Bearing an Hourglass by Piers Anthony Read Free Book Online

dream that I destroyed her. I worry about that.”
    “You can’t hurt her if you leave her after it’s done.”
    “Some people are hurt worse by being left,” Norton muttered.
    “Don’t worry. She’ll have the very best care money can buy, courtesy of my estate.”
    “I wasn’t thinking of physical hurt, necessarily. She’s a young, vibrant girl. I don’t think she can give herself to a man without giving all of herself. She—”
    He paused, for Gawain had vanished. Orlene stood in the doorway. She was dressed in a modest green street skirt with matching jacket and hat and shoes, and now looked very businesslike. Her fair hair was pinned back with green barrettes. Somehow all that green reminded him of the breakfast pancakes, of the park scene in the puzzle, and of the lovely wilderness itself. “The ghost again?” she asked.
    Embarrassed, Norton nodded. “He has only one thing on his mind.”
    She cocked her head at him again. “And you don’t?”
    “I have a care for the damage I may do to others.”
    “I think that’s why you glow so brightly.”
    He shrugged. “Maybe. But maybe I want more than I have a right to want.”
    She touched his hand. “I told you before, Norton. You don’t have to go after it’s done.”
    “I think I do. You are a married woman.”
    She looked at him so intently that he became nervous. “What are you doing?” he asked.
    “I’m visualizing you as a prospective husband, to compare the glow.”
    “Don’t do that! I’m not your—can never be your—”
    “That’s odd,” she said. “That hasn’t happened before.”
    “
What
hasn’t happened?”
    “The glow seems to have split. Part of it is extremelyintense, but part of it is dim. As if you would be both a very good husband and a not-very-good husband.”
    “How can that be?”
    “I’m not sure. You see, the glow doesn’t figure character
per se
. It includes the total person, the total situation. How good a person is, how loyal, how effective a provider, how lucky or unlucky—the perfect man might be downgraded because an unfortunate accident will cripple him in five years, making him worse through no fault of his own.”
    Norton felt a chill. “I might have an accident?”
    “No. I don’t think it’s that. Maybe it’s that you could be the perfect husband, but you won’t be, because I can’t marry you. You’re too good for the job—overqualified. So you suffer.”
    “Overqualified!” Norton exclaimed incredulously.
    “I don’t know,” she said quickly. “That’s just a conjecture. I don’t understand all the aspects of the glow. I just see its brightness.”
    “Well, stop considering me as—as the impossible. It’s time to go out.”
    “Of course.” She took his arm, and they went out.
    Travel on the fast belts took them to this floor’s nearest mall, where shoppers thronged in the fashion they had done so for millennia at such centers. This could be a market at Babylon or in a medieval city. The stores had changed somewhat in detail in the ensuing interval, however. Today they were holographic images, each in its alcove, the goods being displayed with lifelike realism, each tagged with its price. The shopper had only to touch the image of the item he wanted; it would be shipped directly from the warehouse to his home, and his account as identified by his fingerprint patterns would be debited accordingly. Of course, these were mostly standard items whose details were generally known; the more individual ones required a different type of shopping. Marked containers of food in set units did not need to be physically verified, while specially fitted clothing did. There were booths for fitting via holo imaging, but that still required undressing.
    They stopped at an ice cream stall, where the holograph of a chef stood by a chart of a thousand different flavors and types. Orlene touched the panels for their choices—honey flavor, of course—and the cones snapped into the adjacent