"Put down the pad."
"That is a sensible idea."
Glawen spread the pad. He looked around to find that Zaa had stepped from her gown. Silhouetted against the lamplight her form was not unpleasing. Zaa came close and unclasped his gown. Glawen found himself stimulated despite the unusual circumstances. The two dropped down to the pad, where the lamplight revealed more detail than before. Glawen told himself desperately: "I will not notice the white skin nor the blue veins, nor the knobby knees, nor the sharp teeth; I will ignore the weird circumstances and the ghosts watching with wide blank eyes."
"Ah, Glawen," breathed Zaa.
"I suspect that Duality has never truly left me behind. I am Ordene but I am a woman!"
She threw back her head and the red wig rolled away to reveal her narrow white scalp and a tattoo on her forehead.
Glawen gave a choked cry and disengaged himself.
"It is beyond my capacity! Look at me! See for yourself!"
Wordlessly Zaa rearranged the wig and resumed her white gown. She stood looking at Glawen with a queer twisted grin.
At last she said: "It seems that I too must grow my hair and exercise my body in the sun."
"But what of me?"
Zaa shrugged.
"Do as you like. Study Monomantics. Perform gymnastic exercises. Explore the deep pool. I have given my information un stintingly Until I am satisfied with your services, and until my primitive female rage is soothed, you shall never leave Pogan's Point."
Zaa went to the door, tapped three times. It swung open; she passed through and the door closed.
Glawen sat on the edge of the dais, legs sprawled out, gaze fixed on nothing in particular. This moment, he thought, must be considered the very nadir of his life--though the situation had the potentiality for becoming worse.
Time passed, of duration unknown: more than an hour, less than a day. Someone came out on the balcony and lowered a basket on a string, then departed, leaving the lamp in place.
Without haste and with no great interest, Glawen went to investigate. The basket held several pots, containing bean soup, stew, bread, tea and three figs. Evidently he was not to be starved.
Glawen discovered that he was very hungry. He had eaten nothing in the refectory except a bite or two of bread; how much time had passed since then? More than a day, less than a week.
Glawen finished all the food and replaced the pots in the basket. He now felt somewhat more energetic and looked around the tomb. The ceiling, fifty feet above, was a vault of unbroken stone. The spring seeped into the room through a fissure halfway up the wall.
Glawen went to look at the tunnel where the water left the chamber. The opening was roughly circular, about three feet in diameter. Glawen could see that the tunnel trended downward after leaving the tomb. From far away he heard a steady gurgle, of water falling into water. Glawen turned away with a shiver. One day he might want to seek out the pool, so dark and cold, but not yet.
Glawen went back to sit on the edge of the dais. What now?
Something must happen, he told himself. A person simply did not live away the days and weeks and years of his life immured in a cave. Still, there was no immutable law of nature which stated the contrary.
Time passed. Nothing happened, except that after a long interval the basket was drawn up and another basket lowered.
' Glawen ate, then arranged himself on the pad, pulled the blanket over himself and slept.
A time certainly to be measured in days and weeks went by, with two food baskets apparently representing the interval of one day. Glawen noted the succession by scratching a mark for each two baskets on a flat stone. On the eleventh day Muds appeared on the balcony, and lowered fresh garments and a fresh sheet. He spoke in a gruff voice: "I am instructed to ask if there is anything you want?"
"Yes. A razor and soap. Paper and a stylus."
The items were lowered in the next basket.
Thirty days passed by, and forty, then fifty. The fifty-second day, if Glawen's reckoning was accurate, was his birthday. Was he now Glawen Clattuc, full-status Agent of Araminta Station? Or Glawen co-Clattuc, collateral and excess population, with no status whatever?
What could be happening at Araminta Station? By now someone must be making inquiries as to what had happened to him.
What would Kirdy tell Bodwyn Wook? The truth? Not likely.
Still, no matter what else, his father Scharde would never abandon the search. His route should be simple to follow, but what of that? Even if Scharde arrived at the seminary, and was invited by Zaa to make a search, and thus discovered Zonk's Tomb, Glawen knew that before such a time, another body would have joined the white conclave at the bottom of the pool.
Meanwhile, Glawen tried to maintain both his physical fitness and his morale. He spent much time each day at calisthenics, running endless laps around the room, jumping up and kicking at the wall in a contest with himself, walking on his hands, turning handsprings. The exercise became an obsession: an ocupation which he used as a substitute for thinking; every day he crowded more and more effort into his waking hours.
Sixty days passed. Glawen found difficulty in remembering the outside world. Reality was the volume and extent of Zonk's Tomb. Lucky Glawen Clattuc! Thousands of tourists came to Tassadero in search of this hole in the rock which he knew so well! And it came to him, in a sudden instant of clarity, that Zaa had been totally generous with her information not because she trusted him, but because when he had performed all the services of which he was capable, his silence would be ensured by the most definite and final of means. When Zaa so casually had identified the cave as Zonk's Tomb, she had as much as assured him that she planned his death.
On the sixtieth day, the lower door opened. Funo stood in the doorway.
"Come."
Glawen gathered up his papers and followed. Funo took him as before up two flights of stairs and to the room he had occupied before. The door closed. Glawen climbed up on the chair: his bundle of clothes and the spare sheets were as before.
There were sounds at the door. Glawen jumped down, just as Mutis threw open the door.
"Come! You must bathe yourself."
Glawen submitted to a sanitary shower and a rinse of cold water. Mutis ignored Glawen's new growth of hair.
"Dress in proper garments, then go to your chamber."
