eternity’s loom. Would you like to know the promotion about to come your way? How many children you’ll…”
“Come on, lady,” said the man in uniform. “It’s illegal to tell fortunes here.”
“But I’ve got my license,” declared Rara. “I’m a genuine clairvoyant. Just a second…” And her hands began to plunge into the seams and pockets of her gray rags.
“Never mind, lady. Just get moving,” and he gave her a push. Rara moved.
Tel peeled back the strip of rind he’d loosened from the kharba fruit, licked the juice from the yellow wound, and followed Rara.
“Son of an electric eel,” she said when Tel reached her, her birthmark scarlet. “Just trying to make a living, that’s all.”
“Want a bite?”
Rara shook her head. “I’m too angry,” she said. They walked back to the inn.
“Do you know where Alter is?” Tel asked. “I was looking for her.”
“She’s not in the inn?”
“I couldn’t find her there.”
“Did you look on the roof?” Rara asked.
“Oh,” said Tel. “No.” They turned into the tavern and Tel went upstairs. It was not until he was halfway up the ladder on the second floor that went to the trap door in the ceiling that he wondered why she was on the roof. He pushed the trap door back and hoisted himself to the dusty, weathered rim.
Alter was hanging head and white hair down from a pipe that went from the stone chimney to a supporting pipe that was fastened by a firm collar to the roof.
“What are you doing?” Tel asked.
“Hi,” she smiled down at him. “I’m practicing.”
“Practicing what?”
She was hanging double from her waist over the pipe. Now she grabbed the bar close to her waist and somersaulted forward, letting her feet slowly and evenly to the ground, her legs perfectly straight. “My stunts,” she said. “I’m an acrobat.” She did not let go of the bar, but suddenly swung her legs up so that her ankles nearly touched her hands, and then whipped them down again, ending the kip by supporting herself upright on the metal perch. Then she flung her legs back (Tel jumped because she looked like she was going to fall) and went out and down, then under, swung up, arced over, and went down again in a giant circle. She circled once more, then doubled up, caught one knee over the bar, reversed direction, and suddenly was sitting on top of the rod with one leg over.
“Gee,” Tel said. “How did you do that?”
“It’s all timing,” Alter said. Suddenly she threw her head back, and circled the bar once more, hanging from her hands and one knee. Then the knee came loose, and her feet came slowly to the ground. “You’ve just got to be strong enough to hold up your own weight. Maybe a little stronger. But the rest is all timing.”
“You mean I could do that?”
“You want to try something?”
“Like what?”
“Come here and grab hold of the bar.”
Tel came over and grabbed. He could just keep his feet flat on the tar-papered roof and still hold on. “All right,” he said.
“Now pull yourself up and hook your left knee around the bar.”
“Like this?” He kicked up once, missed, and tried again.
“When you kick, throw your head back,” she instructed. “You’ll balance better.”
He did, pulled up, and got his foot through his arms, and suddenly felt the bar slide into the
