“Of course it was. Look, Bunny—“
Lorq clasped Katin’s shoulder. “Come on.”
They left the guard/Bunny arguing with Cyana.
“Why …?” Katin tried to ask around the captain’s shoulder.
Lorq stopped.
Under Sirius #11 (Selvin forgery) flared in purple cascade behind his shoulder.
“I said I couldn’t tell you what I meant. Perhaps this shows you a little. We’ll get the others now.”
“How will you find them? They’re still wandering around the museum.”
“You think so?” Lorq started again.
The lower galleries were chaos.
“Captain … “ Katin tried to picture the thousands of tourists confronted with Prince’s vehemence; he remembered his initial confrontation on the Roc, Visitors swarmed the onyx floor of the FitzGerald Salon. The iridescent allegories of the twentieth-century genius glazed the vaulted walls with light. Children chattered to their parents. Students pattered to one another, Lorq strode between them with Katin close after.
They spiraled out into the lobby above the dragon’s head.
A black thing flapped over the crowd, was jerked back. “The others must be with him,” Katin cried, pointing to Sebastian.
Katin swung around the stone jaw. Lorq overtook him on the blue tile.
“Captain, we just saw …”
“—Prince Red, like on the ship—“
“—on the announcement screens, it was—“
“—was all over the museum, We got back—“
“—here so we wouldn’t miss you—“
“—when you came down. Captain, what—“
“Let’s go.” Lorq stopped the twins with a hand on each of their shoulders. “Sebastian! Tyy! We have to get back to the wharf and get the Mouse.”
“And get off this world and to your nova!”
“Let’s just get to the wharf first. Then we’ll talk about where we’re going next.”
They pushed their way toward the archway.
“I guess we’ve got to hurry up before Prince gets here,” Katin said.
“Why?”
That was Lorq.
Katin tried to translate his visage.
It was indecipherable.
“I have a third message coming. I am going to wait for it.”
Then the garden: boisterous and golden.
“Thanks, doc!” Alex called. He kneaded his arm: a fist, a flex, a swing. “Hey, kid,” He turned to the Mouse. “You know, you really can play that syrynx. Sorry about the medico-unit coming in right in the middle of things. But thanks anyway.” He grinned, then looked at the wall clock. “Guess I’ll make my run after all. Malakas!” He strode down among the clinking veils.
Leo asked sadly. “Now you it away put?”
The Mouse pulled the sack’s draw string and shrugged. “Maybe I’ll play some more later.” He started to stick his arm through the strap. Then his fingers fell in the leather folds. “What’s the matter, Leo?”
The fisherman stuck his left hand beneath the tarnished links of his belt. “You just me very nostalgic make, boy.” The right hand now. “Because so much time passed has, that you no longer a boy are.” Leo sat down on the steps. Humor brushed his mouth. “I not here happy am, I think. Maybe time again to move is. Yeah?” He nodded. “Yeah.”
“You think so?” The Mouse turned around on his drum to face him. “Why now?”
Leo pressed his lips. The expression said about the same as a shrug. “When I the old see, I know how much the new I need. Besides, leaving for a long time I have been thinking of.”
“Where’re you going?”
“To this Pleiades I go.”
“But you’re from the Pleiades, Leo. I thought you said you want to see someplace new?”
“There a hundred-odd worlds in the Pleiades are. I maybe a dozen have fished. I something new want, yes; but also, after these twenty-five years, home.”
The Mouse watched the thick features, the pale hair: familiarity? You adjust it like you would a mist-mask, the Mouse thought; then fit it on the face that must wear it. Leo has changed so much. The Mouse, who had had so little childhood, lost some more of it now. “I just want the new, Leo. I wouldn’t want to go home … even if I had one.”
“Some day as I the Pleiades, you Earth or Draco will want.”
“Yeah.” He shrugged his sack onto his shoulder. “Maybe I will. Why shouldn’t I, in twenty-five years?”
An echo:
“Mouse!”
And:
“Hey, Mouse?”
And again:
“Mouse are you in there?”
“Hey!” The Mouse stood and cupped his hands to his mouth. “Katin?” His shout was even uglier than his speech.
Long and curious, Katin came between the nets. “Surprise, surprise. I didn’t think I’d find you. I’ve been going down the wharf asking people if they’d seen you. Some guy said you’d been playing in here.”
“Is the captain through at the Alkane? Did he get what he wanted?”
“And then some. There was a message from Prince waiting for him at the institute. So he played it over the public announcement system.” Katin whistled. “Vicious!”
“He’s got his nova?”
“He does. Only he’s waiting around here for something else. I don’t understand it.”
“Then we’re off to the star?”
“Nope. Then he wants to go to the Pleiades. We have a couple of weeks’ wait. But don’t ask me what he wants to do there.”
“The Pleiades?” the Mouse asked. “Is that where the nova will be?”
Katin turned up his palms. “I don’t think so. Maybe he thinks it’ll be safer to pass the time in home territory.”
“Wait a minute!” The Mouse swung around to Leo again. “Leo, maybe Captain will give you a lift back to the Pleiades with us.”
“Huh?” Leo’s chin came off his hands.
“Katin, Captain Von Ray wouldn’t mind giving Leo a ride out to the Pleiades, would he?”
Katin tried to look reservedly doubtful. The expression was too complicated and came out blank.
“Leo’s an old friend of mine. From back on Earth, He taught me how to play the syrynx, when I was a kid.”
“Captain’s got a lot on his mind—“
“Yeah, but he wouldn’t care if—“
“But much better than me now he plays,” Leo interjected.
“I bet Captain would do it if I asked him.”
“I no trouble with your captain want to make—“
“We can ask him.” The Mouse tucked his sack behind him, “Come on, Leo. Where is the captain, Katin?”
Katin and Leo exchanged the look of unintroduced adults put in league by youth’s enthusiasms.
“Well? Come on!”
Leo stood up and followed the Mouse and Katin toward the door.
Seven hundred years ago the first colonists on Vorpis carved the Esclaros des Nuages into the mesa rock-rim of Phoenix. Between the moorings for the smaller fog crawlers and the wharfs where the net-riders docked, the stairs descended into the white fog. They were chipped and worn today.
Finding the steps deserted at the Phoenix mid-day siesta, Lorq strolled down between the quartz-shot walls. Mist lapped the bottom steps; wave on white wave rolled from the horizon, each blued with shadow on the left, gilded with sun on the right, like rampant lambs.
“Hey, Captain!”
Lorq looked back up the steps.
“Hey, Captain, can I talk to you a minute?” the Mouse came crabwise down the stairway. His syrynx jogged on his hip. “Katin told me you were going to go to the Pleiades after we leave here. I just ran into a guy I used to know back on Earth, an old friend. Taught me how to play the syrynx.” He shook his sack. “I thought maybe since we were going in that direction—we could sort of drop him off home. He was really a good friend of—“