Nova

  She looked. She took her hand away. "I have to go now. I promised I'd help him." Her smile was not a happy thing. The piercing expression etched itself on his heightened senses. "Don't wear Prince's mask any more." She lifted the bird of paradise from the rail. "Just because he chooses to insult you, you needn't display that insult to everyone here."

  Lorq looked down at the pirate's head, confused.

  Foil eyes glittered at him from blue feathers. "Besides"— her voice was muffled now— "you're too handsome to cover yourself up with something so mean and ugly." And she was crossing the street, was disappearing in the crowded alley.

  He looked up and down the sidewalk, and did not want to be there.

  He crossed after her, plunged into the same crowd, only realizing halfway down the block that he was following her.

  She was beautiful.

  That was not bliss.

  That was not the party's excitement.

  That was her face and the way it turned and formed to her words.

  That was the hollow in him so evident now because moments before, during a few banal exchanges, it had been so full of her face, her voice.

  Trouble with all of this is that there's no cultural solidity underneath." (Lorq glanced to the side where the griffon was speaking to earnest armadillos, apes, and others.) "There's been so much movement from world to world that we have no real art any more, just a pseudo-inter-planetary ..."

  In the doorway, on the ground, lay a lion's head and a frog's. Back in the darkness, Dan, his back sweating from the dance, nuzzled the girl with sequined shoulders.

  And halfway down the block, Ruby passed up a set of steps behind scrolled iron.

  "Ruby!"

  He ran forward— "Hey, watch— "

  "Look out. Where do you— "

  "Slow down— "

  "— swung round the banister, and ran up the steps after her, "Ruby Red!" and through a door. "Ruby ...?"

  Wide tapestries between thin mirrors cut all echo from his voice. The door by the marble table was ajar. So he crossed the foyer, opened it.

  She turned on swirling light.

  Beneath the floor, tides of color flowed the room, flickering on the heavy, black-in-crystal legs of Vega Republic furniture. Without shadow, she stepped back. "Lorq! Now what are you doing here?" She had just placed her bird mask on one of the circular shelves that drifted at various levels around the room.

  "I wanted to talk to you some more."

  Her brows were dark arches over her eyes. "I'm sorry. Prince has planned a pantomime for the float that goes down the middle of the island at midnight. I have to change."

  One of the shelves had drifted toward him. Before it could respond to his body temperature and float away, Lorq removed a liquor bottle from the veined glass panel. "Do you have to rush?" He raised the bottle. "I want to find out who you are, what you do, what you think. I want to tell you all about me."

  "Sorry." She turned toward the spiral lift that would take her up to the balcony.

  His laughter stopped her. She turned back to see what had caused it.

  "Ruby?"

  And continued turning till she faced him again.

  He crossed the surging floor and put his hands on the smooth cloth falling at her shoulders. His fingers closed on her arms. "Ruby Red." His inflection brought puzzlement to her face. "Leave here with me. We can go to another city, on another world, under another sun. Don't the configurations of the stars bore you from here? I know a world where the constellations are called the Mad Sow's Litter, the Greater and Lesser Lynx, the Eye of Vahdamin.

  She took two glasses from a passing shelf. "What are you high on anyway?" Then she smiled. "Whatever it is, it becomes you."

  "Will you go?"

  "No."

  "Why not?" He poured frothing amber into tiny glasses.

  "First." She handed him the glass as he placed the bottle on another passing shelf. "Because it's terribly rude— I don't know how you do it back on Ark— for a hostess to run out on her party before midnight."

  "After midnight then?"

  "Second." She sipped the drink and wrinkled her nose (he was surprised, shocked that her clear, clear skin could support anything so human as a wrinkle). "Prince has been planning this party for months, and I don't want to upset him by not showing up when I promised." Lorq touched his fingers to her cheek. "Third." Her eyes snapped from the brim of her glass to lock his. "I'm Aaron Red's daughter and you are the dark, red-haired, high, handsome son"— she turned her head away— "of a blond thief!" Cold air on his fingertips where her warm arm had been,

  He put his palm against her face, slid his fingers into her hair. She turned away from his band and stepped onto the spiral lift. She rose up and away, adding, "And you haven't got much pride if you let Prince mock you the way he does."

  Lorq jumped onto the edge as the lift came around, She stepped back, surprised.

  "What's all this talk of thieves, piracy, and mocking mean?" Anger, not at her but at the confusion she caused. "I don't understand and I don't know if it sounds like anything I want to. I don't know how it is on Earth, but on Ark you don't make fun of your guests."

  Ruby looked at her glass, his eyes, her glass again. "I'm sorry." And then his eyes. "Go outside, Lorq. Prince will be here in a few minutes. I shouldn't have spoken to you at all— "

  "Why?" The room revolved, falling. "Whom you should speak to, whom you shouldn't; I don't know what brings this all up, but you're talking as if we were little people." He laughed again, a slow low sound in his chest, rising to shake his shoulders. "You're Ruby Red?" He took her shoulders and pulled her forward. For a moment her blue eyes beat. "And you take all this nonsense that little people say seriously?"

  "Lorq, you'd better— "

  "I'm Lorq Von Ray! And you're Ruby, Ruby, Ruby Red!" The lift had already taken them past the first balcony.

  "Lorq, please. I've got to— "

  "You've got to come with me! Will you go over the rim of Draco with me, Ruby? Will you come to Ark, where you and your brother have never been? Or come with me to Sao Orini. There's a house there that you'd remember if you saw it, there at the galaxy's edge." They rose by the second balcony, rotated toward the third. "We'll play behind the bamboo on the stone lizards' tongues— "

  She cried out. Because veined glass struck the lift ceiling and rained fragments over them.

  "Prince!" She pulled away from Lorq, and stared down over the lift's edge.

  "Get AWAY FROM HER!" His silver glove snatched another of the shelves from the inductance field that caused it to float around the room, and sailed it at them. "Damn you, you ... " His voice rasped to silence on his anger, then broke: "Get away!"

  The second disk hissed by their shoulders and smashed on the balcony bottom. Lorq flung up his arm to knock aside the shards.

  Prince ran across the floor to the stairway that mounted at the left side of the tiered chamber. Lorq ran from the lift across the carpeted balcony till he reached the head of the same stairway— Ruby behind him— and started down.

  They met on the first balcony. Prince grasped both rails, panting with fury.

  "Prince, what the hell is the matter with— "

  Prince lunged for him. His silver glove clanged the railing where Lorq had been standing. The brass bar caved, the metal tore. "Thief! Marauder!" Prince hissed, "Murderer!" Scum— "

  "What are you talking— "

  "— spawn of scum. If you touch my— " His arm lashed again.

  "No, Prince!" (That was Ruby.)

  Lorq vaulted the balcony and dropped twelve feet to the floor. He landed, falling to his hands and knees in a pool of red that faded to yellow, was cut by drifting green.

  "Lorq— !" (Ruby again.)

  He flipped, rolling on multichrome (and saw Ruby at the rail, hands at her mouth; then Prince cleared the rail, was in the air, was falling at him). Prince struck the place Lorq's head had been with his silver fist.

  Crack!

&nbs
p; Lorq staggered back to his feet and tried to regain his breath. Prince was still down.

  The multichrome had smashed under his glove. Cracks zagged a yard out from the impact. The pattern had frozen in a sunburst around the glaring point.

  "You ... " Lorq began. Words floundered under panting, "You and Ruby, are you crazy— ?"

  Prince rocked back to his knees. Fury and pain hooked his face up in outrage. The lips quivered about small teeth, the lids about turquoise eyes. "You clown, you pig, you come to Earth and dare to put your hands, your hands on my— "

  "Prince, please— !" Her voice tautened above them. Anguish. Her violent beauty shattered with a cry.

  Prince reeled to his feet, grasped another floating shelf. He flung it, roaring.

  Lorq cried as it cut his arm and crashed into the French doors behind him.

  Cooler air swept the room as the panels swung. Laughter poured from the street.

  "I'll get you; I'll catch you, and"— he rushed Lorq— "I'll hurt you!"

  Lorq turned, jumped the wrought iron and crashed against the crowd.

  They screamed as he barreled through. Hands struck his face, pushed his chest, grabbed his shoulders. The screaming— and the laughter— increased. Prince was behind him because:

  "What are they ...? Hey, watch out— "

  "They're fighting! Look, that's Prince— "

  "Hold them! Hold them! What are they— "

  Lorq broke from the crowd and stumbled against the balustrade. For a moment the rushing Seine and wet rock were below. He pulled back and turned to see.

  "Let go of me!" Prince's voice howled from the crowd. "Let go of my hand! My hand, let go of my hand!"

  Memories struck up, shaking. What was confusion before, was fear now.

  Beside him stone steps led to the river's walkway. He fled down, and heard others behind him as he reached the bottom.

  Then lights ground on his eyes. Lorq shook his head. Light across the wet pavement, the mossy stone wall beside him— someone had swung a floodlight over to watch.

  "Let go of my— " He heard Prince's voice, cutting through the others. "I'm going to get him!"

  Prince raced down the steps, reflections glancing from the rocks. He balanced at the bottom, squinting by the floodlit river.

  His vest had been pulled from one shoulder. In the scuffle he had lost the long glove.

  Lorq backed away.

  Prince raised his arm:

  Copper mesh and jeweled capacitors webbed black metal bone, pullies whirred in the clear casing.

  Lorq took another step.

  Prince lunged.

  Lorq dodged for the wall; the two boys spun around each other.

  The guests crowded the rail, pushed at the banister. Foxes and lizards, eagles and insects joggled one another to see. Someone stumbled against the floodlight, and the inverted gallery in the water shook,

  "Thief!" Prince's narrow chest was in spasm. "Pirate!" A rocket flared overhead. The explosion thudded after. "You're dirt, Lorq Von Ray! You're less than— "

  Now Lorq lunged.

  Anger snapped in his chest, his eyes, his hands. One fist caught the side of Prince's head, the other jabbed his stomach. He came with blasted pride, fury compelled by bewilderment, with dense humiliation breaking his breath against his ribs as he fought below the fantastic spectators. He struck again, not knowing where.

  Prince's prosthetic arm swung up.

  It caught him under the chin, bright fingers flat. It crushed skin, scraped bone, went on up, opening lip and cheek and forehead. Fat and muscle tore.

  Lorq screamed, bloody mouthed, and fell.

  "Prince!" Ruby (struggling to see, it was she who had jarred the light) stood on the wall. Red dress and dark hair whipped behind her in the river wind. "Prince, no!"

  Panting, Prince stepped back, back again. Lorq lay facedown, one arm in the water. Beneath his head blood slurred the stone.

  Prince turned sharply, and walked to the steps. Someone swung the floodlight back up. The people watching from the quay across the Seine were momentarily illuminated. Then the light went up and over, fixing on the building.

  People turned from the rail.

  Someone started to come down the steps, confronted Prince. After a second he turned back. A plastic rat's face left the rail. Someone took the transparent vinyl shoulder, led her away. Music from a dozen epochs clashed across the island.

  Lorq's head rocked by the dark water. The river sucked his arm.

  Then a lion climbed the wall, dropped barefoot to the stone. A griffon ran down the steps and fell to one knee beside him.

  Dan pulled off his false head and tossed it against the steps. It thumped, rolled a foot. The griffon head followed.

  Brian turned Lorq over.

  Breath caught in Dan's throat, then came out whistling. "He sure messed up Captain, huh?"

  "Dan, we've got to get the patrol or something. They can't do something like this!"

  Dan's shaggy brows rose. "What the hell makes you think they can't? I've worked for bastards with a lot less money than Red-shift who could do a lot more."

  Lorq groaned.

  "A medico-unit!" Brian said. "Where do you get a medico-unit here?"

  "He ain't dead. We get him back to the ship. When he comes to, I get my pay and off this damn planet!" He looked over the river from the twin spires of Notre Dame to the opposite bank. "Earth just ain't big enough for me and Australia both. I'm willing to leave." He got one arm under Lorq's knees, the other under his shoulders, and stood up.

  "You're going to carry him?"

  "Can you think of another way to get him back?" Dan turned toward the steps.

  "But there must be— " Brian followed him. "We have to do— "

  Something hissed on the water. Brian looked back.

  The wing of a skimmer-boat scraped the shore. "Where are you taking Captain Von Ray?" Ruby, in the front seat, wore a dark cloak now.

  "Back to his yacht, ma'am," Dan said. "It doesn't look like he's welcome here."

  "Bring him on the boat."

  "I don't think we should leave him in anybody's hands on this world."

  "You're his crew?"

  "That's right," Brian said. "Were you going to take him to a doctor?"

  "I was going to take him to De Blau Field. You should get off Earth as soon as possible."

  "Fine by me," Dan said.

  "Put him back there. There's a pre-med kit under the seat. See if you can stop him from bleeding."

  Brian stepped on the swaying skimmer and dug under the seat among the rags and chains to bring out the plastic box. The skimmer doffed again as Dan stepped aboard. In the front seat Ruby took the control line and plugged it into her wrist. They moved forward, hissing. The small boat mounted above the spray on its hydrofoils and sped. Pont St.-Michel, Pont Neuf, and Pont des Arts dropped their shadows over the boat. Paris glittered on the shores.

  Minutes later the struts of the Eiffel Tower cleared the buildings left, spotlighted on the night. Right, above slanted stone and behind sycamores, the last late strollers moved under the lamps along the Allee des Cygnes.

  Pleiades Federation, Ark, New Ark, 3162

  "All right," his father said. "I'll tell you.

  "I think he should get that scar ... " his mother's image spoke from the viewing column. "It's been three days, and the longer he lets the scar go ..."

  "If he wants to go around looking as though there was an earthquake in his head, that's his business," Father said. "But: right now I want to answer his question." He turned back to Lorq. "But to tell you"— he walked to the wall and gazed out across the city— "I have to tell you some history. And not what you learned at Causby."

  It was high summer on Ark.

  Wind tossed salmon clouds about the sky beyond the glass walls. When a gust was too strong, the blue veins of the irises in the windward wall contracted to bright mandalas, then dilated when the eighty-mile winds had passed.

  His mother's
fingers, dark and jeweled, moved on the rim of her cup.

  His father folded his hands behind his back as he watched the clouds torn up like rags and flung from Tong.

  Lorq leaned against the back of the mahogany chair, waiting.

  "What strikes you as the most important factor in today's society?"

  Lorq ventured after a moment: "The lack of a solid cultural— ?"

  "Forget Causby. Forget the things that people babble to one another when they feel they have to say something profound. You're a young man who may someday control one of the largest fortunes in the galaxy. If I ask you a question, I want you to remember who you are when you answer me. This is a society where, given any product, half of it may be grown on one world, the other half mined a thousand light-years away. On Earth, seventeen out of the hundreds of possible elements make up ninety per cent of the planet. Take any other world, and you'll find a different dozen making up ninety to ninety-nine per cent. There are two hundred and sixty-five inhabited worlds and satellites in the hundred and seventeen sun systems that make up Draco.

  "Here in the Federation we have three-quarters the population of Draco spread over three hundred and twelve worlds. The forty-two populated worlds of the Outer Colonies— "

  "Transportation," Lorq said. "Transportation from one world to the other. That's what you mean?"

  His father leaned against the stone table. "The cost of transportation is what I mean. And for a long time the biggest factor in the cost of transportation was Illyrion, the only way to get enough power to hurl the ships between worlds, between stars. When my grandfather was your age, Illyrion was manufactured artificially, a few billion atoms at a time, at great cost. Just about then it was discovered there was a string of stars, younger stars, much further out from the galactic center whose planets still possessed minute quantities of natural Illyrion. And it has only been since you were born that large-scale mining operations have been feasible on those planets that now make up the Outer Colonies."

  "Lorq knows this," his mother said. "I think he should have— "

  "Do you know why the Pleiades Federation is a political entity separate from Draco? Do you know why the Outer Colonies will soon be a separate political entity from either Draco or the Pleiades?"