Nova

  "They're drifting as lonely as we are. We'll hear from them in due time. But for now we don't need them and they don't need us. Cyana has warned them we're coming. I'll point them on matrix moveable. There, you can follow their locations and their movements. That's the major manned station. It's fifty times as far out as we are."

  "Are we within the danger zone when she goes?"

  "When that nova starts, that star is going to eat up the sky and everything in it a long way out."

  "When does it begin?"

  "Days, Cyana predicted. But such predictions have been known to be off by two weeks in either direction. We'll have a few minutes to clear if she goes. We're about two and a half light-hours from her now." All their views came not by light, but by ethric disturbance, which gave them a synchronous view of the sun. "We'll see her start at exactly the instant she goes."

  "And the Illyrion?" Sebastian asked. "How we that get?"

  "That's my worry," Lorq told him. "We'll get it when the time comes to get it. You can all cut loose for a while now."

  But no one hurried to release cables. Vanes diminished to single lines of light, but only after a while did two, and two wink off.

  Katin and the Mouse lingered longest.

  "Captain?" Katin asked after a few minutes. "I was just wondering. Did the patrol say anything special when you reported Dan's ... accident?"

  It was nearly a minute before Lorq said: "I didn't report it."

  "Oh," Katin said. "I didn't really 'think you had."

  The Mouse started to say "But" three times, and didn't.

  "Prince has access to all official records coming through the Draco patrol. At least I assume he has; I've got a computer scanning all those that come through the Pleiades. His is certainly programmed to trace down thoroughly anything that comes in vaguely connected with me. If he traced down Dan, he'd find a nova. I don't want him to find it that way. I'd just as soon he didn't know Dan was dead. As far as I know, the only people who do know are on this ship. I like it that way."

  "Captain!"

  "What, Mouse?"

  "There's something coming."

  "A supply ship for the station?" Katin asked.

  "It's in too far. They're sniffing along after our faery dust."

  Lorq was silent while the strange ship moved across the co-ordinate matrix. "Cut loose and go into the commons. I'll join you."

  "But, Captain-" The Mouse got it out.

  "It's a seven-vaned cargo ship like this one, only its identification says Draco."

  "What's it doing here?"

  "Into the commons I said."

  Katin read the name of the ship as its identification beam translated at the bottom of the grid: "The Black Cockatoo? Come on, Mouse. Captain says cut loose."

  They unplugged, and joined the others at the pool's edge.

  At the head of the winding steps, the door rolled up. Lorq stepped out on the shadowed stair.

  The Mouse watched Von Ray come down and thought: Captain's tired.

  Katin watched Von Ray and Von Ray's reflection on the mirrored mosaic and thought: he moves tired, but it's the tiredness of an athlete before his second wind.

  When Lorq was halfway down, the light-fantasia in the gilt frame on the far wall cleared.

  They started. The Mouse actually gasped.

  "So," Ruby said. "Nearly a tie. Or is that fair? You are still ahead. We don't know where you intend to find the prize. This race goes by starts and stops." Her blue gaze washed the crew, lingered on the Mouse, returned to Lorq. "Till last night at Taafite, I'd never felt such pain. Perhaps I've lived a sheltered life. But whatever the rules are, handsome Captain," (contempt resonated now) "we too have been bred to play."

  "Ruby, I want to talk to you ... Lorq's voice faltered. "And Prince. In person."

  "I'm not sure if Prince wants to talk to you. The time between your leaving us at the edge of Gold and our finally struggling to a medico is not one of my— our pleasantest memories."

  "Tell Prince I'm shuttling over to The Black Cockatoo. I'm tired of this horror tale, Ruby. There are things you want to know from me. There are things I want to say to you."

  Her hand moved nervously to the hair falling on her shoulder. Her dark cloak closed in a high collar. After a moment she said, "Very well." Then she was gone.

  Lorq looked down at his crew. "You heard. Back on your vanes. Tyy, I've watched the way you swing on your strings. You've obviously had more experience flying than anyone else here. Take the captain's sockets. And if anything odd happens— anything, whether I'm back or not, take the Roc out of here, fast."

  The Mouse and Katin looked at each other, then at Tyy.

  Lorq crossed the carpet, mounted the ramp. Hallway over the white arc, he stopped and gazed at his reflection. Then he spat.

  He disappeared before ripples touched the bank.

  Exchanging puzzled looks, they broke from the pool.

  Outer Colonies (Black Cockatoo transit), 3172

  On his couch, Katin plugged in and switched on his sensory input outside the ship to find the others were all there already.

  He watched The Black Cockatoo drift closer to receive the shuffle.

  "Mouse?"

  "Yeah, Katin."

  "I'm worried."

  "About Captain?"

  "About us."

  The Black Cockatoo, beating vanes on the darkness, turned slowly beside them to match orbits.

  "We were drifting, Mouse, you and I, the twins, Tyy and Sebastian, good people all of us— but aimless. Then an obsessed man snatches us up and carries us out here to the edge of everything. And we arrive to find his obsession has imposed order on our aimlessness; or perhaps a more meaningful chaos. What worries me is that I'm so thankful to him. I should be rebelling, trying to assert my own order. But I'm not. I want him to win his infernal race. I want him to win, and until he wins or loses, I can't seriously want anything else for myself."

  The Black Cockatoo received the shuttle boat like a cannon shot in reverse. Without the necessity of maintaining matched orbits, she drifted a ways from them. Katin watched her dark rotations.

  "Good morning."

  "Good evening."

  "By Greenwich time it's morning, Ruby."

  "And I do you the politeness of greeting you by Ark time. Come this way." She held back her robe to let him pass into the black corridor.

  "Ruby?"

  "Yes?" Her voice was just behind his left shoulder.

  "I've always wondered something, each time I've seen you. You've shown me so many hints of the magnificent person you are. But it gleams from under the shadow Prince throws. Years ago, when we talked at that party on the Seine, it struck me what a challenging person you would be to love."

  "Paris is worlds and worlds away, Lorq."

  "Prince controls you. It's petty of me, but that's what I can least forgive him. You've never shown your own will before him. Except at Taafite, that once beneath the exhausted sun on the other world. You thought Prince was dead. I know you remember it. I've thought of little else since. You kissed me. But he screamed, and you ran to him. Ruby, he's trying to destroy the Pleiades Federation. That's all the worlds that circle three hundred suns, and how many billions of people. They're my worlds. I can't let them die."

  "You would topple the column of Draco and send the Serpent crawling off through the dust to save them? You would pull the economic support out from under Earth and let the fragments fall into the night? You would bowl the worlds to Draco into epochs of chaos, civil strife, and deprivation? The worlds of Draco are Prince's worlds. Are you really presumptuous enough to think he loves his less than you love yours?"

  "What do you love, Ruby?"

  "You are not the only one with secrets, Lorq. Prince and I have ours. When you came up out of the burning rocks, yes, I thought Prince was dead. There was a hollow tooth in my jaw filled with strychnine. I wanted to give you a victory kiss. I would have, if Prince had not screamed."

  "Prince l
oves Draco?" He whirled, caught her upper arms, dragged her against him.

  Her breath surged against his chest. With eyes opened their faces struck. He mashed her thin mouth with his full one till her lips drew back, and his tongue ground teeth.

  Her fingers grappled his rough hair. She made ugly sounds. The moment his grip relaxed, she was away, eyes wide; then her lids veiled the blue light till fury widened them again.

  "Well?" He was breathing hard.

  She drew her cloak around her. "When a weapon fails me once"— her voice was hoarse as the Mouse's— "I throw it away. Otherwise, handsome pirate, you ..."

  Did the harshness lessen? "We would be ... But I have other weapons now."

  The Cockatoo's commons was small and stark. Two cyborg studs sat on the benches. Another stood on the steps beside the door to his projection chamber.

  Sharp-featured men in white uniforms, they reminded Lorq of another crew he had worked. On their shoulders they wore the scarlet emblem of Red-shift, Ltd. They glanced at Lorq and Ruby. The one standing stepped back into his chamber and the plate door clanged in the high room. The other two got up to go.

  "Will Prince come down?"

  Ruby nodded toward the iron stair. "He'll see you in the captain's cabin."

  Lorq began to climb. His sandals clacked on the perforated steps. Ruby followed him.

  He knocked on the studded door.

  It swung in, Lorq stepped inside, and a metal and plastic gauntlet on a jointed arm telescoped from the ceiling and struck him across the face, twice.

  Lorq reeled against the door— it was covered in leather on the inside and set with brass heads— so that it slammed.

  "That," the corpse announced, "is for manhandling my sister."

  Lorq rubbed his cheek and looked at Ruby. She stood by the jade wall. The draping valences were the same deep wine as her cloak.

  "Do you think I don't watch everything that goes on the ship?" asked the corpse. "You Pleiades barbarians are as uncouth as Aaron always said you were."

  Bubbles rose in the tank, caressed the stripped and naked foot, caught and clustered on the shriveled groin, rolled up the chest-ribs scored between blackened flaps of skin— and fanned about the burned, bald head. The lipless mouth gaped on broken teeth. No nose. Tubes and wires snaked the rotten sockets. Tubes pierced at belly, hip, and shoulder. Fluids swirled in the tank and the single arm drifted back and forth, charred fingers locked with rigor mortis in a claw.

  "Weren't you ever told it was impolite to stare? You are staring, you know."

  The voice came from a speaker in the glass wall.

  "I'm afraid I sustained a bit more damage than Ruby back on the other world."

  Above the tank two mobile cameras shifted as Lorq stepped from the door.

  "For someone who owns Red-shift Limited, your turn to match orbits wasn't very ..." The banality did not mask Lorq's astonishment.

  Cables for running the ship were plugged into sockets set on the tank's glass face. The glass itself was part of the wall. The cables coiled over black and gold tiles to disappear into the coppery grill covering the computer face.

  On walls, floor, and ceiling, in opulent frames, ethric disturbance screens all showed the same face of night: At the edge of each was the gray shape of the Roc.

  Centered on each was the star.

  "Alas," the corpse said, "I was never the sportsman you were. Still, you wanted to speak to me. What do you have to say?"

  Again Lorq looked at Ruby. "I've said most of it to Ruby, Prince. You heard it."

  "Somehow I doubt you'd drag us both out here to the brink of a stellar catastrophe just to tell us that. Illyrion, Lorq Von Ray. Neither you nor I have forgotten your major purpose for coming here. You will not leave without telling where you intend to get— "

  The star went nova.

  The inevitable is that unprepared for.

  In the first second the images about them changed from points to floodlights. And the floodlights got brighter.

  Ruby backed against the wall, arm across her eyes.

  "It's early!" the corpse shouted. "It's days early ..."

  Lorq took three steps across the room, yanked two plugs from the tank, and fixed them in his wrists. The third plug he twisted into his spinal socket. The play of the ship surged through him. Sensory input came in. His vision of the room was overlaid with the night. And night was catching fire.

  Wresting control from the studs, he swung the Cockatoo around to point her toward the node of light. The ship plunged forward.

  Twin cameras swiveled to focus him.

  "Lorq, what are you doing?" Ruby cried.

  "Stop him!" from the corpse. "He's flying us into the sun!" Ruby leaped at Lorq, caught him. They turned together, staggered. The chamber and the sun outside fixed on his eyes like a double exposure. She caught up a loop of cable, flung it around his neck, twisted it, and began to strangle him. The cable housing chewed his neck. He locked his arm behind her, and pushed his other hand against her face. She grunted, and her head went back (his hand pushed at the center of the light). Her hair slipped, came loose; the wig fell from her burned scalp. She had only used the medico to return health. The cosmetic plasti-skin with which she had restored her face tore between his fingers. Rubbery film pulled from her blotched and hollowed cheek. Lorq suddenly jerked his hand away. As her ruined face screamed toward him through fire, he ripped her hands from his neck and pushed her away. Ruby went backwards, tripped on her cloak, fell. He turned just as the mechanical hand swung down at him from the ceiling.

  He caught it.

  And it had less than human strength.

  Easily he held it at arm's length as the fingers grasped from the raging star. "Stop!" he bellowed. At the same time he willed the sensory input off all over the ship.

  The screens went gray.

  The sensory input had always been clamped off on all six of the ship's cyborg studs.

  The fires went out in his eyes.

  "What in heaven are you trying to do, Lorq?"

  "Dive into hell and fish Illyrion out with my bare hands!"

  "He's insane!" the corpse shrieked. "Ruby, he's insane! He's killing us, Ruby! That's all he wants to do, kill us!"

  "Yes! I'm killing you!" Lorq tossed the hand away. It grasped at the cable hanging from his wrist to jerk the plug. Lorq caught the arm again; the ship lurched.

  "For God's sake, pull us out, Lorq!" the corpse cried. "Pull us out of here!"

  The ship jerked again. The artificial gravity slipped long enough for liquid to streak on the tank face, then bead the glass as gravity righted.

  "It's too late," Lorq whispered. "We're caught in gravity spin!"

  "Why are you doing this?"

  "Just to kill you, Prince." Lorq's face raged till laughter spilled it. "That's all, Prince! That's all I want to do now."

  "I don't want to die again!" the corpse shrieked. "I don't want to flash out like an insect burning!"

  "Flash?" Lorq's face twisted about the scar. "Oh no! It'll be slow, slower than before. Ten, twenty minutes at least. It's already getting warm, isn't it? But it won't be unbearable for another five." Below the gold blaze Lorq's face darkened. Spittle flecked his lips with each consonant. "You'll boil in your jar like a fish— " He stopped to rub his stomach beneath his vest. He looked around the chamber. "What can burn in here? The drapes? Is your desk real wood? And all those papers?"

  The mechanical hand yanked from Lorq's. The arm swung across the room. The fingers seized Ruby's hand. "No, Ruby! Stop him! Don't let him kill us!"

  "You're in liquid, Prince, so you'll see them afire before you go. Ruby, the places where you're already burned won't be able to sweat. So you'll die first. He'll be able to watch you a few moments before his own fluids begin to boil, the rubber runs, the plastic melts— "

  "No!" The hand jerked from Ruby's, swung across the room, and smashed into the tank face. "Criminal! Thief! Pirate! Murderer! Murderer! No— !"

  The
hand was weaker than it had been at Taafite.

  So was the glass.

  The glass broke.

  Nutrient fluids splashed Lorq as he danced back on flooded sandals. The corpse crumpled in the tank, netted in tubes and wires.

  The cameras swung wildly out of focus.

  The hand clattered to the wet tile.

  As the fingers stilled, Ruby screamed, and screamed again. She flung herself across the floor, scrambled over the ragged hem of glass, caught up the corpse, hugged it to her, kissed it, and screamed, and kissed it again, rocking back and forth. Her cloak darkened in the puddle.

  Then her scream choked. She dropped the body, hurled herself back against the tank wall, and clutched her neck. Her face flushed deeply beneath burns and wrecked makeup.

  She slid slowly down the wall. Her eyes were closed when she reached the bottom.

  "Ruby ...?" Whether or not she had cut herself climbing over the glass, it didn't matter. The kiss would have done it. So soon after severe burns, even with what the medico could do, she must have been in a hyperallergic state. The alien proteins in Prince's nutrient fluid had entered her system, causing a massive histamine reaction. She had succumbed in seconds to anaphylactic shock.

  And Lorq laughed.

  It started like a rearrangement of boulders in his chest. Then it opened to a full sound, ringing on the high walls of the flooded chamber. Triumph was laughable and terrible and his.

  He took a deep breath. The ship surged at his fingertips. Still blind, he urged The Black Cockatoo into the bursting sun.

  Somewhere in the ship one of the cyborg studs was crying

  Outer Colonies (Roc transit), 3172

  "The 'star!" the Mouse cried. "She's blown nova!"

  Tyy's voice shot through the master circuit: "Out of here we go! Now!"

  "But the captain!" Katin shouted. "Look at The Black Cockatoo!"

  "The Cockatoo, my God, it's— "

  "— Lord, it's falling toward— "

  "— falling into the— "

  "— the sun!"

  "All right, everybody, vanes spread. Katin, I your vanes spread said!"