“What you have asked is currently being done.” Beheim had distinguished no development with respect to the enthroned man, and he contemplated whether mental signs could be passing among him and the lady. “You comprehend that this should be finished with nuance,” Beheim said. “The spreading of the talk, I mean. Furthermore, you should not advise anybody before sunrise. Reveal to them that I am wanting to investigate the body of the elderly person soon after nightfall, and that I wish nobody else to contact the body until I have gotten an opportunity to take a gander at it myself. Some story might be expected to clarify the shortfall of Felipe and Dolores. I will pass on that for you to decide.” “All that will be done as you require,” the lady said. Another extended interruption. “In any case, here is a condition that joins to my help. My representative should go with you. Do you have with you an inventory of the undiluted medication?” “I do.” “Enough for two?” “More than enough.”She held out a hand and, hesitantly, he ignored one of his three flagons. “I will send her to you after sunrise.” “A taste ought to give adequate assurance to the day,” Beheim said. “Something else, ruler. Two of my workers are holding up external your chambers.” “Yes,” said the lady. “We know. One is woefully needing judgment.” She tipped her head, as though attempting to see him in a superior light. “Will we judge her for you?” The possibility of unburdening himself of his obligations was engaging, yet he opposed allurement. “No, my master. However, I beseech you to look after them while I am gone.” She slanted her head. “It will be finished.” “I’m interested with regards to something, my master,” Beheim said. “I have been informed that this, the examination, the homicide, is important for a game, that games are the thing to get done, and that I am just an immaterial player. That much I can acknowledge. Be that as it may, I view it hard to be so oblivious to the objective of the game. The stakes.” The lady said nothing. “The question of our normal contention,” said Beheim. “The inquiry regarding whether the Family ought to go into the East… is this, maybe, something in question? The goal of that contention?” “Maybe,” said the lady. Baffled, Beheim said, “By ‘maybe,’ do you mean it is one of numerous things in danger, or is it that—” “The response to every one of your inquiries is ‘maybe,'” the lady said. “Every second brings another reply, yet all things considered, they are all ‘maybe,’ for you don’t have the caution important to see the subtleties of the inquiries.” Beheim began to talk, however she waved him to quietness. “This question of a potential relocation,” she went on, “it is of some little interest to us. Also, that being along these lines, it is to a degree engaged with the entirety of our consultations and our activities. However, just to a degree. Should calamity happen upon us, some here”— she demonstrated the spectators, the moving couples — “have different method for get out available to them separated from escaping to unimaginable lengths. Others have no wish to get away. Others yet at this point don’t have any genuine comprehension of the idea of getaway. Thus, while it is aquestion that worries most of our cousins, here, among this most distinguished minority, it merits patchy thought, best case scenario.” “Yet doubtlessly you have on a basic level the government assistance of all the Family, not only that of its most remarkable individuals?” “In the event that you could perceive what is in my heart,” the lady said, “your eyes would go dim with that vision. In the event that you could see however 100th of the rationales that attack me at consistently, your mind would explode. Have your impact. Gain from its playing. That is everything you can do. At any rate, you will ultimately reach your own determinations, regardless I advise you.” Beheim was baffled. To have suffered so a lot, to have gone through that frightening waiting room and to have gotten a particularly unstable reply, to have found that the Patriarch had been diminished to sculpture, to an odd nursery trimming fit for conveying simply through an intermediary, it was more terrible than baffling. He had anticipated a more unique presence, somebody whose force and lucidity would go about as a dissolvable upon his questions and solidify his intelligence. The lady let out a delighted murmur. Her grin enlarged until the tips of her teeth were uncovered, loaning a recently vile perspective to her excellence. A portion of the couples had halted their moving and were in regards to Beheim with what appeared to be guileful expectation. “You wish to stand up to the Patriarch?” the lady asked in a dry voice. “Really you do have boldness.” Beheim looked in disarray at the sculpture of the enthroned man, with his eroded blue skin and dreary mouth and slitted eyes. “I thought this was — ” “Maybe sometime in the future. For the present he holds up his time.” She moved near Beheim, took his left hand. “Accompany me, Michel. In case it’s the Patriarch you wish to see, I will take you to him.” She attracted him to the outrageous edge of one of the dark pools, and on looking down, seeing lights floating underneath the surface, aficionados of pale brilliance like a blurring aurora borealis, he screamed and hurled himself in reverse, understanding that this pool, and probable the remainder, were not occurrences of underground water but rather entrances into the unadulterated mode of Mystery, into the nation of death. The lady held him quick, pressing his hand with such power, he figured the bones would break. She turned a withering gaze upon him, and he before long wound up consumed by the shiftsof shading inside the irises, the moment constrictions and extensions of the students. His dread dwindled to a flashing nervousness.