Nova

  The Mouse stepped down. "Me?"

  "You and your infernal hurdy-gurdy! If you think you can watch where you're going, I'd like somebody to juggle the air in front of my eyes and tickle my earlobes. Take the job."

  A grin struck the Mouse's lips back from his teeth. "Sure," and the grin went. "I'll go." The words came from the young gypsy in an old man's whisky whisper. "Sure I'll go, Captain." The Mouse nodded and his gold earring flashed above the volcanic crevice. Hot wind over the rail struck down hanks of his black hair.

  "Do you have a mate you want to make the run with? I need a crew."

  The Mouse, who didn't particularly like anyone in this port, looked up at the incredibly tall young man who had stopped his harassment of Dan. "What about shorty?" He thumbed at surprised Katin. "Don't know him, but he's mate enough."

  "Right then. So I have ..." Captain Von Ray narrowed his eyes a moment, appraising Katin's slump shoulders, narrow chest, high cheeks and weak blue eyes floating behind contact lenses " ...two." Katin's ears warmed.

  "Who else? What's the matter? Are you afraid to leave this little well of gravity funneling into that half-pint sun?" He jerked his chin toward the highlighted mountains. "Who's coming with us where night means forever and morning's a recollection?"

  A man stepped forward. Skin the color of an emperor grape, he was long-headed and full-featured. "I'm for out." When he spoke, the muscles under his jaw and high on his nappy scalp rolled.

  "Have a mate?"

  A second man stepped up. His flesh was translucent as soap. His hair was like white wool. It took a moment for the likeness of feature to strike. There were the same sharp cusp lines at the corner of the heavy lips, the same slant below the bell nostrils, the same break far front on the cheekbones: twins. As the second man turned his head, the Mouse saw the blinking pink eyes, veiled with silver.

  The albino dropped his broad hand— a sack of knuckles and work-ruined nails cabled to his forearm by thick, livid veins— on his brother's shoulder. "We run together."

  Their voices, slow with colonial drawl, were identical.

  "Anyone else?" Captain Von Ray looked about the crowd.

  "You me, Captain, want to take?"

  A man pushed forward.

  Something flapped on his shoulder.

  His yellow hair shook with a wind not from the chasm. Moist wings crinkled, stretched again, like onyx, like isinglass. The man reached up to where black claws made an epaulet on his knotted shoulder and caressed the grappling pads with a spatulate thumb.

  "Do you have any other mate than your pet?"

  Her small hand in his, she stepped out, following him at the length of their two arms.

  Willow bough? Bird's wing? Wind in spring rushes? The Mouse riffled his sensory store to equal her face in gentleness. And failed.

  Her eyes were the color of steel. Small breasts rose beneath the laces of her vest, steady in breath. Then steel glittered as she looked about. (She's a strong woman, thought Katin, who could perceive such subtleties.)

  Captain Von Ray folded his arms. "You two, and the beast on your shoulder?"

  "We six pets, Captain, have," she said.

  "As long as they're broken to ship, fine. But I'll jettison the first fluttering devil I trip on."

  "Fair, Captain," the man said. The slanted eyes in his ruddy face crinkled with a smile. With his free hand now he grasped his opposite biceps and slid his fingers down the blond hair that matted each forearm, the back of each knuckle, till he held the woman's hand in both of his. They were the couple who had played cards in the bar, the Mouse realized. "When you us aboard want?"

  "An hour before dawn. My ship goes up to meet the sun. It's the Roc on Stage Seventeen. How do your friends call you?"

  "Sebastian." The beast beat on his golden shoulder.

  "Tyy." Its shadow crossed her face.

  Captain Von Ray bent his head and stared from beneath his rusty brows with tiger's eyes. "And your enemies?"

  The man laughed. "Damned Sebastian and his flapping black gillies."

  Von Ray looked at the woman. And you?"

  "Tyy." That, softly. "Still."

  "You two" Von Ray turned to the twins. "Your names?"

  "He's Idas— " the albino said, and once more put his hand on his brother's arm.

  "— and he's Lynceos."

  "And what would your enemies say if I asked them who you were?"

  The dark twin shrugged. "Only Lynceos— "

  "— and Idas."

  "You?" Von Ray nodded toward the Mouse.

  "You can call me the Mouse if you're my friend. You my enemy, and you never know my name."

  Von Ray's lids fell halfway down the yellow balls as he looked at the tall one.

  "Katin Crawford." Katin surprised himself by volunteering. "When my enemies tell me what they call me, I'll tell you, Captain Von Ray."

  "We're on a long trip," Von Ray said. "And you'll face enemies you didn't know you had. We're running against Prince and Ruby Red. We fly a cargo ship out empty and come back— if the wheels of the machine run right— with a full hold. I want you to know this trip has been made twice before. Once it hardly got started. Once I got within sight of the goal. But the sight was too much for some of my crew. This time I intend to go out, fill my cargo hold, and come back."

  "Where we for running are?" Sebastian asked. The creature on his shoulders stepped from one foot to the other, flapping to balance. Its wingspan was nearly seven feet. "What out there, Captain, is?"

  Von Ray threw up his head as though he could see his destination. Then he looked down slowly. "Out there ..."

  The Mouse felt the skin on the back of his neck go funny, as though it were cloth and someone had just snagged a loose end and raveled the fabric.

  "Somewhere out there," Von Ray said, "is a nova."

  Fear?

  The Mouse for one moment searched for stars and found Dan's ruined eye.

  And Katin spun backward across the pits of many moons, his eyes bulged beneath the faceplate while somewhere, wombward, a sun collapsed.

  "We're hunting a nova."

  So that's real fear, the Mouse thought. More than just the beast flapping in the chest, lurching into the ribs.

  It's the start of a million journeys, Katin reflected, with your feet stuck in the same place.

  "We have to go to the flaming edge of that imploding sun. The whole continuum in the area of a nova is space that has been twisted away. We have to go to the rim of chaos and bring back a handful of fire, with as few stops as possible on the way. Where we're going all law has broken down."

  "Which law do you mean?" Katin asked. "Man's, or the natural laws of physics, psychics, and chemistry?"

  Von Ray paused. "All of them."

  The Mouse pulled the leather strap across his shoulder and lowered the syrynx into its sack.

  "This is a race," Von Ray said. "I tell you again. Prince and Ruby Red are our opponents. There is no human law I could hold them to. And as we near the nova, the rest break down."

  The Mouse shook massed hair off his forehead. "It's going to be a changey trip, eh, Captain?" The muscles in his brown face jumped, quivered, fixed finally on a grin to hold his trembling. His hand, inside the sack, stroked the inlay on the syrynx. "A real changey trip." His woolly voice licked at the danger. "Sounds like a trip I'll be able to sing about." And licked again.

  "About this ... handful of fire we're bringing back," Lynceos began.

  "A cargo hold full." Von Ray corrected. "That's seven tons. Seven slugs of a ton each."

  Idas said: "You can't bring home seven tons of fire— "

  "— so what are we hauling, Captain?" Lynceos finished.

  The crew waited. Those standing near the crew waited.

  Von Ray reached up and kneaded his right shoulder.

  "Illyrion," he said. "And we're getting it from the source." His hand fell. "Give me your classification numbers. After that, the next time I want to see you is on the Roc an hour
before dawn."

  "Take a drink— "

  The Mouse pushed the hand away and kept dancing. Music smashed over the metal chimes while red lights fled one another around the bar.

  "Take a— "

  The Mouse's hips jerked against the music, Tyy jerked against him, swinging dark hair back from a glistening shoulder. Her eyes were closed, her lips shook.

  Someone was saying to someone else: "Here, I can't drink this. Finish it for me."

  She flapped her hands, coming toward him. Then the Mouse blinked.

  Tyy was beginning to flicker.

  He blinked again.

  Then his saw Lynceos holding the syrynx in his white hands. His brother stood behind him; they were laughing. Real Tyy sat at a corner table shuffling her cards.

  "Hey," the Mouse said, and went over fast. "Look, don't fool with my ax, please. If you can play it, fine. But ask me first."

  "Yeah," Lynceos said. "You were the only one who could see it— "

  "— it was on a directional beam," said Idas. "We're sorry."

  "That's okay," the Mouse said, taking his syrynx back. He was drunk and tired. He walked out of the bar, meandered along the glowing lip of Hell3, finally to cross the bridge that led toward Stage Seventeen. The sky was black. As he ran his hand along the rail, his fingers and forearm were lit orange from beneath.

  Someone was leaning on the rail ahead of him.

  He slowed.

  Katin looked dreamily across the abyss, face devil-masked by underlight.

  At first the Mouse thought Katin was talking to himself. Then he saw the jeweled contrivance in his hand.

  "Cut into the human brain," Katin told his recorder. "Centered between cerebrum and medulla you will find a nerve cluster that resembles a human figure only centimeters high. It connects the sensory impressions originating outside the brain with the cerebral abstractions forming within. It balances the perception of the world outside with the knowledge of the world within.

  "Cut through the loose tangle of intrigues that net world to world— "

  "Hey, Katin."

  Katin glanced at him as the hot air shook up from the lava.

  "— ties star system to star system, that keeps the Sol-centered Draco sector, the Pleiades Federation, and the Outer Colonies each a single entity: you will find a whirl of diplomats, elected or self-appointed officials, honest or corrupt as their situations call for— in short, the governmental matrix that takes its shape from the worlds it represents. Its function is to respond to and balance the social, economic, and cultural pressures that shift and run through empire.

  "And if one could cut directly through a star, centered in the flaming gas would be a bole of pure nuclear matter, condensed and volatile, crushed to this state by the weight of the matter around it, spherical or oblate as the shape of the sun itself. During a solar disturbance, this center carries vibrations from that disturbance directly through the mass of the star to cancel those vibrations racing the tidal shift on the sun's surface.

  "Occasionally something goes wrong with the tiny bodies balancing the perceptual pressures on the human brain.

  "Often the governmental and diplomatic matrix cannot handle the pressures of the worlds they govern.

  "And when something goes wrong with the balancing mechanism inside a sun, the dispersal of incredible stellar power dephases into the titanic forces that make a sun go nova— "

  "Katin?"

  He switched off his recorder and looked at the Mouse.

  "What you doing?"

  "Making notes on my novel."

  "Your what?"

  "Archaic art form superseded by the psychorama. Alas, it was capable of vanished subtleties, both spiritual and artistic, that the more immediate form has not yet equaled. I'm an anachronism, Mouse." Katin grinned. "Thanks for my job."

  The Mouse shrugged. "What are you talking about?"

  "Psychology." Katin put the recorder back in his pocket. "Politics, and Physics. The three P's."

  "Psychology?" the Mouse asked. "Politics?"

  "Can you read and write?" Katin asked.

  "Turkish, Greek, and Arabic. But not too good in English. The letters don't have nothing to do with the sounds you make."

  Katin nodded. He was a little drunk too. "Profound. That's why English was such a fine language for novels. But I oversimplify."

  "What about psychology and politics? I know the physics."

  "Particularly," Katin said to the flowing, glowing strip of wet rock that wound two hundred meters below, "the psychology and politics of our captain. They intrigue me."

  "What about them?"

  "His psychology is, at this point, merely curious because it is unknown. I shall have a chance to observe that as we progress. But the politics are gravid with possibilities."

  "Yeah? What's that mean?"

  Katin locked his fingers and balanced his chin on a knuckle. "I attended an institution of higher learning in the ruins of a once great country. A bit across the quad was a building called the Von Ray Psycho-science Laboratory. It was a rather recent addition, from, I would guess, a hundred and forty years ago."

  "Captain Von Ray?"

  "Grandpa, I suspect. It was donated to the school in honor of the thirtieth anniversary of the grant of sovereignty to the Pleiades Federation by the Draco Courts."

  "Von Ray is from out in the Pleiades? He don't talk like he is. Sebastian and Tyy, I could guess from them. Are you sure?"

  "His family holdings are there, certainly. He's probably spent time all over the universe, traveling in the style we would like to be accustomed to. How much would you bet he owns his own cargo ship?"

  "He's not working for some company combine?"

  "Not unless his family owns it. The Von Rays are probably the most powerful family in the Pleiades Federation. I don't know if Captain there is a kissing cousin lucky enough to have the same name, or whether he's the direct heir and scion. But I do know that name is connected up with the control and organization of the whole Pleiades Federation; they're the sort of family with a summer home in the Outer Colonies and a town house or two on Earth."

  "Then he's a big man." The Mouse spoke hoarsely.

  "He is."

  "What about this Prince and Ruby Red he was talking about?"

  "Are you dense, or are you merely a product of thirty-first-century over-specialization?" Katin asked. "Sometimes I dream about a return of the great renaissance figures of the twentieth century: Bertrand Russell, Susanne Langer, Pejt Davlin." He looked at the Mouse. "Who makes every drive system you can think of, interplanetary or interstellar?"

  "Red-shift Limited— " The Mouse stopped. "That Red?"

  "Were he not a Von Ray, I would assume he spoke of some other family. Since he is, it is very probable that he speaks of just those Reds."

  "Damn," the Mouse said. Red-shift was a label that appeared so frequently you didn't even notice it. Red-shift made the components for all conceivable space drives, the tools for dismantling them, the machines for servicing them, replacement parts.

  "Red is an industrial family with its roots in the dawn of space travel; it is very firmly fixed on Earth specifically, and throughout the Draco system in general. The Von Rays are a not so old, but powerful family of the Pleiades Federation. And they are now in a race for seven tons of Illyrion. Doesn't that make your political sensitivities quiver for the outcome?"

  "Why should it?"

  "To be sure," Katin said, "the artist concerned with self-expression and a projection of his inner world should, above all things, be apolitical. But really, Mouse."

  "What are you talking about, Katin?"

  "Mouse, what does Illyrion mean to you?"

  He considered. "An Illyrion battery makes my syrynx play. I know they use it to keep this moon's core hot. Doesn't it have something to do with the faster-than-light drive?"

  Katin closed his eyes. "You are a registered, tested, competent cyborg stud, like me, right?" On "right," his eyes opened. r />
  The Mouse nodded.

  "Oh, for the rebirth of an educational system where understanding was an essential part of knowledge," Katin intoned to the flickering dark. "Where did you get your cyborg training, anyway, Australia?"

  "Um-hm."

  "Figures. Mouse, there is noticeably less Illyrion in your syrynx battery, by a factor of twenty or twenty-five, than there is, let's say, radium in the fluorescent paint on the numerals of a radium dial watch. How long does a battery last?"

  "They're supposed to go to fifty years. Expensive as hell."

  "The Illyrion needed to keep this moon's core molten is measured in grams. The amount needed to propel a starship is on the same order. To quantify the amount mined and free in the Universe, eight or nine thousand kilograms will suffice. And Captain Von Ray is going to bring back seven tons!"

  "I guess Red-shift would be pretty interested in that."

  Katin nodded deeply. "They might."

  "Katin, what is Illyrion? I used to ask, at Cooper, but they told me it was too complicated for me to understand."

  "Told me the same thing at Harvard," Katin said. "Psychophysics 74 and 75. I went to the library. The best definition is the one given by Professor Plovnievsky in his paper presented at Oxford in 2238 before the theoretical physics society. I quote: 'Basically, gentlemen, Illyrion is something else.' One wonders if it was a happy accident from lack of facility with the language, or a profound understanding of English subtlety. The dictionary definition, I believe, reads something like, ' ...general name for the group of trans three-hundred elements with psychomorphic properties, heterotropic with many of the common elements as well as the imaginary series that exist between 107 and 255 on the periodic chart.' How's your subatomic physics?"

  "I am but a poor cyborg stud."

  Katin raised a flickering brow. "You know that as you mount the chart of atomic numbers past 98, the elements become less and less stable, till we get to jokes like Einsteinum, Californium, Fermium with half lives of hundredths of a second— and mounting further, hundredths of thousandths of a second. The higher we go, the unstable. For this reason, the whole series between 100 and 298 were labeled— mislabeled— the imaginary elements. They're quite real. They just don't stay around very long. At 296 or thereabouts, however, the stability begins to go up again. At three hundred we're back to a half-life measurable in tenths of a second, and five or six above that and we've started a whole new series of elements with respectable half-lives back in the millions of years. These elements have immense nuclei, and are very rare. But as far back as 1950, hyperons had been discovered, elementary particles bigger than protons and neutrons. These are the particles that carry the binding energies holding together these super nuclei, as ordinary mesons hold together the nucleus in more familiar elements. This group of super-heavy, super-stable elements go under the general heading of Illyrion. And to quote again the eminent Plovnievsky, 'Basically, gentlemen, Illyrion is something else.' As Webster informs us, it is both psychomorphic and heterotropic. I suppose that's a fancy way of saying Illyrion is many things to many men." Katin turned his back to the railing and folded his arms. "I wonder what it is to our captain?"