“It just the sewer grating is, I think,” Leo said. The fisherman looked at the fog winding up the pole that supported the brilliant, induced-fluorescence streetlight. At the ground the steam ballooned and sagged. Before the light it danced and quivered.
“Taafite is just at the end of this street,” Lorq said.
They walked up the hill past half a dozen gratings that steamed through the perpetual evening.
“I guess Gold is right—”
“—right behind that embankment there?”
Lorq nodded to the twins.
“What sort of a place is Taafite?” the Mouse asked.
“A place where I can be comfortable.” Subtle agony played among the captain’s features. “And where I won’t have to be bothered with you.” Lorq made to cuff him, but the Mouse ducked. “We’re here.”
The twelve-foot gate, with chunks of colored glass set in wrought iron, fell back when Lorq laid his hand to the plate.
“It remembers me.”
“Taafite isn’t yours?” Katin asked.
“It belongs to an old school friend, Yorgos Setsumi, who owns Pleiades Mining. A dozen years ago I used it often. That’s when the lock was keyed to my hand. I’ve done the same for him with some of my houses. We don’t see each other much now but we used to be very close.”
They entered Taafite’s garden.
The flowers here were never meant to be seen in full light. The blossoms were purple, maroon, violet—colors of the evening. The mica-like scales of the spidery tilda glistened over the leafless branches. There was much low shrubbery, but all the taller plants were slim and sparse, to make as little shadow as possible.
The front wall of Taafite itself was a curving shape of glass. For a long stretch there wasn’t any wall at all and house and garden merged. A sort of path led to a sort of flight of steps cut into the rock below what probably was the front door.
When Lorq put his hand on the doorplate, lights began to flicker all through the house, above them in windows, far at the ends of corridors, reflected around corners, or shifting through a translucent wall, veined like violet jade, or panes of black-shot amber. Even under: a section of the floor was transparent and they could see lights coming on in rooms stories down.
“Come in.”
They followed the captain across the beige carpeting. Katin stepped ahead to examine a shelf of bronze statuettes. “Benin?” he asked the captain.
“I believe so. Yorgos has a passion for thirteenth-century Nigeria.”
When Katin turned to the opposite wall his eyes widened. “Now those can’t be the originals.” Then narrowed. “The Van Meegeren forgeries?”
“No. I’m afraid those are just plain old copies.”
Katin chuckled. “I’ve still got Dehay’s Under Sirius on the brain.”
They continued down the hall.
“I think there’s a bar in here.” Lorq turned into a doorway.
The lights only came halfway up because of what was beyond the forty feet of glass opposite.
Inside the room yellow lamps played on a pool of opalescent sand filled by siftings from the rock wall. Refreshments were already moving into the room on the rotary stage. On floating glass shelves sat pale statuettes. Benin bronzes in the hall; here were early Cycladic marbles, lucent and featureless.
Outside the room was Gold.
Down among brackish crags, lava flamed like day.
The river of rock flowed by, swinging the crags’ shadows between the wooden beams of the ceiling.
The Mouse stepped forward and said something without sound.
Tyÿ and Sebastian narrowed their eyes.
“Now isn’t that—”
“—that something to look at!”
The Mouse ran around the sand-pool, leaned against the glass with his hands by his face. Then he grinned back over his shoulder. “It’s like being right down in the middle of some Hell on Triton!”
The thing on Sebastian’s shoulder dropped, flapping, to the floor and cowered behind its master as something in Gold exploded. Falling fire dropped light down their faces.
“Which brew of the other world’s do you want to try first?” Lorq asked the twins as he surveyed bottles on the stage.
“The one in the red bottle—”
“—in the green bottle looks pretty good—”
“—not as good as some of the stuff we got on Tubman—”
“—I bet. On Tubman we got some stuff called bliss—”
“—you know what it is bliss, Captain?”
“No bliss.” Lorq held up the bottles, one in each hand. “Red or green. They’re both good.”
“I could sure use some—”
“—me too. But I guess he doesn’t have—”
“—guess he doesn’t. So I’ll take—”
“—red—”
“—green.”
“One of each. Coming up.”
Tyÿ touched Sebastian’s arm.
“What is?” Sebastian frowned.
She pointed to the wall as one of the shelves floated away from a long painting.
“The view from Thule down Ravine Dank is!” Sebastian seized Leo’s shoulder. “Look. That home is!”
The fisherman looked up.
“If you out the back window of the house where I was born look,” Sebastian said, “all that you see.”
“Hey.” The Mouse reached up to tap Katin’s shoulder.
Katin looked down from the sculpture he was examining at the Mouse’s dark face. “Huh?”
“That stool over there. You remember that Vega Republic stuff you were talking about back on the ship?”
“Yes.”
“Is that stool one?”
Katin smiled. “No. Everything here is all patterned on pre-star-flight designs. This whole room is a pretty faithful replica of some elegant American mansion of the twenty-first or -second century.”
The Mouse nodded. “Oh.”
“The rich are always enamored of the ancient.”
“I never been in a place like this before.” The Mouse looked about the room. “It’s something, huh?”
“Yes. It is.”
“Come get your poison,” Lorq called from the stage.
“Mouse! Now you your syrynx play?” Leo brought over two mugs, pushed one into the Mouse’s hands, the other into Katin’s. “You play. Soon I down to the ice docks will go. Mouse, play for me.”
“Play something that we can dance—”
“—dance with us, Tyÿ. Sebastian—”
“—Sebastian will you dance with us too?”
The Mouse shucked his sack.
Leo went over to get a mug for himself, came back, and sat down on the stool. The Mouse’s images were paled by Gold. But the music was ornamented with sharp, insistent quarter tones. It smelled like a party.
On the floor, the Mouse balanced the body of the syrynx against his blackened, horny foot, tapped time with the toe of his boot, and rocked. His fingers flew. Light from Gold, from the fixtures about the room, from the Mouse’s syrynx, lashed the captain’s face to fury. Twenty minutes later he said, “Mouse, I’m going to steal you for a while.”
The Mouse stopped playing. “What you want, Captain?”
“Company. I’m going out.”
The dancers’ faces fell.
Lorq turned a dial on the stage. “I’ve had the sensory recorder running.” The music began again. And the ghostly visions of the Mouse’s syrynx cavorted once more, along with images of Tyÿ, Sebastian, and the twins dancing, the sound of their laughter—
“Where are we going, Captain?” the Mouse asked. He put his syrynx down on the case.
“I’ve been thinking. We need something here. I’m going to get some bliss.”
“You mean you know—”
“—where to get hold of some?”
“The Pleiades is my home,” the Captain said. “We’ll be gone maybe an hour. Come on, Mouse.”
“Hey, Mouse, will you le
ave your—”
“—syrynx here with us—”
“—now? It’ll be okay. We won’t—”
“—won’t let anything happen to it.”
With lips pulled thin, the Mouse looked from the twins to his instrument. “All right. You can play it. But watch out, huh?”
He walked over to where Lorq stood at the door.
Leo joined them. “Now it too time for me to go is.”
Inside the Mouse, surprise opened like a wound over the inevitable. He blinked.
“For the lift, Captain, I you thank.”
They walked down the hall and through Taafite’s garden. Outside the gate, they stopped by a smoking grate. “For the ice docks down there you go.” Lorq pointed down the hill. “You the mono to the end of the line take.”
Leo nodded. His blue eyes caught the Mouse’s dark ones, and puzzlement passed on his face. “Well, Mouse. Maybe someday again each other we’ll see, huh?”
“Yeah,” the Mouse said. “Maybe.”
Leo turned and walked down the fuming street, boot heel clicking.
“Hey …” the Mouse called after a moment.
Leo looked back.
“Ashton Clark.”
Leo grinned, then started again.
“You know,” the Mouse said to Lorq, “I’ll probably never see him again in my life. Come on, Captain.”
“Are we anywhere near the spacefield?” the Mouse asked. They came down the crowded steps of the monorail station.
“Within walking distance. We’re about five miles down Gold from Taafite.”
The spray trucks had recently been by. The wandering people were reflected on the wet pavement. A group of youngsters—two of the boys with bells around their necks—ran by an old man, laughing. He turned, followed them a few steps, hand out. Now he turned back and came toward the Mouse and Lorq.
“An old guy with something, you help? Tomorrow, tomorrow into a job I plug. But tonight …”
The Mouse looked back after the panhandler, but Lorq kept on.
“What’s in there?” The Mouse pointed to a high arcade of lights. People clustered before the door on the shining street.
“No bliss there.”
They turned the corner.
On the far side of the street, couples had stopped by a fence. Lorq crossed the street. “That’s the other end of Gold down there.”
Below the ragged slope, bright rock wound into the night. One couple turned away hand in hand, with burnished faces.
Flashing from his hair, hands, and shoulders, a man came up the walkway in a lame vest. A tray of jewels hung around his neck. The couple stopped him. She bought a jewel from the vendor and, laughing, placed it on her boyfriend’s forehead. The sequined streamers from the central cluster of stones ran back and wound themselves in his long hair. They laughed up the wet street.
Lorq and the Mouse reached the end of the fence. A crowd of uniformed Pleiades patrolmen came up the stone steps. Three girls ran up behind them, screaming. Five boys overtook them, and the screams turned to laughter. The Mouse looked back to see them cluster about the jewelry man.
Lorq started down the steps.
“What’s down there?” The Mouse hurried on behind.
To the side of the broad steps, people drank at tables set beside the cafes cut into the rock wall.
“You look like you know where you’re going, Captain.” The Mouse caught up with Lorq’s elbow. “Who is that?” He gazed after one stroller. Among the lightly clad people, she wore a heavy parka rimmed with fur.
“She’s one of your ice-fishermen,” the captain told him. “Leo will be wearing one of them soon. They spend most of their time away from the heated part of the City.”
“Where are we going?”
“I think it was down this way.” They turned along a dim ledge. A few windows were cut in the rock. Blue light leaked from the shades. “These places change owners every couple of months, and I haven’t been in the City for five years. If we don’t find the place I’m looking for, we’ll find one that’ll do.”
“What sort of place is it?”
A woman shrieked. A door swung open. She staggered out. Another suddenly reached from the darkness, caught her by the arm, slapped her twice, and yanked her back. The door slammed on a second shriek. An old man—probably another ice-fisherman, from his furs—supported a younger man on his shoulder. “We you back to the room take. Your head up hold. All right it will be. To the room we you take.”
The Mouse watched them stagger by. A couple had stopped back near the stone stairway. She was shaking her head. Finally he nodded, and they turned back.
“The place I was thinking of, among other things, used to have a thriving business conning people to work in the mines in the Outer Colonies, then collecting a commission on each recruit. It was perfectly legal; there’re a lot of stupid people in the universe. But I’ve been a foreman in one of those mines and seen it from the other end. It’s not very pretty.” Lorq looked over a doorway. “Different name. Same place.”
He started down the steps. The Mouse looked quickly behind him, then followed. They entered a long room with a plank bar by one wall. A few panels of multichrome gave out feeble color. “Same people too.”
A man older than the Mouse, younger than Lorq, with stringy hair and dirty nails came up. “What can I do for you boys?”
“What have you got to make us feel good?”
He closed an eye. “Have a seat.”
Dim figures passed and paused before the bar.
Lorq and the Mouse slipped into a booth. The man pulled up a chair, reversed it, straddled it, and sat at the table’s head. “How good do you want to feel?”
Lorq turned his hands palms up on the table.
“Downstairs we have a—” the man glanced toward a doorway in the back where people moved in and out—“pathobath …?”
“What’s that?” the Mouse asked.
“A place with crystal walls that reflect the color of your thoughts,” Lorq told him. “You leave your clothes at the door and float among columns of light on currents of glycerin. They heat it to body temperature, mask out all your senses. After a little while, deprived of contact with sensory reality, you go insane. Your own psychotic fantasies provide the floor show.” He looked back at the man. “I want something we can take with us.”
Behind thin lips the man’s teeth came together sharply.
On the stage at the end of the bar a naked girl stepped into the coral spotlight and began to chant a poem. Those sitting at the bar clapped in time.
The man looked quickly back and forth between the captain and the Mouse.
Lorq folded his hands. “Bliss.”
The man’s eyebrows raised under the matted hair that fell down his forehead. “That’s what I thought.” His own hands came together. “Bliss.”
The Mouse looked at the girl. Her skin was unnaturally shiny. Glycerin, the Mouse thought. Yeah, glycerin. He leaned against the stone wall, then quickly pulled away. Drops of water ran the cold rock. The Mouse rubbed his shoulder and looked back at the captain.
“We’ll wait for it.”
The man nodded. After a moment he said to the Mouse, “What do you and pretty-man do for a living?”
“Crew on a … freighter.”
The captain nodded just enough to communicate approval.
“You know, there’s good work in the Outer Colonies. You ever thought about doing a hitch in the mines?”
“I worked the mines for three years,” Lorq said.
“Oh.” The man fell silent.
After a moment, Lorq asked, “Are you going to send for the bliss?”
“I already did.” A limp grin moved over his lips.
At the bar the rhythmic clapping broke into applause as the girl finished her poem. She leaped from the stage, and ran across the floor toward them. The Mouse saw her take something quickly from one of the men at the bar. She hugged the man at the table with them. Their hands j
oined, and as she ran into the shadow, the Mouse saw the man’s hand fall on the table, the knuckles high with something underneath. Lorq placed his hand over the man’s, completely masking them.
“Three pounds,” the man said, “@sg.”
With his other hand Lorq put three bills on the table.
The man pulled his hand away and picked them up.
“Come on, Mouse. We’ve got what we want.” Lorq rose from the table and started across the room.
The Mouse stepped after him. “Hey, Captain. That man didn’t speak the Pleiades way!”
“In a place like this, they always speak your language, no matter what it is. That’s where their business comes from.”
As they reached the door, the man suddenly hailed them once more. He nodded at Lorq. “Just wanted to remind you to come on back when you want some more. So long, beautiful.”
“See you around, ugly.” Lorq pushed the door. In the cool night, he paused at the top of the steps, bent his head over his cupped hands and breathed deeply. “Here you go, Mouse.” He held his hands out. “Have a whiff on me.”
“What am I supposed to do?”
“Take a deep breath, hold it for a while, then let it go.”
As the Mouse leaned down, a shadow fell that was not his own. The Mouse jumped.
“All right. What you got?”
The Mouse looked up at, and Lorq looked down at the patrolman.
Lorq narrowed his eyes and opened his hands.
The patrolman decided to ignore the Mouse and looked at Lorq. “Oh.” He moved his lower lip over his upper teeth. “Something dangerous it could have been. Something illegal, understand?”
Lorq nodded. “It could have been.”
“These places around here, you got to watch out.”
Lorq nodded again.
So did the patrolman. “Say, how about the law swinging out a little, you let?”
The Mouse saw the smile the captain had not yet allowed out on his face. Lorq raised his hands to the patrolman. “Out yourself knock.”
The patrolman bent, sucked a breath, stood. “Thanks,” and he turned into the dark.
The Mouse watched him a moment, shook his head, shrugged, then gave the captain a cynical frown.
He put his hands around Lorq’s, leaned over, emptied his lungs, then filled them. After he held his breath for nearly a minute, he exploded, “Now what’s supposed to happen?”