After the clash of chi, the only completely stationary object in the room was an enormous couch on which two young women were buoyed up as though upon an anchored balloon. They were both in white and their dresses were rippling and fluttering as if they had just been blown back in after a short flight around the house. I must have stood for a few moments listening to the whip and snap of the curtains and the groan of a picture on the wall as the circulating ether died down. Then there was a boom as Tomas Buth-Chanain cut his chi while simultaneously shutting the rear windows and the caught wind died out about the room and the curtains and the rugs and the two young women ballooned slowly to the floor.

The younger of the two was a stranger to me. She was extended full length at her end of the divan, completely motionless and with her chin raised a little as if she were balancing something on it which was quite likely to fall. It was obvious that the woman was cycling her chi. If she saw me out of the corner of her eyes she gave no hint of it—indeed, I was almost surprised into murmuring an apology for having disturbed her by coming in.

The other girl, Dai Zee, made an attempt to rise—she leaned slightly forward with an expression of a coiled spring—then she laughed, an absurd, charming little laugh, and I laughed too and came forward into the room.

"I'm p-paralyzed with energy strain."

She laughed again, as if she said something very witty, and held my hand for a moment, looking up into my face, promising that there was no one in the world she so much wanted to see. That was a way she had. She hinted in a murmur that the surname of the cultivating girl was Pan-ya. (I've heard it said that Dai Zee's murmur was only to make people lower their guard toward her; an irrelevant tactic that made it no less charming.)

At any rate Miss Pan-ya's lips fluttered, she nodded at me almost imperceptibly and then quickly tipped her head back again—the energy she was cycling had obviously tottered a little and given her something of a fright. Again a sort of apology arose to my lips. Almost any exhibition of complete self empowering draws a stunned tribute from me.

I looked back at my cousin who began to ask me questions in her low, thrilling voice. It was the kind of voice that the ear follows up and down as if each speech is an arrangement of notes that will never be played again. Her own particular talent with chi imbued her with enormous acoustic control and abilities. Her face was sad and lovely with bright things in it, bright eyes and a bright passionate mouth—but there was an vibrato in her voice that opponents who had faced her found difficult to forget: a singing compulsion to sleep, a whispered "Listen” to stun, a promise that she has done dark, violent things to spark fear and that she will do dark, violent things until submission.

I told her how I had stopped off in Second City for a day on my way east and how a dozen people had sent their missives through me.

"Do they miss me?" she cried ecstatically.

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"The whole town is desolate from the loss of their only siren. All the demons no longer fear for their lives. All the carts have the left rear wheel painted black as a mourning wreath and there's a persistent wail all night along the North Shore."

"How hideous! Let's go back, Tomas. Tomorrow!" Then she added irrelevantly, "You ought to see the baby."

"I'd like to."

"She's asleep. She's two years old. Haven't you ever seen her?"

"Never."

"Well, you ought to see her. She's—"

Tomas Buth-Chanain who had been hovering restlessly about the room stopped and rested his hand on my shoulder.

"What you doing, Nic?"

"I'm a guild man."

"Who with?"

I told him.

"Never heard of them," he remarked decisively.

This annoyed me.

"You will," I answered shortly. "You will if you stay in the East."

"Oh, I'll stay in the East, don't you worry," he said, glancing at Dai Zee and then back at me, as if he were alert for something more. "I'd be a God Damned fool to live anywhere else."

At this point Miss Pan-ya said "Accomplished!" with such suddenness that I started—it was the first word she uttered since I came into the room. Evidently it surprised her as much as it did me, for she yawned and with a series of rapid, deft movements stood up into the room.

"I'm stiff," she complained, "I've been cycling on that sofa for as long as I can remember."

"Don't look at me," Dai Zee retorted. "I've been trying to get you to New Citadel all afternoon."

"No, thanks," said Miss Pan-ya to the four elixirs just in from the pantry, "I'm absolutely in training. Those will slow the growth of my channels."

Her host looked at her incredulously.

"You are!" He took down his elixir as if it were a drop in the bottom of a glass. "How you ever get anything done is beyond me."

I looked at Miss Pan-ya wondering what it was she "got done." She was a slender, small-breasted girl, with an erect carriage which she accentuated by throwing her body backward at the shoulders like a young cadet. Her grey sun-strained eyes looked back at me with polite reciprocal curiosity out of a wan, charming discontented face. It occurred to me now that I had seen her, or a portrait of her, somewhere before.

"You live in West End," she remarked contemptuously. "I know somebody there."

"I don't know a single—"

"You must know Gatsu-be."

"Gatsu-be?" demanded Dai Zee. "What Gatsu-be?"

Before I could reply that he was my neighbor dinner was announced; wedging his tense arm imperatively under mine Tomas Buth-Chanain compelled me from the room as though he were moving a checker to another square.

Slenderly, languidly, their hands set lightly on their hips the two young women preceded us out onto a rosy-colored porch open toward the sunset where four candles flickered on the table in the diminished wind.

"Why candles?" objected Dai Zee, frowning. She put them out with a snap her fingers. "In two weeks it'll be the longest day in the year." She looked at us all radiantly. "Do you always wait for the longest day of the year and then cultivate on it? I wait for the longest day of the year and then cultivate on it."

"We ought to plan something," yawned Miss Pan-ya, sitting down at the table as if she were getting into bed.

"All right," said Dai Zee. "What'll we plan?" She turned to me helplessly. "What do legionnaires plan?"

Before I could answer her eyes fastened with an awed expression on her little finger.

"Look!" she complained. "I hurt it."

We all looked—the knuckle was black and blue.

"You did it, Tomas," she said accusingly. "I know you didn't mean to but you did do it. That's what I get for marrying a brute of a man, a great big hulking physical specimen of a—"

"I hate that word hulking," objected Tomas crossly, "even in kidding."

"Hulking," insisted Dai Zee.