Page 69

"Glad to hear it," said the Prince. "Then tomorrow night we can discover what it is that we have in common, and what it is that concerns us in common."

"Exactly," she said.

It was over, done, finished. Dertu collected the little throwaway phone.

Now they only had to survive for the next eight to nine hours of darkness in this nest of human dwellings, with the car safely hidden in the garage, without being discovered by Rhoshamandes.

None of the others had spoken a word during this exchange, but Garekyn had been called away for a call of his own, and when he came back into the room, he looked deeply disturbed.

"The monster burned my house in London," he said. "That was less than an hour ago."

"Contemptible," said Kapetria. "But it does mean the monster has no idea where we are. Or he wouldn't be wasting his time with such gestures."

It will be fine, thought Derek. It will all work. We will be safe, thought Derek, because she is here now to think of everything.

Welf was the first to dispel the gloom.

"It's time for us to feast," he announced. He had cooked a roast for them earlier, and he was ready to serve it up with cold beer, which should not affect their senses too badly. Welf and Garekyn set the table in the dining room. Dertu went about checking the locks of the house, though what good that would ever do Derek did not know.

At last they sat down, and clasped hands and bowed their heads, and they were together again, breaking bread, for the first time since those ancient days and nights, and Derek found himself weeping. He was ashamed and wanted to leave the table, but Welf sat beside him, and comforted him, saying how sorry he was for all his early questions.

Kapetria was cutting Derek's food into small pieces as if he were a child, and Dertu was devouring everything in sight, carrots, potatoes, bright red slices of tomato in olive oil with garlic, hot bread dripping with butter, and slabs of pink meat.

They began to talk, asking about how Dertu had been born, wanting to know all the details, even the smallest, and soon they were going over the whole story in the ancient language. Dertu was struggling to describe what he didn't know--how he had developed from the severed arm and precisely how he had come to consciousness. Derek tried to describe the little face on the palm of the hand and the mouth sucking at his nipple, and the heat in his chest, but he remembered mostly the shock and the pain, and then opening his eyes eventually to see Dertu standing there.

Memories swept over Derek as the others talked, of that first night on Earth when they had feasted with the savages. The drums, the reed pipes, and the gentle face of the headman.

And another memory came to him unbidden and fresh, of the Festival of Meats in Atalantaya, when the whole city was allowed to feast on lamb and fowl before returning to its regular diet of fruit and fish and vegetables. Six times a year came the Festival of Meats.

He remembered standing in their apartment gazing down on the streets, at all those lighted tables in courtyards and little parks and rear gardens, on all those balconies, with so many happy people gathered in the candlelight to enjoy the Pleasure of Meat, and how much he had enjoyed it when they had gathered over their meal on the rooftop, where they could see out over countless other rooftops.

Atalantaya had seemed too beautiful to be described in words that night, and through the crystal-clear dome he had seen the stars spread out over the sky in their eternal patterns, and the bright burning light of Bravenna up there, Bravenna, the satellite or the planet of the Parents.

"I feel they are looking at us right now," Derek had said.

"But they can't see us here because of the dome," Kapetria had reminded him. "And surely they are becoming anxious. We've been in Atalantaya a month."

All had fallen silent. Derek remembered the taste of the ice-cold beer. He remembered the juices of the lamb from the slices on the plate, such a pretty plate, translucent as was so much else. He had put his finger in the juices from the lamb and licked his finger. He could no longer remember the name of the red fruit on his plate, the fruit with all the tiny seeds.

Welf and Kapetria had spoken often of Bravenna, of the Parents in their rooms with the talking walls, walls filled with moving pictures of the jungles of Earth and the savages, the savages making love, the savages hunting, the savages feasting....

"Are you sure they can't see us?" he'd asked then as he'd gazed up into the sky as if the dome weren't even there.

"Yes, I'm sure," said Kapetria. "The Parents told us they cannot see through the dome."

The shadow of their purpose had fallen over them. They had continued to eat, to feast, to drink the delicious cold beer that was brewed in Atalantaya, and they had been slightly drunk when the moon was at its highest. And all of them, look at them, the mammalian humans, how innocent they are, thought Derek, all of them all around us in these mighty towers and in the old Mud City and the old Wooden City, dining together, happy together with no thought of what it meant, that bright star in the sky!

"Oh, I wish," he'd said. "I so wish we had another purpose."

No one had answered, but Kapetria had been smiling at him in her loving way.

And now he was in a country called France on a continent called Europe again, and they were all together and he wondered did they still have the power--? You must lock arms! You must stand together, with arms locked....And what about Dertu? Bright new Dertu? And they were still talking about how it had happened, the slice of the ax, the fallen arm, the fingers crawling....

Finally Kapetria said, "I want Derek to sleep, to be restored. He's hollow eyed and weak from his ordeals."

She rose from the table and took Derek by the hand. "You come into the bedroom and sleep now," she said. "The rest of you, wait here for me. You wait as well, Dertu. You remain here."

He welcomed it, the quiet of the bedroom. Such a pretty house, but the French windows everywhere made him anxious; the black night pressing on the glass made him anxious. The sound of wind moving in the black trees made him anxious. He wanted to walk outside, see the stars, see the stars he hadn't seen in all those long years in that basement tomb under Budapest, but he was too sleepy, and when Kapetria helped him to remove his boots and lie down, he plumped the pillow under his head and fell asleep.