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"Right," he said "It&039;d have to be that long for whoever plants it in the Parthian cain
"Second question Is there a locksmith in the house?"
For all Bruce&039;s easiness, he atching us like a golden eagle and he caught Beau&039;s and Maud&039;s affire theood Under certain circuo to work on the chest But before we consider that, there&039;s Question Three: Is anyone here an atomics technician?"
That one took a little conversation to straighten out, Illy having to explain that, yes, the Early Lunans had atomic power - hadn&039;t they blasted the life off their planet with it and hastly craters? - but no, he wasn&039;t a technician exactly, he was a "thinger" (I thought at first his squeakbox was lisping); as a thinger? - well, a thinger was sos in a way that was truly impossible to describe, but no, you couldn&039;t possibly thing atomics; the idea was quite ridiculous, so he couldn&039;t be an atoer; the term orse than a contradiction, well, really! - while Sevensee, frorunted to the effect that his culture didn&039;t rightly use any kind qf power, but just sort ofspacetirne around, "or think em roun ef we hafta Can&039;t think em in the Void, tho, wus luck Hafta have - I dunno wut Dun havvit anyhow"
"So we don&039;t have an A-tech," Bruce suerous, to tamper with the chest We wouldn&039;t knohat to do if we did get inside safely Onebefore we can jettison anything?"
Sid, looking a shade jealous, yet rateful for the way Bruce had calmed his chickens, started to explain, but Bruce didn&039;t see his audience, and as soon as Sid got to the word "rhythm," he pulled the ansay from him
"In brief, not until we can effectively tune in on the cosham That&039;s at least five hours - two mealtimes, as the Cretan officer put it," and he threw Kaby a quick soldierly sypt or elsewhere, there&039;s not a thing we can do about it for five hours All right then!"
His sht and he took a couple of steps up and down the bar, as if lasses sailed off and popped, but he didn&039;t seem to notice them and we hardly did either It was creepy the way he kept staring from one to another of us We had to look up Behind his face, with the straight golden hair flirting around it, was only the Void
"All right then," he repeated suddenly "We&039;re twelve Spiders and two Ghosts, and we&039;ve time for a bit of a talk, and we&039;re all in the sa the sa about I raised the subject a while back, but I was steaht! But now the gloves are off!"
Bruce ripped them out of his belt where they&039;d been tucked and slammed them down on the bar, to be kicked off the next time he paced back and forth, and it wasn&039;t funny
"Because," he went right on, "I&039;ve been getting a completely new picture of what this Spiders&039; war has been doing to each one of us Oh, it&039;s jolly good sport to slaed little party outside both of them when the operation&039;s over It&039;s sweet to know there&039;s no cranny of reality so narrow, no privacy so intih, that we can&039;t shoulder in Knowledge is a glaluttony or the passion of fighting and including all three, the ultireat to be Faust, even in a pack of other Fausts
"It&039;s sweet to jigger reality, to twist the whole course of a man&039;s life or a culture&039;s, to ink out his or its past and scribble in a new one, and be the only one to know and gloat over the changes - hah! killingthe sense of power It&039;s sweet to feel the Change Winds blowing through you and know the pasts that were and the past that is and the pasts that may be It&039;s sweet to wield the Atropos and cut a Zoer in the face and see the Resurrection-glow in it and Recruit a brother, welcome a newborn fellow Demon into our ranks and decide whether he&039;ll best fit as Soldier, Entertainer, or what
"Or he can&039;t stand Resurrection, it fries or freezes hiot to decide whether to return him to his lifeline and his Zorayer and horrider than they were before, or whether, if she&039;s got that tantalizing soirl - that&039;s sweet, too It&039;s even sweet to have Change Death poised over your neck, to know that the past isn&039;t the precious indestructible thing you&039;ve been taught it was, to know that there&039;s no certainty about the future either, whether there&039;ll even be one, to know that no part of reality is holy, that the cosmos itselfleft but nothing"
He threw out his ar all that, it&039;s doubly sweet to coh the Door into the Place and be out of the worst of the Change Winds and enjoy a well-earned Recuperation and share theabout, and work out all the fascinating feelings you&039;ve been accu back in the cosmos, layer by black layer, in the company of and with the help of the best bloody little band of fellow Fausts and Faustines going!
"Oh, it&039;s a sweet life, all right, but I&039; you - " and here his eyes stabbed us again, one by one, fast - "I&039; a completely new picture, as I said, of what my life was and what it could have been if there&039;d been changes of the sort that even we Demons can&039;thoe&039;ve all been responding to things just now, to the news of Saint Petersburg and to what the Cretan officer told beautifully - only it wasn&039;t beautiful what she had to tell - andeach one of you, what&039;s happened to you?"
He stopped his pacing and stuck his thu to the wheels turning in at least eleven other heads - only I stopped o co up out of the dark on the turn and Mother and the Indiana Dunes and Jazz Li the Spider doctor had flicked into existence when I flopped as a nurse, because I can&039;t stand that to be done tothe old infallible Entertainers&039; gi topic there is - other people&039;s troubles
Offhand, Beau looked as if he had iven her heart to a Soldier; he was hugging them to himself very quiet
I didn&039;t stop for the two ETs - they&039;re too hard to figure - or for Doc; nobody can tell whether a fallen-down drunk&039;s at the black or bright end of his cycle; you just know it&039;s cycling
Maud ought to be suffering as ht out in a panic, which always hurts her because she&039;s plus three hundred years ht to be that much wiser, which she isn&039;t always - not to h her ho teen-age most of the time She&039;d backed away from the bronze chest so as not to stand out, and now Lili came from behind the piano and stood beside her
Lili had the opposite of troubles, a great big glow for Bruce, proud as a pro her betrothed Erich frohen he saw her, for he seemed proud too, proud of the way his Kamerad had taken command of us panicky whacks Fuhrer-fashion Sid still looked
Even Kaby and Mark, those two dragons hot for battle, standing a little in front and to one side of us by the bronze chest, like its guardians, see to listen TheyBruce run on, although the path his talk was leading us doas flashing with danger signals: When it was over, there&039;d still be the proble up between Soldiers and Entertainers, and Sid was hoping a solution would turn up in theto put off the evil day
But beyond all that, and like the rest of us, I could tell fro his beardy lip that he was shaken and moved by what Bruce had said This New Boy had dipped into our hearts and counted our kicks so beautifully, better than most of us could have done, and then somehow turned them around so that we had to think of what messes and heels and black sheep and lost lambs ere - well, anted to keep on listening