no Bleeding Lion stalking from the north, no gunslinger-man. Oh, and the Greencloaks succumbed to a computer virus. If all that's the case, what's gotten under your skin? What feels hinky-di-di to ya?"
"The approaching end, I suppose." Finli sighed heavily.
"I'm going to double the guard in the watchtowers tonight, any ro', and humes along the fence, as well."
"Because it feels hinky-di-di." Pimli, smiling a little.
"Hinky-di-di, yar." Finli did not smile; his cunning little teeth remained hidden inside his shiny brown muzzle.
Pimli clapped him on the shoulder. "Come on, let's go up to The Study. Perhaps seeing all those Breakers at work will soothe you."
"P'rhaps it will," Finli said, but he still didn't smile.
Pimli said gently, "It's all right, Fin."
"I suppose," said the taheen, looking doubtfully around at the equipment, and then at Beeman and Trelawney, the two low men, who were respectfully waiting at the door for the two big bugs to finish their palaver. "I suppose 'tis." Only his heart didn't believe it. The only thing he was sure his heart believed was that there were no teleports left in Algul Siento.
Telemetry didn't lie.
SEVEN
Beeman and Trelawney saw them all the way down the oakpaneled basement corridor to the staff elevator, which was also oak-paneled. There was a fire-extinguisher on the wall of the car and another sign reminding Devar-folken that they had to work together to create a fire-free environment.
This too had been turned upside down.
Pimli's eyes met Finli's. The Master believed he saw amusement in his Security Chiefs look, but of course what he saw might have been no more than his own sense of humor, reflected back at him like a face in a mirror. Finli untacked the sign without a word and turned it rightside up. Neither of them commented on the elevator machinery, which was loud and ill-sounding. Nor on the way the car shuddered in the shaft. If it froze, escape through the upper hatch would be no problem, not even for a slighdy overweight (well... quite overweight) fellow like Prentiss. Damli House was hardly a skyscraper, and there was plenty of help near at hand.
They reached the third floor, where the sign on the closed elevator door was rightside up. It said STAFF ONLY and PLEASE USE KEY and GO DOWN IMMEDIATELY IF YOU HAVE REACHED THIS LEVEL IN ERROR. YOU WILL NOT BE PENALIZED IF YOU REPORT IMMEDIATELY.
As Finli produced his key-card, he said with a casualness that might have been feigned (God damn his unreadable black eyes): "Have you heard from sai Sayre?"
"No," Pimli said (rather crossly), "nor do I really expect to.
We're isolated here for a reason, deliberately forgotten in the desert just like the scientists of the Manhattan Project back in the 1940s. The last time I saw him, he told me it might be... well, the last time I saw him."
"Relax," Finli said. "I was just asking." He swiped the keycard down its slot and the elevator door slid open with a rather hellish screee sound.
EIGHT
The Study was a long, high room in the center of Damli, also oak-paneled and rising three full stories to a glass roof that allowed the Algul's hard-won sunlight to pour in. On the balcony opposite the door throvigh which Prentiss and the Tego entered was an odd trio consisting of a ravenhead taheen named Jakli, a can-toi technician named Conroy, and two hume guards whose names Pimli could not immediately recall.
Taheen, can-toi, and humes got on together during work hours by virtue of careful-and sometimes brittle-courtesy, but one did not expect to see them socializing off-duty. And indeed the balcony was strictly off-limits when it came to "socializing."
The Breakers below were neither animals in a zoo nor exotic fish in an aquarium; Pimli (Finli O'Tego, as well) had made this point to the staff over and over. The Master of Algul Siento had only had to lobo one staff member in all his years here, a perfectly idiotic hume guard named David Burke, who had actually been throwing something-had it been peanut-shells?-down on the Breakers below. When Burke had realized the Master was serious about lobotomizing him, he begged for a second chance, promising he'd never do anything so foolish and demeaning again. Pimli had turned a deaf ear. He'd seen a chance to make an example which would stand for years, perhaps for decades, and had taken it. You could see the now truly idiotic Mr. Burke around to this day, walking on the Mall or out by Left'rds Bound'ry, mouth