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looked me over in an automatic, unfocused way. I was twenty-nine, already a
Four, thanks to my inspired guesses about computers and IT. I looked pretty
good;
better than I had at nineteen. Hazleton might have forgotten my name but he
hadn't forgotten what I
looked like. He'd made straight for the seat at my side. Well, fairly
straight: he bumped a couple of gold-
painted chairs on the way.
He'd just nodded at me as he'd sat down and then ignored me throughout the
first course, as though he'd really chosen this seat at random or had taken it
reluctantly, then suddenly he'd come up with this unlikely chat-up line about
digital digits. I had become used to this sort of thing from upper-class
Englishmen. At least he had used the second person, rather than 'one'.
'And if one used one's toes,' he said, 'one could go up to over a million.'
(Oh, so we were using 'one', were we?)
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'Impractical, though,' I said.
'Yes, you'd have to take your socks or stockings off.' (Back to 'you', then.)
'I was thinking,' I said, 'of the difficulty of articulating your toes.'
'Oh. Yes. How do you mean?'
'Well, you can use your fingers to count because you can alter their state,
bend each one to show whether
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a zero or a one, but very few people can do anything similar with their toes.
They just sort of sit there, don't they?'
He thought about this. 'I can put my little toes over the ones next to them.'
'Really? On both sides?'
'Yes. Good, eh?'
'Then assuming you can put each of your big toes over the one next to them
, you could count to, what, just over sixteen thousand.'
'I suppose so.' He contemplated his entrée for a moment. 'I can wiggle my
ears, you know.'
'Never!'
'Yes. Watch.'
'Good heavens!'
We amused each other with a selection of childish antics like this for a
while, then got on to puzzles.
'I've got one,' I said. 'What are the next two letters in this sequence? S, T,
N, D, R, D?'
He sat back. I had to repeat the letters for him. He looked thoughtful. 'S,
D,' he said.
'No.'
'Yes, it is. It's "standardised" with all the vowels taken out.'
'No, it isn't.'
'Why not?' he asked indignantly. 'That's a perfectly good answer.'
'The correct one's much better.'
He made a noise which sounded suspiciously close to a 'harrumph', and sat back
with his arms crossed.
'Well, so you tell me, young lady.'
'Want a clue?'
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'Oh, if you insist.'
'First clue. I'll write it down.' I took my napkin and lipstick and wrote: S
T N D R D _ _.
He bent over the napkin, then looked up at me sceptically. 'That's a clue?'
'The gaps, the spacing. That's the clue.'
He looked unconvinced. He carefully extracted a pair of half-moon glasses
from his breast pocket and put them on. He peered at the napkin over the top
of them.
'Want another clue?'
'Wait, wait,' he said, holding up one hand. 'All right,' he said eventually.
'Second clue: it's a very simple sequence.'
'Really? Hmm.'
'The simplest. That's your third clue. Actually it's your fourth clue, too,
and I've already given you the answer.'
'Uh-huh.'
He gave in at last. 'Well, I think the answer S, D, and you're just being a
tease,' he told me, folding the is glasses and putting them away.
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'The answer is T, H.'
He looked at the napkin. I wrote the last two letters into the space. 'No,'
he said. 'I still don't see.'
'Watch.' I wrote a large 1 in front of the letters ST. I didn't need to add
the 2, the 3 or the 4.
'Ah,' he said, nodding. 'Very clever. Haven't heard of that one before.'
'You wouldn't have. I made it up myself.'
'Really?' He looked at me. 'You are a clever little thing, aren't you?'
I used my wintry smile.
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I woke up in darkness, breathless. I was gasping for air, drowning in what
felt like a semi-vacuum beneath a huge and terrible weight. Darkness. Not
just ordinary darkness but total darkness; profound and utter and somehow
intensifying the breathlessness. Where was I? Berlin? No, that had been a
dream, or something remembered. Blysecrag? Chilly enough for one of the
turret rooms. I looked for my watch. The bed felt small and cold and odd.
Nebraska? The air outside the bed, as well as feeling absurdly cold, didn't
smell right. The bedclothes were far too heavy. My breath hurt my throat.
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