Light Shaper (34 page)

Rigel grinned sadly and lifted up his hands so the braces would be clearly visible. “I have a problem in both my wrists. Something having to do with the tendons and overuse, so I can’t do very much with my hands anymore. Even holding a paintbrush is hard after a while. Not ideal when you’ve chosen to become a painter.”

“I’m so sorry,” she said, and placed one of her hands lightly on top of his. “It must’ve been very hard.”

“A little, at the beginning,” Rigel admitted. “Now I’ve mostly gotten used to it. Well, almost all of the time. There’s still a few moments when I get really angry. Like when I grab a glass of water and my grip starts shaking so badly that I have to use both hands in order to drink without spilling water all over myself. Those little things. They can be pretty humiliating.”

Zoe’s hand was still touching his, and she was nodding sadly.

What’s the matter with me?
Rigel thought, surprised at his sudden confession, pouring out his thoughts in front of a complete stranger. It was worse than doing it with a therapist, something Rigel had always avoided because he could not accept that he was not in control of his own mind. And now here he was, complaining about his problem for all he was worth, and worst of all, he was doing it in front of Steve.

Rigel snatched his hand away from her grasp, resolving to keep his mouth shut from now on. He did not want them to think he was weak and whiny.

Thankfully, Steve chose that moment to clear his throat loudly.

“I’m also here, you know,” he said. “Even if I don’t know anything about art.”

“Stevie, don’t get jealous!” Zoe said teasingly. Rigel cringed again at her familiar tone. “I just wanted to get to know your friend. You know how it is in here. We live right next to the city people, but they almost never visit, and we never go there. Two different worlds. I’ve been here all my life. Not all of us can leave this place for good like you did.”

Steve choked a little on the coffee he had been drinking. Rigel looked at him curiously.

“You lived here?” he asked Steve.

“Um….”

“That’s how I met him,” Zoe intervened, dragging her chair so she would be sitting a little bit closer to Steve. “We were both teenagers, stupid and terrified. It may not look like it from what you’ve seen, Rigel, but life in the slums is hard. I’ve got a steady job in here, but I’m one of the lucky ones. The Corporation pays me directly. It’s not much, but I also get some things for free in the Market, or a discount, or maybe a hint of when the next airship is docking. My life is relatively easy now. But if you don’t know anybody in here and you want to survive….”

“You do what you have to,” Steve finished for her, fingering the melted key around his neck. Zoe nodded, her eyes suddenly far away.

“I had no idea,” Rigel said.

“It’s okay,” Zoe told him gently. “I was luckier than most because I had Stevie. He helped out many times. He helped a bunch of us, really. We were a small gang, and he was the oldest. When he could, he made sure everybody at least had something to eat. He was always the best of us. I knew he would make it out of here, make a life for himself in the city. And he did.”

She smiled fondly at Steve and gave him such a look of adoration Rigel looked away, feeling as if he was intruding on something private. He looked back just in time to catch Zoe giving Steve a kiss that might have been intended for his mouth but landed on his cheek instead. Steve, incredibly, was blushing.

“Well, it’s been great meeting you,” Rigel said abruptly. “I’m still a bit tired, and we got to wait here until we get the message from Streaker, so I guess I’ll go and rest in my room.”

“Bye, Rigel!” Zoe said happily, already resting her hand on Steve’s shoulder. “I’ll let you know when lunch is ready!”

Steve didn’t say anything to him. Rigel thought he was probably too busy already.

He went downstairs quickly, almost knocking aside a surprised housekeeper who was just closing the door to his room. Rigel apologized and shut himself inside once again, lying down on the bed without even kicking off his shoes.

He knew he was probably behaving very stupidly. After all, he had never even considered Steve’s past. Rigel had vaguely assumed that Steve had always been a security guard of one kind or another, just an average dude working in the city. A loner for most of his life. That was an idiotic fantasy he had created in his mind somehow, of course. It really shouldn’t bother him that Steve knew other people who were obviously extremely friendly toward him. If anything, his admiration for the man should only grow now that Rigel knew Steve had started at the very bottom, a penniless teenager trying to survive in the slums. Rigel tried to imagine what it would have been like, but he really couldn’t. His own childhood and adolescence had been fairly comfortable, and he was still trying to come to grips with this cutthroat subculture of need and poverty.

In a way, Zoe’s revelation explained a lot about why Steve was such a tough guy. Rigel supposed that compared to having to fight for your food every day, running from a couple of assassins sent by an evil millionaire was not that big of a deal. Steve had always reacted calmly, thinking ahead. And then Rigel thought back on his own reactions during the chase, his near-constant panic and the way he had been—and still was—trying to make sense of the new, ruthless reality he was trapped in because of Atlas’s machinations. He imagined that to Steve he must have appeared like a pampered city boy, terrified of anything that was not his predictable and comfortable routine.

Rigel wondered why Steve even bothered to stick around with him. The problem was not his, and Atlas had not given him a mission and ruined his life in the process. Now that he had found Zoe, who was not only indebted to him but who obviously liked him, Steve could very well make use of his contacts down here and disappear for a while until he could take an airship out of Aurora like he had said. Yes. That was probably what would happen. Rigel couldn’t even blame him if that’s what he did. Steve had already helped him a lot, more than any gratitude for saving him from that fire could justify. Rigel would have to go alone out on the desert once Streaker got him a vehicle to face whatever was sleeping in that old military compound.

Rigel took off his shoes and reached about for the TV remote until he found it. He turned the set on, volume nearly all the way up. He did not want to hear any more bits of excited conversation from the room next door.

Over the next couple of days, Rigel kept mostly to himself. He woke up very late each morning so he could eat breakfast once Zoe’s shift had ended and another girl took over for her at reception. The tiny hotel did not have a gym or a game room or any of the amenities Rigel was used to seeing in the places he had stayed before, but it did have a big room with some large screens and comfortable chairs that was probably used for meetings. Steve and Zoe liked to talk in there when they were not walking outside or doing whatever, so the few times Rigel passed by the room while the two of them were inside, he quickly kept going. He ignored the way Steve tried to catch his eye at those times. Rigel did not want to hover over the pair like a third wheel, and so he switched his dinnertime as well so it did not coincide with theirs. The few times Rigel wandered outside, he made sure to go out when it was full daylight even though the heat was almost unbearable. That way he could be sure he would not run into anyone since the streets were mostly deserted. It also helped alleviate the horrible boredom that was now bordering on claustrophobia, being stuck inside his room underground with no windows for days on end.

He did run into Steve one evening, though. Steve was having dinner by himself in the hotel restaurant when Rigel came in. He tried to turn away, but Steve had already seen him.

“Hey, Rigel.”

“Hey.”

“Wanna join me?”

Rigel wasn’t sure he should, but Zoe was nowhere in sight, and he was hungry. Besides, Steve looked amazing in a T-shirt with the sleeves torn off. Rigel guessed he had been working out recently, since every muscle in his arms was clearly outlined against his flawless skin.

“Sure, why not?” he said, trying to sound as casual as possible.

He walked over to the table and grabbed a seat next to Steve. There were mashed potatoes and what looked like grilled chicken breasts piled on a plate. Rigel grabbed some of each and poured himself some water. With Steve that close, though, he suddenly didn’t feel as hungry.

“Haven’t seen you around much,” Steve commented, skewering one of the chicken breasts with his fork.

“Yeah, I guess,” Rigel answered. He poked his mashed potatoes.

“It’s just weird, since we are both stuck here and all.”

“I suppose.”

“You must be really bored. I know I am.”

“Right.”

Steve sighed and gave up on starting a conversation. Rigel ate a little. A few minutes later, however, he realized he was too uncomfortable. The silence was really awkward.

“Guess I’ll see you around,” Rigel said, standing up and abandoning his meal.

Steve looked a bit disappointed. “Yeah. I guess.”

Rigel fled back to his room. He closed the door and took a few minutes to calm down. He wanted to stop obsessing over Steve, but he couldn’t get himself to do it. It would be easier if the other man weren’t so damn nice.

He needed to do something to distract his mind, so Rigel dragged a chair to sit by the dilapidated terminal that was bolted to the wall in the corner of his room, logged on to his cloud drive, and started browsing idly through old file folders. Most of the stuff was pictures from the university, a couple of videos he had shot on a trip with some friends when they had spent the night out in the desert, and even a folder with some really old e-mails from Rigel’s first boyfriend. He skimmed through most of it, wondering what the guy in all the pictures would have thought if he could see Rigel as he was now, and the situation he was in. None of the folders were particularly interesting until he stumbled across one labeled Projects. He opened it and was surprised to see most of his design projects from art school. There were assignments, group work, and a few of the more professional concepts he had developed to be part of his portfolio.

Rigel opened each one and spent a long time looking at his character designs, at the evolution of his art skills, and his later experimentation with mixed digital media. At first most of his work had been forgettable—Rigel had always been good at drawing ever since he was a kid, but he had never really challenged himself until he had started at the university and decided to become an artist for real. There, he had met people who were just as talented as he and even more so. It had motivated him to try new things and come up with ideas that were all his own. In his last couple of semesters, right before he had started having problems with his hands, the few things he had created showed promise. But then he had gotten worse, and he’d had to give it up.

“They are beautiful,” Steve said behind him.

Rigel jumped, startled, kicked his chair back, and nearly fell down when he tripped himself with one of the legs of the terminal desk.

“What the hell?” he exclaimed.

“Sorry, the door wasn’t locked. Didn’t mean to scare you.”

Rigel turned around and saw that Steve was standing just inside the open doorway, one of his hands still resting on the door handle. He looked apologetic.

“I just wanted to see if you wanted to check out this bar I know nearby. Sorry again. Didn’t mean to intrude.”

“It’s okay,” Rigel heard himself say. Normally he would have been furious that somebody had come into his room like that, but this time it was the furthest thing from his mind.

Steve nodded jerkily, and his gaze strayed over to the computer monitor. “Are those your designs? The art you used to do?”

“Um, yeah.”

“That one right there. It’s amazing.”

Rigel looked back at his screen. It was showing a painting he had done several months ago, a view of Aurora as seen from the Skytrain. However, instead of the usual arid desert environment, Rigel had decided to paint Aurora as it would look if it were a city in the middle of a lush tropical rainforest. Towering trees were interspersed among the familiar skyline. The sky overhead was not cloudless and glaringly blue as usual but covered by heavy gray clouds that looked about to burst into torrential rain. The line of the Skytrain itself was overhung by thick green vines that grew in wild tangles among the steel and glass. A couple of exotic birds could be seen flying out in the distance.

“There’s a lot going on in there,” Steve said, walking boldly into the room until he was standing right behind Rigel’s chair. “I like it. I would like to live in a place like that. It’s what could be, right? Like an alternate reality of some kind for this city, if the desert weren’t here.”

“Yes,” Rigel answered, pleasantly surprised. “That’s why I painted this, I think. I wanted to see what it would be like if things were different.”

Steve nodded thoughtfully. “It works. The city would be… beautiful.”

“Thanks.”

“You’re really talented, you know? Not just this piece. I was standing there for a while, and I saw a lot of the others. Bet you would have been a great artist.”

“Thanks,” Rigel repeated.

“Is the problem in your hands really that bad? Bad enough that you can’t create things like this anymore?”

“Yes. That bad.”

Rigel looked away from Steve so he wouldn’t see the upwelling of bitterness that must have been reflected in his eyes. He’d had all his hopes set on becoming a professional artist. He had even made some contacts, planned out exhibits to showcase his work, and started to become known in the artistic world. He had started to create his definitive portfolio when he had been forced to give it up. The effort of years went down the drain because his body couldn’t keep up with his mind. It had felt like a betrayal, like a cruel irony. He’d had fate first instill in him the desire to create things with his hands, to have the gift of doing so even, only for it to be taken away just as he had learned it was the thing he liked to do most in the world.