Maybe, though, she had been to Dubhe 4. He knew very little about her.
He knew nothing at all, in fact, save that she had murdered her father.
He did not even know how she had murdered him, or why. Abruptly Blake
shoved the matter from his mind. It wasn't his business to know how or
why she had done the deed. It was his business to find and apprehend
her.
Presently, in the darkness before him, he made out a motionless
white-robed figure. He approached it warily, found to his consternation
that it was frozen in the act of taking a step forward. He shone his
light into the face. It was dark bronze in hue. The eyes were wide
apart, and the teeth showed in a vivid white line between half-parted
purple lips. Eldoria, on her way to keep her tryst with him....
But why didn't she move on? Suddenly Blake knew. In treating a patient,
Trevorite psychologists sometimes froze certain place-times in his past
in order to study them in greater detail. The girl in Blake's mind had
either frozen the Dubhe 4 place-time herself, then, or had hired a
professional to do the job.
Clearly she had something up her sleeve about which Blake knew nothing.
He went on, not quite so confidently now. He had proceeded less than a
dozen steps when he saw the brooch. It was lying in the dust just to
the left of one of Sabrina's footprints, and it threw back the light
of the torch in glittering shards that hurt his eyes. Disbelievingly,
he picked it up. The Erinyes clustered around him to see what he had
found. They were still wet and dishelved and reeked of the piercing
odor of decayed algae. They looked anything but happy.
Blake turned the brooch over in the palm of his hand. The inscription
on the back leaped up and smote him right between the eyes, and he
staggered and nearly fell. _To Deirdre Eldoria_, he read, _from Nathan
Blake._
He stood there numbly for a long while, not thinking--unable to think.
Finally he slipped the brooch into his pocket and moved on.
* * * * *
He was trembling when he reached the door of Eldoria's hut. The
footprints led straight up to the threshold and came to an end.
Diffidently he touched the primitive knob, turned it and pushed the
door open. He stepped inside and closed the door in the faces of the
three Erinyes. The remembered anteroom seemed smaller and more sordid
than the original, but he knew that it was really no different. He had
remembered it accurately enough. It was he who was different, not the
room.
Opposite the door, Deirdre Yesterday sat immobile before the arras.
Equally immobile, Blake Past sat facing her. Deirdre Yesterday's lips
were parted in the midst of uttering a soundless word. The _Anabasis_
lay open on her lap.
Blake Present found it difficult to breathe. The difficulty stemmed
from a physical as well as an emotional source. Someone was burning
incense.
He wiped his forehead. Then, bracing himself, he walked over to the
arras, parted it and stepped into the inner room.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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