Pamela Dean (12 page)

"Holy Mother," said somebody, in a dramatic voice that the hall made into echoes.

Janet lurched to her feet and ran like hell down the hallway that led to the side door.

She heard Nick shout, "Stop!" and then an assortment of yelps that persuaded her, though she would not have stopped anyway, that he had not been talking to her.

She burst out the emergency exit and ran across lawn, sidewalk, more lawn, another sidewalk, and into the welcoming labyrinth of the Fine Arts building. It would be fatal to stop; Nick couldn't possibly hold off eight people, and the sight of Schiller had been known to change allegiances abruptly. The Fine Arts building, like the library, was built into the hill and went down instead of up. Most unfortunately, it was not connected into the steam-tunnel system.

Janet galloped down four flights of steps, clutching Schiller under one arm and knowing from the way it rasped the skin inside her elbow that it had broken an ear or a nose or a curl. She pushed open the bottom door and stepped outside again-breathing hard. To her right was the grove of larches; to her left was the dismaying open space of the playing fields behind the line of Masters Hall, library, and the old Chem building; before her, across a narrow asphalt road and down a long open slope, were the lower lake and the wooden bridge to Mai Fete Island. Janet started for it, then plunged across the asphalt road, rolled halfway down the hill, and scrambled into the shelter of the larches.

It was cool in there, but extremely prickly. Janet crawled along as fast as she could manage, bumping her head and cursing Nick Tooley and his children unto the
n
th generation, until she found a suitable hollow by catching her knee in it. She removed the knee, saying, "Shit, shit, shit," under her breath because there was no time to think of anything creative, and scooped leaves and dry needles out of the hollow. She dumped Schiller into it unceremoniously, covered him over, limped on through the larch grove to the sidewalk, trudged down it to the bottom of the hill, and took off running in plain sight along the edge of the lake just as the chase came howling past the Fine Arts building.

Janet took one look at them and wadded one side of her

smock up under the arm

they couldn't see. Then she put on considerably more speed and pounded over the wooden bridge to Mai Fete Island, her heart racing. She had planned to let them catch her, but the way they loped after her with their long legs, like hounds to the hunt, was far too unsettling. She plunged recklessly into the underbrush, and emerged scratched and breathless on the island's other side. She could hear them coming after her over the bridge.

She looked at the green lake water. I'll get hepatitis, she thought desperately, the water will get in the scratches and I'll die a lingering death. The chase came rustling along the narrow path that ran along the shore of the island. They were not breathing hard; their steps were light, their faces intent. Janet plunged into the water. She had to swim, in the end. The water was not deep, but the silt was, and the dreadful slow-motion effect of slogging through it was not to be borne.

She achieved a brisk if lopsided dog paddle, keeping her face and the arm gouged by Schiller's broken ear out of the water as best she could, and clambered gasping up the tangled grass of the far shore. She turned and looked back at the island. There were six of them, Kit and Anne and Jack and three more very like them. The sun was in her eyes, and she could not make out their expressions. They stood up against the blazing sky like huge statues, utterly still.

She disappeared from their sight into a thin strip of woods and out again onto the asphalt road that ran down from the lilac maze to Dunbar. There were people here, on bicycles and on foot, converging on Dunbar for supper. Janet found their presence comforting, until they began to comment on how wet she was, to speculate on how she had ended up in the lake, and to make various dire predictions of exactly what diseases she would come down with.

She scowled at them impartially; then, breathing hard, she followed the clump of them into Dunbar and walked down its first-floor corridor, leaving them to stand in line for dinner. The carpeting was brown; nobody would notice the mud. And this would keep her out of sight for a little longer—or, if the chase had seen her go in, give the hunters one more place to think she might have hidden the bust. Now that she was inside, with the fading smells of dinner behind her, she became aware that she exuded a strong odor of rotting vegetation, algae, and wet dog. She was also feeling rather cold.

She paused at the glass door at Dunbar's other end, looking down the hill to the wooden bridge that crossed the stream, with the great brick bulk of Eliot Hall looming over the bridge and the lake. The reflection of sunset on its upper windows sparkled the lake with gold squares. The bridge and the sidewalk leading down to it were beginning to look rather dark. Once safely inside Eliot, she could take to the tunnels—if she wanted to. The thought of being pursued through them, or caught there, was not pleasing. Well, getting as far as Eliot was a good plan, anyway. The more buildings she went into, the more puzzling it would be for the chase. If they caught her, she would simply show them that she no longer had the bust. It was against the rules to use coercion or threats to find out the bust's location; only guile was permitted.

Janet took a deep breath, pushed open the door, and ran again, pelting down the sidewalk, over the bridge, past the hollow willow, and up the hill alongside Eliot, until she came to a door, which she yanked open and bolted through. A few dinner-goers looked at her oddly, but nobody actually commented this time; her expression just now forbade it.

She turned and squelched down the first-floor corridor to the other end of Eliot.

Now she must decide which it was to be, outside or the tunnels. She peered through Eliot's side door; it was mostly oak, and gave less view than the modern glass one of Dunbar.

She could see the entrance to the Women's Center; and out of it, by God, even as she watched, paced Rob Benfield and Nick, shorn of their masks and jackets, in what looked like perfect amity. Janet put her hand angrily on the bar of the door, intending to go out and tell Nick what she thought of him. No, not like this. Even though she had done all this on his behalf, there was too great a chance that he would laugh at her; and then she would probably break his nose.

Janet went down the stairs to the basement of Eliot, and down the next flight to the tunnels. In their arid and slightly dusty depths, the rotten-lake smell of her clothes was stronger than ever. Janet moved as fast as she could without actually running. Her knee was throbbing, and her scraped arm screamed at her. She wanted to look at it more closely, but not enough to stop in the tunnels to do it.

She passed the opening of
The Iliad,
the dim tunnel to Forbes and the ghastly bright one to Holmes, hearing nothing but her own footsteps. Bright patches of poetry and invective swam at the edges of her vision; there was always something you had missed, beckoning you to stoop under a pipe or stand on one, to read what was inserted into a far corner or scrawled on the ceiling by a dedicated graffitist. Janet ignored them all, and, pursued by fragments of Tennyson and Ginsberg and a piece of Euripides that she was certain she had never seen before, turned the last corner, bolted up the steps past the dehydrated water, and ran for all she was worth up all five flights to the top floor of Ericson. She was still oozing slimy water.

She stopped outside her own door, panting, and banged on it. It was opened in a moment by Christina, who looked first annoyed and then surprised and then flabbergasted.

"What happened to you?"

"I went and jumped in the lake," said Janet, shortly.

"You'll get hepa—"

"Look, you don't want me dripping on the carpet. Could you get me my bathrobe so I can take a shower?"

Christina disappeared down the interior hallway, returning in what seemed like a long time not only with Janet's green chenille bathrobe, but her toiletry kit, her week's supply of towels, and a large paper sack from Jacobsen's as well. She was stuffing the first three into the fourth as she approached, and held out the bulging bag to Janet.

"You won't have to touch the clean stuff now," she said, "and you can put those clothes in the bag when you're done."

"And burn them," said Janet, accepting the bag. "Thank you, Tina. "

"I don't think you have to burn them," said Christina. " Soak them overnight in detergent and some bleach and run them through the washer a couple of times."

"Sure," said Janet, who had not been speaking literally. "That's a good idea."

Mercifully, the bathroom was empty; very few people took showers at dinnertime. It took three latherings with herbal shampoo and four soapings with peppermint soap to get the smell of the lake off of Janet. She was about to do a fifth round with the peppermint when she realized that the remaining smell was from the sodden heap of clothes she had removed.

She bundled herself into her bathrobe, wound a towel around her head, and disposed of the clothes as Christina had recommended, putting, in addition, a large sign above the sink that said, "No, I DIDN'T forget about these; touch them at your peril." In a mixed dormitory that would just be asking for trouble, but in a girls' dorm it was probably all right; and it vented a little of her remaining spleen.

When she came upstairs she found Nora, also in a bathrobe, a red silk one with a blue dragon on the back, and her hair not in a towel but in dozens of little braids, sitting at Molly's desk and waiting for her. Christina was sitting on her own bed and looking vastly concerned.

"Christina said you fell in the lake," Nora said.

"Well?" said Janet.

"Did you swallow any water?"

"No, I don't think so."

"You'd know," said Nora. "Well, you could go in on Monday if you wanted and ask for a tetanus shot and a blood test, but there's probably nothing to worry about."

"I wasn't worrying," said Janet.

"No, I'm sure you weren't," said Nora, getting up, "but somebody has to."

She went out. Janet, still irked, began to dry her hair. As soon as she had got it so it wouldn't drip on the book, she ought to do that philo reading. She was not hungry anymore.

Christina sat on her bed, doing nothing, but having the wit not to say anything.

As Janet shook herb-scented water from her right ear, somebody began to whistle in the staircase. In the room the women come and go, Talking of Michelangelo.

"It's Nickl" said Christina, starting up. "Do you want me to keep him out in the hall till you get dressed?"

"Certainly not," said Janet. What she wanted was for Christina to go away so she could scarify Nick properly; but it was Christina's room too, and Christina was being remarkably decent about everything.

The whistle came on down the hall and stopped, and Nick knocked hugely.

Christina let him in; he greeted her cheerfully, saying something in a low tone that made her laugh. Janet sat down on her bed and shook out her damp hair, scowling.

Nick came around the corner, pleasure and approbation evident in him from his unruly dark hair to his scuffed loafers.

"Oh, well done," he said to her. "Did I keep them occupied for long enough? I saw Kit looking quite disconsolate, but I didn't care to speak to him somehow."

Janet gathered herself carefully, and Christina said, "She ended up in the lake.

What have you two been doing?"

The way she said "you two" made Janet grit her teeth.

"Schiller," said Nick, apparently unaffected. He grinned at Janet. "That was very bright of you. That whole lot hates water. Look, do you want to have dinner before the movie?"

"I have to do my philo reading," said Janet darkly.

"Come to dinner anyway."

"If you'll promise me one thing."

"It's yours."

"
Never
do that to me again."

"But why? You managed it beautifully."

"I don't care," said Janet. "The point is not how well or badly I manage surprises like that—the point is that I hate them. Don't do it again. All you had to do was ask; I'd have agreed to take Schiller and run like hell. But
don't spring things on me.
"

"What'd you do with him?" said Christina with wide eyes.

"Nicholas?" said Janet, her eyes on Nick's blunt face and those ingenuous blue eyes, which were looking at Christina and not at her.

"I understand," said Nick; and then looked at her. "Well, what
did
you do with him? Since Tina's had to witness this uproar, she might as well be in on the secret. I need a new cell, anyway."

"A new what?" said Christina.

"Cell," said Janet. "As in conspiracy to commit revolution. We're going to have to conspire to put him in a better place, actually; he's not very secure where he is."

Nick, on hearing Schiller's location, agreed with this assessment; he and Christina and Janet then removed Schiller from under the larches and deposited him with a friend of Nick's in Dunbar. Then they ate dinner in that modern, airy, glassed-in dining hall, with its fine view of the green lake. Then they all went to see Olivier roll his eyes in
Othello.

It was not until Nick, sitting between them, took Janet's hand and, looking to smile at him in the dim light, she saw that he was also holding Christina's hand that she remembered Tina had seen this movie last night. She did not know whether the dual hand-holding was diplomacy or impudence, but she thought she knew what to call what Tina was doing. It was appropriate, though hardly comfortable, that the theme of
Othello
should be jealousy.

Nick walked them back to Ericson afterward and left them on its front steps. "I'll call you," he said, straight to Janet, and walked off briskly, whistling "Greensleeves."

It occurred to Janet that he always said that, but he never did; he just showed up.

"Isn't he cute?" said Christina placidly, and opened the main door of Ericson.

"Perishingly," said Janet, and they went upstairs.