“She didn’t kill you.”
“Do I look dead?”
But Aaron’s attention had left him abruptly. He was gazing down at the fine, colored wire in his hand. He opened his mouth to speak, but nothing came out. Jase touched dead lights at random; nothing responded.
“They may be still in the Hub, hiding. Let’s—”
“They?” Aaron said sharply.
“That crazy musician—”
“Michele?”
“No, the Magician. Restak. We can still get to Maindock. I could put the Hub on defense, but—” He rubbed one ankle, thinking furiously. Aaron put the wire on the desk.
“The Magician.”
“He reprogrammed the docking challenges. My voice command: no override.”
“The Magician did.”
“He’s taking Terra out. But not if we have a chance to get to Maindock first. I’ll have Nils put the Hub on defense when he gets in here, just in—”
“The Magician in the band?”
“Mr. Fisher, does your brain always work this fast?”
Aaron took his eyes off the wire. He looked stunned again, his eyes pained, shocked. Jase said tautly, “Now what?”
“We’ve been friends for years. He wouldn’t—he—that makes no sense… Unless he’s doing it for Michele. But even so—”
“Mr. Fisher,” Jase said, rounding the desk, “you can stand here and speculate until doomsday if you want, or you can come with me and get some answers. If they have left the Hub, they’re on their way to the Flying Wail, and we’ve got to intercept it before it gets out.”
“You’ve got half the Underworld fleet in Maindock,” Aaron said bewilderedly. “The Flying Wail is fast, but she can’t outrun them all.”
Jase felt the blood wash into his face. “The Underworld fleet couldn’t outrun a flying bathtub right now. He’s got them trapped. All of them. Everyone but us. Let’s go!”
The Magician crossed the dock area quickly, unobtrusively, keeping his eyes off the cruisers around him, the dock crew, the men and women in the control deck above the dock who seemed, at his single, brief glance, to be unconcernedly going about their duties. The Flying Wail was open, fore and aft. The Queen of Hearts was carrying cube-cases up the main hatch. The Nebraskan and the Scholar were pushing the piano up the aft-hatch ramp. For a moment he felt an icy, wrenching spasm of terror. They’d arouse suspicion if they tried to leave surrounded by equipment; they’d never get it packed in two minutes; if they did get it packed, if they did leave, he’d have most of Nova with him, and how could he explain… They’d never forgive him for taking them; Quasar would never forgive him for leaving her behind…
“Don’t look back,” the Scholar had said. He left his fear behind him like something palpable—his body or his shadow—and picked up a cube-case as he reached the Flying Wail.
Michele met him coming down the ramp again. Her face looked odd without paint, smaller, younger. She stopped him, a hand on his shoulder, frowning at the cut on his face. He shook his head quickly.
“Never mind that. Get the cubes inside. We’re taking off.”
“Now?” Her eyes went wide suddenly, Terra’s eyes, seeing into him. “Magic-Man,” she whispered. “What have you done?”
He dumped the cube-case in her arms. “Fast,” he said, and she turned. On the aft-hatch ramp, the piano was jammed at an awkward angle, half in, half out of the hatch. The Nebraskan heaved; the piano rolled through. The Magician followed them up, brought the ramp up and closed the hatch.
Terra, he thought. The name was a pulse in his brain. Where? Where? Anywhere.
Everywhere. He had tied Klyos up and she was gone. Just gone. But she was attached to his mind like the tail of a comet; she must know where he would go. She’s on the dock. She’s inside the Flying Wail. She must be.
Don’t look back.
He moved to the bridge. Quasar was there, painting her nails, and he smiled in relief. She glanced at him, brooded a moment at the state of his face and said mordantly, “It’s not a color I would have chosen.”
Michele came in with a cube-case. “That’s it,” she said. He sealed the cruiser, his hands chilly, shaking, and stepped around her cube-cases to the controls. Michele watched him, motionless, still clutching the last case. He said, “Sit down. The Nebraskan can get those.”
She sat in the navigator’s chair. Quasar’s brush stilled abruptly. “Magic-Man, are we leaving? But our clothes, everything—”
“You want them,” he said, “you go get them.”
She was silent. The engines rumbled.
There was a surprised shout from the tail of the cruiser. The Magician wondered if they had found Terra. The receiver crackled instantly.
“Flying Wail, this is Maindock. You’re not scheduled to depart until seven hundred hours GTT.”
“Maindock, this is Restak,” the Magician said glibly. “We misjudged our performance schedule. We’re due at Rimrock earlier than we thought. We’re not used to off-world time. Request permission to leave.”
The control deck was silent. Right in the middle of an alert, the Magician thought. With Terra loose and the Hub sealed. Sure, Magic-Man, go right ahead. Take your leave. Take our prisoner too.
“Flying Wail, you’ll need a dock escort,” Maindock said politely. “We’ll apply for permission to Chief Klyos for you. Hang on.”
“Thank you,” the Magician said, translating automatically: You move an inch, Magic-Man, you blow up. Salt gathered in his cut; he winced. Then he thought, Hub-com’s out. He won’t get through. He’ll call in the troops.
“All right,” he said steadily. He slid the panel away from the keyboard, as the Nebraskan, panting, swung into the bridge. “What’s going on?” he asked amazedly. “Magic-Man? We haven’t gotten paid yet. All our luggage—”
“Quiet,” the Magician said very gently, “or we blow to Kingdom Come.” There was silence aboard the Flying Wail. All his thoughts slid away from the world around him, from the past, from the future, from danger and confusion, to focus on the music in his mind. He tapped out a dock code, linked the Flying Wail to the Hub-computer. “Flying Wail. Request permission to leave the Underworld.”
“How?” Aaron demanded. “How could he possibly do that?” Jase settled into the Hub-craft beside him. He had seen guards finally enter the computer room, just as he’d retracted the dock ladder. But he had no time to tell them what he was doing. The Hub-craft’s com-system was silent; he wasn’t able to raise the control deck on it from within the Underworld. The Hub-craft was built for speed, not sophistication. It had no weaponry, no warning lights, and needed nothing but Jase’s voice to permit it to leave the dock.
“Don’t ask,” Jase said disgustedly. Aaron was silent, staring at the red safety lights. Jase glanced at him, found time for a moment’s appreciation of Aaron’s bewilderment. He said, “I’m sorry I brought you up here, Mr. Fisher. This wasn’t what I had in mind. But since I did, and you’ve already risked your life for me once or twice, I’ll see that that gets on your record.”
Aaron looked at him, then back at the lights. “Thanks,” he said tonelessly. Then: “Lights gold.”
“Klyos. Identify.”
“Identified,” the Hub-craft said. “Airlock opening.”
“I just can’t believe it,” Aaron said suddenly. “Any of it. How could everyone I know go crazy in a day? How could—how could that happen with me not seeing it coming? The Magician—he even pays his docking fines on time. And the—M—” He closed his mouth, inarticulate again. Jase finished for him.
“The Queen of Hearts. How close a friend was she?”
“She.” The blood mounted in his face; his eyes grew dark as the sky beyond the opening lock. “Lights go.” He brought his whole fist soundlessly down on the panel and the cruiser shot into the Underworld’s shadow.
Jase hit the com-light instantly. “Klyos to Maindock. Identify. Sound dock alert. Dock alert.” They were still blocked, it seemed, by the bulk of
the Underworld. “No outgoing vessels. Repeat: Klyos to Maindock. Identify. No outgoing—”
“Override,” Maindock said in Jase’s own voice. He held his breath, then loosed it furiously and swore.
“Go.”
The Hub-craft picked up speed. They were silent, hearing the Magician’s voice.
“Permission to leave the Underworld.”
Again, the voice of the Chief of the Underworld.
“Challenge.”
Silence. Then a calm, gentle line ot ancient music.
“Challenge.”
Another phrase, brief, minor.
“Challenge.”
A third line, sweet and totally unfamiliar. The Hub-craft rounded the curve of the Underworld in time to see the vast dome over the dock begin to open, unlock the stars beyond it.
“Flying Wail. Permission to leave the Underworld.”
PART THREE
The Vision
ONE
The oval cracked.
The Magician, alerted by a musical comment from the Flying Wail, gazed in surprise at the blip on the scanner. Then a slow, soundless rain of images fell endlessly out of the oval into a purple mist, into his mind.
They were crystal-structures, delicate and varied as snowflakes. Occasionally he recognized colors: red crystal within a cocoon of yellow light, black within green, white within orange.
They drifted down like confetti through still air, seemingly directionless, random. But each one was a message, and the Magician, no longer aware of what his body was doing, felt their force.
Each message was precise and absolute. This was the vision. This was life. This was necessary as bone or air. If he could have responded to them, he might have changed the structure of his blood cells, or the shape of his lungs, for they were that imperative. But what were they? he wondered, fascinated. Biological or chemical messages? An alien language?
What, beneath some distant, dying star, absorbed them? He began to see through the gentle haze. It thinned; the crystals grew indistinct, a tiny, fiery swarm, nothing. He drew breath, feeling lost, as if, bereft of vision, he had come to the end of time. Then he saw the light flashing on the scanner again, and remembered that he was Roger Restak, shooting through space pursued by a blip, with the Underworld a Furies’ nest behind him.
It was, he had to admit, within his own time pattern a state almost as demanding as the alien vision.
Then he heard the absolute silence within the Flying Wail.
He swiveled his chair. Quasar, most of her nails green, held an unlit cigarette halfway to her mouth. Her eyes flickered as the Magician looked at her, but beyond that she gave no indication that she wasn’t frozen. The Scholar was sitting against the aft-hatch, breathing quickly, too astonished to speak. The Nebraskan, surrounded by equipment, was still hugging two rod-cases upright against the Flying Wail’s lift-off vibrations. His face was devoid of expression; even his mustache seemed stiff.
The woman in the navigator’s chair startled the Magician until he realized she was wearing an expression instead of gold paint. “Magic-Man.” Even her voice was unfamiliar. “What did you do?”
“It was simple enough,” he said calmly, though his wild luck was beginning to shake him.
“I put all the musical tones in the Underworld computer—paging-tones, com-tones—into a scale pattern and then into code. I played Bach by number. There’s a forty-eight-hour override on the docking challenges. They’ll have to play Bach on their cruisers to get out of there.”
Still no one moved. The Scholar breathed. “Sweet God.” His dark face glistened with sudden sweat. The Nebraskan made a soft noise, as if the wind had been knocked out of him.
The Magician turned back to the panel, nagged by the blip.
“Strap in. We’re going to accelerate.”
“Where?” For some reason no one could speak above a whisper.
“What?”
“Where,” the Scholar whispered more precisely, “are we going to?”
“Oh. I don’t know. Heart-Lady, what’s the nearest asteroid colony?” He brooded over the blip. “It’s got to be a cruiser that was just coming in, but I didn’t hear—Heart-Lady, did they fix the UF?”
“Yes,” she said faintly.
“Well, fix it back again, will you? I want to know what’s on our tail.”
“Magic-Man.”
“Did you find—”
“Land’s End is the nearest colony. Magic-Man!” Her hands came down flat on her control lights. The Flying Wail responded with a discordant complaint. The Magician took his eyes off the scanner, stared at her in amazement, and saw Terra’s eyes again, Terra’s face. He touched Michele reassuringly.
“She’s not crazy. Neither am I. Did you compute our course?”
Her hands moved; she still looked at him, the Queen of Hearts with her mouth open, unable to find words. “Not.”
“Not crazy. But we’re in for a hell of a ride. All set?” He activated the cruiser’s pursuit thrusters and sat listening to the musical messages. The power surge pushed him back in his seat. He heard chaos behind him and swore, remembering the instrument cases. He turned, saw the Nebraskan sprawled among them.
“You okay?”
The Nebraskan shoved cases away, struggling to sit. “My nose is bleeding.”
“I told you to strap in, why were you up?”
“Because,” the Nebraskan shouted through his hands, “I was going to tear your head off! What are you doing? We’re musicians! A band on a concert tour! You’ve got the whole Underworld after us, and all we were doing is loading equipment!” He pulled his shirt off, held it against his nose. “I quit.”
“Oh, come on, Nebraska, calm down. The Underworld isn’t after us. I told you, I’ve got them locked up for forty-eight hours.”
“You locked up the Underworld,” the Nebraskan said hollowly, hunched over his knees.
“All we had to do was that one concert at Helios. We would have had video studios all over the world begging for Nova. We were so close to fame it was breathing on us. It was smiling on us. All we had to do was one more concert. One more. All those years of playing clubs, and all we had to do was one more. Now we’ll be famous all right. We’ll have our faces on the six o’clock news, and we’ll have people offering us a fortune for the true story of why Nova traded an off-world tour for a mattress and a tin can in the Dark Ring and—” He lifted his head, his voice rising. “I couldn’t tell it because I don’t even know why!”
“The Dark Ring,” Quasar breathed. “Magic-Man, what have you done?” She dissolved into old-world, came out of it, finishing, “—a renegade band, so we have to fight them, shit alors, we have no weapons.”
“Wait a moment,” the Scholar said heavily, holding up his hands. “Wait. Let’s all stay calm. Maybe we’re not in trouble yet. Maybe we’re not fully comprehending the situation. Right, Magic-Man? We’ve all been with you for years. You’ve never exhibited signs of raving lunacy before. Now. You say you’ve trapped all the patrol-cruisers in the Underworld, just so we could leave a few hours early? Is that it? We’re a little off-schedule for Helios? You didn’t want to wait until after breakfast?”
“We have an unauthorized guest on board,” the Magician said surprisedly. “I thought you saw her.”
“Her,” the Scholar said blankly. Then his eyes moved from the Magician to the Queen of Hearts and back again, narrowed, incredulous. “Her.” He was breathing quickly, his face glistening, as if he were in the throes of space-sickness. “What did you—” He shouted suddenly, startling the Magician, who had never heard him shout. “Did you steal that crazy woman out of the Dark Ring?”
“I’m sorry,” the Magician sighed. The cut over his eye was beginning to throb. “But you were all in here. I had to leave fast.”
“Magic-Man,” the Scholar said furiously, “you better keep this cruiser accelerating all the way to light because as soon as I can stand you are going to be space-debris!”
“Will yo
u let me explain?”
“You try. You just try.”
“Terra,” Quasar said, enlightened. “The Queen of Hearts’ mad sister who has a vision.”
“What do you mean,” the Queen of Hearts said bewilderedly, “she’s not crazy?”
“Either we’re both crazy or neither of us is. Am I crazy?”
“Yes,” the Nebraskan muttered.
“We rescued Terra?” Quasar said.
“Yes.”
“Oh, God,” the Scholar prayed.
“We freed her from the Underworld cochons who were performing experiments on her brain?”
“Yes.”
“Quel beau geste.” She tossed him a green, pointed kiss from her fingernails. The Queen of Hearts closed her eyes briefly and opened them again.
“Magic-Man,” she said, her voice shaking, “leaving aside the question of your sanity, which I wouldn’t want to make a hasty decision on just at this moment, maybe you should tell me where she is.”
The Magician opened his mouth, but nothing came out. He looked at the Scholar. “You didn’t see her in the hold?”
The Scholar shook his head. “She wasn’t back there. Not unless she crawled into the piano.”
“Well, she was just behind me,” the Magician said puzzledly. The Queen of Hearts stared at him in horror. “Or ahead of me, I’m not sure…”
Quasar grinned suddenly, wickedly. “You forgot her?” Behind her, the Nebraskan made garbled noises into his shirt.
“She’s got to be around somewhere. She nearly blew up the Hub to get out. She knew what she was doing.”
The Scholar’s voice vanished again. “She blew up—”
“The last time I saw her was when I tied up Chief Klyos with some body-wire. The blue tone. She held the rifle.” He frowned at the blip again. “She must be somewhere in the hold. Heart-Lady, the pursuit thrusters will shut down in a couple of minutes. Get the UF working when you can move. I want to know who’s on our—”
“That’s it. That’s it!” The Scholar’s fury cracked across the Magician’s concentration like a thunderclap, making him wince. “You tossed away our futures like last week’s garbage, you plugged up the Underworld like a hornet’s nest to rescue the lunatic of the century, and then, Lochinvar, you forgot the girl and came away with the goddamn buzzing hornet’s nest instead! You’re over the edge. You ever hear of Mutiny on the Bounty? Well, this is it, Captain Magic. Soon as you shut down, I’m taking over your ship.”
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