Nova (21 page)

The Mouse pulled the sack's draw string and shrugged. "Maybe I'll play some more later." He started to stick his arm through the strap. Then his fingers fell in the leather folds. "What's the matter, Leo?"

The fisherman stuck his left hand beneath the tarnished links of his belt. "You just me very nostalgic make, boy." The right hand now. "Because so much time passed has, that you no longer a boy are." Leo sat down on the steps. Humor brushed his mouth. "I not here happy am, I think. Maybe time again to move is. Yeah?" He nodded. "Yeah."

"You think so?" The Mouse turned around on his drum to face him. "Why now?"

Leo pressed his lips. The expression said about the same as a shrug. "When I the old see, I know how much the new I need. Besides, leaving for a long time I have been thinking of."

"Where're you going?"

"To this Pleiades I go."

"But you're from the Pleiades, Leo. I thought you said you want to see someplace new?"

"There a hundred-odd worlds in the Pleiades are. I maybe a dozen have fished. I something new want, yes; but also, after these twenty-five years, home."

The Mouse watched the thick features, the pale hair: familiarity? You adjust it like you would a mist-mask, the Mouse thought; then fit it on the face that must wear it. Leo has changed so much. The Mouse, who had had so little childhood, lost some more of it now. "I just want the new, Leo. I wouldn't want to go home ... even if I had one."

"Some day as I the Pleiades, you Earth or Draco will want."

"Yeah." He shrugged his sack onto his shoulder. "Maybe I will. Why shouldn't I, in twenty-five years?"

An echo:

"Mouse!"

And:

"Hey, Mouse?"

And again:

"Mouse are you in there?"

"Hey!" The Mouse stood and cupped his hands to his mouth. "Katin?" His shout was even uglier than his speech.

Long and curious, Katin came between the nets. "Surprise, surprise. I didn't think I'd find you. I've been going down the wharf asking people if they'd seen you. Some guy said you'd been playing in here."

"Is the captain through at the Alkane? Did he get what he wanted?"

"And then some. There was a message from Prince waiting for him at the institute. So he played it over the public announcement system." Katin whistled. "Vicious!"

"He's got his nova?"

"He does. Only he's waiting around here for something else. I don't understand it."

"Then we're off to the star?"

"Nope. Then he wants to go to the Pleiades. We have a couple of weeks' wait. But don't ask me what he wants to do there."

"The Pleiades?" the Mouse asked. "Is that where the nova will be?"

Katin turned up his palms. "I don't think so. Maybe he thinks it'll be safer to pass the time in home territory."

"Wait a minute!" The Mouse swung around to Leo again. "Leo, maybe Captain will give you a lift back to the Pleiades with us."

"Huh?" Leo's chin came off his hands.

"Katin, Captain Von Ray wouldn't mind giving Leo a ride out to the Pleiades, would he?"

Katin tried to look reservedly doubtful. The expression was too complicated and came out blank.

"Leo's an old friend of mine. From back on Earth, He taught me how to play the syrynx, when I was a kid."

"Captain's got a lot on his mind— "

"Yeah, but he wouldn't care if— "

"But much better than me now he plays," Leo interjected.

"I bet Captain would do it if I asked him."

"I no trouble with your captain want to make— "

"We can ask him." The Mouse tucked his sack behind him, "Come on, Leo. Where is the captain, Katin?"

Katin and Leo exchanged the look of unintroduced adults put in league by youth's enthusiasms.

"Well? Come on!"

Leo stood up and followed the Mouse and Katin toward the door.

Seven hundred years ago the first colonists on Vorpis carved the Esclaros des Nuages into the mesa rock-rim of Phoenix. Between the moorings for the smaller fog crawlers and the wharfs where the net-riders docked, the stairs descended into the white fog. They were chipped and worn today.

Finding the steps deserted at the Phoenix mid-day siesta, Lorq strolled down between the quartz-shot walls. Mist lapped the bottom steps; wave on white wave rolled from the horizon, each blued with shadow on the left, gilded with sun on the right, like rampant lambs.

"Hey, Captain!"

Lorq looked back up the steps.

"Hey, Captain, can I talk to you a minute?" the Mouse came crabwise down the stairway. His syrynx jogged on his hip. "Katin told me you were going to go to the Pleiades after we leave here. I just ran into a guy I used to know back on Earth, an old friend. Taught me how to play the syrynx." He shook his sack. "I thought maybe since we were going in that direction— we could sort of drop him off home. He was really a good friend of— "

"All right."

The Mouse cocked his head. "Huh?"

"It's only five hours to the Pleiades. If he's at the ship when we leave and stays in your projection chamber, it's fine with me."

The Mouse's head went back the other way; he decided to scratch it. "Oh. Gee. Well." Then he laughed. "Thanks, Captain!" He turned and ran up the steps. "Hey, Leo!" He took the last ones double. "Katin, Leo! Captain says it's all right." And called back, "Thanks again!"

Lorq walked a few steps down.

After a while he sat against the rough wall.

He counted waves.

When the number got to four figures, he stopped.

The polar sun circled the horizon; less gilt, more blue.

When he saw the net, his hands slid his thighs, stopped on the bone knots of his knees.

Links clinked on the bottom steps. Then the rider stood up, waist-high in the rolling white. Fog-floats carried the nets up. Quartz caught blue sparks.

Lorq had been leaning against the wall. He raised his head.

The dark-haired rider walked up the steps, webs of metal waving above and behind. Nets struck the walls and rattled. A half dozen steps below him, she pulled off her mist-mask. "Lorq?"

His hands unclasped. "How did you find me, Ruby? I knew you would. Tell me how?"

She breathed hard, unused to the weight she wielded.

Laces tightened, loosened, tightened between her breasts. "When Prince found that you'd left Triton, he sent tapes to six dozen places that you might have gone. Cyana was only one. Then he left it to me to get the report on which one was received. I was on Chobe's World; so when you played that tape at the Alkane, I came running." Nets folded on the steps. "Once I found out you were on Vorpis, in Phoenix ... well, it took a lot of work. Believe me, I wouldn't do it again." She rested her hand on the rock. Nets rustled.

"I'm taking chances this game, Ruby. I tried to play it through once with a computer plotting the moves." He shook his head. "Now I'm playing by hand, eye, and ear. So far I've come out no worse. And it's moving a lot faster. I've always liked speed. That's perhaps the one thing that makes me the same person I was when we first met."

"Prince said something very much like that to me, once." She looked up. "Your face." Pain flickered in hers. She was close enough to him to touch the scar. Her hand moved, then fell back. "Why didn't you ever have it ...?" She didn't finish,

"It's useful. It allows each polished surface in all these brave, new worlds to serve me."

"What sort of service is that?"

"It reminds me what I'm here for."

"Lorq"— and exasperation grew in her voice— "what are you doing? What do you, or your family, think they can accomplish?"

"I hope that neither you nor Prince knows yet. I haven't tried to hide it. But I'm getting my message to you by a rather archaic method. How long do you think it will take a rumor to bridge the space between you and me?" He sat back. "At least a thousand people know what Prince is trying to do. I played them his message this morning. No secrecy any more, Ruby. There are many places to hide; there is one where I can stand in the light."

"We know you're trying to do something that will destroy the Reds. That's the only thing that you would have put so much time and effort into."

"I wish I could say you were wrong." He meshed his fingers. "But you still don't know what it is."

"We know it has something to do with a star."

He nodded.

"Lorq, I want to shout at you, scream— who do you think you are?"

"Who am I to defy Prince, and the beautiful Ruby Red? You are beautiful, Ruby, and I stand before your beauty very much alone, suddenly cursed with a purpose. You and I, Ruby, the worlds we've been through haven't really fit us for meanings. If I survive, then a world, a hundred worlds, a way of life survives. If Prince survives ..." He shrugged. "Still, perhaps it is a game. They keep telling us we live in a meaningless society, that there is no solidity to our lives. Worlds are tottering about us now, and still I only want to play. The one thing I have been prepared to do is play, play hard, hard as I can; and with style."

"You mystify me, Lorq. Prince is so predictable— " She raised her eyebrows. "That surprises you? Prince and I have grown up together. But you present me with an unknown. At that party, years ago, when you wanted me, was that part of the game too?"

"No— yes— I know I hadn't learned the rules."

"Now?"

"I know the way through is to make your own; Ruby, I want what Prince has— no. I want to win what Prince has. Once I have it, I might turn around and throw it away. But I want to gain it. We battle, and the course of how many lives and how many worlds swings? Yes, I do know all that. You said it then: we are special people, if only by power. But if I tried to keep that knowledge forward in my mind, I'd be paralyzed. Here I am, at this moment, in this situation, with all this to do. What I've learned, Ruby, is how I can play. Whatever I do— I, the person I am and have been made— I have to do it that way to win. Remember that. You've done me another favor now. I owe it to you to warn you. It's why I waited."

"What is it you want to do that you have to give such an inflated apology for?"

"I don't know, yet," Lorq laughed. "It does sound pretty stuffy, doesn't it. But it's true."

She breathed in deeply. Her high forehead wrinkled as the wind pushed her hair forward across her shoulder. Her eyes were in shadow. "I suppose I owe you the same warning." He nodded. "Consider it given." She stood up from the wall.

"I do."

"Good." Then she drew back her arm; flung it forward!

And three hundred square feet of chain webbing swung over her head and rattled down on him.

The links caught on his raised hands and bruised them. He staggered under their weight.

"Ruby— "

She flung her other arm; another layer fell.

She leaned back, and the nets pulled, striking his ankles so that he slipped.

"No! Let me ..."

Through shifting links he saw she was masked again: glittering glass, her eyes; her mouth and nostrils, grilled. All expression was in her slim shoulders, the small muscles suddenly defined. She bent; her stomach creased. The adapter circuits magnified the strength in her arms some five hundred to one. Lorq was wrenched forward down the steps. He fell, caught at the wall. Rock and metal hurt his arms and knees.

What the links gave in strength, they sacrificed in precision of movement. A swell swept the web, but he was able to duck beneath and gain two steps. But Ruby kicked back; he was yanked down four more. He took two on his back, then one on his hip. She was reeling him down. Fog lapped her calves; she backed further into the suffocating mists, stooped till her black mask was at the fog's surface.

He threw himself away from her, and fell five more steps. Lying on his side, he caught at the links and heaved. Ruby staggered, but he felt another stone edge scrape his shoulder.

Lorq let go of the nets, of his held breath. Again he tried to duck what fell at him.

But he heard a gasp from Ruby.

He beat links from his face and opened his eyes. Something outside ...

It darted, dark and flapping, between the walls.

Ruby flung up an arm to ward it off. And a sheet of netting exploded up from Lorq. It rose, avoiding the links.

Fifty pounds of metal fell back into the fog. Ruby staggered, disappeared.

Lorq went down more steps. The mist lapped his thighs. The astringent arsenic fog clogged his head. He coughed and clutched rock.

The dark thing flapped about him now. The weight lifted a moment; he scrambled up the stones on his belly. Sucking fresher air, gasping and dizzy, he looked back.

The net hovered above him, grappling with the beast. He pulled himself up another step as the shape flapped free. Links fell heavy on his leg; pulled from his leg; dragged down the steps; vanished.

Lorq sat up and forced himself to follow the thing's flight between the stones. It cleared the walls, gyred twice, then returned to Sebastian's shoulder:

The squat cybord stud looked down from the wall.

Lorq swayed to his feet, squeezed his eyes closed, shook his head, then lurched up the Esclaros des Nuages.

Sebastian was fastening the steel band about the creature's flexing claw when Lorq reached him at the head of the steps.

"Again, I"— Lorq took another breath and dropped his hand on Sebastian's gold-matted shoulder - "you thank."

They looked from the rocks out where no rider broke the mist.

"You in much danger are?"

"I am."

Tyy came quickly across the wharf to Sebastian's side.