She nodded agreement.
The tall man seemed to be walking toward it, which was fine with me. I would have gone toward it whether he had been going there or not.
Audrey called, “Hello! Hello there!”
Somebody answered, very faint. I couldn’t make out the words, and I wanted to get out my own light stick and turn it on. No dice on that if I wanted to keep the box flat.
The flashlight beam found us; and Audrey and I shouted. Pretty soon we were near enough to see, dimly, the girl who held it—black curls and lots of them, quilted black jacket, close-fitting black trousers, and high-topped black boots. Pale, oval face. Full red lips and big dark eyes. As we got nearer, I realized there was something familiar about that face. I’d like to prove how smart I am right here, but it would be a lie. I never made her until she told us who she was.
“I’m Peggy Pepper.” She had a good smile. “I’m in here looking for Dr. Fevre. Have you seen him?”
“Not lately,” Audrey told her, “but we’d like to.”
Peggy Pepper turned her light on the tall man. “Do you know where Dr. Fevre is?”
“Sven,” the tall man said. It was the first time I had heard him speak, and I got the impression that just that one word had cost him a lot.
“We came in here with Dr. Fevre,” Audrey explained, “but we got separated. We’d like to find him or find our way out of here. Either one.”
“I can take you out,” Peggy said, “and I will after I find Dr. Fevre. That comes first.” She paused, and then … “You’re reclones, all three of you.”
Audrey nodded, and I said, “Guilty. I’m Ern A. Smithe, by the way.”
“From a library?”
Audrey nodded again. “Audrey Hopkins, Polly’s Cove Public Library.”
I said, “Spice Grove Public Library, on interlibrary loan to Polly’s Cove.”
“You screened me once, looking for Dr. Fevre.”
I nodded.
“Did he bring you here? All of you?”
I said, “He brought Audrey and me. We don’t know where Sven came from, we ran into him right here in the cave. He doesn’t talk a lot and he certainly wasn’t in the sleigh that brought us here.”
Audrey added, “Neither were you. How did you get here?”
Peggy smiled. “I’m supposed to ask the questions, but Hell’s bells, why not? The stable in Maiborg rented me a horse. He isn’t much of a saddle horse, but he’s docile and sturdy. How about you?”
Audrey said, “In a sled. Dr. Fevre got it, but I don’t know where.”
“A sled? With dogs?”
I said, “Horses. Two horses. I imagine it’s supposed to come back later and pick us up. Maybe Dr. Fevre has some way to call it, eephone or something. I don’t know.”
“I see.” Peggy switched off her flash and turned back to Audrey. “Are you an ancient author, too? How many books did you write?”
“Sixteen.”
“Wow! Give me some titles. I may have read you.”
“One Woman Sails Alone Around the World.” Audrey paused. “Lost at Sea, Teaching Girls to Sail, Among the Pirates of the Horn, Junks Weren’t, My Sheets Are Rigging, Coral Reefs Can Thrill You, You and Your Daughter Can Build a Boat, Safe Anchorage…” Audrey paused to wait for some comment.
“I’m writing a book myself,” Peggy said. “My first. Or at least I hope there’ll be others after it.”
I was tired of carrying the green box by then, so I put it down. “What’s the title?”
“An Atlas of Female Anatomy. That’s just a working title, of course. It’s not just the internal organs, it will cover everything. Musculature, skin and eyes, the works.”
Audrey said, “Aren’t a lot of things the same for men and women?”
“Ah!” Peggy looked pleased. “That’s it. At what points are men and women the same and where do they differ? All the standard works deal largely with male anatomy, then some of them consider the exception.”
I said, “I suppose that’s natural.”
“Not really. There are more women on this planet than men, and as far as anybody can tell there always have been. What about you, Smithe? How many books?”
“Somewhere between thirty and forty; it depends on how you count. The Ice-Blue Kiss, Men Mice and Murderers, Murder for Prophet, Murder’s Good for Business, Kill Mama Kill Papa, Death on a Daybed, The Corpse Drank Wine, When Will Murder End? Murder on Mars. Is that enough? I always stop there, but I’ll name the rest if you want them.”
Peggy nodded. “You must have found writing books pretty easy.”
“It is if you know what you want to say. If you have to make it up as you go along, you go slowly. Think of it as a wagon.”
There was a silence. Finally Peggy said, “I don’t understand that at all.”
“If your wagon’s all built and in good shape, you hitch up the horses and off you go. You should do forty or fifty kilometers a day, depending. If you have to build and rebuild your wagon on the road, you’ll be lucky to average ten kilometers a day.”
Audrey said, “We should be looking for Dr. Fevre.”
“I agree.” I picked up the green box and started off in a new direction, realizing after a minute or two that I was following Sven.
Audrey said, “Do you think it’s that way?”
I nodded. “Dr. Fevre’s not in the direction we came from, or in the direction Peggy came from. Besides, Sven was headed this way. He may know something.”
“If he does know, he’ll never tell us.”
I nodded again. “Maybe he’ll show us, and that’s better.”
Behind Audrey, Peggy said, “You haven’t asked me why I want to see him.”
I looked back at her. “None of my business. Do you want to tell me?”
“It’s the cadavers. I’m taking his classes while he’s on sabbatical.”
Audrey said, “That can’t be much fun, and I imagine you have a great deal to do.”
“It is fun, really. I enjoy teaching. The students are horrified for the most part. I can handle a cadaver as if it were an allsweeper, or—”
Audrey said, “There are thousands of them here, and the closer they are the more they bother me.”
Peggy completed her thought. “Or a chicken. What’s the difference between a human being and an animal?”
“Intelligence, I suppose.” Audrey looked at me for guidance. “We’re smarter. Wouldn’t you agree?”
I nodded. “As long as we’re writing the tests.”
Peggy said, “You then, Mr. Smithe. What would you say the difference is?”
“We’re us. We bury our dead, and sometimes we even bury our pets. There are pet cemeteries. Animals—”
Audrey interrupted me. “Except that we burn them sometimes. My parents were cremated, both of them. That was the way they had wanted it.”
I could not indicate the hundreds of frozen corpses with a single gesture, but I got about half of them. “Not always.”
“Three hundred years ago people would have said human beings had an immortal soul that fled the body after death,” Peggy told us. “I believe that now. Does that surprise you?”