Fractal Mode

Chapter 16

the permissible limits, she took his hand and guided it to more intimate regions than she would have tolerated had she not had control of it. It was both game and not-game, at the verge of loss of control. She wanted to stop teasing him and being teased by him, and to let nature take its course beyond. But that would be tantamount to commitment, and she couldn"t afford it. Never before this series of dates had she truly understood how a girl could actually come to desire what it seemed every young man did.

Meanwhile she was definitely getting closer to the Mega-players. She felt them more perfectly each time she danced. But they remained distant. Their music was there, capable of being evoked in her mind, and the beat of it grew stronger, but that was all. The Players themselves were somewhere else.

How was she to reach them? She had only one more month before her birthday. Then she would have to marry Stave, or risk the alternative. They discussed this openly, for it was independent of her quest.

"If we go to work for the despots," he said, "I will become a carpenter like my father and build shelves. That is my training. But though you are trained in music, you may not be sent to teach it. You are too beautiful."

"I know," she agreed.

"If we marry, I will still be a carpenter, but you will not be the plaything of your employer. They will let you teach music."

"Until I begin having children," she finished. There was the crux of it. When she began bearing babies, her magic would diminish, and her chance to find the Megaplayers would be gone. She had to find them now-and was not succeeding.

There had to be some way to reach them. Dancing wasn"t enough; it only verified the presence of their lingering magic. But what else could she do?

There had to be a way! Tomorrow she would find it. Somehow. Her magic sense was tingling; she could not actually foresee the future, but she could tell when something important was about to happen.

The day was much like the one when she and Stave had first come here, except that there was no storm forming in the distance. There were no other couples, but Cougar came along, as gladly as ever. The dog still seemed to hope that their control would snap, and they would get into a tangle of arms and legs that rolled helplessly down the hillside, leaving their clothing stranded at the top of the slope, as was reported to have happened on occasion to other couples.

She danced at the brink, taken by the glory of the ancient music, but still she could not reach the Players. Then something else came, something weird and wonderful and alarming. What could it be, if not the Players?

She broke step, retreating to make way. But she saw nothing. It must have been her own desire manifesting as a kind of illusion.