A Different Light (17 page)

"Be quick," Jimson said.

"All right." Russell caught hold of his chin with one hand, and with the other, tore the second bandage off. Leaning down, he set his lips on the scratches, and ran his tongue down the line of the wound. It was warm.

"Let me up."

Russell got off him. Jimson slid out of the bunk and padded naked to the mirror. His left cheek had two furrows in it, his right, one, where he had been struck by the hard edge of Russell's ring. His ribs were mottled with purple. It seemed a lot of damage for the few seconds it had taken the redhead's fury to spend itself. Then he had allowed Leiko and Ysao to wrestle him away.

Russell came up behind him, brushing his fingers over the bruises. Jimson shivered.

Sometime in his sleep period, after he had blown Shev Allard's life away, he had heard, drawing him out of sleep, Leiko's cry of triumph: "Done it!"

The bed had dipped, under Russell's weight. "We're out of the Maze, Jim. Nine days from home." Under the exhaustion in his voice, Jimson had heard appeal. He moved over. It had not taken long to overcome the hesitancies legacied by their separation. Russell had become an experienced and elegant partner.

Ysao remarked, watching them now from his workbench, "You ought to put something on those bruises."

"Like padding," said Leiko. Turning from her contemplation of the vision screen, she grinned at his nakedness. He was not shy of her. It was too late to be shy of Ysao. During the lovemaking, held a breath from orgasm by Russell's hands, he'd felt the presence of another mind and known that Ysao was watching them. Then he had something else to think about—but now he was certain that all through the loving, Ysao had been there.

Russell saw him grimace. "You want some anaesthetic on them?" he asked.

"No, no." Jimson turned away from the mirror. "Leave them be. They don't hurt." What hurt was his ankle, where he had twisted it falling from the monkey bars. He went to his bunk for clothing. He pulled his clothes on slowly, hoping that the others were not looking. His joints ached when he bent them. When he finished pulling on his coveralls he had to stop to catch his breath. Doggedly he checked the time and took a pill. He wondered if they were doing him any good at all. He picked his notebooks up and carried them to the food unit table.

Eight days from home; light years across the universe. Jimson set himself to ignore the pain, to banish it. Eight days was no time. He would last. On Nexus he would get the tools he needed to make the finished drawings. He would do pen-and-ink on most of the Masks, he decided, but dry point for the Dragon and the Alabaster Lady, and scratchboard for the Blue Mask. All he needed was a week to work in, and then De Vala could have them.
A week? Alleca, can you do nine pen-and-inks, two etchings, and a scratchboard in one week?
He rubbed his hands together.
Damn right I can.

Then the pain shot through his left leg, making him cry out against his will, and he was no longer sure.

"Jim." Russell bent over him. "Jim, are you all right?"

Jimson resisted the urge to say,
No, damn it, Tm not all right, and I'll never be all right!
Instead, he waited till the pain subsided, and then said, "Yes. It's just a cramp."

"I'll get you something for pain." Russell went to the ship's medikit, and came back with a pill and water. He stood and watched as Jimson took it.

"Don't stand over me," Jimson said. "I said I'm all right."

"Russell!" called Leiko from her chair, "I need a course to Psi Center."

"Right." Russell went to his chair. After a while he swung around. "This course gets us home a bit faster then our present one. Five days to Psi Center, one day in spacetime normal, and half a day through the Hype to Nexus."

"I like that," Leiko said. "Does Psi Center have a port?"

The pill was taking affect. Jimson listened, detached and curious. "There's a moon but we don't land there," Russell said. "There's a spaceport planetside."

Leiko made a face. "I hate bouncing around in the atmosphere. What do we do after we land? Is there a mail-slot? One ancient artifact, one approximately fifteen-year-old girl for delivery. Receipt please." Jimson chuckled at the image of stuffing Ast through a mail-slot. The pain needled through his left leg again, but this time it was easier to ignore. He had gotten much farther away.

"Ysao," said Russell. The telepath looked up. "What do we do when we get to Psi Center? Is there a door?'

"You'll find out," Ysao promised.

* * *

In-ter-est-ing.

Yes.

Stirred in the middle of a drug-fed sleep, Jimson heard the two voices—one male, one female—talking within his dream. The woman's voice made him think of the Silver Goddess. That, he thought, was the way she talked: powerful and amused. She had a trick of breaking her syllables up. He wondered what she was doing on the
Morgana.

And then he woke up.

Even in sleep he had been aware of the moment of the Jump into spacetime normal around Psi Center. We must have landed, he thought, and tried to sit up.

He couldn't move.

The voices continued their conversation.

It was the right solution, to blow up the ship.

Per-fect. O'Neill could not have done it.

The pilot would have.

Yes, she would. But this was per-fect. I ap-plaud it.
The voices faded out and then returned.
One rarely sees such artistry in our un-ti-dy world. Such ro-mance is the stuff true tragedy is made of.

The second voice agreed. Jimson wondered if he was hearing things. He could not imagine human beings talking like this. A third voice entered the conversation.
You waste time.

The Silver Goddess laughed.
But no, Mahil. You have no ap-pre-ci-a-tion.

Wake the girl.

The voices faded out completely. Jimson tried again to move. He was not in pain. His body was simply not responding to his head. It seemed to take hours as, centimeters at a time, he propped himself against the bulkhead until he could see the whole of the ship. Leiko was in her chair, immobile. Russell was in his. The cords in the Starcaptain's neck stood out as he fought to turn his head.

Ysao
, said the Silver Goddess,
don't you agree with me? Did you help it happen that way?

Jimson wondered how the Goddess knew Ysao's name.

"No," said Ysao aloud. "Absolve me, Goryn. I do not play with my friend's lives."

Dull
, said Goryn,
for you. I do
.

"That is why you have no friends," said Ysao.

Goryn said,
I think you are very rude. The voices faded out and came back again. Mahil and Nior and I have conferred. We think you ought to stay. Since you are here. It will save you the trouble of making a second trip.

Ysao said, "You are planning something. I know you."

Certain-ly
, said Goryn.
If you want to affect it you must stay to find it out.

The third voice said again,
Wake the girl.

Ast came rolling out of her bunk. She stretched. She walked to Jimson's bunk and pulled out, smiling at him, his pair of expandable boots. She put them on. She walked to the Blue Mask, swathed as it was in protective wrapping, and put it under her arm.

"I must go," she said, speaking to Jimson. "They tell me I am like them, I am one of them. I think they must be gods. I will go and learn to be a god." She turned to Ysao where he sat on his workbench. "You must come. They want you."

The woman's voice said, coaxingly,
If you do not come now you will have nothing to say about it later, Ysao.

Ysao shook his head. "Goryn, you are incorrigible," he said.

Jimson felt a shiver, a shift, inside his mind.
Jim-son Al-lec-a
. It was the woman's voice.
I like your mind. You have vi-sion. When you are finished with your life, come to me here. I will find you something to do, an in- ter-est-ing thing
.

"Goryn!" said Ysao sharply, from the open door.

Come when you are ready, not before!

Goryn, you waste time!
said Mahil.

Goryn laughed.
Oh, no.

Ysao and Ast swung out into the sunlight.
Farewell,
said a blending trinity of voices.

Fusion drive yelling, the
Morgana
went racing away from Psi Center.

* * *

Leiko was indignant. "I have a crick in my neck," she said. "Ysao might have warned us that that was going to happen."

Russell said, "I don't think he knew it. I think he was surprised."

"What do we do if we have an emergency and no engineer?"

"I can handle it."

Jimson climbed stiffly down from his bunk. He hurt. He went to the medikit and got himself a pain pill. Then he punched buttons at the food unit for three food bars. He brought one to Leiko, and one to Russell. "Thank you," Leiko said.

Russell looked sharply at him. "Are you all right?"

Jimson nodded. "I'm all right."

"What do you think that woman meant when she spoke to you?"

Jimson shrugged. "I don't know." He stood for a moment, unseeing, remembering.
When you are finished with your life....

The food bar snapped between his fingers and fell to the floor. He looked at the pieces, surprised at the sudden spurt of anger; equally surprised that he had that much strength left. He could be gentle with Russell but it was pointless for him to lie to himself. The woman with the voice like the Silver Goddess had been talking about his death.

He walked slowly—he could no longer walk fast—to the table by the food unit. He turned the pages of his notebook. The drawings seemed good to him. He savored them. And as his hand and arm moved to turn the pages, he could feel the brittle tension in each motion.

If there could only be someone else there, someone to hold on to—but the essence of dying was that there could not be.
You can't cheat the luck.
He clenched his fingers till his knuckles trembled, till the nails left crescent shaped cuts in his palms. He straightened out his hands, feeling the tendons move under the skin. The pill was starting to work. He touched his eyelids with his fingertips.
Your eyes and your hands, Alleca, that's all you have. That's all you ever had. And your mind.

He walked to his bunk, feeling himself float away on the drug. After the first effects wore off he would work, but not now. He couldn't now.

No time. No time at all.

Chapter 16

From Psi Center it took the
Morgana
a day and a half to get to Nexus.

During that time Jimson's appetite diminished: he ate half a food bar. The pain came and went at its own pacing, independent of the drugs. He sat at the table with his notebook open, his pens laid out, looking at the drawings, his hands too weak to work. He snarled at Leiko and Russell until they left him alone. Leiko sat in her chair, working out an approach to Port. Going in to Nexus was a much more complicated procedure than Jumping from it: they would have to Jump from the Hype to spacetime normal somewhere past the orbit of Nexus' moon, and then jet in. Leiko played with the computer and sang tunelessly to it, or to herself. Russell paced. Jimson could feel the redhead's eyes boring into his back. When Jimson could no longer sit on the bench, he asked Russell to help him to the bunk.

"Just an arm," he said. "My left leg doesn't seem to want to function."

"Put your arm round my neck," Russell said. Jimson did, and Russell caught him round the ribs and lifted him, taking almost all of his weight. Russell lowered him into a bunk and then stayed with him, steadying him as he fought to catch his breath.

"All right," Jimson said. "I'm all right."

"Do you want a pill?"

"The pills stopped working days ago. I'm all right, damn it! Leave me alone." Noiselessly Russell turned away from him.

After a while Jimson said, "Russ, I didn't mean to yell at you."

Russell said, "That's all right." He came to stand over the bed. His eyes were like green glass, giving nothing away. "When we get to Nexus, I'll take you to a clinic."

"Sure," Jimson said.

But he doubted that any clinic had medication to help him now.

The pain ebbed. He slept a little. When he woke he felt refreshed. He moved. The ache in his joints had lessened. He moved slowly and carefully out of bed. He felt the stirrings of hunger and walked to the food unit to get a food bar.

Leiko said from her chair, "Hey, should you be up?"

"I feel better." He ate. "How close are we to Nexus?"

"Very close," said Leiko, and she made a rude noise.

When they landed on Nexus, Jimson felt almost normal. He avoided looking at himself in a mirror. He gathered his things together, his notebooks, his pens. Russell tried to take the pack from him. Jimson held to it. "I'll carry it," he said. Leiko palmed the door-plate. Sunlight, many times brighter than the ship's artificial light, splashed across the floor. The air rushed in. It smelled of hot metal. Russell's medallion caught the light and glittered.