And the Roc put down by the black blister of the City tipping the Devil’s Claw.
Pleiades Federation, other world, CDN, 3172
“ …of eighteen hours.” And that was the end of the info-voice.
“Is this home enough for you?” the Mouse asked.
Leo gazed across the field. “I never this world walked,” the fisherman sighed. Beyond, the sea of broken ice stretched toward the horizon. “But great segmented and six-flippered nhars in schools across that sea move. The fishermen for them with harpoons long as five tall men together hunt. The Pleiades it is; home enough it is.” He smiled, and his frosted breath rose to dim his blue eyes.
“This is your world, isn’t it, Sebastian?” Katin asked. “You must feel good coming home.”
Sebastian pushed a dark wing away that beat before his eyes. “Still mine, but … “ He looked around, shrugged. “I from Thule come. It a bigger city is; a quarter of the way around the other world it lies. From here very far is; and very different.” He looked up at the twilight sky. Sister was high, a bleary pearl behind a gun-colored sheath of cloud. “Very different.” He shook his head.
“Our world, yes,” Tyy said. “But not our home at all.”
The captain, a few steps before them, looked back when they spoke. “Look.” He pointed to the gate. Beneath the scar his face was fixed. “No dragon on his column coils. This home is. For you and you and you and me, this home is!”
“Home enough,” Leo repeated. But his voice was guarded.
They followed the captain out through the serpentless gates.
The landscape held all the colors of burning:
Copper: it oxidizes to a mottled, yellow-shot green.
Iron: black and red ash.
Sulfur: its oxide is an oozy, purplish brown.
The colors smeared in from the dusty horizon, and were repeated in the walls and towers of the City. Once Lynceos shaded the silver fringe of his lashes to look at the sky where a swarm of shadows like mad, black leaves winked on the exhausted sun, capable of no more than evening, even at noon. He looked back at the creature on Sebastian’s shoulder that spread its wings now and rattled its leash. “And how does the gully feel to be home?” He reached out to chuck the perched thing, only to jerk his white hand back from a dark claw. The twins looked at one another and laughed.
They descended into the City of Dreadful Night.
Halfway down, the Mouse began to walk backwards up the escalator. “It’s … it’s not Earth.”
“Huh?” Katin glided by, saw the Mouse, and began backtracking himself.
“Look at it all down there, Katin. It isn’t the Solar System. It isn’t Draco.”
“This trip is your first time away from Sol, isn’t it?”
The Mouse nodded.
“It won’t be too different.”
“But just look at it, Katin.”
“The City of Dreadful Night,” Katin mused. “All those lights. They’re probably afraid of the dark.”
They stick-legged a moment more, gazing across the checkerboard: ornate gaming pieces, a huddle of kings, queens, and rooks towered knights and pawns.
“Come on,” the Mouse said.
The twenty-meter blades of metal that made up the giant stair swept them down.
“We better catch up with Captain.”
The streets near the field were crowded with cheap rooming houses. Marquees arched the walkways, advertising dance halls and psychoramas. The Mouse looked through the transparent wall at people swimming in a recreation club. “It isn’t that different from Triton. Sixpence @sg? Prices are sure a hell of a lot lower, though.”
Half the people on the streets were obviously crew or officers. The streets were crowded. The Mouse heard music. Some of it was from the open doors of bars.
“Hey, Tyy.” The Mouse pointed to an awning. “Did you ever work in a place like that?”
“In Thule, yes.”
Expert Readings: the letters glittered, shrank, and expanded on the sign.
“We stay in the City—“
They turned to the Captain.
“—five days.”
“Are we going to put up on the ship?” the Mouse asked. “Or here in town where we can have some fun?”
Take that scar. Cut it with three close lines near the top: the captain’s forehead creased. “You all suspect the danger we’re in.” He swept his eyes over the buildings. “No. We’re not staying either here or on the ship.” He stepped into the wings of a communications booth. Not bothering to swing the panels shut, he passed his hand before the inductance plates. “This Lorq Von Ray is. Yorgos Setsumi?”
“I if his advisory meeting over is will see.”
“An android of him will do,” Lorq said. “Just a minor favor I want.”
“He always to you in person, Mr. Von Ray, likes to talk. Just a moment, I he available is think.”
A figure materialized in the viewing column. “Lorq, so long now you I have not seen. What for you can I do?”
“Is anybody using Taafite on Gold for the next ten days?”
“No. I’m in Thule now, and will be for the next month. I gather you’re in the City and need a place to stay?”
Katin had already noted the captain’s slide between dialects.
There were unrecordable similarities between the captain’s voice and this Setsumi’s that illuminated both. Katin recognized common eccentricities that began to define for him an upper-class Pleiades accent. He looked at Tyy and Sebastian to see if they responded to it. Only a small movement in the muscles around the eyes, but there. Katin looked back at the viewing column.
“I have a party with me, Yorgy.”
“Lorq, my houses are your houses. I hope you and your guests enjoy your stay.”
“Thanks, Yorgy.” Lorq stepped from the booth.
The crew looked among themselves.
“There’s a possibility,” Lorq said, “that the next five days I spend on the other world will be the last I spend anywhere.” He searched intently for their reactions. As intently, they tried to hide them. “We might as well pass the time pleasantly. We go this way”
The mono crawled up the rail and flung them out across the City. “That Gold is?” Tyy asked Sebastian.
The Mouse, beside them, pressed his face against the glass. “Where?”
“There.” Sebastian pointed across the squares. Among the blocks, a molten river faulted the City.
“Hey, just like on Triton,” the Mouse said. “Is the core of this planet melted by Illyrion too?”
Sebastian shook his head. “The whole planet too big for that is. Only the space under each city. That crack Gold is called.”
The Mouse watched the brittle, igneous outcroppings fall back along the lavid fissure.
“Mouse?”
“Huh?” He looked up as Katin pulled out his recorder. “What do you want?”