Nova

  "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, the
ir 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 Alkan
e.

  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."