A Different Light (7 page)

"Steal," said Ysao.

"Yes. A necklace, a rare book, once it was an old map."

"Of course," Jimson said. "Morgan the Pirate."

Russell swept a bow. "Except by tradition a ship is always she, even the
Sigurd,
and so my ship is
Morgana
."

Leiko asked: "How will you find out?"

Russell held out a small box. Leiko took it, and pulled off the top. In the cotton nestled a pair of pearl earrings. Leiko regarded them dubiously. She picked one up, turned it over. "This means something?"

Russell was pulling the green gems from his ears. "There's a signal in the earrings, and a scanner picks it up. I expect they change the scanner setting often. With these on, I walk up to De Vala's house and open the door. Without them, I can pound on the door till doomsday. The guards come out when I get inside."

"Huh." Ysao reached for the box. "I don't suppose you could arrange to walk out wearing them."

"I doubt it," Russell said. "What could I tell them?
I
have a friend who's an engineer. Do you mind if I borrow these for a little while? I'll bring them right back.
" He took the box back and put the earrings in his ears. "They're too big," he remarked. "I like small earrings. I'm going there now. If you're interested, I'll meet you at the Field Gate in an hour."

"I think they look good," said Leiko. "All right. I'm interested. An hour at the Field Gate."

"We'll go out to
Morgana.
Jim, you want to come see my ship?"

"I won't know what I'm seeing," Jimson said. "But if I won't be in the way...."

"You won't be in my way," said Russell. "Here." He handed Jimson a square of clear plastic. "This'll get you onto the Flight Field."

Leiko glanced at it. "It looks like a navigator's I-disc," she said.

"It is," Russell said. "It's mine. But all I need is this." He touched the Starcaptain's medallion. "An hour, then." He opened the door and was gone through it, leaving a breeze and the smell of the city streets hanging in the room.

Ysao stood up. "I think I'll see you later," he remarked. He left. Leiko looked at Jimson.

"How's your head?"

Jimson felt it carefully. "I believe I'll keep it."

* * *

When Leiko and Jimson arrived at the Field Gate, Russell and Ysao were waiting for them. The green gems were back in Russell's ears. "I've got a bubble," he told them. "Leiko, would you like to take it?"

"Would I!" Leiko was sparkling. She had put on her purple coveralls, neon-bright, and masked her eyes with gold-flecked glitter. "I haven't flown a thing in months!" The bubble looked like one of the city's swinging bubbles, but colorless: round, transparent, and alarming. Jimson used the ceiling bar to pull himself into one of the low and narrow seats. Ysao crammed in beside him. Russell took a front seat.

Leiko swung in last, and settled herself at the pilot's board with a sigh of delight. "Here goes!" Jimson clutched the seat. The little craft shivered and rose straight up in the air.

"Where to, Captain?" Russell reeled off a string of numbers, and the bubble swooped buoyantly away. Jimson clamped his teeth together to keep his insides from getting out. He had a mercifully vague memory of another such ride, on Epsilon Moon—but he'd been drugged, and the damn bubble had been opaque, not clear as a lens! He hoped that no one would suggest he look down.

The bubble dropped to earth. Leiko hopped out. Jimson came out very slowly, feeling as if everything inside had come unstuck. "You get used to it," Russell said compassionately. "This is
Morgana
." Jimson surveyed the round pewter-colored thing. Ysao, normally imperturbable, was impatient for once. He tapped the metal with his knuckles. Russell slapped his palm on the side of the ship, and a door opened. Reaching upwards, Ysao swung inside. Leiko went after him.

Jimson touched the metal skin. It was smooth and cool. The ship reminded him of pictures he'd seen of whales, or giant turtles. She was round. Light pulsed near them, tossing rainbows off the
Morgana
's side. "Go in," said Russell.

Jimson hesitated at the door. It was several feet off the ground. "How do I—"

"There's a ceiling bar," directed Russell. "Grab for it." Jimson felt for it, locked his fingers around it, and pulled himself clumsily inside. His knee scraped the opening as he went through. Russell followed him, lifting himself like an acrobat on a chinning bar. His hand slapped a plate just inside the door. It slid shut. "Ysao?" he called.

"Yo." The sound was muffled. Russell laughed.

"Trust an engineer to find the Drive Core." He touched Jimson's shoulder. "You look around," he invited. "If you want to know anything, ask me."

Jimson said, "I was wondering how long you've been a Starcaptain."

"I've been a Starcaptain for six years," Russell said. "I trained to be a navigator. That took me two years. I went to work in a nice legal job, too, navigated cargo ships for one of the combines. But you know me. I get bored fast. I got curious about the places I wasn't going to—and I got very tired of taking orders. I wanted to be my own boss. So I came back here and went through four more years of training, and came out with this." His hand brushed the medallion on his chest. "Made some good friends then, too." His eyes were looking into a private place. Jimson waited, not wanting to disturb him. The green eyes changed as if shutters had fallen over them. "I had another ship before this: a lovely old hulk named the
Mariana
."

"Did something happen to her?"

"I sold her. She was close to being scrap anyway. I bought this ship and renamed her
Morgana
two years ago—in fact, De Vala bought her for me. It was my pay for the job I did for him."

"Russ!" Ysao was calling from wherever he was.

"Coming! Feel at home," he said to Jimson.

As a home, the ship was one big round room. Leiko was standing, smiling, before a curving wall with two chairs in front of it. The wall was a collage of screens and dials and buttons. Along another curve of wall there were bunks, six of them, in two rows of three, and a food unit with a table which could be lowered out of the wall. There was a cubicle that might be a bathroom. There was no privacy. It was disturbing not to have divisions: walls, doors, rectangles and squares. Up the wall, over the ceiling, and down the other side, hung rungs. A ladder? No, they stuck out too much. Jimson scowled at them. They looked like giant towel racks.

There was a picture on the wall. He went up to it. It was one of his own: a landscape, rare for him, in colored pencil: an orchard in blossom, with petals thick as fleece. The orchard on North Island, on New Terrain, where Russell and he had walked, talked, made love in the sun.... Russell's hand fell on his shoulder. "What are you—oh."

Jimson said, "I did that five years ago."

Russell said, "I bought it five years ago. Saw it at a show on Cameo."

"Why did you buy it?" Jimson asked.

For a moment he thought Russell would refuse to answer. The green eyes shuttered. But Russell said, "I bought it because it reminded me of you." He turned then to the food unit. The table came out of the wall, and benches came out of the table. "If you'll drag Leiko from the pilot's chair, I'll get Ysao away from the Drive, and we can talk."

Leiko came to the table reluctantly. "This is a beautiful ship."

"Just tell me where we're going," Ysao said. "I'm in."

Russell looked at Leiko. "I don't know," she said. "Talk about it."

"The Crystal Masks," Russell said. He turned to Jimson. "Ever heard of them?"

"No."

"Nor I. But De Vala has, and he wants one. He described them to me. They're masks, carved out of jade, ivory, crystal. Supposed to be incredibly beautiful. They are on a planet called Demea, which circles a star called 82 Eridani. The catch is that 82 Eridani is congruent to an edge of the Maze."

"82 Eridani," murmured Ysao. "Demea. I remember something about that place...."

"What's the Maze?" Jimson asked.

Leiko answered him. "It's a place in the Hype. It's dangerous. The concentration of red dust—matter—is intense. They haven't mapped it very well. Ships jump around it. Some have been lost there."

Russell said, "A year ago, Shev Allard's ship
Emeraude
went into the Maze and didn't come out." Something in his tone made Jimson look at him. But his face was giving nothing away, except the equivocation of pain.

"I've never piloted near the Maze," Leiko said.

"We'll be near it. Not in it."

"Ysao engineer. You as navigator?—" Russell nodded—"Can I say
yes
tentatively?' Leiko asked.

"No," Russell said. "I need someone I can count on."

Leiko bristled. "Yes, then, Starcaptain! I'll try anything once, even piracy and the Maze. I'll get you past it. But I hope you struck a hard bargain with De Vala!"

"I did," Russell said. "Expenses no matter what, and ten thousand credits if we deliver a Mask."

"Done," said Leiko.

Russell slapped his right hand down on the table. Leiko covered it with both of hers. Ysao laid his huge hands on top of the pile, and Russell put his left hand on Ysao's. "Done," he repeated. The piled-up hands confirmed a contract. Jimson looked away. He was out of it. It hurt.

Leiko said joyfully, "When do we leave?"

Russell shrugged. "I'll let you know. Say—three days?"

Jimson said, jolted into speech, "Three days!"

The hands parted. Russell touched his shoulder. "It won't be a long trip," he said. "Ten days in, ten days out, and then we'll be back. Don't you think three days is long enough for us to say goodbye?"

"Sure," said Jimson shortly. What the hell, he thought, it wouldn't help if I said
no.
But we've fourteen years to catch up on, minus one night, and we've barely had a chance to say hello.

Chapter 8

Leiko and Jimson rode the movalongs back to the house alone. Leiko rode with her hands in her pockets and her shoulders hunched. Jimson felt the distance growing between them. When she happened to look his way and notice him she smiled, a pleasant gentle smile, a stranger's smile.

He followed her around the house as she packed her gear. "Lady?" he said finally, to her bent back.

She turned around. "Hey?"

"You've already left, haven't you?"

"You knew I would go back to the Hype."

"Yes." What's it like, then? Dark and dust. No stars. And people go out there and out there.

Like Russell.

"Give me something?" she asked quietly.

"What?"

"Something to hang on my wall. I never looked at pictures before I met you. Give me a print for over my bed."

Automatically Jimson reached for the print of the
Polish Rider.
No. That landscape was not Leiko's. He went looking for a print, a copy of an Old Terran tapestry. Mountains, a tiny temple shrine, and two sages toiling upwards to a peak hidden by a pearly cloud... "Here." It was serene and remote as starlight.

"Um. I like this."

"That's you."

"The little old woman with the bundle?"

"Yes. You'll look like that when you're eighty."

"When I'm eighty I'll be drunk in a bar somewhere, in some Port city, telling lies about my notorious past."

When I'm eighty, Jimson thought, I'll be famous. Too bad I won't be around to appreciate it.

You're famous now, Alleca. Big deal.

"What are you thinking?" She sat on the bed.

"About fame."

"You like being famous?"

"I don't care."

"When you first started to draw, did you think about it?"

"No." I first started to draw, he thought, when the doctors told me that I was sick, that I would always be sick, and never well. And I started to draw everything, anything, frantic because there was a world, a dozen worlds, a universe to see, and they had just taken away my time. Filling notebooks with mostly bad, half-done and half-baked sketches. "I just thought about all the places I wanted to see."

"Like Nexus."

"Like Nexus. And Old Terra."

"What's there?'

"Art."

"There's art on a lot of worlds. You told me about some of them. Chudra—"

"On Dakar. Yes. But even Chudra doesn't understand.
They
did. The old artists."

"What?"

Jimson pointed to the
Polish Rider.
"Tell me about that," he said.

"A man, riding. At sunset, I think."

"How does it make you feel?"

She thought about it. "Lonely. And cold."

"Yes. They could do that. That's Death. The Pale Rider. On Old Terra that road was always just ahead of you.... And everything you did, you did knowing that the next day you might not be around to see the fruit of your work.
They understood.
Maybe old Yamaguchi on Pellin understands. The others—" he envisioned the colors and wide white streets of Las Flores—"they play at art. They make pretty pictures. Art isn't pretty pictures. It's all you can do. It's all that lasts, when you come round the curve of the road, and see the Rider waiting. It lasts, because you painted your portraits with your own blood—" he felt the rage rising in him, "with the blood of the children you can't ever have, because famine or war or disease or their own genes will kill them.... It comes from there." He caught back his anger, wanting her to understand. "My art is my soul," he said. "It's the piece of me that won't die."