Nova

Draco, Vorpis, Phoenix, 3172

The world?

Vorpis.

A world has so much in it, on it—

“Welcome, travelers …”

– while a moon, Katin thought as they left the spacefield by dawn-blazed gates, a moon holds its gray glories miniatured in rock and dust.

“ … Vorpis has a day of thirty-three hours, a gravity just high enough to increase the pulse rate by point three of Earth normal over an acclimating period of six hours …”

They passed the hundred-meter column. Scales, burnished under the dawn, bled the mists scarfing the plateau: the Serpent, animated and mechanical, symbol of this whole sequined sector of night, writhed on his post. As the crew stepped onto the moving roadway, an oblate sun rouged away night’s bruises.

“ …with four cities of over five million inhabitants. Vorpis produces fifteen per cent of all the dynaplasts for Draco. In the equatorial lavid zones, more than three dozen minerals are quarried from the liquid rock. Here, in the tropic polar regions, both the arolat and the aqualat are hunted by net-riders along the inter-plateau canons. Vorpis is famous throughout the galaxy for the Alkane Institute which is located in the capital city of its Northern Hemisphere, Phoenix …”

They passed the limit of the info-service voice, into silence. As the road buoyed them from the steps, Lorq, among the crew, gazed-on the plaza.

“Captain, where we now go?” Sebastian had brought only one of his pets from the ship. It swayed and stepped on his ridged shoulder.

“We take a fog crawler into the city and then go to the Alkane. Anyone can come with me who wants, wander around the museum, or take a few hours leave in the city. If anybody wants to stay back on the ship—“

“—and miss a chance to see the Alkane? – “

“—doesn’t it cost a lot to get in? – “

“—but the captain’s got an aunt working there—“

“—so we can get in free then,” Idas finished.

“Don’t worry about it,” Lorq said as they jogged down the ramp to the slips where the fog crawlers moored.

Polar Vorpis was set with rocky mesas, many of them several square miles in area. Between, heavy fogs riled and slopped, immiscible with the nitrogen/oxygen atmosphere above. Powdered aluminum oxide, and arsenic sulfate in vaporized hydrocarbons expelled from the violent floor, filled the space between mesas. Just beyond the table that held the spacefield was another with cultivated plants, indigenous to a more southern latitude of Vorpis but kept here as a natural park (maroon, rust, scarlet); on the largest mesa was Phoenix.

The fog crawlers, inertial-drive planes powered by the static charges built up between the positively ionized atmosphere and the negatively ionized oxide, plowed the surface of the mist like boats.

On the concourse, the departure times drifted beneath the transparent bricks, followed by arrows directing the crowds to the loading slip:

ANDROMEDA PARK—PHOENIX—MONTCLAIR

and a great bird dripping fire followed through the multi-chrome beneath boots, bare feet, and sandals.

On the crawler deck Katin leaned on the rail, looking through the plastic wall as white waves crackled and uncoiled over the sun to shatter by the hull.

“Have you ever thought,” Katin said as the Mouse came up to him sucking on a piece of rock candy, “what a difficult time a man from the past would have understanding the present. Suppose someone who died in, let’s say, the twenty-sixth century woke up here, Do you realize how totally horrified and confused he’d be just walking around this crawler?”

“Yeah?” The Mouse took the candy out of his mouth: “Want to finish this? I’m through with it.”

“Thanks. Just take the matter of”—Katin’s jaw staggered as his teeth crushed crystalline sugar from the linen thread.—“cleanliness. There was a thousand-year period from about fifteen hundred to twenty-five hundred, when people spent an incredible amount of time and energy keeping things clean. It ended when the last communicable disease finally became not only curable, but impossible. There used to be an incredibility called ‘the common cold’ that even in the twenty-fifth century you could be fairly sure of having at least once a year. I suppose back then there was some excuse for the fetish: there seemed to have been some correlation between dirt and disease. But after contagion became an obsolescent concern, sanitation became equally obsolescent. If our man from five hundred years ago, however, saw you walking around this deck with one shoe off and one shoe on, then saw you sit down to eat with that same foot, without bothering to wash it—do you have any idea how upset he’d be?”

“No kidding?” Katin nodded.

Fog broke at a shaft of rock, sparking.

“The idea of paying a visit to the Alkane has inspired me, Mouse. I’m developing an entire theory of history. It’s in conjunction with my novel. You don’t mind indulging me with a few moments? I’ll explain. It has occurred to me that if one considers—“ He stopped.

Enough time passed for a handful of expressions to subsume the Mouse’s face. “What is it?” he asked when he decided nothing in the moiling gray had Katin’s attention. “What about your theory?”

“Cyana Von Ray Morgan!”

“What?”

“Who, Mouse. Cyana Von Ray Morgan. I’ve had a perfectly oblique thought: It just came to me who the captain’s aunt is, the curator at the Alkane. When Tyy gave her Tarot reading, the captain mentioned an uncle who was killed when he was a child.”

The Mouse frowned. “Yeah …”

Katin shook his head, mocking disbelief.

“Who what?” the Mouse asked.

“Morgan and Underwood?”

The Mouse looked down, sideways, and in the other directions people search for mislaid associations.

“I guess it happened before you were born,” Katin said at last. “But you must have heard about it, seen it someplace. The whole business was being sent out across the galaxy on psychoramics while it happened. I was only three, but—“

“Morgan assassinated Underwood!” the Mouse exclaimed.

“Underwood,” Katin said, “assassinated Morgan. But that’s the idea.”

“In Ark,” the Mouse said. “In the Pleiades.”

“With billions of people experiencing the whole business throughout the galaxy on psychoramics. I couldn’t have been more than three at the time. I was at home on Luna watching the inauguration with my parents when that incredible character in the blue vest broke out of the crowd and sprinted across Chronaiki Plaza with that wire in his hand.”

“He was strangled!” the Mouse exclaimed. “Morgan was strangled! I did see a psychorama of that! One time in Mars City, last year when I was doing the triangle run, I experienced it as a short subject. It was part of a documentary about something else, though.”

“Underwood nearly severed Morgan’s head,” Katin elucidated. “Whenever I’ve experienced a re-run, they’ve cut out the actual death. But five billion-odd were subjected to all the emotions of a man, about to be sworn in for his second term as Secretary of the Pleiades, suddenly attacked by a madman and killed. All of us, we felt Underwood land on our backs; we heard Cyana Morgan scream and felt her try to pull him off; we heard Representative Kol-syn yell out about the third bodyguard—that’s the part that caused all the confusion in the subsequent investigation—and we felt Underwood lock that wire around our necks, felt it cut into us; we struck out with our right hands, and our left hands were grabbed by Mrs. Tai; and we died.” Katin shook his head. “Then the stupid projector operator—his name was Naibn’n and thanks to his idiocy he nearly had his brain burned out by a bunch of lunatics who thought he was involved in the plot—swung his psychomat on Cyana—instead of the assassin so we could have learned who he was and where he was going—and for the next thirty seconds we were all a hysterical woman crouching on the plaza, clutching our husband’s streaming corpse amid a confusion of equally hysterical diplomats, representatives, and patrolmen, watching Underwood dodge and twist through the crowd and finally disappear.”

“They didn’t show that part in Mars City. But I remember Morgan’s wife. That’s the captain’s aunt?”

“She must be his father’s sister.”

“How do you know?”

“Well, first of all, the name, Von Ray Morgan. I remember reading once, about seven or eight years back, that she had something to do with the Alkane. She was supposed to be quite a brilliant and sensitive woman. For the first dozen years or so after the assassination, she was the focus for that terribly sophisticated part of society always back and forth between Draco and the Pleiades; being seen at the Flame Beach on Chobe’s World, or putting in an appearance with her two little daughters at some space regatta. She spent a lot of time with her cousin, Laile Selvin, who was Secretary of the Pleiades Federation herself for a term. The news-tapes were always torn between the desire to keep her at the edge of scandal and their respect for that whole horror with Morgan. Today if she appears at an art opening or a social event, it’s still covered, though the last few years they’ve let go of her a little. If she is a curator of the Alkane, perhaps she’s gotten too involved in it to bother with publicity.”

“I’ve heard of her.” The Mouse nodded, looking up at last. “There was a period when she was probably the best known woman in the galaxy.”

“Do you think we’ll get to meet her?”

“Hey,” Katin said, holding the rail and leaning back, “that would be something! Maybe I could do my novel on the Morgan assassination, a sort of modern historical.”

“Oh yeah,” the Mouse said. “Your book.”

“The thing that’s been holding me up is that I can’t find a subject. I wonder what Mrs. Morgan’s reaction would be to the idea. Oh, I wouldn’t do anything like those sensational reports that kept coming out in the psychoramas right afterwards. I want to attempt a measured, studied work of art, treating the subject as one that traumatized an entire generation’s faith in the ordered and rational world of man’s—“

“Who killed who again?”

“Underwood—you know, it just occurred to me, he was my age now when he did it—strangled Secretary Morgan.”

“Because I wouldn’t want to make a mistake if I met her. They caught him, didn’t they?”

“He stayed free for two days, gave himself up twice and was turned away twice with the other twelve hundred-odd people who confessed in the first forty-eight hours; he got as far as the spacefield where he had planned to join his two wives on one of the mining stations in the Outer Colonies, when he was apprehended at the emigrations office. There’s enough material there for a dozen novels! I wanted a subject that was historically significant. If nothing else, it will be a chance to air my theory. Which, as I was about to say—“

“Katin?”

“Eh … yes?” His eyes, before on copper clouds, came back to the Mouse.

“What is that?”

“Huh?”

“There.”

In broken hills of fog, metal flashed. Then a black net rose rippling from the waves. Some thirty feet across, the net flung from the mist. Clinging to the center by hands and feet, vest flying, dark hair whipping from his masked face, a man rode the web into the trough; fog covered him.

“I believe,” Katin said, “that is a net-rider hunting the inter-plateau canons for the indigenous arolat—or possibly the aqualat.”

“Yeah? You’ve been here before …

“No. At the university I experienced dozens of the Alkane’s exhibits. Just about every big school is iso-sensory with them. But I’ve never been here in person; I was just listening to the info-voice back at the field.”

“Oh.”

Two more riders surfaced in their nets. Fog sparkled. As they descended, a fourth and fifth emerged, a sixth.

“Looks like a whole herd.”

The riders swept the mists, doffing, electric, disappearing to emerge further on.

“Nets,” Katin mused. He leaned forward on the rail. “A great net, spreading among the stars, through time—“ He spoke slowly, softly. The riders disappeared. “My theory: if you conceive of society as a …” Then he glanced down at a sound beside him like wind:

The Mouse had taken out his syrynx. From beneath dark, and shaking fingers gray lights swiveled and wove.

Through the imitations of mist, gold webs glittered and doffed to a hexatonic melody. The air was tang and cool; there was the smell of wind; but no pressure of wind.

Three, five, a dozen passengers gathered to watch. Beyond the rail, the net-riders appeared once more, and someone, realizing the boy’s inspiration, went, “Ohhhh, I see what he’s …” and stopped because so did everyone else. It ended.

“That lovely was!”

The Mouse looked up. Tyy stood half behind Sebastian.

“Thanks.” He grinned and started to put the instrument back into the bag. “Oh.” He saw something and looked up again. “I have something for you.” He reached into the sack. “I found this on the floor back in the Roc. I guess you dropped it?”

He glanced at Katin and caught the frown vanishing. Then he looked at Tyy and felt his smile open in the light of hers.

“I you thank.” She put the card in the pouch pocket of her jacket. “You the card did enjoy?”

“Huh?”

“You on each card to gain must meditate.”

“You did meditate?” Sebastian asked.

“Oh, yeah. I looked at it a whole lot. Me and the captain.”

“That good is.” She smiled.

But the Mouse was fiddling with his strap.

At Phoenix Katin asked, “You really don’t want to go?”

The Mouse was fiddling with his strap again. “Naw.”

Katin shrugged. “I think you’d enjoy it.”

“I’ve seen museums before. I just want to walk around some.”

“Well,” Katin said. “Okay. We’ll see you when we get back to the port.” He turned and ran up the stone steps behind the captain and the rest of the crew. They reached the auto-ramp that carried them up through the crags toward gleaming Phoenix.

The Mouse looked down at the fog slopping along the slate. The larger crawlers-they had just disembarked from one – –were anchored down the docks to the left; the little ones bobbed to the right. Bridges arched from the rocks, crossing the crevices that cut here and there into the mesa.

The Mouse dug carefully in his ear with his little fingernail, and went left.

The young gypsy had tried to live most of his life only with eyes, ears, nose, toes, and fingers. Most of his life he had succeeded. But occasionally, as on the Roc during Tyy’s Tarot reading, or during the interviews with Katin and the captain afterwards, he was forced to accept that what had happened in his past affected present action. Then a time of introspection followed. Introspecting, he found the old fear. By now, he knew it had two irritant surfaces. One he could soothe by stroking the responsive plates of his syrynx. To ease the other required long, private sessions of self-definition. He defined:

Eighteen, nineteen?

Maybe. Anyway, a good four years past the age of reason, they call it. And I can vote in Draco. Never did, though. Again picking my way down the rocks and docks of another port. Where you going, Mouse? Where you been, and what you going to do when you get there? Sit down and play awhile. Only it’s got to mean more than that. Yeah. It means something for Captain. Wish I could get that riled up over a light in the sky. Almost can when I hear him talk about it. Who else could fire my harp to ape the sun? A pretty big light it’d be, too. Blind Dan … and I wonder what it looked like. Don’t you want to make the next five fifths of your life with hands and eyes intact? Bind myself to a rock, get girls and make babies? Naw. Wonder if Katin’s happy with his theories and notes and notes and theories? What would happen if I tried to play my syrynx the same way he’s trying on this book, thinking, measuring? One thing, I wouldn’t have time to ask myself these bad questions. Like: what does the captain think of me? He trips over me, laughs, and picks the Mouse up and puts him in his pocket. But it does mean more than that! Captain’s got his crazy star. Katin makes his word-webs that no one listens to. Me, Mouse? A gypsy with a syrynx instead of a larynx. But for me, it isn’t enough. Captain, where are you taking me? Come on. Sure I’ll go.

There’s no place else I’m supposed to be. Think I’ll find out who I am when I get there? Or does a dying star really give that much light so as I can see?

The Mouse walked off the next bridge, thumbs in his pants, eyes down.

The sound of chains.

He looked up.

Chains crawled over a ten-foot drum, hauling a shape from the mists. On the rock before a warehouse, men and women lounged at giant machinery. In his cabin, the winch operator was still in his mask. Covered in nets, the beast rose from the fog, wing-fin whipping. Nets rattled.

The arolat (or it might have been an aqualat) was twenty meters long. Smaller winches lowered hooks. The net-riders holding to the flank of the beast caught at them.

As the Mouse walked down among the men to watch at the precipice, someone called: “Alex’s hurt!”

Lowered on a pulley, a scaffold took down a crew of five.

The beast had stilled. Crawling the nets as though they were an easy ladder, they loosed one section of links. The rider hung centered and limp.

One nearly dropped his section; the injured rider swung against the blue flank.

“Hold it there, Bo!”

“That all right is! I it have!”

“Bring him up slow.”

The Mouse gazed down into the fog. The first rider gained the rock, links clattering on the stone ten feet away. He came up dragging his net. He released the straps from his wrist, unplugged the connections from his arms, kneeled, and unplugged the lower sockets from his wet ankles. Now he dragged the net over his shoulder across the wide dock. The fog-floats at the net’s edge still took the major weight of the web, buoying it through the air. Without them, the Mouse judged, not taking into account the slightly heavier gravity, the sprawling entrapment mechanism would probably weigh several hundred pounds.

Three more riders came up over the edge, their damp hair lank along their masks—standing out curly and red on one man’s head—dragging their nets. Alex limped between two companions.

Four more riders followed. A blond, chunky man had just unplugged his net from his left wrist, when he looked up at the Mouse. Red eye-plates flittered in the black mask as he cocked his head. “Hey”—it was a guttural grunt—“that on your hip. What is?” His free hand pushed back his thick hair.

The Mouse looked down and up. “Huh?”

The man kicked the net loose from his left boot. His right foot was bare. “A sensory-syrynx is, hey?”

The Mouse grinned. “Yeah.

The man nodded. “A kid once who really the devil could play I knew—“ He stopped, the head uncocked. He pried his thumb beneath the jaw of his mask. Mouth-guard and eye-plates came away.

When it hit him, the Mouse felt the tickly thing happen in his throat which was another aspect of his speech defect. He clamped his jaws and opened his lips; then he closed his lips and opened his teeth. You can’t speak that way either. So he tried to let it out with a tentative question mark; it rasped in uncontrolled exclamation: “Leo!”

The squinting features broke. “You, Mouse, it is!”

“Leo, what are you …? But …!” Leo dropped the net from his other wrist, kicked the plug loose from his other ankle, then scooped up a handful of links. “You with me to the net-house come! Five years, a dozen … but more …”

The Mouse still grinned because that was all that was left to do. He scooped up links himself, and they dragged the net—with the help of the fog-floats—across the rock. “Hey, Caro, Bolsum, this the Mouse is!”

Two of the men turned around.

“You a kid I talked about remember? This him is. Hey, Mouse, you a half a foot taller even aren’t! How many years, seven, eight, it is? And you, still the syrynx have?” Leo looked around at the sack. “You good are, I bet. But you good were.”

“Did you ever get hold of a syrynx for yourself, Leo? We could play together

Leo shook his head with an embarrassed grin. “Istanbul the last time a syrynx I held, Not since. By now I it all have forgotten.”

“Oh,” the Mouse said and sensed loss.

“Hey, that the sensory-syrynx you in Istanbul stole is?”

“I’ve had it with me ever since.

Leo broke out laughing and dropped his arm around the Mouse’s sharp shoulders. The laughter (did the Mouse sense Leo’s gain?) rolled through the fisherman’s words. “And you the syrynx all that time have been playing? You for me now play. Sure! You for me the smells and sounds and colors will strike.” Big fingers bruised the dark scapula beneath the Mouse’s work vest. “Hey, Bo, Caro, you a real syrynx player now will see.”

The two riders hung back:

“You really play that thing?”

“There was a guy through here about six months ago who could tinkle out some pretty …” He made two curves in the air with his scarred hands, then elbowed the Mouse. “You know what I mean?”

“The Mouse better than that plays!” Leo insisted,

“Leo couldn’t stop talking about this kid he used to know on Earth. He said he’d taught this kid to play himself, but when we gave Leo the syrynx …” He shook his head, laughing.

“But this the kid is!” Leo exclaimed, rounding the Mouse’s shoulder.

“Huh?”

“Oh!”

“The Mouse this is!”

They walked into the double-storied door of the net house. From high racks, swaying nets curtained labyrinths. The riders hung their nets on tenterhook arrangements that lowered from the ceiling by pullies. Once stretched, a rider could repair broken links, readjust the response couplers which caused the net to move and shape itself to the nerve impulses from the plugs.

Two riders were wheeling out a great machine with a lot of teeth.

“What’s that?”

“With that they will the arolat butcher.”

“Arolat?” The Mouse nodded.

“That’s what we here hunt. Aqualats down around Black Table they hunt.”

“Oh.”

“But Mouse, what here you are doing?” They walked through jingling links. “You in the nets will a while stay? You for a while with us will work? I a crew that a new man needs know—“

“I’m just on leave from a ship that’s stopping over here awhile. It’s the Roc, Captain Von Ray.”

“Von Ray? A Pleiades ship is?”

“That’s right.”

Leo hauled down the hooking mechanism from the high beams and began to spread his net. “What it in Draco doing is?”

“The captain has to stop at the Alkane Institute for some technical information.”

Leo gave a yank on the pulley chain and the hooks clattered up another ten feet. He began to spread out the next layer.

“Von Ray, yes. That a good ship must be. When I first into Draco came”—He strained black links across the next hook—no one from the Pleiades ever into Draco came. One or two, maybe. I alone was.” The links snapped in place; Leo hauled the chain again. The top of the net rose into the light from the upper windows. “Nowadays many people from the Federation I meet. Ten on this shore work. And ships back and forth all the time go.” He shook his head unhappily.

Somebody called from across the work area. “Hey, where’s the doc?” Her voice echoed in the webs. “Alex’s been waiting here five minutes now.”

Leo rattled his web to make sure it was firm. They looked back toward the door. “Don’t worry! He’ll here come!” he hollered out. He caught the Mouse’s shoulder. “You with me go!”

They walked through the hangings. Other riders were still hooking.

“Hey, you gonna play that?”

They looked up.

The rider climbed halfway down the links, then jumped to ‘the floor. “This I want to see.”

“Sure he is,” Leo exclaimed.

“You know, really I …” the Mouse began. As glad as he was to see Leo, he had been enjoying his private musings.

“Good! Cause Leo ain’t been talking about nothing else.”

As they continued through the webs, other riders joined them.

Alex sat at the bottom of the steps up to the observation balcony. He held his shoulder, and leaned his head against the spokes. Occasionally he sucked in his unshaven cheeks.

“Look,” the Mouse said to Leo, “why don’t we just go someplace and get something to drink? We can talk some, maybe. I’ll play for you before we go …

“Now you play!” Leo insisted. “Later we talk.”

Alex opened his eyes. “Is this the guy you—he grimaced—“were telling us about, Leo?”

“See, Mouse. After a dozen years, a reputation you have.” Leo pulled over an upside-down lubricant drum that rasped on the cement. “Now you sit.”

“Come on, Leo.” The Mouse switched to Greek. “I don’t really feel like it. Your friend is sick, and doesn’t want to be bothered—“

“Malakas!” Alex said, then spat bloody froth between his frayed knees.’ “Play something. You’ll take my mind off the hurt. Damn it, when is the medico going to get here?”

“Something for Alex you play.”

“It’s just …” The Mouse looked at the injured net-rider, then at the other men and women standing along the wall.

A grin mixed into the pain on Alex’s face. “Give us a number, Mouse.

He didn’t want to play.

“All right.”

He took his syrynx from the sack and ducked his head through the strap. “The doc will probably get here right in the middle,” the Mouse commented.

“I hope they get here soon,” Alex grunted. “I know I’ve got at least a broken arm. I can’t feel anything in the leg, and something’s bleeding inside—“ He spat red again. “I’ve got to go out on a run again in two hours. He better get me patched up quick. If I can’t make that run this afternoon, I’ll sue ‘im. I paid my damned health insurance.”

“He’ll get you back together,” one of the riders assured. “They ain’t let a policy lapse yet. Shut up and let the kid play …”

He stopped because the Mouse had already started.

Light struck glass and turned it copper. Thousands on thousands of round panes formed the concaved facade of the Alkane.

Katin strolled the path by the river that wound the museum garden. The river—the same heavy mists that oceaned polar Vorpis—steamed at the bank. Ahead, it flowed beneath the arched and blazing wall.

The captain was just far enough in front of Katin so that their shadows were the same length over the polished stones. Among the fountains, the elevated stage was continually bringing up another platform full of visitors, a few hundred at a time. But within seconds they dispersed on the variegated paths that wound down rocks licked through with quartz. On a bronze drum, at the focus of the reflecting panes, some hundred yards before the museum, her marble, armless grace vivid in the ruddy morning, was the Venus de Milo.

Lynceos squinted his pink eyes and averted his face from the glare. Idas, beside him, looked back and forth and up and down.

Tyy, her hand in Sebastian’s, hung behind him, her hair lifting with the beating of the beast on his gleaming shoulder.

Now the light, thought Katin, as they passed beneath the arch into the lens-shaped lobby, goes blue. True, no moon has natural atmosphere enough to cause such dramatic diffraction. Still, I miss a lunar solitude. This cool structure of plastics, metal, and stone was once the largest building made by man. How far we’ve come since the twenty-seventh century. Are there a dozen buildings larger than this today through the galaxy? Two dozen? Odd position for an academic rebel here: conflict between the tradition thus embodied and the absurdity of its dated architecture. Cyana Morgan nests in this tomb of man’s history. Fitting: the white hawk broods on bones.

From the ceiling hung an octagonal screen where public announcements were broadcast. A serial light-fantasia played now.

“Would you get me extension 739-E-6,” Captain Von Ray asked a girl at the information desk.

She turned her hand up and punched the buttons on the little com-kit plugged on her wrist. “Certainly.”

“Hello, Bunny?” Lorq said.

“Lorq Von Ray!” the girl at the desk exclaimed in a voice not hers. “You’ve come to see Cyana?”

“That’s right, Bunny. If she isn’t busy, I’d like to come up and talk to her.”

“Just a moment and I’ll see.”

Bunny, wherever Bunny was in the hive around them released control of the girl long enough for her to raise her eyebrows in surprise. “You’re here to see Cyana Morgan?” she said in her own voice.

“That’s right.” Lorq smiled.

At which point Bunny came back, “Fine, Lorq. She’ll meet you in South West 12. It’s less crowded there.”

Lorq turned to the crew. “Why don’t you wander around the museum a while? I’ll have what I want in an hour.”

“Should he carry that”—The girl frowned at Sebastian—“thing around with him in the museum. We don’t have facilities for pets.” To which Bunny answered, “The man’s in your crew, Lorq, isn’t he? It looks housebroken.” She turned to Sebastian. “Will it behave itself?”

“Certainly it itself will behave.” He petted the claw flexing on his shoulder.

“You can take it around,” Bunny said through the girl. “Cyana is already on her way to meet you,”

Lorq turned to Katin. “Why don’t you come with me?”

Katin tried to keep surprise off his face. “All right, Captain.”

“South West 12,” the girl said. “You just take that lift up one level. Will that be all?”

“That’s it.” Lorq turned to the crew. “We’ll see you later.”

Katin followed him.

Mounted on marble blocks beside the spiral lift was a ten-foot dragon’s head. Katin gazed up at the ridges on the roof of the stone mouth.

“My father donated that to the museum,” Lorq said as they stepped on the lift.

“Oh?”

“It comes from New Brazillia.” As they rose about’ the central pole, the jaw fell. “When I was a kid I used to play inside one of its first cousins.” Diminishing tourists swarmed the floor.

The gold roof received them.

Then they stepped from the lift.

Pictures were set at various distances from the gallery’s central light source. The multilensed lamp projected on each suspended frame the closest approximation (as agreed on by the Alkane’s several scholars) to the light under which each picture had originally been painted: artificial or natural, red sun, white sun, yellow or blue.

Katin looked at the dozen or so people wandering the exhibit.

“She won’t be here for another minute or so,” the captain said. “She’s quite a ways away.”

“Oh.” Katin read the exhibit title.

Images of My People

Overhead was an announcement screen, smaller than the one in the lobby.

Right now it was stating that the paintings and photographs were all by artists of the last three hundred years and showed men and women at work or play on their various worlds. Glancing down the list of artists, Katin was chagrined to discover he recognized only two names.

“I wanted you with me because I needed to talk to somebody who can understand what’s involved.”

Katin, surprised, looked up.

“My sun—my nova. In my mind I’ve almost accustomed myself to its glare. Yet I’m still a man under all that light. All my life people around me have usually done what I wanted them to do. When they didn’t—“

“You made them?”

Lorq narrowed yellow eyes. “When they didn’t, I figured out what they could do and used them for that instead. Someone else always comes along to fill the other jobs. I want to talk to someone who will understand. But talking won’t convey it. I wish I could do something to show you what this all means.”

“I … I don’t think I understand.”

“You will.”

Portrait of a Woman (Bellatrix IV): her clothing was twenty years dated. She sat by a window, smiling in the gold light of a sun not painted.

Go With Ashton Clark (no location): he was an old man, His work coveralls were two hundred years out of style. He was about to unplug himself from some great machine. But it was so big you couldn’t see what it was.

“It’s makes me wonder, Katin. My family—at least my father’s part—is from the Pleiades. Still, I grew up speaking like a Draconian in my own home. My father belonged to that encrusted nucleus of old-guard Pleiades citizens who still held over so many ideas from their Earth and Draconian ancestors; only it was an Earth that had been dead for fifty years by the time the earliest of these painters lifted a brush. When I settle on a permanent family, my children will probably speak the same way. Does it seem strange to you that you and I are probably closer than I and, say, Tyy and Sebastian?”

“I’m from Luna,” Katin reminded him. “I only know Earth through extended visit. It’s not my world.”

Lorq ignored that. “There are ways Tyy, Sebastian, and myself are much alike. In those basic defining sensibilities we are closer than you and I.”

Again it took Katin an uncomfortable second to interpret the wrecked face’s agony.

“Some of our reactions to given situations will be more predictable to each other than to you; yes, I know it goes no further.” He paused. “You’re not from Earth, Katin. But the Mouse is. So is Prince. One’s a guttersnipe; the other is … Prince Red. Does the same relation exist between them as between Sebastian and me? The gypsy fascinates me. I do not understand him. Not in the way I think I understand you. I don’t understand Prince either.”

Portrait of a Net-rider: Katin looked at the date: the particular net-rider, with his pensive Negroid features, had sieved the mist two hundred and eighty years ago.

Portrait of a Young Man: contemporary, yes. He was standing in front of a forest of … trees? No. Whatever they were, they weren’t trees.

“In the middle of the twentieth century, 1950 to be exact,”—Katin looked back at the captain—“there was a small country on Earth called Great Britain that had by survey some fifty-seven mutually incomprehensible dialects of English. There was also a large country called the United States with almost four times the population of Great Britain spread out over six times the area. There were accent variants, but only two tiny enclaves composing less than twenty thousand people spoke in a way that could be called mutually incomprehensible with the standard tongue; I use these two to make my point because both countries spoke essentially the same language.”

Portrait of a Child Crying (A.D. 2852 Vega IV)

Portrait of a Child Crying (A.D. 3052 New Brazillia II)

“What is your point?”

“The United States was a product of that whole communication explosion, movements of people, movements of information, the development of movies, radio, and television that standardized speech and the framework of thought—not thought itself, however—which meant that person A could understand not only person B, but person W, X, and Y as well. People, information, and ideas move over the galaxy much faster today then they moved across the United States in 1950. The potential of understanding is comparatively greater. You and I were born a third of a galaxy apart. Except for an occasional college weekend to Draco University at Centauri, this is the first time I’ve ever been outside the Solar System. Still, you and I are much closer in information structure than a Cornishman and Welshman a thousand years ago. Remember that when you try to judge the Mouse—or Prince Red. Though the Great Snake coils his column on a hundred worlds, people in the Pleiades and the Outer Colonies recognize it; Vega Republic furniture implies the same things about its owners here or there; Ashton Clark has the same significance for you as for me. Morgan assassinated Underwood and it became part of both our experiences—“ He stopped; because Lorq had frowned.

“You mean Underwood assassinated Morgan.”

“Oh, of course … I meant …” Embarrassment broiled beneath his cheeks. “Yes … but I didn’t mean …”

Coming between the paintings was a woman in white. Her hair was high-coifed and silver.

She was thin.

She was old.

“Lorq!” She held out her hands. “Bunny said you were here. I thought we’d go up to my office.”

Of course! Katin thought. Most of the pictures he would have seen of her would have been taken fifteen, twenty years ago.

“Cyana, thank you. We could have gotten up ourselves. I didn’t want to disturb you if you were busy. It won’t take much time.”

“Nonsense. The two of you come along. I’ve been considering bids for half a ton of Vegan light sculptures.”

“From the Republic period?” Katin asked.

“Alas, no. Then we might be able to get them off our hands. But they’re a hundred years too early to be worth anything. Come.” As she led them among the mounted canvases, she glanced down at the wide metal bracelet that covered her wrist socket. One of the micro-dials was blinking.

“Excuse me, young man.” She turned to Katin. “You have a … recorder of some sort with you?”

“Why … yes, I do.”

“I have to ask you not to use it here.”

“Oh. I wasn’t—“

“Not so much recently, but often I have had problems maintaining privacy.” She laid her wrinkled hand on his arm. “You will understand? There’s an automatic erasing field that will completely clear the machine should it go on.”

“Katin’s on my crew, Cyana. But it’s a very different crew from the last one. There’s no secrecy any more.”

“So I gathered.” She took her hand away. Katin watched it fall back to the white brocade.

She said—and both Katin and Lorq looked up when she said it—“When I arrived at the museum this morning there was a message for you from Prince.”

They reached the galley’s end.

She turned briefly to Lorq. “I’m taking you at your word about secrecy.” Her eyebrows made a bright metallic stroke on her face.

Lorq’s brows were metal rusted; the stroke was broken by his scar. Still, Katin thought, that must be part of the family’s marking.

“Is he on Vorpis?”

“I have no idea.” The door dilated and they passed through. “But he knows you’re here. Isn’t that what’s important?”

“I just arrived at the spacefield an hour and a half ago. I leave tonight.”

“The message arrived about an hour and twenty-five minutes ago. Its origin was conveniently garbled so the operators couldn’t have it traced without a lot of difficulty. They’re going through that difficulty now—“

“Don’t bother.” He said to Katin: “What will he have to say this time?”

“We shall all see fairly soon,” Cyana said. “You say no secrecy. I would still prefer to talk in my office.”

This gallery was confusion: a storage room, or material for an exhibit not yet sorted.

Katin was going to, but Lorq asked first: “Cyana, what is this junk?”

“I believe”—she looked at the date in gold decalcomania on the ancient wooden case – 1923: the Aeolian Corporation. Yes, they’re a collection of twentieth-century musical instruments. That’s an Ondes Martinot, invented by a French composer of the same name in 1942. Over here we have”—she bent to read the tag—“a Duo Arts Player Piano made in 1931. And this thing is … Mill’s Violano Virtuoso, built in 1916.”

Katin peered through the glass door in the front of the violano.

Strings and hammers, stops, fobs, and plectra hung in shadow.

“What did it do?”

“It stood in bars and amusement parks. People would put a coin in the slot and it would automatically play a violin that’s on the stand in there with a player-piano accompaniment, programmed on a perforated paper roll.” She moved her silver nail to a list of titles. “’The Darktown Strutters’ Ball’” … “ The moved on through the clutter of theremins, encore banjoes, and hurdy-gurdies. “Some of the newer academics question the institute’s preoccupation with the twentieth century. Nearly one out of four of our galleries is devoted to it.” She folded her hands on brocade. “Perhaps they resent that it has been the traditional concern of scholars for eight hundred years; they refuse to see the obvious. At the beginning of that amazing century, mankind was many societies living on one world; at its end, it was basically what we are now: an informatively unified society that lived on several worlds. Since then, the number of worlds has increased; our informative unity has changed its nature several times, suffered a few catastrophic eruptions, but essentially it has remained. Until man becomes something much, much different, that time must be the focus of scholarly interest: that was the century in which we became.”

“I have no sympathy with the past,” Lorq announced. “I have no time for it.”

“It intrigues me,” Katin offered. “I want to write a book; perhaps it will deal with that.”

Cyana looked up. “You do? What sort of book?”

“A novel, I think.”

“A novel?” They passed beneath the gallery’s announcement screen: gray.

“You’re going to write a novel. How fascinating. I had an antiquarian friend some years ago who attempted to write a novel. He only finished the first chapter. But he claimed it was a terribly illuminating experience and gave him a great deal of insight into just exactly how the process took place.”

“I’ve been working on it for quite some time, actually,” Katin volunteered.

“Marvelous. Perhaps, if you finish, you’ll allow the institute to take a psychic recording under hypnosis of your creative experience. We have an operable twenty-second-century printing press. Perhaps we’ll print up a few million and distribute them with a documentary psychoramic survey to libraries and other educational institutions. I’m sure I could raise some interest in the idea among the board.”

“I hadn’t even thought about getting it printed … “ They reached the next gallery.

“Through the Alkane is the only way you might. Do keep it in mind.”

“I … will.”

“When is this mess going to be straightened out, Cyana?”

“Dear nephew, we have much more material than we can possibly display. It has to go somewhere. There are over twelve hundred public and seven hundred private galleries in the museum. As well as three thousand five hundred storage rooms. I’m fairly acquainted with the contents of most of them. But not all.”

They ambled beneath high ribs. Vertebrae arched toward the roofing. Cold ceiling lights cast the shadow of teeth and socket on the brass pedestal of a skull the size of an elephant’s hip.

“It looks like a comparative exhibit of reptilian osteology between Earth and … “ Katin gazed through bone cages. “I couldn’t tell you where that thing comes from.”

Blade of scapula, pelvic saddle, clavicle bow …

“Just how far away is your office, Cyana?”

“About eight hundred yards as the arolat flies. We take the next lift.”

They walked through the archway into the lift-well.

The spiral carrier took them up some dozens of floors.

A corridor of plush and brass.

Another corridor, with a glass wall …

Katin gasped: all Phoenix patterned below them, from central towers to fog-lapped wharf. Though the Alkane was no longer the tallest building in the galaxy, it was by far the tallest in Phoenix.

A ramp curved into the building’s heart. Along the marbled wall hung the seventeen canvases in the Dehay sequence, Under Sirius.

“Are these the …?”

“Nyles Selvin’s molecular-reproduction forgeries, done in twenty-eight hundred at Vega. For a long time they were more famous than the originals—which are downstairs on display in the South Green Chamber—but there’s so much history connected with the forgeries Bunny decided to hang them here.”

And a door.

“Here we are.”

It opened on darkness.

“Now, nephew of mine,”—As they stepped inside, three shafts of light fell from someplace high to circle them on the black carpet—“would you be so good as to explain to me why you are back? And what is all this business with Prince?” She turned to face Lorq.

“Cyana, I want another nova.”

“You what?”

“You know the first expedition had to be abandoned. I’m going to try again. No special ship is needed. We learned that last time. It’s a new crew; and new tactics.” The spotlights followed them across the carpet.

“But Lorq—“

“Before, there was meticulous planning, movements oiled, meshed, propelled by confidence in our own precision. Now we’re a desperate bunch of dock-rats, with a Mouse among us; and the only thing that propels us is my outrage. But that’s a terrible thing to flee, Cyana.”

“Lorq, you just can’t go off and repeat—“

“The captain is different too, Cyana. Before, the Roc flew under half a man, a man who’d only known victory. Now I’m a whole man. I know defeat as well.”

“But what do you want me—“

“There was another star under study by the Alkane that was near the point of nova. I want the name and when it’s likely to go off.”

“You’re just going to go like that? And what about Prince? Does he know why you’re going to the nova?”

“I couldn’t care less. Name my star, Cyana.”

Uncertainly troubled her gauntness. She touched something on her silver bracelet.

New light:

Rising from the floor was a bank of instruments. She sat on the bench that rose too and looked over the indicator lights. “I don’t know if I’m doing right, Lorq. Outrage? If the decision did not so much affect my life as well as yours, it would be easier for me to give it in the spirit you demand. Aaron was responsible for my curatorship.”

She touched the board, and above them appeared—“Till now I have always been as welcome in Aaron Red’s home as I was in my own brother’s. But the machine has worked round to a point where this may no longer be. You have placed me in this position: of having to make a decision that ends a time of great comfort for me.”

– appeared the stars.

Katin suddenly realized the chamber’s size. Some fifty feet across, massed from points of light, hung a hologramic projection of the galaxy, turning.

“We have several study expeditions out now. The nova that you missed was there.” She touched a button and one star among the billions flared—so brightly Katin’s eyes narrowed. It faded, and again the whole domed astrarium was ghosted with starlight. “At present we have an expedition attending a build-up—“

She stopped.

She reached out; and opened a small drawer.

“Lorq, I really am troubled by this whole business—“

“Go on, Cyana. I want the star’s name. I want a tape of its galactic co-ordinates. I want my sun.”

“And I’ll do all I can to give it to you. But you must indulge the old woman first.” From the drawer she took—Katin formed a small surprise-sound in the back of his mouth, then swallowed it—a deck of cards. “I want to see what guidance the Tarot gives.”

“I’ve already had my cards read for this undertaking. If they can tell me a set of galactic co-ordinates, fine, Otherwise, I have no time for them.”

“Your mother was from Earth and always harbored the Earthman’s vague distrust of mysticism, even though she admitted its efficacy intellectually. I hope you take after your father.”

“Cyana, I’ve already had one complete reading. There’s nothing that a second one can tell me.”

She fanned the cards face down. “Perhaps there’s something it can tell me. Besides, I don’t want to do a complete reading. Just pick one.”

Katin watched the captain draw, and wondered if the cards had prepared her for that bloody noon on Chronaiki Plaza a quarter of a century ago,

The deck was not the common three-D dioramic type that Tyy owned. The figures were drawn. The cards were yellow, It could easily have dated from the seventeenth century or before.

On Lorq’s card a nude corpse hung from a tree by a rope tied to the ankle.

“The Hanged-man.” She closed the deck. “Reversed, Well, I can’t say I’m surprised.”

“Doesn’t the Hanged-man imply a great spiritual wisdom is coming, Cyana?”

“Reversed,” she reminded him, “It will be achieved at great price.” She took the card and put it, with the rest of the deck, back in the drawer. “These are the co-ordinates of the star you want.” She pressed another button.

A ribbon of paper fed into her palm. Tiny metal teeth chomped it. She held it up to read. “The co-ordinates are all there. We’ve had it under observation two years. You’re in luck. The blowup date has been predicted at between ten and fifteen days off.”

“Fine,” Lorq took the tape. “Come on, Katin.”

“What about Prince, Captain?”

Cyana rose from the bench. “Don’t you want to see your message?”

Lorq paused. “Go on. Play it.” And. Katin saw something come alive in Lorq’s face. He walked over to the console as Cyana Morgan searched the message index.

“Here it is.” She pressed a button.

Across the room Prince turned to face them. “Just what the hell”—His black-gloved hand struck a crystal beaker, as well as its embossed dish, from the table—“do you think you’re doing, Lorq?” The hand came back; the dagger and the carved wooden stick clattered to the floor from the other side. “Cyana, you’re helping too, aren’t you? You are a traitorous bitch. I am angry. I am furious! I am Prince Red—I am Draco! I am a crippled Serpent; but I’ll strangle you!” The damask table cloth crumpled in black fingers; and the sound of the wood beneath, splintering.

Katin swallowed his shock a second time.

The message was a 3-D projection. An out-of-focus window behind Prince threw light from some sun’s morning—probably Sol’s—across a smashed breakfast.

“I can do anything, anything I want. You’re trying to stop that.” He leaned across the table.

Katin booked at Lorq, at Cyana Morgan.

Her hand, pale and veined, clamped brocade.

Lorq’s, ridged and knot-knuckled, lay on the instrument bank; two fingers held a toggle.

“You’ve insulted me; I can be very vicious, simply out of caprice. Do you remember that party where I was forced to break your head to teach you manners? Your existence is an insult to me, Lorq Von Ray. I am going to devote myself to gaining reparation for that insult.”

Cyana Morgan suddenly looked at her nephew, saw his hand on the toggle. “Lorq! What are you doing – ?” She seized his wrist; but he seized hers and pushed her hand from his.

“I know a lot more about you than I did the last time I sent a message to you,” Prince said from the table.

“Lorq, take your hand off that switch!” Cyana insisted. “Lorq … “ Frustration cracked her voice.

“The last time I spoke to you, I told you I was going to stop you. Now, I tell you that if I have to kill you to stop you, I will. The next time I speak to you … “ His gloved hand pointed. His forefinger quivered …

As Prince flickered out, Cyana struck Lorq’s hand away. The toggle clicked ‘off.’ “Just what do you call yourself doing?”

“Captain …?”

Under wheeling stars Lorq’s laughter answered.

Cyana spoke angrily: “You sent Prince’s message through the public announcement system! That blasphemous madman was just seen on every screen throughout the institute!” In anger she struck the response plate.

Indicator lights dimmed.

Bank and bench fell into the floor.

“Thank you, Cyana. I’ve got what I came for.”

A museum guard burst into the office. A shaft of light lit him as he came through the door. “Excuse me, I’m terribly sorry, but there was—oh, just a moment.” He punched his wrist com-kit. “Cyana, have you gone and flipped your silver wig?”

“Oh, for heaven’s sake, Bunny. It was an accident!”

“An accident! That was Prince Red, wasn’t it?”

“Of course it was. Look, Bunny—“

Lorq clasped Katin’s shoulder. “Come on.”

They left the guard/Bunny arguing with Cyana.

“Why …?” Katin tried to ask around the captain’s shoulder.

Lorq stopped.

Under Sirius #11 (Selvin forgery) flared in purple cascade behind his shoulder.

“I said I couldn’t tell you what I meant. Perhaps this shows you a little. We’ll get the others now.”

“How will you find them? They’re still wandering around the museum.”

“You think so?” Lorq started again.

The lower galleries were chaos.

“Captain … “ Katin tried to picture the thousands of tourists confronted with Prince’s vehemence; he remembered his initial confrontation on the Roc, Visitors swarmed the onyx floor of the FitzGerald Salon. The iridescent allegories of the twentieth-century genius glazed the vaulted walls with light. Children chattered to their parents. Students pattered to one another, Lorq strode between them with Katin close after.

They spiraled out into the lobby above the dragon’s head.

A black thing flapped over the crowd, was jerked back. “The others must be with him,” Katin cried, pointing to Sebastian.

Katin swung around the stone jaw. Lorq overtook him on the blue tile.

“Captain, we just saw …”

“—Prince Red, like on the ship—“

“—on the announcement screens, it was—“

“—was all over the museum, We got back—“

“—here so we wouldn’t miss you—“

“—when you came down. Captain, what—“

“Let’s go.” Lorq stopped the twins with a hand on each of their shoulders. “Sebastian! Tyy! We have to get back to the wharf and get the Mouse.”

“And get off this world and to your nova!”

“Let’s just get to the wharf first. Then we’ll talk about where we’re going next.”

They pushed their way toward the archway.

“I guess we’ve got to hurry up before Prince gets here,” Katin said.

“Why?”

That was Lorq.

Katin tried to translate his visage.

It was indecipherable.

“I have a third message coming. I am going to wait for it.”

Then the garden: boisterous and golden.

“Thanks, doc!” Alex called. He kneaded his arm: a fist, a flex, a swing. “Hey, kid,” He turned to the Mouse. “You know, you really can play that syrynx. Sorry about the medico-unit coming in right in the middle of things. But thanks anyway.” He grinned, then looked at the wall clock. “Guess I’ll make my run after all. Malakas!” He strode down among the clinking veils.

Leo asked sadly. “Now you it away put?”

The Mouse pulled the sack’s draw string and shrugged. “Maybe I’ll play some more later.” He started to stick his arm through the strap. Then his fingers fell in the leather folds. “What’s the matter, Leo?”

The fisherman stuck his left hand beneath the tarnished links of his belt. “You just me very nostalgic make, boy.” The right hand now. “Because so much time passed has, that you no longer a boy are.” Leo sat down on the steps. Humor brushed his mouth. “I not here happy am, I think. Maybe time again to move is. Yeah?” He nodded. “Yeah.”

“You think so?” The Mouse turned around on his drum to face him. “Why now?”

Leo pressed his lips. The expression said about the same as a shrug. “When I the old see, I know how much the new I need. Besides, leaving for a long time I have been thinking of.”

“Where’re you going?”

“To this Pleiades I go.”

“But you’re from the Pleiades, Leo. I thought you said you want to see someplace new?”

“There a hundred-odd worlds in the Pleiades are. I maybe a dozen have fished. I something new want, yes; but also, after these twenty-five years, home.”

The Mouse watched the thick features, the pale hair: familiarity? You adjust it like you would a mist-mask, the Mouse thought; then fit it on the face that must wear it. Leo has changed so much. The Mouse, who had had so little childhood, lost some more of it now. “I just want the new, Leo. I wouldn’t want to go home … even if I had one.”

“Some day as I the Pleiades, you Earth or Draco will want.”

“Yeah.” He shrugged his sack onto his shoulder. “Maybe I will. Why shouldn’t I, in twenty-five years?”

An echo:

“Mouse!”

And:

“Hey, Mouse?”

And again:

“Mouse are you in there?”

“Hey!” The Mouse stood and cupped his hands to his mouth. “Katin?” His shout was even uglier than his speech.

Long and curious, Katin came between the nets. “Surprise, surprise. I didn’t think I’d find you. I’ve been going down the wharf asking people if they’d seen you. Some guy said you’d been playing in here.”

“Is the captain through at the Alkane? Did he get what he wanted?”

“And then some. There was a message from Prince waiting for him at the institute. So he played it over the public announcement system.” Katin whistled. “Vicious!”

“He’s got his nova?”

“He does. Only he’s waiting around here for something else. I don’t understand it.”

“Then we’re off to the star?”

“Nope. Then he wants to go to the Pleiades. We have a couple of weeks’ wait. But don’t ask me what he wants to do there.”

“The Pleiades?” the Mouse asked. “Is that where the nova will be?”

Katin turned up his palms. “I don’t think so. Maybe he thinks it’ll be safer to pass the time in home territory.”

“Wait a minute!” The Mouse swung around to Leo again. “Leo, maybe Captain will give you a lift back to the Pleiades with us.”

“Huh?” Leo’s chin came off his hands.

“Katin, Captain Von Ray wouldn’t mind giving Leo a ride out to the Pleiades, would he?”

Katin tried to look reservedly doubtful. The expression was too complicated and came out blank.

“Leo’s an old friend of mine. From back on Earth, He taught me how to play the syrynx, when I was a kid.”

“Captain’s got a lot on his mind—“

“Yeah, but he wouldn’t care if—“

“But much better than me now he plays,” Leo interjected.

“I bet Captain would do it if I asked him.”

“I no trouble with your captain want to make—“

“We can ask him.” The Mouse tucked his sack behind him, “Come on, Leo. Where is the captain, Katin?”

Katin and Leo exchanged the look of unintroduced adults put in league by youth’s enthusiasms.

“Well? Come on!”

Leo stood up and followed the Mouse and Katin toward the door.

Seven hundred years ago the first colonists on Vorpis carved the Esclaros des Nuages into the mesa rock-rim of Phoenix. Between the moorings for the smaller fog crawlers and the wharfs where the net-riders docked, the stairs descended into the white fog. They were chipped and worn today.

Finding the steps deserted at the Phoenix mid-day siesta, Lorq strolled down between the quartz-shot walls. Mist lapped the bottom steps; wave on white wave rolled from the horizon, each blued with shadow on the left, gilded with sun on the right, like rampant lambs.

“Hey, Captain!”

Lorq looked back up the steps.

“Hey, Captain, can I talk to you a minute?” the Mouse came crabwise down the stairway. His syrynx jogged on his hip. “Katin told me you were going to go to the Pleiades after we leave here. I just ran into a guy I used to know back on Earth, an old friend. Taught me how to play the syrynx.” He shook his sack. “I thought maybe since we were going in that direction—we could sort of drop him off home. He was really a good friend of—“

“All right.”

The Mouse cocked his head. “Huh?”

“It’s only five hours to the Pleiades. If he’s at the ship when we leave and stays in your projection chamber, it’s fine with me.”

The Mouse’s head went back the other way; he decided to scratch it. “Oh. Gee. Well.” Then he laughed. “Thanks, Captain!” He turned and ran up the steps. “Hey, Leo!” He took the last ones double. “Katin, Leo! Captain says it’s all right.” And called back, “Thanks again!”

Lorq walked a few steps down.

After a while he sat against the rough wall.

He counted waves.

When the number got to four figures, he stopped.

The polar sun circled the horizon; less gilt, more blue.

When he saw the net, his hands slid his thighs, stopped on the bone knots of his knees.

Links clinked on the bottom steps. Then the rider stood up, waist-high in the rolling white. Fog-floats carried the nets up. Quartz caught blue sparks.

Lorq had been leaning against the wall. He raised his head.

The dark-haired rider walked up the steps, webs of metal waving above and behind. Nets struck the walls and rattled. A half dozen steps below him, she pulled off her mist-mask. “Lorq?”

His hands unclasped. “How did you find me, Ruby? I knew you would. Tell me how?”

She breathed hard, unused to the weight she wielded.

Laces tightened, loosened, tightened between her breasts. “When Prince found that you’d left Triton, he sent tapes to six dozen places that you might have gone. Cyana was only one. Then he left it to me to get the report on which one was received. I was on Chobe’s World; so when you played that tape at the Alkane, I came running.” Nets folded on the steps. “Once I found out you were on Vorpis, in Phoenix … well, it took a lot of work. Believe me, I wouldn’t do it again.” She rested her hand on the rock. Nets rustled.

“I’m taking chances this game, Ruby. I tried to play it through once with a computer plotting the moves.” He shook his head. “Now I’m playing by hand, eye, and ear. So far I’ve come out no worse. And it’s moving a lot faster. I’ve always liked speed. That’s perhaps the one thing that makes me the same person I was when we first met.”

“Prince said something very much like that to me, once.” She looked up. “Your face.” Pain flickered in hers. She was close enough to him to touch the scar. Her hand moved, then fell back. “Why didn’t you ever have it …?” She didn’t finish,

“It’s useful. It allows each polished surface in all these brave, new worlds to serve me.”

“What sort of service is that?”

“It reminds me what I’m here for.”

“Lorq”—and exasperation grew in her voice—“what are you doing? What do you, or your family, think they can accomplish?”

“I hope that neither you nor Prince knows yet. I haven’t tried to hide it. But I’m getting my message to you by a rather archaic method. How long do you think it will take a rumor to bridge the space between you and me?” He sat back. “At least a thousand people know what Prince is trying to do. I played them his message this morning. No secrecy any more, Ruby. There are many places to hide; there is one where I can stand in the light.”

“We know you’re trying to do something that will destroy the Reds. That’s the only thing that you would have put so much time and effort into.”

“I wish I could say you were wrong.” He meshed his fingers. “But you still don’t know what it is.”

“We know it has something to do with a star.”

He nodded.

“Lorq, I want to shout at you, scream—who do you think you are?”

“Who am I to defy Prince, and the beautiful Ruby Red? You are beautiful, Ruby, and I stand before your beauty very much alone, suddenly cursed with a purpose. You and I, Ruby, the worlds we’ve been through haven’t really fit us for meanings. If I survive, then a world, a hundred worlds, a way of life survives. If Prince survives …” He shrugged. “Still, perhaps it is a game. They keep telling us we live in a meaningless society, that there is no solidity to our lives. Worlds are tottering about us now, and still I only want to play. The one thing I have been prepared to do is play, play hard, hard as I can; and with style.”

“You mystify me, Lorq. Prince is so predictable—“ She raised her eyebrows. “That surprises you? Prince and I have grown up together. But you present me with an unknown. At that party, years ago, when you wanted me, was that part of the game too?”

“No—yes—I know I hadn’t learned the rules.”

“Now?”

“I know the way through is to make your own; Ruby, I want what Prince has—no. I want to win what Prince has. Once I have it, I might turn around and throw it away. But I want to gain it. We battle, and the course of how many lives and how many worlds swings? Yes, I do know all that. You said it then: we are special people, if only by power. But if I tried to keep that knowledge forward in my mind, I’d be paralyzed. Here I am, at this moment, in this situation, with all this to do. What I’ve learned, Ruby, is how I can play. Whatever I do—I, the person I am and have been made—I have to do it that way to win. Remember that. You’ve done me another favor now. I owe it to you to warn you. It’s why I waited.”

“What is it you want to do that you have to give such an inflated apology for?”

“I don’t know, yet,” Lorq laughed. “It does sound pretty stuffy, doesn’t it. But it’s true.”

She breathed in deeply. Her high forehead wrinkled as the wind pushed her hair forward across her shoulder. Her eyes were in shadow. “I suppose I owe you the same warning.” He nodded. “Consider it given.” She stood up from the wall.

“I do.”

“Good.” Then she drew back her arm; flung it forward!

And three hundred square feet of chain webbing swung over her head and rattled down on him.

The links caught on his raised hands and bruised them. He staggered under their weight.

“Ruby—“

She flung her other arm; another layer fell.

She leaned back, and the nets pulled, striking his ankles so that he slipped.

“No! Let me …”

Through shifting links he saw she was masked again: glittering glass, her eyes; her mouth and nostrils, grilled. All expression was in her slim shoulders, the small muscles suddenly defined. She bent; her stomach creased. The adapter circuits magnified the strength in her arms some five hundred to one. Lorq was wrenched forward down the steps. He fell, caught at the wall. Rock and metal hurt his arms and knees.

What the links gave in strength, they sacrificed in precision of movement. A swell swept the web, but he was able to duck beneath and gain two steps. But Ruby kicked back; he was yanked down four more. He took two on his back, then one on his hip. She was reeling him down. Fog lapped her calves; she backed further into the suffocating mists, stooped till her black mask was at the fog’s surface.

He threw himself away from her, and fell five more steps. Lying on his side, he caught at the links and heaved. Ruby staggered, but he felt another stone edge scrape his shoulder.

Lorq let go of the nets, of his held breath. Again he tried to duck what fell at him.

But he heard a gasp from Ruby.

He beat links from his face and opened his eyes. Something outside …

It darted, dark and flapping, between the walls.

Ruby flung up an arm to ward it off. And a sheet of netting exploded up from Lorq. It rose, avoiding the links.

Fifty pounds of metal fell back into the fog. Ruby staggered, disappeared.

Lorq went down more steps. The mist lapped his thighs. The astringent arsenic fog clogged his head. He coughed and clutched rock.

[*]

The dark thing flapped about him now. The weight lifted a moment; he scrambled up the stones on his belly. Sucking fresher air, gasping and dizzy, he looked back.

The net hovered above him, grappling with the beast. He pulled himself up another step as the shape flapped free. Links fell heavy on his leg; pulled from his leg; dragged down the steps; vanished.

Lorq sat up and forced himself to follow the thing’s flight between the stones. It cleared the walls, gyred twice, then returned to Sebastian’s shoulder:

The squat cybord stud looked down from the wall.

Lorq swayed to his feet, squeezed his eyes closed, shook his head, then lurched up the Esclaros des Nuages.

Sebastian was fastening the steel band about the creature’s flexing claw when Lorq reached him at the head of the steps.

“Again, I”—Lorq took another breath and dropped his hand on Sebastian’s gold-matted shoulder – “you thank.”

They looked from the rocks out where no rider broke the mist.

“You in much danger are?”

“I am.”

Tyy came quickly across the wharf to Sebastian’s side.

“What it was?” Her eyes, alive like metal, flashed between the men. “I the black gilly saw released!”

It all right is,” Lorq told her. “Now, anyway. I a run-in with the Queen of Swords just had. But your pet me saved.”

Sebastian took Tyy’s hand. As her fingers felt the familiar shapes of his, she calmed.

Sebastian frowned.

“To the Dim, Dead Sister we now go,” Lorq told them.

Shadow and shadow; shadow and light: the twins were coming acoss the wharf. You could see the puzzled expression on Lynceos’ face. Not on Idas’.

“But …?” Sebastian began. Then Tyy’s hand moved in his and he stopped.

Lorq volunteered no answer to the unfinished question. “The others we get now. I what I waited for have. Yes; time to go it is.”

Katin fell forward to clutch the links. The rattle echoed in the net house.

Leo laughed. “Hey, Mouse. In that last bar your big friend too much to drink had, I think.”

Katin regained his balance. “I’m not drunk.” He raised his head and looked up the curtained metal. “It’d take twice as much as that to get me drunk.”

“Funny. I am.” The Mouse opened his sack. “Leo, you said you wanted me to play some more. What do you want to see?”

“Anything, Mouse. Anything you like, play.”

Katin shook the nets again. “From star to star, Mouse; imagine, a great web that spreads across the galaxy, as far as man. That’s the matrix in which history happens today. Don’t you see? That’s it. That’s my theory. Each individual is a junction in that net, and the strands between are the cultural, the economic, the psychological threads that hold individual to individual. Any historic event is like a ripple in the net.”

He rattled the links again. “It passes over and through the web, stretching or shrinking those cultural bonds that involve each man with each man. If the event is catastrophic enough, the bonds break. The net is torn a while. De Eiling and 34-Alvin are only arguing where the ripples start and how far they travel. But their overall view is the same, you see. I want to catch the throw and scope of this web in my … my novel, Mouse. I want it to spread about the whole web. But I have to find that central subject, that great event which shakes history and makes the links strike and glitter for me. A moon, Mouse; to retire to some beautiful rock, my art perfected, to contemplate the flow and shift of the net; that’s what I want, Mouse. But the subject won’t come!”

The Mouse was sitting on the floor, looking in the bottom of the sack for a control knob that had come off the syrynx.

“Why don’t you write about yourself?”

“Oh, that’s a fine idea! Who would read it? You?”

The Mouse found the knob and pushed it back on its stem.

“I don’t think I could read anything as long as a novel.”

“But if the subject were, say, the clash between two great families like Prince’s and the captain’s, wouldn’t you at least want to?”

“How many notes have you made on this book?” The Mouse chanced a tentative light through the hangar.

[*]

“Not a tenth as many as I need. Even though it’s doomed as an obsolete museum reliquary, it will be jeweled”—he swung back on the nets—“crafted”—the links roared; his voice rose—“a meticulous work; perfect!”

“I was born,” the Mouse said. “I must die. I am suffering. Help me. There, I just wrote your book for you.”

Katin looked at his big, weak fingers against the mail. After a while he said, “Mouse, sometimes you make me want to cry.”

The smell of cumin.

The smell of almonds.

The smell of cardamon.

Falling melodies meshed.

Bitten nails, enlarged knuckles; the backs of Katin’s hands flickered with autumn colors; across the cement floor his shadow danced in the web.

“Hey, there you go,” Leo laughed. “You play, yeah, Mouse! You play!”

And the shadows danced on till voices:

“Hey, are you guys still—“

“—in here? Captain told us to—“

“—said to hunt you up. It’s—“

“—it’s time to get going. Come on—“

“—we’re going!”