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She moved to him, carefully sidestepping the huge metal cat.
But its tail flicked as she was passing.
She instinctively jumped, allowing the tail to pass under her feet.
“Nice,” Jubal said. “You did a lot of jumping rope as a kid?”
“Not really,” she told him.
“What do I do with this?” he asked her, eyeing the egg dubiously.
“Open it,” she told him.
He frowned.
“Not by breaking it,” she told him quickly. “It should have a seam along the middle, and you can twist it open from there.”
“Whoa, how did you know?” he asked, twisting the egg open.
“These are common on Terra-58 during the Old Terra Easter celebrations,” she told him with a smile.
“The fertility bacchanals, right,” he said. “I’ve read about those. Sounds like a wild time.”
“Oh, um, those are from before Terrans began to celebrate Easter,” she told him. “Easter is more about the man-savior, and a celebration of life.”
“And you celebrate life with eggs and small animals that multiply regularly?” he asked. “That’s a fertility rite, Chloe.”
“Let’s read the clue,” she said, clearing her throat.
He removed it from the egg, and they both leaned over it.
To Chloe’s intense disappointment, this one looked very, very hard.
There were no words and no pictures at all, just what looked like a few measures of sheet music.
“Oh wow,” she said. “I took music back in school, but that doesn’t mean anything to me.”
But before she finished speaking, Jubal was humming.
“You read sheet music?” she asked in wonder.
“No, guys like me only read girlie mags and room service menus,” he said, rolling his eyes.
What was that supposed to mean?
“Sorry,” she said, knowing their time was short. “Does the music have a clue in it?”
“The notes are F, A, C, and E,” he said. “So maybe it’s supposed to mean face.”
They looked around, but there was nothing with a face on it. All the paintings were either abstract or scenic.
“The clock,” Jubal said suddenly. “It has a face.”
Of course.
They moved to it together.
Jubal lifted the cuckoo clock down from the wall, but there was nothing on it or behind it.
