Nova

by Samuel R. Delany

  "This is your world, isn't it, Sebastian?" Katin asked. "You must feel good coming home."

  Sebastian pushed a dark wing away that beat before his eyes. "Still mine, but ... " He looked around, shrugged. "I from Thule come. It a bigger city is; a quarter of the way around the other world it lies. From here very far is; and very different." He looked up at the twilight sky. Sister was high, a bleary pearl behind a gun-colored sheath of cloud. "Very different." He shook his head.

  "Our world, yes," Tyy said. "But not our home at all."

  The captain, a few steps before them, looked back when they spoke. "Look." He pointed to the gate. Beneath the scar his face was fixed. "No dragon on his column coils. This home is. For you and you and you and me, this home is!"

  "Home enough," Leo repeated. But his voice was guarded.

  They followed the captain out through the serpentless gates.

  The landscape held all the colors of burning:

  Copper: it oxidizes to a mottled, yellow-shot green.

  Iron: black and red ash.

  Sulfur: its oxide is an oozy, purplish brown.

  The colors smeared in from the dusty horizon, and were repeated in the walls and towers of the City. Once Lynceos shaded the silver fringe of his lashes to look at the sky where a swarm of shadows like mad, black leaves winked on the exhausted sun, capable of no more than evening, even at noon. He looked back at the creature on Sebastian's shoulder that spread its wings now and rattled its leash. "And how does the gully feel to be home?" He reached out to chuck the perched thing, only to jerk his white hand back from a dark claw. The twins looked at one another and laughed.

  They descended into the City of Dreadful Night.

  Halfway down, the Mouse began to walk backwards up the escalator. "It's ... it's not Earth."

  "Huh?" Katin glided by, saw the Mouse, and began backtracking himself.

  "Look at it all down there, Katin. It isn't the Solar System. It isn't Draco."

  "This trip is your first time away from Sol, isn't it?"

  The Mouse nodded.

  "It won't be too different."

  "But just look at it, Katin."

  "The City of Dreadful Night," Katin mused. "All those lights. They're probably afraid of the dark."

  They stick-legged a moment more, gazing across the checkerboard: ornate gaming pieces, a huddle of kings, queens, and rooks towered knights and pawns.

  "Come on," the Mouse said.

  The twenty-meter blades of metal that made up the giant stair swept them down.

  "We better catch up with Captain."

  The streets near the field were crowded with cheap rooming houses. Marquees arched the walkways, advertising dance halls and psychoramas. The Mouse looked through the transparent wall at people swimming in a recreation club. "It isn't that different from Triton. Sixpence @sg? Prices are sure a hell of a lot lower, though."

  Half the people on the streets were obviously crew or officers. The streets were crowded. The Mouse heard music. Some of it was from the open doors of bars.

  "Hey, Tyy." The Mouse pointed to an awning. "Did you ever work in a place like that?"

  "In Thule, yes."

  Expert Readings: the letters glittered, shrank, and expanded on the sign.

  "We stay in the City— "

  They turned to the Captain.

  "— five days."

  "Are we going to put up on the ship?" the Mouse asked. "Or here in town where we can have some fun?"

  Take that scar. Cut it with three close lines near the top: the captain's forehead creased. "You all suspect the danger we're in." He swept his eyes over the buildings. "No. We're not staying either here or on the ship." He stepped into the wings of a communications booth. Not bothering to swing the panels shut, he passed his hand before the inductance plates. "This Lorq Von Ray is. Yorgos Setsumi?"

  "I if his advisory meeting over is will see."

  "An android of him will do," Lorq said. "Just a minor favor I want."

  "He always to you in person, Mr. Von Ray, likes to talk. Just a moment, I he available is think."

  A figure materialized in the viewing column. "Lorq, so long now you I have not seen. What for you can I do?"

  "Is anybody using Taafite on Gold for the next ten days?"

  "No. I'm in Thule now, and will be for the next month. I gather you're in the City and need a place to stay?"

  Katin had already noted the captain's slide between dialects.

  There were unrecordable similarities between the captain's voice and this Setsumi's that illuminated both. Katin recognized common eccentricities that began to define for him an upper-class Pleiades accent. He looked at Tyy and Sebastian to see if they responded to it. Only a small movement in the muscles around the eyes, but there. Katin looked back at the viewing column.

  "I have a party with me, Yorgy."

  "Lorq, my houses are your houses. I hope you and your guests enjoy your stay."

  "Thanks, Yorgy." Lorq stepped from the booth.

  The crew looked among themselves.

  "There's a possibility," Lorq said, "that the next five days I spend on the other world will be the last I spend anywhere." He searched intently for their reactions. As intently, they tried to hide them. "We might as well pass the time pleasantly. We go this way"

  The mono crawled up the rail and flung them out across the City. "That Gold is?" Tyy asked Sebastian.

  The Mouse, beside them, pressed his face against the glass. "Where?"

  "There." Sebastian pointed across the squares. Among the blocks, a molten river faulted the City.

  "Hey, just like on Triton," the Mouse said. "Is the core of this planet melted by Illyrion too?"

  Sebastian shook his head. "The whole planet too big for that is. Only the space under each city. That crack Gold is called."

  The Mouse watched the brittle, igneous outcroppings fall back along the lavid fissure.

  "Mouse?"

  "Huh?" He looked up as Katin pulled out his recorder. "What do you want?"

  "Do something."

  "What?"

  "I'm trying an experiment. Do something."

  "What do you want me to do?"

  "Anything that comes into your head. Go on."

  "Well ..." The Mouse frowned. "All right." The Mouse did.

  The twins, from the other end of the car, turned to stare.

  Tyy and Sebastian looked at the Mouse, then at one another, then back at the Mouse.

  "Characters," said Katin into his recorder, "are fixed most vividly by their actions. The Mouse stepped back from the window, then swung his arm around and around. From his expression, I could tell he was both amused by my surprise at the violence of his action, at the same time curious if I were satisfied. He dropped his hands back on the window, breathing a little hard, and flexed his knuckles on the sill— "

  "Hey," the Mouse said. "I just swung my arm. The panting, my knuckles— that wasn't part— "

  "'Hey,' the Mouse said, hooking his thumb in the hole at the thigh of his pants. 'I just swung my arm. The panting, my knuckles— that wasn't part— '"

  "God damn!"

  "The Mouse unhooked his thumb, made a nervous fist, ejaculated, 'God damn!' then turned away in frustration. There are three types of actions: purposeful, habitual, and gratuitous. Characters, to be immediate and apprehensible, must be presented by all three." Katin looked toward the front of the car.

  The captain gazed through the curving plate that lapped the roof. His yellow eyes fixed her consumptive light that pulsed like fire-spots in a giant cinder. The light was so weak he did not squint at all.

  "I am confounded," Katin admitted to his jeweled box, "nevertheless. The mirror of my observation turns and what first seemed gratuitous I see enough times to realize it is a habit. What I suspected as habit now seems part of a great design. While what I originally took as purpose explodes into gratuitousness. The mirror turns again, and the character I thought obsessed by purpose reveals his obsession is only a
habit; his habits are gratuitously meaningless; while those actions I construed as gratuitous reveal a most demonic purpose."

  The yellow eyes had fallen from the tired star. Lorq's face erupted about the scar at some antic from the Mouse that Katin had missed.

  Rage, Katin pondered. Rage, Yes, he is laughing. But how is anyone supposed to distinguish between laughter and rage in that face.

  But the others were laughing too.

  "What's the smoke?" the Mouse asked, stepping around the steaming grate in the cobbles.

  "It just the sewer grating is, I think," Leo said. The fisherman looked at the fog winding up the pole that supported the brilliant, induced-fluorescence streetlight. At the ground the steam ballooned and sagged; before the light it danced and quivered.

  "Taafite is just at the end of this street," Lorq said.

  They walked up the hill past a half dozen other gratings that steamed through the perpetual evening.

  "I guess Gold is right— "

  "— right behind that embankment there?"

  Lorq nodded to the twins.

  "What sort of a place is the Taafite?" the Mouse demanded.

  "A place where I can be comfortable." Subtle agony played the captain's features. "And where I won't have to be bothered with you." Lorq made to cuff him, but the Mouse ducked. "We're here."

  The twelve-foot gate, with chunks of colored glass set in wrought iron, fell back when Lorq laid his hand to the plate.

  "It remembers me."

  "Taafite isn't yours?" Katin asked.

  "It belongs to an old school friend, Yorgos Setsumi who owns Pleiades Mining. A dozen years ago I used it often. That's when the lock was keyed to my hand. I've done the same for him with some of my houses. We don't see each other much now but we used to be very close."

  They entered Taafite's garden.

  The flowers here were never meant to be seen in full light. The blossoms were purple, maroon, violet-colors of the evening. The mica-like scales of the spidery tilda glistened over the leafless branches. There was much low shrubbery, but all the taller plants were slim and sparse, to make as little shadow as possible.

  The front wall of Taafite itself was a curving shape of glass. For a long stretch there wasn't any wall at all and house and garden merged. A sort of path led to a sort of flight of steps cut into the rock, below what probably was the front door.

  When Lorq put his hand on the door plate, lights began to flicker all through the house, above them in windows, far at the ends of corridors, reflected around cowers, or shifting through a translucent wall, veined like violet jade, or panes of black-shot amber. Even under: a section of the floor was transparent and they could see lights coming on in rooms stories down.

  "Come in."

  They followed the captain across the beige carpeting. Katin stepped ahead to examine a shelf of bronze statuettes. "Benin?" he asked the captain.

  "I believe so. Yorgos has a passion for thirteenth-century Nigeria."

  When Katin turned to the opposite wall his eyes widened. "Now those can't be the originals." Then narrowed. "The Van Meegeren forgeries?"

  "No. I'm afraid those are just plain old copies."

  Katin chuckled. "I've still got Dehay's Under Sirius on the brain."

  They continued down the hall.

  "I think there's a bar in here." Lorq turned into a doorway.

  The lights only came halfway up because of what was beyond the forty feet of glass opposite.

  Inside the room yellow lamps played on a pool of opalescent sand filled by siftings from the rock wail. Refreshments were already moving into the room on the rotary stage. On floating glass shelves sat pale statuettes. Benin bronzes in the hall; here were early Cycladics, lucent and featureless.

  Outside the room was Gold.

  Down among brackish crags, lava flamed like day.

  The river of rock flowed by, swinging the crags' shadows between the wooden beams of the ceiling.

  The Mouse stepped forward and said something without sound.

  Tyy and Sebastian narrowed their eyes.

  "Now isn't that— "

  "— that something to look at!"

  The Mouse ran around the sand-pool, leaned against the glass with his hands by his face. Then he grinned back over his shoulder. "It's like being right down in the middle of some Hell on Triton!"

  The thing on Sebastian's shoulder dropped, flapping, to the floor and cowered behind its master as something in Gold exploded. Falling fire dropped light down their faces.

  "Which brew of the other world do you want to try first?" Lorq asked the twins as he surveyed bottles on the stage.

  "The one in the red bottle— "

  "— in the green bottle looks pretty good "

  “— not as good as some of the stuff we got on Tubman— "

  "— I bet. On Tubman we got some stuff called bliss— "

  "— you know what it is bliss, Captain?"

  "No bliss." Lorq held up the bottles, one in each hand.

  "Red or green. They're both good."

  "I could sure use some— "

  "— me too. But I guess he doesn't have— "

  "— guess he doesn't. So I'll take— "

  "— red— "

  "— green."

  "One of each. Coming up." Tyy touched Sebastian's arm. "What is?" Sebastian frowned.

  She pointed to the wall as one of the shelves floated away from a long painting.

  "The view from Thule down Ravine Dank is!" Sebastian seized Leo's shoulder. "Look. That home is!"

  The fisherman looked up.

  "You out the back window of the house where I was born look," Sebastian said. "All that you see."

  "Hey." The Mouse reached up to tap Katin's shoulder. Katin looked down from the sculpture he was examining at the Mouse's dark face. "Huh?"

  "That stool over there. You remember that Vega Republic stuff you were talking about back on the ship?"

  "Yes."

  "Is that stool one?"

  Katin smiled. "No. Everything here is all patterned on pre-star-flight designs. This whole room is a pretty faithful replica of some elegant American mansion of the twenty-first or second century."

  The Mouse nodded. "Oh."

  "The rich are always enamored of the ancient."

  "I never been in a place like this before." The Mouse looked about the room. "It's something, huh?"

  "Yes. It is."

  "Come get your poison," Lorq called from the stage.

  "Mouse! Now, you your syrynx play?" Leo brought over two mugs, pushed one into the Mouse's hands, the other into Katin's. "You play. Soon I down to the ice docks will go. Mouse, play for me."

  "Play something that we can dance— "

  "— dance with us, Tyy. Sebastian— "

  "— Sebastian will you dance with us too?"

  The Mouse shucked his sack.

  Leo went over to get a mug for himself, came back, and sat down on the stool. The Mouse's images were paled by Gold. But the music was ornamented with sharp, insistent quarter tones. It smelled like a party.

  On the floor, the Mouse balanced the body of the syrynx against his blackened, horny foot, tapped time with the toe of his boot, and rocked. His fingers flew. Light from Gold, from the fixtures about the room, from the Mouse's syrynx, lashed the captain's face to fury. Twenty minutes later he said, "Mouse, I'm going to steal you for a while."

  He stopped playing. "What you want, Captain?"

  "Company. I'm going out."

  The dancers' faces fell.

  Lorq turned a dial on the stage. "I've had the sensory recorder running." The music began again. And the ghostly visions of the Mouse's syrynx cavorted once more, along with images of Tyy, Sebastian, and the twins dancing, the sound of their laughter—

  "Where are we going, Captain?" the Mouse asked. He put his syrynx down on the case.

  "I've been thinking. We need something here. I'm going to get some bliss."

  "You mean you know— "
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  "— where to get hold of some?"

  "The Pleiades is my home," the Captain said. "We'll be gone maybe an hour. Come on, Mouse."

  "Hey, Mouse, will you leave your— "

  "— syrynx here with us— "

  "— now? It'll be okay. We won't— "

  "— won't let anything happen to it."

  With lips pulled thin, the Mouse looked from the twins to his instrument. "All right. You can play it. But watch out, huh?"

  He walked over to where Lorq stood at the door.

  Leo joined them. "Now it too time for me to go is."

  Inside the Mouse, surprise opened like a wound over the inevitable. He blinked.

  "For the lift, Captain, I you thank."

  They walked down the hall and through Taafite's garden. Outside the gate, they stopped by the smoking grate. "For the ice docks down there you go." Lorq pointed down the hill. "You the mono to the end of the line take."

  Leo nodded. His blue eyes caught the Mouse's dark ones, and puzzlement passed on his face. "Well, Mouse. Maybe some day again we'll see, huh?"

  "Yeah," the Mouse said. "Maybe."

  Leo turned and walked down the fuming street, boot heel clicking.

  "Hey," the Mouse called after a moment.

  Leo looked back.

  "Ashton Clark."

  Leo grinned, then started again.

  "You know," the Mouse said to Lorq, "I'll probably never see him again in my life. Come on, Captain."

  "Are we anywhere near the spacefield?" the Mouse asked. They came down the crowded steps of the monorail station.

  "Within walking distance. We're about five miles down Gold from Taafite."

  The spray trucks had recently been by. The wandering people were reflected on the wet pavement. A group of youngsters— two of the boys with bells around their necks— ran by an old man, laughing. He turned, followed them a few steps, hand out. Now he turned back and came toward the Mouse and Lorq.

  "An old guy with something, you help? Tomorrow, tomorrow into a job I plug. But tonight ..."

  The Mouse looked back after the panhandler, but Lorq kept on.

  "What's in there?" The Mouse pointed to a high arcade of lights. People clustered before the door on the shining street.

  "No bliss there."

  They turned the corner.