The January Dancer

An Craic

The restaurant itself is only a shed with an open front and a service bar in the back and three or four rickety tables. The cooking is done in the back by a wide-bodied woman named Mamacita Tiffni who smiles a lot and speaks an unintelligible patois. The harper eyes the place with instinctive distrust, but the chicken tikka proves excellent and is served in the traditional “tortiya” with “fresh fries.” She wonders why Terran food is not more widely popular. Mamacita carries plates in from the back in an apparently endless series. Not only the tikka, but roganjosh and hodawgs and sarkrat. Now and then Mamacita swats the scarred man playfully on the back of the head, calling him “Old Man,” and it is the first time that the harper has ever seen a genuine smile on what remains of the scarred man’s lips.

When dessert is served—it is called a rasgula—the harper feels full to bursting and waves the balls of iced chocolate milk off.

“We should have met here from the beginning,” she tells him. “It is a better venue for the story.”

But the scarred man shakes his head. “No, this is too bright and open a place for the darker passages.”

It is not bright. The sun has gone down and the only illumination is from strings of small electric lights that outline the shed and dangle in loops from the nearby trees. A short distance away, ground cars hurry past, as many west as east, and the harper wonders where they are going. It seems that if everyone would only move to the other side of town, there would be no traffic at all. “Shall we conclude the tale, then? How did the posse manage to take the Dancer from Lady Cargo?”

“Why do you suppose they did?”

“You jest. We would all be ruled by the ICC.”

“How do you know we aren’t? That we aren’t may be a dream we’ve been commanded to have. The gift to command has many facets. Do this. Do that. But also, forget this. In fact, we were once given that command.”

“By Radha Lady Cargo?” The harper is suddenly appalled that everything she has ever known has been a lie. Then she relaxes. “That is what you meant, wasn’t it, when you said the moment before the Dancer was discovered was the last sane moment in the universe. Because there could never be any certainty afterward.”

“Only the mad are certain,” the scarred man says. “And sanity is a precious thing. Law of supply and demand.”

The harper laughs at the jest and at that the scarred man stiffens and his eyes go wide. “No!” he cries. “Not now, of all times and places!” He stands in a violent motion and the table slides, toppling ceramic mugs with smiling solar faces and sending balls of kulfito the wooden floor. Mamacita dashes in from the back and wrings her hands in her apron while she stares. Two skinny men at another table rise just as abruptly, reaching for their belts, but they relax on seeing who it is and only laugh.

The harper wants to call to him, to say something to soothe his evident agony. But she realizes that she does not know his name. “Old Man!” she cries, using Mamacita’s name for him. “What is wrong?”

“It is fit, lady harp,” says Mamacita. “Is come on him some time. You!” she hollers at the two skinny men. “Be gone! No mock him! You go, meal free; you stay, price double! Harimanan!”

At her call, a giant of a man rises from the shadow under a tall palm tree where he has been resting. “Hey, boys,” he tells the two, “no dikh. You go jildy. Hutt, hutt.” He hefts a stout billet of wood in one hand and the harper sees tucked into the waist of his dhoti a teaser of an old and obsolete model. One question is answered. How does a woman operate a cash business safely on the edge of a high-crime neighborhood?

When the mockers have been expelled, the harper turns to the scarred man, who stands at the rail that marks the entrance to the shed. Both hands grip the rail and he stands half hunched over. The harper places a tentative hand on his arm, and he shrugs it off with an abrupt, hard motion of his shoulder. “You want the ending, harper? Are you quite certain you want the ending?” He turns and impales her with a single eye.

The harper takes a step back, wondering if she should flee. But the scarred man blocks her way and, with a grip that surprises her, guides her back to their table. “Go on, sit,” he says. “You’ve heard this much. You’ll hear the rest.”

The harper looks to Mamacita, who nods her head ever so slightly, and taking comfort at this signal, she resumes her seat.

The scarred man drags a second chair to him and uses it to prop up his right leg, although it takes him two tries. “Let’s see if you’ve been paying attention,” he says, easily and cruelly. The harper wonders what has become of the man she shared time with on a fountain basin in a small square in the Corner. Yet, she has seen this once before, in the Bar, and more often, she now realizes, in a more attenuated form.

She reaches for her harp case. “Shall I play it back to you?”

“A parrot can do that much. Have you given any further thought to January’s initial mistake?”

“His initial…Ah, you mean upon his escape from Spider Alley. Why surely, that is too obvious to remark. The Irresistible Object was the Dancer, not the terrible storm.”

The scarred man leans forward and folds his arms on the table, which leans from the weight. “And if it was so irresistible, why did he give it up so easily to Jumdar? Every other time, it was violence that pried it from one grip to another; yet January gave the scepter to Jumdar for nothing more than ship repairs and the promise of a cut.”

“Nothing more? A tramp captain would not think that so little. But I’ll give you an answer. In the normal course of affairs, January would go no nearer the Rift than Jehovah Roads, while Jumdar would send it to Old ’Saken.”

“Enter, the Cynthians,” the scarred man prompts. “They would have gone all the way to Sapphire Point on their way home.”

“Aye, into the hands of na Fir Li.”

“Too simple. There’s another reason.”

The harper thinks about it, then shakes her head. “No, that cannot be it.”

The skull beneath his skin leers at her. “Can it not? I’ve all but told you.”

“Then why”—she slaps the table—“not come right out and say it?”

“Why else but that the story achieves its end.”