Fool's Run (v1.1) (8 page)

“Beer,” the Nebraskan murmured. “Break’s half over.”

“We’ll meet tomorrow night, get the details straight, decide what we’re going to play. If,” he added icily, “we have a cuber among us.”

The Nebraskan fondled his mustache. “We could drug him for the flight,” he suggested.

The Gambler, galvanized, pushed himself away from the stage in the direction of the nearest bar, the Magician’s brooding gaze between his shoulder blades.

The Scholar shook his head. “How will we play without him? He plays those cubes like he’s inside our heads, hearing our music before we do.”

The Magician didn’t answer. Still frowning, he heard the rambling, chaotic noises in the club ebb to a distance, like a tide. A faint throb of cubing caught his ear, or the ghost of cubing from a different time.

He moved finally, it seemed to him toward the music. “Let’s get a beer while we have time. Don’t worry,” he added to the astonished Scholar. “We’ll have a cuber.”

Aaron, off duty, was sipping Scotch at one of the quieter bars: a broad, half oval of mahogany and brass that reminded him vaguely of old sailing ships. He was running through lists in his mind: lists of factory workers, private hospital personnel, army recruits, lists of names that could be lies, of lives that could be faked, all except for one incongruity, one careless detail at the moment of interface. Among 5.2 billion people scattered from Earth to the asteroids, how could he find someone who didn’t want to be found? She was picking rice in Dragon Sector, she was feeding birds and albino tigers in a zoo, she was leading Rim-Tours around the coast of Sundown Sector. She was studying for the priesthood. He mused over that one. But even they had credit numbers, ID cards, tax records. She had changed her name, but she couldn’t falsify every single record of her past, and there had to be that one moment when the two, past and future, overlapped into their complex identity. He stared into his Scotch, almost too tired of thinking to think. Why should I care? After seven years? What am I going to do with her if I find her? Shoot her because her crazy sister killed my—I want to find her. I need something from her. I need.

He stilled his thoughts and was immediately enveloped in memory. He tasted the ghost of a kiss. She was dressed in khaki, the last time. She kissed me good-bye and turned, damn near hitting me with her rifle as she went to board the troop-cruiser. Three months later she called me. She was pregnant, she was laughing, they were letting her come home early… She said I had a pirate’s face, she never wanted me to change it. She threw a frying pan at me once. Her eyes were so black you could fly in them…

Something hit his boots. He crawled out of the time-tunnel back to the present, back to Sidney’s Wonderland. He looked down bewilderedly. Half a dozen roses were scattered at his feet. He glanced behind him, saw a figure swathed in a cocoon of gold sequins, all but for one bare arm still gracefully completing the arc of its toss. Even the eyelashes glittered gold. The dark eyes smiled, but there was no telling what sex the slender arm belonged to. Aaron, distrusting ambiguities, let the roses lie.

“Whatever happened to the art of gentle conversation?” Sidney Halleck murmured beside him. “It went out with the bassoon.” He bent, scooped the roses off the floor and dropped them onto the bar. Aaron touched one. Sleek, shiny black acrylic, they were all perfect and they would never die.

“Sometimes it’s easier not to talk… No confusion, no embarrassment, no hurt… and no tomorrow.”

“Really?”

“That’s the rule of the rose. One night, no questions, no complications—”

“No names?”

He shrugged. “It doesn’t matter; no one would believe you even if you gave your real name. That’s the simplest lie of all.”

“Is it?” He picked up the roses, let them fall gently. Aaron felt the amiable expression on his face suddenly strained.

“And,” he added lightly, “no thorns. Nothing to hurt with.”

“I see thorns,” Sidney said. Aaron looked at him. The powerful, kindly face made him smile suddenly, tiredly.

“So do I. But if I catch a rose, I take it for what it’s worth, and sometimes it’s worth clinging with one finger to the edge of life for one more day—” He stopped, startled at himself, and picked up his glass. Sidney motioned for a beer.

“I understand,” he said mildly. “I’m just critical because they clog my vacuums.” He smiled as Quasar, in black leather from head to foot, the heels on her boots impossibly high, strode across the floor toward them. Then he blushed as she flung her arms around him and left a rainbow stain of color on his lips. She turned on her heel to face Aaron, dragged deeply at her cigarette and threw it at his feet. He ground it out, his expression unruffled, as she spun away.

Sidney wiped his mouth, looking as if one of his pop robot-bands had just broken into opera.

“Impulsive,” Aaron commented. The rest of Nova scattered around the bar, the Magician at his elbow.

“I think,” Sidney said, emerging from behind his napkin, “it might actually catch on. A social dinosaur emerging back into fashion, outlasting even the roses.”

“What’s he talking about?” the Magician asked Aaron.

“Kissing.”

“But as a social gesture, the cigarette was bewildering. Does that mean she likes you or she doesn’t like you?”

“It means she wants to set my boots on fire.”

“She’ll more likely set my club on fire one of these days.” He added to the Magician, “Will Nova go to the Underworld?”

The Magician nodded a trifle grimly. “One way or another. The Gambler gets space-sick, and Quasar—does she have a record, Aaron?”

“Yes,” Aaron said. Then he put down his glass, flushing slightly. “How did you know—”

“You told me once you even did a status-check on me, when we first met. What kind of a record? Will they give her an off-world passport? Will they let her in the Underworld? Will they let her out again?”

Aaron nodded. “She had a pretty wild youth in Lumière Sector. She lived underground, in the old sewer and train tunnels. They charged her with a lot of things, but the only things ever proven against her were property damage and disturbing the peace.”

“She was in prison.”

“For a couple of months. That was so long ago it shouldn’t be a problem. As long as she doesn’t create problems herself. She doesn’t like patrollers.”

“I think she likes you,” the Magician said, with an unusual flash of insight. “It’s that she likes you that she doesn’t like.”

“Come again?”

“Never mind. It was a brilliant thought but fleeting. Thinking about people scrambles my circuitry. Have you ever been to the Underworld?”

“Once. I was doing some investigating in their Records Department. They don’t give Earth-access. It’s an amazing place. Quiet as a morgue and as efficient as death.”

“I had a pleasant conversation with the Chief of the Underworld,” Sidney commented. “We talked about nursery rhymes.”

“Klyos?” Aaron said amazedly. “Nursery rhymes?”

“Have you met him?”

“No. I’ve heard rumors, including one that he’s human.”

“Is that strange?”

“In a prison that size, with that potential for disaster, yes.” He shook his head. “Nursery rhymes. How did you get the Underworld Chief even to admit he might have been born?”

“He didn’t go that far,” Sidney said. The Magician’s head turned toward Nova’s stage an instant before the curtain-light spiraled down around it, then up again, signaling a two-minute warning. The Nebraskan was looking at his watch.

“Break’s over,” he called cheerfully. “Back to the salt mines.”

The Magician put his glass down. “You staying awhile, Aaron?”

Aaron shook his head, draining his Scotch. “Not tonight. Too noisy. I’ll drop by the
Flying Wail
soon, see how you’re doing with that receiver.”

“Thanks.” He made a movement to turn, then didn’t. “You all right?”

“Yes,” Aaron said, feeling his face stiffen. “Thanks. Just tired.”

He watched the Magician cross the floor, lost sight of him in the crowds, then found him again, taking his place on the stage. A cataract of purple fell; Nova dissolved into light, and Aaron caught his breath at the sudden, powerful and absurd vision of the light as an alien thing that had just reached down and hidden them forever somewhere within the secret worlds and mysterious, overlapping times beyond the Earth.

His fingers were digging into the muscles of his arms. He dropped his hands, wondering at himself. Too many dead-end messages in the bomb shelter? Too little sleep, too many dreams in a lonely bed? He found Sidney watching him gravely. He smiled wryly and picked up a black rose.

“Maybe I should use one of these.”

“Talk to Quasar,” Sidney suggested.

“No. I prefer anonymity, these days.” He brooded at the room through narrowed, critical eyes, then shrugged, feeling boredom pull at his bones like gravity. He faked a yawn, wanting to go sit in the silent shelter, make more lists, search out new leads. “Tired tonight. I’ve been working overtime.”

“Aaron, is something bother—”

“I’m fine, I just—” He stopped, alarmed at his own response to an unexpected voice-tone.

He drew away from the bar, away from Sidney’s puzzled, generous impulse. “Sometimes it’s too much trouble. I’m just tired, thanks. Good night.”

He eased quickly through the tangle of faces, perfumes, metallic fabrics, body paints, voices; he murmured greetings, steadied a drunk, sidestepped lovers and robot waiters. He reached the door finally and was halfway into the night when he realized he was holding something. It bit his thumb. His hand jerked and he breathed in a light, elusive scent. He stopped, blinking.

Someone had given him a living rose.

Okay,” Dr. Fiori said, wiping bloodshot eyes with his fingers. “Okay, okay, okay. We can never be certain. We can never know that what we’re seeing is precisely what she’s thinking. But you have to admit it’s hard to say ‘roast beef’ and think of an elephant simultaneously.”

“Then why,” Reina asked, “is she giving you a red sun?”

“I asked for red.”

“Why not a fire?”

“Because she’s crazy.”

“Then how…” She paused, confused, her mouth open. Terra, curled in the curve of her bubble-chamber, heard their words disinterestedly. Dr. Fiori sighed.

“I’m sorry. That was a stupid answer. Of course her responses will be somewhat distorted on the screen, and we can’t know how distorted. But I asked for red and she thought red. The Dream Machine showed that she thought red. That’s what’s important. The Dream Machine picked up her brain responses for the word
red
and recorded them. It is working.”

They both looked up at the prisoner, the young woman at the console in her sleek silver uniform, with her curious eyes and her painted mouth still open, and the rumpled doctor who had driven his hair up in spikes with his fingers.

“There’s nothing wrong with her that I can find,” Dr. Fiori added. “No lesions, no chemical imbalances, no growths, no peculiarity in the communication between the two sides of her brain. She should be perfectly healthy. The only aberration any of the tests have located is what I suppose we might call a ‘brainstorm.’ An excitation of electrical impulses with no apparent purpose or result. I’ve never seen anything quite like it… But these come at intervals; between them, there’s no reason why she is not aware and lucid. Instead she seems addicted to these ‘brainstorms’ and the images they apparently create. Why? Perhaps, when we see the images, we’ll begin to understand her.” He smiled reassuringly, almost affectionately at Terra. To his surprise she spoke, with a dogged, weary patience, “This is not in the vision.”

Reina glanced at a smaller screen, which showed constantly changing cross sections of Terra’s brain in vivid colors. “She’s alert. No interference.”

“Terra,” Dr. Fiori said gently. “Terra Viridian.”

“What?”

“How do you feel?”

“I am sane.”

He was briefly silent. “Your perceptions of reality are distorted. We’re going to analyze that, try to help you to see more clearly. Do you know where you are?”

“I am not here.”

“You are in an Infirmary Ward in the Underworld. The same place you’ve been for the past five days. I’m finished showing you pictures. Now it’s your turn. I’ll ask you many questions; I want you to show me your thoughts, your dreams. If you do this, you’ll be helping yourself, and you may help other sick people at the same time. Do you understand?”

She gazed at him, her eyes enormous, haggard. “I see,” she whispered.

“Do you understand?”

“You must understand. The vision is all. The vision. The vision is the knowledge. The vision is life.”

“What vision?”

“Caterpillars.”

“What?”

“Initiation.”

“Your words aren’t making sense to me.”

“Form. To take form. Something needs to take form.”

“What needs to take form?”

“Something… in the mind.”

“In your mind?”

“Yes.”

“What?”

“I don’t know. There is only the vision. The Dark Ring is nothing, no place. The vision is everything.”

“So. You know where you are.”

“No. I only know the vision.”

Her head dropped wearily against the bubble-wall. An image appeared in the eye of the Dream Machine: a strange, distorted oval in grainy, pale purple sand.

Dr. Fiori pulled at his hair absently, chewing over the language she was creating. “Sand. Sand in Desert Sector? Are you recording this? Audio and visual?”

“Yes, Doctor.”

“It’s going to get complicated.”

“Yes, sir. What is the oval?”

“Somebody’s head? A memory of her killing, perhaps, distorted into a safe symbol.” He watched the changing screen. “Now what?”

“It seems to be a wall.”

“Or a cliff? It’s rising out of the sand.”

“But it’s solid black.”

“A wall, then. I guess.”

“It’s too lumpy,” his assistant objected, gazing, like the doctor and Terra, in fascination at the screen.

“It’s a wall of the military station, distorted in memory. Something needs to take form… It’s her memory that needs to take form. The truth she’s terrified of. Trying to hide from it is making her crazy.”