Marianne, the Magus & the Manticore Read Free Page A

though they were already on the window seat, surrounded by the cushions.
    Back in the unremembered time, there had been a window seat with cushions where Marianne had nested like a fledgling bird. Cloud-haired mama had teased Harvey, sometimes, and urged him to sit on the window seat with them and listen to her stories. Marianne had been hiding in the cushions of the window seat the day she had heard Mama speaking to Harvey in the exasperated voice she sometimes used. "Harvey, please, my dear, find yourself a nice girl your own age and stop this nonsense. I am deeply in love with your father, and I could not possibly be interested in a boy your age even if I were twenty again." Of course, there had only been seven years'
    difference in their ages, Marianne reminded herself. Though Papa had been forty-three, Mama had been only twenty-seven and Harvey had been twenty. Harvey had been different then; he had been handsome as a prince, and kind, and they had sometimes gone riding together. She shut down the thought before it started. "Begone," she muttered to the memory. "Be burned, buried, gone." It was her own do-it-yourself enchantment, a kind of self-hypnosis, substitute for God knew how many thousand dollars worth of psychotherapy. It worked. The memory ducked its head and was gone, and as she left the room, she was humming.
    At the confluence of three sidewalks, the library notice board was always good for one or two order points. The bulletin board was always rigorously correct; there were only current items upon it; matters of more than passing interest were dec-orously sleeved in plastic, even behind the sheltering glass, to avoid the appearance of having been handled or read. Marianne sometimes envisioned a crew of compulsive, tenured gnomes arriving each night to update the library bulletin board. Though she had worked at the library for five years now, she had never seen anyone prepare anything for the board or post it there.
    She preferred her own concept to the possible truth and did not ask about it.
    "Order, one; confusion, one. Score, even," she said to herself. The bulletin board was in some respects an analogue of her own life as she sought to have it; neatly arranged, efficiently organized, ruthlessly protected. There were no sentimental posters left over from sweeter seasons, no cartoons savoring ephemeral causes, no self-serving announcements by unnecessary committees. There were only statements of facts in the fewest possible, well chosen words. She scrutinized it closely, finding no fault in it except that it was dull—a fact which she ignored. It was, in fact, so dull that she almost missed the announcement.

    "Department of Anthropology: Spring Lecture Series, Journeys in Ethnography. M. A. Zahmani, Magian Survivals in Modern Alphenlicht. April 16,12:30 p.m.-2:00 p.m. Granville Lecture Hall."
    She felt an immediate compulsion to call Harvey and tell him that a namesake of theirs was to give a lecture in three hours' time on a subject dear to Harvey's heart. Not only a namesake, but a Prime Minister. The impulse gave way at once to sober second thought. Harvey would be in class at the moment. Or, if not in class, he would be in his office persuading some nubile candidate for a postgraduate degree that her thesis would be immeasurably enhanced by experiencing a field trip for the summer in company with "Call Me Har" Zahmani.
    While he might be interested in learning of the visiting lecturer, he would certainly be annoyed at being interrupted. Whatever Harvey might be doing, he was always annoyed—as well she knew—at being interrupted. On the other hand, if she did not tell him and he read about it, as he would, in some journal or other or even, heaven help her, in the daily paper, then she could expect one of those superior, unpleasant phone calls.
    "One would think, Marianne, that with no more on your mind than your own not very distinguished academic work, you might remember that it is my