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In Sabel's time this area of the City had been, as it was now, a glassed-in mall. It had been
then, as it still was, the chief district for entertainment and amusement. The decor must have
been changed innumerable times during the intervening centuries, and parts of the architecture had
been altered too-Harivarman had seen old holographs and models-but the overall look, like the
nature of the business, was pretty much the same.
The exterior of the Contrat Rouge was not impressive, being mainly the same mottled brown and gray
stone walls that you saw on half the buildings of the City. Neither did there appear at first
glance to be anything special about the interior, thinly populated this early in the evening. The
place gained a distinction of a kind when you sat in one of the booths and began to play with the
optical controls that altered the appearance of everything seen through the booth's walls, which
were transparent or translucent in varying degrees depending on where the controls were set. And
that was only the simplest of the visual effects that could be achieved.
Harivarman found Gabrielle waiting for him. She was fine-tuning the booth's optics absently, so
that the images of other patrons and of the human staff came altered through the walls of the
plastic enclosure. The computer system managing the optics identified human images and clothed or
re-clothed them to order. Gabrielle, in a modern green dress as fragile-looking as a spiderweb,
currently had everyone who passed the booth dressed in some kind of fancy historical costumes,
from a time and place that Harivarman was unable to identify.
What surprised the Prince was that Gabrielle was not alone. Sitting with her was a vastly older
but still marginally attractive woman, dressed in somewhat outdated elegance. Brown ringlets hung
past the older woman's hollow cheeks and arresting eyes.
Gabrielle jumped up happily when she saw Harivarman appear in the opening of the plastic wall that
made the single doorway of the booth. "Harry, guess who I've found for you at last!"
For the moment, his mind filled with other matters, the Prince had not the slightest idea what
this girl was talking about. "Found for me?" he asked. And then it came to him who the other woman
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must be, just as Gabrielle pronounced her name.
"Greta Thamar, Harry." The young woman's tone almost reproached him for having forgotten. Even
after two years, Gabrielle was still faintly awed to find herself the intimate companion of a real
Prince.
Now Harivarman could remember. When he had first heard that Greta Thamar, Sabel's old companion,
was still alive, he had in Gabrielle's presence expressed a wish that he might meet her sometime.
At that point he hadn't known that Greta Thamar might still be on the Fortress, or might return to
it. And Harivarman, in the press of other recent events, had temporarily forgotten his wish to
meet her.
Now he bowed lightly, extending a hand in perfect correctness. "Prince Harivarman," he introduced
himself.
The woman made only a token gesture toward rising. She was not in the least impressed, evidently,
and she took her time about replying. The Prince recalled that she had once in her youth undergone
memory extraction at the hands of the Guardians-it was all part of the well-known saga of the
treacherous Sabel-and he supposed that some permanent mental damage might well have resulted. At
last she reached across the table to take his hand, and gave him a close look and a knowing nod.
It was as if she believed they shared a secret.
"The management here has hired Greta again," put in Gabrielle, filling an almost awkward little
silence. "It's new management now, of course. I mean-"
"They think I can bring in some tourists." The old woman's voice was surprisingly deep. Now that
Harivarman had the chance to study her, her face and figure looked much younger than her actual
age of centuries. It was, he thought, as if entering into legend might have helped somehow to
preserve her.
Harivarman looked up involuntarily to see the metal plaque that he knew was high on the wall near
the front entrance of the Control Rouge, visible above surrounding booths. The fancy optics
Gabrielle had evoked in their booth's walls did nothing to change those letters on the metal.
In the year 23 of the 456th century of the Dardanian calendar Greta Thamar, lover and victim of
Georgicus Sabel, danced here
"She's actually been living here in the City all this time, Harry. Or for most of it." Gabrielle
sounded tremendously proud of her find.
"Fascinating," said Harivarman. He realized that his voice sounded a touch too dry. Well, Thamar's
story was really a fascinating one, he supposed. Or it would be, for a man who had the time to
think about it.
The figure of an ethereally lovely human waitress approaching the booth in historical costume
turned into the prosaic inhuman shape of a robotic waiter as soon as it reached the opening
through the walls. The three of them ordered drinks and food, the Prince putting them on his bill;
fortunately the terms of exile had not condemned him to poverty.
Gabrielle, the Prince decided, seemed unreasonably cheerful about everything. And in good
appetite, ordering a substantial dinner. Maybe she was putting on an effort to cheer him up.
Harivarman, mostly out of a habit of wanting to make polite conversation, said to Greta Thamar: "I
wish, then, that I might have met you sooner."
"I haven't been socializing much for a long time. But I'm going to be out now. I might even dance
again." Traces of some handicap or oddity, perhaps the old woman's long-ago ME, were more in
evidence, the Prince thought, the more she spoke.
"That's good," he commented. "That is, it'll be good if you really want to dance again."
"I used to live for dancing."
"I look forward to seeing a performance."
Gabrielle beamed at him for being nice to the old lady. And Greta physically did look as if she
still might be able to dance, though Harivarman supposed it wouldn't be the kind of dancing that
customers ordinarily came to a place like this to see.
Suddenly Gabrielle asked him: "Where are you going, Prince?"
"I-" He hadn't made any move suggesting that he was going to leave the booth, at least none that
he was aware of. "Nowhere at the moment." Suddenly understanding came. She meant that he would [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]

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