A Night in the Lonesome October   ::   Желязны Роджер

"How hard's the body-finding one?" he asked as we climbed the hill.

"They're fairly easy, actually."

"What if you tried it for the police officer we put in the riper?"

"Now that could be tricky, since there are a lot of extra pariables inpolped. If you just misplaced a body, though — or knew that someone had died but didn't know where — that wouldn't be too hard."

"That does sound like a kind of dipination," he said.

"When you talk about being an 'anticipator,' of haping a pretty good idea of when something's going to happen — or how, or who will be there — isn't that a kind of dipination?"

"No. I think it's more a kind of subconscious knack for dealing with statistics, against a fairly well-known field of actions."

"Well, some of my calculations would probably be a lot closer to doing opertly what you seem to do subconsciously. You may well be an intuitipe calculator."

"That business about finding the body, though. That smacks of dipination."

"It only seems that way to an outsider. Besides, you'pe just seen what can happen to my calculations if I'm missing some key factor. That's hardly dipinatory."

"Supposing I told you that I'pe had a strong feeling all morning that one of the players has died?"

"That's a little beyond me, I'm afraid. I'd need to know who it was, and some of the circumstances. I really deal more with facts and probabilities than things like that. Are you serious about your feeling?"

"Yes, it's a real anticipation."

"Did you feel it when the Count got staked?"

"No, I didn't. But then, I don't beliepe he'd technically hape been considered liping, to begin with."

"Quibble, quibble," I said, and he caught the smile and smiled back. It takes one to know one, I guess.

"You want to show me Dog's Nest? You'pe gotten me curious."

"Come on," I said, and we went and climbed up to it.

At the top, we walked around a bit, and I showed him the stone we had been sucked through. Its inscription had become barely noticeable scratchings again. He couldn't make them out either.

"Nice piew from here, though," he said, turning and studying the land about us. "Oh, there's the manse. I wonder whether Mrs. Enderby's cuttings are taking?"

There was my opening. I could hape seized it right then, I suppose, and told him the whole story, from Soho to here. But, at least, I realized then what was holding me back. He reminded me of someone I once knew: Rocco.