A Different Light (6 page)

Jimson tossed the drink down. "Her intentions were friendly, is that what you're trying to say?" he said. "I'll take your word for it."

He looked around. Crow's was not, at initial glance, an elaborate a place as Rin's, seeming almost shabby by comparison, until you looked and realized that everything was made of wood, real wood, in a rich dark color that eased the eyes. All along the bar was repeated the bas-relief motif of a flying bird, obviously a crow. The lights were soft, and there was no glitter anywhere.

"The back room is a bit livelier," Ysao said. "But Crow's is a good place to sit and talk. Only Hypers come here. No tourists. If you'd been alone, you'd never have made it down the steps. Crow sits at that table of hers and keeps an eye on things. And if you walk in here looking for a ship, or a job, or a person, or for nothing in particular, she can steer you towards what you want. Say, a Starcaptain, looking for a crew. She's fast and she's good. Not everybody likes her methods. Some people never come in here."

"I can see why not," Jimson said.

And Leiko was standing in front of him, resplendent in a blaze of orange.

"Hello," he said.

"What are you doing
here
?''

"It's complicated," said Ysao. "Crow's doing him a favor."

"I don't understand it myself," Jimson said.

"All right. Don't tell me." She sat down. "The luck's not with me today. I've been in the other room, listening to the music. I was going onto Liathera's, but since you're here, I'll stick around for a while."

Jimson said, "Got a 'gram from Sammy today."

"Good news?"

"I won't have to worry about the rent for a while."

She kissed him, and then chuckled. "Now you've got glitterstick on you." She turned to Ysao. "There's a rumor in the back room that De Vala has a job for somebody."

De Vala.... "Roman De Vala?' ventured Jimson.

"Yes. I'd love to know what it is."

"Go and ask him," suggested Ysao.

"Thanks, but no. He's rich, but—spooky. Most of his jobs, they say, are a little funny."

Jimson felt a presence at his back. Was it their quarry, their shadower? He turned in his chair. Crow stood behind him. "The person you are looking for just came down the steps. I think he will speak with you soon."

"Thanks," said Jimson. They sat waiting.

A man slid suddenly, smoothly, into the empty fourth chair. "Are you the artist who draws at Rin's?" His face was hidden by a dark hood. Jimson's hands felt cold. In the fold of the man's dark cape swung the shining weight of a Starcaptain's medallion.

Jimson said, "I am. Would you like me to draw your portrait, Starcaptain?"

The man swept back his hood. His hair under the soft light shone red-gold, a tousled froth of curls. Green eyes. Bright green gems in his ears. His voice had changed; it was deeper, older, but it rang the years back. "Crow knew me," Russell said. "So I had to come clean. Got a place to talk? A home? Can we go there?"

"Pirate," said Ysao softly, so that only they four could hear, "you've been keeping yourself hidden lately." It was not quite a question.

"I've been around," said Russell. "Think Crow would let us out the back way?"

"I'll ask her," said Ysao. He left the table. Russell reached over the table and took Jimson's hand. His own hand was warm and dry and muscular.

Leiko was studying him. "I've heard of a Starcaptain who's called Pirate," she said. "He has a ship called
Morgana
."

"You looking for a ship?"

"Yes. I'm a pilot."

Ysao returned. "Crow says it's all right."

The back way was a door behind a tapestry in the back room. The steps outside it were so steep, it was more like climbing a ladder then a stairway. At the top, Russell led them into the alley. "Anyone following us?" he asked Ysao. The giant shook his head.

"Where do you live?" Russell asked Jimson. Leiko told him. Jimson's mouth was dry. It was hard, suddenly, for him to talk. Russell pulled his hood over his face and led them into the sunlight. They followed him: Jimson right behind him, trying to walk smoothly; Leiko beside Jimson, her face tense with joyful excitement; Ysao last. They went up on to the Bridge and let themselves be swallowed by the restless crowd. Overhead, the bubbles swung, like bright and vigilant eyes.

* * *

They were not followed to the house. Ysao swore it. Russell relaxed. Ysao said, "Pirate, you've gotten good at shielding. I felt a shadower, but I couldn't tell it was you. Been practising?"

"Some." Russell put both hands on Jimson's shoulders. "Surprise," he said, gently. "Last person you ever thought you'd see, right?"

Jimson said, as Leiko had once said to him, "You meet up with people in the strangest places." He could not help adding, "I used to hope you'd come back to New Terrain."

Russell pulled away from him. "Sometime I'll tell you why I didn't come back to New Terrain." He prowled. "But when I saw the pictures on Enchanter, I knew you had to be on Nexus. I scorched the Hype getting here. I thought—" he paused—"there was a time when I thought you couldn't leave New Terrain. You told me that."

"It was a sudden decision," Jimson said.

"Did you ever get a visicube of me?"

"I got it."

"I didn't want you to think I'd forgotten you."

Jimson clenched his hands on the arms of his chair. You forgot me for fourteen years, he thought. Damn you, Russell. Where the hell have you been?

"How did you know that I had to be on Nexus?" he managed.

"The portrait you did of Ysao," Russell answered. He stood behind the armchair, and let his hand rest lightly on the back of Jimson's neck. "There's only two places planetside you and Ysao could have met. One of them's Rin's." He didn't say what the other one was. "You have to see
Morgana
," he said to the giant. "I've got some new equipment for her. An automatic scanner, and a new bank of waldoes. Do a repair job as well as you might."

Ysao snorted. "That I'd like to see."

"She's in Port, tucked in beside her big sisters like a pea in a pod."

Forgetting not to ask questions Jimson blurted, "How long can you—will you—stay?"

Russell said, "Well, that depends. The Hype cops don't want me for anything right now, that I know of. No one else is after me. If the air round me starts to heat up, or if I get bored, I'll leave. I might look for a job. 1 might look for a crew." He looked at Leiko. "I won't leave tomorrow. Day after tomorrow, maybe."

Leiko said, "Anybody besides me want some wine?"

Jimson said, "I gather your jobs aren't always legal."

"Not always," Russell agreed. He touched the back of Jimson's neck again. "In fact, not often. I was never very good at waiting for what I wanted, Jim. You remember."

Jimson shivered a little. "I remember," he said. You never waited for anything, Russell, he thought. You wanted the stars, and couldn't wait for me. He pushed the old bitterness away, not wanting it to intrude upon the present.

Leiko brought in a bottle of wine and four goblets. Ysao poured. The wine was creamy gold. Russell picked up his glass and sipped. "Thank you." He raised his goblet to Leiko. "This is fit for a feast."

Jimson leaned out of the soft cushions of the chair, and picked up a glass.

It was a time he could later recall in glimpses through a warm fog of wine. There was music—soft music, and then fast hard music. Leiko danced to it, thin and supple as a flame, in the center of the room. Ysao sat on the sofa, guarding the wine bottle in his huge hands like a benign god. He talked with Russell. Incense burned. Leiko came to sit for a while in Jimson's lap; her hair smelling of plums, her lips tasting of wine. Russell stayed on the arm of Jimson's chair. Unsteadily, and with too many words, Jimson told him about New Terrain, about the art, about the Clinic and the drug disc and Ensel and Epsilon Moon. The day turned to night, and the night went on and on and seemed never to end, until suddenly it was morning, and they went outside to watch the lights of the city blink out before the sunrise.

Jimson said, "I feel like I should have vine leaves in my hair."

Leiko laughed. "They'd overbalance you," she teased. "They'd tip you over."

But Russell took a few steps to where the ivy climbed the wall, and, ripping a length of it from its hold, he twined a wet crown on Jimson's hair. "Bacchus," he said. He brushed Jimson's cheek with his palm. Jimson smiled. It was Russell, he thought, who looked Dionysian, with his curls gilding in the sun, and his face blushed with color from the wine.

They climbed to the roof of the little house and balanced on the tiles. "I'm not drunk," Jimson said. "I'm
not
. What am I?"

"Bewitched," said Leiko. "Enchanted. Magicked."

Jimson teetered precariously, daringly, gloriously, on the ridgepole. "Want to watch me walk a straight line?"

Russell pulled him down. "No," he said. "Absolutely not. You are not to walk a straight line. Straight lines don't go anywhere; straight lines are imaginary, don't you know that? Everything, everyone, goes round, and round, and round...." He cut a great wheel in the air with his hands. "Look at the sun." And as they watched, the circle of the sun broke free of the city's shadow, to make its rounds across the blue arc of the sky.

Chapter 7

At noon, Jimson sat in the kitchen holding up his head. He was trying to drink some coffee. When Leiko came in he looked up at her gingerly. "Want to buy a used head?" he asked. "It just needs tender loving care for about six months to be as good as new."

"Thank you. I have one."

"Do they do head transplants?" The ache in his right eye was like a hammer, and the back of his neck hurt all the way to his eyebrows.

"I'll get you a pill," Leiko said. "In a few hours you won't even know that you had a headache."

"In a few hours you're going to be too busy to think about your head," said Russell. He came through the door, and sniffed. "Coffee! Real coffee!" He found a mug.

"I don't know how you can drink that bitter junk," said Leiko. "Miri drinks it, too."

"Then Miri is from Old Terra, New Terra, or New Terrain," said Russell. "Everyone from those worlds drinks liters of coffee. Even infants. I believe the taste comes with mother's milk."

Jimson put his hands over his ears. Russell laughed at him. "Ysao is coming by."

"Why?" demanded Jimson. "Don't think I mind."

"Because I want to talk to him and Leiko about the same thing, and it seemed easiest to do it here."

"Oh."

"We've worked together before," Russell said patiently. "I want to talk to him about a job."

"A job?"
Russell, you just got here!
The redhead grinned at him. Jimson felt his heart slide sideways in his chest and hang there melting, a lopsided candle trying to burn.

Russell poured him another cup of coffee. "Come on, baby, wake up and join the party."

Resignedly, Jimson took his hands from his ears.

* * *

If Ysao had a hangover, he wasn't showing it. "Good morning."

Russell said, "You ready?" He looked at Leiko.

"Go ahead and talk," she said.

"I'm looking for a crew. For a small job, a short job. I'd like an engineer—and I need a good pilot."

"What kind of job?"

"Something I'm doing for Roman De Vala."

Ysao murmured, "I recall you worked for him before."

"Once or twice."

Leiko said, "There's a house near the center of the city that they say is his."

"It is," said Russell. "It's beautiful. Marble and wood. And inside it there are jewels, paintings, statues.... There was one painting there—" he shook his head. "He said it was a thousand years old. You could see into a corner of the room—in the painting, I mean. There was an open window, and a map, and two people sitting at a cloth-covered table. The woman sat facing you. She was wearing gold, I think. She had a white headdress on, and she was smiling at the man. She was young, and happy, and the light fell on her face and on her dress. The man was sitting facing her with his back to you, and you could just see a bit of his face. He was in red, with lace, and he had a hat with a huge brim. His head was all shadowed by the hat. And the window light fell across his back. Just two people talking, that's all. I couldn't keep my eyes off it. He had it over his desk."

"Not quite a thousand years old," Jimson said. "It's by a painter from Old Terra, named Vermeer. But the original is supposed to be in the Kaolin Collection, on New Terra."

"Well, it isn't," said Russell. "De Vala has it. And it looked as if it had been there for a long time."

Ysao said, "Talk about the job."

Russell said, "I don't know the details. I know the drift. He wants me to—shall we say, obtain something for him?"