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Without pausing in his lecture, he teased a limp cigarette from a softpack in his shirt pocket, straightened it between two fingers, stuck it in the corner of his mouth, and began patting down his pockets in search of a match.
She sighed to herself. Through the window the horizon was ragged with a wintery fringe of trees. She thought of Ratsnickle and the mall with yearning.
But she had made promises to 7332. Shelter, protection, and the food that through technological subterfuge he caused to be delivered twice weekly to the door were not free. The dragon needed an engineer if he were ever to be restored to full power; in her present ignorant state, she was useless to him. As Jane saw it, it was a fair deal, a conspiracy of equal needs. Tutoring sessions with the pale man were part of the price she had agreed to pay.
"Excuse me," she said hesitantly, "but what effect do these minor planets have on our behavior and fortunes? I mean, you know, astrological influence?"
He looked at her. "None."
"None at all?"
"No."
"But if the planets affect our fortunes—" She stumbled to a stop at the dispassionately scornful look on the pale man's face, the slow way he shook his head. "Surely you'll agree that the planets order and control our destinies?"
"They do not."
"Not at all?"
"No."
"Then what does? Control our destinies, I mean."
"The only external forces that have any influence on us are those we can see every day: the smile, the frown, the fist, the brick wall. What you call 'destiny' is merely a semantic fallacy, the attribution of purpose to blind causality. Insofar as any of us are compelled to resist the flow of random events, we are driven solely by internal drives and forces."
Jane seized on this last. "Then what you're saying is that our fate lies within us, right?"
He shook his head. "If so, it must be extremely small and impossibly distant. I would not suggest you put any reliance in such an insignificant entity."
An icy, nihilistic void seemed to unfold itself around Jane, stretching to infinity in all directions at once, a perfect sphere encompassing all the universe. It seemed unimaginable, this existence the pale man presented her with, unregulated, sourceless, without purpose or direction. And yet, he was so obviously beyond illusion, solace, or desire, she could not imagine him lying to her. Why would he bother? "But everyone I know believes in planetary influences."
"Yes. They do."
She waited, but he did not elaborate. "In introductory astrology they told us that each person has a tutelary star and that each star has its own mineral, color, and musical tone, and a plant as well that is a specific for the disease that is caused by that star's occultation."
"All untrue. The stars do not concern themselves in the least with us. Our total extinction would mean nothing to them."
"But why?" Jane cried. "If it's not true, why would they teach it to us?"
A dry fingertip tapped the page not impatiently but pedagogically. "All courses require textbooks, charts, and teaching aids. By the time the information codified as astrology was discredited and became obsolete, it had a constituency. Certain… personages benefit from the supply contracts."
The smell of chalk dust was harsh in Jane's nostrils, a statistical effluvium of dead molecules suspended in the still air and nothing more. She could taste it in her mouth. "But if what you're saying is so, then it's all meaningless. Isn't it? I mean, nothing means anything at all then, does it?"
"Acu tetigisti" the pale man said in his affectless voice. "You have touched it with a needle."
She shivered, as if a rat had run over her grave. Maybe it was just that the chance evocation of Rooster's true name brought back memories she did not want. But deep inside something small and true as a bell told Jane that it wasn't like that at all.
Something awful had just happened, and she had no idea what.
The mall was everything Jane had imagined it to be, and more. It rose from a gracefully bulldozed hilltop on white marble pillars, and was roofed over by a high, grassy dome. She passed nervously through a lot in which chrome horses snorted, pawed the tarmac, leaked oil. "Come on," Ratsnickle said disgustedly. "Don't be such a pussy." He led her through the gates of ivory at the main entrance.
Within, time did not exist.
Soft music filled the air, and subtly arrayed lights pleased the eye with an endless variety of shades and textures, rendering shadows edgeless, gleaming from brass bedsteads and joyously leaping away from the mirror balls that spun among the ba
The air smelled of lilies, leather, and chocolate chip cookies.
"Don't dawdle, okay?" Ratsnickle said.
The mall contained a hundred perfect shops, each one a jewel box of treasures. Sound systems, cloth-of-gold gowns, emerald shoes: row upon row of identical riches filled the racks, wealth multiplied and repeated upon itself in such profusion the mind could not contain it. Standing in front of Der Zauberberg, her reflection in the plate glass window superimposed itself upon cut crystal goblets, ashtrays, decanters, paperweights, and bowls, each diamond-sharp facet throwing off flecks of rainbow, while behind her floated the rippled ghosts of nutmeg trees, fountains, and escalators. Jane's head swam for the sweet richness of it all.
Dazedly, she let Ratsnickle lead her into a boutique. It was called Eulenspiegel's.
"Stop gawking," he said testily. "Here." He yanked at her trousers and something fell heavily to the bottom of her pocket. "Look natural."
"What?" She froze and in a whisper asked, "What is it?"
"A wristwatch." Ratsnickle made a face. "Don't whisper like that, you'll draw attention to us."
Timidly, she let him lead her through several stores. Speaking in a perfectly normal voice, one that lapsed naturally into silence whenever someone drew too near, he lectured her on security procedures and the finer points of shoplifting. "Don't snatch any of the gold," he said before a jewelry store. "It's only for display; the real stuff is kept in a safe in the back. The crap in the windows is only good for a day. By the time you get it home, it'll have changed into dried leaves or a dead mouse. Pebbles maybe."
"Oh," she said.
Ratsnickle showed Jane where the antitheft charms were placed, in high unobtrusive corners of the shops, the ensorcelled mirrors through which a security ogre might be watching over the merchandise from a distance, the quickened silver brooches that would cry thief if removed from their cases. He certainly seemed to know his business.
She noticed, however, that he didn't hit Enchanté or Mother Holle Fashions or indeed any of the high-elven shops, but concentrated on the more proletarian and traffic-dense stores, places where their mere presence would not be enough to draw the baleful glare of security.
"Now it's your turn," he said.
"I couldn't!"
He ignored her. "That one right there—The Eildon Tree. Just be sure you don't touch any of those scarves in the back. They're protected. I felt it when we walked by; like a little electric shock." He gave her a shove. "I'll meetcha by the well."
Somehow, Jane found herself inside. She walked slowly between a rack of pushed-lime and cherry sweat suits and a countertop perfume display, then turned and carefully, wonderingly picked up a leaded-glass bottle of Merde du Temps from Ricci of Ys. It was a lovely thing, and fit perfectly in the palm of her hand.
"May I help you?" A hag materialized at her side, cheekbones aristocratically sharp, skin of a fashionably corpselike pallor. Her expression suggested that she rather doubted it.