* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
"Let's walk back a different way," he suggested.

She shrugged.

"What's the matter?"

"Nothing. I talked to my father. He--was the only one home."

They walked down a few streets, but the buildings were nearly all the same, pressed stone with barred windows. Offices were followed in abundance by repair shops for the private vehicles that clogged the streets and empty lots. Several women smiled at Clark. He noticed that all lacked a tooth or two.

The exhaust began to bother him. "Let's rest a minute," he said.

Paula stopped walking. "Tired?" she asked with a faint smile.

"What did he say?"

"Family things," she sighed.

Clark looked down. "He's pretty rotten to talk to, isn't he?"

"He's my father! Just--I'd rather not discuss it."

They walked on. At the next corner, Paula turned sharply. He backed away from her, into a pale woman of about thirty with a heavily lined face as though she had lost weight and been left with too much skin, who jumped and then, seeing it was an accident, smiled apologetically. She was an ethnic Resheborian like himself. The sudden warmth he felt toward her surprised Clark. He must have been more frightened than he guessed by the warnings about race trouble.

"Sorry," he said in the Intersystems Language. Looking up at the street sign, he saw that they wre leaving East 45th Street. "Is East 46th down this way, or 44th?"

"Forty four," she said.

He caught up to Paula. "You're headed uptown. The Words of Love is the other way."

"It's on an Avenue, not a Street. The Streets go this way;

the Avenues go that way." She crossed her hands.

They were coming to a more densely peopled area. The vacant lots grew smaller and then disappeared. The blocks were all similar, with a liquor and drug store, or a bar, at the corner, a bank or pawnshop under a lighted sign that sead "Credits Liquidated," a clothing store identified as a factory outlet. A land cruiser fuel and repair place occupied one spot on almost every corner. Except for the occasional grocery store, the rest were houses. These, all made of sheet metal, bore devices for attaching them to land cruisers, but their wheels had been taken long ago and they were too delapidated now to survive a trip. Many must be corroded, he guessed from the number of stores advertising waterproof furniture and bed canopies. Those that remained watertight through many winters and summers enriched the makers of structural bracing equipment, another popular item. Clark saw a lot full of new houses for sale. A sign at the entrance advised, "Don't brace, replace!" and something he took for an Outlander translation. He stopped to look.

The houses were shiny polished metal, painted in colors he might have found garish but that, on this dismal street, seemed cheery. Knocking on the walls, he saw why the houses were cheap. Their plates were so thin that they rang and then hummed, oscillating slowly to rest. He found nothing, no ribs or beams, to keep them from buckling. Painted birds with huge beaks and talons, snakes with enormous fangs and other animals decorated the outsides. One had drawings of people.

"That's a story from their Old Planet," Paula said. "This guy here is the stranger. He was a distant cousin or something of the chief and he came to visit." She pointed to a handsome character. "Here, he finds the chief's wife with the chief's best friend. This part is usually by the pipes and all, so you can't see it. Here, she's telling him how rotten the chief is, and he feels sorry for her. But he tells the chief anyway, as you see, and the chief doesn't like it."

"Do they keep this part out of sight, too?"

"No. If you come around to this side, you can see what happened next."

The far side of the house was covered with a single painting of a chaotic fight. People were stabbing, kicking, punching, choking and crushing one another by firelight in a dining hall hung with tapestries. Body parts lay strewn about the floor. In one corner a man held an old woman by the throat. Beside them, a woman was trying to butt another's head into a pillar, and a crone had jumped out from behind it to knock down a child. The child was reaching for a girl near him, but she and a second girl were engaged in lethal combat, their hands and faces covered with blood.

"What's the point?" Clark asked.

"Here's the motto." She indicated a small painting of a winged man hurling a lightening bolt. Beneath him was an elegantly lettered inscription in Outlander.

"The point is that in a house where people don't behave, everybody suffers," Paula told him.

Clark shook his head.

"You just don't have the view of guilt and innocence they had. Maybe a house where such a thing can happen is a guilty house and no member of it can deep from partaking in the guilt. They were all born and raised in it. The actual crimes are only a sign of the house's guilt, and when the sign is deiscovered, the house destroys itself. Here comes a salesman.

.EP1

Let's go."

"Wait, this is the wrong way."

Paula kept walking. "No, it's not. The comm office was north of the cafe and I'm going south."

"But we just came that way."

"Well, we were going the wrong way then," she said casually.

"And the comm office wasn't north, it was west."

She stopped. "Right. Have you got the map?"

"Map?"

"You know, the diagram of the streets. I showed it to you last night."

"No, you didn't."

"Yes, I did. But you forgot it. Well, let me think." She sat down in a doorway. "It's at 62nd Avenue, so ask directions to that."

It was a continual surprise to Clark that Paula, who so loved to deal with people and was so good at it, cared so deeply about what they thought of her that she hated to talk to strangers. He left her staring at her hands in the doorway and stepped out into the street, mentally girding his Eyimalian for the attack, feeling rather foolish even for a puzzled tourist. A group of children, two middle-aged women and an old man in a torn jacket went by while he tried to think of a good way to phrase the question. He looked down the block, hoping to spot a friendly face.

The woman with whom he had spoken on 45th Street was approaching. She had acquired a big shopping sac loaded with bundles and house-painting equipment that struck her ankle at every fourth step, and was glad to set it down for a minute to say, "Lost?"

"I'm not sure. Which way is 62nd Avenue?"

"This way." She inclined her head forward.

"Let me help you with that, then," Clark said, lifting the bag. This is Eyimalia, he thought. He felt strong because of the low gravity. The woman stayed close to him, as though afraid he would disappear with the goods.

"Painting your house?"

"No, it's a community bookstore."

"A what?" Her accent was like the cabdriver's of the night before, but somehow it hindered understanding more in IL than in Eyimalian.

"Lending library and bookstore. I'm the librarian. I keep the accounts, too."

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
CONTINUE.....................

Go to Chapter: 1 2 3 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21
INDEX