Nova

by Samuel R. Delany

  "All secure?" Von Ray's voice rang through the ship. "Open the fore vanes."

  The Mouse's eyes began to flicker with new sight—

  — the space port: lights over the field, the lavid fissures of the crust fell to dim, violet quiverings at the spectrum's tip. But above the horizon, the 'winds' were brilliant.

  "Pull open the side vane seven degrees."

  The Mouse flexed what would have been his left arm. And the side vane lowered like a wing of mica. "Hey, Katin," the Mouse whispered. "Ain't that something! Look at it—"

  The Mouse shivered, crouched in a shield of light. Olga had taken over his breathing and heartbeat while the synapses of the medulla were directed to the workings of the ship.

  "For Illyrion, and Prince and Ruby Red!" from one of the twins.

  "Hold your vane!" the captain ordered.

  "Katin look— "

  "Lie back and relax, Mouse," Katin whispered. "I shall do just that and think about my past life."

  The void roared.

  "You really feel like that, Katin?"

  "You can be bored with anything if you try hard enough."

  "You two, look up," from Von Ray. They looked.

  "Cut in stasis shifters."

  A moment Olga's lights pricked his vision. And were gone; winds swept against him. And they were cartwheeling from the sun.

  "Good-bye, moon," Katin whispered.

  And the moon fell into Neptune; Neptune fell into the sun. And the sun began to fall.

  Night exploded before them.

  Pleiades Federation, Ark, New Ark, 3148

  What were the first things?

  His name was Lorq Von Ray and he lived at 12 Extol Park in the big house up the hill: New Ark (NW. 73), Ark. That was what you told somebody on the street if you should get lost, and that person would help you find home. The streets of Ark were set with transparent wind shields, and the evenings from the months of April to Iumbra were blasted with colored fumes that snagged, ripped free, and writhed above the city on the crags of Tong. His name was Lorq Von Ray and he lived ... Those were the childish things, the things that persisted, the first learned. Ark was the greatest city in the Pleiades Federation. Mother and Father were important people and were often away. When they were home they talked of Draco, its capital world Earth; they talked of the realignment, the prospect of sovereignty for the Outer Colonies. They had guests who were senator this, and representative that. After Secretary Morgan married Aunt Cyana, they came to dinner and Secretary Morgan gave him a hologram map of the Pleiades Federation that was just like a regular piece of paper, but when you looked at it under the tensor beam, it was like looking through a night window with dots of light flickering at different distances, and nebulous gases winding. "You live on Ark, the second planet of that sun there," his father said, pointing down where Lorq had spread the map over the rock table beside the glass wall. Outside, spidery tilda trees writhed in the evening gale.

  "Where's Earth?"

  His father laughed, loud and alone, in the dining room. "You can't see it on that map. It's just the Pleiades Federation."

  Morgan put his hand on the boy's shoulder. "I you a map of Draco next time bring." The secretary, whose eyes were almond-shaped, smiled.

  Lorq turned to his father. "I want to go to Draco!" And then back to Secretary Morgan: "I some day to Draco want to go!" Secretary Morgan spoke like many of the people in his school at Causby; like the people on the street who had helped him find his way home when he had gotten lost when he was four (but not like his father or Aunt Cyana) and Mommy and Daddy had been so terribly upset ("We were so worried! We thought you'd been kidnapped. But you mustn't go to those cardplayers on the street, even if they did bring you home!"). His parents smiled when he spoke like that to them, but they wouldn't smile now, because Secretary Morgan was a guest.

  His father humphed. "A map of Draco! That's all he needs. Oh yes, Draco!"

  Aunt Cyana laughed; then Mother and Secretary Morgan laughed too.

  They lived on Ark but often they went on big ships to other worlds. You had a cabin where you could pass your hand in front of colored panels and have anything to eat you wanted any time, or you could go down to the observation deck and watch the winds of the void translated to visible patterns of light over the bubble ceiling, flailing colors among stars that drifted by— and you knew you were going faster and faster than anything.

  Sometimes his parents went to Draco, to Earth, to cities called New York and Peking. He wondered when they would take him.

  But every year, the last week in Saluary, they would go on one of the great ships to another world that was also not on the map. It was called New Brazillia and was in the Outer Colonies. He lived in New Brazillia too, on the island of Sao Orini, because his parents had a house there near the mine.

  Outer Colonies, New Brazillia, Sao Orini, 3149

  The first time he heard the names Prince and Ruby Red it was at the Sao Orini house. He was lying in the dark, screaming for light.

  His mother came at last, pushed away the insect netting (it wasn't needed because the house had sonics to keep away the tiny red bugs that occasionally bit you outside and made you feel funny for a few hours, but Mother liked to be safe). She lifted him. "Shhh! Shhh! It's all right. Don't you want to go to sleep? Tomorrow is the party. Prince and Ruby will be here. Don't you want to play with Prince and Ruby at the party?" She carried him around the nursery, stopping to push the wall switch by the door. The ceiling began to rotate till the polarized pane was transparent. Through the palm fronds lapping the roof, twin moons splattered orange light. She laid him back in the bed, caressed his rough, red hair. After a while she started to leave.

  "Don't turn it off, Mommy!"

  Her hand fell from the switch. She smiled at him. He felt warm, and rolled over to stare through the meshed fronds at the moons,

  Prince and Ruby Red were coming from Earth. He knew that his mother's parents were on Earth, in a country called Senegal. His father's great-grandparents were also from Earth, from Norway. Von Rays, blond and blustering, had been speculating in the Pleiades now for generations. He wasn't sure what they speculated, but it must have been successful. His family owned the Illyrion mine that operated just beyond the northern tip of Sao Orini. His father occasionally joked with him about making him the little foreman of the mines. That's what "speculation" probably was. And the moons were drifting away; he was sleepy.

  He did not remember being introduced to the blue-eyed, black-haired boy with the prosthetic right arm, nor his spindly sister. But he recalled the three of them— himself, Prince, and Ruby— playing together the next afternoon in the garden.

  He showed them the place behind the bamboo where you could climb up into the carved stone mouths.

  "What are those?" Prince asked.

  "Those are the dragons," Lorq explained.

  "There aren't any dragons," Ruby said.

  "Those are dragons. That's what Father says."

  "Oh." Prince caught his false hand over the lower lip and hoisted himself up. "What are they for?"

  "You climb up in them. Then you can climb down again. Father says the people who lived here before us carved them."

  "Who lived here before?" Ruby asked. "And what did they want with dragons? Help me up, Prince."

  "I think they're silly." Prince and Ruby were now both standing between the stone fangs above him. (Later he would learn that "the people who had lived here before" were a race extinct in the Outer Colonies for twenty thousand years; their carvings had survived, and on these ruined foundations, Von Ray had erected this mansion.)

  Lorq sprang for the jaw, got his fingers around the lower lip, and started scrambling. "Give me a hand?"

  "Just a second," Prince said. Then, slowly, he put his shoe on Lorq's fingers and mashed.

  Lorq gasped and fell back on the ground, clutching his hand.

  Ruby giggled.

  "Hey!" Indignation throbbed, confusion welled. Pain beat
in his knuckles.

  "You shouldn't make fun of his hand," Ruby said. "He doesn't like it."

  "Huh?" Lorq looked at the metal and plastic claw directly for the first time. "I didn't make fun of it!"

  "Yes you did," Prince said evenly. "I don't like people who make fun of me."

  "But I— " Lorq's seven-year-old mind tried to comprehend this irrationality. He stood up again. "What's wrong with your hand?"

  Prince lowered himself to his knees, reached out, and swung at Lorq's head.

  "Watch— !" He leaped backward. The mechanical limb had moved so fast the air hissed.

  "Don't talk about my hand any more! There's nothing wrong! Nothing at all!"

  "If you stop making fun of him," Ruby commented, looking at the rugae on the roof of the stone mouth, "he'll be friends with you."

  "Well, all right," Lorq said warily.

  Prince smiled. "Then we'll be friends now." He had very pale skin and his teeth were small.

  "All right," Lorq said. He decided he didn't like Prince.

  "If you say something like, 'let's shake on it,'" Ruby said, "he'll beat you up. And he can, even though you're bigger than he is."

  Or Ruby either.

  "Come on up," Prince said.

  Lorq climbed into the mouth beside the other two children.

  "Now what do we do?" Ruby asked. "Climb down?"

  "You can look into the garden from here," Lorq said. "And watch the party."

  "Who wants to watch an old party," Ruby said.

  "I do," said Prince.

  "Oh," Ruby said. "You do. Well, all right then." Beyond the bamboo, the guests walked in the garden. They laughed gently, talked of the latest psychorama, politics, drank from long glasses. His father stood by the fountain, discussing with several people his feelings about the proposed sovereignty of the Outer Colonies— after all, he had a home out here and had to have his finger on the pulse of the situation. It was the year that Secretary Morgan had been assassinated. Though Underwood had been caught, there were still theories going around as to which faction was responsible.

  A woman with silver hair flirted with a young couple who had come with Ambassador Selvin, who was also a cousin. Aaron Red, a portly, proper gentleman, had cornered three young ladies and was pontificating on the moral degeneration of the young. Mother moved through the guests, the hem of her red dress brushing the grass, followed by the humming buffet. She paused here and there to offer canapes, drinks, and her opinion of the new realignment proposal. Now, after a year of phenomenal popular success, the intelligentsia had accepted the Tohu-bohus as legitimate music; the jarring rhythms tumbled across the lawn. A light sculpture in the corner twisted, flickered, grew with the tones.

  Then his father let out a booming laugh that made everyone look. "Listen to this! Just hear what Lusuna has said to me!" He was holding the shoulder of a university student who had come with the young couple. Von Ray's bluster had apparently prompted the young man to argument. Father gestured for him to repeat.

  "I only said that we live in an age where economic, political, and technological change have shattered all cultural tradition."

  "My Lord," laughed the woman with silver hair, "is that all?"

  "No, no!" Father waved his hand. "We have to listen to what the younger generation thinks. Go on, sir."

  "There's no reservoir of national, or world solidarity, even on Earth, the center of Draco. The past half dozen generations have seen such movement of peoples from world to world, there can't be any. This pseudo-interplanetary society that has replaced any real tradition, while very attractive, is totally hollow and masks an incredible tangle of decadence, scheming, corruption— "

  "Really, Lusuna," the young wife said, "your Scholarship is showing." She had just taken another drink at the prompting of the woman with the silver hair.

  "— and piracy."

  (With the last word, even the three children crouching in the mouth of the carved lizard could tell from the looks passing on the guests' faces that Lusuna had gone too far.)

  Mother came across the lawn, the bottom of her red sheath brushing back from gilded nails. She held her hands out to Lusuna, smiling. "Come, let's continue this social dissection over dinner. We're having a totally corrupt mangobongoou with untraditional loso ye mbiji a meza, and scathingly decadent mpati a nsengo." His mother always made the old Senegal dishes for parties. "And if the oven cooperates, we'll end up with dreadfully pseudo-interplantary tiba yoka flambe."

  The student looked around, realized he was supposed to smile, and did one better by laughing. With the student on her arm, Mother led everyone into dinner— "Didn't someone tell me you had won a scholarship to Draco University at Centauri? You must be quite bright. You're from Earth, I gather from your accent. Senegal? Well! So am I. What city ...?" And Father, relieved, brushed back oak-colored hair and followed everyone into the jalousied dining pavilion.

  On the stone tongue, Ruby was saying to her brother, "I don't think you should do that."

  "Why not?" said Prince.

  Lorq looked back at the brother and sister. Prince had picked up a stone from the floor of the dragon's mouth in his mechanical hand. Across the lawn stood the aviary of white cockatoos Mother had brought from Earth on her last trip.

  Prince aimed. Metal and plastic blurred.

  Forty feet away, birds screamed and exploded in the cage. As one fell to the floor, Lorq could see, even at this distance, blood in the feathers.

  "That's the one I was aiming for." Prince smiled.

  "Hey," Lorq said. "Mother's not going to ... " He looked again at the mechanical appendage strapped to Prince's shoulder over the stump. "Say, you throw better with— "

  "Watch it." Prince's black brows lowered on chipped blue glass. "I told you not to make fun of my hand, didn't I?" The hand drew back, and Lorq heard the motors— whirr, click, whirr— in wrist and elbow.

  "It's not his fault he was born that way," Ruby said. "And it's impolite to make remarks about your guests. Aaron says you're all barbarians out here anyway, doesn't he, Prince?"

  "That's right." He lowered his hand.

  A voice came over the loudspeaker into the garden. "Children, where are you? Come in and get your supper. Hurry."

  They climbed down and went out through the bamboo.

  Lorq went to bed still excited by the party. He lay under the doubled shadows of the palms above the nursery ceiling, transparent from the night before.

  A whisper: "Lorq!"

  And: "Shhh! Don't be so loud, Prince."

  More softly: "Lorq?"

  He pushed back the netting and sat up in bed. Imbedded in the plastic floor, tigers, elephants; and monkeys glowed. "What do you want?"

  "We heard them leaving through the gate." Prince stood in the nursery doorway in his shorts. "Where did they go?"

  "We want to go too," Ruby said from her brother's elbow.

  "Where did they go?" Prince asked again.

  "Into town." Lorq stood up and padded across the glowing menagerie. "Mommy and Daddy always take their friends down into the village when they come for the holidays."

  "What do they do?" Prince leaned against the jamb.

  "They go ... well, they go into town." Where ignorance had been, curiosity came to fill it.

  "We jimmied the baby sitter," said Ruby.

  "You don't have a very good one; it was easy. Everything is so old-fashioned out here. Aaron says only Pleiades barbarians could think it quaint to live out here. Are you going to take us to go see where they went?"

  "Well, I ..."

  "We want to go," said Ruby.

  "Don't you want to go see too?"

  "All right." He had planned to refuse. "I have to put my sandals on." But childish curiosity to see what adults did when children were not about was marking foundations on which adolescent, and later, adult consciousness would stand.

  The garden lisped about the gate. The lock always opened to Lorq's handprint during the day, but he was sti
ll surprised when it swung back now.

  The road threaded into the moist night.

  Past the rocks and across the water one low moon turned the mainland into a tongue of ivory lapping at the sea. And through the trees, the lights of the village went off and on like a computer checkboard. Rocks, chalky under the high, smaller moon, edged the roadway. A cactus raised spiky paddles to the sky.

  As they reached the first of the town's cafes, Lorq said "hello" to one of the miners who sat at a table outside the door.

  "Little Senhor." The miner nodded back.

  "Do you know where my parents are?" Lorq asked.

  "They came by here," he shrugged, "the ladies with the fine clothes, the men in their vests and their dark shirts. They came by, half an hour ago, an hour."

  "What language is he talking?" Prince demanded.

  Ruby giggled. "You understand that?"

  Another realization hit Lorq; he and his parents spoke to the people of Sao Orini with a completely different set of words than they spoke to each other and their guests. He had learned the slurred dialect of Portuguese under the blinking lights of a hypno-teacher sometime in the fog of early childhood.

  "Where did they go?" he asked again.

  The miner's name was Tavo; for a month last year when the mine shut down, he had been plugged into one of the clanking gardeners that had landscaped the park behind the house. Dull grown-ups and bright children form a particularly tolerant friendship. Tavo was dirty and stupid; Lorq accepted this. But his mother had put an end to the relation when, last year, he came back from the village and told how he had watched Tavo kill a man who had insulted the miner's ability to drink.

  "Come on, Tavo. Tell me where they went?"

  Tavo shrugged.

  Insects beat about the illuminated letters over the cafe door.

  Crepe paper left from the Sovereignty Festival, blew from the awning posts. It was the anniversary of Pleiades Sovereignty, but the miners celebrated it out here both in hope for their own and for Mother and Father.

  "Does he know where they went?" Prince asked.

  Tavo was drinking sour milk from a cracked cup along with his rum. He patted his knee and Lorq, glancing at Prince and Ruby, sat down.