The flower and blossom and all the leaves and branches seemed to contract smoothly. Suddenly they were not. The marble floor tiles fell together with a clink.
A delicate tapping on the door. Esir and Esim poked their heads around the door frame. Their faces were hopeful, and at the same time distressed.
“Lord!” said Esir plaintively. “We hear that you go on a journey! Do we go too?”
Tony sighed.
“I’m afraid not,” he admitted. “Affairs of state, and all that. I’m taking only one attendant, and I’ve not choice of that one.”
“But, lord,” protested Esim, “we have just been given to you and we do not even know if we please you or not!”
They came into the room. They were young and shapely. They pleased him very much. They were openly eager for experimental evidence of this fact, and looked at him imploringly.
I like you both very much,” said Tony. “In fact—” He thought back along a lifetime in New York, spent on subways and in automats and over double-entry ledgers, with only one interlude pounding a typewriter in an army camp. “In fact, I think I could be perfectly happy here in Barkut but for one thing.”
They said anxiously: “Lord, what is it that keeps you from happiness?”
Tony sighed deeply. He said in deepest gloom: “Dammit, there’s no privacy!”