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Show brown hair was of the consistency of steel wool and receded in front toward a bald spot in back. The head underneath was shaped like a bullet, a gleaming brown bullet, and his teeth were large and white. The two other Managers at the table were both women, adorned with tucked and girdled plissons and sipping sweet d'bolo wine. Their graying hair was arranged in elaborate twists. One woman had a veil floating from the crown of her coif which she had to repeatedly brush away from her line of vision. "And what of the waste of DragonGeese, friend Ivan," asked the one with the veil, Manager Andrus, "which be fowl but not at all feathered?" "And what of the dwarf YellowBison?" asked the other one, Manager Jensen. "For as ye wot well, the YellowBison are of the family Suidae, encompassing EarthPigs, Hogs, and Boars, but have neither bristles nor hair, being covered entire by plates of horn." The Visitor listened to this exchange patiently and with a mild interest, for such disputes were familiar to him and indeed a way of life. The female Managers sipped their wine and fluttered their spider-leg eyelashes here and there, noting the folk coming in and out of the Refectory, particularly a tall, thick-bearded Anglican, swinging his cross and murmuring melodious Pax Vobiscums to all the wights along his way. Ivan looked up from his work with the pipe and frowned. "Now, the DragonGeese," he said, "being most often SmallHolding pets in the class of GreenLizards and the smaller JumbleDogs, would come under the eye of the Domestic Bureau, but the dwarf YellowBison. . .hmmmmm. . .hmmmmm. . . " He tapped the pipe stem on his teeth and thought. 62 |
