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"I thought you'd go along. Be right there handy when questions start popping up."

"You thought wrong. I'm going home. I'm going to eat and sleep and not do anything else for about nine days. I'm allergic to the country. It takes me a long time to get over it. I'm just trying to do my civic duty here, anyway."

"You always were a bullshitter, Garrett. I'll let you know how it comes out."

I'd heard that before. He'd forget about me the second I left. The only reason he'd mentioned taking me along was to make me more eager to get out of there. He wanted to grab the benefits of this for Westman Block.

Damn, that was smart of me, being stupid enough to hire a messenger who'd get lost in the red-light district before he thought of doing anything else.

From the little I've heard about the Michorites and related cults, that's a rite of passage. They—the men—get one chance to sneak away and wallow in sin and depravity. Then they spend the rest of their lives keeping an eye on each other, every miserable man making sure nobody else has any fun ever again.

"In your hands," I said. "I hope you get more out of it than I did."

"Go on. Before I change my mind." He might, just to show me that he could, so I got.

The house was crowded, what with Singe, Kip, and the captive silver elves staying over. Singe offered to ease the crowding by moving into my room with me.

I begged off again. Kip and the elves ended up sleeping on the floor in the Dead Man's room, where he'd have the least trouble keeping them under control.

I'd really hoped that Singe's encounter with Rhafi unclothed would scare her off. It seemed to have whetted her curiosity instead.

The situation amused His Nibs immensely. He wasn't going to help me get out of it, either. I fell asleep in a household drenched in the miasma of his amusement.

53

Dean never gave the bitching a minute's rest but he did cook up breakfast enough for the whole wretched crowd.

The elf women joined in timidly. Dean tried them on everything in his arsenal. Tea they found acceptable. Honey seemed to be all right, in tea or straight from the pot. One nibbled a biscuit, also with honey aboard. Bacon revolted the two of them. The more obviously feminine member of the pair—the one who looked like she'd actually made it a few weeks into puberty—attacked the mustard once she discovered it. Dean scowled and muttered to himself. A lot of work goes into grinding seed and preparing the condiment. There's always a pot on the table, mainly because I don't much like mustard.

The other elf woman, the elder and senior woman—judging by wrinkles—seemed terrified, though no one even spoke to her. I got the feeling she'd never seen the i

Fear or no, she did appear to me immensely curious about everything.

Kip was a shuddering zombie, controlled by an increasingly exasperated Dead Man. Kip never stopped fighting him. Something was missing in that boy's makeup. I couldn't understand how he'd managed to stay alive this long.

Singe and I removed to the Dead Man's room as soon as I'd had enough to eat. She brought a platter along with her, loaded with seconds or thirds. Having no better idea what to do with herself, the slimmer elf woman tagged along. She wouldn't sit when I offered her my chair because that would leave me standing between her and the door. The other one stayed with Dean, exploring the wonders of the kitchen.

"So where do we stand, Old Bones? Have we learned anything?"

Perhaps. At the first instance, probably that we should not have allowed emotion to sweep us away and get us involved in this. As I see it now, we have stormed into the middle of something that was none of our business. We have done nothing but trail chaos and dismay wherever we have gone.

"What do you mean, ‘we,' Big Daddy Homely? You can't really talk about someone else in the royal plural, can you?"

Do not become tedious. I am struggling to translate what little recognizable material I find in the thin creature's mind. This is truly an alien intelligence, Garrett. I have encountered nothing like it in all my years. Nor have I ever heard of such creatures... Unless... There may have been similar folk here when I was a child. Visitors, they were called then. They were all murdered for their secrets. Inasmuch as they did not reveal anything they were soon forgotten.



I am having difficulty communicating not just because of what you would call a language barrier but also because of her fear. She is awash in fear, not just of us, here, whom she finds terrifying enough, but of being cut off from her own people. She is completely unma

"And that would be?"

I do not know. That is in a sealed part of her mind.

"What about the other one?"

She is frightened, too. And her mind is more closed. But behind her fear there is a hint of her seeing this personal disaster as a potential opportunity for... I do not know what. Something compulsive. Possibly obsessive. Possibly something wicked. Worms of temptation have begun to awaken way down in the black, mucky deeps...

I hate it when he meanders off on a free association, poetic ramble. I guess because I can't ever figure out what the hell he's babbling about. "What about Kip? Did you get anything new out of him?"

Yes. Once I became aware that there was something that should be there. But it is not much. And I do not know if we can justify hunting down Lastyr and Noodiss.

"Of course we can." But I couldn't think of any reasonable argument in favor of that. "Is there any chance some of those elves might've put a compulsion into my head somewhere along the way? Like one of those times when I was knocked out?"

At the moment I am unable to investigate. All of my mental capacity is occupied by the boy and these foreign women.

"They definitely are both women, then."

By birth. You unclothed them. You saw.

"I didn't see much." But what I had seen had been curiously interesting. "The one in the kitchen at least raised a crop of lemons."

Many human women are not as voluptuous as those in the range you usually find interesting. This one's primary sexual characteristics are somewhat atrophied. I would expect that to be true of the others, as well.

"I did notice that." In the women it all added up to a sort of virginal i

Singe hissed at me. I think it was supposed to be laughter.

I suspect that this is not an individual aberration. I suspect that we would find the males even more atrophied.

"Weird." I shuddered. "The ones I stripped down out there definitely weren't built to boogie. Maybe I ought to introduce this old gal to Morley."

The pixies out front launched one of their racket shows, which wakened the Goddamned Parrot.

She may be beyond seduction, Garrett. They may have tried to breed the sexual impulse out of themselves. The same madness has been tried by countless cults in our part of the world in a shortsighted effort to shove all those distractions aside.

"How the hell do they get little elves, then?"

Exactly. No such cult lasts more than a generation. Per haps the silver elves have found a way around that limitation. Possibly they have a separate breeder caste. I do not know. I do know that no living creature I have ever encountered, save the rare mutant, has lacked desire, however distorted the core impulse might have become because of stresses upon the individual. I would suspect them to be present in these elves. But buried deep.