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Show Soon after Armand, Janni's father, announced to her good mother his intention of playing the Doctor of Needlesmith Hold and ordered his belongings moved to the manager's q u a r t e r s , he began to drink full hard again. The manager's quarters-seldom used as such by the twenty-fourth century-were on the ground floor of the large square granary which stood about three hundred meters from the main Hall. The huge building, nearly as big as the Hall, and built of native rosestone and scrupwood timbers, was used for grain storage no longer, but the large q u a r t e r s on the southeast corner was often used by traveling machinery and electronics Techs who serviced the farm robotics and computer systems and who made their beds- when held over for a p a r t i c u l a r l y large job-in its vast, airy sleeping room. From these q u a r t e r s , Armand was able to come and go as he pleased, unburdened by the cursed eye of his inhibiting partner or of his fair daughter to whom he had hardly spoken in all of her eleven TwelveMonths and whose eye he'd also cursed as inhibiting. Directly after moving into the g r a n a r y , Armand installed Hoqqam, as HeadHerdsman, in Shimu's cottage. Hoqqam himself had admitted into this cottage-with much bad grace-his newly revived s i s t e r , yet scrawny and underfed, though well into her fourteenth season. Thin to the point of emaciation and pale even under BauerWorlde's SixMonth Twins, the f o u r t e e n - y e a r - o l d girl was put by Hoqqam to keeping the cottage tidy and to running back and forth betwixt the cottage and the granary-two kilometers away-with messages to and from Hoqqam and Armand. 217 |
