Nova

by Samuel R. Delany

  "You'll fail. Believe me." Prince smiled.

  And Tyy's whisper became a gasp.

  "No. I don't even know where you're going. But watch. I'll get there first. Then"— he raised his black-gloved hand— "we'll see." He reached forward so that his palm filled the screen. Then the fingers flicked; there was a tinkle of glass- Tyy gave a little scream.

  Prince had snapped his finger against the lens of the message camera, shattering it.

  The Mouse glanced at Tyy; she had dropped her cards.

  The beasts flapped at the leash; the wind scattered Tyy's cards on the carpet.

  "Here," Katin was saying, "I'll get them!" He leaned from his seat and reached about the floor with gawky arms. Lorq had begun to laugh again.

  A card overturned on the rug by the Mouse's foot. Three-dimensional within laminated metal, a sun flared above a black sea. Over the sea wall the sky was alive with flame. On shore two naked boys held hands. The dark one squinted at the sun, his face amazed and luminous. The tow-headed one looked at their shadows on the sand.

  Lorq's laughter, like multiple explosions, rolled in the commons. "Prince has accepted the challenge." He slapped the stone. "Good! Very good! Hey, and you think we'll meet under the sun afire?" His hand went up, a fist. "I can feel his claw. Good! Yes, good!"

  The Mouse picked up the card quickly. He looked from the captain to the viewing screen where the multichrome's shifting hues had replaced the face, the hand. (And there, on opposite walls, were dim Idas and pale Lynceos in their smaller frames.) His eyes fell back to the two boys beneath the erupting sun.

  As he looked, his left toes clawed the carpet, his right clutched his boot sole; fear pawed behind his thighs, tangled in the nerves along his backbone. Suddenly he slipped the card into his syrynx sack. His fingers lingered inside the leather, becoming sweaty on the laminate. Unseen, the picture was even more frightening. He took his hand out and wiped it on his hip, then looked to see if anyone watched.

  Katin was looking through the cards he had picked up. "This is what you've been playing with, Tyy? The Tarot?" He looked up. "You're a gypsy, Mouse. I bet you've seen these before." He held the cards up so the Mouse might see.

  Not looking, the Mouse nodded. He tried to keep his hand from his hip. (There had been a big woman sitting behind the fire— in the dirty print skirt— and the mustachioed men sat around under the flickering overhang of rock, watching while the cards flashed and flashed in her fat hands. But that had been ...)

  "Here," Tyy said. "You to me them give." She reached.

  "May I look through the whole set?" asked Katin.

  Her gray eyes widened. "No." Surprise was in her voice.

  "I'm sorry," Katin began, confused. "I didn't mean to ..."

  Tyy took the cards.

  "You do you read the cards?" Katin tried to keep his face from freezing.

  She nodded.

  "Tarot reading is common over the Federation," Lorq said. He was sitting on the sculpture. "Of Prince's message, your cards anything have to say?" As he turned, his eyes flashed like jasper, like gold. "Perhaps your cards of Prince and me will speak?"

  The Mouse was surprised how easily the captain slipped on the Pleiades dialect. The expression inside was a quick smile.

  Lorq left the stone. "What the cards about this swing into the night say?"

  Sebastian, gazing from under thick blond brows, pulled his dark shapes closer.

  "I their patterns want to see. Yes. Where Prince and myself among the cards fall?"

  If she read, he would have an opportunity to see more of the cards: Katin grinned. "Yes, Tyy. Give us a reading on Captain's expedition. How well does she read them, Sebastian?"

  "Tyy never wrong is."

  "You for a few seconds only Prince's face have seen. In the face the lines of a man's fate mapped are." Lorq put his fists on his hips. "From the crack across mine, you where those lines my fate can tell will touch?"

  "No, Captain— " Her eyes dropped to her hands. The cards looked much too big for her still fingers. "I the cards only array and read."

  "I haven't seen anybody read the Tarot since I was in school." Katin looked back at the Mouse. "There was one character from the Pleiades in my philosophy seminar who knew his cards. I suppose at one time you could have called me quite an amateur aficionado of the Book of Toth, as they were incorrectly labeled in the seventeenth century. I would say rather"— he paused for Tyy's corroboration— "the Book of the Grail?"

  None came.

  "Come. Give me a reading, Tyy." Lorq dropped his fists to his sides.

  Tyy's fingertips rested on the golden backs. From her seat at the bottom of the ramp, gray eyes halved by epicanthi, she looked between Katin and Lorq.

  She said: "I will."

  "Mouse," Katin called, "come on and take a look at this. Give us your opinion on the performance— The Mouse stood up in the light of the gaming table. "Hey ...!"

  They turned at the wrecked voice. "You believe in that?"

  Katin raised an eyebrow.

  "You call me superstitious because I spit in the river? Now you tell the future with cards! Ahnnn!" which is not really the sound he made. Still it meant disgust. His gold earring shook and flashed.

  Katin frowned.

  Tyy's hand hung over the deck.

  The Mouse dared half the distance of the rug. "You're really going to try and tell the future with cards? That's silly. That's superstitious!"

  "No it's not, Mouse," Katin countered. "One would think that you of all people-"

  The Mouse waved his hand and barked hoarse laughter. "You, Katin, and them cards. That's something!"

  "Mouse, the cards don't actually predict anything. They simply propagate an educated commentary on present situations— "

  "Cards aren't educated! They're metal and plastic. They don't know— "

  "Mouse, the seventy-eight cards of the Tarot present symbols and mythological images that have recurred and reverberated through forty-five centuries of human history. Someone who understands these symbols can construct a dialogue about a given situation. There's nothing superstitious about it. The Book of Changes, even Chaldean Astrology only become superstitious when they are abused, employed to direct rather than guide and suggest."

  The Mouse made that sound again.

  "Really, Mouse! It's perfectly logical; you talk like somebody living a thousand years ago."

  "Hey, Captain?" The Mouse closed the rest of the distance and, peering around Lorq's elbow, squinted at the deck in Tyy's lap. "You believe in those things?" His hand fell on Katin's forearm, as though holding it, he might keep it still.

  Tiger eyes beneath rusted brows showed agony; Lorq was grinning. "Tyy, me the cards read."

  She turned the deck over and passed the pictures— "Captain, you one choose"— from hand to hand.

  Lorq squatted to see. Suddenly he stopped the passing cards with his forefinger. "The Kosmos, it looks like." He named the card his finger had fallen on. "In this race, the universe the prize is." He looked up at the Mouse and Katin. "Do you think I should pick the Kosmos to start the reading?" Framed by the bulk of his shoulders, the "agony" grew subtle.

  The Mouse answered with a twist of dark lips.

  "Go ahead," Katin said.

  Lorq drew the card:

  Morning fog wove birch and yew and holly trees; in the clearing a naked figure leaped and cavorted in the blue dawn.

  "Ah," said Katin, "the Dancing Hermaphrodite, the union of all male and female principles." He rubbed his ear between two fingers. "You know, for about three hundred years or so, from about eighteen-ninety to after space travel began, there was a highly Christianized set of Tarot cards designed by a friend of William Butler Yeats that became so popular, they almost obliterated the true images."

  As Lorq tilted the card, diffraction images of animals flashed and disappeared in the mystic grove. The Mouse's hand tightened on Katin's arm. He raised his chin to question.

  "The beasts of the a
pocalypse," Katin answered. He pointed over the captain's shoulder to the four corners of the grove: "Bull, Lion, Eagle, and that funny little ape-like creature back there is the dwarf god Bes, originally of Egypt and Anatolia, protector of women in labor, the scourge of the miserly, a generous and terrible god. There's a statue of him that's fairly famous: squat, grinning, fanged, copulating with a lioness."

  "Yeah," the Mouse whispered. "I seen that statue."

  "You have? Where?"

  "Some museum." He shrugged. "In Istanbul, I think. A tourist took me there when I was a kid."

  "Alas," mused Katin, "I have been content with three-dimensional holograms."

  "Only it's no dwarf. It's"— the Mouse's rasp halted as he looked up at Katin— "maybe twice as tall as you." His pupils, rolling in sudden recollection, showed veined whites.

  "Captain Von Ray, you well the Tarot know?" Sebastian asked.

  "I've had my cards read perhaps a half dozen times," Lorq explained. "My mother didn't like my stopping to listen to the readers who would have their little tables set up under the wind-shield junctions on the streets. Once, when I was five or six I managed to get lost. While I was wandering around a part of Ark I'd never seen before, I stopped and got my fortune read." He laughed; the Mouse, who had not judged the gathering expression right, had expected anger. "When I did get home and told my mother, she grew very upset and told me I mustn't do it again.

  "She knew it was all stupid!" the Mouse whispered.

  "What had the cards said?" Katin asked.

  "Something about a death in my family."

  "Did anyone die?"

  Lorq's eyes narrowed. "About a month later my uncle was killed."

  Katin reflected on the sound of m's. Captain Lorq Von Ray's uncle?

  "But well the cards you do not know?" Sebastian asked once more.

  "Only the names of a few— the Sun, the Moon, the Hanged-man. But I on their meanings never studied."

  "Ah." Sebastian nodded. "The first card picked always yourself is. But the Kosmos a card of the Major Arcana is. A human being it can't represent. Can't pick."

  Lorq frowned. Puzzlement looked like rage. Misinterpreting, Sebastian stopped.

  "What it is," Katin went on, "in the Tarot pack there are fifty-six cards of the Minor Arcana— just like the fifty-two playing cards, only with pages, knights, queens, and kings for court cards. These deal with ordinary human affairs: love, death, taxes— things like that. There are twenty-two other cards: the Major Arcana, with cards like the Fool and the Hanged-man. They represent primal cosmic entities. You can't very well pick one of them to represent yourself."

  Lorq looked at the card a few seconds. "Why not?" He looked up at Katin. All expression was gone now. "I like this card. Tyy said choose, and I chose."

  Sebastian's hand rose. "But— "

  Tyy's slender fingers caught her companion's hairy knuckles. "He chose," she said. The metal of her eyes flashed from Sebastian to the captain, to the card. "There it place." She gestured for him to lay the card down. "The captain which card he wants can choose."

  Lorq laid the card on the carpet, the dancer's head toward himself, the feet toward Tyy.

  "The Kosmos reversed," muttered Katin.

  Tyy glanced up. "Reversed for you, upright for me is. Her voice was sharp.

  "Captain, the first card you pick doesn't predict anything," Katin said. "Actually, the first card you take removes all the possibilities it represents from your reading."

  "What does it represent?" Lorq asked.

  "Here male and female unite," Tyy said. "The sword and the chalice, the staff and the dish join. Completion and certain success it means; the cosmic state of divine awareness it signifies. Victory."

  "And that's all been cut from my future?" Lorq's face assumed agony again. "Fine! What sort of a race would it be if I knew I was going to win?"

  "Reserved it means obsession with one thing, stubbornness," Katin added. "Refusal to learn— "

  Tyy suddenly closed the cards. She held out the deck. "You, Katin, the reading will complete?"

  "Huh? ... I ... Look, I'm sorry. I didn't ... Anyway, I only know the meaning of about a dozen cards." His ears blushed along the rims. "I'll be quiet."

  A wing brushed the floor.

  Sebastian stood and pulled his pets away. One flapped to his shoulder. A breeze, and the Mouse's hair tickled his forehead.

  All were standing now except Lorq and Tyy, who squatted with the Dancing Hermaphrodite between.

  Once more Tyy shuffled and fanned the cards, this time face down. "Choose."

  Broad fingers with thickened nails clamped the card, drew:

  A workman stood before a double vault of stone, a stone-cutter plugged into his wrists. The machine was carving its third five-pointed star into the transom. Sunlight lit the mason and the building face. Through the doorway, darkness sank away.

  "The Three of Pentacles. This card you covers."

  The Mouse looked at the captain's forearm. The oval socket was almost lost between the double tendon along his wrist.

  The Mouse fingered the socket on his own arm. The plastic inset was a quarter the width of his wrist: both sockets were the same size.

  The captain lay the Three of Pentacles on the Kosmos.

  "Again choose."

  The card came out upside down:

  A black-haired youngster in brocade vest, with boots of tooled leather, leaned on the hilt of a sword on which was a jeweled silver lizard. The figure stood in shadow under crags; the Mouse couldn't tell if it were boy or girl.

  "The Page of Swords reversed. This card you crosses."

  Lorq placed the card crosswise on the Three of Pentacles.

  "Again choose."

  Above a seaside, in a clear sky with birds, a single hand, extending from coils of mist, held a five-pointed star-form in a circle.

  "The Ace of Pentacles." Tyy pointed below the crossed cards. Lorq placed the card there. "This card beneath you lies. Choose."

  A big blond fellow stood on the flag path within a garden. He looked up, his hand back. A red bird was about to light on his wrist. On the stones of the court, nine star-shapes were cut.

  "The Nine of Pentacles." She pointed beside the pattern on the rug. "This card behind you lies."

  Lorq placed the card.

  "Choose."

  Upside down again:

  Between storm clouds burned a violet sky. Lightning had ignited the top of a stone tower. Two men had leaped from the upper balcony. One wore rich clothing. You could even see his jeweled rings and the gold tassels on his sandals. The other wore a common work vest, was barefoot, bearded.

  "The Tower, reversed!" Katin whispered. "Uh-oh. I know what— " and stopped because Tyy and Sebastian looked.

  "The Tower reversed." Tyy pointed above the patter "This above you lies."

  Lorq placed the card, then drew a seventh.

  "The Two of Swords, reversed."

  Upside down:

  A blindfolded woman sat on a chair before the ocean, holding two swords crossed on her breasts.

  "This before you lies."

  With three cards in the center and four around, the first seven cards formed a cross.

  "Again choose." Lorq chose.

  "The King of Swords. Here it place." The King went to the left of the cross.

  "And once more." Lorq drew his ninth card. "The Three of Wands reversed." Which went below the King. "The Devil— "

  Katin looked at the Mouse's hand. The fingers arched and the little nail bit Katin's arm.

  "— reversed."

  The fingers relaxed; Katin looked back at Tyy.

  "Here place." The upside-down Devil went below the Wands. "And choose."

  "The Queen of Swords. This final card here place." Beside the cross there was now a vertical row of four cards.

  Tyy squared the pack.

  She brushed her fingers under her chin. As she bent over the vivid dioramas, her iron-colored hair broke on her shoulde
r.

  "Do you see Prince in there?" Lorq asked. "Do you see me, and the sun I'm after?"

  "You I see; and Prince. A woman also, somehow related to Prince, a dark woman— "

  "Black hair, but blue eyes?" Lorq said. "Prince's eyes are blue."

  Tyy nodded. "Her too I see."

  "That's Ruby."

  "The cards mostly swords and pentacles are. Much money I see. Also much struggle about and around it there is."

  "With seven tons of Illyrion?" the Mouse mumbled. "You don't have to read cards to see— "

  "Shhh ..." from Katin.

  "The only positive influence from the Major Arcana the Devil is. A card of violence, of revolution, of struggle it is. But also the birth of spiritual understanding it signifies. Pentacles at the beginning of your reading lay. They cards of money and wealth are. Swords them overtake; cards of power and conflict. The wand the symbol of intellect and creativity is. Though the number of the wands three and low is, high the reading it comes. That good is. But no cups— the symbol of the emotions and particularly love— there are. Bad is. To be good, wands must cups have." She lifted the cards in the center of the cross: the Kosmos, the Three of Pentacles, the Page of Swords.

  "Now ..." Tyy paused. The four men breathed together. "You yourself as the world see. The card covering you of nobility, of aristocracy speaks. As well, some skill which you possess— "

  "You said you used to be a racing captain, didn't you?" asked Katin.

  "That with material increase you are concerned, this card reveals. But the Page of Swords you crosses."

  "That's Prince?"

  Tyy shook her head. "A younger person it is. Someone already close to you now it is. Someone you know. A dark, very young man perhaps— "

  Katin was first to look at the Mouse.

  "— who somehow between you and your flaming sun will come."

  Now Lorq looked up over his shoulder.

  "Hey, now. Look ..." The Mouse frowned at the others. "What are you going to do? Fire me the first stopover because of some stupid cards? You think I want to cross you up?"

  "Even if he you fired," Tyy said, glancing up, "it would nothing change."

  The captain slapped the Mouse's hip. "Don't mind it, Mouse."

  "If you don't believe in them, Captain, why waste your time listening to ...?" and stopped because Tyy had replaced the cards.