thoughts, ordinarily unreadable even to Breakers, now burned in Pimli's mind like neon.
Finli: (He is extraordinary)
Pimli: (And, so far as we know, unique Have you seen the thing)
Image: Eyes growing and shrinking, growing and shrinking.
Finli: (Yes Do you know what causes it)
Pimli: (Not at all Nor care dear Finli nor care That old)
Image: An elderly mongrel with burdocks in his matted fur, limping along on three legs.
(has almost finished his work almost time to)
Image: A gun, one of the hume guards' Berettas, against the side of the old mongrel's head.
Three stories below them, the subject of their conversation picked up a newspaper (the newspapers were all old, now, old like Brautigan himself, years out of date), sat in a leatherupholstered club chair so voluminous it seemed almost to swallow him, and appeared to read.
Pimli felt the psychic force rising past them and dirough them, to the skylight and through that, too, rising to the Beam that ran directly above Algul, working against it, chipping and eroding and rubbing relentlessly against the grain. Eating holes in the magic. Working patiently to put out the eyes of the Bear.
To crack the shell of the Turtle. To break the Beam which ran from Shardik to Maturin. To topple the Dark Tower which stood between.
Pimli turned to his companion and wasn't surprised to realize he could now see the cunning litde teeth in the Tego's weasel head. Smiling at last! Nor was he surprised to realize he could read die black eyes. Taheen, under ordinary circumstances, could send and receive some very simple mental communications, but not be progged. Here, though, all that changed. Here-
-Here Finli O'Tego was at peace. His concerns
(hinky-di-di)
were gone. At least for the time being.
Pimli sent Finli a series of bright images: a champagne bottle breaking over the stern of a boat; hundreds of flat black graduation caps rising in die air; a flag being planted on Mount Everest; a laughing couple escaping a church with their heads bent against a pelting storm of rice; a planet-Earth-suddenly glowing with fierce brilliance.
Images that all said the same thing.
"Yes," Finli said, and Pimli wondered how he could ever have thought those eyes hard to read. "Yes, indeed. Success at the end of the day."
Neither of them looked down at that moment. Had they done, they would have seen Ted Brautigan-an old dog, yes, and tired, but perhaps not quite as tired as some thought-looking up at them.
With a ghost of his own smile.
NINE
There was never rain out here, at least not during Pimli's years, but sometimes, in the Stygian blackness of its nights, there were great volleys of dry thunder. Most of the Devar-Toi's staff had trained themselves to sleep through these fusillades, but Pimli often woke up, heart hammering in his throat, the Our Father running through his mostly unconscious mind like a circle of spinning red ribbon.
Earlier that day, talking to Finli, the Master of Algul Siento had used the phrase hinky-di-divnxh a self-conscious smile, and why not? It was a child's phrase, almost, like allee-allee-in-free or eenie-meen ie-min ie-moe.
Now, lying in his bed at Shapleigh House (known as Shit House to the Breakers), a full Mall's length away from Damli House, Pimli remembered the feeling-the flat-out certainty-that everything was going to be okay; success assured, only a matter of time. On the balcony Finli had shared it, but Pimli wondered if his Security Chief was now lying awake as Pimli himself was, and thinking how easy it was to be misled when you were around working Breakers. Because, do ya, they sent up that happy-gas. That good-mind vibe.
And suppose... just suppose, now... someone was actually channeling that feeling? Sending it up to them like a lullabye?
Go to sleep, Pimli, go to sleep, Finli, go to sleep all of you good children...
Ridiculous idea, totally paranoid. Still, when another doubleboom of thunder rolled out of what might still be the southeast-from the direction of Fedic and the Discordia, anyway-
Pimli Prentiss sat up and turned on the bedside lamp.
Finli had spoken of doubling the guard tonight, both in the watchtowers and along the fences. Perhaps tomorrow they might triple it. Just to be on the safe side. And because complacency this close to the end would be a very bad thing, indeed.
Pimli got out of bed, a tall man with a hairy slab of gut, now wearing blue pajama pants and nothing else. He pissed, then knelt in front of the toilet's lowered lid, folded his hands, and prayed until he felt