A Different Light (18 page)

Leiko said, "Where shall we go first?"

Russell said, "The clinic."

Jimson pictured the pastel walls and bright machines and sympathetic faces. "No," he said.

"What do you mean,
no
?" said Russell.

"You heard me! I feel all right. I don't want to go to any clinic until I have to. I feel just fine." He stood very straight, ignoring the ache curled in his bones. "I want to go to Rin's."

Leiko said, "I think that's a good idea. Come on, Starcaptain. Let's go to Rin's."

* * *

The noise in the bar was like a slap across the ears. Stars, Jimson wondered, was it always this loud? Rin, dark and ageless, was tucked behind the bar as if he had grown there like a mushroom crop. He was still polishing his endless pile of glasses. Three of Jimson's pictures still hung on the walls. They pushed through the crush to the bar, and Rin nodded at them. "Welcome back. First drink is on the house. What'll it be?"

"Wine," said Leiko.

"Beer," said Russell.

"I'll pass," Jimson said. He felt Russell looking at him.

They sat at a table. Jimson looked for Miri, but she was gone, and he guessed the
Sigurd
had already left. He wondered if she was really four hundred years old. He would never have the chance to challenge her.

"It is," said a voice at Jimson's back.

"It isn't. He's much too thin."

"It
is
," said the first voice. "I think it looks like him and I'm going to ask. Sir?"

It was an unusual syllable to hear in Rin's. Jimson turned around. Two youngsters stood back of his chair, one fair-skinned, blond, tall, the other short and darker. They were both looking at him. The blond one said, "Are you Jimson Alleca, the artist?"

Jimson said, "I think so."

"We've been coming in here every day," said the blond. "It's hard to talk to people, you know, when you can't ask questions. But we knew what you looked like. I have a picture of you on a booktape. I'm Sarah. This is Achiko. This was my idea and that's why I'm doing all the talking. We wanted portraits. One of me for her, and one of her for me. She's leaving in seven days. I'm staying here on Nexus: I have two more years to train."

Jimson said, "You're—eighteen?"

"Nineteen. Achiko's twenty-one."

Russell's face, across the table, had whitened as if someone had hit him in the heart.

Achiko said, "I brought a credit disc. We can pay for it."

Jimson studied the two faces. "I can draw you," he said. He reached for his notebook and pens. "There'll be no charge. You first," he said to Achiko. Sarah pushed her forward under the swinging table light. She had wide features, her bones were strong and prominent beneath the skin. A pad of fat across the nose. Curly hair. Dark brown watchful eyes. He crosshatched the shadows along the nose, widened the eyes, and tore the page off. "You next." Sarah stepped under the pool of light. She had a long head, long jaw, high cheekbones. Her hair was long and fine and straight like water falling down from a precipice. Her eyebrows were like feathers. Blue eyes. She was nervous, conscious of the ring of faces grinning around her, and her eyes kept shifting, moving from one face to another, returning each time to Achiko. They wore matching looks of love.

They walked out clutching the sketches, arms around each other. As the door shut behind them, the entire bar appeared to sigh.

Jimson looked at Russell. The Starcaptain's face was granite.
Russell
, Jimson thought,
can you see in my eyes the country I must travel through? The horse and its Rider wait just over the curve of the hill.

"Starcaptain," said a light whisper. A woman plucked at Russell's sleeve. He listened to her for a moment, and then got up and moved from the table, face intent. Jimson turned to Leiko. She was watching him with unusual concentration.

"Lady, I want to go home," he said.

She held out her hand to him.

The door to the house opened to Jimson's palm against the lock.
Summer of ivy.
Leiko said, "I'm glad we paid a holding rent." The place was musty. On Jimson's desk, books, sketchbooks and pens lay as he had left them, in elegiac order. They had an air of disuse about them, as if they really belonged to somebody else, somebody who'd forgotten them and never really used them, just left them to gather dust....
      

We made slow love in a little room.
Jimson sat on the bed. Leiko came to sit beside him. After a while she pulled off her jumpsuit.

Sunlight stippled her back, and then his.

* * *

Water running. Footsteps in the other room. Russell walked in, carrying a half-full bottle of wine, three glasses, and a small white box. He sat on the end of the bed. They drew their legs up to give him room. "You forgot to finish your wine," he said to Leiko. "So I bought the bottle from Rin. I'll drink two glasses of it, one for me, and one for Ysao who ought to be with us and isn't." He poured it out. "Jim, do you want to make a toast?"

Jimson hesitated, and then lifted the glass. "To the end of all good things."

Leiko made a face at him. Solemnly, they drank. Russell held out the white box. Leiko plucked off the top. "Appropriate," she said. She lifted out a pair of silver earrings, patterned after the classical masks of Comedy and Tragedy: one face laughing, one face mourning.

Russell said, "De Vala's messenger slipped me these at Rin's. He's heard we're back, and he's very impatient. The woman was explicit: he won't wait. He wants his Masks."

Jimson said, "But I've nothing to give him! I thought you said I'd have another week to finish in."

"Give him your sketches," said Leiko.

Russell said, "He won't wait a week. And I can't keep him waiting; we have a contract."

"Give him your sketches," urged Leiko. She touched his arm. "He'll take them."

"They're just roughs."

Russell stood up. "But they're all we have, so that's what we'll bring him. He'll take them, Leiko's right. Remember, he is a collector, whatever else he is, and that means he's a little crazy. If they're something that no one else has, or could have, or will have, he'll love them. Clean up, and put your coveralls back on."

"Why?'

Russell smiled. "Don't you want to come with me? Don't you want to see that house?" He laid his palm for a moment against Jimson's cheek.

Jimson got out of bed.

Leiko said, "You just leave me the rest of that wine."

"Don't you want to—"

"Come with you? No." She tipped her head back to gaze at Russell. "Pirate, would you go away?"

"I'll wait for you in the square," Russell said to Jimson.

Leiko waited until she heard the sound of the door closing. Then she pulled Jimson down onto the bed and hugged him fiercely. "I wanted to say goodbye to you," she said.

Jimson put his cheek against the dry soft net of her hair.

"Don't come back here," she whispered into his ear. "There's nothing in this house for either of us but the past, and that won't sustain us."

"You're here."

"I won't be. If you come back looking for me, I won't be here. I'm going back to the Hype."

"Are you really?"

"No. But pretend I am. Just as now you're pretending to be strong, well, without pain."

"You know that?"

Her breath was warm on his ear. "Of course I know it. I'm not Russell O'Neill. That's why you mustn't come back here. It isn't me you need now. It's Russell." She kissed his left eyelid closed. "He wants you, too." Then his right eyelid. She moved out of his arms. He felt her leave the bed. He thought she was dressing. "There's something you have to do for each other. And I'd only be in the way. Count to twenty before you open your eyes. Goodbye, lover. I'm gone."

He counted to twenty. The room was empty. Her last kiss had left the taste of wine on his tongue. He said into the silent room, "Lady—goodbye."

* * *

Russell waited outside the house. Jimson almost asked him what direction Leiko had gone.... He said, forcing cheerfulness, "Where do we go now?"

"Let's take the movalongs." Russell took the pack out of Jimson's hands; this time Jimson didn't resist him. He recalled that Russell—or Leiko—someone had said that De Vala lived in the center of the city. He settled himself for a long ride. He started when Russell grabbed his wrist.

"What are we—?"

"Getting off. We've an errand to do." They were still in the Hyper section of the city. Russell led the way through a maze of alleys. He halted in front of a shop. The brightly painted sign swinging in the wind held a name,
Tyan,
and the picture of a long silver needle. Jimson had no time to look in the window. Russell's hand on his shoulder hurried him into the shop.

"Ty!" Russell called. The owner of the name came from the rear of the place. He had long black hair which hung to his waist, and a curly black beard.

"Hey, Pirate."

Russell put an indicative hand on Jimson's shoulder. "Friend of mine," he said. "Needs his ears done."

Tyan pointed to a gilt chair. "Be so kind as to sit." Jimson sat rather gingerly on the cushion of the chair, which was embroidered as if the seat had been a throne. "Relax, now." He pulled up a small stool and peered at Jimson's face. "Hmm, yes, you have nice earlobes, I must say. Very erotic." He glanced over Jimson's head at Russell. He had four holes in his own ears, two on each side. His earrings were delicate plain gold rings.

"You keep your fantasies to yourself," said Russell.

Tyan grinned. "Well, pick out the earrings you want. 1 always think it's so romantic, buying the first pair of earrings for a friend. Turn your head slightly. Yes, that's right." His tone reminded Jimson of the tone of medics at a clinic; he almost laughed aloud. Something very, very cold touched his left earlobe. He felt a sting. "Don't twitch," murmured Tyan. "Turn your head the other way. Good." Cold. Sting.

"These," said Russell.

"Lovely," said Tyan. "Opals. I love opals." He moved his hands outside of Jimson's line of sight. "Lots of superstitions about opals, you know. Blue ones were supposed to impart wisdom, but it was very bad luck to give them as gifts, especially black opals, they were considered symbols of impending death—"

Russell said, "Tyan, shut up."

Tyan fell suddenly silent. He produced a marvelously ornate hand mirror and held it up for Jimson.

Framed in the gilt oval, his face became a stranger's looking out at him, surprised... who's he? What's HE doing here? Light brown skin, dark knotty hair, slim build, but with chunky square shoulders that made him look top-heavy and ungraceful when he was tired. There was a grey streak in his hair. His pale blue eyes were a migrant's mutation, passed on to him from his mother's family which had come across spacetime normal from Old Terra to New Terra on the fusion starships.
Erotic earlobes? Really?
Pale blue fire-opals—gleamed in his newly-pierced ears. He reached to touch them.

"Let them alone." Tyan slapped his hands away. "Don't play with them. Give the skin time to heal. Don't change the earrings for a month, and don't take them out, even when you sleep, or whatever you do in bed. Wipe them with alcohol—the holes, not the opals—twice a day. Russell can show you how to take care of them. In a month you can come back here and I'll sell you another pair."

Outside the window of the shop, Russell said, "Hold still." He took out the white box. "Tyan would not approve of this. But Tyan is goddamn lucky he's still got a head."

"He's watching us from the window."

"I don't give a damn." Gently, Russell drew out one of the opal stud-backed earrings, and put one of the masks in its place. "The matched pair looks a lot better." He put the Comedy mask in his own earlobe. "But this will get us both into the house."

* * *

The house sat in its own grassy plot in a square. Something in Jimson's mind woke when he saw it. The square stone building teased his memory. He had seen it, or pictures of it. It was a copy of some famous museum or other. He thought it had been built on Terra by some wealthy art collector. The man had lived in it, too, and it bore his name, the something—the Fruck, the Fluke, House.

He stopped short on the walkway as he remembered I what painting had been on a wall of that house.

The door was open. Russell said, "Jim? Come on. We're here."

They stepped into a wood panelled foyer. Two guards with stun pistols waited for them. "There's only supposed to be one," said the nearer guard. "Who're you?" She pointed her gun at Jimson.

"My name is Jimson Alleca."

A voice spoke from the wall. "Let them come in." Russell took a step forward. The guards got out of their way. Jimson heard the sound of water running. He thought of his fountain, the fountain he had left for his friends to enjoy in the house on New Terrain. In harmony with the fountain sounds came music unlike any he'd ever heard before, complex and beautiful and, he guessed, old. Old as the house, or maybe older. He gazed down the short wood-panelled hall