Loose Cannon (6 page)

"Now I'm funny. Oh, woe, oh woe..."

She could see him in the half-light he
preferred for lovemaking; just bright enough that the mirrors on
the wall might tell an interesting tale to a glancing eye. She
remembered that he'd brought beeswax candles, along with wine,
flowers, that first evening after his very first return, when he'd
somehow parlayed her concern--

She laughed again, this time finding his
hair and beard wooly near her face, and she gently moved to brush
them orderly. He had something more on his mind though, as her
hands came in contact with his cheek; but she held him a moment and
he was willing to be calmed.

Of course, she should not stroke his beard
and his cheek; she should not kiss his nose, nor lay her palm on
his face, this Terran who never knew the taboo of it....

"Let's trade," he said, very gently. "A
story for a story, a touch for a touch."

Then he laid his hand on her cheek,
spreading his wide hand so that his thumb and his forefinger
spanned her face.

It was late in the night, very nearly
morning; the sounds from the road were not yet impinging on their
lair. His breathing, and hers, and his touch.

"I," he said after a moment. " I cannot go
to the Healers, because when someone in my family is cured, we
loose the art. My father, my grandfather, my uncle--myself. I
tried, there once--"

He paused, brushed her hair away from her
eyes, kissed her on her nose, covered the marks on her face as if
he would wipe them away. "After that painting was stolen from me I
could have been locked up forever there, but for the good luck of a
Scout's intercession. So, I thought I should get over the crash. I
spoke to a doctor and he seemed to make sense, and they gave me a
therapy and drugs and an implant...."

"Here!"

He guided her hand and held it against that
long scraggly scar on his leg. She'd found that scar before, but
never dared question--there were things lovers were not to ask,
after all; the Code was clear on that.

"Three months," he said very quietly. "Let
me say about two of my usual cycles, though they change
sometimes--be warned!--and I had not even the slightest twinge of
being able to paint, and what I drew was stick figures and bad
circles and patterns, and I spoke politely to people and one night
I went home and picked up a cooking knife and thought that I would
cut my throat."

He took her hand and placed it under his
beard, where it was just above his throat, and let her feel the
pulse of him, and the smaller, more ragged scar.

"I'd made a start, actually, when I realized
that what I wanted was not my throat cut, but my art back. And so I
took the knife and opened my leg and took the thirty-four months'
worth of implant that was left out of me, and I washed it down the
drain."

She stared at him, at once fascinated and
horrified, not knowing what to say.

"My cousin," he went on, after a moment. "My
cousin Darby. He took the cure and has stayed on it. He's married,
he goes to work, comes home, goes to work, comes home--and I have
the last piece of sculpture he did before the implant. He was
brilliant. He made me look like a bumbling student. But it is gone.
Five years and he can't draw a face much less model one; he can't
see the images in the clouds!"

He brushed his lips over the mark under her
left eye, then kissed the one under her right eye.

"You know," he said quietly, "you are
beautiful. I have known beautiful ladies, my friend, and you are
very beautiful."

The realization hit her--what he would ask,
in exchange for this tale from his soul. Very nearly, she panicked,
but he caught her mouth with his, and in a few moments she relaxed
against him.

"My friend," she said, "you can be as cruel
as you are wonderful. To cut yourself so--the pain! But I am not so
brave as you. I took the cuts from my Delm, in punishment--cut with
the blade my family keeps from the early days. Then I wept and
cried, and was cast from the house..."

"Does this person yet live?" Not in his
deepest despair had she heard his voice so cold.

Cyra looked into his face and saw he meant
it--that he contemplated Balance or revenge or--

"No, Bell, you cannot. My Delm was doing
duty. I was cut to remind me and to warn others."

He said nothing, but kissed her face again,
gently, waiting.

"We are not as rich a house as some others,
Clan Nosko; and my Delm, my uncle, is not so easy a spender as you
or I. As I was youngest of the daughters of the house--and lived at
the clan seat, it being close to my shop--it fell my duty sometimes
to spend an afternoon and a night, or sometimes two, doing things
needful. And so..."

Here she paused a moment, gently massaging
Bell's neck under the beard, imagining all too well....

"So it was," she went on very quietly, with
the blood pounding in her ears, "that I was briefly in charge of
the nursery, the nurse having been given a discharge for cost or
cause, I know not. I had put the child Brendar to bed; a likely boy
come to the clan through my sister's second marriage. I changed him
once, but he was otherwise biddable. I was trying for my Master
Jeweler's license, so I was at study with several books. I read,
and read more, hearing no fuss. Then my sister came home, and the
child was not asleep, but had died sometime in the night."

There was quiet then.

Finally, he kissed her again, each scar,
very carefully.

"I'd thought there must be more, but I see
the story now, and I am near speechless. The child died of an
accident--

"My incompetence and negligence..."

He pressed a finger to her lips so hard it
nearly hurt.

"I am a fool, Cyra, my beautiful friend. I
thought it was your own anger, or your own desire, that placed
those marks on your face; that you had rebelled against the rules
of this world and even now wore them as badges. That they were
inflicted by your family to humiliate and destroy you never came to
mind..."

He brushed the hair out of her face
again.

"I will paint your picture one day, I
promise. Your face will be known as among the most beautiful of
this world. And they will see that they have lost you, for I'll not
let them have you back!"

She had no quick answer for this, and then
he said, "Here!" and placed her hand again on the long leg
scar.

She felt the welt there--he
laughed, nibbled on her earlobe, and moved her hand a bit,
murmuring, "Now, lady,
here
if you wish to be pleased!"

She did, and she was.

* * *

THREE DAYS LATER Cyra was not so very
pleased.

To begin, Bell had become inspired sometime
in the night of their pillow talk and when she awoke alone in the
dawn she found him sketching like a madman on her couch, barely
willing to drag himself away from his work long enough to share a
breakfast with her.

He packed his sketches and walked with her
to the shop, his eyes as elsewhere as his mind. Twice she had to
repeat herself while she spoke with him, and then he disappeared
into the back room to work as soon as they reached the store.

In the afternoon he had rushed out of the
back room, complaining that she'd not told him the time, and
stormed out, on his way to a lecture he particularly wanted to see.
Worse, he stormed back, having left his sketchbook and wallet, and
dashed off with nary a backward glance. When he didn't return by
closing--he sometimes went to discussion groups after the
lectures--she'd not expected him to come by her apartment, and he
didn't, which grated mightily.

In the morning he wandered in very late,
hung over and exhausted, explaining that he'd met a pack of Scouts
at the lecture and talked with them until the barkeep announced
shift-change at dawn. He was animated, nearly wildly so, explaining
that he might "have a line on" the Scout who had helped him at
Djymbolay; that his conversations of the evening had revealed that
he owed Balance to that Scout; that he might have an idea for yet
another painting; and that when he had more money there was a world
he'd have to travel to and--

"I have an appointment, Bell," Cyra said
abruptly. "Tell me later!"

She rushed out the door, barely
confident--and barely caring--that he'd heed the advent of a
customer.

Her appointment was with her tongue--had she
stayed and heard more she surely would have said hurtful words.

So she walked, nearly oblivious to the
sounds of transports--more this day than others since a portion of
the port would be closed late in the afternoon for some final
tricksy bit of work for the expansion--and found herself several
blocks from her usual streets, in a very old section, where the
buildings and the people were barely above tumbledown.

Surprisingly, she saw Debbie-the-pastry-girl
hurrying from one of the least kept brick-fronts; Number 83 it was,
a regrettable four-story affair sporting ungainly large windows and
peeling paint. The peaked, slate roof suggested that the building
was several hundred Standards old, and it looked like it had no
repair since the day it was built.

Heart falling, she reached into her card
case, and removed the slip of paper she had from Bell the day he'd
agreed to share his direction with her: Number 83 Corner Four Ave,
Room 15.

A shuttle's long rumble began then; she
could feel the sidewalk atremble as she watched the pastry girl's
blue-and-green hair disappear in the distance. Also on the paper
was the pad combination, and with the whine of the shuttle rising
behind her, and then over, she stood, and for a moment was tempted
to enter Number 83 and find Room 15, open the door, and see
if--if...

She turned and walked all the way home for
lunch, grasping the paper tightly in her fist.

When she got back to the store, calmer, but
heartsore, there was Bell's back vaguely visible in the back room.
He heard her enter and yelled out over his shoulder "Any luck?"

"No," she said, quietly. "No luck,
Bell."

She slept badly alone, and the rumble of the
transports, joined with the not entirely foreign sounds of
proctor-jitneys blaring horns as they answered a nighttime summons
hadn't helped.

And now, on her store step across the road
in the dawn light?

Debbie, cuddling Bell's good jacket in her
arms.

* * *

"BELL'S OK," THE GIRL said
quickly, shaking her absurd hair back from a remarkably grimy face.
"He wasn't bleeding all that much and the medic said he'll do. The
proctor, now, he'll be OK, too, other'n his pride's pretty well
hurt by getting really whomped--I mean
decked
in front of all his buddies.
But there's gonna be some fines to pay, I guess, and he's gotta
have a place to live and--"

Cyra stood staring, hard put to sort this
tumbled message, clinging at last to the simple, "Bell's OK..."

Debbie was looking at her
with desperate eyes. "Cyra, you're a lucky girl, you know? But
you're gonna have to get someone down to the jail to get him
out
. He's not the kind of
guy that'll get along there, and hey--what it'll take is 'a citizen
of known melant'i, moral character, and resources.' I sure don't
qualify for the resources part, the melant'i I ain't got and I'm
not sure if I qualify for the character part...."

Cyra wasn't too sure about the character
part either, though the fact that the girl was here with so many of
Bell's belongings argued for her. Arrayed on the step was a ship
bag with "Belansium" printed on a tag, four or five
studies--paintings and sketches of a woman, who Cyra realized must
be herself by the detail of the face--nude in different positions,
some small odds and ends in boxes, a small paint kit, a picnic
box....

"Tell me again," Cyra demanded. "After we
got these inside. From the beginning. I'll make tea."

* * *

DEBBIE RUSHED OFF while the tea was heating
and returned with pastries, and a damp towel, which she was using
on the dust and grime on her bare arms.

"I was having company over
and wasn't much paying attention to other stuff when I heard one of
the transports go over. Things started trembling and--well, wasn't
at the stage I thought, then the next thing I know there was a
big
cherunk
kind of
noise and the front wall just fell out into the street. The whole
place got shaky and we all got out. Bell come dashing out from his
room carrying something big and square and rushing down the steps
with it whiles bricks and roof-stuff falling all around.

"We was outside standing
and staring--most everyone out by then, when the whole building
kind of slanted over backwards and leaned into the alley. My guy,
he's pretty smart, he'd grabbed a bottle of wine on the way out,
and we all had a sip, and when it looked like there wasn't any
more
up
to
fall
down
we went
in to see what we could save and to make sure no one was
inside--and a bunch of snortheads showed up. One grabbed one of
them sketches of you and yelled for some of the others--

"That Bell picked up part of a drainpipe and
started hitting and bashing at them guys, and then my guy hit one
of 'em with the empty bottle, and then the proctors showed up and
Bell wasn't letting no one near his stuff. Proctor kind of waved
something in his direction and Bell did this neat little dance step
and brought his hand out and lifted the proctor right off his feet.
Right quick they was all on him...and I had to explain-- see it was
my Ma's building, and all-- but they still got Bell for
drunk-and-disorderly, striking a proctor, and I don't know what
else. And I can't speak for him!"