On the platform outside, Gentle heard Pie say, "Good."

He raised himself from the comfort of the wall and stepped out into the sunshine again. "The train?" he said.

"No. The calculations. I've finished them." The mystif stared down at the marks on the platform at its feet. "This is only an approximation, of course, but I think it's sound within a day or two. Three at the most."

"So what day is it?"

"Take a guess."

"March... the tenth."

"Way off," said Pie. "By these calculations, and remember this is only an approximation, it's the seventeenth of May."

"Impossible."

"It's true."

"Spring's almost over."

"Are you wishing you were back there?" Pie asked.

Gentle chewed on this for a while, then said, "Not particularly. I just wish the fucking trains ran on time."

He wandered to the edge of the platform and stared down the line.

"There's no sign," Pie said. "We'd be quicker going by doeki."

"You keep doing that—"

"Doing what?"

"Saying what's on the tip of my tongue. Are you reading my mind?"

"No," said the mystif, rubbing out its calculation with its sole.

"So how did we win all that in Attaboy?"

"You don't need teaching," Pie replied.

"Don't tell me it comes naturally," Gentle said. "I've got through my entire life without winning a thing, and suddenly, when you're with me, I can do no wrong. That's no coincidence. Tell me the truth."

"That is the truth. You don't need teaching. Reminding, maybe...." Pie gave a little smile.

"And that's another thing," Gentle said, snatching at one of the zarzi as he spoke.

Much to his surprise, he actually caught it. He opened his palm. He'd cracked its casing, and the blue mush of its innards was oozing out, but it was still alive. Disgusted, he flicked his wrist, depositing the body on the platform at his feet. He didn't scrutinize the remains, but pulled up a fistful of the sickly grass that sprouted between the slabs of the platform and set about scrubbing his palm with it.

"What were we talking about?" he said. Pie didn't reply. "Oh, yes... things I'd forgotten." He looked down at his clean hand. "Pneuma," he said. "Why would I ever forget having a power like the pneuma?"

"Either because it wasn't important to you any longer—"

"Which is doubtful."

"—or you forgot because you wanted to forget."

There was an oddness in the way the mystif pronounced its reply which grated on Gentle's ear, but he pursued the argument anyway.

"Why would I want to forget?" he said.

Pie looked back along the line. The distance was obscured by dust, but there were glimpses through it of a clear sky.

"Well?" said Gentle.

"Maybe because remembering hurts too much," it said, without looking around.

The words were even uglier to Gentle's ear than the reply that had preceded it. He caught the sense, but only with difficulty.

"Stop this," he said.

"Stop what?"

"Talking in that damn-fool way. It turns my gut."

"I'm not doing anything," the mystif said, its voice still distorted, but now more subtly. "Trust me. I'm doing nothing."

"So tell me about the pneuma," Gentle said. "I want to know how 1 came by a power like that."

Pie started to reply, but this time the words were so badly disfigured, and the sound itself so ugly, it was like a fist in Gentle's stomach, stirring the stew there.

"Jesus!" he said, rubbing his belly in a vain attempt to soothe the churning. "Whatever you're playing at—"

"It's not me," Pie protested. "It's you. You don't want to hear what I'm saying."

"Yes, I do," Gentle said, wiping beads of chilly sweat from around his mouth. "I want answers. I want straight answers!"

Grimly, Pie started to speak again, but immediately the waves of nausea climbed Gentle's gut with fresh zeal. The pain in his belly was sufficient to bend him double, but he was damned if the mystif was going to keep anything from him. It was a matter of principle now. He studied Pie's lips through narrowed eyes, but after a few words the mystif stopped speaking.

"Tell me!" Gentle said, determined to have Pie obey him even if he could make no sense of the words. "What have I done that I want to forget so badly? Tell me!"

Its face all reluctance, the mystif once again opened its mouth. The words, when they came, were so hopelessly corrupted Gentle could barely grasp a fraction of their sense. Something about power. Something about death.

Point proved, he waved the source of this excremental din away and turned his eyes in search of a sight to calm his belly. But the scene around him was a convention of little horrors: a graveolent making its wretched nest beneath the rails; the perspective of the track, snatching his eye into the dust; the dead zarzi at his feet, its egg sac split, spattering its unborn onto the stone. This last image, vile as it was, brought food to mind. The harbor meal in Yzordderrex: fish within fish within fish, the littlest filled with eggs. The thought defeated him. He tottered to the edge of the platform and vomited onto the rails, his gut convulsing. He didn't have that much in his belly, but the heaves went on and on until his abdomen ached and tears of pain ran from his eyes. At last he stepped back from the platform edge, shuddering. The smell of his stomach was still in his nostrils, but the spasms were steadily diminishing. From the corner of his eye he saw Pie approach.

"Don't come near me!" he said. "I don't want you touching me!"

He turned his back on the vomit and its cause and retired to the shade of the waiting room, sitting down on the hard wood bench, putting his head against the wall, and closing his eyes. As the pain eased and finally disappeared, his thoughts turned to the purpose behind Pie's assault. He'd quizzed the mystif several times over the past four and a half months about the problem of power: how it was come by and—more particularly—how he, Gentle, had come to possess it. Pie's replies had been oblique in the extreme, but Gentle hadn't felt any great urge to get to the bottom of the question. Perhaps subconsciously he hadn't really wanted to know. Classically, such gifts had consequences, and he was enjoying his role as getter and wielder of power too much to want it spoiled with talk of hubris. He'd been content to be fobbed off with hints and equivocation, and he might have continued to be content, if he hadn't been irritated by the zarzi and the lateness of the L'Himby train, bored and ready for an argument. But that was only half the issue. He'd pressed the mystif, certainly, but he'd scarcely goaded it. The attack seemed out of all proportion to the offense. He'd asked an innocent question and been turned inside out for doing so. So much for all that loving talk in the mountains.

"Gentle..."

"Fuck you."

"The train, Gentle..."

"What about it?"

"It's coming."He opened his eyes. The mystif was standing in the doorway, looking forlorn.

"I'm sorry that had to happen," it said.

"It didn't have to," Gentle said. "You made it happen."

"Truly I didn't."

"What was it then? Something I ate?"

"No. But there are some questions—"

"That make me sick."

"—that have answers you don't want to hear."

"What do you take me for?" Gentle said, his tone all quiet contempt. "I ask a question, you fill my head with so much shit for an answer that I throw up, and then it's my fault for asking in the first place? What kind of fucked-up logic is that?"

The mystif raised its hands in mock surrender. "I'm not going to argue," it said.

"Damn right," Gentle replied.

Any further exchange would have been impractical anyway, with the sound of the train's approach steadily getting louder, and its arrival being greeted by cheers and clapping from an audience that had gathered on the platform. Still feeling delicate when he stood, Gentle followed Pie out into the crowd.