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.They flew at his window, impacting against the glass.He watched them, imagined them larger, the size of large dogs, so large he could make out their insect faces.They resembled locusts as much as they resembled ants.He imagined them crawling, hopping and occasionally flying over a plain of ice that stretched to the far horizon in every direction, endless hordes of them making for the two low suns, moving with a collective sense of urgency, turning on any of their brethren who showed any sign of weakness or injury.‘Leshe,’ he said aloud.Then, as if afraid of what might have heard him, he withdrew from the window and stood rigid with his back against the wall.Hoping the universe would not look in and see him.Hiding in a smaller universe that consisted of this room, the sunlight, the sound of plumbing and the movement of people in adjoining rooms, and the heartbeats that echoed from within his own chest.He remained like this until the fear passed.Chapter FourDream of CareshShe was having the dream again, the dream she’d had in the blue room without doors or windows when she’d arrived two weeks ago, but each time she dreamt it the dream went a little further.Sometimes the details changed; this time the crater-lake on Dassar Island was frozen over, but that had only happened recently, and she did not want to trust her weight to it, so she made her way around the lake’s edge to the causeway.There was a figure on the causeway, heading towards the crater rim.She could not make out any of the figure’s features, for it was some distance away and dressed from head to foot in robes that covered the body.Curious, she quickened her step but the causeway was slippery and it was hard for her to keep her balance.The time before last she had awoken at this point; last time she had reached the figure and he had pushed back his cowl and she was afforded a fleeting glimpse of his face; not quite long enough to be sure that he really was a ‘he’.This time she saw his face clearly.She memorised it as best she could, even though her visual memory was not very reliable.He spoke to her.‘You must be Troy Game,’ he said.‘Your presence here is unexpected.Do you know who I am?’She was about to answer when she awoke.She lay in her benefactor’s bed – or rather on it, for she had pushed the duvet off during the night.Mornings here came sooner than she was used to and light from the single sun was already shining in through the window and onto her skin.She welcomed it, for it served her body’s needs as well as Ember or Beacon.On this particular morning, however, she would have preferred to have slept longer, for she had been on the verge of addressing the man by name.If she had done so, she would be able to remember it now.She rose from the bed.She reached for the door handle, then remembered just in time to take the dressing gown from the door hook and put it on.Simon Haldane knew he was going to be late for work.It could not be helped.He had cleared a space on the breakfast table for his sketch pad.Already he had nearly filled the pad: there was a map of the Archipelago, a landscape drawing of the volcanic island of Dassar, four frozen seascapes, the two suns at different times of year, diagrams of the Careshi solar system showing the planet’s figure-eight orbit, a quartet of fur-clad fishermen in a skiff navigating the channels between ice sheets.This morning he sketched in the robed figure from Troy Game’s dream as she described it to him.The face was round, slightly sad-looking, aged about sixty.The nose was small, the mouth wide, the whites of the eyes all but crowded out by the brown irises.The hair was very short.Across the breakfast table Troy Game regarded Simon with her big blue eyes as he drew.He looked up at her briefly, then returned his attention to his drawing.It was dangerously easy to misinterpret her eyes.You could think she was bovine, slowwitted, when she was anything but.Or you could think she was looking at you with adoration when she was not.At least, Simon had come to assume she was not.In the two weeks since she had moved in with him there had been no indication of any intended intimacy on her part.Apparently oblivious to his tentative hints, she seemed perfectly happy with the current sleeping arrangements – she slept in his bed, he slept in the spare room, and so matters remained.It was not as straightforward as that, however, for she was not averse to physical contact.She would take his hand or arm whenever they crossed a road, press herself against him if she was afraid, even hug him with a childlike spontaneity if something made her especially happy.But it was never the kind of touch that led to anything.She had no hang-ups about nakedness and that could be very disconcerting, given her sexual disinterest.It was a cultural thing, Simon told himself; she was, after all, literally from another world.‘How’s this look so far?’ he asked, holding up the sketch pad for her to see.Troy Game was peeling an orange, her third that morning.She put it down and gave the portrait her full attention.‘That is much as I remember, Sai-mahn,’ she said.She clenched her eyes shut in concentration then added, ‘The eyebrows were slightly more prominent.And he had.’ She opened her eyes, leant across the table and touched Simon’s ear lobes with both hands.He felt a tingle of pleasure at the touch.‘He had these.’‘Ear lobes,’ Simon said.Troy Game giggled girlishly and he asked, ‘Don’t you have a word for that?’‘Why should we?’‘Fair point’Simon added the ear lobes to the sketch.Troy Game nodded in approval.He gave the drawing a satisfied look and said to himself, ‘I really should have done an art degree.I could have got a job doing photofits for the police.’ To Troy Game he added, ‘That might be significant.The ear lobes, I mean.’‘In what way?’‘Well, it suggests he’s not originally from Caresh [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]