“I know.” He saw her teeth catch her lip. “But we can spend time together, we’ll have a lot of time before I go. And—well, I’ve brought you something, to remember me.” She crossed the room to him.
It was a star, suspended burning coldly in scrolled silver by an artist who knew fire. Inside she showed him her face, laughing, full of joy.
“I found it on Treone… they really are in renaissance. And I liked that holo, I thought you might—”
Leaning across silver he found the silver of her hair, kissed her once on the mouth, felt her quiver as he pulled away. He lifted the woven chain, fixed it at his throat. “I have something for you, too.”
He got up, returned with a slim book the color of red wine, put it in her hands.
“My poems!”
He nodded, his fingers feeling the star at his throat. “I managed to get hold of two copies—it wasn’t easy. Because they’re too well known now; the spacers carry them, they show them but they won’t give them up. You must be known on more worlds than you could ever see.”
“Oh, I hadn’t even heard…” She laughed suddenly. “My fame preceded me. But next trip—” She looked away. “No. I won’t be going that way anymore.”
“But you’ll be seeing new things, to make into new poems.” He stood, trying to loosen the tightness in his voice.
“Yes… Oh, yes, I know…”
“A month is a long time.”
A sudden sputter of noise made them look up. Fat dapples of rain were beginning to slide, smearing dust over the flat roof.
“Rain! not fog; the season’s started.” They stood and watched the sky fade overhead, darken, crack and shudder with electric light. The rain fell harder, the ceiling rippled and blurred; he led her to the window. Out across the smooth folded land a liquid curtain billowed, slaking the dust-dry throat of the canyons, renewing the earth and the spiny tight-leaf scrub. “I always wonder if it’s ever going to happen. It always does.” He looked at her, expecting quicksilver, and found slow tears. She wept silently, watching the rain.
For the next two weeks they shared the rain, and the chill bright air that followed. In the evenings she went out, while he stood behind the bar, because it was the last time she would have leave with the crew of the Who Got Her. But every morning he found her sleeping, and every afternoon she spent with him. Together they traced the serpentine alleyways of the shabby, metamorphosing lower city, or roamed the docks with the windbumed fisherfolk. He took her to meet Makerrah, whom he had seen as a boy mending nets by hand, as a fishnet-clad Tail courting spacers at the Tin Soldier, as a sailor and fisherman, for almost forty years. Makerrah, now growing heavy and slow as his wood-hulled boat, showed it with pride to the sailor from the sky; they discussed nets, eating fish.
“This world is getting old…” Brandy had come with him to the bar as the evening started.
Maris smiled. “But the night is young.” And felt pleasure stir with envy.
“True, true…” Pale hair cascaded as her head bobbed. “But, you know, when… if I was gone another twenty-five years, I probably wouldn’t recognize this street. The Tin Soldier really is the only thing that doesn’t change.” She sat at the agate counter, face propped in her hands, musing.
He stirred drinks. “It’s good to have something constant in your life.”
“I know. We appreciate that too, more than anybody.” She glanced away, into the dark-raftered room. “They really always do come back here first, and spend more time in here… and knowing that they can means so much: that you’ll be here, young and real and remembering them.” A sudden hunger blurred her sight.
“It goes both ways.” He looked up.
“I know that, too… You know, I always meant to ask: why did you call it the Tin Soldier‘? I mean, I think I see… but why ’tin‘?”
“Sort of a private joke, I guess. It was in a book of folk tales I read, Andersen’s Fairy Tales”—he looked embarrassed—“I’d read everything else. It was a story about a toy shop, about a tin soldier with one leg, who was left on the shelf for years… He fell in love with a toy ballerina who only loved dancing, never him. In the end, she fell into the fire, and he went after her—she burned to dust, heartless; he melted into a heart-shaped lump…” He laughed carefully, seeing her face. “A footnote said sometimes the story had a happy ending; I like to believe that.”
She nodded, hopeful. “Me too… Where did your stone bar come from? It’s beautiful; like the edge of the Pleiades, depths of mist.”
“Why all the questions?”
“I’m appreciating. I’ve loved it all for years, and never said anything. Sometimes you love things without knowing it, you take them for granted. It’s wrong to let that happen… so I wanted you to know.” She smoothed the polished stone with her hand.
He joined her tracing opalescences. “It’s petrified wood— some kind of plant life that was preserved in stone, minerals replaced its structure. I found it in the desert.”
“Desert?”
“East of the mountains. I found a whole canyon full of them. It’s an incredible place, the desert.”
“I’ve never seen one. Only heard about them, barren and deadly; it frightened me.”
“While you cross the most terrible desert of them all?—between the stars.”
“But it’s not barren.”
“Neither is this one. It’s winter here now, I can take you to see the trees, if you’d like it.” He grinned. “If you dare.”
Her eyebrows rose. “I dare! We could go tomorrow, I’ll make us a lunch.”
“We’d have to leave early, though. If you were wanting to do the town again tonight…”
“Oh, that’s all right; I’ll take a pill.”
“Hey—”
She winced. “Oh, well… I found a kind I could take. I used them all the time at the other ports, like the rest.”
“Then why—”
“Because I liked staying with you. I deceived you, now you know, true confession. Are you mad?”
His face filled with astonished pleasure. “Hardly… I have to admit, I used to wonder what—”
“Sol-dier!” He looked away, someone gestured at him across the room. “More wine, please!” He raised a hand.
“Brandy, come on, there’s a party—”
She waved. “Tomorrow morning, early?” Her eyes kept his face.
“Uh-huh. See you—”
“—later.” She slipped down and was gone.
The flyer rose silently, pointing into the early sun. Brandy sat beside him, squinting down and back through the glare as New Piraeus grew narrow beside the glass-green bay. “Look, how it falls behind the hills, until all you can see are the land and the sea, and no sign of change. It’s like that when the ship goes up, but it happens so fast you don’t have time to savor it.” She turned back to him, bright-eyed. “We go from world to world but we never see them; we’re always looking up. It’s good to look down, today.”
They drifted higher, rising with the climbing hills, until the rumpled olive-red suede of the seacoast grew jagged, blotched green-black and gray and blinding white.
“Is that really snow?” She pulled at his arm, pointing.
He nodded. “We manage a little.”
“I’ve only seen snow once since I left Calicho, once it was winter on Treone. We wrapped up in furs and capes even though we didn’t have to, and threw snowballs with the Tails… But it was cold most of the year on our island, on Calicho—we were pretty far north, we grew special kinds of crops… and us kids had hairy hornbeats to plod around on…” Lost in memories, she rested against his shoulder; while he tried to remember a freehold on Glatte, and snowy walls became jumbled whiteness climbing a hill by the sea.