The last set of the night finished, Visti slid off her stool after the curtain closed. Then, avoiding the glances of the musicians, she slipped into her dressing room and changed quickly into a long drapey dress of muted colors and a shapeless gray duster for which the stage manager routinely teased her. But on her own time, hiding her “assets” was to her liking.
Slipping quietly through the back hallway, her heels exchanged for the short boots favored by women here, Visti made her way to the main body of the club, then emerged to where Jones was sitting. “I'll do most of the listening tonight,” she murmured to him as she slid onto the chair beside him.
“Yer welcome,” Jones Smit murmured with his quick grin, pushing across to her a frosty cold bottle of a Turuscan brew called Butch that he knew she liked.
Sighing, Visti held the bottle in two hands for a moment — adjusting the contents to eliminate the alcohol. Once Jones had asked her about this curious habit, and she'd retorted that she was “sayin' her prayers.” He never asked her again.
“Drink up,” he said now, his usual bottle of Hotlady in hand. “Your voice was a little raspy tonight, so you must be thirsty.”
At times like this, when there was no one in earshot, talking in lowered voices at their table, Jones dropped into a more conventionally generic accent, leaving aside the miner's tones for the while. Visti had never asked — again feeling that subtle tickle of fear — but she assumed it meant that he wasn't Muphro born and bred like the others, that he was from any number of Communities to get a rounded out accent like that. That could mean a lot of things.
“Was it?” Visti asked mildly, still working to neutralize the alcohol in the bottle. “Lotta dust in the air today.” Then she finished and took a long swig. The brew still had a nice bite to it. “Whoooo, I needed this, thanks!”
Jones leaned in closer. “I don't ask you much personally, Caryl, you know that, but I'm going to tonight, okay?”
“This is sudden,” Visti replied, glad to have the bottle to hold on to. What's this now?
He chuckled, but quickly grew serious again. “Not really. I know you don't want to do a lot of talking, but I've been itching to know something.”
“What is that?” she asked calmly. But the itch of a dread premonition began. Oh, no...
***
About the Author:
Marcia Tucker, retired educator and frequent dabbler in many things metaphysical, has been scribbling out oddments of poetry and science fiction since discovering Isaac Asimov and Arthur C. Clarke when she was twelve years old. Some oddments later evolved into epic, lengthy space operas filling seven three-ring binders, handwritten on college-ruled notebook paper, pre-PC era. This, since 2011, has developed into the Perseus Series. Some oddments coming together as poetry won her recognition in high school and an award. She never wrote to publish, writing as a life-process and a cathartic vehicle. Still, there are plenty of itches to scratch, and more oddments to scribble out, though laptops have long since replaced pen and paper. The Perseus Series, with its themes of constructed intelligence, telepathy, and alternate universes, is her beloved life work. It is currently expected to be complete in fourteen volumes.
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