A Different Light (19 page)

The room in front of him held a pool with fountains and flowers. There was sun on the water. There was statuary in the pool. The music and the water fell together on the stone. Russell sat casually down on the marble edge of the pool. After a moment, Jimson forgot him.

He was recalled by a cough. A man was standing beside him. Black hair, black eyes, high cheekbones. Yes, Jimson thought, he looks like Ast, a little. Same bones. "This house," he said.

"Yes," Roman De Vala said. "You recognize it?"

"I've read about it."

"Only parts of it are the original, of course. Pieces of it were saved by collectors when the city of New York was destroyed. I bought what I could. The music is my own choice. It's Bach. Another period altogether, but I like to think it goes with the intention of the house."

"I like it."

"You are Jimson Alleca, the artist?"

"Yes."

"Well." De Vala smiled shyly. "I'm honored to have you here, really. Would you like to see the rest of the house? Much of the art is original, too. As much as I could find."

"Yes."

"I have no way of knowing how close the architecture and the arrangement of paintings is to the original museum, but I flatter myself that it is fairly close. I use the library as my office, and I rotate my favorite paintings into it. The Holbein portraits are there now. And I do have one room filled with moderns, yourself among them. You recall the pen-and-ink titled
Bar Brawl?
It has sentimental value for me."

"You were there that night."

"I am pleased that you remember. Now, I have business to discuss with the Starcaptain, so you will forgive me if I leave you?" Jimson would. "Enjoy yourself." He spoke softly to the discreetly watchful guard, and left the gallery.

Jimson paced. He felt obliged to hurry but he could not hurry. He kept retracing his steps, from the two small Vermeer paintings at one end of the long gallery to the four monumental Goyas in the side gallery, to the library, and then to the long gallery again. Each time he passed the
Rider
he went more slowly. Finally he stopped.

He hadn't known it was so big.

It was very big. The light that only Rembrandt captured in paint shimmered across it and through it. The horse's flowing mane, the smooth fur of the rider's coat gleamed. The metal bit, the stirrups, the sword hilt and the axe-head shimmered with a different light.
Death, riding.
The Rider looked past him, but knowingly.
I am not come for you now,
Death said. Not yet.
But soon.

De Vala, beside him, said, "It's strange to think that Rembrandt painted on a planet and under light that neither one of us has ever seen."

Jarred from contemplation, Jimson turned to look at the little man. "That's true," he said, trying to be polite.

De Vala was holding Jimson's notebook in his hands. "Starcaptain O'Neill gave me these. He says you drew them on Demea."

"That's right."

"Why couldn't you bring me back a Mask? One Mask."

Jimson wondered what Russell had said. He hoped it was the truth. "There were people on Demea. We had to bargain with them. They let me draw the Masks, but to take one we would have had to kill them." Jimson thought of Rahid. "We did have to kill one man, before they let us go."

"That's what the Starcaptain said too," De Vala murmured. "I wouldn't have wanted that, no, no. These sketches are the originals, right, not the copies? No, of course, they couldn't be copies. I really don't know what to offer you for them."

"Roman!"

De Vala jumped at the imperious call. "Excuse me," he said. He trotted down the long gallery clutching the sketchbook.

"Roman!" A woman swept into the long gallery. She stood just inside the entranceway, staring down the wide windowless hall. No. She was not staring. She was pointing her face in their direction. She wore a long white robe. Her hair, like De Vala's, was black. Her eyes were milky white across the pupil. Jimson knew her. She was the woman who had come into Rin's wearing a blue Japanese mask without eyeholes. He knew now why the mask had needed no eyeholes.

De Vala hurried to her side. She topped him by half a head. "Roman, is it he? The Starcaptain?"

"Raob, you must not get excited. Go back to your own rooms now." De Vala's attempt to be soothing put even Jimson's teeth on edge. She pushed him aside with one irritated thrust, walking down the gallery as if she could see, with lovely long free strides.

"Did you bring them? Did you bring my Masks? One Mask?" She was focusing on Jimson, ruthless and direct as laser light. "Answer!"

De Vala pattered around her like a worried puppy, trying to intervene. "Raob, that is not—"

Jimson reached for a title in a dead language. "Senhora, I am sorry. No." At the end of the hall Russell was coming through a door, a chagrined guard following him. Russell was holding a stun pistol. The guard was holding his right wrist in his left palm.

Her fingers curled to talons. "A bad thief," she said, with venom. "Why not?"

"We would have had to kill too many people," Jimson said. Russell leaned against the wall.

She shrugged. "Little savages. All they ever had came from us. What do you imagine their lives are worth, next to power?" Her blind glare was stunningly malefic. He retreated, and still it came on, a wave of pressure beating on his tired mind
      

He looked at the painting, at the serene, watching Rider.
Did I not say, not yet?
Almost Jimson heard the voice issue from the silence of the canvas and pigment. Armored, he waited out Raob's rancor.

Blocked from his mind, she turned again to words. "I wish you ill luck, poor thief, failed thief. I wish you loss and pain and—"

"Raob!"

She turned on De Vala. "Roman, you will send someone else."

"Raob, please let us discuss this in private—"

"You will send someone else."

"I will. Go back to your rooms, now."

She smiled sweetly, having won, and said, "Send someone with me, then, so that I do not lose my way." De Vala sighed, and motioned to the guard, who looked nervous. Politely, Russell passed back the captured stun gun. Raob laid her hand on the guard's arm. The portraits of the dead duchesses seemed to smile approval as she passed them by.

"I apologize for my sister." De Vala made no effort to hide his relief. "She is difficult. The Masks are an obsession with her, as you saw. She insists that they have some special power, totally apart from their artistic and historical merit, which she desires. I think she thinks they will let her see again. I—I would just like to own one. To be able to look at it."

"Will you send someone else?" Jimson asked. The direct question was rude, but De Vala was no Hyper. He wouldn't know.

"I expect I will. Raob is not easy to withstand. And I would like to own a Mask. They are mine. I have a right to them. I saw them being made, you know. It's pointless to leave them there, on a dim world where they cannot possibly be appreciated." He stopped. "Well. Excuse me. As I was saying, I will be glad to buy these sketches from you."

Pain like a serpent uncoiled up the great bone in Jimson's left thigh.

He fought it, waiting for it to stop. When it subsided he said, "You can buy them. Pay whatever you think they're worth to Starcaptain O'Neill. I don't care what you do with them. Hide them, show them, whatever you like." He took one more look over De Vala's shoulder at the
Polish Rider.
"Thank you for letting me see your house."

"This way," said the guard. He gestured for them to walk ahead of him to the front door. "The earrings, please."

Russell knocked Jimson's hands away as he fumbled for the earring. "I'll do it."

"I can do it." But he put his hands down.

"Who the hell wants your money?" said Russell into his ear.

"I owe it to you," Jimson said. "Call it passenger fee." Pointedly the guard was holding open the door. They stepped outside. It closed behind them.

"I don't want a passenger fee from you! I took you to Demea because you asked me to. That's all the fee I need."

Jimson was finding it difficult to talk. "Not the fee for—for Demea," he said. "Fee for the next trip."

"What the hell are you talking about?"

"Going back to Psi Center." Pain twisted in his bones, shooting up his left thigh, stopping speech, stopping the breath in his throat. His leg buckled; he started to fall. Russell caught him.

"I'm taking you to a clinic."

"No!" Jimson fought him. "Oh, no. You're not taking me to some clinic so that you can leave me there. We made a bargain that—that you don't even know about."

Russell said, with rage in his voice, "I was not going to take you to a clinic and leave you there."

"I want to go to Psi Center."

"You need medics. Medicine."

"There's a clinic on Psi Center."

"It's five days to Psi Center, Jimson!"

Jimson gasped, and waited for the pain to stop. It stopped. "I'm not going to die on you, Russell," he said. "You think I can't do it? You watch. You just get me there."

Chapter 17

Russell got him there.

He had not wanted to take medication for the pain, hating the way the stuff fogged his mind. The last few days he had had to. He floated. He thought it was hysterical that the
Morgana
should land but that he remained high. They landed and waited for something to happen. The air was warm and scented; it reminded Jimson of Las Flores.
Everything goes round and round and round.
The field was edged with grass and tall trees. It took some time for them to see the woman standing alone, waiting for them.

"Goryn?"

The mental voice was unmistakable.
What did you expect? A dra-gon? An an-gel with a flaming sword?

"At least a Sphinx," Jimson said.

You are a romantic
, she said.
But you came.

Psi Center was an image seen through a teleidoscope: complex, symmetrical, and disguised. "You understand," Goryn said, walking beside them, "that this is only a piece of Psi Center. This is the X-team training school." The planet, she explained, was small, its gravity comfortable, a little less than Terran standard. The sun was red, a K-type star. There were some squat utilitarian laboratories, and a domed observatory. There were dormitories. Jimson wondered if the labs would be like the clinic labs on New Terrain: pastel walls with not enough pictures on them.

"Do you wish to go to the clinic first?" she asked.

"Yes," said Russell.

"No," said Jimson. "Not yet. I want to see more of the school."

"Certainly," said Goryn. She took them inside it. They passed one room with tumbling mats in it; with rings, ropes, beams, and parallel bars. Three people were exercising there, bending and stretching. At Goryn's approach they all looked up. "Tom." A boy with long straight black hair and olive skin nodded shyly. "Felicia." Felicia was a pale girl with hair cropped to her skull, and muscles like wire moving under her thin shirt. "Theo." Theo was a fair-skinned boy under a great blond head of hair like a dandelion. He looked down at them from his perch on the vault, and grinned. "Students here."

"Telepaths?"

Of course.

"Is everyone here a telepath?" asked Russell.

"Nearly so."

"How do you keep from overhearing one another's thoughts?"

"We don't," said Goryn. "Why bother? Though
you
needn't worry, no one will listen to your thought. Except me. You are guests. When we wish to have a closed conversation, we hold up a very large bright mental sign which says on it: PRIVATE. Then all the other people go away."

"What if they don't?"

"They do."

Jimson asked, "Is Ast still here?'

"No," said Goryn. "We did not keep her here. She is at another training center not too far away."

"What's happening to her?'

"She is learning control and understanding of her power. When she is finished, we will find her something to do which will adequately use her talents."

"You don't waste talent," Jimson said.

"No. Haven't you noticed how little of it there is in the universe?"

"What kind of work do you have which would adequately use her gifts?"

Goryn pursed her lips. "I think we will send her home, to Demea. That was an ugly situation. Ysao told you that I was there. I think we have been laissez-faire about it long enough. Ast will know best how to reach her people and let them know they are not, and never have been alone. Something must be done. We cannot let Raob De Vala get her hands on one of those Masks."

"What a tidy world you live in!" Jimson said.

That is be-cause we work to make it so.

Russell asked, "Is Ysao here?"

"Certainly. He is an instructor here, you must know that. Oh, I forget. Hypers do not ask each other such personal questions. Did you wish to see him?"