"How's it going, Tanya? Joseph?" Always Joseph and never Joey, at least not to his face; he didn't like it.
They said it was going fine and gave him those dazed, f**kstruck smiles of which only newlyweds are capable. Finli said nothing to the Rastosoviches, but near the Damli House end of the Mall, he stopped before a young man sitting on a faux marble bench beneath a tree, reading a book.
"Sai Earnshaw?" the taheen asked.
Dinky looked up, eyebrows raised in polite enquiry. His face, studded with a bad case of acne, bore the same polite noexpression.
"I see you're reading The Magus," Finli said, almost shyly. "I myself am reading The Collector. Quite a coincidence!"
"If you say so," Dinky replied. His expression didn't change.
"I wonder what you think of Fowles? I'm quite busy right now, but perhaps later we could discuss him."
Still wearing that politely expressionless expression, Dinky Earnshaw said, "Perhaps later you could take your copy of The Collector-hardcover, I hope-and stick it up your furry ass.
Sideways."
Finli's hopeful smile disappeared. He gave a small but perfectly correct bow. "I'm sorry you feel that way, sai."
"The f**k outta here," Dinky said, and opened his book again. He raised it pointedly before his face.
Pimli and Finli O'Tego walked on. There was a period of silence during which the Master of Algul Siento tried out different approaches to Finli, wanting to know how badly he'd been hurt by the young man's comment. The taheen was proud of his ability to read and appreciate hume literature, that much Pimli knew. Then Finli saved him the trouble by putting both of his long-fingered hands-his ass wasn't actually furry, but his fingers were-between his legs.
"Just checking to make sure my nuts are still there," he said, and Pimli thought the good humor he heard in the Chief of Security's voice was real, not forced.
"I'm sorry about that," Pimli said. "If there's anyone in Blue Heaven who has an authentic case of post-adolescent angst, it's sai Earnshaw."
"'You're tearing me apart!'" Finli moaned, and when the Master gave him a startled look, Finli grinned, showing those rows of tiny sharp teeth. "It's a famous line from a film called Rebel Without a Cause," he said. "Dinky Earnshaw makes me think of James Dean." He paused to consider. "Without the haunting good looks, of course."
"An interesting case," Prentiss said. "He was recruited for an assassination program run by a Positronics subsidiary. He killed his control and ran. We caught him, of course. He's never been any real trouble-not for us-but he's got that pain-inthe-ass attitude."
"But you feel he's not a problem."
Pimli gave him a sideways glance. "Is there something you feel I should know about him?"
"No, no. I've never seen you so jumpy as you've been over the last few weeks. Hell, call a spade a spade-so paranoid."
"My grandfather had a proverb," Pimli said. "'You don't worry about dropping the eggs until you're almost home.' We're almost home now."
And it was true. Seventeen days ago, not long before the last batch of Wolves had come galloping through the door from the Arc 16 Staging Area, their equipment in the basement of Damli House had picked up the first appreciable bend in the Bear-Turtle Beam. Since then the Beam of Eagle and Lion had snapped. Soon the Breakers would no longer be needed; soon the disintegration of the second-to-last Beam would happen with or without their help. It was like a precariously balanced object that had now picked up a sway. Soon it would go too far beyond its point of perfect balance, and then it would fall. Or, in the case of the Beam, it would break. Wink out of existence. It was the Tower that would fall. The last Beam, that of Wolf and Elephant, might hold for another week or another month, but not much longer.
Thinking of that should have pleased Pimli, but it didn't.
Mostly because his thoughts had returned to the Greencloaks.
Sixty or so had gone through Calla-bound last time, the visual deployment, and they should have been back in the usual seventy-two hours with the usual catch of Calla children.
Instead... nothing.
He asked Finli what he thought about that.
Finli stopped. He looked grave. "I think it may have been a virus," he said.
"Cry pardon?"
"A computer virus. We've seen it happen with a good deal of our computer equipment in Damli, and you want to remember that, no matter how fearsome the Greencloaks may look to a bunch of rice-farmers, computers on legs is all they really are." He paused. "Or the Calla-/o/fen may have found a way to kill them. Would it surprise me to find that they'd gotten up on their hind legs to fight? A little, but not a lot. Especially if someone with guts stepped forward to lead them."
"Someone like a gunslinger, mayhap?"