“You may want to consider what I’ve told you so far,” the scarred man says. “It will give you something to sleep on, if not someone to sleep with.”
“Will Hugh escape once they reach Jehovah and try to return to New Eireann? Will the Fudir slip loose from Olafsson and heigh for the Hadramoo? Will Olafsson find Donovan or will Greystroke catch up with him? And what of…And what of Bridget ban? What has she been doing in the meantime?”
“That,” the scarred man suggests, “will give you something to wake up for.”
Geantraí: Face Off
“Good morning, harper,” the scarred man says with malicious cheer when dawn has drawn a few hardy souls to the Bar. Praisegod is behind the counter—to all appearances, he might never have left his post. So, too, the scarred man, who sits once more in his niche. The room is redolent with the pasty odors of oatmeal and eggs and daal. “I hope you slept well,” he says. “After a time, the crack of the overnight ballistic runs can grow quite restful and the morning cargo drops little more than a cock’s crow.”
The harper spares him a blurred look and asks Praisegod for a cup of something more lively than she is. She carries the coffee to the table by the niche and slowly puts herself outside of it. The scarred man’s plate is heavy with daal and baked beans, with scrambled eggs and cold, fatty bacon, with sautéed mushrooms. She spares this feast no more than a horrified glance and notes that he seems in a good humor.
“Every day is a promise,” he replies. “Compared to the night mare, we have an easy ride.”
“And what nightmares visit your sleep?” It is an idle question—she is not yet fully awake—but the silence of his answer draws her from her drug. He dips a piece of naan into the daal and shoves it in his mouth. The sauces drip and pool in the upturned cleft of his chin. “None that you would care to ride,” he says just before he swallows.
Silence then draws on toward the point of discomfort. But it is from a point of greater discomfort to one of lesser. The scarred man begrudges her: “Yet there are dreams that come during the day. Sometimes I think you are not quite real, and I am speaking only to another part of my own mind. I’m not sure.”
“Do you not know your own mind, then?”
A facetious question, meant for humor, the words push the scarred man deeper into his niche. “No,” he whispers. “I do not.”
Now the discomfort is real and the harper hurriedly excuses herself to visit the buffet table. Few are the guests who stay at the Bar, fewer still those who breakfast there; and so, few were the choices presented to her. She stares at the unsavory dishes. The bacon is cold and more fat than meat. The eggs have congealed into something resembling rubber. She settles finally on a bowl of oatmeal and some naan, a small glass of muskmelon juice. With these she returns to the niche and is only a little surprised to find the scarred man still there, and still gazing silently at his meal.
“When we parted last night,” she prompts, “Hugh and the Fudir were sliding toward Jehovah with the ’Federal courier.”
The scarred man says nothing and the harper fears she has stopped up the well with her remarks. Then he looks up and fixes her with his gaze. “What is your story? Perhaps you should be the one here telling tales.”
“Every man, every woman, has a story. But some are less interesting than others. I’ve come to learn of the Dancer. My own tale is far less than that.” She does not ask about his personal story, although she suspects there may be a goltraí in it. She is not sure she would want to hear it; yet the question lingers unspoken in the air between them.
Eventually, the scarred man sighs and begins the dance anew.
“Bridget ban,” the scarred man says, “arrived at Peacock Junction…
…a world of lush colors and bubbling waters, and of careless men and women. There, the tropics run from pole to pole and the ocean currents are delightfully warm and languid. It is a world on which not much happens, and what does happen happens slowly. They have a Seanaid of sorts: garrulous old men and women who meet in an open amphitheater during the dry season, and not at all during the rains. Someday they may pass a law, but there is no hurry.
The universe is in motion: planets and stars spinning, galaxies swirling, starships sliding from star to star along superluminal channels in the fabric of space. There is no reason why any world in such a universe should be so much at rest as Peacock Junction.
But while Peacock has very few laws, she is rich in customs; and customs have the greater force. A law may be appealed; but from custom there is no recourse. When Billy Kisilwando killed his partner in a drunken fit, he was given one hundred days’ grace. He set off into the Malawayo Wilderness with a rucksack, a hiking staff, and a small, but faithful terrier. He emerged after ninety-nine days, minus dog and staff, and reported to the District Head, confessed his sin, and prayed forgiveness from his partner’s manu; and ever afterward he repeated his confession in the Hall of Remonstration to all who came to see him. Such is the cruelty of custom.
Compared to the great roundabout of luminal highways that converge on the worlds of Jehovah, Peacock barely deserves the name of junction. Route 66 splits off from the Silk Road and heighs off toward Foreganger and Valency, but that is all. In the early days of settlement, it was thought that proximity to the blue giant at Sapphire Point would endow Peacock with a great many roads; and much effort was spent on the survey of its approaches, but the tenor of scientific thought now runs in the other direction. And a good thing, too; for nothing tempts the highwaymen of the Spiral Arm more than a sun with plentiful roads.
Shalmandaro Spaceport was the primary STC repository for Peacock Roads, and so it was to this gracile orangestone tower that Bridget ban came on the trail of the phantom fleet. The tower was inlaid with gold and decorated with pastel murals of Peacock scenery and of those few ’Cockers who had ever faced anything requiring heroism. On the building’s western facade, a bulbous extrusion eyed distant Polychrome Mountain and the tea plantations that tiled her slopes. There, trace elements in the soils and the artifice of bioneering gave the tea fields sundry colors and the mountain its name.
Despite the building’s importance, there was no security screen at the entrance. Bridget ban was not surprised. It was of a piece with this lackadaisical world. But after she had passed through and was standing before the lift tubes in the great, multistoried atrium, she gave the matter a second thought. Indolent need not mean stupid. Indeed, indolence often required considerable ingenuity. So she returned to the vestibule and studied its walls with greater care, and discovered amid the wild swirls and colors with which the ’Cockers embellished any flat surface the lenticels and digitizers of various sensors. She nodded her approval at one camera eye, her opinion of the ’Cockers rising by a notch.
Konmi Pulawayo was not in the Director’s office when, thanks to typically vague directions from staff, Bridget ban had finally located it. The room did not strike her as very official. Offices ought to appear functionaclass="underline" with desks, storage drives, comm units, hard-copy files, and the like. They ought, in fact, to have walls. They ought not have a whispering waterfall and a glade guarded by colorful parrots and sweet larks. A parrot is not a receptionist; and a hammock is not an office chair.