“Leo couldn’t stop talking about this kid he used to know on Earth. He said he’d taught this kid to play himself, but when we gave Leo the syrynx …” He shook his head, laughing.
“But this the kid is!” Leo exclaimed, rounding the Mouse’s shoulder.
“Huh?”
“Oh!”
“The Mouse this is!”
They walked into the double-storied door of the net house. From high racks, swaying nets curtained labyrinths. The riders hung their nets on tenterhook arrangements that lowered from the ceiling by pullies. Once stretched, a rider could repair broken links, readjust the response couplers which caused the net to move and shape itself to the nerve impulses from the plugs.
Two riders were wheeling out a great machine with a lot of teeth.
“What’s that?”
“With that they will the arolat butcher.”
“Arolat?” The Mouse nodded.
“That’s what we here hunt. Aqualats down around Black Table they hunt.”
“Oh.”
“But Mouse, what here you are doing?” They walked through jingling links. “You in the nets will a while stay? You for a while with us will work? I a crew that a new man needs know—“
“I’m just on leave from a ship that’s stopping over here awhile. It’s the Roc, Captain Von Ray.”
“Von Ray? A Pleiades ship is?”
“That’s right.”
Leo hauled down the hooking mechanism from the high beams and began to spread his net. “What it in Draco doing is?”
“The captain has to stop at the Alkane Institute for some technical information.”
Leo gave a yank on the pulley chain and the hooks clattered up another ten feet. He began to spread out the next layer.
“Von Ray, yes. That a good ship must be. When I first into Draco came”—He strained black links across the next hook—no one from the Pleiades ever into Draco came. One or two, maybe. I alone was.” The links snapped in place; Leo hauled the chain again. The top of the net rose into the light from the upper windows. “Nowadays many people from the Federation I meet. Ten on this shore work. And ships back and forth all the time go.” He shook his head unhappily.
Somebody called from across the work area. “Hey, where’s the doc?” Her voice echoed in the webs. “Alex’s been waiting here five minutes now.”
Leo rattled his web to make sure it was firm. They looked back toward the door. “Don’t worry! He’ll here come!” he hollered out. He caught the Mouse’s shoulder. “You with me go!”
They walked through the hangings. Other riders were still hooking.
“Hey, you gonna play that?”
They looked up.
The rider climbed halfway down the links, then jumped to ‘the floor. “This I want to see.”
“Sure he is,” Leo exclaimed.
“You know, really I …” the Mouse began. As glad as he was to see Leo, he had been enjoying his private musings.
“Good! Cause Leo ain’t been talking about nothing else.”
As they continued through the webs, other riders joined them.
Alex sat at the bottom of the steps up to the observation balcony. He held his shoulder, and leaned his head against the spokes. Occasionally he sucked in his unshaven cheeks.
“Look,” the Mouse said to Leo, “why don’t we just go someplace and get something to drink? We can talk some, maybe. I’ll play for you before we go …
“Now you play!” Leo insisted. “Later we talk.”
Alex opened his eyes. “Is this the guy you—he grimaced—“were telling us about, Leo?”
“See, Mouse. After a dozen years, a reputation you have.” Leo pulled over an upside-down lubricant drum that rasped on the cement. “Now you sit.”
“Come on, Leo.” The Mouse switched to Greek. “I don’t really feel like it. Your friend is sick, and doesn’t want to be bothered—“
“Malakas!” Alex said, then spat bloody froth between his frayed knees.’ “Play something. You’ll take my mind off the hurt. Damn it, when is the medico going to get here?”
“Something for Alex you play.”
“It’s just …” The Mouse looked at the injured net-rider, then at the other men and women standing along the wall.
A grin mixed into the pain on Alex’s face. “Give us a number, Mouse.
He didn’t want to play.
“All right.”
He took his syrynx from the sack and ducked his head through the strap. “The doc will probably get here right in the middle,” the Mouse commented.
“I hope they get here soon,” Alex grunted. “I know I’ve got at least a broken arm. I can’t feel anything in the leg, and something’s bleeding inside—“ He spat red again. “I’ve got to go out on a run again in two hours. He better get me patched up quick. If I can’t make that run this afternoon, I’ll sue ‘im. I paid my damned health insurance.”
“He’ll get you back together,” one of the riders assured. “They ain’t let a policy lapse yet. Shut up and let the kid play …”
He stopped because the Mouse had already started.
Light struck glass and turned it copper. Thousands on thousands of round panes formed the concaved facade of the Alkane.
Katin strolled the path by the river that wound the museum garden. The river—the same heavy mists that oceaned polar Vorpis—steamed at the bank. Ahead, it flowed beneath the arched and blazing wall.
The captain was just far enough in front of Katin so that their shadows were the same length over the polished stones. Among the fountains, the elevated stage was continually bringing up another platform full of visitors, a few hundred at a time. But within seconds they dispersed on the variegated paths that wound down rocks licked through with quartz. On a bronze drum, at the focus of the reflecting panes, some hundred yards before the museum, her marble, armless grace vivid in the ruddy morning, was the Venus de Milo.
Lynceos squinted his pink eyes and averted his face from the glare. Idas, beside him, looked back and forth and up and down.
Tyy, her hand in Sebastian’s, hung behind him, her hair lifting with the beating of the beast on his gleaming shoulder.
Now the light, thought Katin, as they passed beneath the arch into the lens-shaped lobby, goes blue. True, no moon has natural atmosphere enough to cause such dramatic diffraction. Still, I miss a lunar solitude. This cool structure of plastics, metal, and stone was once the largest building made by man. How far we’ve come since the twenty-seventh century. Are there a dozen buildings larger than this today through the galaxy? Two dozen? Odd position for an academic rebel here: conflict between the tradition thus embodied and the absurdity of its dated architecture. Cyana Morgan nests in this tomb of man’s history. Fitting: the white hawk broods on bones.
From the ceiling hung an octagonal screen where public announcements were broadcast. A serial light-fantasia played now.
“Would you get me extension 739-E-6,” Captain Von Ray asked a girl at the information desk.
She turned her hand up and punched the buttons on the little com-kit plugged on her wrist. “Certainly.”
“Hello, Bunny?” Lorq said.
“Lorq Von Ray!” the girl at the desk exclaimed in a voice not hers. “You’ve come to see Cyana?”
“That’s right, Bunny. If she isn’t busy, I’d like to come up and talk to her.”
“Just a moment and I’ll see.”
Bunny, wherever Bunny was in the hive around them released control of the girl long enough for her to raise her eyebrows in surprise. “You’re here to see Cyana Morgan?” she said in her own voice.
“That’s right.” Lorq smiled.
At which point Bunny came back, “Fine, Lorq. She’ll meet you in South West 12. It’s less crowded there.”
Lorq turned to the crew. “Why don’t you wander around the museum a while? I’ll have what I want in an hour.”