Yugo Amaryl said, "Here you are again, Dors."
    "Sorry, Yugo. I'm bothering you twice this week. Actually you don't see anyone very often, do you?"
    Amaryl said, "I don't encourage people to visit me, no. They tend to interrupt me and break my line of thought. -Not you, Dors. You're altogether special, you and Hari. There's never a day I don't remember what you two have done for me."
    Dors waved her hand. "Forget it, Yugo. You've worked hard for Hari and any trifling¹ kindness we did for you has long been overpaid. How is the Project going? Hari never talks about it-not to me, anyway."
    Amaryl's face lightened and his whole body seemed to take on an infusion² of life. "Very well. Very well. It's difficult to talk about it without mathematics, but the progress we've made in the last two years is amazing-more than in all the time before that. It's as though, after we've been hammering away and hammering away, things have finally begun to break loose."
    "I've been hearing that the new equations worked out by Dr. Elar have helped the situation."
    "The achaotic equations? Yes. Enormously."
    "And the Electro-Clarifier has been helpful, too. I spoke³ to the woman who designed it."
    "Cinda Monay?"
    "Yes. That's the one."
    "A very clever woman. We're fortunate to have her."
    "Tell me, Yugo- You work at the Prime Radiant virtually all the time, don't you?"
    "I'm more or less constantly studying it. Yes."
    "And you study it with the Electro-Clarifier."
    "Certainly."
    "Don't you ever think of taking a vacation, Yugo?"
    Amaryl looked at her owlishly, blinking slowly. "A vacation?"
    "Yes. Surely you've heard the word. You know what a vacation is."
    "Why should I take a vacation?"
    "Because you seem dreadfully tired to me."
    "A little, now and then. But I don't want to leave the work."
    "Do you feel more tired now than you used to?"

分享到：