Nova

Draco/Pleiades Federation (Roc transit)

“The Page of Wands.”

“Justice.”

“Judgement. My trick. The Queen of Cups.”

“Ace of Cups.”

“The Star. My trick. The Hermit.”

“With trumps she leads!” Leo laughed. “Death.”

“The Fool. My trick is. Now: the Knight of Coins.”

“Trey of Coins.”

“King of Coins. My trick it is. Five of Swords.”

“The Deuce.”

“The Magus; my trick.”

Katin watched the darkened chess table where Sebastian, Tyy, and Leo, after the hour of reminiscence, played three-handed Tarot-whist.

He did not know the game well; but they did not know this, and he ruminated that they had not asked him to play. He had observed the game for fifteen minutes over Sebastian’s shoulder (the dark thing huddled by his foot), while hairy hands dealt and fanned the cards. From his small knowledge Katin tried to construct a cutting brilliance to toss into the play.

They played so fast.

He gave up.

But as he walked to where the Mouse and Idas sat on the ramp with their feet hanging over the pool, he smiled; in his pocket he thumbed the pips on the end of his recorder, wording another note.

Idas was saying: “Hey, Mouse, what if I were to turn this knob …?”

“Watch it!” The Mouse pushed Idas’ hand from the syrynx. “You’ll blind everybody in the room!”

Idas frowned. “The one I had, back when I fooled around with it, didn’t have—“ His voice trailed, waiting for an absent completion.

The Mouse’s hand slipped from wood to steel to plastic. His fingers brushed the strings and snagged unamplified notes—“You can really hurt somebody if you don’t use this thing properly. It’s highly directional, and the amount of light and sound you can get out of it could detach somebody’s retina or rupture an eardrum. To get opacity in the hologram images, you know, this thing uses a laser.”

Idas shook his head. “I never played around with one long enough to find how it worked inside all the—“

He reached out to touch the safer strings.

“It sure is a nice-looking—“

“Hello,” Katin said.

The Mouse grunted and went on tuning drones.

Katin sat down on the other side of the Mouse and watched for a few moments. “I just had a thought,” he said, “Nine times out of ten, when I just say ‘hello’ to someone in passing, or when the person I speak to is going off to do something else, I spend the next fifteen minutes or so rehearsing the incident, wondering whether my smile was taken for undue familiarity, or my sober expression improperly construed as coldness. I repeat the exchange to myself a dozen times, varying my tone of voice and trying to extrapolate the change this might cause in the other person’s reaction—“

“Hey.” The Mouse looked up from his syrynx. “It’s all right. I like you. I was just busy is all.”

“Oh.” Katin smiled; the smile was worn away by a frown. “You know, Mouse, I envy the captain. He’s got a mission. And his obsession precludes all that wondering about what other people think of him.”

“I don’t go through all that like you described,” the Mouse said. “Much.”

“I do.” Idas looked around. “Whenever I’m by myself, I do it all the—“ and dropped his dark head to examine his knuckles.

“It’s pretty fair of him to let us all have this time off and fly the ship with Lynceos,” Katin said.

“Yeah,” said Idas. “I guess it—“ and turned his hands over to follow the dark scribblings on his palms.

“Captain’s got too many things to worry about,” the Mouse said. “And he doesn’t want them. It doesn’t take anything to get across this part of the trip, so he’d just as soon have something to occupy his mind. That’s what I think.”

“You think the captain has bad dreams?”

“Maybe.” The Mouse struck cinnamon from his harp, but so strongly their noses and the backs of their mouths burned.

Katin’s eyes teared.

The Mouse shook his head and turned down the knob Idas had touched. “Sorry.”

“Knight of … “ Across the room Sebastian looked up from the game and wrinkled his nose. “ …Swords.”

Katin, the only one with legs long enough, tipped the water below the ramp with the toe of his sandal. Colored gravel shook; Katin took out his recorder and flipped the recording pip:

“Novels were primarily about relationships.” He gazed at the distortions in the mosaic wall behind the leaves as he spoke. “Their popularity lay in that they belied the loneliness of the people who read them, people essentially hypnotized by the machinations of their own consciousness. The Captain and Prince, for example, through their obsessions are totally related—“

The Mouse leaned over and spoke into the jeweled box:

“The captain and Prince probably haven’t even seen each other face to face for ten years!”

Katin, annoyed, clicked the recorder off. He considered a retort; found none. So he flipped it on again: “Remember that the society which allows this to happen is the society that has allowed the novel to become extinct. Bear in mind as you write that the subject of the novel is what happens between people’s faces when they talk to one another.” Off again.

“Why are you writing this book?” the Mouse asked. “I mean what do you want to do with it?”

“Why do you play your syrynx? I’m sure it’s for essentially the same reason.”

“Only if I spent all that time just getting ready, I’d never play a thing; and that’s a hint.”

“I begin to understand, Mouse. It’s not my aim, but my methods of achieving it which bug you, as it were.”

“Katin, I do understand what you’re doing. You want to make something beautiful. But it don’t work that way. Sure, I had to practice a long time to be able to play this thing. But if you’re going to make something like that, it’s got to make people feel and thrill to the life around them, even if it’s only that one guy who goes looking for it in the Alkane’s cellar. It won’t make it if you don’t understand some of that feeling yourself.”

“Mouse, you’re a fine, good, and beautiful person. You just happen to be wrong is all. Those beautiful forms you wield from your harp, I’ve looked at your face closely enough to know how much they’re impelled by terror.”

The Mouse looked up and wrinkles scored his forehead.

“I could sit and watch you play for hours. But they’re only momentary joys, Mouse. It’s only when all one knows of life is abstracted and used as an underlining statement of significant patterning that you have what is both beautiful and permanent. Yes, there is an area of myself I haven’t been able to tap for this work, one that flows and fountains in you, gushes from your fingers. But there’s a large part of you that’s playing to drown the sound of someone screaming in there.” He nodded to the Mouse’s scowl.

The Mouse made his sound again.

Katin shrugged.

“I’d read your book,” Idas said.

The Mouse and Katin looked up.

“I’ve read a … well, some books—“ He looked back at his hands.

“You would?”

Idas nodded. “In the Outer Colonies, people read books, even novels sometimes. Only there aren’t very … well, only old—“ He looked up at the frame against the wall: Lynceos lay like an unborn ghost; the captain was in the other. He looked back with loss in his face. “It’s very different in the Outer Colonies than it is—“ He gestured around the ship, indicating all of Draco. “Say, do you know the place we’re going well?”

“Never been there,” Katin said.

The Mouse shook his head.

“I was wondering if you knew whether we could get hold of some …” He looked back down. “Never mind …”

“You’d have to ask them,” Katin said, pointing to the cardplayers across the room. “It’s their home.”

“Oh,” Idas said. “Yeah. I guess—“ Then he pushed himself off the ramp, splashed into the water, waded onto the gravel, and walked, dripping, across the rug.

Katin looked at the Mouse and shook his head.

But the trail of water was completely absorbed in the blue piling.

“Six of Swords.”

“Five of Swords.”

“Excuse me, do any of you know—“

“Ten of Swords. My trick. Page of Cups.”

“—on this world we’re going. Do you know if—“

“The Tower.”

(“I wish that card hadn’t come up reversed in the captain’s reading,” Katin whispered to the Mouse. “Believe me, it portends no good.”)

“The Four of Cups.”

“My trick. Nine of Wands.”

“—we can get hold of—“

“Seven of Wands.”

“—any bliss?”

“The Wheel of Fortune. My trick is.” Sebastian looked up. “Bliss?”

The explorer who decided to name the outermost of the Dim, Dead Sister’s planets Elysium had indulged a poor joke. With all the planoforming devices available, it was still a frozen cinder ellipsing at trans-Plutonian distances from Her ghost-light, barren and uninhabited.

Someone had once proposed the doubtful theory that all three of the remaining worlds were really moons that had been in the shadow of a gigantic planet when the catastrophe occurred, and thus escaped the fury that had annihilated their protector. Poor moon if moon you are, Katin thought as they swept by. You’ve done no better as a world. A lesson there in pretension.

Once the—explorer explored further, he regained his sense of proportion. His grin faltered at the middle world; he called it Dis.

His fate suggests the agenbite of inwit come too late; flaunting the gods even once reaped a classical reward. His ship crashed on the innermost planet. It remained unnamed, and to this day was referred to as the other world, without pomp, circumstance, or capitals. It was not till a second explorer came that the other world suddenly disclosed a secret. Those great plains, which from a distance had been judged solidified slag, turned out to be oceans-of water, frozen. True, the top ten to a hundred feet was mixed with every sort of rubble and refuse. It was finally decided that the other world had once been entirely under two to twenty-five miles of water. Perhaps nineteen twentieths had steamed into space when the Dim, Dead Sister went nova. This left a percentage of dry land just a little higher than Earth’s. The unbreathable atmosphere, the total lack of organic life, the sub-sub temperatures? Minor problems, compared to the gift of seas; easily corrected. So humanity, in the early days of the Pleiades, encroached on the charred and frozen land. The other world’s oldest city—though not its biggest, for the commercial and economic shift over the past three hundred years had shifted the population—had been very carefully named: the City of Dreadful Night.

And the Roc put down by the black blister of the City tipping the Devil’s Claw.

Pleiades Federation, other world, CDN, 3172

“ …of eighteen hours.” And that was the end of the info-voice.

“Is this home enough for you?” the Mouse asked.

Leo gazed across the field. “I never this world walked,” the fisherman sighed. Beyond, the sea of broken ice stretched toward the horizon. “But great segmented and six-flippered nhars in schools across that sea move. The fishermen for them with harpoons long as five tall men together hunt. The Pleiades it is; home enough it is.” He smiled, and his frosted breath rose to dim his blue eyes.

“This is your world, isn’t it, Sebastian?” Katin asked. “You must feel good coming home.”

Sebastian pushed a dark wing away that beat before his eyes. “Still mine, but … “ He looked around, shrugged. “I from Thule come. It a bigger city is; a quarter of the way around the other world it lies. From here very far is; and very different.” He looked up at the twilight sky. Sister was high, a bleary pearl behind a gun-colored sheath of cloud. “Very different.” He shook his head.

“Our world, yes,” Tyy said. “But not our home at all.”

The captain, a few steps before them, looked back when they spoke. “Look.” He pointed to the gate. Beneath the scar his face was fixed. “No dragon on his column coils. This home is. For you and you and you and me, this home is!”

“Home enough,” Leo repeated. But his voice was guarded.

They followed the captain out through the serpentless gates.

The landscape held all the colors of burning:

Copper: it oxidizes to a mottled, yellow-shot green.

Iron: black and red ash.

Sulfur: its oxide is an oozy, purplish brown.

The colors smeared in from the dusty horizon, and were repeated in the walls and towers of the City. Once Lynceos shaded the silver fringe of his lashes to look at the sky where a swarm of shadows like mad, black leaves winked on the exhausted sun, capable of no more than evening, even at noon. He looked back at the creature on Sebastian’s shoulder that spread its wings now and rattled its leash. “And how does the gully feel to be home?” He reached out to chuck the perched thing, only to jerk his white hand back from a dark claw. The twins looked at one another and laughed.

They descended into the City of Dreadful Night.

Halfway down, the Mouse began to walk backwards up the escalator. “It’s … it’s not Earth.”

“Huh?” Katin glided by, saw the Mouse, and began backtracking himself.

“Look at it all down there, Katin. It isn’t the Solar System. It isn’t Draco.”

“This trip is your first time away from Sol, isn’t it?”

The Mouse nodded.

“It won’t be too different.”

“But just look at it, Katin.”

“The City of Dreadful Night,” Katin mused. “All those lights. They’re probably afraid of the dark.”

They stick-legged a moment more, gazing across the checkerboard: ornate gaming pieces, a huddle of kings, queens, and rooks towered knights and pawns.

“Come on,” the Mouse said.

The twenty-meter blades of metal that made up the giant stair swept them down.

“We better catch up with Captain.”

The streets near the field were crowded with cheap rooming houses. Marquees arched the walkways, advertising dance halls and psychoramas. The Mouse looked through the transparent wall at people swimming in a recreation club. “It isn’t that different from Triton. Sixpence @sg? Prices are sure a hell of a lot lower, though.”

Half the people on the streets were obviously crew or officers. The streets were crowded. The Mouse heard music. Some of it was from the open doors of bars.

“Hey, Tyy.” The Mouse pointed to an awning. “Did you ever work in a place like that?”

“In Thule, yes.”

Expert Readings: the letters glittered, shrank, and expanded on the sign.

“We stay in the City—“

They turned to the Captain.

“—five days.”

“Are we going to put up on the ship?” the Mouse asked. “Or here in town where we can have some fun?”

Take that scar. Cut it with three close lines near the top: the captain’s forehead creased. “You all suspect the danger we’re in.” He swept his eyes over the buildings. “No. We’re not staying either here or on the ship.” He stepped into the wings of a communications booth. Not bothering to swing the panels shut, he passed his hand before the inductance plates. “This Lorq Von Ray is. Yorgos Setsumi?”

“I if his advisory meeting over is will see.”

“An android of him will do,” Lorq said. “Just a minor favor I want.”

“He always to you in person, Mr. Von Ray, likes to talk. Just a moment, I he available is think.”

A figure materialized in the viewing column. “Lorq, so long now you I have not seen. What for you can I do?”

“Is anybody using Taafite on Gold for the next ten days?”

“No. I’m in Thule now, and will be for the next month. I gather you’re in the City and need a place to stay?”

Katin had already noted the captain’s slide between dialects.

There were unrecordable similarities between the captain’s voice and this Setsumi’s that illuminated both. Katin recognized common eccentricities that began to define for him an upper-class Pleiades accent. He looked at Tyy and Sebastian to see if they responded to it. Only a small movement in the muscles around the eyes, but there. Katin looked back at the viewing column.

“I have a party with me, Yorgy.”

“Lorq, my houses are your houses. I hope you and your guests enjoy your stay.”

“Thanks, Yorgy.” Lorq stepped from the booth.

The crew looked among themselves.

“There’s a possibility,” Lorq said, “that the next five days I spend on the other world will be the last I spend anywhere.” He searched intently for their reactions. As intently, they tried to hide them. “We might as well pass the time pleasantly. We go this way”

The mono crawled up the rail and flung them out across the City. “That Gold is?” Tyy asked Sebastian.

The Mouse, beside them, pressed his face against the glass. “Where?”

“There.” Sebastian pointed across the squares. Among the blocks, a molten river faulted the City.

“Hey, just like on Triton,” the Mouse said. “Is the core of this planet melted by Illyrion too?”

Sebastian shook his head. “The whole planet too big for that is. Only the space under each city. That crack Gold is called.”

The Mouse watched the brittle, igneous outcroppings fall back along the lavid fissure.

“Mouse?”

“Huh?” He looked up as Katin pulled out his recorder. “What do you want?”

“Do something.”

“What?”

“I’m trying an experiment. Do something.” “What do you want me to do?”

“Anything that comes into your head. Go on.”

“Well …” The Mouse frowned. “All right.” The Mouse did.

The twins, from the other end of the car, turned to stare.

Tyy and Sebastian looked at the Mouse, then at one another, then back at the Mouse.

“Characters,” said Katin into his recorder, “are fixed most vividly by their actions. The Mouse stepped back from the window, then swung his arm around and around. From his expression, I could tell he was both amused by my surprise at the violence of his action, at the same time curious if I were satisfied. He dropped his hands back on the window, breathing a little hard, and flexed his knuckles on the sill—“

“Hey,” the Mouse said. “I just swung my arm. The panting, my knuckles—that wasn’t part—“

“’Hey,’ the Mouse said, hooking his thumb in the hole at the thigh of his pants. ‘I just swung my arm. The panting, my knuckles—that wasn’t part—‘”

“God damn!”

“The Mouse unhooked his thumb, made a nervous fist, ejaculated, ‘God damn!’ then turned away in frustration. There are three types of actions: purposeful, habitual, and gratuitous. Characters, to be immediate and apprehensible, must be presented by all three.” Katin looked toward the front of the car.

The captain gazed through the curving plate that lapped the roof. His yellow eyes fixed her consumptive light that pulsed like fire-spots in a giant cinder. The light was so weak he did not squint at all.

“I am confounded,” Katin admitted to his jeweled box, “nevertheless. The mirror of my observation turns and what first seemed gratuitous I see enough times to realize it is a habit. What I suspected as habit now seems part of a great design. While what I originally took as purpose explodes into gratuitousness. The mirror turns again, and the character I thought obsessed by purpose reveals his obsession is only a habit; his habits are gratuitously meaningless; while those actions I construed as gratuitous reveal a most demonic purpose.”

The yellow eyes had fallen from the tired star. Lorq’s face erupted about the scar at some antic from the Mouse that Katin had missed.

Rage, Katin pondered. Rage, Yes, he is laughing. But how is anyone supposed to distinguish between laughter and rage in that face.

But the others were laughing too.

“What’s the smoke?” the Mouse asked, stepping around the steaming grate in the cobbles.

“It just the sewer grating is, I think,” Leo said. The fisherman looked at the fog winding up the pole that supported the brilliant, induced-fluorescence streetlight. At the ground the steam ballooned and sagged; before the light it danced and quivered.

“Taafite is just at the end of this street,” Lorq said.

They walked up the hill past a half dozen other gratings that steamed through the perpetual evening.

“I guess Gold is right—“

“—right behind that embankment there?”

Lorq nodded to the twins.

“What sort of a place is the Taafite?” the Mouse demanded.

“A place where I can be comfortable.” Subtle agony played the captain’s features. “And where I won’t have to be bothered with you.” Lorq made to cuff him, but the Mouse ducked. “We’re here.”

The twelve-foot gate, with chunks of colored glass set in wrought iron, fell back when Lorq laid his hand to the plate.

“It remembers me.”

“Taafite isn’t yours?” Katin asked.

“It belongs to an old school friend, Yorgos Setsumi who owns Pleiades Mining. A dozen years ago I used it often. That’s when the lock was keyed to my hand. I’ve done the same for him with some of my houses. We don’t see each other much now but we used to be very close.”

They entered Taafite’s garden.

The flowers here were never meant to be seen in full light. The blossoms were purple, maroon, violet-colors of the evening. The mica-like scales of the spidery tilda glistened over the leafless branches. There was much low shrubbery, but all the taller plants were slim and sparse, to make as little shadow as possible.

The front wall of Taafite itself was a curving shape of glass. For a long stretch there wasn’t any wall at all and house and garden merged. A sort of path led to a sort of flight of steps cut into the rock, below what probably was the front door.

When Lorq put his hand on the door plate, lights began to flicker all through the house, above them in windows, far at the ends of corridors, reflected around cowers, or shifting through a translucent wall, veined like violet jade, or panes of black-shot amber. Even under: a section of the floor was transparent and they could see lights coming on in rooms stories down.

“Come in.”

They followed the captain across the beige carpeting. Katin stepped ahead to examine a shelf of bronze statuettes. “Benin?” he asked the captain.

“I believe so. Yorgos has a passion for thirteenth-century Nigeria.”

When Katin turned to the opposite wall his eyes widened. “Now those can’t be the originals.” Then narrowed. “The Van Meegeren forgeries?”

“No. I’m afraid those are just plain old copies.”

Katin chuckled. “I’ve still got Dehay’s Under Sirius on the brain.”

They continued down the hall.

“I think there’s a bar in here.” Lorq turned into a doorway.

The lights only came halfway up because of what was beyond the forty feet of glass opposite.

Inside the room yellow lamps played on a pool of opalescent sand filled by siftings from the rock wail. Refreshments were already moving into the room on the rotary stage. On floating glass shelves sat pale statuettes. Benin bronzes in the hall; here were early Cycladics, lucent and featureless.

Outside the room was Gold.

Down among brackish crags, lava flamed like day.

The river of rock flowed by, swinging the crags’ shadows between the wooden beams of the ceiling.

The Mouse stepped forward and said something without sound.

Tyy and Sebastian narrowed their eyes.

“Now isn’t that—“

“—that something to look at!”

The Mouse ran around the sand-pool, leaned against the glass with his hands by his face. Then he grinned back over his shoulder. “It’s like being right down in the middle of some Hell on Triton!”

The thing on Sebastian’s shoulder dropped, flapping, to the floor and cowered behind its master as something in Gold exploded. Falling fire dropped light down their faces.

“Which brew of the other world do you want to try first?” Lorq asked the twins as he surveyed bottles on the stage.

“The one in the red bottle—“

“—in the green bottle looks pretty good “—not as good as some of the stuff we got on Tubman—“ “—I bet. On Tubman we got some stuff called bliss—“ “—you know what it is bliss, Captain?”

“No bliss.” Lorq held up the bottles, one in each hand.

“Red or green. They’re both good.”

“I could sure use some—“

“—me too. But I guess he doesn’t have—“

“—guess he doesn’t. So I’ll take—“

“—red—“

“—green.”

“One of each. Coming up.” Tyy touched Sebastian’s arm. “What is?” Sebastian frowned.

She pointed to the wall as one of the shelves floated away from a long painting.

“The view from Thule down Ravine Dank is!” Sebastian seized Leo’s shoulder. “Look. That home is!”

The fisherman looked up.

“You out the back window of the house where I was born look,” Sebastian said. “All that you see.”

“Hey.” The Mouse reached up to tap Katin’s shoulder. Katin looked down from the sculpture he was examining at the Mouse’s dark face. “Huh?”

“That stool over there. You remember that Vega Republic stuff you were talking about back on the ship?”

“Yes.”

“Is that stool one?”

Katin smiled. “No. Everything here is all patterned on pre-star-flight designs. This whole room is a pretty faithful replica of some elegant American mansion of the twenty-first or second century.”

The Mouse nodded. “Oh.”

“The rich are always enamored of the ancient.”

“I never been in a place like this before.” The Mouse looked about the room. “It’s something, huh?”

“Yes. It is.”

“Come get your poison,” Lorq called from the stage.

“Mouse! Now, you your syrynx play?” Leo brought over two mugs, pushed one into the Mouse’s hands, the other into Katin’s. “You play. Soon I down to the ice docks will go. Mouse, play for me.”

“Play something that we can dance—“

“—dance with us, Tyy. Sebastian—“

“—Sebastian will you dance with us too?”

The Mouse shucked his sack.

Leo went over to get a mug for himself, came back, and sat down on the stool. The Mouse’s images were paled by Gold. But the music was ornamented with sharp, insistent quarter tones. It smelled like a party.

On the floor, the Mouse balanced the body of the syrynx against his blackened, horny foot, tapped time with the toe of his boot, and rocked. His fingers flew. Light from Gold, from the fixtures about the room, from the Mouse’s syrynx, lashed the captain’s face to fury. Twenty minutes later he said, “Mouse, I’m going to steal you for a while.”

He stopped playing. “What you want, Captain?”

“Company. I’m going out.”

The dancers’ faces fell.

Lorq turned a dial on the stage. “I’ve had the sensory recorder running.” The music began again. And the ghostly visions of the Mouse’s syrynx cavorted once more, along with images of Tyy, Sebastian, and the twins dancing, the sound of their laughter—

“Where are we going, Captain?” the Mouse asked. He put his syrynx down on the case.

“I’ve been thinking. We need something here. I’m going to get some bliss.”

“You mean you know—“

“—where to get hold of some?”

“The Pleiades is my home,” the Captain said. “We’ll be gone maybe an hour. Come on, Mouse.”

“Hey, Mouse, will you leave your—“

“—syrynx here with us—“

“—now? It’ll be okay. We won’t—“

“—won’t let anything happen to it.”

With lips pulled thin, the Mouse looked from the twins to his instrument. “All right. You can play it. But watch out, huh?”

He walked over to where Lorq stood at the door.

Leo joined them. “Now it too time for me to go is.”

Inside the Mouse, surprise opened like a wound over the inevitable. He blinked.

“For the lift, Captain, I you thank.”

They walked down the hall and through Taafite’s garden. Outside the gate, they stopped by the smoking grate. “For the ice docks down there you go.” Lorq pointed down the hill. “You the mono to the end of the line take.”

Leo nodded. His blue eyes caught the Mouse’s dark ones, and puzzlement passed on his face. “Well, Mouse. Maybe some day again we’ll see, huh?”

“Yeah,” the Mouse said. “Maybe.”

Leo turned and walked down the fuming street, boot heel clicking.

“Hey,” the Mouse called after a moment.

Leo looked back.

“Ashton Clark.”

Leo grinned, then started again.

“You know,” the Mouse said to Lorq, “I’ll probably never see him again in my life. Come on, Captain.”

“Are we anywhere near the spacefield?” the Mouse asked. They came down the crowded steps of the monorail station.

“Within walking distance. We’re about five miles down Gold from Taafite.”

The spray trucks had recently been by. The wandering people were reflected on the wet pavement. A group of youngsters—two of the boys with bells around their necks—ran by an old man, laughing. He turned, followed them a few steps, hand out. Now he turned back and came toward the Mouse and Lorq.

“An old guy with something, you help? Tomorrow, tomorrow into a job I plug. But tonight …”

The Mouse looked back after the panhandler, but Lorq kept on.

“What’s in there?” The Mouse pointed to a high arcade of lights. People clustered before the door on the shining street.

“No bliss there.”

They turned the corner.

On the far side of the street, couples had stopped by a fence. Lorq crossed the street. “That’s the other end of Gold down there.”

Below the ragged slope, bright rock wound into the night. One couple turned away hand in hand, with burnished faces.

Flashing from his hair, hands, and shoulders, a man came up the walkway in a lame vest. A tray of jewels hung around his neck. The couple stopped him. She bought a jewel from the vendor and, laughing, placed it on her boyfriend’s forehead. The sequined streamers from the central cluster of stones ran back and wound themselves in his long hair. They laughed up the wet street.

Lorq and the Mouse reached the end of the fence. A crowd of uniformed Pleiades patrolmen came up the stone steps; three girls ran up behind them, screaming. Five boys overtook them, and the screams turned to laughter. The Mouse looked back to see them cluster about the jewelry man.

Lorq started down the steps.

“What’s down there?” The Mouse hurried on behind.

On the side of the broad steps, people drank at tables set beside the cafes cut into the rock wall.

“You look like you know where you’re going, Captain.” The Mouse caught up with Lorq’s elbow. “Who is that?” He gazed after one stroller. Among the lightly clad people, she wore a heavy parka rimmed with fur.

“She’s one of your ice-fishermen,” the captain told him. “Leo will he wearing one of them soon. They spend most of their time away from the heated part of the City.”

“Where are we going?”

“I think it was down this way.” They turned along a dim ledge; there were a few windows in the rock. Blue light leaked from the shades. “These places change owners every couple of months, and I haven’t been in the City for five years. If we don’t find the place I’m looking for, we’ll find one that’ll do.”

“What sort of place is it?”

A woman shrieked. A door swung open; she staggered out. Another suddenly reached from the darkness, caught her by the arm, slapped her twice, and yanked her back. The door slammed on a second shriek. An old man—probably another ice-fisherman—supported a younger man on his shoulder, “We you back to the room you take. Your head up hold. All right it will be. To the room we you take.”

The Mouse watched them stagger by. A couple had stopped back near the stone stairway. She was shaking her head. Finally he nodded, and they turned back.

“The place I was thinking of, among other things, used to have a thriving business conning people to work in the mines in the Outer Colonies, then collecting a commission on each recruit. It was perfectly legal; there’re a lot of stupid people in the universe. I’ve been a foreman in one of those mines and seen it from the other end. It’s not very pretty.” Lorq looked over a doorway. “Different name. Same place.”

He started down the steps. The Mouse looked quickly behind him, then followed: They entered a long room with a plank bar by one wall. A few panels of multichrome gave out feeble color. “Same people too.”

A man older than the Mouse, younger than Lorq, with stringy hair and dirty nails came up. “What can I do for you boys?”

“What have you got to make us feel good?”

He closed an eye. “Have a seat.”

Dim figures passed and paused before the bar.

Lorq and the Mouse slipped into a booth. The man pulled up a chair, reversed it, straddled it, and sat at the table’s head. “How good do you want to feel?”

Lorq turned his hands palms up on the table.

“Downstairs we have a …” The man glanced toward a doorway in the back where people moved in and out. “ …pathobath?”

“What’s that?” the Mouse asked.

“A place with crystal walls that reflect the color of your thoughts,” Lorq told him. “You leave your clothes at the door and float among columns of light on currents of glycerin.

They heat it to body temperature, mask out all your senses. After a little while, deprived of contact with sensory reality, you go insane. Your own psychotic fantasies provide the floor show.” He looked back at the man. “I want something we can take with us.”

Behind thin lips the man’s teeth came together sharply.

On the stage at the end of the bar a naked girl stepped into the coral spotlight and began to chant a poem. Those sitting at the bar clapped in time.

The man looked quickly back and forth between the captain and the Mouse.

Lorq folded his hands. “Bliss.”

The man’s eyebrows raised under the matted hair that fell down his forehead. “That’s what I thought.” His own hands came together. “Bliss.”

The Mouse looked at the girl. Her skin was unnaturally shiny. Glycerin, the Mouse thought. Yeah, glycerin. He leaned against the stone wall, then quickly pulled away. Drops of water ran the cold rock. The Mouse rubbed his shoulder and looked back at the captain.

“We’ll wait for it.”

The man nodded. After a moment he said to the Mouse, “What do you and pretty-man do for a living?”

“Crew on a … freighter.” The captain nodded just enough to communicate approval.

“You know, there’s good work in the Outer Colonies. You ever thought about doing a hitch in the mines?”

“I worked the mines for three years,” Lorq said.

“Oh.” The man fell silent.

After a moment, Lorq asked, “Are you going to send for the bliss?”

“I already did.” A limp grin washed his lips.

At the bar the rhythmic clapping broke into applause as the girl finished her poem. She leaped from the stage, and ran across the floor toward them. The Mouse saw her take something quickly from one of the men at the bar. She hugged the man at the table with them. Their hands joined, and as she ran into the shadow, the Mouse saw the man’s hand fall on the table, the knuckles high with something underneath. Lorq placed his hand over the man’s, completely masking them.

“Three pounds,” the man said, “@sg.”

With his other hand Lorq put three bills on the table.

The man pulled his hand away and picked them up.

“Come on, Mouse, we’ve got what we want.” Lorq rose from the table and started across the room.

The Mouse ran after him. “Hey, Captain. That man didn’t speak the Pleiades way!”

“In a place like this, they always speak your language, no matter what it is. That’s where their business comes from.”

Just as they reached the door, the man suddenly hailed them once more. He nodded at Lorq. “Just wanted to remind you to come on back when you want some more. So long, beautiful.”

“See you around, ugly.” Lorq went out the door. In the cool night, he paused at the top of the steps, bent his head over his cupped hands and breathed deeply. “Here you go, Mouse.” He held his hands out. “Have a whiff on me.”

“What am I supposed to do?”

“Take a deep breath, hold it for a while, then let it go.” As the Mouse leaned down, a shadow fell that was not his own. The Mouse jumped.

“All right. What you got?”

The Mouse looked up at, and Lorq looked down at the patrolman.

Lorq narrowed his eyes and opened his hands.

The patrolman decided to ignore the Mouse and looked at Lorq. “Oh.” He moved his lower lip over his upper teeth. “Something dangerous it could have been. Something illegal, understand?”

Lorq nodded. “It could have been.”

“These places around here, you got to watch out.”

Lorq nodded again.

So did the patrolman. “Say, how about the law swinging out a little, you let?”

The Mouse saw the smile the captain had not yet allowed out on his face. Lorq raised his hands to the patrolman. “Out yourself knock.”

The patrolman bent, sucked a breath, stood. “Thanks,” and he turned into the dark.

The Mouse watched him a moment, shook his head, shrugged, then gave the captain a cynical frown.

He put his hands around Lorq’s, leaned over, emptied his lungs, then filled them. After he held his breath, for nearly a minute, he exploded, “Now what’s supposed to happen?”

“

“Don’t worry about it,” Lorq said. “It is.”

They started back along the ledge past the blue windows.

The Mouse looked at the river of bright rock. “You know,” he said after a while, “I wish I had my syrynx. I want to play.” They had almost reached the steps with the open cafes under the lights. There was the tinkling of amplified music. Someone at a table dropped a glass that broke on the stone, and the sound disappeared under an onslaught of applause. The Mouse looked at his hands. “This stuff makes my fingers itchy.” They started up the steps. “When I was a kid back on Earth, in Athens, there was a street like this. Odos Mnisicleous, it ran right up through the Plaka. I worked at a couple of places in the Plaka, you know? The Golden Prison, the ‘0 kal ‘H. And you climb the stairs up from Adrianou and way above is the back porch of the Erechtheum in a spotlight over the Acropolis wall at the top of the hill. And people at the tables on the sides of the street, they break their plates, see, and laugh. You ever been in the Plaka in Athens, Captain?”

“Once, a long time ago,” Lorq said. “I was just about your age now. It was only for an evening though.”

“Then you don’t know the little neighborhood above it. Not if you were just there one evening.” The Mouse’s hoarse whisper gained momentum. “You keep going up that street of stone steps till all the night clubs give out and there’s nothing but dirt and grass and gravel, but you keep going, with the ruins still poking over that wall. Then you come to this place called Anaphiotika. That means ‘Little Anaphi,’ see? Anaphi was an island that was almost destroyed by an earthquake, a long time ago. And they got little stone houses, right in the side of the mountain, and streets eighteen inches wide with steps so steep it’s like climbing a ladder. I knew a guy who had a house there. And after I got finished work, I’d get some girls. And some wine. Even when I was a kid, I could get girls—“ The Mouse snapped his fingers. “You climb up to his roof by a rusty spiral stair outside the front door, chase the cats off. Then we’d play and drink wine and watch the city spread all down the mountain like a carpet of lights, and then up the mountain with the little monastery like a splinter of bone at the top. Once we played too loud and the old lady in the house above us threw a pitcher at us. But we laughed at her and yelled back and made her get up and come down for a glass of wine. And already the sky was getting gray behind the mountains, behind the monastery. I liked that, Captain. And I like this too. I can play much better than I could back then. That’s because I play a lot. I want to play the things I can see around me. But there’s so much around me I can see that you can’t. And I have to play that too. Just because you can’t touch it, doesn’t mean you can’t smell and see and hear it. I walk down one world and up another and I like what I see in all of them. You know the curve of your hand in the hand of someone more important to you than anybody? That’s the spirals of the galaxy locked in one another. You know the curve of your hand when the other hand is gone and you’re trying to remember how it felt? There is no other curve like that. I want to play them against each other. Katin says I’m scared. I am, Captain. Of everything around me. So whatever I see, I press against my eyeballs, stick my fingers and tongue in it. I like today; that means I have to live scared. Because today is scary. And at least I’m not afraid of being frightened. Katin, – he’s all mixed up with the past. Sure, the past is what makes now like now makes tomorrow; Captain, there’s a river crashing by us. But we can only go down to drink one place and it’s called ‘now.’ I play my syrynx, see, and it’s like an invitation for everybody to come down and drink. When I play I want everybody to applaud. Cause when I play I’m up there, see, with the tightrope walkers, balancing on that blazing rim of crazy where my mind still works. I dance in the fire. When I play, I lead all the other dancers where you, and you”—the Mouse pointed at people passing—“and him and her, can’t get without my help. Captain, back three years ago, when I was fifteen in Athens, I remember one morning up on that roof. I was leaning on the frame of the grape arbor with shiny grape leaves on my cheek and the lights of the city going out under the dawn, and the dancing had stopped, and two of the girls were making out in a red blanket back under the iron table. And suddenly I asked myself, ‘What am I doing here?’ Then I asked it again: ‘What am I doing here?’ Then it got like a tune caught in my head, playing through again and again. I was scared, Captain. I was excited and happy, and scared to death, and I bet I was grinning wide as I’m grinning now. That’s how I run, Captain. I haven’t got the voice to sing or shout it. But I play my harp, don’t I? And what am I doing now, Captain? Climbing another street of stone steps worlds away, dawn then, night now, happy and scared as the devil. What am I doing here? Yeah! What am I doing?”

“You’re rapping, Mouse.” Lorq let go of the post at the top of the steps. “Let’s get back to Taafite.”

“Oh, yeah. Sure, Captain.” The Mouse suddenly looked into the ruined face. The captain looked down at him. Deep among the broken lines and lights, the Mouse saw humor and compassion. He laughed. “I wish I had my syrynx now. I’d play your eyes out of your head. I’d turn your nose inside out from both nostrils, and you’d be twice as ugly as you are now, Captain!” Then he looked across the street: at once wet pavement and people and lights and reflections kaleidoscoped behind amazing tears. “I wish I had my syrynx,” the Mouse whispered again, “had it with me … now.”

They headed back to the monorail station.

“Eating, sleeping, current wages: how would I explain the present concept of these three to somebody from, say, the twenty-third century?”

Katin sat at the edge of the party watching the dancers, himself among them, laughing before Gold. Now and then he bent over his recorder.

“The way we handle these processes would be totally beyond the comprehension of someone from seven hundred years ago, even though he understood intravenous feeding and nutrition concentrates. Still he would have nowhere near the informational equipment to understand how everyone in this society, except the very, very rich, or the very, very poor take their daily nourishment. Half the process would seem completely incomprehensible; the other half, disgusting. Odd that drinking has remained the same. At the same period of time these changes took place—bless Ashton Clark—the novel more or less died. I wonder if there’s a connection. Since I have chosen this archaic art form, must I consider my audience the people who will read it tomorrow, or should I address it to yesterday? Past or future, if I left those elements out of the narrative, it might serve to give the work more momentum.”

The sensory recorder had been left on to record and re-record so that the room was crowded with multiple dancers and the ghosts of dancers. Idas played a counterpoint of sounds and images on the Mouse’s syrynx. Conversations, real and recorded, filled the room.

“Though all these dance around me now, I make my art for a mythological audience of one. Under what other circumstances can I hope to communicate?”

Tyy stepped from among Tyys and Sebastians. “Katin, the door-light flashing is.”

Katin flipped off his recorder. “The Mouse and Captain must be back. Don’t bother, Tyy. I’ll let them in.” Katin stepped out of the room and hurried down the hall.

“Hey, Captain”—Katin swung the door back—“the party’s going—“ He dropped his hand from the knob. His heart pounded twice in his throat, and then might as well have stopped. He stepped back from the door.

“I gather you recognize myself and my sister? I won’t bother with introductions then. May we come in?”

Katin’s mouth started working toward some word.

“We know he’s not here. We’ll wait.”

The iron gate with its chunk-glass ornamentation closed on a scarf of steam. Lorq looked about the plants in silhouette against Taafite’s amber.

“Hope they still have a party going,” the Mouse said. “To go all this way and find them curled up in the corner asleep!”

“Bliss’ll wake them up.” As Lorq mounted the rocks, he took his hands from his pockets. A breeze pushed beneath the flaps of his vest, cooled the spaces between his fingers. He palmed the circle of the door plate. The door swung in. Lorq stepped inside. “Doesn’t sound like they’ve passed out.”

The Mouse grinned and hopped toward the living room.

The party had been recorded, re-recorded, and re-recorded again. Multiple melodies flailed a dozen dancing Tyys to different rhythms. Twins before were duodecuplets now. Sebastian, Sebastian, and Sebastian, at various stages of inebriation, poured drinks of red, blue, green.

Lorq stepped in behind the Mouse. “Lynceos, Idas! We got your—I can’t tell which is which. Quiet a minute!” He slapped at the wall switch of the sensory recorder—From the edge of the sand-pool the twins looked up; white hands fell apart; black came together.

Tyy sat at Sebastian’s feet, hugging her knees: gray eyes flashed under beating lids.

Katin’s Adam’s apple bounded in his long neck.

And Prince and Ruby turned from contemplating Gold. “We seem to have put a damper on the gathering. Ruby suggested they just go on and forget us, but—“ He shrugged. “I’m glad we meet here: Yorgy was reluctant to tell me where you were. He’s a good friend to you. But not so good as I am an enemy.” The black vinyl vest hung loose on his bone-white chest. Ridged ribs scored it sharply. Black pants, black boots. Around his upper arm at the top of his glove: white fur.

A hand slapped Lorq’s sternum, slapped it again, again. The hand was inside. “You’ve threatened me a great deal, and interestingly. How are you going to carry it out?” Bearing Lorq’s fear was a net of exaltation.

As Prince stepped forward, a wing of Sebastian’s pet brushed his calf. “Please .. …” Prince glanced down at the creature. At the sand-pool he stopped, stooped between the twins, scooped his false hand into the sand, and made a fist. “Ahhhh .. .” His breath, even with parted lips, hissed. He stood now, opened his fingers.

Dull glass fell smoking to the rug. Idas pulled his feet back sharply. Lynceos just blinked faster.

“How does that answer my question?”

“Consider it a demonstration of my love of strength and beauty. Do you see?” He kicked the shards of hot glass across the rug. “Bah! Too many impurities to rival Murano. I came here—“

“To kill me?”

“To reason.”

“What did you bring beside reasons?”

“My right hand. I know you have no weapons. I trust my own. We are both playing this one by ear, Lorq. Ashton Clark has set the rules.”

“Prince, what are you trying to do?”

“Keep things as they are.”

“Stasis is death.”

“But less destructive than your insane movements.”

“I am a pirate, remember?”

“You’re fast on your way to becoming the greatest criminal of the millennium”

“Are you about to tell me something I don’t know?”

“I sincerely hope not. For our sake here, for the sake of worlds around us …” Then Prince laughed. “By every logical extension of argument, Lorq, I’m right as far as this battle goes. Has that occurred to you?”

Lorq narrowed his eyes.

“I know you want Illyrion,” Prince continued. “The only reason you want it is to upset the balance of power; otherwise, it wouldn’t be worth it to you. Do you know what will happen?”

Lorq set his mouth. “I’ll tell you: it will ruin the economy of the Outer Colonies. There will be a whole wave of workers to relocate. They’ll swarm in. The empire will come as close to war as it’s been since the suppression of Vega. When a company like Red-shift Limited reaches stasis in this culture, that’s tantamount to destruction. That should kill as much work for as many people in Draco as the destruction of my companies would mean in the Pleiades. Does that begin your argument well?”

“Lorq, you are incorrigible!”

“Are you relieved that I’ve thought it through?”

“I’m appalled.”

“Here’s another argument you can use, Prince: you’re fighting not only for Draco, but for the economic stability of the Outer Colonies as well. If I win, a third of the galaxy moves forward and two thirds fall behind. If you win, two thirds of the galaxy maintains its present standard and one third falls.”

Prince nodded. “Now, demolish me with your logic.”

“I must survive.”

Prince waited. He frowned. The frown parted with puzzled laughter. “That’s all you can say?”

“Why should I bother to tell you that the workers can be relocated in spite of the difficulty? That there will be no war because there are enough worlds and food for them—if it is properly distributed, Prince? That the increase in Illyrion will create enough new projects to absorb these people?”

Prince’s black brows arched. “That much Illyrion?”

Lorq nodded. “That much.”

By the great window, Ruby picked up the ugly lumps of glass. She examined them, seeming unconscious of the conversation. But Prince held out his hand. Immediately, she placed them on his palm. She was following their words closely.

“I wonder,” Prince said, looking at the fragments, “if this will work.” His fingers closed. “Do you insist on reopening this feud between us?”

“You’re a fool, Prince. The forces that have pried up the old hostilities were moving about us when we were children. Why pretend here that these parameters mark our field?”

Prince’s fist began to quiver. His hand opened. Bright crystals were shot with internal blue light. “Heptodyne quartz. Are you familiar with it? Mild pressure on impure glass will often produce—I say ‘mild.’ That’s a geologically relative term, of course.”

“You’re threatening again. Go away—now. Or you’ll have to kill me.”

“You don’t want me to go. We’re trying to maneuver a single combat here to decide which worlds fall where.” Prince hefted the crystals. “I could put one of these quite accurately through your skull.” He turned his hand over; again shards fell on the floor. “I’m not a fool, Lorq. I’m a juggler. I want to keep all our worlds spinning about my ears.” He bowed and stepped back. Again his foot brushed the beast.

– Sebastian’s pet yanked at its chain. Sails cracked the air, jerked its master’s arm back and forth—“Down! Down, now you go …”

– the chain pulled from Sebastian’s hand. It rose, swept back and forth beneath the ceiling. Then it dove at Ruby.

She whirled her arms around her head. Prince dodged at her, ducked beneath the wings. His gloved hand struck up.

It squealed, flapped back. Prince whipped his hand again at the black body. It shook in the air, collapsed.

Tyy cried out, ran to the beast, which flapped weakly on its back, and pulled it away. Sebastian rose from his stool with knotted fists. Then he dropped to his knees to minister to his injured pet.

Prince turned his black hand over. Wet purple blotched the nap. “That was the creature that attacked you on the Esclaros, wasn’t it?”

Ruby stood up, still silent, and pushed dark hair from her shoulder. Her dress was white, rimmed at hem, collar, and sleeve with black. She touched her satin bodice where bangles of blood had dropped.

Prince regarded the mewing thing between Tyy and Sebastian. “That almost settles the score, Ruby?” He rubbed his hands: flesh and bloody black.

He frowned at his smeared fingers. “Lorq, you asked me a question: when am I going to make good my threats? Some time within the next sixty seconds. But we have a sun to settle between us. Those rumors you mentioned to Ruby have reached us. The protective gauze the Great White Bitch of the North, your Aunt Cyana, drapes about herself, is most effective. It fell the moment you left her office. But we’ve listened at other keyholes; and we heard news of a sun, about to go nova. It, or suns like it, have apparently been the center of your interest for some time.” His blue eyes rose from his stained palm. “Illyrion. I don’t see the connection. No matter. Aaron’s men are working on it.”

Tension rode like pain between Lorq’s hips and in the small of his back. “You are preparing for something. Go on. Do it.”

“I must figure out how. With my bare hand, I think—no.” His brows arched; he held up his dark fist. “No, this one. I respect your attempt to justify yourself to me. But how do you justify yourself to them?” With bloody fingers he gestured at the crew.

“Ashton Clark would side with you, Prince. So would justice. I’m not here because I willed a situation. I’m only struggling to solve it. The reason I must fight you is I think I can win. There’s only that one. You’re for stasis. I’m for movement. Things move. There’s no ethic there.” Lorq looked at the twins. “Lynceos? Idas?”

The black face looked up; the white, down.

“Do you know what you risk in this contest?”

One looking at him, one looking away, they nodded.

“Do you want to sign off the Roc?”

“No, Captain, we—“

“—I mean, even if it all—“

“—all changes, on Tubman—“

“—in the Outer Colonies, maybe—“

“—maybe Tobias will leave there—“

“—and join us here.”

Lorq laughed. “I think Prince would take you with him—if you wanted.”

“Tarred and feathered,” Prince said. “Etiolated and denigrated. You’ve lived out your own myths. Damn you, Lorq.”

Ruby stepped forward. “You!” she said to the twins. Both looked at her. “Do you really know what happens if you help Captain Von Ray and he succeeds?”

“He may win—“ Lynceos finally looked away, silver lashes quivering.

Idas moved closer to shield his brother. “—or he may not.”

“What do they say about our cultural solidarity?” from Lorq. “It’s not the world you thought it was, Prince.”

Ruby turned sharply. “Does the evidence say it’s yours?” Without waiting for answer, she turned to Gold. “Look at it, Lorq.”

“I’m looking. What do you see, Ruby?”

“You—you and Prince—want to control the internal flames that run worlds against the night. There, the fire has broken out. It’s scarred this world, this city, the way Prince scarred you.”

“To bear such a scar,” Prince (Lorq felt his jaw stiffen; muscles bunched at temple and forehead) said slowly, “you may have to be greater than I.”

“To bear it I have to hate you.”

Prince smiled.

The Mouse, Lorq saw from the corner of his eye, had backed against the doorjamb, both hands behind him. Slack lips had fallen from white teeth; white encircled both pupils.

“Hate is a habit. We have hated each other a long time, Lorq. I think I’ll finish it now.” Prince’s fingers flexed. “Do you remember how it started?”

“On Sao Orini? I remember you were as spoiled and vicious then as you—“

“Us?” Prince’s eyebrows arched again. “Vicious? Ah, but you were blatantly cruel. And I’ve never forgiven you for it.”

“For making fun of your hand—“

“Did you? Odd, I don’t remember. Insults of that nature I rarely forget. But no. I’m talking about that barbaric exhibition you took us to in the jungle. Beasts; and we couldn’t even see the ones in the pit. All of them, hanging over the edge, sweating, shouting, drunk, and—bestial. And Aaron was one of them. I remember him to this day, his forehead glistening, his hair straggling, face contorted in a grisly shout, shaking his fist.” Prince closed his velvet fingers. “Yes, his fist. That was the first time I saw my father like that. It terrified me. We’ve seen him like that many times since, haven’t we, Ruby?” He glanced at his sister. “There was the De Targo merger when he came out of the board room that evening.., or the Anti-Flamina’ scandal seven years ago … Aaron is a charming, cultured, and utterly vicious man. You were the first person to show me that viciousness naked in his face. I could never forgive you for that, Lorq. This scheme of yours, whatever it is, with this ridiculous sun: I have to stop it. I have to stop the Von Ray madness.” Prince stepped forward. “If the Pleiades Federation crashes when you crash, it is only so that Draco live—“

Sebastian rushed him.

It came that suddenly, surprised all equally.

Prince dropped to one knee. His hand fell on the quartz lumps; they shattered with blue fire. As Sebastian struck at him, Prince whipped one of the fragments through the air: thwik. It sank in the cyborg stud’s hairy arm. Sebastian roared, staggered backward. Prince’s hand swept again over the bright, broken crystals.

…thwik, thwik, and thwik.

Blood dribbled from two spots on Sebastian’s stomach, one on his thigh. Lynceos lunged from the pool edge. “Hey, you can’t—“

“—yes he can!” Idas grappled his brother; white fingers tried and failed to tear the black bar from his chest. Sebastian fell.

Thwik …

Tyy shrieked and dropped to his side, grabbing his bleeding face and rocking above him.

…thwik, thwik.

He arched his back, gasping. The wounds on his thigh and cheek, and two on his chest flickered.

Prince stood. “Now, I’m going to kill you.” He stepped over Sebastian’s feet as the stud’s heels gouged the carpet. “Does that answer your question?”

It came up from somewhere deep below Lorq’s gut, moored among yesterdays. Bliss made his awareness of its shape and outline precise and luminous. Something inside him shook. From the hammock of his pelvis it clawed into his belly, vaulted his chest and wove wildly, erupted from his face; Lorq bellowed. In the sharp peripheral awareness of the drug, he saw the Mouse’s syrynx where it had been left on the stage. He snatched it up—

“No, Captain!”

– as Prince lunged. Lorq ducked with the instrument against his chest. He twisted the intensity knob.

The edge of Prince’s hand shattered the doorjamb (where a moment before the Mouse had leaned). Splinters split four and five feet up the shaft.

“Captain, that’s my …!”

The Mouse leaped, and Lorq struck him with his flat hand. The Mouse staggered backward and fell in the sand-pool.

Lorq dodged sideways and whirled to face the door as Prince, still smiling, stepped away.

Then Lorq struck the tuning haft.

A flash.

It was reflection from Prince’s vest; the beam was tight. Prince flung his hand up to his eyes. Then he shook his head, blinking.

Lorq struck the syrynx again.

Prince clutched his eyes, stepped back, and screeched.

Lorq’s fingers tore at the sound-projection strings. Though the beam was directional, the echo roared about the room, drowning the scream. Lorq’s head jarred under the sound. But he beat the sounding board again. And again. With each sweep of his hand, Prince reeled back. He tripped on Sebastian’s feet, but did not fall. And again. Lorq’s own head ached. That part of his mind still aloof from the rage thought: his middle ear must have ruptured. … Then the rage climbed higher in his brain. There was no part of him separate from it.

And again.

Prince’s arms flailed about his head. His ungloved hand struck one of the suspended shelves. The statuette fell.

Furious, Lorq smashed at the olfactory plate.

An acrid stench burned his own nostrils, seared the roof of his nasal cavity so that his eyes teared.

Prince screamed, staggered; his gloved fist hit the plate glass. It cracked from floor to ceiling.

With blurred and burning eyes, Lorq stalked him.

Now Prince struck both fists against the glass; glass exploded. Fragments rang on the floor and the rock.

“No!” from Ruby. Her hands were over her face.

Prince lurched outside.

Heat slapped at Lorq’s face. But he followed.

Prince wove and stumbled down toward the glow of Gold. Lorq crab-walked the jagged slope.

And struck.

Light whipped Prince. He must have regained some of his vision, because he clawed at his eyes again. He went down on one knee.

Lorq staggered. His shoulder scraped hot rock. He was already slicked with sweat. It trickled his forehead, banked in his eyebrows, poured through at the scar. He took six steps. With each he struck light brighter than Gold, sound louder than the lava’s roar, odor sharper than the sulfur fumes that rasped his throat. His rage was real and red and brighter than Gold. “Vermin … Devil … Dirt!”

Prince fell just as Lorq reached him. His bare hand leaped about the scalding stone. His head came up. His arms and face had been cut by falling glass. His mouth was opening and closing like a fish. His blind eyes blinked and wrinkled and opened again.

Lorq swung his foot back, smashed at the gasping face. …

And it was spent.

He sucked hot gas. His eyes raged with heat. He turned, arms slipping against his sides. The ground tilted suddenly. The black crust opened and heat struck him back. He staggered up between the pitted crags. The lights of Taafite quivered behind shaking veils. He shook his head. His thoughts reeled about the burning cage of bone. He was coughing; the sound was a distant bellow. And he had dropped the syrynx …

…she cleared between the jagged edges.

Cool touched his face, seeped into his lungs. Lorq pulled himself erect. She stared at him. Her lips fluttered before no word. Lorq stepped toward her.

She raised her hand (he thought she was going to strike him. And he did not care) and touched his corded neck.

Her throat quivered.

Lorq looked over her face, her hair, twisted about a silver comb. In the flicker of Gold her skin was the color of a velvet nut-hull; her eyes were kohled wide over prominent cheekbones. But her magnificence was in the slight tilt of her chin, the expression on her copper mouth, caught between a terrifying smile and resignation to something ineffably sad; in the curve of her fingers against her throat.

Her face loomed against his. Warm lips struck his own, became moist. On the back of his neck, still the warmth of her fingers, the cool of her ring. Her hand slid.

Then, behind them, Prince screamed.

Ruby jerked away, snarling. Her nails raked his shoulder. She fled past him down the rock.

Lorq did not even watch her. Exhaustion held him in the flow. He stalked through the fragments of glass. He glared about at the crew. “Come on, God damn it! Get out of here!”

Beneath the knotted cable of flesh, the muscles rode like chains. Red hair jerked up and down over his gleaming belly with each breath.

“Go on now!”’

“Captain, what happened to my …

But Lorq had started toward the door.

The Mouse looked wildly from the captain to flaming Gold. He dashed across the room and ducked out the broken glass.

In the garden, Lorq was about to close the gate when the Mouse slipped through behind the twins, syrynx clutched under one arm, sack under the other.

“Back to the Roc,” Lorq was saying. “We get off this world!”

Tyy supported the injured pet on one shoulder and Sebastian on the other. Katin tried to help her, but Sebastian was too short for Katin really to assist the weak, glittering stud. At last Katin stuck his hands under his belt.

Mist twisted beneath the streetlights as they hurried along the cobbles through the City of Dreadful Night.

Pleiades Federation/Outer Colonies (Roc transit) 3172

“Page of Cups.”

“Queen of Cups.”

“The Chariot. My trick is. Nine of Wands.”

“Knight of Wands.”

“Ace of Wands. The trick to the dummy-hand goes.” Take-off had gone smoothly. Now Lorq and Idas flew the ship; the rest of the crew sat around the commons.

From the ramp Katin watched Tyy and Sebastian play a two-handed game of cards. “Parsifal—the pitied fool—having forsaken the Minor Arcana, must work his way through the remaining twenty-one cards of the Major. He is shown at the edge of a cliff. A white cat tears the seat of his pants. One is unable to tell if he will fall or fly away. But later in the series, we have an indication in the card called the Hermit: an old man with a staff and a lantern on that same cliff looks sadly down the rocks—“

“What the hell are you talking about?” the Mouse asked. He kept running his finger over a scar on the polished rosewood. “Don’t tell me. Those damned Tarot cards—“

“I’m talking about quests, Mouse. I’m beginning to think my novel might be some sort of quest story.” He raised his recorder again. “Consider the archetype of the Grail. Oddly unsettling that no writer who has attacked the Grail legend in its naked entirety has lived to complete the work. Mallory, Tennyson, and Wagner, responsible for the most popular versions, distorted the basic material so greatly that the mythical structure of their versions is either unrecognizable or useless—perhaps the reason they escaped the jinx. But all true Grail tellings, Chretien de Troyes’ Conte del Graal in the twelfth century, Robert de Boron’s Grail cycle in the thirteenth century, Wolfram von Eschenbach’s Parzival, or Spenser’s Faerie Queene in the sixteenth, were all incomplete at their authors’ deaths. In the late nineteenth century I believe an American, Richard Hovey, began a cycle of eleven Grail plays and died before number five was finished. Similarly, Lewis Carroll’s friend George MacDonald left incomplete his Origins of the Legend of the Holy Grail. The same with Charles William’s cycle of poems Taliesin through Logres. And a century later—“

“Will you shut up! I swear, Katin, if I did all the brain-hacking you did, I’d go nuts!”

Katin sighed, and flipped off his recorder. “Ah, Mouse, I’d go nuts if I did as little as you.”

The Mouse put the instrument back in his sack, crossed his arms on the top, and leaned his chin on the back of his hands.

“Oh, come on, Mouse. See, I’ve stopped babbling. Don’t be glum. What are you so down about?”

“My syrynx …”

“So you got a scratch on it. But you’ve been over it a dozen times and you said it won’t hurt the way it plays.”

“Not the instrument.” The Mouse’s forehead wrinkled. “What the captain did with …” He shook his head at the memory.

“Oh.”

“And not even that.” The Mouse sat up.

“What then?”

Again the Mouse shook his head. “When I ran out through the cracked glass to get it …”

Katin nodded.

“The heat was incredible out there. Three steps and I didn’t think I was going to make it. Then I saw where Captain had dropped it, halfway down the slope. So I squinched my eyes and kept going. I thought my foot would burn off, and I must have got halfway there hopping. Anyway, when I got it, I picked it up, and … I saw them.”

“Prince and Ruby?”

“She was trying to drag him back up the rocks. She stopped when she saw me. And I was scared.” He looked up from his hands. His fingers were clenched; nails cut the dark palms. “I turned the syrynx on her, light, sound, and smell all at once, hard. Captain doesn’t know how to make a syrynx do what he wants. I do. She was blind, Katin. And I probably busted both her eardrums. The laser was on such a tight beam her hair caught fire, then her dress—“

“Oh, Mouse …”

“I was scared, Katin! After all that with Captain and them. But, Katin … “ The whisper snagged on all sorts of junk in the Mouse’s throat. “It’s no good to be that scared …”

“Queen of Swords.”

“King of Swords.”

“The Lovers. My trick is. Ace of Swords—“

“Tyy, come in and relieve Idas for a while,” Von Ray’s voice came through the loud speaker.

“Yes, sir. Three of Swords from the dummy comes. The Empress from me. My trick is.” She closed the cards and left the table for her projection chamber.

Sebastian stretched. “Hey, Mouse?”