Jack Vance by To Live Forever

Author:To Live Forever
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub, pdf
Published: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

XI

The air cab set Waylock down on a plat crowded with private fliers, glossy toys which only Amaranth and glarks could find time to enjoy. A broad dull path, like a strip of black carpet, led to the hall. Waylock stepped upon the path; microscopic fibers, vibrating too rapidly to be felt, slid him up the slope. He was carried through a gold and glass portal, into a vestibule. A poster read:

TONIGHT THE AQUEFACTS

of REINHOLD BIEBURSSON

A large, languid woman sat at a small table, where a card read: Donation gratefully accepted. The woman appeared bored, and crocheted an intricate ribbon from metallic thread. Waylock put a florin on the table; she said,

“Thank you” in a hoarse voice without breaking the rhythm of her work.

Waylock stepped through portieres of wine-colored velvet into the reception hall.

The aquefacts of Reinhold Biebursson, intricate constructions of congealed water, occupied pedestals around the walls. On cursory inspection, Waylock found them strange and bleak, and turned his attention to the guests.

There were two hundred persons present. They stood in groups making conversation, or circulated past the glistening aquefacts. Reinhold Biebursson himself stood near the door, a great gaunt man seven feet tall. He seemed not so much the guest of honor as a martyr reconciled to suffering. This exhibition must have represented something to him—triumph, vindication, perhaps only a financial transaction—but for all the expression on his face, Biebursson might have been walking in solitude through a lonely forest. Only when someone spoke directly to him did he lower his eyes from their brooding search of the air, and then his expression became attentive and kind.

The Jacynth stood across the hall conversing with a young woman in a dramatic gray-green leotard. She wore a sheath of a gown the exact color of her hair, which tonight was dressed in the style of the Aquitani street-dancers, combed straight up into the shape of a candle flame. Her eyes brushed Waylock as he came through the portieres, but passed on with no glint of recognition.

Waylock drifted with the slow stream of people around the room. The Jacynth took no heed of him, but maintained her watch on the door. Her companion, a small alluringly shaped woman, seemed to share her vigilance. Her face, piquant, narrow at the jaw, wide at the cheekbones, with great dark eyes and a tousle of dark hair, awoke a sense of vague familiarity in Waylock; somewhere he had seen this face.

He passed behind the two, and paused, so close that fragments of their conversation came to his ears.

“Will he come, will he come?” The Jacynth asked in a petulant staccato.

“Of course,” the dark-haired girl replied. “The ridiculous creature dotes on me.”

Waylock raised his eyebrows. The watch, then, was not for him. He felt a bit deflated.

The Jacynth laughed nervously. “Even to the extent of—¦ well, even to this extent?”

“Vincent would distribute uplift pamphlets among the Nomads if I so ordered.… Here he is now.”

Waylock followed their gaze to the man who had just entered the room.

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