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“Sure, General. You can skip all that.”
“I have never known Man. Therefore I saw the face of the goddess exactly as I see yours. More clearly, because her face was very bright. I heard each word she uttered, and can repeat them verbatim, as I said. When I have known Man…”
The guilty words had slipped out; she hurried on, conscious that her cheeks were reddening. “I shall no longer be able to see Echidna. No more than your friend could. In the event that I know Man — I mean, have relations with a — with a husband. My husband. Then I won’t be able to repeat the words of the gods any more than you could.”
“That was the thing I was wanting to talk to you about.”
“The words of the goddess? She said—”
Spider waved Echidna’s words aside. “You gettin’ married and knowin’ a man, like you said. I got to tell you.”
Her hand closed about the needler in her pocket. “Do you mean yourself, Spider? No. Not willingly.”
He shook his head. “Bison. I’m fly, see? I can tell from how you talk about him. It got you worried when I said I got culls you think’s yours. You were scared Bison was one.”
“Certainly not!” Maytera Mint took three deep breaths and relaxed her hold on the needler. “I suppose I was, a little.”
“Yeah, I know. You kept tellin’ yourself it couldn’t be like that, on account of stuff he’s said to you.”
She had taken a step backward; she found that her shoulders were pressed against the tu
“Yeah, I got you, General.” To her surprise, Spider leaned against the wall next to her, sparing her the embarrassment of his gaze. “How old are you?”
“That is none of your affair.” She made her voice as firm as she could.
“Maybe it is, and maybe it isn’t. How old’d you say I am?”
She shook her head. “Since I decline to confide my age to you, it would be completely inappropriate for me to speculate on yours.”
“I’m forty-eight, and that’s lily. I’d say you’re about thirty-three, thirty-four. If that’s queer I’m sorry, but you wouldn’t tell me.”
“Nor will I now.”
“I just want to say it goes awful fast. Life goes by awful fast. You think you know all about that now. The shag you do. I remember all kind of things that happened when I was a sprat.”
“I understand, Spider. I know precisely what you mean.”
“You just think you do. I’ve had maybe a hundred women. I wish I’d kept count, but I didn’t. There was only two I didn’t have to pay, and one was abram once you got to know her.”
“It’s quite normal for men to think women—” Maytera Mint sought for a diplomatic word. “Irrational. And for women to think men irrational as well.”
“Handin’ you the lily, I had to pay the other one, too. I didn’t give her the gelt, but she cost a shaggy lot more. More than she was worth.” Spider shot Maytera Mint a sidelong look. “I got something important to say, but I don’t know how to make you believe me.”
“Is it true, Spider?”
“Shag, yes! Every word.
“Then I will believe you, even if you don’t believe me about the gods. What is it?”
“This isn’t it. This’s what I should of said back there, see? There was a time when I might of got a woman like you, but that’s over. Over and done up, see? Just slipped away. Last year I met one I thought I might like and sort of shaved her a little, you know? And she shaved me back. Then she seen I was gettin’ to be serious, and she just froze up. She’d look at me, and her eyes kept sayin’ too old, too old. It goes so fast. I didn’t feel like I’d got old. I still don’t.”
For a half-minute or more, his silence filled the tu
“All right, about this buck Bison.”
Maytera Mint forced herself to nod.
“I’m goin’ to die. Probably it won’t be very long at all. Back there where we bury, I kept hopin’ they’d shoot me and I’d get to say it before I went cold, ’cause then you’d believe me. But they don’t shoot like that. The way my culls got it, you’re chilled straight off, so I got to say it right here. He was one of mine, see? Bison was. A dimber hand.”
She could not be certain she had spoken; perhaps not.
“He was supposed to check in every night. I’d meet him, see, in this certain place. But he only come the first time, the first night.”
It was possible to breathe again.
“So I sent somebody. I sent this cully we’re fetchin’, Sewellel. Bison, he told him he was out. He wouldn’t tell you anything about us, but he wouldn’t tell us anything about you, neither. That’s the lily, General. That’s how it was. I don’t blame you if you don’t believe it, and in your shoes maybe I wouldn’t. But I’m goin’ today and know it, and I’d like you to cap for me when I’m cold.”
“Pray for your spirit.” She was still trying to wrap her understanding about the fact.
“Yeah. So it’s lily. I told you I wouldn’t tell you who mine was, the ones you thought was yours. But he’s not mine any more. That’s what I’m tellin’ you.”
She found herself entering the guardroom again, with no memory of having resumed their walk. “Shall I go back and cut off a piece of synthetic?” she asked. “I forgot entirely that we’d need another one. If you carry Sewellel on your shoulders, you’ll have blood all over you.”
“I got it right here,” Spider told her. He held it up.
“But I have your knife. You gave me that so…”
“I used Guan’s, ’fore I wrote for him.” Spider smiled, a small, sad smile heart-wrenchingly foreign to his coarse face. “It don’t really take three. It don’t even take two, see? I been down here by myself and buried a couple times, and that’s what I do, ’cause I start by findin’ the dead cull’s knife.”
“Yes,” she said. “Yes, I’m certain you must have been the only mourner that those men had, more than once.” She thrust her hands into her pockets, found his needler and her beads, and at last his knife. “Take it, please. I don’t want to bury you, Spider. I won’t. I want to save your life, and I’m going to try. I’m going to try very hard, and I’ll succeed.”
He shook his head, but she forced the rough clasp knife into his hand. “Close the door, please. I think it would be better if we didn’t startle His Eminence.
Striding purposefully now, she crossed the guardroom and entered the storeroom. “I should have gone in here before,” she told Spider over her shoulder. “I let His Eminence do it both times, and it was cowardly of me. This locker — I suppose that’s what you call it — with the sign of addition on it in red. Is this where the stretcher’s kept?”
Behind her, Spider said, “Yeah, that’s it.”
She turned, drawing his needler. “Raise both your hands, Spider. You are my prisoner.”
He stared at her, his eyes wide.
“He may be able to see us. I can’t be sure. Raise them! Hold them up before he kills you.”
As Spider lifted his hands, the front of the locker swung open; a soldier stepped out and saluted, his slug gun stiffly vertical, his steel heels clashing. Maytera Mint said, “You aren’t Sergeant Sand. What’s your name?”
“Private Schist, sir!”
“Thank you. There’s a dead man in the outer room. I take it you killed him?”
“That’s right, sir.”
“Take the synthetic this man’s holding and wrap him — the dead man out there, I mean. Wrap the dead man’s body in that. You can carry it for us.”
Schist saluted again.
Spider said, “You knew he was in there all the time.”
Maytera Mint shook her head, finding herself suddenly weak with relief. “I wish I were that… I don’t know what to call it. That godlike. People believe I am, but I’m not. I have to think and think.”
She paused to watch Schist through the doorway as he knelt beside Sewellel’s corpse. “And even then I ask Bison’s advice, and the captain’s. Often I find they’ve seen more deeply into the problem than I have. I suppose it’s useless to ask whether you were telling me the whole truth about Bison now. You can put down your hands, I think.”