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Show something electronic. She frowned and looked back at the room into which she'd been ushered politely but firmly only moments before. The mullioned and barred windows looked out on a spendidly appointed atrium-benches, stone tables, gardens, small trees, and such like-and a high wall of smoothly dressed bluestone. The atrium was covered with a frosted, transparent roof which gave off a soft, diffused light. The heavy gate at the end of the atrium was opened and drawn back against the wall, but the portcullis was down. Through its heavy metal mesh Dr'Anya could see a brace of strapping teenage girls, hard at it with blunted broadswords in what was evidently the tilting yard. Across the yard was the other half of the mews, still being used for horses, for there was tack lying about over there. She turned to the door into the hall. Assuredly, it will be locked, she thought, and went over to try it. It was locked. Dr'Anya bit her lip. Cloistered with a vengeance, and that rightly. The Mews were at the very center of the CloistersLaboratory complex which was at the very center of NewOxbridge University because the small stock of horses the FirstSleeper colonists had brought with them from Earth had been so very precious. The lynx had gotten a few, even then. And the Zetts had run off with almost half the stock from the SecondSleeper- twenty-two beautiful beasts, all quarter horses from the American West. What grieved the NewOxbridge Yeofolk most sorely was that the Zetts intended to use them all in stew. Good Saint Ida! Horsefolk fair fainted away whenever they thought of it. They would have presented the Zetts with EarthAngus stock and their blessings in exchange, but alas it was too late. 76 |