From the corner of her eye Zefla caught Sharrow turning away with a hand stuffed in her mouth, just as the little man appeared from the shadows again, struggling to carry a huge hide bucket full of water.
“Fifteen,” Travapeth repeated, closing his eyes. “Six, five four.”
Zefla looked down, shaking her head and rubbing her chin.
“Well, then,” Travapeth sighed. “In three equal tranches; I can’t say fairer than that.”
The little man grabbed the chair with the gown draped over it and dragged it with him as he staggered up to where Travapeth lay panting on the sit-up bench; he climbed up onto the chair, heaved the bucket up level with his chest, then dumped the water over Travapeth’s deep-breathing, nine-tenths naked frame. Zefla stepped back quickly from the splash.
The scholar shuddered mightily as the water poured off him onto the mat beneath. He spluttered and blinked his eyes as his butler climbed down from the seat and walked away.
Travapeth smiled wetly at Zefla. “Do we have a deal, dear girl?”
Zefla glanced at Sharrow, who nodded almost imperceptibly.
“Ugh! Fate! Did you see his loincloth going clingy and see-through after the little guy poured the water over him? Yech!”
“Thankfully, my eyes were averted at that point.”
“And that stuff about ‘the generous globes of your mothers’ breasts’!” Zefla said in a booming voice, then squealed, hand over her mouth as they walked laughing down Imagery Lane through units and packs of students moving between lectures.
“I thought I was going to throw up,” Sharrow said.
“Well you shouldn’t have tried to put your whole hand into your mouth,” Zefla told her.
“It was that or howl.”
“Still, at least he seems to know what he’s talking about.”
“Hmm,” Sharrow said. “So far so plausible; we’ll see if Cenuij is impressed.” She nodded down the street to their right. “Let’s go down here. There’s a place I remember.”
“Okay,” Zefla said. They turned down Structuralist Street.
“Down here somewhere,” Sharrow said, looking around. The street was busy and edged with cafes and estaminets.
“Actually,” Zefla said, putting her arm through Sharrow’s again and looking up at the high membrane waving slowly two kilometres above. “Now I think about it, maybe I do kind of admire his brazenness.”
Sharrow glared at Zefla. “You really can’t hate anybody for more than about three seconds, can you?”
Zefla smiled guiltily. “Ah, he wasn’t that bad.” She shrugged. “He’s a character.”
“Let’s hope he stays a minor one,” Sharrow muttered.
Zefla laughed. “What’s the aim of this sentimental journey, anyway?” She looked along the crowded street. “Where are we heading for now?”
“The Bistro Onomatopoeia,” Sharrow told her.
“Oh, I remember that place,” Zefla said. She peered into the distance, a pretend frown on her face. “How do you spell it again?” she asked.
“Oh,” they chanted together, “just the way it sounds.”
She kept her cap down over her eyes and her boots on the rickety seat opposite. Her uniform jacket hung over the back of her own chair.
“Schlotch.” She said, and took another drink of the trax spirit.
“Schlotch?” Miz asked.
“Schlotch,” she confirmed.
“Mud scraped off a boot,” Dloan said, tapping her boot with the toe of his own.
She shook her head slowly, looking down at her hands where they were clasped between her uniformed thighs. She belched. “Nup,” she said.
Next round the table was Cenuij.
“A turd dropping into a toilet bowl,” he suggested, his gaze shining out from two black eyes he’d collected a couple of nights earlier. “From ten thousand metres.”
“Close,” she said, then giggled, waving one hand as the others started to heckle. “Na; na, not close at all. I lied. I lied. Ha ha ha.”
“The noise a-hic! shit-sock full of pickled jelly-bird brains makes when swung vigorously against an Excise Clipper escape hatch by a dwarf wearing a jump-girdle on his head.”
Sharrow glanced up at Zefla and shook her head quickly. “Too prosaic.”
Zefla shrugged. “Fair enough.”
Cara cleared his throat carefully. “The noise a speckle bug makes-” he began patiently.
They all pulled off their caps and started throwing them at him and shouting, “No!” “Choose another track!” “No, no, no!” “Fuck this goddamn speckle bug!” “Think of something else!”
Cara flinched, grinning under the barrage of caps, putting his arms out over the table so that his drink wasn’t spilled. “But,” he said, sounding reasonable. “It’s got to be right eventually…”
“Na, wrong again,” Sharrow said. She took some more trax. She felt drunker than she ought to feel. Could it be because it was on an empty stomach? They’d come to the Onomatopoeia for hangover cures and lunch, but somehow-it being their last day before another tour unless peace broke out-it had turned all too easily into another drinking bout.
Had she had breakfast? She accepted her cap back from somebody, and put it on over her crew-cut scalp. No, she couldn’t remember whether she’d had breakfast or not.
She drained the trax, said, “Next!” quite loudly, and put her glass down and pointed at Miz at the same time. Somebody refilled her glass.
Miz looked thoughtful. Then his thin, bright face lit up. “A Tax cruiser hitting another asteroid at half the speed of-”
They all started shouting and throwing their caps at him.
“This is getting too silly,” Froterin said, as Miz started to retrieve the caps. Froterin looked massively round them all. “Everybody’s starting to repeat themselves.”
“What was that?”
“Pardon?”
“Eh?”
Froterin stood shakily, his seat scraping back across the pavement, teetering and almost falling into the street. He put his hand onto his broad chest, over his heart. “But now,” he rumbled, “I think it’s time for a little song…” He started to sing: “Oh, Caltasp oh Caaaltasp…”
“Oh, Fate… My cap!”
“Give me my cap!”
“Mine first! I’m less drunk and I aim better anyway!”
“Throw something else!”
“I know!”
“Not my drink, you cretin; use his!”
“Oh CAAALtasp, oh CAAALtasp-”
“My ears! My ears!”
“It’s no good, sir; caps just bounce off it!”
“Oh no! His glass is empty!”
Vleit got out of her seat and tip-toed round to Sharrow while the rest tried to stop Froterin singing. Vleit had a wicked grin on her face, and when she got to Sharrow she crouched down and whispered in her ear.
Sharrow nodded vigorously and they both dissolved into fits of giggles and then throaty, coughing laughter. “Yes!” Sharrow nodded, crying with laughter. “Yes!”
“Oh CAAAALtasp, oh CAAAAAAALtasp, oh thank you very much,” Froterin said, and sat down with the mug of mullbeer Miz had brought him. He sat supping happily.
“She got it! Vleit-hic! shit-got it!”
“What?”
“What was it?”
“Come on!”
Sharrow sat shaking her head and drying her eyes on her shirt sleeve while Vleit got up from the cafe pavement, holding her stomach and still laughing.
“What?”
“That’s cheating!”
“What was the answer?”
“Not telling,” Sharrow laughed.
“You got to tell,” Miz protested. “Otherwise how do we know Vleit’s really won?”
Sharrow put her cap back on again and glanced at Vleit;they both started giggling again, then guffawing. “You want to tell them?” Sharrow said.