Nova

by Samuel R. Delany

  Bunny, wherever Bunny was in the hive around them released control of the girl long enough for her to raise her eyebrows in surprise. "You're here to see Cyana Morgan?" she said in her own voice.

  "That's right." Lorq smiled.

  At which point Bunny came back, "Fine, Lorq. She'll meet you in South West 12. It's less crowded there."

  Lorq turned to the crew. "Why don't you wander around the museum a while? I'll have what I want in an hour."

  "Should he carry that"— The girl frowned at Sebastian— "thing around with him in the museum. We don't have facilities for pets." To which Bunny answered, "The man's in your crew, Lorq, isn't he? It looks housebroken." She turned to Sebastian. "Will it behave itself?"

  "Certainly it itself will behave." He petted the claw flexing on his shoulder.

  "You can take it around," Bunny said through the girl. "Cyana is already on her way to meet you,"

  Lorq turned to Katin. "Why don't you come with me?"

  Katin tried to keep surprise off his face. "All right, Captain."

  "South West 12," the girl said. "You just take that lift up one level. Will that be all?"

  "That's it." Lorq turned to the crew. "We'll see you later."

  Katin followed him.

  Mounted on marble blocks beside the spiral lift was a ten-foot dragon's head. Katin gazed up at the ridges on the roof of the stone mouth.

  "My father donated that to the museum," Lorq said as they stepped on the lift.

  "Oh?"

  "It comes from New Brazillia." As they rose about' the central pole, the jaw fell. "When I was a kid I used to play inside one of its first cousins." Diminishing tourists swarmed the floor.

  The gold roof received them.

  Then they stepped from the lift.

  Pictures were set at various distances from the gallery's central light source. The multilensed lamp projected on each suspended frame the closest approximation (as agreed on by the Alkane's several scholars) to the light under which each picture had originally been painted: artificial or natural, red sun, white sun, yellow or blue.

  Katin looked at the dozen or so people wandering the exhibit.

  "She won't be here for another minute or so," the captain said. "She's quite a ways away."

  "Oh." Katin read the exhibit title.

  Images of My People

  Overhead was an announcement screen, smaller than the one in the lobby.

  Right now it was stating that the paintings and photographs were all by artists of the last three hundred years and showed men and women at work or play on their various worlds. Glancing down the list of artists, Katin was chagrined to discover he recognized only two names.

  "I wanted you with me because I needed to talk to somebody who can understand what's involved."

  Katin, surprised, looked up.

  "My sun— my nova. In my mind I've almost accustomed myself to its glare. Yet I'm still a man under all that light. All my life people around me have usually done what I wanted them to do. When they didn't— "

  "You made them?"

  Lorq narrowed yellow eyes. "When they didn't, I figured out what they could do and used them for that instead. Someone else always comes along to fill the other jobs. I want to talk to someone who will understand. But talking won't convey it. I wish I could do something to show you what this all means."

  "I ... I don't think I understand."

  "You will."

  Portrait of a Woman (Bellatrix IV): her clothing was twenty years dated. She sat by a window, smiling in the gold light of a sun not painted.

  Go With Ashton Clark (no location): he was an old man, His work coveralls were two hundred years out of style. He was about to unplug himself from some great machine. But it was so big you couldn't see what it was.

  "It's makes me wonder, Katin. My family— at least my father's part— is from the Pleiades. Still, I grew up speaking like a Draconian in my own home. My father belonged to that encrusted nucleus of old-guard Pleiades citizens who still held over so many ideas from their Earth and Draconian ancestors; only it was an Earth that had been dead for fifty years by the time the earliest of these painters lifted a brush. When I settle on a permanent family, my children will probably speak the same way. Does it seem strange to you that you and I are probably closer than I and, say, Tyy and Sebastian?"

  "I'm from Luna," Katin reminded him. "I only know Earth through extended visit. It's not my world."

  Lorq ignored that. "There are ways Tyy, Sebastian, and myself are much alike. In those basic defining sensibilities we are closer than you and I."

  Again it took Katin an uncomfortable second to interpret the wrecked face's agony.

  "Some of our reactions to given situations will be more predictable to each other than to you; yes, I know it goes no further." He paused. "You're not from Earth, Katin. But the Mouse is. So is Prince. One's a guttersnipe; the other is ... Prince Red. Does the same relation exist between them as between Sebastian and me? The gypsy fascinates me. I do not understand him. Not in the way I think I understand you. I don't understand Prince either."

  Portrait of a Net-rider: Katin looked at the date: the particular net-rider, with his pensive Negroid features, had sieved the mist two hundred and eighty years ago.

  Portrait of a Young Man: contemporary, yes. He was standing in front of a forest of ... trees? No. Whatever they were, they weren't trees.

  "In the middle of the twentieth century, 1950 to be exact,"— Katin looked back at the captain— "there was a small country on Earth called Great Britain that had by survey some fifty-seven mutually incomprehensible dialects of English. There was also a large country called the United States with almost four times the population of Great Britain spread out over six times the area. There were accent variants, but only two tiny enclaves composing less than twenty thousand people spoke in a way that could be called mutually incomprehensible with the standard tongue; I use these two to make my point because both countries spoke essentially the same language."

  Portrait of a Child Crying (A.D. 2852 Vega IV)

  Portrait of a Child Crying (A.D. 3052 New Brazillia II)

  "What is your point?"

  "The United States was a product of that whole communication explosion, movements of people, movements of information, the development of movies, radio, and television that standardized speech and the framework of thought— not thought itself, however— which meant that person A could understand not only person B, but person W, X, and Y as well. People, information, and ideas move over the galaxy much faster today then they moved across the United States in 1950. The potential of understanding is comparatively greater. You and I were born a third of a galaxy apart. Except for an occasional college weekend to Draco University at Centauri, this is the first time I've ever been outside the Solar System. Still, you and I are much closer in information structure than a Cornishman and Welshman a thousand years ago. Remember that when you try to judge the Mouse— or Prince Red. Though the Great Snake coils his column on a hundred worlds, people in the Pleiades and the Outer Colonies recognize it; Vega Republic furniture implies the same things about its owners here or there; Ashton Clark has the same significance for you as for me. Morgan assassinated Underwood and it became part of both our experiences— " He stopped; because Lorq had frowned.

  "You mean Underwood assassinated Morgan."

  "Oh, of course ... I meant ..." Embarrassment broiled beneath his cheeks. "Yes ... but I didn't mean ..."

  Coming between the paintings was a woman in white. Her hair was high-coifed and silver.

  She was thin.

  She was old.

  "Lorq!" She held out her hands. "Bunny said you were here. I thought we'd go up to my office."

  Of course! Katin thought. Most of the pictures he would have seen of her would have been taken fifteen, twenty years ago.

  "Cyana, thank you. We could have gotten up ourselves. I didn't want to disturb you if you were busy. It won't take much time."

 
"Nonsense. The two of you come along. I've been considering bids for half a ton of Vegan light sculptures."

  "From the Republic period?" Katin asked.

  "Alas, no. Then we might be able to get them off our hands. But they're a hundred years too early to be worth anything. Come." As she led them among the mounted canvases, she glanced down at the wide metal bracelet that covered her wrist socket. One of the micro-dials was blinking.

  "Excuse me, young man." She turned to Katin. "You have a ... recorder of some sort with you?"

  "Why ... yes, I do."

  "I have to ask you not to use it here."

  "Oh. I wasn't— "

  "Not so much recently, but often I have had problems maintaining privacy." She laid her wrinkled hand on his arm. "You will understand? There's an automatic erasing field that will completely clear the machine should it go on."

  "Katin's on my crew, Cyana. But it's a very different crew from the last one. There's no secrecy any more."

  "So I gathered." She took her hand away. Katin watched it fall back to the white brocade.

  She said— and both Katin and Lorq looked up when she said it— "When I arrived at the museum this morning there was a message for you from Prince."

  They reached the galley's end.

  She turned briefly to Lorq. "I'm taking you at your word about secrecy." Her eyebrows made a bright metallic stroke on her face.

  Lorq's brows were metal rusted; the stroke was broken by his scar. Still, Katin thought, that must be part of the family's marking.

  "Is he on Vorpis?"

  "I have no idea." The door dilated and they passed through. "But he knows you're here. Isn't that what's important?"

  "I just arrived at the spacefield an hour and a half ago. I leave tonight."

  "The message arrived about an hour and twenty-five minutes ago. Its origin was conveniently garbled so the operators couldn't have it traced without a lot of difficulty. They're going through that difficulty now— "

  "Don't bother." He said to Katin: "What will he have to say this time?"

  "We shall all see fairly soon," Cyana said. "You say no secrecy. I would still prefer to talk in my office."

  This gallery was confusion: a storage room, or material for an exhibit not yet sorted.

  Katin was going to, but Lorq asked first: "Cyana, what is this junk?"

  "I believe"— she looked at the date in gold decalcomania on the ancient wooden case— 1923: the Aeolian Corporation. Yes, they're a collection of twentieth-century musical instruments. That's an Ondes Martinot, invented by a French composer of the same name in 1942. Over here we have"— she bent to read the tag— "a Duo Arts Player Piano made in 1931. And this thing is ... Mill's Violano Virtuoso, built in 1916."

  Katin peered through the glass door in the front of the violano.

  Strings and hammers, stops, fobs, and plectra hung in shadow.

  "What did it do?"

  "It stood in bars and amusement parks. People would put a coin in the slot and it would automatically play a violin that's on the stand in there with a player-piano accompaniment, programmed on a perforated paper roll." She moved her silver nail to a list of titles. "'The Darktown Strutters' Ball'" ... " The moved on through the clutter of theremins, encore banjoes, and hurdy-gurdies. "Some of the newer academics question the institute's preoccupation with the twentieth century. Nearly one out of four of our galleries is devoted to it." She folded her hands on brocade. "Perhaps they resent that it has been the traditional concern of scholars for eight hundred years; they refuse to see the obvious. At the beginning of that amazing century, mankind was many societies living on one world; at its end, it was basically what we are now: an informatively unified society that lived on several worlds. Since then, the number of worlds has increased; our informative unity has changed its nature several times, suffered a few catastrophic eruptions, but essentially it has remained. Until man becomes something much, much different, that time must be the focus of scholarly interest: that was the century in which we became."

  "I have no sympathy with the past," Lorq announced. "I have no time for it."

  "It intrigues me," Katin offered. "I want to write a book; perhaps it will deal with that."

  Cyana looked up. "You do? What sort of book?"

  "A novel, I think."

  "A novel?" They passed beneath the gallery's announcement screen: gray.

  "You're going to write a novel. How fascinating. I had an antiquarian friend some years ago who attempted to write a novel. He only finished the first chapter. But he claimed it was a terribly illuminating experience and gave him a great deal of insight into just exactly how the process took place."

  "I've been working on it for quite some time, actually," Katin volunteered.

  "Marvelous. Perhaps, if you finish, you'll allow the institute to take a psychic recording under hypnosis of your creative experience. We have an operable twenty-second-century printing press. Perhaps we'll print up a few million and distribute them with a documentary psychoramic survey to libraries and other educational institutions. I'm sure I could raise some interest in the idea among the board."

  "I hadn't even thought about getting it printed ... " They reached the next gallery.

  "Through the Alkane is the only way you might. Do keep it in mind."

  "I ... will."

  "When is this mess going to be straightened out, Cyana?"

  "Dear nephew, we have much more material than we can possibly display. It has to go somewhere. There are over twelve hundred public and seven hundred private galleries in the museum. As well as three thousand five hundred storage rooms. I'm fairly acquainted with the contents of most of them. But not all."

  They ambled beneath high ribs. Vertebrae arched toward the roofing. Cold ceiling lights cast the shadow of teeth and socket on the brass pedestal of a skull the size of an elephant's hip.

  "It looks like a comparative exhibit of reptilian osteology between Earth and ... " Katin gazed through bone cages. "I couldn't tell you where that thing comes from."

  Blade of scapula, pelvic saddle, clavicle bow ...

  "Just how far away is your office, Cyana?"

  "About eight hundred yards as the arolat flies. We take the next lift."

  They walked through the archway into the lift-well.

  The spiral carrier took them up some dozens of floors.

  A corridor of plush and brass.

  Another corridor, with a glass wall ...

  Katin gasped: all Phoenix patterned below them, from central towers to fog-lapped wharf. Though the Alkane was no longer the tallest building in the galaxy, it was by far the tallest in Phoenix.

  A ramp curved into the building's heart. Along the marbled wall hung the seventeen canvases in the Dehay sequence, Under Sirius.

  "Are these the ...?"

  "Nyles Selvin's molecular-reproduction forgeries, done in twenty-eight hundred at Vega. For a long time they were more famous than the originals— which are downstairs on display in the South Green Chamber— but there's so much history connected with the forgeries Bunny decided to hang them here."

  And a door.

  "Here we are."

  It opened on darkness.

  "Now, nephew of mine,"— As they stepped inside, three shafts of light fell from someplace high to circle them on the black carpet— "would you be so good as to explain to me why you are back? And what is all this business with Prince?" She turned to face Lorq.

  "Cyana, I want another nova."

  "You what?"

  "You know the first expedition had to be abandoned. I'm going to try again. No special ship is needed. We learned that last time. It's a new crew; and new tactics." The spotlights followed them across the carpet.

  "But Lorq— "

  "Before, there was meticulous planning, movements oiled, meshed, propelled by confidence in our own precision. Now we're a desperate bunch of dock-rats, with a Mouse among us; and the only thing that propels us is my outrage. But that's a terrible thing t
o flee, Cyana."

  "Lorq, you just can't go off and repeat— "

  "The captain is different too, Cyana. Before, the Roc flew under half a man, a man who'd only known victory. Now I'm a whole man. I know defeat as well."

  "But what do you want me— "

  "There was another star under study by the Alkane that was near the point of nova. I want the name and when it's likely to go off."

  "You're just going to go like that? And what about Prince? Does he know why you're going to the nova?"

  "I couldn't care less. Name my star, Cyana."

  Uncertainly troubled her gauntness. She touched something on her silver bracelet.

  New light:

  Rising from the floor was a bank of instruments. She sat on the bench that rose too and looked over the indicator lights. "I don't know if I'm doing right, Lorq. Outrage? If the decision did not so much affect my life as well as yours, it would be easier for me to give it in the spirit you demand. Aaron was responsible for my curatorship."

  She touched the board, and above them appeared— "Till now I have always been as welcome in Aaron Red's home as I was in my own brother's. But the machine has worked round to a point where this may no longer be. You have placed me in this position: of having to make a decision that ends a time of great comfort for me."

  — appeared the stars.

  Katin suddenly realized the chamber's size. Some fifty feet across, massed from points of light, hung a hologramic projection of the galaxy, turning.

  "We have several study expeditions out now. The nova that you missed was there." She touched a button and one star among the billions flared— so brightly Katin's eyes narrowed. It faded, and again the whole domed astrarium was ghosted with starlight. "At present we have an expedition attending a build-up— "

  She stopped.

  She reached out; and opened a small drawer.

  "Lorq, I really am troubled by this whole business— "

  "Go on, Cyana. I want the star's name. I want a tape of its galactic co-ordinates. I want my sun."

  "And I'll do all I can to give it to you. But you must indulge the old woman first." From the drawer she took— Katin formed a small surprise-sound in the back of his mouth, then swallowed it— a deck of cards. "I want to see what guidance the Tarot gives."