Nova (16 page)

"I know." He ran his fingers along the strap of his sack, "The cards were already talking about me coming between Captain and his sun; and I'd just pinched the card from the deck." The Mouse shook his head.

Katin held the card out. "Why don't you give it back? While you're at it, you might apologize for kicking up that fuss."

The Mouse looked down for half a minute. Then he stood, took the card, and started up the hall.

Katin watched him turn the corner. Then he crossed his arms and dropped his head to think. And his mind drifted to the pale dusts of remembered moons.

Katin mulled in the quiet hall; finally he closed his eyes. Something tugged at his hip.

He opened them. "Hey— "

Lynceos (with Idas a shadow at his shoulder) had come up to him and pulled the recorder out of his pocket by the chain. He had held up the jeweled box. "What's this— "

"— thing do?" Idas finished.

"You mind giving that back?" The foundations for Katin's annoyance were laid at their interruption of his thoughts. It was built on their presumption.

"We saw you fooling with it back at the port." Idas took it from his brother's white fingers— "Look— " Katin began.

— and handed it back to Katin. "Thanks!" He started to put it back into his pocket. "Show us how it works— "

"— and what you use it for?"

Katin paused, then turned the recorder in his hand. "It's just a matrix recorder where I can dictate notes and file them. I'm using it to write a novel."

Idas said, "Hey, I know what that— "

"— me too. Why do you want to— "

"— have to make one of— "

"— why don't you just make a psychorama— "

"— is so much easier. Are we— "

"— in it?"

Katin found himself starting to say four things. Then he laughed. "Look, you glorified salt and pepper shakers, I can't think like that!" He pondered a moment. "I don't know why I want to write one. I'm sure it would be easier to make a psychorama if I had the equipment, the money, and the connections in a psychorama studio. But that's not what I want. And I have no idea whether you'll be 'in it' or not. I haven't begun to think about the subject. I'm still making notes on the form." They frowned. "On structure, the aesthetics of the whole business. You can't just sit down and write, you know. You have to think. The novel was an art form. I have to invent it all over again before I can write one. The one I want to write, anyway."

"Oh," Lynceos said.

"You sure you know what a novel— "

"— of course I do. Did you experience War— "

"— and Peace. Yeah. But that was a psychorama— "

"— with Che-ong as Natasha. But it was— "

"— taken from a novel? That's right, I— "

"— you remember now?"

"Um-hm," Idas nodded darkly behind his brother. "Only"— He was talking to Katin now— "how come you don't know what you want to write about?"

Katin shrugged.

"Then maybe you'll write something about us if you don't know yet what— "

"— can we sue him if he says something that isn't— "

"Hey," Katin interrupted. "I have to find a subject that can support a novel. I told you, I can't tell you if you're going to be in it or— "

"— what sort of things you got in there anyway?" Ides was saying around Lynceos' shoulder.

"Huh? Like I said, notes. For the book."

"Let's hear."

"Look, you guys don't ..." Then he shrugged. He dialed the ruby pivots on the recorder's top, then flicked it to seven. Bear in mind that the novel— no matter how intimate, psychological, or subjective— is always a historical projection of its own time." The voice played too high, and too fast. But it facilitated review. "To make my book, I must have an awareness of my time's conception of history."

Idas' hand was a black epaulet on his brother's shoulder. With eyes of bark and coral, they frowned, flexed their attention.

"History? Thirty-five hundred years ago Herodotus and Thucydides invented it. They defined it as the study of whatever had happened during their own lives. And for the next thousand years it was nothing else. Fifteen hundred years after the Greeks, in Constantinople, Anna Comnena, in her legalistic brilliance (and in essentially the same language as Herodotus) wrote history as the study of those events of man's actions that had been documented. I doubt if this charming Byzantine believed things only happened when they were written about. But incidents unchronicled were simply not considered the province of history in Byzantium. The whole concept had transformed. In another thousand years we had reached that century which began with the first global conflict and ended with the first conflict between globes brewing. Somehow the theory had arisen that history was a series of cyclic rises and falls as one civilization overtook another. Events that did not fit on the cycle were defined as historically unimportant. It's difficult for us today to appreciate the differences between Spengler and Toynbee, though from all accounts their approaches were considered polar in their day. To us they seem merely to be quibbling over when or where a given cycle began. Now that another thousand years has passed, we must wrestle with De Biling and Broblin, 34-Alvin and the Crespburg Survey. Simply because they are contemporary, I know they must inhabit the same historic view. But how many dawns did I see flickering beyond the docks of the Charles while I stalked and pondered whether I held with Saunder's theory of Integral Historical Convection or was I still with Broblin after all. Yet I have enough— prospective to know that in another thousand years these differences will seem as minute as the controversy of two medieval theologians disputing whether twelve or twenty-four angels can dance on the head of a pin.

"Note to myself number five thousand three hundred and eight. Never loose the pattern of stripped sycamores against vermilion— "

Katin flicked off the recorder.

"Oh," Lynceos said. "That was sort of odd— "

"— interesting," Idas said. "Did you ever figure it out— "

"— he means about the history— "

"— about our time's historical concept?"

"Well, actually, I did. It's quite an interesting theory, really. If you just— "

"I imagine it must be very complicated," Idas said. "I mean— "

"— for people living now to grasp— "

"Surprisingly enough, it isn't." (Katin) "All you have to do is realize how we regard—"

"— Maybe for people who live later— "

"— it won't be so difficult— "

"Really. Haven't you noticed," (Again Katin) "how the whole social matrix is looked at as though it— "

"We don't know much about history." Lynceos scratched his silver wool. "I don't think— "

"— we could understand it now— "

"Of course you could!" (Katin encore) "I can explain it very— "

"— Maybe later— "

"— in the future— "

"— it'll be easier."

Dark and white smiles bobbed at him suddenly. The twins turned and walked away.

"Hay," Katin said. "Don't you ...? I mean, I can ex ..." Then, "Oh."

He frowned and put his hands on his hips, watching the twins amble down the corridor. Idas' black back was a screen for fragmented constellations. After a moment Katin lifted his recorder, flicked the ruby pips and spoke softly:

"Note to myself number twelve thousand eight hundred and ten: Intelligence creates alienation and unhappiness in ..."

." He stopped the recorder. Blinking, he looked after the twins.

"Captain?"

At the top of the steps Lorq dropped his hand from the door and looked down.

The Mouse hooked his thumb through a tear in the side of his pants and scratched his thigh. "Eh ... Captain?" Then he took the card out of the sack. "Here's your sun."

Rusty brows twisted in shadow.

Yellow eyes dropped their lights at the Mouse.

"I, eh, borrowed it from Tyy. I'll give it back— "

"Come up here, Mouse."

"Yes, sir." He started up the coiled steps. Ripples lapped the pool edge. His image, rising, glittered behind the philodendrons on the wall. Bare sole and boot heel gave his gait syncopation.

Lorq opened the door. They stepped into the captain's chamber.

The Mouse's first thought: His room isn't any bigger than mine.

His second: There's a lot more in it.

Besides the computers, there were projection screens on the walls, floor, and ceiling. Among the mechanical clutter, nothing personalized the cabin— not even graffiti.

"Let's see the card." Lorq sat on the cables coiled over the couch and examined the diorama.

Not having been invited to sit on the couch, the Mouse pushed aside a tool box and dropped cross-legged to the floor.

Suddenly Lorq's knees fell wide; he stretched his fists; his shoulders shook; the muscles of his face creased. The spasm passed, and he sat up again. He drew a breath that pulled the laces tight on his stomach. "Come sit here." He patted the edge of the couch. But the Mouse just swung around on the floor so that he sat by Lorq's knee.

Lorq leaned forward and placed the card on the floor.

"This is the card you stole?" The expression that was his frown wrinkled down his face. (But the Mouse was looking at the card.) "If this were the first expedition I pulled together to plumb this star ..." He laughed. "Six trained and crackling men, who had studied the operation hypnotically, knew the timing of the whole business like they knew the beating of their own hearts, functioned closely as the layers in a bimetal strip. Stealing among the crew ...?"He laughed again, shaking his head slowly. "I was so sure of them. And the one I was surest of was Dan." He caught the Mouse's hair, gently shook the boy's head. "I like this crew better." He pointed to the card. "What do you see there, Mouse?"

"Well, I guess ... two boys playing under a— "

"Playing?" Lorq asked. "They look as if they're playing?"

The Mouse sat back and hugged his sack. "What do you see, Captain?"

"Two boys with hands locked for a fight. You see how one is light and the other is dark? I see love against death, light against darkness, chaos against order. I see the clash of all opposites under ... the sun. I see Prince and myself."

"Which is which?"

"I don't know, Mouse."

"What sort of person is Prince Red, Captain?"

Lorq's left fist flopped in the hammock of his right palm. "You saw him on the viewing screen in color and tri-D. You have to ask? Rich as Croesus, a spoiled psychopath; he has one arm and a sister so beautiful I ..." Weight and hammock came apart. "You're from Earth, Mouse. The same world Prince comes from. I've visited it many times, but I've never lived there. Perhaps you know. Why should someone from Earth who's had every advantage that could be distilled from the wealth of Draco, boy, youth, and man be ..." The voice caught. Weight and hammock again. "Never mind. Take out your hell-harp and play me something. Go on. I want to see and hear."

The Mouse scrabbled in his sack. One hand on the wooden neck, one sliding beneath curve and polish; he closed his fingers and his mouth and his eyes. Concentration became a frown; then a release. "You say he's one-armed?"

"Underneath that black glove he so dramatically smashed up the viewer with, there's nothing but clock-works."

"That means he's missing a socket," the Mouse went on in his rough whisper. "I don't know how it is where you come from; on Earth that's about the worst thing that can happen to you. Captain, my people didn't have any, and Katin back there just got finished explaining how that made me so mean." The syrynx came out of the sack. "What do you want me to play?" He hazarded a few notes, a few lights.

But— Lorq was staring at the card again. "Just play. We'll have to plug up soon to come in to the Alkane. Go on. Quick now. Play, I told you."

The Mouse's hand fell toward the—

"Mouse?"

— and moved away without striking.

"Why did you steal this card?"

The Mouse shrugged. "It was just there. It fell out on the rug near me."

"'But if it had been some other card, the Two of Cups, the Nine of Wands— would you have picked it up?"

"I guess so."

"Are you sure there isn't something in this card that's special? If any other had been there, you would have let it lie or handed it back ...?"

Where it came from the Mouse didn't know. But it was fear again. To battle it, he whirled and caught Lorq's knee. "Look, Captain! Don't mind what the cards say, I'm going to help you get to that star, see? I'm going right with you, and you'll win your race. Don't let some crazy-woman tell you different!"

In their conversation, Lorq had been self-absorbed. Now he looked seriously at the dark frown. "You just remember to give the crazy-woman her card back when you leave here. We'll be at Vorpis soon."

The intensity could maintain itself no longer. Rough laughter broke the dark lips. "I still think they're playing, Captain." The Mouse turned back in front of the couch. Planting his bare foot on top of Lorq's sandaled one, for all the world like a puppy by its master, he struck.

The lights flickered over the machines, copper and ruby, to arpeggios recalling harpsichords; Lorq looked at the boy by his knee. Something happened to him. He did not know the cause. But for the first time in a long time, he was watching someone else for reasons having nothing to do with his star. He did not know what he saw. Still, he sat back and looked at what the Mouse made:

Nearly filling the cabin, the gypsy moved a myriad of flame-colored lights about a great sphere, in time to the crumbling figures of a grave and dissonant fugue.