43.

The Last Ordinary Journey

Trainyard to Il Thalore, Year 198 AGH

The pattern gauge fitted in Perrin's case until he put in the things he might need to use it.

The dwarf took out his clean shirt, laid the two smaller clamps across the bottom, and tried again. The gauge went on top in its cloth. He had spent most of the previous afternoon freeing the sliding arm, and he did not want it knocked against anything. The little level in the stock was clear now. He tipped it, watched the bubble travel, and put the shirt back over it.

Una would notice that he had left the old scratch beside the adjustment screw. She had put it there herself, marking a setting she said she would certainly remember. He had told her that if she could certainly remember it there was no reason to scratch the gauge.

He could begin with that. Or with the leaf pattern.

The leaf pattern had been a dreadful thing, crowded with ornament until the edges appeared to be growing more leaves in an effort to escape the middle. Una had defended it. Perrin had been looking forward to mentioning it ever since her invitation arrived, though he could not see how the conversation would continue after she denied having liked it.

He put a small file beside the clamps.

Mirra, his orc neighbor, knocked while he was testing whether the lid would close. She stood in the doorway with her coat on and one bag over her shoulder. Her hair was tied high and close, and she had the look of someone who intended to remain dressed for leaving.

“Is that everything?” she asked.

“Nearly.”

She looked at the tools still on the table. Perrin closed the lid before her attention could become a question.

“I was thinking,” he said, “this will probably be my last long journey.”

“You haven't made this one yet.”

“I mean after this.”

“Have you got the ticket?”

He had put it beneath Una's letter. Mirra took the ticket while he folded the letter along its old crease. His broad fingertips had polished the paper at the ends of the address. He had not seen Una since he retired from the pattern shop. They had written, mostly about people they both knew and jobs they no longer had to finish. Her latest letter had asked him to come and spend a day with her. It named no work at all.

“Where's the other booking?” Mirra asked.

“What other booking?”

“From Il Thalore to her house.”

“That takes me to Il Thalore.”

“Yes.” She put a finger on the destination. “And she doesn't live at the Current stop.”

Perrin unfolded the letter again. The directions after the stop were quite clear. Una had even named the local road carrier.

“They used to arrange the whole journey when you asked for it.”

“Did you ask for it?”

“I gave them the destination.”

Mirra waited. At thirty-one she had an excellent capacity for waiting without appearing to spare any time for it.

“Il Thalore,” he admitted.

“There's a booking desk on our way. We'll ask there.”

She moved her bag out of the doorway so he could get the case through. He went back for the larger clamp.

“Perrin.”

“In case she has something that needs holding.”

“I have an appointment. We agreed to travel together if we took this departure.”

He looked from her to the clamp. There was no comfortable place left for it in the case. He put it down with rather more care than it needed, lifted his coat over the tool roll already tied to the handle, and took the other end of the case.

At the desk he asked for the local journey by name. The clerk found an outward place and a return that would bring him back to Il Thalore the following morning. He paid separately and accepted a second piece of paper. One case was included in that arrangement. He said he understood.

Mirra had set her bag between her boots while they waited. She took it up at once.

“You might have let me pay for your time,” Perrin said outside.

“You can carry your end.”

He did. The case was heavy enough to occupy him all the way to the Current approach at Trainyard.

*   *   *

The porter wanted to know whether they could lift it by both handles.

“There's a gauge inside,” Perrin said. “And some pattern tools. I used to make the metal patterns for casting. You have to allow for what the finished piece will do, not simply copy the thing you want.”

“Both handles?”

“Yes. They're sound.”

The porter tried the nearer one, asked Mirra to let go, and brought the case onto the luggage trolley with Perrin still holding the other end.

“There we are. You can leave it with me.”

Perrin let go. His hand remained curled for a moment after the weight had gone. He opened it, rubbed the impression of the handle with his thumb, and followed Mirra toward the carriage.

Beyond the passenger approach he could see freight being moved along an older line. A worker walked beside a low load with a hand resting on its edge. Perrin watched long enough to see it pass clear of a stack, then had to quicken his pace. Mirra had found their entrance.

Inside, a woman had a flat box on her lap and one foot well into the space where his would have to go. She drew it back before he asked.

“Mind the corner,” she said.

“Is it fragile?”

“It's a cake.”

He moved past it with the attention he would have given a finished mold. Once seated, he discovered that there was room to stretch his legs if he kept them slightly to one side. The woman shifted the box to improve his passage, then checked beneath the lid to make sure the courtesy had cost her nothing.

Mirra sat opposite. Her long knees made a different arrangement of the same space. She put her bag away and took out a book with a folded sheet marking her place.

Perrin took off his coat. His case was secured elsewhere, his tickets were in his pocket, and there was nothing he needed to hold. He settled his shoulders against the seat. It was very comfortable.

He considered telling Mirra this, but she had begun reading. Across the aisle a passenger was already asleep, mouth slightly open, with a parcel held between their feet. The cake woman smoothed a corner of the paper around her box. Someone farther along asked which side would give the better view, and received two different answers.

The carriage began to move. Perrin had braced for a jolt and found himself sitting firmly against nothing that required it. Through the window, the platform edge slid away. Roofs hid one another and then separated. A narrow strip of ground appeared beside the guideway, with weeds growing beyond the maintained edge.

At a hundred and seventy-five he did not consider himself obliged to be astonished by every new means of going somewhere. Nevertheless, he leaned toward the glass.

The smoothness made the noises easier to distinguish. There was a low working sound beneath the floor, a small change of note as they passed a junction, and the ordinary rattle of something a passenger had not packed tightly enough. He listened for the rattle again.

“It's mine,” Mirra said, without looking up.

“What is?”

She touched the clasp of her bag with the toe of her boot. The rattle stopped.

“Ah,” he said.

She turned a page. Perrin looked out at a row of workshops whose rear walls he had never seen, though he knew the street on the other side of them. One had a patch of washing between the loading doors. A red sleeve lifted and fell as they passed.

For a while he followed the changes in the roofs. There were low new buildings where he remembered an open yard, then an open yard where he could not remember what had stood. He liked being able to look without finding his way. When the cake woman took a little packet of food from beneath her coat, he remembered the bread in his own pocket and ate it while Mirra read.

At the next stop the sleeping passenger woke, looked out, and went back to sleep. The doors closed. Perrin put the last crust in his mouth.

“They'll bring us forward now,” he said. “You can see where the other guideway joins.”

They did not move.

He waited through the time in which, having said it, he felt they reasonably should have moved. Mirra raised her eyes from the book. He pointed out the junction, though she had not asked where it was.

There was a quiet exchange near the end of the carriage. One of the staff went through an inner door. Perrin leaned into the aisle, listening.

“Perhaps the fitting hasn't come back,” he said.

“Which fitting?” Mirra asked.

He could not see the relevant fitting. He could see the closed door and a staff member beside it, looking along the carriage. Perrin got to his feet. His pocket driver was in his hand before he had decided whether to take it.

“Stay clear of this end, please,” the staff member said as he approached.

“I wondered if you needed someone to look at a fastening.”

“No, thank you. We're waiting for the route ahead. Please take your seat.”

Perrin put the driver away. There had been nothing discourteous in the answer, which left him no useful reply. On his way back he had to wait for the cake woman to draw her foot in again.

“Still all right?” she asked.

He glanced at the box.

“The journey,” she said.

“Yes. They're waiting.”

She nodded and settled the box more squarely on her lap.

Mirra kept one finger between her pages. “What are you and Una doing?”

“I don't know yet. She may have some of her old patterns. I've brought the gauge we used.”

“Did she ask you to?”

“It's a present.”

“I meant the patterns.”

“No.”

Mirra looked at the pocket into which he had put the driver.

“Are you going to see her or audit the country?”

“I wasn't going to touch anything.”

“All right. What will you do when you get there?”

He watched a staff member outside cross a strip of paving and stop at a marked place. The person stood there quite easily. Nobody appeared to need a tool.

“We haven't seen one another since I left the shop,” he said.

Mirra took her finger out of the book. “How long?”

He told her.

“Then you'll have things to talk about.”

“We used to talk while we were doing something.”

“She asked you to come.”

“I know.”

He heard how impatient that sounded and added, “I was pleased.”

“I thought you were.”

The carriage moved before he had another answer. Outside, the staff member remained at the marked place and diminished behind them. Mirra found her line again. Perrin took Una's letter out, read the directions though he knew them, and looked at the last part, where she had said she hoped he would stay until morning.

He folded it carefully. Beyond the next group of houses, the view opened onto low ground. A cart stood beside a road with its load covered. Two people were doing something beneath the cover; he lost sight of them before he could tell what. Farther away stood a building he recognized by its long, irregular roof. He had once gone there over a disputed measurement. He remembered being angry on the return journey, and then remembered where he had eaten, though not who had been right.

Mirra turned another page. He asked what she was reading. She told him, and read him a short passage she disliked because the person in it had been allowed to leave an argument at precisely the moment an answer would have become difficult.

Perrin agreed that this was convenient. She went on reading to see whether the person ever came back.

*   *   *

At Il Thalore, Mirra helped him bring the case clear of the passenger route. Then she shifted her own bag higher on her shoulder.

“Here tomorrow,” she said, indicating the waiting place beside the outward information. “After your road carriage arrives. We have time between them.”

He checked the return paper. “I know.”

“Good. My appointment is that way.”

“Will you get something to eat?”

“Yes.”

“You needn't hurry back on my account.”

“I'll come at the time we agreed.”

She gave his sleeve a brief pat and went. He watched her pass a slow-moving group without making any of them move for her, then turned his case toward the local carriers.

The road carriage looked less spacious when he reached it than it had sounded at the booking desk. Its carrier read the paper and pointed to the place for his case. Perrin set it down there. As he lifted his coat away, the tied tool roll swung against the side.

“That extra bundle isn't booked,” the carrier said.

“It's fastened to the case.”

“It still takes the space beside it.”

Perrin looked at the indicated space. The roll did indeed occupy a part of it which another case would need.

“It came on the Current.”

“This is the road carriage.”

Behind him someone was waiting with a basket. The carrier did not hurry Perrin, but neither did they move the basket's place to accommodate his tools.

He began to untie the roll. The knot had tightened on the journey. He took out his driver, worked its end beneath the cord and freed it, pleased for a moment to have brought the right thing.

“There's a store over there,” the carrier said. “They'll keep it for the return.”

“For a charge?”

“Yes.”

He had expected the answer. It annoyed him nonetheless.

At the store he laid the roll on the counter, then opened it to make sure he had not tied the gauge into it by mistake. He had not. The gauge was under the clean shirt, exactly where he had packed it. The attendant waited while he checked. Perrin closed the case, paid, and took a receipt for tools he would be paying to leave idle.

He put the receipt beside the return booking in the outer pocket.

Without the roll the case went into the allotted place. The owner of the basket sat beside him and took out some mending. Perrin moved his elbow to give the needle room. The road began with buildings close on both sides, then turned where the Current continued away from them.

Here he felt the surface change through the seat. At a narrow place they waited while a loaded vehicle came the other way. A person outside a house lifted a hand to the carrier. The basket's owner drew a length of thread through cloth and bit it off. Perrin had thought he would use this part of the journey to sleep, but he kept looking for Una's landmarks.

When they reached his stopping place, he was ready with the case before the carrier asked. He thanked them for the storage direction. The tools could wait quite comfortably until morning, which was more than could be said for the part of his hand that had held the case all the way from the road to Una's door.

Una opened the door while he was considering whether to put the case down before knocking again.

“Perrin!”

She took the nearer handle and pulled him and the luggage into the passage. He tried to explain that she should lift from the other side, but she had already set it down where she wanted it.

“Let me look at you.”

He straightened. She laughed, and he realized he had arranged himself as he used to when somebody came through the shop looking for the person in charge.

“You look well,” she said. “Come in. You can leave that there.”

“I've brought you something.”

“Then bring that.”

Una was a stout dwarf with a white plait lying over one shoulder, loose at its lower end. When she turned toward the room, he caught the familiar square movement of her back beneath a very unfamiliar yellow waistcoat. He had known her through years of gray work clothes. The yellow pleased him. He opened the case and took out the cloth-wrapped gauge.

She cleared a place for it on the table before he had finished undoing the fold.

“Oh,” she said.

She did not touch it at once. He had been ready to explain what he had done to the screw, and stopped.

Una put a hand on the stock. Her broad fingertips passed over the scratch and came to rest on the sliding arm.

“It moves now,” he said.

She loosened the screw and tried it. “It used to move.”

“With assistance.”

“You were impatient.”

“I was usually holding the other end of something.”

She moved it back, tightened the screw and checked the setting. Then she looked up at him.

“Thank you. I wondered what had become of it.”

“I thought you could use it.”

“I shall find a place for it.”

“Are you still doing the smaller patterns?”

“No. I stopped.”

He waited for her to say when she intended to begin again. Una folded the wrapping cloth neatly beneath the gauge.

“Altogether?”

“Yes.”

“I didn't know.”

“I meant to write about it. Then I thought you were coming.”

Perrin drew out a chair. He had expected a room in which work lay ready to be picked up. There were things on the table, but none of them required a pattern maker. A book lay open facedown beside a cup. Someone had begun to mend the edge of a cloth and left the needle safely through it. Beyond the table stood a row of shelves crowded with pottery.

“Do you remember that leaf pattern?” he asked.

“Which one?”

He began describing it, though the joke depended on her remembering at once.

“The one with the little leaves inside the larger leaves?” she said.

“And the large ones coming round the edge.”

“There was a flower in the middle.”

“There wasn't room.”

“There was. You said there wasn't, and I showed you.”

He remembered the flower. It had been almost worse than the leaves.

“You defended it,” he said.

“I liked it.”

She said this without the least attempt to recover her reputation. He laughed, but the next thing he had meant to say was about a job they had done afterward, and he could not remember whether she or somebody else had worked on it with him.

Una brought water and asked about his journey. He told her about the road carrier and the roll in storage. She glanced toward the passage.

“There's more?”

“Only the extra tools.”

“What have you kept?”

“A few things.”

She poured his water. “I've been putting mine away. It takes longer than you'd think.”

He wanted to ask where. Instead he asked whether she missed the work.

“Sometimes. I don't miss having to finish it when I've had enough.”

He knew exactly which part of a day she meant. He drank and looked toward the shelves again. Something about the middle row troubled him.

“Is that one lower at the end?”

Una followed his eye. “I've been wondering. I didn't want to take everything off to discover I'd only been looking at it crookedly.”

He stood up. She moved beside him and took down two cups, then a third. The empty wood made a clear line beneath the remaining row.

Perrin laid the gauge along it. The bubble settled between its marks. He turned the gauge end for end and let it settle again. Una bent to look beside him.

“It's level,” he said.

“That's a relief.”

“That cup isn't.”

He pointed to a squat green vessel whose painted rim sloped alarmingly. Una handed it down. On the table it stood almost straight until he touched the edge; then it tipped onto a different part of its foot.

“There.” He turned it. “One side of the foot is high.”

“I know.”

“You knew?”

“I didn't know whether the shelf was doing something as well.”

He held it upside down. There was enough material to work with. “It wouldn't take much to make it sit.”

“I like it standing like that.”

He put it down and watched it choose its worse angle. The green paint had run beneath one side of the rim. From this position it looked as though the whole cup were preparing to slide into its own handle.

“Why?”

“Look at it.”

“I am.”

She turned it until the lean was strongest. He could see that she preferred it that way. She had known it would do this when she bought it.

He looked back at the shelf, now with more attention to the individual objects. There was a tall cup so narrow that cleaning the bottom would be a serious undertaking, and a dark one whose raised flowers left very little place to put a hand. Beside those stood a perfectly ordinary white cup with a blue band.

“What's that doing there?” he asked.

Una took it down. “This?”

“It seems quite respectable.”

She turned the handle toward him.

The handle was painted as a pink hand. Six green fingernails followed its outer curve, and a gold ring encircled a place where no finger could bend. The lower end emerged from a painted cuff on the cup's otherwise innocent side.

Perrin took it from her.

“They've put the ring in the wrong place.”

“Only if that's a finger.”

“What else would it be?”

“I don't know. You've only just arrived. You needn't decide at once.”

He carried it to the window. In the stronger light, a small white highlight appeared on each green nail. The painter had taken pains over them. Perrin turned the cup until he could see how the lowest nail met the cuff, then brought it closer.

“There's another one underneath.”

Una came to look. “No.”

He showed her. Hidden where the handle joined the bowl was a seventh green mark, carefully finished with its own little stroke of white.

She began to laugh. “I never saw that.”

“You can't put it on a shelf with that part against the wall.”

“It has to face some way.”

“Put it at the end. Then you can come at it from either side.”

She took it from him and held it at the end of the shelf, trying the position without setting it down. He moved to the doorway to judge it from there.

“The other end,” he said.

“There's a cup there.”

“I can see that.”

“You haven't seen its back.”

She fetched that one, then went to the kitchen for another which, she said, had been unfairly excluded from the room because people kept using it.

Perrin carried the pink-handled cup back to the window. Under the blue band were four evenly spaced dots. They were unnecessary, and he liked the painter a little less for them. When Una returned, he told her so.

“Leave the dots alone,” she said. “I've brought you something much worse.”

The cup from the kitchen had teeth painted beneath its lip. They were small, close together, and continued all the way round. Its handle was plain. Perrin held it by the handle and considered the teeth.

“I don't think it's worse,” he said.

“You haven't drunk from it.”

“Do you?”

“Often. It holds a good amount.”

“The shape is good.”

“I didn't buy it for the shape.”

He set the two side by side. In the afternoon light the white of the pink-handled cup was slightly yellow, whereas the toothed cup had a bluish glaze. He had not noticed the difference while carrying them separately. Una moved them so the handles did not overlap and went to put the kettle on.

He followed her. There was a little room at the back where his case could go, and she showed him the bed before taking him into the kitchen. A cloth lay over a dish on the table. Beside it was a loaf already cut at one end.

“I thought we'd have this,” she said. “We needn't do anything to it.”

Under the cloth were cold beans dressed with raw onion and a great deal of something sour. He could smell it before she brought the plates.

“You don't like it?”

“I haven't tried it.”

“You looked as though you had.”

He took a modest serving and brought the bread nearer. Una gave herself considerably more. They began to eat.

The first mouthful was mostly vinegar. The second was no improvement, though he took care to include more beans.

“It's too sharp for me,” he said.

“I like that.”

“I can see.”

She reached for the bread. He held the loaf while she cut it, then took a piece for himself. There was enough, and he was hungry. He ate the beans with more bread than he would ordinarily have wanted, while Una told him about the seller from whom she had bought the toothed cup.

“I only stopped because he was taking the stall down. It was in a box with two bowls, and he put the bowls on top of it.”

“They must have been small bowls.”

“They were. Very dull. I asked him to lift them.”

“What did he say?”

“He lifted them.”

Perrin smiled. She went on eating. He had forgotten how she could leave a story there, with the thing she had wanted done and no further conduct required of the person who had done it.

“How many have you got?”

“I don't know.”

“You must know roughly.”

“Several.”

He looked through the doorway at the shelves.

“More than several.”

“Then don't ask roughly.”

He laughed. Una pushed the dish toward him, remembered, and drew it back without making him refuse a second time. She took the last onion instead.

After supper he carried the plates to the sink while she cleared the table. He washed; she dried. It was easier to keep the water in the bowl if he stood a little closer, and she moved the empty dish out of his way without saying anything. They had once shared a washstand at which either could displace the other's elbows for an entire working day. This sink was wider. He enjoyed the width.

The pink-handled cup was waiting where they had left it. Perrin dried his hands and brought it back to the kitchen.

“It would have been better without the dots,” he said.

“You're still on the dots?”

“They make it look as though the rest was an accident.”

Una took it from him. “Perhaps the person wanted somewhere to rest between fingernails.”

She filled the toothed cup for herself and found him one whose handle did not invite further investigation. He drank a little, then put it down and took up the other one again.

The gold ring went almost all the way round the painted finger, though part of it could only be seen from below. Somebody had finished it there, in a place a drinker would scarcely look. Perrin tilted the cup toward Una.

“They did the back.”

“Of course they did.”

“There's no of course about it.”

She bent over it with him. Their heads were close enough that a loose end of her white hair brushed his cheek, and she tucked it back without lifting her eyes from the paint. For a while neither spoke. He could follow the narrow line until it met itself beneath the handle.

“That must have been awkward,” Una said.

“Yes.”

“Worth it, though.”

He turned the cup upright. “For you.”

“You found it.”

He was pleased that he had. He put it down where they could both see the handle, and they drank their tea.

Later she showed him a chipped cup she had kept because of the color, and another whose owner had painted over a mistake without choosing an opaque paint. Perrin liked the first one more than she expected. He disliked the second enough to put it back after a very short examination. She took it down again and defended the part he disliked. They returned to the window, though the light there was no longer as good.

“There's a stall near here tomorrow,” Una said. “We could look before you go.”

He thought of the return booking in his pocket.

“How near?”

She told him the way, which involved no road carrier or complicated arrangement at all. He took out his paper. They compared the time they would need with the time already allowed for his departure. Una moved the toothed cup onto a different shelf while he checked.

“Yes,” he said. “We could.”

“I was going anyway. Sometimes there's nothing.”

“There must be something.”

“Not something I want.”

He watched her give the leaning green cup its preferred angle. She had left a space at the end for the pink hand. The gauge lay on the side table, its cloth beneath it.

“I didn't know what we'd do,” he said.

She looked round. “When?”

“Here. After I'd arrived.”

“I wanted to show you those.”

“You could have said.”

“You might not have come.”

He began to deny it, then looked at the cups again. If her letter had said she wanted him to travel all that way to look at some ugly pottery, he would have tried to find another purpose for the journey. He might have brought a larger case.

“I would have come,” he said. “I'd have complained.”

“You have.”

She was smiling. He smiled back, then asked her to turn the green one slightly toward the room. It had looked more determined from that angle.

They were still discussing where it should stand when Una noticed how late it was.

In the morning Perrin had his case closed before Una had found the bag she wanted.

“You've got one there,” he said.

“That one's for the food.”

“You could put a cup in it.”

“I know. I'm looking for the other one.”

He sat down and waited. She was a hundred and sixty-seven, eight years younger than he was, and had been making him wait for the particular thing she wanted for longer than he cared to calculate. He looked at the cups while she searched. In the morning light the green one seemed less inclined to fall. He took it down, turned it, and discovered that the worst of its lean had been toward the room all along.

“Leave it,” Una called from the other room.

“I'm only looking.”

“So was I yesterday.”

She came back with a broad cloth bag and put her purse inside. Perrin set the cup down at the angle she had chosen. His case could stay by the door until they returned.

The stall stood beneath an awning beside a place selling ordinary household goods. Somebody was turning a frying pan over to inspect its bottom. Una went past the larger pieces with her bag held close, stopping where a low board carried a mixed row of cups. Perrin stopped beside her.

For a little while they found nothing. There were usable cups, damaged cups, a vase pretending to be a cup because someone had given it a handle. Una rejected that without consulting him. He picked up a plain brown one, liked its weight, and put it back.

Then he saw the ship.

It occupied almost the whole side of a squat cup, its sails crowded against the rim. The hull was too long for the available sea. Perrin turned the cup, expecting the painter to have ended the water at the handle. Instead the waves climbed it. A white curl broke over the top, and below it a blue stroke ran down toward a place where there had been no room left for the ship's stern.

He turned it back.

“Una.”

She was examining a lid that did not fit the vessel beneath it. She put it down and came to him.

“That would do for your shelf,” he said.

She took the cup. Her thumb followed the white curl across the handle, then stopped so she could look without covering it.

“They didn't want to lose any sea.”

“They haven't lost any ship either. Look round the other side.”

She did. The stern ended in a very small brown triangle squeezed between two waves.

“They nearly did,” she said.

“But they kept it.”

She held the cup farther away. He wanted it back before she had finished looking, and waited until she offered it.

The foot was even. He checked it on the board. The seller, who had finished with the frying pan, named the price.

Perrin reached for his purse.

“I was thinking,” he said to Una, “it might be too low among those tall ones.”

“You could put it at the front.”

“It would obscure the others.”

“Only their feet.”

He looked at the sea on the handle. At home he had a place beside the window where it would be possible to turn the cup without moving anything else.

“I might keep it,” he said.

“You haven't bought it yet.”

He paid the seller.

Una held out her open bag, and he almost drew the cup back before realizing she meant to carry it safely for him.

“I'll manage,” he said.

“Then keep it. It was you who saw it.”

“You don't mind?”

“Perrin, I have several cups.”

He laughed and asked the seller for something to wrap it in. Una went back to the mismatched lid. She bought neither lid nor vessel, but found a small dish farther along and spent some time deciding whether the faded edge spoiled it. Perrin stood with his purchase in both hands and waited without offering to decide for her.

They went back by the same streets. The wrapped cup was not heavy, but he kept changing the way he carried it so the handle did not press against his fingers.

“There must be other stalls,” he said.

“There are.”

“Somewhere else, I mean.”

Una looked at him. “We could go and see.”

He thought of places he knew because he had worked in them. Each came with a workshop or a foundry gate standing in front of everything else he might remember.

“Somewhere we haven't worked,” he said.

“Both of us?”

“That might take more looking.”

“We could manage that.”

They began comparing what each would count as having worked somewhere. Perrin thought a single delivery should not disqualify an entire town. Una said it depended whether he intended to spend the visit looking for the person who had received it. By the time they reached her door, they had eliminated several places without choosing one.

There was time to wrap the cup properly. Perrin opened his case on the floor and took out the shirt that had protected the gauge. Una watched while he arranged the cloth around the handle.

“You can put it in the gauge's place,” she said.

“I am.”

“I thought you were trying to give it half the case.”

He moved a clamp to the other side and put the shirt between metal and pottery. When he closed the lid, nothing shifted.

The gauge was still on the side table. Una had put the old cloth away and given it a clear place of its own. He was glad to see it there.

At the door she took his empty hand in both of hers and pressed it once.

“Write when you've found somewhere,” she said.

“I'll send the choices.”

“Send more than one.”

He promised he would. Then he took the case and walked to the road stop, arriving with time to put it down before the carrier came.

*   *   *

At Il Thalore he showed his receipt and collected the tool roll. The attendant brought it out with the cord still tied as he had left it. Perrin checked that the knot held, then set it beside the case while he looked inside to make sure the cup had survived the road.

It had. The white wave appeared first when he folded the shirt back. He covered it again before anyone could jostle him.

Mirra found him at the agreed waiting place with both pieces of luggage beside his feet. She had a paper parcel under her arm as well as the bag she had brought. He asked whether her appointment had gone as she wanted. She said it had, except for a question that would have to be answered in writing, and told him what she had found to eat afterward. He listened while she unfastened her coat.

“And Una?” she asked.

“Very well. She's stopped working.”

“Did you have a good visit?”

“Yes. I bought a cup.”

Mirra waited for the connection. He found he wanted to show it to her, but the waiting place was filling and he had packed it carefully.

“I'll show you when we get home,” he said. “Do you know where I should start if we wanted to make another trip? Una and me.”

“You can do the booking this time.”

“I mean somewhere else.”

“So do I.”

She moved her parcel away from a damp place on the bench and sat. Perrin sat beside her. His case rested between his boots, with the tool roll beyond it.

The journey information was in his outer pocket with the used local ticket. He opened it, passed over the main corridor map, and found the local connections. He would need to know where the road carriers took people after they left the Current. He took out his pencil and began to read.