Death Match - Diane Duane [18]
“This a private project,” Catie said, coming down the curved stone stairs around the outside of the tower, “or something for school?”
“Both,” he said, putting the flasks down. “You interrupting me just for spiteful personal pleasure, or as a public service?”
“Both,” Catie said, giving him a look. “I didn’t think you’d be done with the postgame show already….”
“It was shorter than they expected,” Hal said, taking the stopper out of one of the bottles and sniffing it. “Which was just as well, since while I was watching I solved a problem that’s been bugging me for a while, and now I can get on with this.” He put the stopper back into the bottle and paused to make a note on a pad on the table.
Wow, Catie thought, he really is intense about this, whatever it is. Her curiosity threatened to get the better of her, but for the moment she put it aside. “Hal,” she said to her brother, “look, about Brickner…”
He paused and looked up, frowning. “Catie, I hate to say it, but this is one moment when I don’t feel like discussing spat.”
“All right! Just very quickly…do you think you’re gonna be able to work something out with your friend?”
Her brother turned his attention back to his work, but he was grinning now. “Had a look at the People interview, did you? So did half the girls your age in the country.”
Catie made an annoyed face, then realized there wasn’t any point in it. Maybe it was for the better if Hal thought she had a crush on this guy. He’d then go out of his way to see that they met, so that he could see Catie gush and then ride her about it later. “Whatever. When can we set it up?”
“Talk to me tomorrow. If I don’t get this to work out, my organic chemistry grade is gonna suffer.”
Catie became more curious still, for her brother didn’t often discuss his schoolwork with her. “What’re you doing?”
“Creating life in a test tube, what else? Cates, pleeeeze…”
She contemplated sticking around to tease him a little more, in order to extract some revenge for last Tuesday, when he had been running the same number on her…she sighed, deciding it wasn’t kind to give him trouble, especially when schoolwork was at issue. “Vanishing,” she said. And she did.
Catie found herself standing again in the Great Hall of the Library of Congress’s Jefferson Building, looking around at the opulent pillars and mosaics, all gleaming softly in some warm afternoon slanting light. “Hey, Space!” she said.
“Listening with bated breath for your lightest word, boss.”
Only features, huh, Catie thought as she made her way across the beautiful mosaics and down the hallway that led to the main reading room. I’m going to find a way to get Mark for this…eventually. She came out into that great octagonal space, all lined two stories high with shelves, and glanced around. Her own “workspace” proper was out in the middle of it, where the big circular mahogany-built reference and stacks-access island would be, but here and now the space was empty. “Yeah, well,” Catie said, “if you’re paying such assiduous attention to me, you broken-down box of spurious instructions, why isn’t my chair where it should be?”
“I was cleaning,” said her workspace, and her chair appeared in the center of the space. Catie made her way over and flopped down in it, tucking her legs underneath her. “And you really ought to get that thing reupholstered. Look at the fabric!”
“Reupholstered,” Catie said in a reflective sort of voice as she sat down and looked up into the overarching golden glow of the main dome with its upward-spiraling square recesses, a glorious restatement of the old dome of the Pantheon in Rome. “Possibly with your hide.”
The clear sky showing through at the top of the dome went abruptly cloudy, and lightning