“All right. Let’s get out of here. To Prince’s party!”
“Be careful now …” His mother’s voice came over the speaker.
“Give our regards to Aaron. And congratulations again, son,” Father said. “If you wreck that brass butterfly on this silly trip, don’t expect me to buy a new one.”
“So long, Dad.”
The Caliban rose from among the ships clustered at the viewing station where the spectators had come to observe the Regatta’s conclusion. Fifty-foot windows flashed in starlight below them (behind one, his father and an android of his mother stood at the railing, watching the ship pull away), and in a moment they were wheeling through the Pleiades Federation, then toward Sol.
A day out, they lost six hours in a whirlpool nebula (“Now if you had a real ship instead of this here toy,” Dan complained over the intercom, “it’d be a sneeze to get out of this thing.” Lorq turned the frequency of the scanner higher on the ion-coupler. “Point two-five down, Brian. Then catch it up fast—there!”), but made up the time and then some on the Outward Tidal Drift.
A day later, and Sol was a glowing, growing light in the cosmos raging.
Draco, Earth, Paris, 3162
Shaped like the figure eight of a Mycenaean shield, De Blau Field tilted miles below the sweeping vans. Cargo shuttles left from here for the big star—port on Neptune’s second moon. The five-hundred-meter passenger liners glittered across the platforms. Caliban fell toward the inset of the yacht basin, coming down like a triple kite. Lorq sat up from the couch as the guide beams caught them. “Okay, puppets. Cut the strings.” He switched off Caliban’s humming entrails a moment after touchdown. Banked lights died around him.
Brian hopped into the control cabin, tying his left sandal. Dan, unshaven, his vest unlaced, ambled from his projection chamber. “Guess we got here, Captain.” He stooped to finger dirt between his toes. “What kind of party is this you kids are going to?”
As Lorq touched the unload button, the floor began to slant and the ribbed covering rolled back till the lower edge of the floor hit the ground. “I’m not sure,” Lorq told him. “I suppose we’ll all find out when we get there.”
“Ohhh no,” Dan drawled as they reached the bottom. “I don’t go for this society stuff.” They started from beneath the shadow of the hull. “Find me a bar, and just pick me up when you come back.”
“If you two don’t want to come,” Lorq said, looking around the field, “we’ll stop off for something to eat, and then you can stay here.”
“I … well, sort of wanted to go.” Brian looked disappointed. “This is as close as I’ll ever get to going to a party given by Prince Red.”
Lorq looked at Brian. The stocky, brown-haired boy with coffee-colored eyes had changed his scuffed leather work-vest for a clean one with iridescent flowers. Lorq was only beginning to realize how dazzled this young man, who had hitched across the universe, was before the wealth, visible and implied, that went with a nineteen-year-old who could race his own yacht and just took off to parties in Paris.
It had not occurred to Lorq to change his vest at all.
“You come on then,” Lorq said. “We’ll get Dan on the way back.”
“Just you two don’t get so drunk you can’t carry me back on board.”
Lorq and Dan laughed.
Brian was staring around at the other yachts in the basin. “Hey! Have you ever worked a tri-vaned Zephyr?” He touched Lorq’s arm, then pointed across to a graceful, golden hull. “I bet one of those would really twirl.”
“Pickup is slow on the lower frequencies.” Lorq turned back to Dan. “You make sure you get back on board by take-off time tomorrow. I’m not going to go running around looking for you.”
“With me this close to Australia? Don’t worry, Captain. By the by, you wouldn’t get upset if I should happen to bring a lady onto the ship?” He grinned at Lorq, then winked.
“Say,” Brian said. “How do those Boris-27s handle? Our club at school was trying to arrange a swap with another club that had a ten-year-old Boris. Only they wanted money too.”
“As long as she doesn’t leave the ship with anything she didn’t bring,” Lorq told Dan. He turned to Brian again. “I’ve never been on a Boris more than three years old. A friend of mine had one a couple of years back. It worked pretty well, but it wasn’t up to Caliban.”
They walked through the gate of the landing field, started down the steps to the street, and passed through the shadow from the column of the coiled snake.
Paris had remained a more or less horizontal city. The only structures interrupting the horizon to any great extent were the Eiffel Tower to their left and the spiring structure of Les Halles: seventy tiers of markets were enclosed in transparent panes, tessellated with metal scrollwork—it was the focus of food and produce for the twenty-three million inhabitants of the city.
They turned up Rue de Les Astronauts past the restaurants and hotel marquees. Dan dug under the rope around his middle to scratch his stomach, then pushed his long hair from his forehead. “Where do you get drunk around here if you’re a working cyborg stud?” Suddenly he pointed down a smaller street. “There!”
At the bend of the L-shaped street was a small cafe-bar with a crack across the window, Le Sideral. The door was closing behind two women.
“Fine,” Dan drawled, and loped ahead of Lorq and Brian. “I envy someone like that, sometimes,” Brian said to Lorq, softly.
Lorq looked surprised.
“You really don’t care,” Brian went on, “I mean if he brings a woman on the ship?”
Lorq shrugged. “I’d bring one on.”
“Oh. You must have it pretty easy with girls, especially with a racing ship.”
“I guess it helps.”
Brian bit at his thumbnail and nodded. “That would be nice. Sometimes I think girls have forgotten I’m alive. Probably be the same, yacht or no.” He laughed. “You ever brought a girl onto your ship?”
Lorq was silent a moment. Then he said, “I have three children.”
Now Brian looked surprised.
“A boy and two girls. Their mothers are miners on a little Outer Colony world, New Brazillia.”
“Oh, you mean you …”
Lorq cupped his left hand on his right shoulder, right hand on his left.
“We lead very different sorts of lives, I think,” Brian said slowly, “you and I.”
“That’s what I was thinking.” Then Lorq grinned. Brian’s smile returned uneasily.
“Hold on, you there!” from behind them. “Wait!” They turned.
“Lorq? Lorq Von Ray?”
The black glove Lorq’s father had described was now a silver one. The armband, high on his biceps, was set with diamonds.
“Prince?”
Vest, pants, boots were silver. “I almost missed you!” The bony face beneath black hair animated. “I had the field call me as soon as you got clearance at Neptune. Racing yacht, huh? Sure took your time. Oh, before I forget; Aaron told me if you did come, I should ask you to give his regards to your Aunt Cyana. She stayed with us for a weekend at the beach on Chobe’s World last month.”
“Thanks. I will if I see her,” Lorq said. “If she was with you last month, you’ve seen her more recently than I have. She doesn’t spend much time on Ark any more.”
“Cyana …” Brian began. “ …Morgan?” he finished in astonishment. But Prince was already going on: “Look.” He dropped his hands on the shoulders of Lorq’s leather vest (Lorq tried to detect a difference in pressure between gloved and ungloved fingers), “I’ve got to get to Mt. Kenyuna and back before the party. I have every available bit of transportation bringing people down from all over everywhere. Aaron’s not co-operating. He’s refused to have anything more to do with the party; he thinks it’s gotten out of hand. I’m afraid I’ve been throwing his name around to get things I needed in a few places he didn’t approve. But he’s somewhere off on Vega. Do you want to run me over to the Himalayas?”