CHAPTER THE ELEVENTH

Providence Chooses Left

“Sniper!”

The cry rose from one throat first, then many. It is a researcher’s duty to stand objective before birth and death and all between, but the sight of Sniper, still sparkling damp from morning swim practice, swinging on a Tarzan rope through the spiraling, hypnotic architectural experiments which lined the Spectacle City heart of Ingolstadt would dumbfound even Felix Faust. In fact, it did. The Headmaster had been strolling with a patriarch’s dawdling dignity along the grass beside a footpath whose electric keyboard stepping stones turned his students’ hijinks into harmonies, but he stopped now, slumping against a crystal Spinosaurus sculpture, as if his frame had not the strength to simultaneously stand and study such a specimen.

“Sniper, my dear,” Faust greeted. “Nice pants.”

What else could one say? The living doll wore nothing else: gray riding britches which made the Olympic striping on its boots seem like the rank marks of an army, but from the waist up it wore nothing. If Sniper is, as many speculate, an Amazon, female by birth, then the surgeon who nipped in the bud the breasts which might have slowed the athlete down in sports, left no blemish on this matchless human canvas. The mist of nearby fountains served as polish for its skin, hairless and pale across the muscles which so many vitamins, exercises, and coaches have trained into the most perfect in the world. Or second-most perfect. I have seen the Major strip to tend a wound, his musculature sculpted by experiences so much more raw, more real, than Sniper’s in the gym. Perhaps the Major shouldn’t count.

Sniper’s smile glittered. “I let my fans vote on how I should repay them for playing hooky most of yesterday. They voted for ‘no shirt.’ ” The living doll turned, displaying every angle to the cameras which hovered about like flying saucers. “I was hoping for a chat, Headmaster, but you look like you’re on your way somewhere. Am I interrupting?”

Faust laughed, not at Sniper’s words but at its gesture, posture, the angle of its stance, which, to the old voyeur, betrayed more than a diary. “Not at all, my dear, your company is one of life’s more fascinating pleasures. I was just strolling up to the Old City to discipline some absentees.” He nodded toward the river, where sharp Bavarian towers still pined for knights and dukes and Charlemagne. “There is much hooky being played of late, not just by you.”

Sniper was obliged to laugh.

“What did happen to you yesterday?” Faust asked. “I hear no one could find you for fifteen hours.”

“Bash’ business.” Sniper winked. “We all have bash’ business sometimes, even me.” Its smile apologized for the half answer.

“Naturally. Well, walk with me. I’m eager to hear what’s brought you to Ingolstadt, and to hear your comments on the question of the day.”

The old gentleman offered Sniper his arm, and the hermaphrodite took it gingerly, like a falcon which settles on a high branch, only deigning to land where it is easiest to leap free. “What ‘question of the day’?” it asked.