“Don’t worry about it, Sir Max,” Juffin said jovially.
Usually he begins to understand what I’m feeling before I even notice a change of mood in myself. But today he seemed to lag behind a bit with his consolations.
“This is no test of your nerves. It’s a form of pleasure, because we have a chance to find out something we didn’t know before. Keep your chin up, son!”
“I’m not so sure that this arcane knowledge is going to improve my appetite,” I murmured.
Sir Kofa and Melifaro looked at us with incomprehension.
“It’s nothing,” Juffin told them. “Just a little family quarrel.”

“Exactly, sir. I’m surprised at how quickly you understand me. Perhaps you also live nearby?”
“No, but I’m planning on moving there soon,” Melifaro informed her in a confidential tone. “Please go on, my lady.”
The lady blushed with pleasure. I could hardly keep from laughing aloud, though it would have been quite awkward if I had lost my composure. The lady would no doubt have refused to give a deposition until they had me strung up and quartered – all the more since my Mantle of Death reduced any hypothetical manly charms to zero.

Joking aside, passing by the Sated Skeleton I heard two-middle aged ladies in heated argument. If I’m not mistaken, they were playing Krak, the local version of poker. And, inevitably, they were both cheating. They made so much noise that they couldn’t hear the melodious tinkle of the bells on my boots. “May Sir Max spit on you!” one of them screamed at the other.
Unbelievable! I plunked myself down on the mosaic sidewalk and let my head fall into my hands. I sat like that for ten minutes or more. I kept repeating, like a mantra, Juffin’s advice: “Get used to it, and try to enjoy it.”

Mr. Janira bears the title of Master Comforter of Sufferers. As I came to understand it, he was a sort of psychotherapist. He visits the prisoners regularly, asks them how they slept, what they are anxious or worried about, and what messages they want to send home. In Echo, prisoners are treated very humanely. It is thought that if a person has landed in Xolomi, he has no farther to fall, and to subject a prisoner to further discomfort and inconvenience is senseless and cruel. The psychological and emotional comfort of a prisoner is a matter of great concern, and this is, of course, only proper.

When urgent matters crop up (and there are more of them than there are agents), my personal time-frame stops coinciding with the pace of the hands on the clock. Sometimes I seem to live through a few years in just one day; but at the end of the day I’m not any older.
I like this. I’m hungry for life. Even those several hundred years that are almost guaranteed to every inhabitant of this World seem like a very short allotment of infinity to me. I admit, hand on heart, that I just want to live forever – preferably without becoming too decrepit, though being old doesn’t really frighten me. If you take one look at Juffin or at Sir Kofa, you understand that solid old age is rather an advantage than a burden.

“I have no objections to that,” I said with a smile, “but I have one last question. Sir Melifaro, do you have any cats at your estate?”
“Of course. Why do you ask?”
“I promised myself that when this ordeal was over, I would get myself a kitten. But since two missions have come to a close at the same time, I’ll need two kittens.”
“I could give you a dozen if you ask; but tell me what do plan to do with them? Do you eat them?”
“We Border Dwellers eat anything!” I announced. Then, taking pity on my nonplussed colleagues, I said, “I’m going to stroke them, and they are going to purr. Those, I believe, are the ideal relations between humans and cats.”