it for a short stretch lying that way on the the moderately tilted ground in this summer woods. And why not once in a while?

The lofty columns of trees respectfully gave rather a wide birth to each other. The soft rustle of the breeze in their tops’ leafage merged with with low buzz of rare flies or bees, or who knows what else air traveling insects and an occasional drum roll of a busy pecker. The wood shades made the sunny day mild, pleasant. Stretched prostrate on the warm ground he felt good, this here once in a while. He turned his eyes to where she was sitting, cross-legged, looking away.

‘And you too,’ said he, ‘Bro Brutus! Joined the team in the best traditions of corporate solidarity’.

‘No need,’ she shook her head watching a squat blackberry bush. ’You agreed to Wal’s proposal before our meeting’,

‘He told you so? Grabbed my thoughts out the noosphere?’

‘I had known it before he offered yo to join in. I know you too well, V’,

He released his hands and crawled, still in the prostrate position, backward, closer t to the trunk to lean his back onto. ‘So why this kind of a romantic meeting? To finalize the deal? Last nail in the coffin lid of a freelancer’s freedom?’

‘You always rode a too high horse. Could you talk in plain words?’

‘Will we be meeting as co-employees?’

‘I don’t think so. The Institution is a too diversified enterprise’.

He pinched a weeny piece off the moss between the tree roots, rubbed it between his fingers then smelled them. The smell was that of moist earth. She looked up to meet his stare. The ping of since long suppressed and fully forgotten pangs reached him and made cast his eyes down.

‘Wal missed or rather obviated answering the first from the 2-in-1 questions: why me?’

‘It was R’s decision when he found out that the Institution headed to a crunching halt, impossible workload and things getting out of hand completely because of your and my baby. Too much depended on that kid..

‘What the… we didn’t have no baby!’

‘It was due in a couple of years. That’s why we split’.’

‘Who’s nuts? I or you, or R? It’s a sheer madness!’

‘It’s the world we live in, V’.

‘Have you manipulated me? Later? By those goddamn retroactions?’

No. Just looking after. Maybe a couple of close calls. At most. I didn’t want you become a wheel-chaired gimp because of a car accident and stuff, you know’.

‘The alarm call by 2ic was one of the preventive moves?’

‘Not exactly. A part of a wider plot. R’s retiring, he looks for a substitute’.

‘Has he found any?’

‘You know yourself’.

‘Leya’s in?’

‘Nope. Her “saving” you was an unforeseen turn. We had to improvise later’.

‘Improvisations, huh? You’re fucking manipulators’.

‘You can’t let the world be ruled by senile morons ready to annihilate it to revenge their natural mortality in a kinda forestalling slam of the door. Neither want you younger morons driven by greed or stupidity, or both’.

‘Another Theory of Conspiracy? The Dark Wing scenario? Come on! They are baubles for high-school kids.’

‘ Bravo, R! He’s right about you aptitude at wild guesses’.

‘Fucking manipulator motherfucker!’

‘Slow down, V! You are in presence of a lady. Would you allow a toddler drop down thru the railing or thrust his hand into a working…’

‘Fuck! Fuck! Fuck! Do I express myself plainly enough?’

‘Which I take for your polite “good-by”, Sir. Fare thee well!’

She rose on her feet and walked down the tilt towards the black SUV on a desolate dirt road in the wood.

* * *

24

…the moon sailed away across the sky I followed it before my eyes my only part capable of moving reached their orbits’ rim and then there remained just the pin-pricks of stars in the dark violet firmament and the ever-present sound of running water might be falling from those moistly gleaming stars

I hovered prostrate and numb above the pain I parted with but still felt so acutely it only swapped from less to more cutting and back the sound was like that of a languid brook in Yorkshire and here it struck me I recalled all both my mother calling ‘Jimmy!’ and the verdure in wavy hills sliced with the stone ribs of hedges the sky over our village church and something you could not miss the presence of the sea beyond the hills

wed to the sea I made my way up from an able man to commander an captain the renown cartographer and explorer of the South Seas commissioned by the Royal Society to discover Terra Australis bringing instead unknown isles new territories with numerous subjects brought to the Crown under the shade of Union Jack touching the lands of dark-skinned people of savage customs and rites the most shocking I witnessed on the second voyage a human sacrifice which I first thought was just a sacrifice

they brought him into the sandy square in the clump of huts under high trees like a great prince they brought him on a stretcher naked prostrate and to my question Omai answered the poor devil could not sit or walk for each and every bone in his body was split and crashed minutely except for the scull and that all of the previous night he lay steeped in the brook to cleanse his body and spirit then under mutual chant and drum beating gushed the blood from the throat cut with the white blindingly white knife disembowelment offal was taken away we retired to the King’s hut where I was bestowing beads and trinkets of pewter to my sovereign host and he was happy and his family too while through the entrance in floated the sweet whiffs of baked flesh but I refused to partake in the royal dinner my stomach