The Spacetime Pool Read Online Free PDF Page B

melodic
phrases that almost sounded like English, but that went by too fast to catch.
     
    “I’m sorry.” Janelle’s
voice rasped with fatigue. “I don’t understand.”
     
    The woman tried more
slowly. “Come with us.” She didn’t smile. “To someplace you can wash. And
sleep.”
     
    Relief washed over
Janelle. “Thank you.”
     
    The woman just barely
inclined her head, stiff and cool.
     
    As Janelle set off
with them, accompanied by her guards, she glanced back at Dominick. He remained
deep in conversation with his men, and she wasn’t certain he knew she had left.
     
    The older woman spoke
curtly. “His Highness has important matters to attend.”
     
    Janelle nodded, not
wanting to interrupt his conference. They went down a “corridor” of arches, one
of many in the hall, walkways delineated by columns instead of walls. It was
dizzying, all that geometrical beauty gleaming in the torchlight.
     
    The older woman was
watching her face. “This hall is why Prince Dominick-Michael’s home is called
the Palaces of Arches.”
     
    “It’s glorious,”
Janelle said. “Is this the Hall of Arches?”
     
    “No. The Fourier
Hall.”
     
    “Fourier?” She
blinked. “Like the mathematician?”
     
    The woman gave a
sharp wave of her hand. “It has always been called this. That is all I know.”
     
    Janelle didn’t push.
Having lived as the child of a diplomat for so many years had taught her a
great deal about dealing with cultures other than her own, and she could tell
her interactions here were on shaky ground. She had discovered early on that if
she wasn’t certain how her words would be received, it was often better to say
nothing.
     
    She couldn’t stop
staring at the arches, though. What an exquisite challenge, to portray those
graceful repeating patterns as a periodic function. Their Fourier transform
would be a work of art. An unsteady urge to laugh hit her, followed by the
desire to sit down and put her head in her hands. Such a strange thought, that
she could capture in mathematics the essence of a dream palace that couldn’t
exist.
     
    The women’s slippered
feet padded on the tiled floor, and Janelle’s tennis shoes squeaked. At the
back of the hall, they passed under a huge arch built from gold-veined marble
rather than the wood used in the Fourier Hall. A true corridor lay beyond, with
stone walls tiled in star mosaics. Its size dwarfed their party, and other
halls intersected it at oddly sharp angles. The pillars at corners where the
halls met were carved to portray men with great broadswords or women in elegantly
draped robes holding long-stemmed flowers. It spoke to the European influence
here that the designs included human statues, which weren’t seen in Moorish
architecture.
     
    Janelle tried to keep
track of their route through the maze of halls, but exhaustion dulled her mind.
She was lost by the time they stopped at an oaken door. The guards stayed
outside while the women took her into a small room. Plush rugs covered the
floor, and mosaics with pink tulips and swirling green stems graced the lower half
of the walls. Something odd about the stems tugged at her mind, but she was too
tired to puzzle it out. In one corner, a white table supported a blue vase with
real flowers. Blue velvet bedcovers lay in another corner, on a thicker pile of
rugs, with pillows heaped there like a tumble of rose and jade clouds.
     
    “It’s beautiful,”
Janelle said. “Thank you.”
     
    No one answered. They
led her across the room and under an archway. In the chamber beyond, a small,
sunken pool steamed, and a lamp glowed dimly in a seashell claw on the wall.
     
    The older woman
finally spoke. “We can help you bathe.”
     
    Janelle’s face
heated. “It’s kind of you to offer. But I can manage.”
     
    “Then we will leave
you to rest.” She was so aloof, she could have been a hundred miles away. The
trio bowed and gracefully exited the chamber. A moment later, the outer