“I could listen all day about the marvelous people when Aunt Robet takes
you home I will go along.”
“O say no more, I implore. I feel so lost when I think of home.”
“To-morrow,” I see she is going to make me happy again, “I will take you
over the city. It is one of many that occur every ten miles. This side
the river is our summer home, the other is our winter.”
The next morning I take to the tower top and delight myself by
discovering another motion still of the chairs. It is a circle whirl
which I practice until I feel I am seasoned to any mode of motion sprung
on me.
Serpenta seeks me out, and asks me sweetly what place we shall visit
first.
“O, no matter.”
“A library?”
“Very well.”
She connects our chairs securely, as did Robet, and presses them to
motion, without saying as did Robet, “look out.”
We are moving—how, _how_? Her “look out,” had she said it, would have
helped one less than Robet’s. For this is worse—so much more worse.
Not so exhilarating, quite the opposite. I am losing my breath in a
faint, so utterly unprepared am I, for we are moving straight out into
space. I look sideways to see Serpenta calm. I look in front, if to see
a track, none there. Nothing above or below to hold, not even a wire.
Still we are steady and aim to another tower top that is rapidly
nearing. Now we stop on it. I get down and walk around my chair to find
its wizard action. No track, did I say? There is a track—good rail track
behind. It pops into my head it is after the method devised some years
ago for a railroad to lay its track as it went, but must have land to
lay it on. This carries and steadies its supplements—bridge-like.
We descend the elevator into an elegant room of many windows and
drapery, seat ourselves beside one, high and wide. The scene outside is
exquisite. Some fur-clad people are on the ice around a fire cooking. A
ship in the distance is ice locked.
But there is no ice in this neighborhood.
“How do you like the picture?” asked Serpenta eagerly.
“O, the window is a picture; it is fine,” I reply enlightened.
“Is it like your people that go in ships?”
“They must be the last explorers whom Savant found. How I wish I could
rescue them and bring them into Arc.”
“Did you say this is a library, where are the books?”
She presses on the picture frame; it changes as a part advances, opens
and is a book. The back was part of the picture. It is Savant’s story in
pictured writing and quite enlists my sympathy. Seeing me tearful she
takes me outside and leaves me in a shrubbery plot, while I attempt to
compose my features.
Hearing a sob from someone else close by, I am upset again and weep in
sympathy. I peer through the low-lying branches and see Robet in a mossy
nook, giving way to hysterical bitterness, her hands over her face.
Now, two other hands pull them away to give her view of the laughing
face of Show Off. She pushes him off spitefully. Partly losing his
balance, he settles back on his heels, still laughing, seeing which with
her toe she completes his overthrow and leaves him in the moss as she
continues unconstrained her grief.
Show Off picks himself up sobered and looks around for other occupation.
I do also view the surroundings. I perceive this building is over the
river. Before I salute Robet, she arises and stamps away.
Passing my retreat I hear her moan:
“You are lost, O my darling.”
Something drops gently upon my hand. I look down to see a round
button-like object attached to a line that goes up above.
I raise it, when the string sways out from the tree, free from aught
else but the sky.
I feel in my hand a signal, which I recognize. By my knowledge of Arc as
a “hello,” which I answer back. Then comes a communication:
“I am away up in the sky. Who are you?”
Thinking some trick is being played on me I answer:
“Robet.”