The Oomp walked away from the windlass. The drum sang; the rope ran free; Zamian disappeared into the hole. Scharde uttered a sick groan, squeezed his eyes shut and held back from an attack on the Oomp.
Scharde looked down into the hole. The yoots had rushed back;
Zamian sat staring at them in confusion as they tore at his body. His world had become constricted; it seemed certain that he would have no more to say.
Scharde turned away. In a flat voice he said: "I'll go now to my flyer. I'm done here."
Glawen, meanwhile, had risen at his usual hour, taken a solitary breakfast and spent the morning dealing with neglected tasks, and preparations for the resumption of classes after the Parilia recess.
An hour before noon he received a telephone call.
"Glawen Clattuc here."
A small clear voice responded.
"Glawen, this is Miranda.
I've discovered something very odd and I want to talk to you about it."
"Certainly; talk away. What's it all about?"
"Glawen! Not over the telephone!" Miranda's voice faded momentarily.
Glawen called out: "Are you still there?"
"I was looking over my shoulder; I'm starting to be nervous about noises. Properly so, in this case, since the noise was Mother."
"Very well; we'll talk. Shall I come to Veder House?"
"No. I'll meet you down in the Way, in about ten minutes."
"I'll be there."
Glawen arrived at the rendezvous a minute early, and watched as Miranda came running down the avenue from Veder House: a slim big-eyed little creature with a mop of brown curls, keenly aware of;
her own importance, at least within the realms of her private universe. Glawen, waiting in the shadow of the gate posts, thought that she :
seemed subdued and uneasy.
Miranda arrived breathless at the bottom of the avenue.
Glawen :j stepped forward.
"I'm over here." ;
Miranda jerked around.
"Oh--I didn't see you at first. I was ," startled."
"Sorry," said Glawen.
"What's the problem?" | "Come along," said Miranda.
"I don't want to talk here." ;
"Whatever you say. But at least tell me where we're going."
"To Archives." ^ The two went up Wansey Way in the tree shadows, past the Arbor; and along the riverside path to the venerable Old Agency. I As they walked, Miranda began to talk, at first in disconnected ;, ideas; "--all the time, as if she's sitting just out of sight... Sometimes I think I've gone just a bit crazy, or become old ten or twenty years too soon."
"That's an original thought, certainly," said Glawen.
"As far as that goes, I suddenly feel old as the hills."
Preoccupied with her own thoughts, Miranda hardly heard him.
"I don't like the way I feel, so full of hate that I get sick in my throat ... One night while I lay in bed I tried to imagine how it happened. Whoever did it must have watched Sessily during the Phantasmagoria, but before the end he went around to the back and hid in the truck."
Glawen asked in surprise: "How do you know about the truck?
That's supposed to be a secret."
"I heard Mother and Father talking when they thought I couldn't hear. Anyway, I thought of the Archive cameras;
they must have photographed him going around to the loading dock."
"That's very sensible. Even the Bureau B staff thought of it. Captain Rune Offaw has been studying the photographs every day."
"I know. He's taken spools away from me several times."
"Ah, I see! You've been down in the Archives, helping Bureau B study the photographs!"
Miranda gave him a reproachful look.
"Glawen, are you laughing at me? Before even seeing what I have to show you?"
"Not really. And I admit that I'm curious."
Miranda acknowledged the response with a dignified nod as they entered the Old Agency.
The two went down the wide hall, footsteps echoing from the marble floors and odd intricate walls of cast iron and greenstone medallions. Miranda said thoughtfully: "Perhaps I had better tell you what I was looking for."
"I think I know. Someone going around to the back of the Orpheum."
"Someone wearing fur. Like Latuun, or a Bold Lion, or one or two others."
"So you know about the fur too."
"Why shouldn't I know?"
