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Johan. The girls can feel it. A safe danger, you are.
 Because I'm married to you?
 Exactement. Do not forget that. She spoiled the effect by smiling.  Herr
Doktor Donniger cannot see. The most dense of your girl students see, but he
cannot.
 David can't see much beyond David and faculty politics. I looked up to see
Victor approaching with a tray.
 Power there is. Politics are not power.
I nodded. She'd put it succinctly. Too often, especially in democratic
societies, people mistook the mechanisms of power for power itself.  Did you
get in touch with Terese Stewart?
 I did. She is most excited. Llysette smiled.  More than am I. She has done
the Vocalise, but not  The Lilacs. The others, elles ne sont pas si
difficile.
As Victor set his special champignon dish down before us, I decided to set
aside musico-political ruminations and concentrate more on gourmet gustatory
explorations, inhaling the fragrance that steamed up from the plate.  It
smells wonderful.
Llysette took a bite, then smiled and looked up at the anxious Victor.
 Merveilleux.
Victor bobbed his head. He was happy.
And, sitting across from Llysette, with great food before me, so was I.
16
T HE REST OF the week passed uneventfully, and so did the beginning of the
following week. In fact, we got to Thursday in blissful quietude. Neither rain
nor snow fell on Vanderbraak Centre, and while it froze at night, the frost
was gone before we left the house in the morning.
Llysette reported that Dierk Geoffries had located a former choral director at
the University of Assen who had retired the spring before and who was willing
to fill in for Beau Jonn. No one sent me any mysterious packages or letters or
briefing materials. As Harlaan had promised, I did see a few gray steamers,
but at a distance except for the one hidden under the maple across the back
lawn and the field beyond, an older gray Spazi steamer that was there almost
all the time.
I'd also done some more ghost-projection-related research and by Wednesday
night had come up with a system. By scanning an image, then converting the
codes to a log base, which reflected the image parameters, and then changing
certain aspects, by feel, nothing more, I got so I could create projected
images that looked like what I'd scanned. Complex, but it did work. A good
mathematician could have done it in an hour or so, but . . . it worked, for
whatever reason, and I've always been one for making things work first and
worrying about how I got there later. That, I reflected, was also how I'd
gotten into a lot of trouble, and on more than one occasion.
Since that Thursday was the third one of the month, when the Music and Theatre
Department had its monthly faculty meeting, I didn't get lunch with Llysette.
I made do with a sandwich from the student centre and graded essays and
quizzes until it was time for Environmental Politics 2B. Because the
temperature was just above freezing, the classroom in Smythe was boiling. I
couldn't believe Mondriaan thought the room was cold, but as we passed in the
entryway, he had his winter coat buttoned up to his chin. It was a good thing
his family had fled west, rather than to Russia and that they'd escaped before
the fall of the Low Countries. Ferdinand didn't care that much for painters
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and their families, but then, Ferdinand didn't seem to care much for any kind
of art except for instrumental suites that glorified the Hapsburg empire or
statues of its heros and emperors.
Class went as planned, if more smoothly, because the korfball team had left at
noon to travel to Asten for some sort of preseason tournament. After class I
graded a few more papers, and then went to pick up Llysette. Dinner would be
rushed because Gregor Martin's production of Hamlet opened that night, and
Llysette had promised to attend. I would have gone with her, regardless, but I
was interested in seeing the production, because Gregor had set it in the [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]