A Different Light (5 page)

"Can I do one more picture of you?"

"With no clothes on, you mean?"

"Uh-huh."

"Whatever," she said. Contented. And then just had to add: "It's too bad I'm not beautiful."

"You are beautiful."

"I'm
not.
"

He kissed her wrist. "Do you know what color your hair is?"

"Dirty brown," she offered.

"It's the color of faded copper silk floating in a pool, with sunlight shining on it."

The image so occupied her mind that she forgot to scoff. Perhaps she would indeed let him do one more nude—before she left him. Four months was a long time for a Hyper to stay planetside. She was a good pilot; she could get work anytime. When her longing for the Hype grew stronger she would leave him for it, he knew, even if she had to scrounge up the rest of a crew from the deadheads and dopers that hung around the Port at night. She'd go, and he wouldn't see her again, except, maybe, hung in frames on the walls of other people's rooms. And maybe not even there.

She sighed, and settled into his arms. "I like that," she said. "Silk on water." She stroked him with one hand. "Summer of ivy," she murmured.

He was embarrassed. "Snoop."

She was not. "I look at your papers once in a while. That one didn't say 'secret' on it. I like poetry. What comes after that verse?"

"That was all there was."

* * *

It took nearly a month before the drawings and prints were ready to send. Jimson littered the house with his mess: piles of papers, scattered pens, gouged-out shavings from wood blocks curling pathetically in corners. Leiko prowled around the house as if it had grown bars. She was irritable. "When are you going to be done with it?"

He looked up. "When I am."

She glared at him. "I'm going out." Out to Rin's, or, perhaps, out to Port. He looked at the picture on his desk. It was good—it was really good. Leiko looked out of it at him, turning back in midstride, naked against the background of a bare room. Out of the empty room her skin, her hair, her eyes all glowed. He had used colored chalks on this, and it had given him the texture he wanted. After they made love, her skin seemed to change, till it seemed almost gorged, denser, and somehow, furry. It was this feel he had worked for in the portrait, and he had achieved it. When he looked at the picture he felt as if there were firecrackers bursting inside his head.

There were two other pieces he felt that way about.

One had grown out of an incident at Rin's. It had been a soupy, foggy night, not a night for tourists to be out. Jimson was surprised when they came in: three women, two men, and behind them four more men, following at a little distance, eyes watchful, clearly in formation. He leaned to Leiko. "Who are they?"

"Roman De Vala—and friends."

"Who's
he?"

"He lives here. He buys bodyguards, and brings his rich friends to Hyper bars. He's an art collector. He
says
he's a Terran. But a lot of people say that."

"Which is he?"

"The little one, with the black hair." Jimson observed him covertly. It was rude to stare, and fights had started for less—unless, of course, you were Ysao, or Chi, lounging with alien elegance. No one picked fights with Chi. De Vala was studying Jimson's pictures. Suddenly he turned and walked back to the table Chora had found for the group, bending to talk to one of the women. Jimson had never seen anyone wear a mask before, though he had seen a lot of Hypers use glitterstick like a mask. Hers was blue, and the face carved on it was Japanese: stylized and delicate, with feathery arching brows. The eyes were outlined with black and not painted in, and Jimson realized that there were no eyeholes. Why go out, he wondered, if you could neither see nor be seen?

The noise level went slowly up to normal, as people turned to other interests. Jimson could hear Denny muttering insults from the safe perch of his bar stool, but Chora was standing near him, ready to reach out an inexorable, restraining hand.

All would have remained fine, had Ysao not chosen that moment to shamble through the door. There was glitter in his beard, and he wore turquoise studs in his ears and a turquoise ring in his nose. He was hairy and scary and nearly two and a half meters tall. One of the tourist women went "Eep!" and pointed. One of the men laughed. The bar grew acutely, dangerously, silent. Ysao looked down his nose at the interlopers and said two sentences, both hideously contemptuous, audible throughout the front room and possibly into the back. De Vala turned pale. The other man turned red, and then started to shout. Denny edged around Chora, and glass began to fly.

The ink drawing that had come out of that fracas was jagged and jarring, like the glass mirror over the bar that Ysao had brought smashing down. Jimson was a little nervous about it, it was so unlike most of his work. But it was good, he was sure of that.

The third piece was a portrait of Ysao, a woodcut. A front face portrait: the giant was sitting on an old wooden chair that was too small, acromegalic hands in bitter prominence in his lap. His face was lumpy, distorted by its own bones. But a mind shone out through his eyes—calm, potent, and unhampered.

Sammy set up a show for him on a planet called Enchanter. Jimson packed them, and he and Leiko went to the Port together to watch the ship for Enchanter leave. Leiko danced unhesitatingly along the intricate movalong routes, and the ships' silver finish seemed dull compared to the brightness of her eyes. Desire showed plainly in her face. In the sunlight, the rainbow changing of the ship before it jumped was like watching a real rainbow. But no real rainbow left that inward shiver after, that oscillation in the nerves. She leaned over the observation railing, watching the space where the ship had been, head on one side, as if she were listening to the wind rushing in to fill the place.

Jimson knew what she was going to say before she turned to him and said it.

"I have to go soon."

"I know."

At Rin's, that night, she tried to explain it to him, her voice low to slide beneath the laughter and noise and the drum-drumming of the skins.

"The Hype—it's like the beginning of everything out there. Entropy is slower. So in the congruencies where our galaxies lie, is space, and shining dust. The dust makes patterns. They call them proto-stars. When you're there—it's all there is. Hyperspace is the universe. You come out of it, surely, to Nexus or Terra or New Terrain, and sunlight and grass. But you go back to the Hype and you're alone. On an aircruiser sometimes you can look across the plane of the sky and see another cruiser, parallel to yours, or going down into the clouds, or maybe climbing. You never see that in the Hype—I don't know why. You're alone. The silence gets so heavy outside your ship, it's like you're breathing dust, not air. The ship becomes your skin. Can you understand?" She was tense, leaning against him, trying to make him see it.

"No."

"No," she echoed sadly. "All you can do is draw."

Chapter 6

She went looking for a ship.

In the mornings she would pull on a bright pair of coveralls, and mask her eyes with glitterstick. "Where do you go?" Jimson asked her, the first night. He had stayed up, waiting for her to come home. It was very late. He was overdue for a pill. He ached.

"Crow's Place. Liathera's. The Dragon."

"Why there—why not Rin's?"

"The Starcaptains go there."

Her absence depressed him. He felt burnt out and lonely. Rin's seemed lifeless when she was not there to sit with, to look at. He got a 'gram from Sammy, two weeks after the ship left for Enchanter, burbling congratulations and a hefty credit total. It made him smile, but the pleasure was dimmed. There was no one in the house to share the news with. And soon she would be gone altogether. He would move. He could not live in the house where the ivy coming in the window made him think of her.

He went to Rin's. Ysao was there. He beckoned. Jimson went to sit beside him. During the afternoons in which Ysao sat for the portrait, they had found each other easy company.

He showed Ysao the 'gram. "Congratulations," said the giant. "I think you ought to buy me a drink."

"I think you're right," Jimson said. He went to the bar. "Whatever Ysao's drinking," he said to Rin. "Two of 'em." He brought them back to the table and tossed his down. It made him feel better.

"I don't think you should get drunk," remarked Ysao.

"Why the hell not?"

"It's still morning."

"I know. But there's nobody
there
." He felt desolate, lost.

"Trust the luck," said Ysao. "She always gives back what she takes away."

The luck.
Once she'd been called Dame Fortune. Now she was
the luck
, less personal but equally powerful. All Hypers believed in the luck. The luck was misfortune, the luck was serendipitous coincidence. The luck was Goddess of the Hype.

"Come on," said Ysao. He stood up. He was very formidable, standing. "Let's go for a walk."

There were three ways to get around inside Port City. Ground level was the movalongs. Second level was the Bridge—a raised platform on which you could stroll, watching at leisure the swifter bob of heads below you. Up above the Bridge were the bubbles, strung on their cables like jewels on a chain, sliding swiftly and unceasingly around the city. They were beautiful to look at, especially at night, when they were lit from within, and their colorful neo-lucite walls glowed green, rose, red, orange, and blue, a mobile circlet of gemstones. Leiko adored them and took them every chance she got. They made Jimson nervous as they careened through the air, but he rode them once in a while just to look down and see the magical city, blue, rose, red.

Underground ran the magnetos, and overhead the aircruisers commanded the skies. Shuttleships would take you to Nexus' three moons, if you wanted to go there. To go farther—you went through the Hype.

They walked on the Bridge for a while. Despite his height and his deformities, Ysao moved like a dancer or an acrobat. It was a peculiar and improbable gait. Now, how can I ask about it? Jimson wondered. Casually he said, "It must be annoying, being too tall to reach the handrail."

Ysao shrugged. "My balance is good. I've been to a lot of other worlds, and that teaches you to stay on your feet no matter where you are. And I'm an engineer; I trained to work in freefall."

Jimson tried, and failed, to imagine himself floating, falling through space.

"Want to eat?" asked Ysao suddenly. "I'm hungry."

"Sure."

"There's a place I know—" he pointed to the Bridge ramp just ahead of them. "Let's go down and hit the movalongs for a minute." Jimson followed him. He changed bands twice, and then abruptly swung off and led the way into an alleyway. "We're being followed," he said. "We were followed all the way here."

"Followed?" Jimson said stupidly.

"I felt it when you first came into Rin's. Somebody there started paying close attention to you. It's pretty obvious—like turning on a light. I've been trying to pick out who it is, that's why I played on the movalongs, but whoever it is can shield pretty damn good. Not
sure
that it's deliberate, but I think it is." His heavy brows came together. "You in any kind of trouble?"

"Not that I know of," said Jimson. He was not going to insult Ysao by asking if he was sure. He looked around. The narrow alleyway seemed suddenly ominous. Ysao was leaning back against the building, humming, eyes closed. They snapped open.

"Got it," he said. "Come on."

They crossed a square. Jimson couldn't help looking behind them. No one was following them—now where the hell was Ysao? "Down here," said a deep voice. There was a narrow flight of steps. Gingerly, leaning against the wall, Jimson followed him down.

"What are we doing here?" he asked.

Here
was a long room. Tables, chairs, a bar—and the familiar sound of drumming coming from somewhere. A back room, like Rin's. Jimson began to relax. Then he felt the thought floating up like dark smoke from the room.
We don't like strangers
, it warned.
Go away.
It was impossible to mistake, and there was a mind behind it.

If Ysao felt the communication, he was unaffected. "Come on," he said again. He led the way across the floor to a small triangular table. There was only one person at the table; she was looking down, nodding, and Jimson wondered if she was stoned or asleep.

Her head came up. Jimson was conscious of a pale face, and then of dark eyes. Only the eyes. He could not look away from them. The woman was speaking to Ysao. "All right," she was saying, "I'll find him for you. Go sit down."

Jimson let Ysao take him to a chair. He rubbed his face with his hands, hard, trying to shake off the feeling of having been swallowed up—devoured. He looked at Ysao. The giant was watching him apologetically. "You all right?"

"I'll manage. Where the hell are we?"

"This is Crow's," Ysao said. "That was Crow. She's going to locate our tailer. Here, drink this." He pushed a glass across the table. "You'll feel better. If I'd told you, you would have tried to block, and then it would have been worse."