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Show 72 Lorin took his face out of the hat and said "Accomplish," and waited until he heard the scrattle of Oliver's quill pen before he bent over again. He hated having to repeat things. It ate up time. The next character swam into the glow from the right as he moved his hand to the left. It resembled a corkscrew with a sharp elbow. "Design," he called out. "Divine?" asked Oliver, who was always pleased when the text used religious words. There were already more passages of secular narration than he was comfortable with. "Design," said Lorin, raising his voice. Oliver made the little humming sound in his throat as his pen scrattled that meant his feelings had been hurt, and Lorin resolved to speak less sharply next time. "Kishkumen," he said, reading from the next figure. He hadn't seen that one before. Evidently a proper name. "Spell it?" asked Oliver. It was a long process, and it created syntactic monsters. They had been at it for several weeks already, discovering migrations, apostasies, battles and assassinations, but there was an immense quantity still on the table. Lorin kept the plates covered with a bedspread when he was not using them, and kept the two translucent stones wrapped in a pair of silk handkerchiefs in his bottom drawer except to take one or the other out to begin a working day. He tended to alternate them, some days using the Urim, other days the Thummin, though he was not fastidious about it. On some days neither of them seemed to work. This normally followed a fight with Melanie. He would put his face into the hat and the stone would lie there inert, without a flicker, no matter that he moved his hand onto every inch of the plate's |