Текст книги "Earth Logic"

Автор книги: Marks Laurie

сообщить о нарушении

Текущая страница: 16 (всего у книги 26 страниц)

The soldiers began telling stories almost at once, their order of recitation apparently having been worked out in advance. Half listening, Clement watched the storyteller, whose attention in turn was focused on whoever spoke: an attention the likes of which Clement had never seen, not even in a predator whose life depended on such watchfulness. When one or another speaker began to falter self‑consciously, the storyteller would look away, to give him some relief. Every single time, she looked into Clement’s eyes instead. Clement perceived nothing in that glance: not curiosity nor self‑consciousness nor weariness nor wonder. Certainly, the storyteller didn’t care that Clement stared at her. In fact, she hardly even seemed to notice.

Gilly, skimming his list, interrupted one man’s story, and then another, to say, “Sorry, that one’s been told.” For other stories, he wrote a few words down on his paper: a title, or a description, Clement supposed. After some mental ciphering, Clement concluded that the woman probably had already told, and been told, well over two hundred stories. And if the storytelling continued to winter’s end, it would easily be more than a thousand. Surely the soldiers were making bets on when the stories would run dry because they had realized, however vaguely, that the storyteller was uncanny, and that she was doing something that should have been impossible. But, apparently, it had occurred to no one, except perhaps to Gilly, that extraordinary events are seldom benign.

The storyteller was in the refectory, being served an early supper so she could be refreshed and ready to perform when the meal bell was rung. Clement and Gilly stood out in the chilly street, both of them on foot now. As always, Gilly crouched over his cane like an old man, but he looked even older in winter, and in the last few years his hair had begun to go gray. Clement took off her hat and brushed a hand self‑consciously across her own hair, close‑clipped for the helmet she hardly ever wore anymore. Was she also going gray? She tried to think of when she had last looked into a mirror.

“That storyteller is more than strange,” she said. “She is supernatural.”

Gilly gave her that peculiar sideways look of his, but did not speak.

“Is she a witch?” Clement asked.

He said, “I believe she has what the Shaftali call an elemental talent, an unusual ability that gives a remarkable shape to her thinking. If she were a witch, though, she’d be turning her stories into reality.”

“If Cadmar knew about this …”

Gilly looked grimly down at his hand gripping the cane. “The soldiers adore her. I’d hate to take her away from them for no good reason, after such a year as they’ve had to endure.”

“I think,” said Clement, “that you yourself might like her a little.”

He looked sideways at her again. “A monstrous creature like her?”

They were silent until Gilly added, quietly, “She must be aware of what danger she puts herself in by entering these gates. But she seems incapable both of fear and of self‑protection.”

“Isn’t she as much a danger to us?”

Gilly said, “You think she’s a Paladin spy? With that memorable face? Dressed in extremely visible flame‑red silk? Always the center of attention?”

“Well, if she was lurking about trying to be invisible, she wouldn’t have soldiers blabbing to her for hours every day with official permission.”

“What one thing has she been told today that could be even remotely useful to our enemies?”

“It’s not what they’re telling her that matters,” said Clement. “It’s the habitof telling.”

“Yes,” said Gilly. “The habit of telling. And the novelty of being heard. It matters, yes. But how is it dangerous?”

Clement could not think of when she had felt so unbalanced, so utterly confounded. Gilly’s steadiness, his very seriousness, only contributed to the sensation. She wanted him to make a joke of the entire afternoon. But he clung to his cane as though he feared he would fall over, frowned distantly at the icy ground, and waited for her to speak.

Surely something the storyteller had said to Gilly had unnerved him also. Perhaps, because of her, he now shared with Clement this lingering sensation that he had overlooked the possibilities of his life. But the sensation would pass, and they would still be what they were.

Clement said, “Well, we can forbid the storyteller to enter the garrison. Or we can arrest her and do to her what we do to witches. Or we can pretend like we haven’t noticed a bloody thing, and let the soldiers hear her tales.” She paused. “Do you think you can make certain she has no other conversations like the one she had with me today? With anyone? Including yourself?”

There was a silence. “Yes,” Gilly said.

“Has Cadmar showed any interest in hearing her tales?”

“None.”

“Let’s make certain he doesn’t.” The bell was ringing. “Shall we go in?” She took his arm, and felt him lean into her.

It was the first time Clement had sat down in that room to watch the storyteller’s performance. The eager soldiers struggled with each other for the best spots, but they had left a seat for Gilly, and Clement sat in the place the storyteller vacated. A soldier said, “Lieutenant‑General, you’ve not come here before? You’ll be amazed.”

She turned to the soldier, and found a hard‑faced, embittered veteran, who had already turned away from her to look up at the storyteller with an expression of childish anticipation. “Why?” said Clement.

“Oh, she’s good.”The veteran put a ringer to her lips. “This is the best part.”

What followed was a ripple of silence, and the tension of anticipation. The storyteller waited on the stage of the tabletop: poised, taut, intent. Just as Clement thought the performer had waited too long, she spoke. “I am a collector of tales, and I will trade, story for story. This is a tale of the Juras people, who are giants in an empty land, whose voices are so big they sing the light into the stars.”

She told the tale of the grasslion and the buffalo, which Clement thought was about the dangers of underestimating the enemy, or of overestimating oneself, or perhaps of being so stupid as to assume there is no more to be understood about the world. The storyteller told five more tales, and each one was a disappointment to Clement, for none of them was a tale of magical flower bulbs.

“Oh, dear,” Gilly said. “Clem, I fear you are in trouble. Something very odd is happening to you.”

But he added, after a while, “At least get Cadmar’s permission.”

Clement made certain Cadmar was in a jovial mood, which, after so many years with him was not too difficult to engineer. He laughed at her request, which she expected, and then granted it. He liked to think he was generous with his inferiors, especially in matters that were irrelevant to and not inconvenient to him.

Clement rode to Alrin’s house early one cold afternoon, alone and unexpected. Marga must have been out, for the storyteller opened the door and admitted her without comment. She was not wearing her performance clothes, but Alrin’s tailor certainly had been exercising his skills on her: her wool suit was austere, not impractical, and very flattering. Clement had been curious what possessed the courtesan to take in this unconventional lodger, but, watching the uncanny woman go up the stairs to announce Clement’s presence, it occurred to Clement that Akin might simply be indulging in a passion for exotic decoration.

“She asks you to come upstairs,” said the storyteller when she returned.

“You did tell her–?”

“Business. As you said.”

Clement made her own way to Alrin’s room. The courtesan lay in bed, supported by pillows, with the lamp lit and an account book beside her. Her round belly jutted before her. “You’re not well?” Clement said.

Alrin waved a graceful hand. “Oh, it’s nothing. Marga made me see the midwife, and now I must lie abed all day. I’m sure you wish that you might suffer so.”

Clement was particularly glad that she had managed to bring a gift, which she now unpacked from its makeshift wrappings. The pottery cup was no more than a broken discard found outside the refectory. The cup was full of plain water and ordinary stones, but the bulb planted in it had bravely and insouciantly put forth its buds, and just that morning one of the buds had cracked open to release a pale pink flower.

Alrin exclaimed, “Oh, what a scent! How did you convince it to bloom so early?”

“Soldier’s secret.” Clement set the broken cup with its perfumed contents on the nearby table. As she stood at the foot of the bed, watching Alrin breathe in the scent again and again, each time with fresh pleasure, she had the amazed idea that perhaps she had accomplished one worthwhile, though extremely small, thing this year.

“What do you want from me?” Alrin finally asked.

“I would like,” Clement said, “to adopt your child.”

“Surely you are not serious.”

“Very serious.” Clement looked around, found a chair nearby, drew it closer to the bed, and sat in it. “How much will it take?”

“You could start by being a man,” Alrin said.

This directness was new, and very strange. Perhaps, since Alrin’s retirement had been thrust upon her early by this illness, she had begun to practice bluntness in preparation for her new career.

Clement said, “If I had pretended to be acting as Cadmar’s intermediary, you’d give me the child, and never know the money wasn’t his.”

“But you didn’t.”

“Of course not.”

They both were silent. The heady scent of the newly opened flower gradually filled the room.

Alrin finally said, “I’m stunned by this proposal.”

That was when Clement knew she had a chance, for if there had been no hope, Alrin would have simply refused. Clement said, “If I were a man, how much would it take to outbid the other candidates?”

Alrin rather delicately named a sum.

Clement offered substantially more than that.

Alrin looked involuntarily at her closed account book.

Clement stood up. “Let me know when you have made up your mind. I have a journey to make in a few days, and may be gone from the garrison for some time. But Gilly will act as my agent in my absence, and he has access to my funds.”

Alrin said in some surprise, “Is he your brother?”

Clement felt rather blank. But surely it should have been a simple question? She finally answered, “Gilly is what I have.”

Chapter Twenty‑Five

On any night, Garland might open his eyes to the glow of Medric’s candle, a red blur behind the curtain that divided the attic. Medric’s pen might be scratching, or he might be steadily, rhythmically turning the pages of a book, or he might be mixing a new batch of ink. Sometimes he muttered to himself, and Garland might wonder sleepily how anyone could possibly work in such cold. One night, though, Garland awakened to Medric’s voice, raised in excitement, and Emil’s voice, moderately responding. Garland got up, and peered cautiously through the curtain. Emil sat on the edge of the bed with a sheaf of papers on his knees. Medric, lenses aglow with candlelight, talked wildly, his long, thin fingers flickering in the cold air.

Emil spotted Garland and said wryly, “Sometimes we have nights like this. There’s no point in begging him to be quiet.”

“Oh, my brother!” Medric cried. “It’s finished! And you can read it, too!”

Garland said groggily, “I stillcan’t read.” For although he had been sharing Leeba’s alphabet lessons, he suspected he had quite a distance to go.

“But Emil will read it to you. He’s a fine reader.”

Emil tugged at the tangle of blankets. “Do get in the bed, Garland, and listen for a while. I would consider it a great favor.”

The effort of getting the bedding straightened out was enough to wake Garland up completely. “Blessed day,” Emil grumbled, shivering in his underclothes. “How did these blankets get to be such a mess? And Medric, why must you and I always be condemned to the one room without a fireplace?”

“It’s for the books, really,” said Medric. “They like it airy.”

“But why must we sleep with them? A man might be forgiven for wishing he might occasionally be just a little comfortable.”

“Oh, no, no, no,” Medric admonished him. “Not a little, not even for a moment! Shaftal is a discomforting mistress!”

Garland got rather self‑consciously under the blankets, which were extremely heavy but not at all warm, and Emil tucked a stale‑smelling pillow under his head. “That was a remarkable thing you did with that fowl tonight,” he said. Beyond him, Medric bounced excitedly on his toes, apparently trying to jump out of his skin. “I have to say,” continued Emil, “it’s a pleasure to see Karis finally putting on that weight she lost from being sick this spring. She was looking an awful lot like a smoke addict again, and I was finding it unsettling. Present miseries are bad enough, without always being reminded of past ones.”

Garland said, “Karis used to look like a smoke addict? Why?”

“Because she was one.” Emil got under the blankets beside Garland, and muttered, “Well, thatwas hardly worth the effort. Do you think we have even a hope of becoming warm?”

Garland, trying and failing to imagine Karis as one of those numbed, obsessed, starved, shadow‑people that in the last few years had become increasingly rare in Shaftal, replied rather vaguely, “No hope at all.”

“What is the matter, Medric?” said Emil innocently.

Medric pushed the sheaf of papers at him. “I beg you! Read! In your clear, compelling, quavering–”

“–candid, cantankerous–” said Emil.

“–querulous voice!”

Smiling, Emil picked up the first page and held it at an angle to capture the candle light. “A History of My Father’s People,” he read. “Being an Account of the Sainnites, and How They Came to Shaftal, a Discussion of How to Understand Them, and Why They are Doomed.”

He put down the sheet and rubbed his eyes. “A very specific and compelling title. Who could resist reading the book?”

Medric rubbed his hands gleefully. “I should think that no one could resist! And at this time of year, there’s nothing else to do anyway, and thanks to the Sainnites, there’s nothing to read.”

“They can cook,” interjected Garland.

“While someone reads to them.”

“And fix things,” said Emil.

“But someone will read to them while they work! Twenty or thirty people at once might hear a single reading. And then they’ll bring it to their neighbors, who will bring it to their neighbors… !” Unable to contain himself, Medric leapt to his feet, with the quilt in which he was wrapped trailing him like a cloak. But the attic was filled with books–floor to ceiling–and he could only walk three paces before he ran into a pile of stacked crates. Nose to nose with the crate, he cried, “We’ll print five hundred copies! And two hundred thousand people will have read it by spring mud!”

“I know better than to question your ciphering,” Emil said, “But there are a few practicalproblems.”

Medric snorted dismissively.

Garland said to Emil in a low voice, “Are the Sainnites really doomed?”

“Hmm.” Emil leafed through the sheets, and gradually his face became nearly as gleeful as Medric’s. “Look at those numbers! That’s got to be giving some poor officer any number of sleepless nights. They have only a few hundred children, and it takes as many as ten to replace one dead soldier? They’re doomed, all right! Medric, bring the candle, will you?” Medric sat on the bed with the candle in his hand, grinning like a maniac. In a steady, clear voice, Emil began to read, interrupted only by Medric’s occasional snort or chuckle.

The people you callSainnites would more properly be called Carolins– born into a soldier caste that happened to serve under the warlord of Sainna.My father served thatwarlord with honor until he was driven out of Sainnaby fellow Carolins, who served different warlords and were simply following orders.My father was just a young man then and it’s difficult to say how accurate his version of events is, butI have talked to several otherveterans and they all tell a similar story, so I believe it is true enough. They say the lord of Sainna was a greedy man whose holdings encompassed a great stretch of sea coast, including several important harbors. In Shaftal, the harbors are important to the fisherfolk who ride the high tides over the rocks that will wreck their ships at lower tides; in the harbors the fishing boats can safely unload and can take shelter from the storms that make navigation so hazardous. But in Sainna, the harbors were big and deep, accessible at any tide, with long docks that served ships two or three times the size of the largest Shaftali fishing boat. These harbors were places that people went to make their fortunes, young people hoping to sign on as sailors, merchants with money to invest, hoping to sell a boatload of something to another country at a profit, and the Lord of Sainna himself, who collected inordinate shipping taxes and regularly punished his land bound neighbors by refusing to let them travel to the coast or to use his harbors. So the day came that three of the neigh‘ boring warlords banded together against him, having agreed in advance that they each would get one of Sainna’s ports and a corridor to the sea. Their Carolin soldiers were no better fighters than those of Sainna, but the numbers were overwhelming, and they literally drove the army of Sainna into the sea. Eventually, the refugees reached Shaftal, far to the north, after a hazardous crossing of an unfriendly sea that sometimes is covered with floating ice mountains.

My father was eighteen, more than old enough to fight, a marksman of some renown already, but who was, he used to tell me, of no use at all in that last, chaotic battle where it was all hand‑to‑hand fighting and there was no time for loading pistols. He survived unscathed by simple luck and can scarcely remember his escape, he was so bewildered and exhausted with fighting. He had four close friends of his own age, and by the time he was climbing the ladder to board a commandeered ship, all of his friends had disappeared and he never saw them again, nor did he know what had become of them. Of all the griefs he bore in his short life– for he was dead at thirty‑five– it was the loss of those friends that weighed most heavily on him, for though there are many criticisms my father’s people justly deserve, it can’t be said that they aren’t loyal to their friends.

My father drew a map once, of that faraway land he hailed from. He could not read or write, but he remembered where the major rivers and boundaries lay, and where an army on the move might easily travel, and what lord ruled what territory. He had studied that map as a boy, for like all Carolins, his life depended upon knowing where he was and where he was going. Still, he might leave on a journey through a friendly neighbor’s territory and have the friend turn enemy before the journey’s end, and there was nothing he could do to save his life then.

Lately, travel in Shaftal has also gotten hazardous, for there are bandits and hostile farmholds where before they were unheard of. Still, it is difficult for a Shaftal‑born person to imagine what my father’s homeland was like: I have caught glimpses of it in my dreams, an easy, sunny place of gentle winds and fertile soil, crisscrossed by guarded boundaries and walls to keep one lord from encroaching on another’s territory. The soil is rich because of all the blood that’s been spilled in defense or attack, and some of the slights over which these lords still battle are centuries old.I askedmy father once to explain it tome, why the people all are willing to die over some high lord’s whim, and my father was angry with me thatI did not instinctively understand the requirements of asoldier’s honor.

To understand the Carolins– the Sainnites, as they are called here–it is necessaryto understand what they meanby honor. To discipline oneself to accept and fulfill one’s station and to do it with pride, that is honor. To do as commanded without question or hesitation, that is honor. To want with all your heart and soul for your people, whoever they are, to gain ascendancy at any cost, that is honor. To dishonor oneself, then, is to question tradition, to think for oneself, to desire differently from one’s father or mother. These are the things a Carolin soldier will never do, or at hast will not admit to.

I am,by Carolin standards, a dishonorable man. I suppose I should disclose this fact early, so that you might slam this book shut in disgust if that is your bent, and not waste further time on it. I am writing this book that you might understand the tragedy ofmy father’s people, how their honor has brought them to the point of extinction in this land they once thought their refuge. Andyet I am writing inmy mother’s tongue, Shaftalese, because it is the Shaftali people who most need to learn from this history. The worst thing they have done to you, who are my mother’speople, was not to destroy your government, take your food andchildren, deny your traditions, or outlaw your greatest powers. The worst thing they have done is to replace your version of honor with theirs. They are making you, the Shaftal people, into Carolins. So when you read this book, read it not as a history of the enemy, but as a history of your own future: what will happen to Shaftal when the Carolins are extinct, but live on in you and your children. Rather than defeat the enemies, you must change them– or else, someday, their story will be your story.

The text continued, but Garland fell asleep. When he awoke to rising daylight, Emil and Medric were still huddled together in the bed with him, with pages of the manuscript scattered about. They seemed to be arguing their way through it, word by word, and inexplicably enjoying themselves so much that it had not occurred to them to go to sleep. Garland stumbled downstairs to light the ovens and knead the bread dough. His hands knew their work, and he shaped his loaves in a daze of sleepy satisfaction.

Karis appeared and went outside with the scrap bucket, and soon Garland could hear the ringing of her ax. Then Medric poked his head in the kitchen door and asked, “Did you tell her?”

“Tell who what?”

“Very good.” Medric disappeared, and Garland heard him go out the front door. “Karis!” he called. “Karis, Karis, Karis!”

The ax fell silent. Garland left his loaves to rise and his ovens to heat, put on his coat, and took another coat from the hook for Medric. Outside, the ravens fought over the scraps that Karis had spilled across the snow. The ax, driven into the stump, quivered in the cold glare of the sun. Karis and Medric sat together at the top of the porch steps. Her hair stuck out stiffly below her cap; her eyes were as blue and crisp as the sky. Garland put Medric’s coat on him.

“I did wonder what we were hauling a printing press around for,” Karis said to Medric. “But does anyone know how to use it? I doubt it.”

“Oh, you’re as bad as Emil,” Medric said. “It doesn’t matter,Karis. It’s just a machine.You’ll figure it out.”

“Not necessarily. I never learned to cook or sew.”

“Your hands are too big, and you just didn’t like the idea. But you like the idea of printing a book, don’t you?”

She looked at him askance. “I think you’d better get J’han to mix you a potion.”

Leaning on the wall nearby, Garland began to laugh helplessly. He muffled his face in his collar.

“You think,” Karis added, “that we can typeset, print, and bind five hundred books.”

“Emil knows bookbinding.”

“But the typesetting, Medric! It takes years of training!”

“It only has to be readable, though. And we have to do it.”

“Oh, well, if we haveto … ,” she said sarcastically.

“Good!” Apparently having become aware of the cold, Medric huddled, grinning, in his coat. “Emil and J’han between them must know practically everyone worth knowing in Shaftal. We’ll get the books to their friends, and they’ll give them to their friends …”

“We?” said Karis. “How, exactly? In dead of winter? You aremad.”

He nodded so enthusiastically that his neck appeared pliable as a noodle. Karis gazed at him with fond exasperation. “Tell me, master seer,” she said, “We need sledges to move the books, but how can I build sledges without any wood?”

He gestured expansively at the nearby trees.

“Green wood will be too heavy.”

“Well, you’ll think of something.” He yawned so abruptly and prodigiously that Garland yawned with him in sympathy.

“And what of Long Night?” she asked.

Medric looked for a moment like he didn’t know what she was talking about. “I can’t see that far,” he finally confessed. “Too many possibilities, too much unknown. If I knew that Zanja knows she is alive … or if I knew what the creature in her skin is doing … or if I knew anything about her, really …” He seemed, then, suddenly human: crestfallen, his fierce enthusiasm burnt to ashes, his wild certainties revealed as mere guesswork.

“Is it time to send a raven to Watfield?”

“No, no, I think not. Not yet. Restrain yourself.”

“You’re hardly the one to lecture me about restraint!”

“Hardly,” he said agreeably. “By the lands, I am exhausted. I don’t even know why. I’m going to bed now.”

When he was gone, Karis glanced at Garland. “He doesn’t know why he’s tired? One conversation with him and I’m exhausted.”

“You just need some breakfast.” Garland’s face, stiff with cold, felt as if it would crack.

“Will you cook eggs? Should I go down the hill and get us some?”

Garland squatted with his back against the house’s sturdy stone side. “The G’deon of Shaftal wants to walk two miles in the snow to fetch her cook some eggs?”

“Yes.” She stretched her long legs, and her feet reached to the bottom step. “I have no patience, Garland. Zanja liked to comment on her lack of patience, though as far as anyone could see, her patience was supernatural. She could wait with such stillness that she practically disappeared. All the while, she was silently, motionlessly, unnoticeably–exploding.”

Garland couldn’t see Karis’s face. She was looking across the snow’s aching glare. But her big, dirty hands, belying the quiet, steady tone of her voice, had clenched into fists.

Garland said, “The two of you were a bit alike, I guess.”

Karis looked at him. “Let me fetch some eggs. It’ll be another hour in which I won’t go mad. I can stretch it out to two hours, probably, by chatting with the farmers about their livestock. When I get home, you’ll feed me a lot of good food, and only then will I have to figure out what to do with the rest of the day. Maybe I’ll be lucky enough that someone will break something, so I can fix it.” She sighed. “The G’deon of Shaftal?” she said belatedly.

“There’s a lot I don’t understand about that. But these learned people insist that’s what you are.”

Karis said dryly, “I’ve heard that rumor too. But I never gave it much credence. Dowe need eggs?”

“I’m afraid not.”

“A kind man would have lied.”

“One never knows when a Truthken might be listening.”

She tilted her head back to look at him. The corners of her eyes were crinkled with squinting into the sun. “You mustn’t like us, Garland. It’s terribly dangerous. We’ll catch you up in some mad scheme. We’ll make you pack up your pots and abandon that sweet oven, in dead of winter, to trudge about in the teeth of various snowstorms, trying to convince a bunch of bored farmers to read a seditious book.”

“Oh, I don’t mind.” Garland looked at her sun‑brilliant eyes, her weathered skin, the twisted mess of her hair. “To have my own kitchen used to be my life’s ambition,” he added in some amazement. “It was not too long ago.”

“Oh, for pity’s sake. What has that crazy seer done to you?”

Garland tried to think of an answer. He did not think Medric was even to blame.

Karis continued, with an agitation that seemed altogether unfeigned, “We come to you with our weary spirits, our broken hearts, our extremely baffled minds, and you make us biscuits, sausage rolls, jam buns, poached eggs with that amazing sauce, seed cakes, roast fowl varnished with that delicious shiny stuff–”

“Raspberry jam glaze.”

“I walk into your realm, and you hand me something to eat. Whatever it is tastes so good that my fears and worries drop dead on the spot. I sit there with my mouth full, knowing nothing but how good it is. It isn’t food,Garland. It’s sanity.”

Garland picked flakes of dried dough off his hands. He felt quite speechless.

“Don’t change,” she said.

“I’ll stop cooking for you when you stop needing to eat. And I don’t need a kitchen.”

“Is that a promise? I’ll hold you to it.” She was laughing. She had no idea what she had just given him.

Garland managed to say after a while, “Can you explain something?”

“Explaining things, that’s what Emil does.”

“But I have trouble understanding him, he uses so many words.”

She glanced back at him. “He does that to entertain Medric. Words are as good as sex to those two.”

“Oh,” Garland said. Then, as comprehension belatedly came to him, he exclaimed, “Oh!”

She was grinning. “But Emil can be perfectly plain spoken; just ask him. What do you want me to explain? You understand I’ll do it badly?”

“Why is it so important that you don’t take any action, if inaction is driving you mad?”

Garland began to wish he hadn’t asked, after a while. He could see that Karis’s light spirits had gotten heavy, and she was squinting across the yard again, as though she could see through the woods, down the mountain, across the rough landscape of that rocky land, all the way to Watfield. And perhaps, he realized suddenly, that was precisely what she wasdoing. It was a dazzling, unnerving possibility. She said at last, “Imagine you’ve got a tray of food balanced on one hand. And you need to add something really heavy to the tray.”

“A steamed pudding?”

“Yes, a steamed pudding. The only place you can safely put that pudding is in the middle of the tray, right above your hand. If you get it even slightly wrong, the entire meal goes to the floor.”

Garland could almost see it: the shattered plates, the splattered gravy, the flying peas, the dismayed cook, the ravenous diners startled by the disaster. “I’d be very careful where I put that pudding,” he said.