Fool's Run (v1.1) (7 page)

Jase was watching her on one of the monitor screens in the computer room. Cameras followed her every movement from her cell to the Dark Ring infirmary. She looked alien, he thought. A head taller than Fiori; a spacer, he remembered, bald and thin as an insect, with huge, secret, insect eyes. He watched closely, tense. If anything happened to Fiori, and word got out that Terra Viridian was doing anything but sitting in the Dark Ring waiting to die, it was his ass in the Big Dipper, and he didn’t want a transfer that far. She had stopped once, turned, and had half a dozen rifles aimed at her so quickly he thought she was dead. She had moved fast, without warning. “Terra Viridian Killed On Rampage In Underworld.” But Dr.

Fiori was fast too, breaking in among the guards, talking nonstop. Jase breathed when they moved again: the mad murderer, the babbling, surprisingly courageous doctor, the six guards trained to kill.

His shift was nearly over; he was looking forward to supper and a beer with Sidney Halleck, one bright spot in the day. It had been lousy: Jeri Halpren annoying him before breakfast about some visiting nightclub band, the transfer refusal, Terra Viridian un-buried, like something in an old movie, wandering wraithlike and ominous around the Underworld, a patrol-cruiser malfunction near the moon during a speed-chase. There was another crater in the moon now. Messages had flashed back and forth for hours, from Artemis, from FWGBI: Have the bodies been found? Yes. No. There was nothing left to find. How did it happen?

Whose fault? Who were they? Who is next of kin? Where—Meanwhile, the smallcraft that the cruiser had been pursuing ran out of fuel and was drifting somewhere beyond the backside of the moon, sending erratic and drunken messages for help.

Nils should have caught this one, Jase thought. He’d have appreciated it.

Terra was in the Infirmary Ward. Jase turned away from the screen, relinquishing his responsibility to will them all alive. He rubbed his eyes tiredly and was rewarded, when he dropped his hands, with a vision of Jeri Halpren entering his office.

He made a noise and crossed the hall. Jeri was grinning. We should connect those teeth to a generator, Jase thought wearily. He sat down and let Jeri talk for a few moments, until a salient point struck him.

“You keep saying ‘Sidney Halleck said this,’ and ‘Sidney Halleck suggested that—’ I wouldn’t mind hearing from Mr. Halleck himself what he said.”

Jeri’s smile eased faintly. “Well. You could call him when he gets back home in four days.”

“What?”

“He had to leave this evening. He had some conference to attend tomorrow in Rainforest Sector. I tried to call you before he left,” Jeri added nervously, “but I couldn’t get through to you, and you always chew me out when I walk in on an emergency.” Jase sighed. “He said he was sorry he missed you.”

“So am I.”

“One of his bands is coming to play here.”

Jase scowled at him. “You keep saying that too.”

“With your permission, of course.”

“I don’t care. It’s your program. I just don’t want to even know they’ve been here until they’re gone. Music. Nightclub bands. This is a—”

“There is historical precedent,” Jeri said warily but firmly. “Sidney Halleck said so.”

Jase leaned back in his chair. “Thanks,” he said sourly. Lights flashed at him, responding to his sudden relaxation; he leaned forward again, wondering who—the moon, the lost smallcraft, Earth, Dr. Fiori and Terra, or the unknown—was calling out of crisis, chaos and urgent necessity to deprive him of his beer this time.

“Terra. Can you hear me? Terra.”

She was sitting in a bubble. It was warm, pliant, suspended in shadows above the floor. She lifted a hand, touched it wonderingly. The translucent wall stretched to her touch, then flowed back into shape.

“Terra.”

A young woman in a red jumpsuit was speaking softly into a computer. Terra stared at the red, swaying toward it as if it were a flame. “Project: Guinea Pig. Dr. A. Fiori. Assistants: Reina Barton. Nathaniel Ng. Pietro Ames. Subject: Terra Viridian. Female. Age 28. Prisoner, Dark Ring of the Underworld. Status-sheet follows. Legal permission for use of Underworld prisoner in experimental biocomputer program given by Dr. Grace Czerny, FWGBI, Department of Psychobiology. Family: one sister, whereabouts unknown.”

She looked at the doctor, who was standing beside the bubble. He nodded, smiling.

“Go ahead, Reina. Let’s begin.”

A screen above the console glowed. Colors washed across it, merged to form new colors that swirled together again into different shades. Terra, who had seen no colors outside of her own mind for seven years, watched, her lips parted. She put one hand on her head suddenly, felt a cap on it. But with the fuchsias and blues and golds fusing in front of her, the thin filaments running out of her head seemed unimportant.

“Terra. What do you see?”

“Colors. Novas.”

“Terra.” His voice was slower now, very calm. “I want you to do something very simple for me. All the things I will ask you to do for the next few days will be very simple.”

“Nothing is simple.”

“The beginning is very simple. Will you try?”

She moved her eyes from the screen, looked directly at him. “Override,” she said clearly.

Black lightning leaped through the red sky, struck a patch of the purple sand that melted and ran to meet the incoming tide. The colors on the screen dissolved into static. Someone whistled.

“How did she do that? Dr. Fiori, she called that one—”

“Sh. Terra. Concentrate on the colors. Remember them. Let them come back.”

She thought of them and they returned: colors beautiful enough to drink, to smell, to wear.

“Good, good… Keep concentrating…” His voice faded; the colors danced together, fell apart, swirled into a memory, as sudden and astonishing to her as any of her visions. The greenhouses on the tiny, misshapen moon where she had been born… the warm, damp air, the smell of an alien earth, all the colors that grew out of that Earth as easily as wishes, as freely as dust and ice and magma grew out of all the worlds she knew then…

“Terra. Tell me what you see.”

“A rose,” she whispered.

Where,” the Magician demanded surprisedly, “is that light coming from?”

The members of Nova looked at one another, and then at him. In the midst of the Constellation Club, with its stages flooded with light and its walls, at that hour, glowing a soft amethyst mist, the question seemed absurd. The Nebraskan stroked his pale, drooping mustache and glanced around obligingly. The Scholar, his black face split by a silver lightning bolt, narrowed his eyes incredulously.

“Would you care to elucidate?”

“I don’t see anything,” the Gambler said vaguely. Propped against the stage, he looked as if his long, wraithlike body would collapse into a formless pile if the stage suddenly disappeared.

“Except. You know. The usual.”

“Elucidate,” Quasar said, sampling each syllable as if it were edible. She gave the Magician a sidelong smile, revealing scarlet teeth.

“
Moi
, I will help you elucidate, Magic-Man. Just tell me where.”

“It’s not from our stage,” the Nebraskan said. “What does it look like?”

“What?”

“The light,” the Nebraskan said bewilderedly. “You just said—”

“Oh.” He shook his head slightly, blinking. “I just saw something out of the corner of my eye. Or thought I did. I don’t see it now.”

“I don’t, either,” the Gambler said helpfully.

“Tell me about this thing: to elucidate. Is it legal, or is it subterranean?”

“Underground,” the Scholar murmured. “If that’s the word you’re looking for.”

Quasar waved fingernails that matched the hues of her short, rainbow hair. “
La même chose —it’s the same. Underground, subterranean—”

“One has political connotations, the other is from an ancient, pre-FWG language called Latin. Sub: under. Terra: earth. Under-earth, underground—”

“Can we get down to business?” the Magician pleaded, “before the break is—”

“Anyway, the opposite of legal is not subterranean, but—”

“Underworld,” the Gambler suggested. The Magician folded his arms and raised his voice.

“Which is why I called this meeting, if anyone happens to remember that this is a meeting.”

“Well, what?” the Scholar asked affably. “We’re here, we’re listening. Sidney give us a raise?”

“Sidney’s giving us an off-world tour, beginning at the Underworld.”

They were silent, staring at him again, their vivid, painted faces still as masks hanging in the air around him. Then the Nebraskan grinned, and the Gambler made a sudden move to keep himself from sliding onto the floor.

“The Underworld,” the Scholar breathed. “Magic-Man—”

“We’ll play one night there, then go on to the moon, to Rimrock and Moonshadow, then to Helios—”

“The sun?” the Gambler asked bewilderedly.

“The space-city.”

“Hot damn,” the Nebraskan said. Quasar, expressionless, lit a cigarette and blew smoke in a jet stream over the Magician’s head.

“Prison,” she said brittlely. She added something succinct and untranslatable in old-world.

“Magic-Man—”

“It’s just one concert,” he said again, quickly, watching her hand shake as she drew on the cigarette. “We’ll only be there overnight.”

“But what do they want with music in the Underworld?” the Scholar asked amazedly.

“Especially ours?”

“They’re starting a new Rehab program.” He smiled dryly. “They’re trying to bring more noise into the Underworld. Sidney recommended us. The Suncoast Agency is setting up the rest of the tour for us.” He nodded at the Scholar’s whistle. “It’s too good to turn down. If we can get some publicity, maybe we can return to a full Sector tour.”

The Gambler had come to life, standing almost straight. He looked horrified. “Fly?”

The Magician closed his eyes and opened them. “That’s the general idea.”

“Space?”

“It’s ubiquitous,” the Scholar said gravely.

“No.”

“No what?”

“No way. Magic-Man, I can’t. I don’t have any balance.”

“I’m not asking you to walk a tightrope to the Underworld. What do you mean you can’t?
You’re going. Going without you is not among the options.”

“Here.” The Gambler tapped at his ear. “I don’t have any balance here. I get sick. Throw up. Even in tall buildings. Everywhere.”

The Magician gazed at him remotely, as if he had just dropped a pint of beer into the piano.

“There are cures for that,” he said distinctly.

“I can’t—”

“You can’t back out on me now, is what you can’t do. You’ve been playing my music for five years. It might be the only thing inside whatever it is you call a brain, but you know it like you know air, and if you think Nova is going on an off-world tour with some cuber off the streets we’ve rehearsed with for three weeks, you are thinking with your head up your backside. You’re going, and that’s all—”

“I can’t.” He swayed back from the Magician’s wrath, his pale, gangly arms draped along the stage. Only his shoulders, wide and straight from cubing, suggested any muscle beneath his bodysuit. “I don’t even fly a sol-car. Magic-Man, I have to stay on the ground. I don’t like air under me. At all. Ever. Me”—he put a palm to his lips and then to the floor at his feet—“Earth. We like each other. There’s nothing I can do. I knew you would get famous on me someday.”

“What?”

“I left my last band because of that. They started to do tours. Fly. I knew it would happen to Nova.” He sighed. “The best bands are always leaving me.” He added, his fingers gripping the stage as if he might float away, “I’m sorry.”

The Magician regarded him expressionlessly a moment longer. He turned his gaze to the Scholar. “How’s your balance?” he asked with dangerous calm.

“Fine,” the Scholar said hastily. “Me.” He kissed the air. “Space. I’m with you, Magic-Man.”

The Magician looked at Quasar, who was puffing rapidly. “We can’t go without the Gambler,” she said nonchalantly, but she didn’t meet his eyes.

“We’re going.”

“But—”

“The Gambler will either go with us or find a replacement. As good as he is.”

“As good?” the Gambler said doubtfully. The Magician withdrew his eyes from Quasar long enough to glare.

“And you’ll find one fast.” He turned back to Quasar, all his attention focused on her, for while her delicately raised eyebrows suggested indifference, her eyes were dark, expressionless, and the movements of her cigarette too abrupt. She would not put her reluctance into words, and yet it was there between them, tangible as the haze of smoke around her.

“It’s the prisoners we’ll play to,” he said, for she objected to authority instinctively and without compunction. “The Light-Ringers. Not the patrollers.” And then he saw it: her edgy, nervous movements confined in too small a space, her eyes straining to see through an artificial
darkness.

He drew breath noiselessly; she looked at him then, smiling a little, wicked smile at her own terror.

“If you want this, Magic-Man,” she said, casting caution back to him. He made no move to intercept it.

“I want it,” he said. He also wanted to take her hand, kiss her cheek in gratitude. He didn’t move, but in some strange way the air around him transmitted his impulse: she looked surprised, the smile suddenly young.

“Good!” the Nebraskan said, oblivious to obstacles. “When are we leaving?”

“Three—less than three weeks.”

“You taking the Flying Wail?”

“Of course.”

“Does it still fly?” the Scholar asked.

“Of course it flies,” the Magician said indignantly. “It merely has a small problem communicating.”

“How big a small problem?”

“I’ll fix it.”

“Last time you had a small problem, the refrigeration system broke down, and we spent two weeks touring with no cold beer.”