[*]
The dark thing flapped about him now. The weight lifted a moment; he scrambled up the stones on his belly. Sucking fresher air, gasping and dizzy, he looked back.
The net hovered above him, grappling with the beast. He pulled himself up another step as the shape flapped free. Links fell heavy on his leg; pulled from his leg; dragged down the steps; vanished.
Lorq sat up and forced himself to follow the thing’s flight between the stones. It cleared the walls, gyred twice, then returned to Sebastian’s shoulder:
The squat cybord stud looked down from the wall.
Lorq swayed to his feet, squeezed his eyes closed, shook his head, then lurched up the Esclaros des Nuages.
Sebastian was fastening the steel band about the creature’s flexing claw when Lorq reached him at the head of the steps.
“Again, I”—Lorq took another breath and dropped his hand on Sebastian’s gold-matted shoulder – “you thank.”
They looked from the rocks out where no rider broke the mist.
“You in much danger are?”
“I am.”
Tyy came quickly across the wharf to Sebastian’s side.
“What it was?” Her eyes, alive like metal, flashed between the men. “I the black gilly saw released!”
It all right is,” Lorq told her. “Now, anyway. I a run-in with the Queen of Swords just had. But your pet me saved.”
Sebastian took Tyy’s hand. As her fingers felt the familiar shapes of his, she calmed.
Sebastian frowned.
“To the Dim, Dead Sister we now go,” Lorq told them.
Shadow and shadow; shadow and light: the twins were coming acoss the wharf. You could see the puzzled expression on Lynceos’ face. Not on Idas’.
“But …?” Sebastian began. Then Tyy’s hand moved in his and he stopped.
Lorq volunteered no answer to the unfinished question. “The others we get now. I what I waited for have. Yes; time to go it is.”
Katin fell forward to clutch the links. The rattle echoed in the net house.
Leo laughed. “Hey, Mouse. In that last bar your big friend too much to drink had, I think.”
Katin regained his balance. “I’m not drunk.” He raised his head and looked up the curtained metal. “It’d take twice as much as that to get me drunk.”
“Funny. I am.” The Mouse opened his sack. “Leo, you said you wanted me to play some more. What do you want to see?”
“Anything, Mouse. Anything you like, play.”
Katin shook the nets again. “From star to star, Mouse; imagine, a great web that spreads across the galaxy, as far as man. That’s the matrix in which history happens today. Don’t you see? That’s it. That’s my theory. Each individual is a junction in that net, and the strands between are the cultural, the economic, the psychological threads that hold individual to individual. Any historic event is like a ripple in the net.”
He rattled the links again. “It passes over and through the web, stretching or shrinking those cultural bonds that involve each man with each man. If the event is catastrophic enough, the bonds break. The net is torn a while. De Eiling and 34-Alvin are only arguing where the ripples start and how far they travel. But their overall view is the same, you see. I want to catch the throw and scope of this web in my … my novel, Mouse. I want it to spread about the whole web. But I have to find that central subject, that great event which shakes history and makes the links strike and glitter for me. A moon, Mouse; to retire to some beautiful rock, my art perfected, to contemplate the flow and shift of the net; that’s what I want, Mouse. But the subject won’t come!”
The Mouse was sitting on the floor, looking in the bottom of the sack for a control knob that had come off the syrynx.
“Why don’t you write about yourself?”
“Oh, that’s a fine idea! Who would read it? You?”
The Mouse found the knob and pushed it back on its stem.
“I don’t think I could read anything as long as a novel.”
“But if the subject were, say, the clash between two great families like Prince’s and the captain’s, wouldn’t you at least want to?”
“How many notes have you made on this book?” The Mouse chanced a tentative light through the hangar.
[*]
“Not a tenth as many as I need. Even though it’s doomed as an obsolete museum reliquary, it will be jeweled”—he swung back on the nets—“crafted”—the links roared; his voice rose—“a meticulous work; perfect!”
“I was born,” the Mouse said. “I must die. I am suffering. Help me. There, I just wrote your book for you.”
Katin looked at his big, weak fingers against the mail. After a while he said, “Mouse, sometimes you make me want to cry.”
The smell of cumin.
The smell of almonds.
The smell of cardamon.
Falling melodies meshed.
Bitten nails, enlarged knuckles; the backs of Katin’s hands flickered with autumn colors; across the cement floor his shadow danced in the web.
“Hey, there you go,” Leo laughed. “You play, yeah, Mouse! You play!”
And the shadows danced on till voices:
“Hey, are you guys still—“
“—in here? Captain told us to—“
“—said to hunt you up. It’s—“
“—it’s time to get going. Come on—“
“—we’re going!”
Chapter Six
Draco/Pleiades Federation (Roc transit)
“The Page of Wands.”
“Justice.”
“Judgement. My trick. The Queen of Cups.”
“Ace of Cups.”
“The Star. My trick. The Hermit.”
“With trumps she leads!” Leo laughed. “Death.”
“The Fool. My trick is. Now: the Knight of Coins.”
“Trey of Coins.”
“King of Coins. My trick it is. Five of Swords.”
“The Deuce.”
“The Magus; my trick.”
Katin watched the darkened chess table where Sebastian, Tyy, and Leo, after the hour of reminiscence, played three-handed Tarot-whist.
He did not know the game well; but they did not know this, and he ruminated that they had not asked him to play. He had observed the game for fifteen minutes over Sebastian’s shoulder (the dark thing huddled by his foot), while hairy hands dealt and fanned the cards. From his small knowledge Katin tried to construct a cutting brilliance to toss into the play.
They played so fast.
He gave up.
But as he walked to where the Mouse and Idas sat on the ramp with their feet hanging over the pool, he smiled; in his pocket he thumbed the pips on the end of his recorder, wording another note.
Idas was saying: “Hey, Mouse, what if I were to turn this knob …?”
“Watch it!” The Mouse pushed Idas’ hand from the syrynx. “You’ll blind everybody in the room!”
Idas frowned. “The one I had, back when I fooled around with it, didn’t have—“ His voice trailed, waiting for an absent completion.
The Mouse’s hand slipped from wood to steel to plastic. His fingers brushed the strings and snagged unamplified notes—“You can really hurt somebody if you don’t use this thing properly. It’s highly directional, and the amount of light and sound you can get out of it could detach somebody’s retina or rupture an eardrum. To get opacity in the hologram images, you know, this thing uses a laser.”
Idas shook his head. “I never played around with one long enough to find how it worked inside all the—“
He reached out to touch the safer strings.
“It sure is a nice-looking—“