When Sork left them for some business of his own, Kiri Quintero lingered behind.
Sue-ling's expression was pleasantly receptive. Cheered by the look on her face, Kiri asked her, "Tonight? I've been gone a long time."
"Tonight," she said softly, "would be a very fine idea. I've missed you, too."
So placid Kiri Quintero was almost excited with the pleasure of anticipation as he strolled back toward her room a few hours later. He knew what was forthcoming. She would be wearing the yellow silk robe he had once managed to buy for her in New Hong Kong, when there on some never-to-be-clearly-known errand for the Turtles, and her sweet body would be fragrant with the Spanish scent she loved. It would be a wonderful night together—
It would not. Voices told him that when he was in the hall outside. Sue-ling was not alone, and the person with her was his twin.
A man who discovers his lover in the arms of another man has many options—tears, fury, violence; perhaps suicide, if one believes the romantic novel to represent truth. Kiri Quintero did not choose any of them. He stood there in thought for a moment, trying to listen to the words from inside—there was, after all, the chance that his twin had stopped by just for a moment, perhaps to pick up some more of his old lecture chips. But that did not seem to be the case. Although Kiri could not really make out the words from inside, he could surely hear the tone—Sue-ling protesting, Sork persuading, Sue-ling objecting, Sork insisting . . . and finally Sue-ling surrendering.
Kiri sighed, turned around and went back to his own room.
He knew that Sue-ling thought he yielded too often, and in too many ways, to his twin. Perhaps it was true.' But Kiri Quintero had always been happiest when Sork Quintero was happy, too.
All the same, he slept poorly that night. When he woke he automatically listened for the faint whisper of his brother's audio chips from the room next door, and was not surprised when he didn't hear it. No doubt Sork had chosen to stay the night.
That didn't really trouble Kiri Quintero, exactly. Though he loved Sue-ling, he was not jealous of her. Perhaps one day she would finally give up their menage a trois and settle on one of the twins. Perhaps then she would marry him. Perhaps it would be his brother she chose. Whichever happened would be right . . . and, in any case, he would go right on loving Sue-ling Quong.
Kiri rolled over on his back and gazed peacefully into the darkness of his room. Poor Sork! Where Kiri saw symmetries, congruences, interlocking relationships and resonances, Sork saw only problems. For Kiri Quintero, he always knew that every part belonged to the whole, and the whole was all of its parts. Sometimes the patterns he perceived were pleasing, but sad. Sometimes they were just pleasing. Kiri Quintero's nature was not to worry about whether the future would be good or bad, or about whether whatever was happening at any moment was right or wrong, for whatever was was.
All these things Kiri Quintero knew as certainly as he knew that his heart beat and his lungs drew breath—and that one day both heart and breath would stop and he would die—and that there was nothing in that knowledge, in any of it, to cause fear or sorrow.
If there was one thing that Kiri Quintero regretted it was that his brother did not seem to understand this self-evident law of nature. If it had been within his power he would have tried to help his brother—to share with him his own vision of the rightness of what was so. To share it with the whole world, if he could.
But it was Sork Quintero, not Kiri, who had the skill with words. Kiri's lofty peace was all internal. He had no way to share it.
Kiri hadn't known that he had at last fallen asleep until he heard his brother pounding on his door. "Kiri? Wake up, it's morning. Sue-ling just got a call from that space captain. He's in the compound, and he's brought somebody with him."
Kiri sat up, still groggy. "Who?"
"I don't know that yet, do I?" his twin snapped pettishly. "That's what I'm going to find out. I'm going over to meet them at the western gate. Come after me when you're awake, all right?"
"All right," said Kiri, yawning. Somehow the brief discontent of the night before had gone away, as it always did with Kiri Quintero. He stretched placidly and then, comfortably, not at all rushed, rolled out of his bed and headed for the sanitary. There was no reason for haste, after all. Whatever was there would still be there when he got there.
It was still early morning when he strolled out toward the gate, and turning out to be a sultry, lowering day—the kind that all Turtles despised. Few of them were in sight. Few of anybody were in sight. The bustling compound at the base of the space ladder had turned into a ghost town. The long trains of scrap metal were motionless and abandoned, and there was an eerie silence where for so long there had been the drumming bustle of Turtle trade.
As Kiri approached the gate he caught a glimpse of a group of people gathered around a three-wheeled surface vehicle. One of the group was his brother, all right, along with that captain from space. With them was a human female, but it was not Sue-ling Quong. She was a young girl Kiri had never seen before and standing behind her, looming over her, was, yes, a Taur. Not just a Taur, but a male, with developed horns. Kiri blinked and started toward them, but as he turned in their direction a Turtle stepped out from behind a halted freight car to challenge him. Kiri was surprised to see that it was the rusty brown pigmy called Lidun, evidently lurking there to look at the humans.
One of Litlun's eyes turned to Kiri, and the Turtle in-standy activated his transposes "Stop there, Quintero! Which are you?"
"I'm Kiri Quintero, Facilitator. Not," he was careful to explain, "my brother, Sork, who is the one you believe to possess some disapproved recorded lectures."
The Turtle rolled his yellow eyes at him. "One does not speak of such record chips," he said, like a reproving teacher. "Their possessor does not wish to sell, and they are not of importance. One cannot concern oneself with commercial matters at this time."
Kiri's eyes almost popped. Litlun couldn't concern himself with trade? A Turtle couldn't? So it was all true!
But the Turtle was still speaking. Litlun gestured toward the group at the gate. "Is that creature not an adult male Taur?" he asked.
"Oh, I don't think so," Kiri said automatically. "Not an adult because, look, he still has his horns—" Then he took a better look. "Well, he does look different from most of the others," he admitted.
"One may have a use for such a Taur. Go and find out, please," rapped the Turtle, and turned back to the shelter of the motionless car.
Kiri's calm was threatened at last by surprise—not least because, for the first time in his memory, he had heard a Turde say "please" to a human being. But the real surprise came when he got closer. The great bull-headed creature standing by the three-wheeled surface car was fully horned, and even in the light of morning Kiri saw that the horns were faintly glowing.
His twin turned to him. "You took your time," he said accusingly. "Look, you stay here with this girl and her Taur— don't let anybody bother them."
"Who would bother them?" Kiri asked reasonably. "Where's Sue-ling?"
"Back at her office, of course," Sork snapped. "That's where Krake and I are going, to see if she can get any news of his crew. Oh, don't argue with me now, Kiri," Sork went on as his brother opened his mouth. "We're in a hurry!" And the two of them left, leaving Kiri face to face with the young woman and the Taur bull.
The girl was studying his face. "You two look a lot alike," she said, discovering. "Are you brothers?"