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Emotionlessly, Sirin said, "I didn't have any reasons. I've never had any reasons to do anything. Maybe other people have reasons. But when I look inside myself it's like there was an emptiness inside where something ought to be but isn't. Why? I don't know. Why not?"
The crocodile leered down at them both. An ironic sparkle glinted in one dull glass eye and a silent chuckle threatened to stretch his grin so wide all his gray cotton stuffing would fall out. Mastering herself, Jane wiped her eyes against her sleeve. "You can still take steps to protect yourself."
"I've already done everything. I even looked into buying an exemption, that's how desperate I was."
"You could—"
"But since I'm not going to, what would be the point?" Suddenly Sirin laughed, shook her hair, and said, "Not another word. Let's go hang out in the student center. We'll have a soda, play a few hands of cards, dish a little gossip. That would be fun. But with so little time left to me, I don't want to waste any of it just talking and talking and talking about this thing."
Jane bit her lip and nodded. Together they started down the stairs. The crocodile dwindled above them. She could feel its scornful regard shrink to a hot point source of emotion and then wink out.
"Sirin? What you said about an exemption. You mean I could buy my way out of the Teind?"
"Forget I said anything. It's more money than you've got anyway."
As it turned out, the money an exemption from the Teind would cost was exorbitant and then some. Jane stopped by Dr. Nemesis's office for information, though she doubted she could hack the cost. She had the brochure in her purse the afternoon when Ratsnickle came by to ask after the gloves.
He caught her as she was leaving her dissection lab. The metal door clicked softly shut behind her, closing away the chill rows of cadavers on chrome gurneys. The refrigerator rooms were at the bottom of an obscure cul-de-sac, and so late in the day there was very little traffic. The halls were quiet.
Ahead, where the corridor turned, Monkey wheeled her bike into view, blocking the way. Ratsnickle strolled alongside her.
Jane stopped.
Leaving Monkey behind, Ratsnickle approached Jane. She waited, ready for anything he might have to say.
"Have you heard?" he asked. "Sirin's on the bane."
"What? I don't believe you." Flustered, because it fit so well, Jane said, "She wouldn't. Sirin's not like that."
A shrug. "Believe what you will." Down the hall, Monkey leaned against her bicycle, eyes two burning smudges of hatred. "You and I have things to talk about."
"I'm not going to steal for you. Not now, not again, not ever."
"There are ways and ways to make us even."
"I don't owe you a thing."
"Oh?" Ratsnickle's eyebrows rose. He held out his palm. "Give me the faun-skin gloves and I'll call it quits. I'll walk out of your life and you'll never see me again."
Jane said nothing. There was nothing she could say.
Ratsnickle glanced over his shoulder to determine that nobody but she and Monkey were about. Then slowly he unbuttoned his trousers in what he obviously thought a seductive ma
Jane felt an involuntary thrill of revulsion. Penises had never exactly impressed her as things of beauty, but Ratsnickle's was particularly ugly and faintly green as well, doubtless because his standards of cleanliness had allowed some mold or microscopic moss to establish itself there.
He watched her avidly, an electric grin splitting his face. Down below, his penis was hardening in small jerks, like some ludicrous rubber toy being inflated by a hand pump.
"Better put it away before it starts to draw flies," Jane said.
Ratsnickle's face twisted with anger. "You hypocrite! I was watching—you liked what you saw. You couldn't get enough of it. You wanted to go down on me right then and there." But he scooped it back into his trousers and rebuttoned them anyway.
"Fu
Ratsnickle drew himself up and for an instant she thought he was going to hit her. But instead he seized her hand in both of his and kissed her knuckles. "Touché, sweet lady. But one touch is not a duel, nor does a single skirmish determine the battle. We shall meet again on the field of combat—dearest enemy."
He swaggered away, without even looking back to see if Monkey would follow.
As soon as he was gone, Jane ducked into the nearest bathroom to wash her hands.
The bathroom was tiled and painted a glossy black. Graffiti were painstakingly carved into the paint. Several generations of angular runes were visible through successive coats, palimpsests of anger and flip obscenity. Curved mirrors leaned over the sinks, so that Jane had to stare up into a distorted image of herself to check on her makeup.
The bathroom door slammed. A ballooning and deflating Monkey swam toward her in the mirror.
Monkey was in a state, her face red and her fists clenched. Her hair was a mess. "You bitch! You cat! You get your fucking claws out of my sweetie!"
"You can have him. I don't want any part of him." Jane went on washing her hands. "Goddess knows, the two of you deserve each other."
"Cute. Very cute. I know your devious little ways." Monkey began to cry. "I've done things for him that you never would. Not in a million years. I degraded myself for him."
Jane finished rinsing her hands. She cranked a paper towel from the dispenser. "Well, good for you."
"Don't give me any of your lip. Don't you fucking dare. I'm warning you." Suddenly Monkey staggered and lurched. She grabbed the edge of the sink to steady herself.
"Are you okay?" Jane asked cautiously.
"I thought for a second I was having a—" Monkey shook her head. It was obvious she'd lost the thread of what she was saying. She shivered convulsively. Then from a jacket pocket she removed a tissue-wrapped bundle. "Look at this." She peeled away the tissues to reveal a blown-glass unicorn. She set it down on the cosmetics shelf. "Ratsnickle bought me this on our first date." The sad little trinket caught the light and made it dance. "What did he ever buy for you?"
"Nothing."
"Damn straight, nothing!" Triumphantly, Monkey picked up the unicorn.
It shattered in her hand.
Jane stepped back, startled. Monkey stood as if transfixed, arm extended. Blood ran down her fingertips and dripped to the floor. "That's one small step for man," she said, "one giant leap for—" She gagged, and a spume of fish eyes poured from her mouth. They spilled down the front of her blouse.
"Monkey?"
"The surface is fine and powdery, it adheres in fine layers, like powdered charcoal, to the soles and sides of my foot." The voice that came from Monkey's mouth was unlike anything Jane had ever heard, harsh and broken by static, as if she were speaking from somewhere hundreds of thousands of miles away. "I can see the footprints of my boots and the treads in the fine, sandy particles."
With the onset of the awen her pupils had clenched, sucking in the irises, and disappeared, leaving her eyes a hard milky white. She did not resist when Jane, mastering her horror, guided her to a sink and ran cold water over her bleeding hand. "It's a very soft surface," she said. There was a clean handkerchief in Jane's purse; she used it to bandage up Monkey's palm, hoping there weren't any slivers of glass in the cuts. "But here and there, where I probe with the contingency sample collector, I run into very hard surface."
"Hard surface," Jane repeated. She moistened a paper towel and wiped the vomit from the corners of Monkey's mouth. A toilet flushed and a rusalka emerged from a stall. She gave the two of them an odd look and left without washing her hands. Jane realized that she had to decide whether to leave her roommate here for the night or not. She started for the door, came back to the small figure slumped on the floor, started for the door again. She could not leave. Finally she sighed. "I'm taking you home, Monkey." Her roommate nodded dreamily. "This certainly has to be the most historic phone call ever made."