Long Sun - Nightside The Long Sun Part 55

enille opened the door to Orchid's rooms and showed ; in. Still wearing the pink peignoir, Orchid was sitting

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on a wide green-velvet couch in the big sellaria, her hard, heavy face as composed as it had been when diey had talked in the cramped office downstairs.

Chenille waved toward a chair. "Have a seat, Patera." She herself sat down next to Orchid and put her arm around her shoulders. "He says Blood sent him up to talk to us. I said all right, but he'll probably come back later if you'd rather."

"I'm fine," Orchid told her.

Looking at her, Silk could believe it; Chenille herself seemed more in need of solace.

"What do you want, Patera?" Orchid's voice was harsher than he remembered. "If you're here to tell me how she's gone to Mainframe and all that, save it till later. If you still want somebody to show you around my place, Chenille can do it."

There was a gla.s.s on the wall to the left of the couch. Silk was watching it nervously, but no floating face had yet appeared. "I'd like to speak with you in private for a few minutes, that's all."

To Chenille he added, "I was going to say that it would give you a chance to get dressed-so many of you here are not-but I see that you're dressed already."

"Go out," Orchid said. And then, "It was nice of you to worry about me, Chenille. I won't forget this."

The tall girl rose, smoothing her skirt. "I was going to look for a new gown, before this happened."

"I have to speak to you, too," Silk told her, "and this should only take a few minutes. You can wait for me, if you prefer. Otherwise, I would appreciate it very much if you came to my manteion this evening."

"I'll be in my room."

Silk nodded. "That will be better. Please pardon me for not rising; I injured my ankle last night." He watched

Chenille as she went out, waiting until she had closed the door behind her.

"Nice-looking, isn't she?" Orchid said. "Only she'd bring in more if she wasn't so tall. Maybe you like them that way. Or is it the hips?"

"What I like hardly matters."

"Good hips, nice waist for a girl as big as she is, and the biggest b.o.o.bs in the place. Sure you won't change your jttind?"

SUk shook his head. "I'm surprised you didn't mention bra* kind disposition. There must be a great deal of good in her, or she wouldn't have come here to comfort you." ' Orchid stood up. "You want a drink, Patera? I've got wine and whatnot in the cabinet here."

"No, thank you."

"I do." Orchid opened the cabinet and filled a small goblet with straw-colored brandy.

t "She seemed quite depressed," Silk ventured. "She must have been a close friend of Orpine's."

. "Chenille's a real rust bucket, to hand you the lily, Pat-t.i.tta, and they're always pretty far down anytime they're Straight." ^ Silk snapped his fingers. "I knew I'd heard that name

Orchid resumed her seat, swirled her brandy, inhaled its , and balanced the goblet precariously on the arm of couch. "Somebody told you about her, huh?" .%v "A man I know happened to mention her, that's all. It jHoesn't matter." He waved the question away. "Aren't you Mug to drink that?" After he had spoken, he realized that had asked the same question of him the previous it.

iOrchid shook her head. "I don't drink until the last it's gone. That's my rule, and I'm going to stick to it,

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even today. I just want to know it's there. Did you come here to talk about Chen, Patera?"

"No. Can we be overheard here? I ask for your sake, Orchid, not for my own."

She shook her head again.

"I've heard that houses like this often have listening devices."

"Not this one. And if it did, I wouldn't have any in here."

Silk indicated the gla.s.s. "The monitor doesn't have to appear to overhear what is said in a room, or so one's given me to understand. Does the monitor of that gla.s.s report to you alone?"

Orchid had the brandy goblet again, swirling the straw-colored fluid until it climbed the goblet to the rim. "That gla.s.s has never worked for as long as I've owned this house, Patera. I wish it did."

"I see." Silk limped across the room to the gla.s.s and clapped his hands loudly. The room's lights brightened, but no monitor answered his summons. "We have a gla.s.s like this in Patera Pike's bedroom-I mean in the room that he once occupied. I should try to sell it. I would think that even an inoperable gla.s.s must be worth something."

"What is it you want with me, Patera?"

Silk returned to his chair. "What I really want is to find some more tactful way of saying this. I haven't found it. Orpine was your daughter, wasn't she?"

Orchid shook her head.

"Are you going to deny her even in death?"

He had not known what to expect: tears, or hysteria, or nothing-and had felt himself ready for them all. But now Orchid's face appeared to be coming apart, to be losing all cohesion, as if her mouth and her bruised and swollen cheeks and her hard hazel eyes no longer obeyed a common will. He wanted her to hide that terrible face in her hands; she did not, and he turned his own away.

There was a window on the other side of the couch. He went to it, parted its heavy drapes, and threw it open. It overlooked Lamp Street, and though he would have called fjbe day hot, the breeze that entered Orchid's sellaria jeemed cool and fresh.

"How did you know?" Orchid asked. '. He limped back to his chair. "That's what's wrong with place, not enough open windows. Or one thing, any-." Wanting to blow his nose, he took out his handker-saw Orpine's blood on it just in time, and put it away stily.

>v "How did you know, Patera?" ""Don't any of the others know? Or at least guess?" y Orchid's face was still out of control, afflicted with odd, aost spastic twitchings. "Some of them have probably ight about it. I don't think she ever told anybody, and treat her any better than the rest." Orchid gulped f. "Worse, whenever there was any difference. I made her

me, and I was always yelling at her." Tm not going to ask you how this happened; it's none imy affair."

lanks, Patera." Orchid sounded as though she meant father took her. I couldn't have, not then. But he -he said-"

fou don't have to tell me," Silk repeated. ^5he had not heard. "Then I found her on the street, you She was thirteen, only she said fifteen and I believed I didn't know it was her." Orchid laughed, and her iter was worse than tears, icre's really no need for you to torment yourself like