“Don’t worry about it,” Lorq said. “It is.”
They started back along the ledge past the blue windows.
The Mouse looked at the river of bright rock. “You know,” he said after a while, “I wish I had my syrynx. I want to play.” They had almost reached the steps with the open cafes under the lights. There was the tinkling of amplified music. Someone at a table dropped a glass that broke on the stone, and the sound disappeared under an onslaught of applause. The Mouse looked at his hands. “This stuff makes my fingers itchy.” They started up the steps. “When I was a kid back on Earth, in Athens, there was a street like this. Odos Mnisicleous—it ran right up through the Plaka. I worked at a couple of places in the Plaka, you know? The Golden Prison, the ‘O kai ‘H. And you climb the stairs up from Adrianou, and way above is the back porch of the Erechtheum in a spotlight over the Acropolis wall at the top of the hill. And people at the tables on the sides of the street, they break their plates, see, and laugh. You ever been in the Plaka in Athens, Captain?”
“Once, a long time ago,” Lorq said. “I was just about your age now. It was only for an evening though.”
“Then you don’t know the little neighborhood above it. Not if you were just there for one evening.” The Mouse’s hoarse whisper gained momentum. “You keep going up that street of stone steps till all the nightclubs give out and there’s nothing but dirt and grass and gravel, but you keep going, with the ruins still poking over that wall. Then you come to this place called Anaphiotika. That means ‘Little Anaphi,’ see? Anaphi was an island that was almost destroyed by an earthquake, a long time ago. And they got little stone houses, right in the side of the mountain, and streets eighteen inches wide with steps so steep it’s like climbing a ladder. I knew a guy who had a house there. And after I got finished work, I’d get some girls. And some wine. Even when I was a kid, I could get girls—” The Mouse snapped his fingers. “You climb up to his roof by a rusty spiral stair outside the front door, chase the cats off. Then we’d play and drink wine and watch the city spread all down the mountain like a carpet of lights, and then up the other mountain with the little monastery like a splinter of bone at the top. Once we played too loud and the old lady in the house above us threw a pitcher at us. But we laughed at her and yelled back and made her get up and come down for a glass of wine. And already the sky was getting gray behind the mountains, behind the monastery. I liked that, Captain. And I like this too. I can play much better than I could back then. That’s because I play a lot. I want to play the things I can see around me. But there’s so much around me I can see that you can’t. And I have to play that too. Just because you can’t touch it, doesn’t mean you can’t smell and see and hear it. I walk down one world and up another, and I like what I see in all of them. You know the curve of your hand in the hand of someone more important to you than anybody? That’s the spirals of the galaxy locked in one another. You know the curve of your hand when the other hand is gone and you’re trying to remember how it felt? There is no other curve like that. I want to play them against each other. Katin says I’m scared. I am, Captain. Of everything around me. So whatever I see, I press against my eyeballs, stick my fingers and tongue in it. I like today; that means I have to live scared. Because today is scary. But at least I’m not afraid of being frightened. Katin, he’s all mixed up with the past. Sure, the past is what makes now like now makes tomorrow. Captain, there’s a river crashing by us. But we can only go down to drink one place, and it’s called ‘now.’ I play my syrynx, see, and it’s like an invitation for everybody to come down and drink. When I play I want everybody to applaud. ’Cause when I play I’m up there, see, with the tightrope walkers, balancing on that blazing rim of crazy where my mind still works. I dance in the fire. When I play, I lead all the other dancers where you, and you”—the Mouse pointed at people passing—“and him and her, can’t get without my help. Captain, back three years ago, when I was fifteen in Athens, I remember one morning up on that roof. I was leaning on the frame of the grape arbor with shiny grape leaves on my cheek and the lights of the city going out under the dawn, and the dancing had stopped, and two of the girls were making out in a red blanket back under the iron table. And suddenly I asked myself, ‘What am I doing here?’ Then I asked it again: ‘What am I doing here?’ Then it got like a tune caught in my head, playing through again and again. I was scared, Captain. I was excited and happy and scared to death, and I bet I was grinning wide as I’m grinning now. That’s how I run, Captain. I haven’t got the voice to sing or shout it. But I play my harp, don’t I? And what am I doing now, Captain? Climbing another street of stone steps worlds away, dawn then, night now, happy and scared as the devil. What am I doing here? Yeah! What am I doing—?”
“You’re rapping, Mouse.” Lorq let go of the post at the top of the steps. “Let’s get back to Taafite.”
“Oh, yeah. Sure, Captain.” The Mouse suddenly looked into the ruined face. The captain looked down at him. Deep among the broken lines and lights, the Mouse saw humor and compassion. He laughed. “I wish I had my syrynx now. I’d play your eyes out of your head. I’d turn your nose inside out from both nostrils, and you’d be twice as ugly as you are now, Captain!” Then he looked across the street: at once wet pavement and people and lights and reflections kaleidoscoped behind amazing tears. “I wish I had my syrynx,” the Mouse whispered again, “had it with me … now.”
They headed back to the monorail station.
“Eating, sleeping, current wages: how would I explain the present concept of these three to somebody from, say, the twenty-third century?”
Katin sat at the edge of the party watching the dancers, himself among them, laughing before Gold. Now and then he bent over his recorder.
“The way we handle these processes would be totally beyond the comprehension of someone from seven hundred years ago, even though he understood intravenous feeding and nutrition concentrates. Still he would have nowhere near the informational equipment to understand how everyone in this society, except the very, very rich, or the very, very poor take their daily nourishment. Half the process would seem completely incomprehensible—the other half, disgusting. Odd that drinking has remained the same. At the same period of time these changes took place—bless Ashton Clark—the novel more or less died. I wonder if there’s a connection. Since I have chosen this archaic art form, must I consider my audience the people who will read it tomorrow, or should I address it to yesterday? Past or future, if I left those elements out of the narrative, it might serve to give the work more momentum.”
The sensory recorder had been left on to record and rerecord so that the room was crowded with multiple dancers and the ghosts of dancers. Idas played a counterpoint of sounds and images on the Mouse’s syrynx. Conversations, real and recorded, filled the room.
“Though all these dance around me now, I make my art for a mythological audience of one. Under what other circumstances can I hope to communicate?”
Tyÿ stepped from among Tyÿs and Sebastians. “Katin, the door-light flashing is.”
Katin flipped off his recorder. “The Mouse and Captain must be back. Don’t bother, Tyÿ. I’ll let them in.” Katin stepped out of the room and hurried down the hall.
“Hey, Captain—” Katin swung the door back—“the party’s going—” He dropped his hand from the knob. His heart pounded twice in his throat, then might as well have stopped. He stepped back from the door.
“I gather you recognize myself and my sister …? I won’t bother with introductions, then. May we come in?”
Katin’s mouth started working toward some word.
“We know he’s not here. We’ll wait.”
The iron gate with its chunk-glass ornamentation closed on a scarf of steam. Lorq looked about the plants in silhouette against Taafite’s amber.
“Hope they still have a party going,” the Mouse said. “To go all this way and find them curled up in the corner asleep!”
“Bliss’ll wake th
em up.” As Lorq mounted the rocks, he took his hands from his pockets. A breeze pushed beneath the flaps of his vest, cooled the spaces between his fingers. He palmed the circle of the doorplate. The door swung in. Lorq stepped inside. “Doesn’t sound like they’ve passed out.”
The Mouse grinned and hopped toward the living room.
The party had been recorded, rerecorded, and rerecorded again. Multiple melodies flailed a dozen dancing Tyÿs to different rhythms. Twins before were duodecuplets now. Sebastian, Sebastian, and Sebastian, at various stages of inebriation, poured drinks of red, blue, green.
Lorq stepped in behind the Mouse. “Lynceos, Idas! We got your—I can’t tell which is which. Quiet a minute!” He slapped at the wall switch of the sensory recorder—
From the edge of the sand-pool the twins looked up; white hands fell apart; black came together.
Tyÿ sat at Sebastian’s feet, hugging her knees: gray eyes flashed under beating lids.
Katin’s Adam’s apple bounded in his long neck.
And Prince and Ruby turned from contemplating Gold. “We seem to have put a damper on the gathering. Ruby suggested they just go on and forget us, but …” He shrugged. “I’m glad we meet here. Yorgy was reluctant to tell me where you were. He’s a good friend to you. But not so good as I am an enemy.” The black vinyl vest hung loose on his bone-white chest. Ridged ribs scored it sharply. Black pants, black boots. Around his upper arm at the top of his black glove: white fur.
A hand slapped Lorq’s sternum, slapped it again, again. The hand was inside. “You’ve threatened me a great deal, and interestingly. How are you going to carry it out?” Bearing Lorq’s fear was a net of exaltation.
As Prince stepped forward, a wing of Sebastian’s pet brushed his calf. “Please …” Prince glanced down at the creature. At the sand-pool he stopped, stooped between the twins, scooped his false hand into the sand, and made a fist. “Ahhhh …” His breath, even with parted lips, hissed. He stood now, opened his fingers.
Dull glass fell smoking to the rug. Idas pulled his feet back sharply. Lynceos just blinked faster.
“How does that answer my question?”
“Consider it a demonstration of my love of strength and beauty. Do you see?” He kicked the shards of hot glass across the rug. “Bah! Too many impurities to rival Murano. I came here—”
“To kill me?”
“To reason.”
“What did you bring beside reasons?”
“My right hand. I know you have no weapons. I trust my own. We are both playing this one by ear, Lorq. Ashton Clark has set the rules.”
“Prince, what are you trying to do?”
“Keep things as they are.”
“Stasis is death.”
“But less destructive than your insane movements.”
“I am a pirate, remember?”
“You’re fast on your way to becoming the greatest criminal of the millennium.”
“Are you about to tell me something I don’t know?”
“I sincerely hope not. For our sake here, for the sake of worlds around us …” Then Prince laughed. “By every logical extension of argument, Lorq, I’m right as far as this battle goes. Has that occurred to you?”
Lorq narrowed his eyes.
“I know you want Illyrion,” Prince continued. “The only reason you want it is to upset the balance of power; otherwise, it wouldn’t be worth it to you. Do you know what will happen?”
Lorq set his mouth. “I’ll tell you: it will ruin the economy of the Outer Colonies. There will be a whole wave of workers to relocate. They’ll swarm in. The empire will come as close to war as it’s been since the suppression of Vega. When a company like Red-shift Limited reaches stasis in this culture, that’s tantamount to destruction. That should kill as much work for as many people in Draco as the destruction of my companies would mean in the Pleiades. Does that begin your argument well?”
“Lorq, you are incorrigible!”
“Are you relieved that I’ve thought it through?”
“I’m appalled.”
“Here’s another argument you can use, Prince: you’re fighting not only for Draco, but for the economic stability of the Outer Colonies as well. If I win, a third of the galaxy moves forward and two-thirds fall behind. If you win, two-thirds of the galaxy maintains its present standards and one-third falls.”
Prince nodded. “Now, demolish me with your logic.”
“I must survive.”
Prince waited. He frowned. The frown parted with puzzled laughter. “That’s all you can say?”
“Why should I bother to tell you that the workers can be relocated in spite of the difficulty? That there will be no war because there are enough worlds and food for them—if it is properly distributed, Prince? And that the increase in Illyrion will create enough new projects to absorb these people?”
Prince’s black brows arched. “That much Illyrion?”
Lorq nodded. “That much.”
By the great window, Ruby picked up the ugly lumps of glass. She examined them, seeming unconscious of the conversation. But Prince held out his hand. Immediately, she placed them on his palm. She was following their words closely.
“I wonder,” Prince said, looking at the fragments, “if this will work.” His fingers closed. “Do you insist on reopening this feud between us?”
“You’re a fool, Prince. The forces that have pried up the old hostilities were moving about us when we were children. Why pretend here that these parameters mark our field?”
Prince’s fist began to quiver. His hand opened. Bright crystals were shot with internal blue light. “Heptodyne quartz. Are you familiar with it? Mild pressure on impure glass will often produce—I say ‘mild.’ That’s a geologically relative term, of course.”
“You’re threatening me again. Go away—now. Or you’ll have to kill me.”
“You don’t want me to go. We’re trying to maneuver a single combat here to decide which worlds fall where.” Prince hefted the crystals. “I could put one of these quite accurately through your skull.” He turned his hand over; again shards fell on the floor. “I’m not a fool, Lorq. I’m a juggler. I want to keep all our worlds spinning about my ears.” He bowed and stepped back. Again his foot brushed the beast.
Sebastian’s pet yanked at its chain. Sails cracked the air, jerked its master’s arm back and forth—
“Down! Down, now you go …!”
—the chain pulled from Sebastian’s hand. It rose, swept back and forth beneath the ceiling. Then it dove at Ruby.
She whirled her arms around her head. Prince dodged at her, ducked beneath the wings. His gloved hand struck up.
It squealed, flapped back. Prince whipped his hand again at the black body. It shook in the air, collapsed.
Tyÿ cried out, ran to the beast, which flapped weakly on its back, and pulled it away. Sebastian rose from his stool with knotted fists. Then he dropped to his knees to minister to his injured pet.
Prince turned his black hand over. Wet purple blotched the nap. “That was the creature that attacked you on the Esclaros, wasn’t it?”
Ruby stood up, still silent, and pushed dark hair from her shoulder. Her dress was white, rimmed at hem, collar, and sleeve with black. She touched her satin bodice where bangles of blood had dropped.
Prince regarded the mewing thing between Tyÿ and Sebastian. “That almost settles the score, Ruby.” He rubbed his hands—flesh and bloody black—and frowned at his smeared fingers. “Lorq, you asked me a question: When am I going to make good my threats? Some time within the next six minutes. But we have a sun to settle between us. Those rumors you mentioned to Ruby have reached us. The protective gauze the Great White Bitch of the North, your Aunt Cyana, drapes about herself, is most effective. It fell the moment you left her office. But we’ve listened at other keyholes; and we heard news of a sun about to go nova. It, or suns like it, have apparently been the center of your interest for some time.” His blue eyes rose from his staine
d palm. “Illyrion. I don’t see the connection. No matter. Aaron’s men are working on it.”
Tension rode like pain between Lorq’s hips and in the small of his back. “You are preparing for something. Go on. Do it.”
“I must figure out how. With my bare hand, I think … no.” His brows arched. He held up his dark fist. “No, this one. I respect your attempt to justify yourself to me. But how do you justify yourself to them?” With bloody fingers he gestured at the crew.
“Ashton Clark would side with you, Prince. So would justice. I’m not here because I willed a situation. I’m only struggling to solve it. The reason I must fight you is that I think I can win. There’s only that one. You’re for stasis. I’m for movement. Things move. There’s no ethic there.” Lorq looked at the twins. “Lynceos? Idas?”
The black face looked up; the white, down.
“Do you know what you risk in this contest?”
One looking at him, one looking away, they nodded.
“Do you want to sign off the Roc?”
“No, Captain, we—”
“—I mean, even if it all—”
“—all changes, on Tubman—”
“—in the Outer Colonies, maybe—”
“—maybe Tobias will leave there—”
“—and join us here.”
Lorq laughed. “I think Prince would take you with him—if you wanted.”
“Tarred and feathered,” Prince said. “Etiolated and denigrated. You’ve lived out your own myths. Damn you, Lorq.”
Ruby stepped forward. “You!” she said to the twins. Both looked at her. “Do you really know what happens if you help Captain Von Ray and he succeeds?”
“He may win—” Lynceos finally looked away, silver lashes quivering.
Idas moved closer to shield his brother. “—or he may not.”
“What do they say about our cultural solidarity?” from Lorq. “It’s not the world you thought it was, Prince.”
Ruby turned sharply. “Does the evidence say it’s yours?” Without waiting for answer, she turned to Gold. “Look at it, Lorq.”