by Tom Clancy
Charlie shrugged. "Who knows," he said, "what parents think?"
"I know what you mean." Nick grinned a little. "I like to think of dealing with them as practice for when we finally meet up with alien life-forms."
"You and me both, brother. Well, if you ever find out why it's working better, tell me. Meanwhile, let's do whatever needs doing here, and then get out before the situation deteriorates somehow… "
Later that evening Nick and Charlie met in Deathworld again, near the Keep of the Dark Artificer. This time there was no agenda, nothing to worry about. This time they could walk and talk and simply relax, debriefing each other. "You know," Nick said, once or twice catching a betraying expression on Charlie's face, "if I didn't know better… I'd think you were beginning to like some of this music."
"Oh, I don't know… " Charlie said as they went in the gates of the Keep, and the demons there snapped to attention and saluted them. "Some of the rhythms are more interesting than I thought originally… " He grinned. "But the lyrics…"
"Oh, give me a break. So they're depressive." "Morbid," Charlie said, "that's the word I would have used."
They strolled through the great "front hall," while Charlie looked around him, apparently fascinated by the architecture. Nick raised his eyebrows, mildly exasperated. "Just because some idiot critics call it morbo-jazz," Nick said, "isn't any reason to take them seriously. It's hardly even jazz. If you think about it, you'll see that the basic riff structure has been completely… uh…"
He trailed off, coming to a stop, slowly becoming aware that Charlie was staring at him. " 'Completely uh?'"
There was a dark form standing in their path, all in black leather, a shadow dressed in shadows. "Hey, Nick," said Joey Bane, dry-voiced and ironic. "How goes it?"
Nick couldn't find it in his heart to say "Badly, as always," for this was the man himself, no simulacrum, no clone generated by the machine. The look in his eyes was too feral, too amused, and too real, for any program to fake.
Camiun was over his shoulder, and for once its strings were still. "I asked the system to let me know when you two gents came through next," Joey Bane said. "I believe your last visit was, well, to put it politely, interrupted… "
"Uh," Nick said. "Yeah. I mean, no, it-"
"Look, relax," Bane said. "Nobody's going to ream you out. You did me and mine a favor. I thought I'd try to return it, a little. Come on."
He gestured them toward the back of the entry hall. They walked with him. "Besides," Joey said, "I would have come to take a look at you eventually, anyway. You just hurried me a little."
Nick goggled. On the other side of Joey, Charlie was looking at Nick and plainly trying not to burst out laughing. Nick ignored him. "You wanted to look at me? Why me?"
Bane laughed. "Because you're the one who's always subverting my staff."
Nick blushed. "I never-"
"You always! The DP people who do their dialogue-are always saying, 'There's this kid who talks to us all the time, and treats us like people-' ".
"Scorchtrap!"
"And the others. Bluebelch and Wringscalpel and Twistlestomp and the others. Where do they get these names, anyway? Whatever… they say the Demons want you to sit in on their next collective bargaining session. As if I don't give them stock options, and as if we didn't just have a split? What do they want now? Do they think I'm made of money?" Joey gave the two of them an ironic look. "But, kid, even the tables here say nice things about you. Somebody who's as kind to inanimate objects and support staff as you are will go far in the world."
Nick grinned. He couldn't think of anything to say to that.
"So," Joey said, "make yourselves at home. No connect charges for you two anymore. Though I think we'll see more of you than of your friend here." He nodded courteously enough to Charlie.
"I don't know," Charlie said suddenly, acquiring a wicked look. "I heard some material borrowed from Hovannes in that last lift Nick played for me. Maybe we have common ground after all."
Bane grinned. "Maybe we do. Stop in sometimes and find out. Meanwhile, what's your pleasure, gentlemen?" "We were going to do the Ninth Circle," Nick said, looking over toward the doors on the left-hand side. "I wouldn't go that way."
Nick looked at him in surprise. "Why not?"
"There's a shortcut. Who wants to go through all that stuff again? The noise, the crowd-" He waved his hand, made an annoyed noise. "Nick, why go through all that again? You did it once. Once is enough. Suffering for a purpose-" He looked up, as it were, through the depth of Deathworld, somehow including in the glance all the screaming and horror of the upper levels, all the rage, and the acknowledgment of evil. "That's one thing. Purification, punishment with an object, to deter or teach you never to do it again, that's one thing. But prolonging it indefinitely, punishment for its own sake, for the mere love of cruelty-" He shook his head. "That's not how we do it in Des Moines. Come on."
He led them toward the back of the entry hall. The place was empty, for the moment, except for the three of them. "One word," said Joey. "You got to the very threshold, last time, before you left. We have an agreement, which one of my clones would 1-lve administered to you before passing that last doorwL you saw off in the distance. We do not discuss with anyone but other people who've passed Nine, what lies beyond that portal. Anyone who does and is caught at it is banned for life." He shrugged. "Every now and then someone breaks the promise and tells… but you know what? No one believes them. Suits me. And as for the rest of us… sometimes it's fun to have a secret. Sometimes it's fun to make a promise and keep it forever. Can you cope with that?"
They both nodded.
"Right," Joey said.
He put two fingers in his mouth and whistled, piercingly.
Suddenly the air was full of music the likes of which Nick had never heard before-Camiun singing, for once, not in its usual dark fierce minor, but in a triumphant clarion major that was most uncharacteristic. Around them, like a mist, like a dream, the darkness and the stone and the night all began to melt away. Light came pouring in, and the view across a green landscape that scaled up and up through rolling hills. Farther up yet, to mountains stacked halfway up the sky, green at first, then blinding with snow, but snow that looked down on what seemed like an eternal spring.
The chords crashed around them as Nick looked at Joey Bane, the only dark thing in all that landscape, with astonishment.
"Okay, so life stinks," Joey said, ". but then you stop complaining, and get on with finding out how to make it work."
Through waves of triumphant music of lute and bass and jazz sax the three of them walked uphill, into the light, toward the crowd of Banies dancing under the second sun.
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