A Different Light (15 page)

"Jim."

Russell was bending over Ysao. He was pulling back the slit clothing. Jimson stood up and staggered. His legs were numb. Under the dried blood covering Ysao's wound, red streaks were inching upwards towards the groin, and down to the knee. Ysao stared blindly at them, gasping, talking nonsense. Jimson touched his forehead. It was hot. "Fever."

"Shit." Russell was digging the medikit from his pack. He selected four gel ampules from it, and laid them on the skin near the wound. They shrank and melted in. "We should have
_;
done this right away, without trusting to the immunomine shots. The luck alone knows when he last had them. There's a capsule for fever in here—where's the water?" Quietly, Ast handed him a water bottle. "Now, how the fuck are we going to open his mouth?"

"I can do that," Ast said.

"Can you? All right. Here." Russell handed the pill and water bottle to Jimson. "When she gets his mouth open, dump in the pill and some water. Go on!" Ast was feeling through the brush of Ysao's beard for the contours of his jaw. She pulled down gently on his lower jaw. Thrashing, he fought them. Russell held his head between both knees, and leaned his weight on those massive shoulders. Jimson tried to pin one of Ysao's arms. Ast had the mouth open. Jimson let go the arm and pushed the pill down Ysao's throat, poured water in—"Close his mouth!"

Ast held it closed. Ysao choked, tried to sit up, and swallowed. Jimson tried to pin his arms and got hit on the side of the head. He hung on. Ysao bucked, tried to roll, bucked again. Russell's left hand was being banged into the floor. At last the convulsive movements ceased. Russell looked at his hands. One of the knuckles on his left hand was scraped and bleeding, and they were all puffy. "Pass me the kit." He sprayed his hands with the antiseptic spray.

"Now what?" Jimson asked.

"Now we wait. I don't want to have to carry him out in the cold wind. The fever should subside. If it doesn't, if he gets worse—then we carry him."

Ast asked, timidly, "Is that magic?"

"No," said Russell, "it's medicine." He sat down beside the twitching giant. "Jim, why don't you call Leiko? It's time."

"Shall I tell her about Ysao?"

"Yes, you can tell her."

Jimson thumbed the communicator uncertainly. "Hey, lady."

"Hello, lover," said Leiko cheerfully. "You having a good time?"

"Not exactly."

"Fill me in."

He said, "Well, Ysao's not doing too well. I guess he's going to be all right. And I'm just sitting on my ass, drawing pictures."

Her laughter sounded very close. "I can't say I'm surprised. But what's wrong with Ysao?"

He gave her details.

"Russell wouldn't wait if he were seriously worried," she said. "But I'll be standing by if you need me in a hurry. I'll see you soon anyway. It's less than two hours till dawn."

"Bye." Jimson remembered that other dawn they had shared from the roof of the cottage on Nexus.
Everyone, everything, goes round and round and round....

He touched the communicator stud, and Leiko went away.

"Tired?" said Russell from behind him. "Hold still." He put both hands on Jimson's shoulders.

"Since when do Starcaptains learn shiatsu?" Jimson asked, gasping as Russell's powerful thumbs loosened the knots. "Sssss..."

"I was always good with my hands," Russell answered. His fingers probed expertly, half-pleasure, half-pain. Jimson recalled the orchard on North Island, the afternoons—So the circle comes round again, he thought. With no one watching, Leiko in the ship, Ysao asleep—he turned around. I'll have to tell Leiko, he thought absently. I wonder what she'll say?

She would only laugh at him, for waiting so long.

"Don't put your hands in your pockets, Russ."

Ysao began to talk again. Russell sighed, his mouth against Jimson's hair. He got up and knelt beside the engineer. Ysao thrashed weakly, eyes rolling and unfocused. "Ysao," Russell said. "Ysao!" He caught Ysao's head between his palms to steady it. The telepath focused.

"Russell?" he said.

"That's right," said Russell. "You're tired, Ysao, you need to sleep. Go to sleep."

Ysao seemed not to understand him. "Russell? Where—" he tried to lift himself off the floor. "This isn't—where is this? It's cold here. I want to go to bed."

Russell touched his face with astonishing tenderness. "This is the only bed around," he said.

"I'm cold," said Ysao peevishly.

"All right. Be still." Russell eased down beside the restless telepath and put his arms around him. There was no awkwardness in the motion. It looked as if it had been done many times before. In the familiar embrace Ysao rested, and seemed to be asleep. Russell stayed beside him, holding him.

Jimson left the room to let them be together.

He was sitting on the edge of the dais when Russell came to find him. "Ast woke up again and said she'd watch him. She promised to call me if he starts to yell again."

Jimson nodded. Russell sat on the edge of the dais and put an arm around him. "You're stiff again," he said. "I thought I'd taken care of that. Something's on your mind, Jim."

"You were lovers—you and Ysao."

"Yes," Russell said, "for a little while. Does it bother you? Are you jealous?"

Jimson tried to laugh. "Of your other lovers? I'm not an idiot. It's been fourteen years, and you always did love to bed-hop. You must have a hundred lovers scattered here and there across the Hype."

"At least," said Russell. "What is it, then?"

Jimson scrubbed his face with his hands. He was very tired. "A friend once told me—a friend who would know—
All telepaths are voyeurs
."

Russell said, "You'd have to ask Ysao. As far as I know, it's true."

"It's awfully hard for me to know that there's someone watching me in bed with you."

"I understand," Russell said. "Is that why you kept pulling out of my reach, aboard ship?"

'That's a lot of it."

"Ah. Well, Ysao's asleep now."

The wind wailed through the sand, like a voice. Jimson pulled away from Russell's arms. He had to push himself off the dais to stand. "No," he said. "The Masks, Russell. I'm not finished drawing them yet."

* * *

There was light in the room. Sunlight made a great grey patch on the dusty floor. The Blue Mask lay in the center of the patch. It sparkled. Jimson stretched. It was time for a pill. He had lost all sense of time over the night, but his bones kept their own time, and they ached now. He had to step over Russell to get to his pack. The Starcaptain was stretched out full length on the filthy floor. Ast too was asleep, snoring softly; so was Ysao, curled like a baby in a nest of packs. His breathing was easy. Jimson laid a palm on his forehead; it was cool.

Russell came awake. "He's better."

"Leiko will be here soon."

Russell drew back the cloth over Ysao's leg. The area around the wound was still reddened, but the streaking had vanished. Ysao murmured, shifted, and woke. "Huh."

"You had a bad night," Russell said. "How do you feel?"

"Feel all right."

"Think you can walk?"

"If I have to."

"Good," said Russell, "because I don't want to have to carry you."

Then the sound of the ship landing shook the world.

It was anticlimactic when Leiko came walking in through the door. She was carrying her stun pistol. Her thermal suit was a non-standard, ornate silver; it matched her eyes, and it gleamed in the sunlight. "Hello," she said.

Russell sprayed Ysao's leg with topical anaesthetic. Jimson gathered their scattered belongings. Lamps, the water bottles, the can of foam.... He reached for the Blue Mask. The light touched it and changed it. He could see now that the lips were faintly curved. The God was smiling. Stars, if only I had another hour! Jimson thought.

"Are we taking that one with us?" asked Leiko.

"I thought we'd take the dragon," Russell said. Then he grinned at Jimson. "No, we'll take that one. I know how frustrating it can be, to have to leave something half done."

Then the glass shattered, and the men came in.

The air filled with them. They came leaping, suicidally, it seemed, from the roof. They wore sand-colored robes. Jimson wondered in the midst of the chaos if they had been all night in the dunes. Four of them fell on Russell, fighting him for the stun pistol. Someone was shouting orders. Leiko, backed against a wall, calmly aimed and fired, aimed and fired, dropping them. One man had been cut coming through the glass. He lay writhing on the floor, mouth working, bloody hands holding in his belly. Why aren't they attacking me? Jimson wondered, and remembered that he was holding the Mask. As he thought it someone grabbed his elbows from behind and jerked backwards. His fingers opened convulsively. The Mask dropped.

Ast, lizard-quick, darted through the press of desperate struggling men to receive the Mask as it fell from his arms.

Suddenly there was an arm around his neck, choking him viciously. He tore at it—and felt a bright pain cut through his clothes on his left side. He stopped fighting. The room was quiet, except for the harsh breathing in his ear, and the whimpering of the badly wounded man on the floor. He smelled sweat.

The man holding him spoke. Ast translated: "Rahid says he makes no agreement with thieves. He says he will kill your companion if you do not surrender to him."

There was a beat of silence. Held as he was, Jimson could not see Russell's face. But he heard in his voice a deep, killing rage. "Tell Rahid if he uses that knife he will die—and that I will still take one of the Masks."

The silence seemed infinite. Jimson felt the sweat roll from his hairline to his eyes. It tickled. Be still, he told his body, be still. You're not going to die now. He felt Rahid's heartbeat through the shudder of his own. The knifepoint of pain joined them close as lovers. He did not hear Russell's next sentence, nor Rahid's response, but suddenly he was free.

He stumbled forward. Leiko's long fingers closed round his wrist and pulled him out of the way. Ast was holding both stun guns, and the Mask. Rahid's men were dragging their stunned fellows to one side. The man with the stomach wound screamed as they moved him. "What's going on?"

"Sh!" Leiko said fiercely.

Rahid said something. One of his men bent and skittered a bright shining object across to Russell. The redhead scooped it up.
A knife.
Rahid was moving in, moving his knife, waving it back and forth in his hand. Russell crouched slightly and circled away, his own knife steady. Rahid struck out, and Russell parried the blow, catching it with the blade of his knife. Steel sheared on steel—
shreek.
Ast was leaning forward, her hand on the wrong end of one of the stun pistols, her other hand on the Mask. Rahid lunged, and ripped through Russell's thermal suit. Russell whirled like a dancer and spun behind him, but Rahid was fast as he, facing him, knife alert to parry. He snarled at Russell. Russell smiled at him. There was blood across his ribs. "Don't bitch at me, sweetheart," he said. Rahid lunged at him once more. He blocked it—and stumbled, arms flailing, off balance. Rahid stood waiting for him to go down.

Russell fell, throwing himself forward—and rolled, his body a circle in the air, twisting, coming up on one knee, in graceful
ukemi,
a warrior gymnast—and then he threw the knife. It turned in the air, catching the sunlight as it passed, and went point first into Rahid's throat. The chieftain went down, blood spraying like water from the wound. Leiko went unobtrusively down on one knee, and picked both stun pistols from Ast's loose grasp. She pointed the stunners at Rahid's men.

Russell was breathing hard, and there was blood on his face and in his hair. He rose to his feet. He looked at Jimson. "I learned that trick twelve years ago," he said. "Put some foam around that Mask. We've paid the toll; we can leave."

Chapter 14

Jimson looked once, quickly, at the red glitter crawling out of the vision screen, and just as quickly, looked away. Through the stunning scarlet vortex the darkness drew at his mind. Quietly he turned away from the screen, not speaking to Leiko, not touching her. In the pilot's chair she was totally intent, her hand imperceptively moving the stick, weaving the ship like a shuttle through the strands and currents of the Maze. Her face was drawn.
Three days.

They had Jumped into it. Russell's face had tightened grimly when he saw the red dust closing around them. He said to Leiko, "You'll get us out of it." She had nodded, and not slept since. Russell forced her out of the chair to exercise on the monkey bars and eat. She refused to leave until he swore not to touch the stick. He slept lightly as a hunted beast, waking to pace, and check the computer, and pace again.
Three days. What if we never get out?

Forget it—work.
But he couldn't work. His notebooks lay piled on his bunk, but he hadn't opened them. His leg, his head, even his hands ached from the tension. He rubbed his hands together.