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Show all do? Dr'Anya opened her eyes again. Such a pother toward no discernible e n d . . .! Dr'Anya sat in one of the relatively comfortable carved and upholstered armchairs that were placed around the chamber wherever there was no door and gazed upward at the plaster gargoyles and angels decorating the junction between ceiling and stuccoed walls. The backlighted vault above was filled in with a lightly tinted leaded glass design depicting Ida and Isaac Needlesmith walking over the BauerWorlde Ocean. This aquatic embellishment cast a bluish glow over the chamber and the bustling androids continually transecting it, imparting to the scene a certain lunatic quality. The good woman flexed her aching toes inside her leathern boots, smoothed out the soft blue folds of her black-girdled plisson, and rubbed the stiffened fingers of one hand with the other. Ah, 'twas a trial indeed for Dr'Anya to wend her way from the CloistersLaboratory to the BAABattlements in the center of the both sprawling and crabbed city of NewOxbridge. Dr'Anya happened upon the place during the height of the biggest festival on BauerWorlde-the NewOxbridge CivicPageant. She'd forgot all about it, forsooth-a HighFeastDay that Dr'Anya would indeed forget, for she was something more disposed than the Doctor class as a whole to scholarly abstraction. Dr'Anya sighed. Indeed, all she'd ever wished for was peace and quiet, a simple life with her pearl among pearls, young Janni. She thought about her trip into the old city. Marry, every wight living west of the Tartars must have been in the NewOxbridge streets or flitting above them in aircars and sight-seeing airvans. Horses were 33 |