Nova (5 page)

A woman with silver hair flirted with a young couple who had come with Ambassador Selvin, who was also a cousin. Aaron Red, a portly, proper gentleman, had cornered three young ladies and was pontificating on the moral degeneration of the young. Mother moved through the guests, the hem of her red dress brushing the grass, followed by the humming buffet. She paused here and there to offer canapes, drinks, and her opinion of the new realignment proposal. Now, after a year of phenomenal popular success, the intelligentsia had accepted the Tohu-bohus as legitimate music; the jarring rhythms tumbled across the lawn. A light sculpture in the corner twisted, flickered, grew with the tones.

Then his father let out a booming laugh that made everyone look. "Listen to this! Just hear what Lusuna has said to me!" He was holding the shoulder of a university student who had come with the young couple. Von Ray's bluster had apparently prompted the young man to argument. Father gestured for him to repeat.

"I only said that we live in an age where economic, political, and technological change have shattered all cultural tradition."

"My Lord," laughed the woman with silver hair, "is that all?"

"No, no!" Father waved his hand. "We have to listen to what the younger generation thinks. Go on, sir."

"There's no reservoir of national, or world solidarity, even on Earth, the center of Draco. The past half dozen generations have seen such movement of peoples from world to world, there can't be any. This pseudo-interplanetary society that has replaced any real tradition, while very attractive, is totally hollow and masks an incredible tangle of decadence, scheming, corruption— "

"Really, Lusuna," the young wife said, "your Scholarship is showing." She had just taken another drink at the prompting of the woman with the silver hair.

"— and piracy."

(With the last word, even the three children crouching in the mouth of the carved lizard could tell from the looks passing on the guests' faces that Lusuna had gone too far.)

Mother came across the lawn, the bottom of her red sheath brushing back from gilded nails. She held her hands out to Lusuna, smiling. "Come, let's continue this social dissection over dinner. We're having a totally corrupt mangobongoou with untraditional loso ye mbiji a meza, and scathingly decadent mpati a nsengo." His mother always made the old Senegal dishes for parties. "And if the oven cooperates, we'll end up with dreadfully pseudo-interplantary tiba yoka flambe."

The student looked around, realized he was supposed to smile, and did one better by laughing. With the student on her arm, Mother led everyone into dinner— "Didn't someone tell me you had won a scholarship to Draco University at Centauri? You must be quite bright. You're from Earth, I gather from your accent. Senegal? Well! So am I. What city ...?" And Father, relieved, brushed back oak-colored hair and followed everyone into the jalousied dining pavilion.

On the stone tongue, Ruby was saying to her brother, "I don't think you should do that."

"Why not?" said Prince.

Lorq looked back at the brother and sister. Prince had picked up a stone from the floor of the dragon's mouth in his mechanical hand. Across the lawn stood the aviary of white cockatoos Mother had brought from Earth on her last trip.

Prince aimed. Metal and plastic blurred.

Forty feet away, birds screamed and exploded in the cage. As one fell to the floor, Lorq could see, even at this distance, blood in the feathers.

"That's the one I was aiming for." Prince smiled.

"Hey," Lorq said. "Mother's not going to ... " He looked again at the mechanical appendage strapped to Prince's shoulder over the stump. "Say, you throw better with— "

"Watch it." Prince's black brows lowered on chipped blue glass. "I told you not to make fun of my hand, didn't I?" The hand drew back, and Lorq heard the motors— whirr, click, whirr— in wrist and elbow.

"It's not his fault he was born that way," Ruby said. "And it's impolite to make remarks about your guests. Aaron says you're all barbarians out here anyway, doesn't he, Prince?"

"That's right." He lowered his hand.

A voice came over the loudspeaker into the garden. "Children, where are you? Come in and get your supper. Hurry."

They climbed down and went out through the bamboo.

Lorq went to bed still excited by the party. He lay under the doubled shadows of the palms above the nursery ceiling, transparent from the night before.

A whisper: "Lorq!"

And: "Shhh! Don't be so loud, Prince."

More softly: "Lorq?"

He pushed back the netting and sat up in bed. Imbedded in the plastic floor, tigers, elephants; and monkeys glowed. "What do you want?"

"We heard them leaving through the gate." Prince stood in the nursery doorway in his shorts. "Where did they go?"

"We want to go too," Ruby said from her brother's elbow.

"Where did they go?" Prince asked again.

"Into town." Lorq stood up and padded across the glowing menagerie. "Mommy and Daddy always take their friends down into the village when they come for the holidays."

"What do they do?" Prince leaned against the jamb.

"They go ... well, they go into town." Where ignorance had been, curiosity came to fill it.

"We jimmied the baby sitter," said Ruby.

"You don't have a very good one; it was easy. Everything is so old-fashioned out here. Aaron says only Pleiades barbarians could think it quaint to live out here. Are you going to take us to go see where they went?"

"Well, I ..."

"We want to go," said Ruby.

"Don't you want to go see too?"

"All right." He had planned to refuse. "I have to put my sandals on." But childish curiosity to see what adults did when children were not about was marking foundations on which adolescent, and later, adult consciousness would stand.

The garden lisped about the gate. The lock always opened to Lorq's handprint during the day, but he was still surprised when it swung back now.

The road threaded into the moist night.

Past the rocks and across the water one low moon turned the mainland into a tongue of ivory lapping at the sea. And through the trees, the lights of the village went off and on like a computer checkboard. Rocks, chalky under the high, smaller moon, edged the roadway. A cactus raised spiky paddles to the sky.

As they reached the first of the town's cafes, Lorq said "hello" to one of the miners who sat at a table outside the door.

"Little Senhor." The miner nodded back.

"Do you know where my parents are?" Lorq asked.

"They came by here," he shrugged, "the ladies with the fine clothes, the men in their vests and their dark shirts. They came by, half an hour ago, an hour."

"What language is he talking?" Prince demanded.

Ruby giggled. "You understand that?"

Another realization hit Lorq; he and his parents spoke to the people of Sao Orini with a completely different set of words than they spoke to each other and their guests. He had learned the slurred dialect of Portuguese under the blinking lights of a hypno-teacher sometime in the fog of early childhood.

"Where did they go?" he asked again.

The miner's name was Tavo; for a month last year when the mine shut down, he had been plugged into one of the clanking gardeners that had landscaped the park behind the house. Dull grown-ups and bright children form a particularly tolerant friendship. Tavo was dirty and stupid; Lorq accepted this. But his mother had put an end to the relation when, last year, he came back from the village and told how he had watched Tavo kill a man who had insulted the miner's ability to drink.

"Come on, Tavo. Tell me where they went?"

Tavo shrugged.

Insects beat about the illuminated letters over the cafe door.

Crepe paper left from the Sovereignty Festival, blew from the awning posts. It was the anniversary of Pleiades Sovereignty, but the miners celebrated it out here both in hope for their own and for Mother and Father.

"Does he know where they went?" Prince asked.

Tavo was drinking sour milk from a cracked cup along with his rum. He patted his knee and Lorq, glancing at Prince and Ruby, sat down.

Brother and sister looked at each other uncertainly.

"You sit down too," Lorq said. "On the chairs."

They did.

Tavo offered Lorq his sour milk. Lorq drank half of it, then passed it to Prince. "You want some?"

Prince raised the cup to his mouth, then caught the smell. "You drink this?" He wrinkled his face and set the cup down sharply.

Lorq picked up the glass of rum. "Would you prefer ...?" But Tavo took the glass out of his hand. "That's not for you, Little Senhor."

"Tavo, where are my parents?"

"Back up in the woods, at Alonza's."

"Take us, Tavo?"

"Who?"

"We want to go see them."

Tavo deliberated. "We can't go unless you have money." He roughed Lorq's hair. "Hey, Little Senhor, you have any money?"

Lorq took out the few coins from his pocket. "Not enough."

"Prince, do you or Ruby have any money?" Prince had two pounds @sg in his shorts.

"Give it to Tavo."

"Why?"

"So he'll take us to see our parents."

Tavo reached across and took the money from Prince, then raised his eyebrows at the amount,

"Will he give this to me?"

"If you take us," Lorq told him.

Tavo tickled Lorq's stomach. They laughed. Tavo folded one bill and put it in his pocket. Then he ordered another rum and sour milk. "The milk is for you. Some for your friends?"

"Come on, Tavo. You said you'd take us."

"Be quiet," the miner said. "I'm thinking whether we should go up there. You know I must go plug in at work tomorrow morning." He tapped the socket on one wrist.

Lorq put salt and pepper in the milk and sipped it.

"I want to try some," Ruby said.

"It smells awful," said Prince, "You shouldn't drink it. Is he going to take us?"

Tavo gestured to the owner of the cafe. "Lots of people up at Alonza's tonight?"

"It's Friday night, isn't it?" said the owner.

"The boy wants me to take him up there," said Tavo, "for the evening."

"You're taking Von Ray's boy up to Alonza's?" The owner's purple birthmark crinkled.

"His parents are up there." Tavo shrugged. "The boy wants me to take them. He told me to take them, you know? And it will be more fun than sitting here and swatting redbugs." He bent down, tied the thongs of his discarded sandals together, and hung them around his neck. "Come on, Little Senhor. Tell the one-armed boy and the girl to behave."

At the reference to Prince's arm, Lorq jumped.

"We are going now."

But Prince and Ruby didn't understand.

"We're going," Lorq explained. "Up to Alonza's.

"What's Alonza's?"

"Is that like the places Aaron is always taking those pretty women in Peking?"

"They don't have anything out here like in Peking," Prince said. "Silly. They don't even have anything like Paris."

Tavo reached down and took Lorq's hand. "Stay close. Tell your friends to stay close too." Tavo's hand was all sweat and callus. The jungle chuckled and hissed over them.

"Where are we going?" Prince asked.

"To see Mother and Father." Lorq's voice sounded uncertain. "To Alonza's."

Tavo looked over at the word and nodded. He pointed through the trees, dappled with double moons.

"Is it far, Tavo?"

Tavo just cuffed Lorq's neck, took his hand again, and went on.

At the top of the hill, a clearing: light seeped beneath the edge of a tent. A group of men joked and drank with a fat woman who had come out for air. Her face and shoulders were wet. Her breasts gleamed before falling under the orange print. She kept twiddling her braid.

"Stay," whispered Tavo. He pushed his children back.

"Hey, why— "

"We have to stay here," Lorq translated for Prince who had stepped forward after the miner.

Prince looked around, then came back and stood by Lorq and Ruby.

Joining the men, Tavo intercepted the raffia-covered bottle as it swung from arm to arm. "Hey, Alonza, are the Senhores Von Ray ...?" He thumbed toward the tent.

"Sometimes they come up. Sometimes they bring their guests with them," Alonza said. "Sometimes they like to see— "

"Now," Tavo said. "Are they here now?"

She took the bottle and nodded.

Tavo turned and beckoned the children.

Lorq, followed by the wary siblings, went to stand beside him. The men went on talking in blurry voices that undercut the shrieks and laughter from the tarpaulin. The night was hot. The bottle went around three more times. Lorq and Ruby got some. And the last time Prince made a face, but drank too.

Finally Tavo pushed Lorq's shoulder. "Inside."

Tavo had to duck under the low door. Lorq was the tallest of the children and the top of his head just brushed the canvas.

A lantern hung from the center pole: harsh glare on the roof, harsh light in the shell of an ear, on the rims of nostrils, on the lines of old faces. A head fell back in the crowd, expelling laughter and expletives. A wet mouth glistened as a bottle neck dropped. Loose, sweaty hair. Over the noise, somebody was ringing a bell. Lorq felt excitement tingling in his palms.

People began to crouch. Tavo squatted. Prince and Ruby did too. So did Lorq, but he held on to Tavo's wet collar.