“Hey.” The Mouse reached up to tap Katin’s shoulder. Katin looked down from the sculpture he was examining at the Mouse’s dark face. “Huh?”
“That stool over there. You remember that Vega Republic stuff you were talking about back on the ship?”
“Yes.”
“Is that stool one?”
Katin smiled. “No. Everything here is all patterned on pre-star-flight designs. This whole room is a pretty faithful replica of some elegant American mansion of the twenty-first or second century.”
The Mouse nodded. “Oh.”
“The rich are always enamored of the ancient.”
“I never been in a place like this before.” The Mouse looked about the room. “It’s something, huh?”
“Yes. It is.”
“Come get your poison,” Lorq called from the stage.
“Mouse! Now, you your syrynx play?” Leo brought over two mugs, pushed one into the Mouse’s hands, the other into Katin’s. “You play. Soon I down to the ice docks will go. Mouse, play for me.”
“Play something that we can dance—“
“—dance with us, Tyy. Sebastian—“
“—Sebastian will you dance with us too?”
The Mouse shucked his sack.
Leo went over to get a mug for himself, came back, and sat down on the stool. The Mouse’s images were paled by Gold. But the music was ornamented with sharp, insistent quarter tones. It smelled like a party.
On the floor, the Mouse balanced the body of the syrynx against his blackened, horny foot, tapped time with the toe of his boot, and rocked. His fingers flew. Light from Gold, from the fixtures about the room, from the Mouse’s syrynx, lashed the captain’s face to fury. Twenty minutes later he said, “Mouse, I’m going to steal you for a while.”
He stopped playing. “What you want, Captain?”
“Company. I’m going out.”
The dancers’ faces fell.
Lorq turned a dial on the stage. “I’ve had the sensory recorder running.” The music began again. And the ghostly visions of the Mouse’s syrynx cavorted once more, along with images of Tyy, Sebastian, and the twins dancing, the sound of their laughter—
“Where are we going, Captain?” the Mouse asked. He put his syrynx down on the case.
“I’ve been thinking. We need something here. I’m going to get some bliss.”
“You mean you know—“
“—where to get hold of some?”
“The Pleiades is my home,” the Captain said. “We’ll be gone maybe an hour. Come on, Mouse.”
“Hey, Mouse, will you leave your—“
“—syrynx here with us—“
“—now? It’ll be okay. We won’t—“
“—won’t let anything happen to it.”
With lips pulled thin, the Mouse looked from the twins to his instrument. “All right. You can play it. But watch out, huh?”
He walked over to where Lorq stood at the door.
Leo joined them. “Now it too time for me to go is.”
Inside the Mouse, surprise opened like a wound over the inevitable. He blinked.
“For the lift, Captain, I you thank.”
They walked down the hall and through Taafite’s garden. Outside the gate, they stopped by the smoking grate. “For the ice docks down there you go.” Lorq pointed down the hill. “You the mono to the end of the line take.”
Leo nodded. His blue eyes caught the Mouse’s dark ones, and puzzlement passed on his face. “Well, Mouse. Maybe some day again we’ll see, huh?”
“Yeah,” the Mouse said. “Maybe.”
Leo turned and walked down the fuming street, boot heel clicking.
“Hey,” the Mouse called after a moment.
Leo looked back.
“Ashton Clark.”
Leo grinned, then started again.
“You know,” the Mouse said to Lorq, “I’ll probably never see him again in my life. Come on, Captain.”
“Are we anywhere near the spacefield?” the Mouse asked. They came down the crowded steps of the monorail station.
“Within walking distance. We’re about five miles down Gold from Taafite.”
The spray trucks had recently been by. The wandering people were reflected on the wet pavement. A group of youngsters—two of the boys with bells around their necks—ran by an old man, laughing. He turned, followed them a few steps, hand out. Now he turned back and came toward the Mouse and Lorq.
“An old guy with something, you help? Tomorrow, tomorrow into a job I plug. But tonight …”
The Mouse looked back after the panhandler, but Lorq kept on.
“What’s in there?” The Mouse pointed to a high arcade of lights. People clustered before the door on the shining street.
“No bliss there.”
They turned the corner.
On the far side of the street, couples had stopped by a fence. Lorq crossed the street. “That’s the other end of Gold down there.”
Below the ragged slope, bright rock wound into the night. One couple turned away hand in hand, with burnished faces.
Flashing from his hair, hands, and shoulders, a man came up the walkway in a lame vest. A tray of jewels hung around his neck. The couple stopped him. She bought a jewel from the vendor and, laughing, placed it on her boyfriend’s forehead. The sequined streamers from the central cluster of stones ran back and wound themselves in his long hair. They laughed up the wet street.
Lorq and the Mouse reached the end of the fence. A crowd of uniformed Pleiades patrolmen came up the stone steps; three girls ran up behind them, screaming. Five boys overtook them, and the screams turned to laughter. The Mouse looked back to see them cluster about the jewelry man.
Lorq started down the steps.
“What’s down there?” The Mouse hurried on behind.
On the side of the broad steps, people drank at tables set beside the cafes cut into the rock wall.
“You look like you know where you’re going, Captain.” The Mouse caught up with Lorq’s elbow. “Who is that?” He gazed after one stroller. Among the lightly clad people, she wore a heavy parka rimmed with fur.
“She’s one of your ice-fishermen,” the captain told him. “Leo will he wearing one of them soon. They spend most of their time away from the heated part of the City.”
“Where are we going?”
“I think it was down this way.” They turned along a dim ledge; there were a few windows in the rock. Blue light leaked from the shades. “These places change owners every couple of months, and I haven’t been in the City for five years. If we don’t find the place I’m looking for, we’ll find one that’ll do.”
“What sort of place is it?”
A woman shrieked. A door swung open; she staggered out. Another suddenly reached from the darkness, caught her by the arm, slapped her twice, and yanked her back. The door slammed on a second shriek. An old man—probably another ice-fisherman—supported a younger man on his shoulder, “We you back to the room you take. Your head up hold. All right it will be. To the room we you take.”
The Mouse watched them stagger by. A couple had stopped back near the stone stairway. She was shaking her head. Finally he nodded, and they turned back.
“The place I was thinking of, among other things, used to have a thriving business conning people to work in the mines in the Outer Colonies, then collecting a commission on each recruit. It was perfectly legal; there’re a lot of stupid people in the universe. I’ve been a foreman in one of those mines and seen it from the other end. It’s not very pretty.” Lorq looked over a doorway. “Different name. Same place.”
He started down the steps. The Mouse looked quickly behind him, then followed: They entered a long room with a plank bar by one wall. A few panels of multichrome gave out feeble color. “Same people too.”
A man older than the Mouse, younger than Lorq, with stringy hair and dirty nails came up. “What can I do for you boys?”