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  Take the body and wash in the water taken from a maiden s first bath after the marriage night. Place
the body undried in a brazen coffin above a fire heated seven times, and with bellows pumped by a
dwarf. A dwarf with red hair ensures complete success; if a red-haired dwarf is not to be found then a
black-haired dwarf will suffice, or a brown-haired dwarf; but then the fire must be pumped over twice.
Into the coffin over the body pour the water used in the bathing. To this add the same weight of squishes.
The fruits may be used entire, but they must be scrupulously clean. Add in double-handfuls so that the
spirit may boil from them into the water and the cayferm enter the submerged body and so remove from
it the ib. When all has boiled away the body may be taken up and given due burial; it is wise to place a
tuffa wand at the head and feet until the first night of Notor Zan passes. 
He looked up, resting one hand on the open hyr-lif. His eyes wrinkled up, regarding me. I was aware of
a flick-flick plant snaking out a six-foot tendril, taking a fly on the wing, and popping it into one of its
orange cone-shaped flowers. The shadow of the plant in its pot on the windowsill, the sound of laughter
from outside, high and shrill, meant nothing; the sight and sounds were as distant as the planet of my birth.
 Cayferm, I said.
 Aye, Prince. I think after treatment like that any body would be willing to go down into burial, aye, and
be glad to.
 Yes, that would be the way of it. But, Evold, it must be! Don t you see? Steam! If you boil water you
must get steam!
 Steam, he said. We used the Kregish word, the most common word for steam,kish.  I can find no
other mention of cayferm in all my library.
 You have done well.
 I remembered one horrific time in the Heavenly Mines where I had sweated, as number eight two eight
one, to dig and tunnel for minerals. And how a little Och stylor, writing in his notebook, had jumped with
alarm, deep in a tunnel through a seam, and called to the Rapa guard to prod the slaves out fast. We had
not gone back to the seam. And now I recalled that over the smell of the cheap oil lamp I had sniffed the
scent of squishes. I had thought of Inch, and then the little Och had near-panicked.
Now I thought I knew why.
 Steam made up with boiled squishes, I said.  Cayferm.
Evold sneezed.  Maybe, maybe. But we must test it first. We can only talk now, we must 
 Yes! I bellowed.  Everyone must gather squishes! Every perishing soul, by Vox!
Evold Scavander nodded, the excitement getting to him.
 Although . . . I said. And I felt a chill.  Although this cannot be so. It is against nature.
 Many things are against nature, my Prince. Every time you put on a hat to go out into the rain, it is
against nature.
 I grant that. But I mean that boiling will produce a purity; the steam cannot possibly contain any part of
the squishes! This is a matter of common knowledge.
He put a yellowish finger alongside his nose, which had a large brown lump on the larboard side.
 Maybe nature winks, my Prince. For a man to fly through the air using boxes filled with dirt and air 
surely that is so against nature as to make all the rest simple.
 Oh, the vollers work. There is no doubt of that. Aye, I added viciously,  and they crash, also.
We looked at the pathetic pile of wreckage. Lish s voller had come down hard at the end. The two
silver boxes had been taken from the smashed jumble of sturm-wood and bronze orbits. They lay on the
table, separated from those we had made ourselves.
They were also well separated from each other. I walked across and gently pushed one of the boxes
toward the other, along the lenken tabletop. I could feel nothing at first. And then like a thrilling of rubbed
amber, like a million warrior ants of the hostile territories marching over my skin, I felt the tremble, the
vibration. When the two boxes came within that certain special distance from each other they both,
together, sprang into the air. Up they went, glittering in the light of Antares. We stared upward, knowing
what would happen.
The boxes flew up together until wind pressure divided them. They curved out and away and so,
separated, plummeted back to the floor. One hit so heavily that the corner split. I cursed.
Evold Scavander scuttled for the box, lifted it, and stuck it under that lumpy nose of his. His mad old
eyes snapped with intelligence, with baffled intelligence.
 Ha, my Prince! Squishes! When I was a small boy, cleaning the retorts and collecting the frogs legs
and sweeping the floor, aye, and being well beaten by the old San, I remember a piece of squish pie as a
direct gift from Oolie Opaz himself.
I sniffed. Squish, without a doubt.
  It has gone, drifted into the air and gone.
 True. But we will do as you command, and boil many squishes. The whole fortress will be perfumed
with squishes.
 But, I said, fretful, seeing that first quick flash of hope utterly ruined,  if we boil squishes and put the
steam in a silver box, why, then, the steam will condense and we will merely have a box of water.
San Evold shook his head. What I said was true. But he had no other suggestion.
 Let me first try, my Prince. Afterward, if it does not work, we must think again. [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]