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going to be what Mark dreamed of; what you dreamed of, and 1, too. Maybe it'll
happen fast enough-"
He broke off as the old head before him made the same minuscule side to side
movement. Tam's hand stirred slightly between his two palms; and he was
puzzled for a second before he realized the other was trying to return a
pressure to his touch.
Once more Tam's lips moved. But this time the ghost of a
voice came from them. "Hal . . .
But the faint exhalation of breath died, the heavy eyelids wavered and closed.
Tam was utterly motionless and the moment of his stillness stretched out and
out. . . . "Tam!" cried Ajela suddenly; and both Rukh and Amanda moved in on
the chair where Tam sat. But Tam's heavy eyelids fluttered briefly and rose.
For a second he focused on Ajela; and that small attempt at a smile once more
turned up the corners of his lips for her.
Hal rose and moved back out of the way, as Ajela slipped forward onto her
knees where he had been, threw her arms around Tam and buried her face against
the ancient body.
Rukh bent over the gold-haired, kneeling figure. Hal felt a
touch on his elbow and looked to see Amanda's eyes meaningfully upon his. He
turned and followed her out of the door by which they had just come in. As the
door closed behind them, he turned back to face her and they stood, looking at
each other. "What can I do?" said Hal. "is there anything I can do at all
for her?" "Not directly," said Amanda. "Leave her to Rukh and me. Both of us
have been through this sort of experience in our own
lives. For me, it was Ian, when I was still young. For Rukh it was
380
Gordon R. Dickson
James Child-of-God. We can help her. You can't, except by getting on with your
own work." "Which is what I intend starting immediately," he said. "With luck,
I can still achieve something before-"
He broke off. Rukh had just come through the door and joined them,
11 How is she?" Hal asked. "She's best left alone with him for now," said
Rukh. "Later it'll be a matter of getting her away from him to rest for a
while. Let's go to her office to talk."
With another brief use made of the Final Encyclopedia's magic, and another
short walk down the corridor, they entered the office. It was, like the office
of any of the others from Tam on down who worked with the Encyclopedia, merely
one room of the personal living space of each within the massive structure
that was the TFE. But illusion made the space chosen appear as large as was
wished and hid all doors to more rooms beyond, to all but those who knew the
quarters intimately.
Sol as with Tam's forest glade, Ajela's working space was a reflection of her
own individual identity. As his did, hers had water; but not a stream. Where
Ajela worked was a round, shallow pool in which brightly colored fish lazily
swam. There was indeed a desk beside the pool but the floor space about it was
furnished in lounge fashion; except that the chairs, like the desk, were
floats, instead of solidly floor-standing, oldfashioned furniture.
However, the largest difference between the two personalized rooms lay in
their general concept. Tam's was a slice of Old Earth. Ajela's was a nostalgic
reconstruction of part of a typical Exotic countryside residence; one of those
artfully constructed dwellings in which it was possible to move from indoors
to outside without having realized it, so well were the two environments
integrated in the design and furnishings.
The inside surface of the wall through which Hal, Amanda and Rukh now entered
was simple wood paneling. But where the wall connecting to it at an angle on
their right would normally be was the seeming of a vertical face of roughly
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cut, warm brown granite. The wall to their left seemed a trellis overgrown
with vine from which hundreds of varicolored sweetpea blossoms looked inward
at them. While the wall that should have
THE CHANTRY GUILD
381
iven opposite the one through which they had entered appeared not to exist.
Instead, they looked out on a vista of green treetops in a bowl-shaped valley
lifting in the distance to bluish mountains wreathed in soft tendrils of
moving white mist. "Let's take the desk," said Rukh. She stepped ahead,
leading the way, and went forward and around to seat herself behind the desk.
It was a piece of office furniture that could be expanded both lengthwise and
in width to make a conference table seating up to fifteen people; but at the
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