"Yes," she replied. "Drinking too."
She knelt and reached beneath the bed. She retrieved a bottle.
"Let it burn," she said. "Have a drink. We'll watch it."
"Leila, stay out of my way!"
"Sure, Reyd. Anything you say."
She withdrew, seated herself in a large chair, looked about, rose again, crossed to the dresser, applied a candle that burned there to the wick of an oil lamp and picked up a goblet. She returned to the chair.
There were rapid footsteps in the hall. They slowed, stopped.
"How bad is it?" came Johnson's voice, followed by a cough.
"Just the bed," Red replied. "I've got it under control now."
"You can throw the mattress out the window when you're able to handle it. There's just gravel down there."
"Okay. I will."
' Room seventeen is empty. Miss Leila. You can have that one."
"Thanks, but I like it here."
Red moved to the window, unfastened the shutters, swung them back. Returning to the bed, he rolled the mattress, gathered it in his arms and bore it to the star-filled square, where he pushed it through.
"I'll have a new bed and mattress sent up," Johnson said.
"And another bottle."
Johnson, who had stepped inside, backed out into the hall, still coughing.
"Very well. I don't see how you people can breathe in there."
Red stared out the window. Leila opened her bottle. Johnson's footsteps retreated down the hall.
"Care for a drink, Reyd?"
"Okay."
He turned and walked to her. She handed him the goblet.
"Your health," he said, and sipped it.
She snorted and took a drink from the bottle.
"Here, that isn't ladylike," he said. "I'll trade you."
She chuckled.
"Never mind. I've the better part of the deal. —Your health. How is it, anyway?"
"The booze or my health?"
"Either one."
"I've had better and I've had worse. Either one. What are you doing here, Leila?"
She shrugged.
"Drinking. Turning a few tricks. What are you doing? Still racing up and down the Road, looking for an unmarked turnoff—or trying to open one?"
"More or less. For a long while I thought perhaps you had found the way and taken it. To find you here is—how shall I say it?—disillusioning."
"I've a way of producing that effect," she said, "haven't I?"
He withdrew a cigar from his vest, crossed to the candle, lit it.
"Got another of those on you?"
"Yeah."
He passed her the cigar, lit a second for himself.
"Why are you doing it?" he asked.
The smoke spiraled above her head.
"Doing what?"
"Doing nothing," he said. "Wasting your time here when you could be looking."
"Since you ask," she said, taking another drink, "I will tell you. I have been up and down that damned Road from the Neolithic to C Thirty. I have followed every sideroad, footpath and rabbit run along the way. I am known in a thousand lands by different names. Yet in none of them have I found what I sought, what we seek."
"You have never been close? You have never felt the presence?"
She shuddered.
"I have felt presences—some of them very similar, some of them quite unforgettable—none of them right. No. I can only conclude that the place I once sought no longer exists."
"Everything exists somewhere."
"Then you can't get there from here."
"I can't believe that."