The Watched by Christopher Priest

Author:Christopher Priest
Language: eng
Format: mobi
Published: 2011-07-21T14:20:29+00:00

VII

Parren and his wife stayed at the house for the rest of the day.

Ordier was a passive listener to most of the conversation, feeling excluded from it. He wished he could involve himself in Jenessa’s work to the same degree that Luovi seemed to be involved with Parren, but whenever he ventured an opinion or an idea into the discussion of the Qataari, he was either ignored or tacitly dismissed. The result was that while Jacj Parren outlined his elaborate scheme—there was an aircraft to be hired, and a place found to erect the scintilla

monitoring and decoding

equipment—Ordier fell into an introspective mood, and grew increasingly preoccupied with his secret one-sided relationship with the Qataari girl.

From the summit of the ridge it had been impossible to see whether there was a ritual taking place, and in any event the fact that he and Parren had been noticed would have put an immediate halt to it, but just the sight of the placid, colorful valley had been enough to remind him of the girl, and the ambiguity of the part she took in the ritual.

And there was the uncertainty of what Jenessa and Luovi had seen or done while they were in the folly.

Guilt and curiosity, the conflicting motives of the voyeur, were rising in Ordier again.

Shortly before sunset, Parren suddenly announced that he and Luovi had another appointment in the evening, and Jenessa offered to drive them back to Tumo Town. Ordier, uttering the platitudes of host to departing guests, saw this as a brief chance to satisfy his curiosity. He walked down with the others to Jenessa’s car, and watched as they drove away. The sun was already behind the Tumoit Mountains, and the distant town was glittering with lights.

When the car was out of sight, Ordier hurried back to the house, collected his binoculars, and set off for the folly.

As Jenessa had said, the padlock on the gate was open; he must have forgotten to close it the last time he left the folly. As he went through he made sure of locking it, as usual, on the inside.

Twilight on Tumo was short, a combination of the latitude and the western mountain heights, and as Ordier went up the slope towards the folly wall it was difficult to see his way.

Once inside the hidden cell, Ordier wasted no time and put his eyes directly to the slit. Beyond, the valley was dark under the evening sky. He could see no one about; the alarm that their intrusion had caused seemed to have passed, for those Qataari in the valley during the day were nowhere about. The rose plantation was deserted, and the blooms moved to and fro in the breeze.

Unaccountably relieved, Ordier returned to the house. He was washing up the plates and cups when Jenessa returned. She was looking excited and beautiful, and she kissed Ordier when she came in.

“I’m going to work with Jacj!” she said. “He wants me to advise him. Isn’t that marvelous?”

“Advise him? How?”

“On the Qataari.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.