The balding one waited until all eyes were upon him before he said, in an unctuous tone, “Welcome home, Jenore Mordene.”
Eblon rose from the front rank of the crowd. “I do not recall inviting any of your crowd onto this foranq, Alwan Foulaine, least of all you.”
The man dismissed the inhospitable remark with a flexing of his eyebrows and a slight widening of his eyes. “When I heard that my betrothed was returned from the stars it never occurred to me that I would be denied an opportunity to call upon her.” He turned an incisive gaze upon Jenore. “Well, at least you haven’t run to fat,” he said.
“No,” said Jenore, looking him up and down, “but it seems I unknowingly ran from it.”
A laugh rippled through the crowd and Foulaine’s face went rigid. Eblon gave his daughter a look of approval before turning back to the man in the doorway to say, “The traditions of Mordene hospitality are rigid but wide of extent. You have appeared, therefore you must be allowed in. Join us, if you will.”
Foulaine assumed an air of unconcern and strode into the hall, his auxiliary at his heels. They seated themselves on an empty bench that had remained against the wall. The young man who had sung the verse about his fickle inamorata rose and crossed to sit with him. A few of the other boys and young men followed. Conn saw one of them open the collar of his shirt to reveal what looked to be a necklace of colored disks.
Eblon Mordene was still standing where he had risen. Conn saw his face harden as he saw the boy reveal the necklace. But before the old man could take a step toward the group around Alwan Foulaine, Munn reached up from where she was sitting and stayed him with a hand on his arm and a motion of her head that said, Not here, not now.
The patriarch acquiesced and gestured to the musicians to play. “Something all can dance to,” he said.
The players gave him a sprightly tune that spiraled away and back through two octaves. Munn rose and Eblon led her out onto the floor where they performed what struck Conn as an unlikely combination of high-spirited rompery and dignified bearing. Whatever it was, they had clearly pushed Alwan Foulaine beyond their notice, leaving themselves free to enjoy the music, the motion and each other.
“Dance with me,” said Jenore, pressing her warm palm against Conn’s.
“I know no steps,” he said. “Certainly nothing like what you just did.”
She shrugged. “When you were slaying opponents with falchions and epiniards, you must have been light on your feet, surely?”
“There was a certain amount of stamping involved,” he said, “but, yes, there was lightfootedness as well.”
She showed him how to hold her. “Follow me and let the rhythm do the rest.”
He did as she bid and was surprised to find that within a few moments they were moving in tandem. The process grew even more smooth when he stopped thinking about where his feet should go and thought instead of how pleasant it felt to enclose Jenore Mordene in his arms.
The song ended but a new one began almost immediately, this time slower and with a different time signature. The change at first disconcerted Conn but within a few moments Jenore had him adapted to the new rhythm. He found it was even more engrossing to be dancing slowly with her, especially when she rested her head upon his shoulder.
The intrusive sound of a throat being cleared caused him to reluctantly shift his attention. Alwan Foulaine had come to find them on the dance floor.
“Might I have the pleasure?” he asked, in a tone that on Thrais would have told Conn that a personage of highly elevated status was addressing someone he considered unworthy to scrape ordure from his footwear. But perhaps things were different here.
Conn made allowances. “I do not understand,” he said. “What pleasure?”
“He wishes to dance with me,” said Jenore.
“Do you wish to dance with him?”
“No.”
“Then the matter is settled,” Conn said to Foulaine. He stepped and glided as Jenore had shown him and they moved away from the former suitor.
But Foulaine followed, plodding straight lines while they executed arcs. His heavy face had reddened well up into the region at which it could more properly be called scalp. Foulaine’s look of condescension became a glower of angry resentment. “I heard that you had descended into poverty or worse on some barbaric hole,” he said. “So you have come crawling back.”
“No, we came by space liner and sailboat,” said Jenore.
Foulaine made a face that said he found her remark a poor riposte. “I have done well,” he said. “I am spoken of from one end of the New Shore to the other.”
“Indeed,” Jenore said, “I heard my father speak of you at some length.”
Foulaine’s plump hand flicked her comment away. “The old mudsticks will maunder on. We of the modern age set our own standards.”
Conn was finding that he disliked this man. “I am sure that makes it easier to live up to them,” he said.
He was rewarded with a contemptuous glance, then Foulaine addressed himself again to Jenore. “I am building my own manse on Griff Island.”
Jenore said, “I heard that a pile of driftwood and sea wrack had appeared there. You have burrowed into it?”
Foulaine’s face was rigid. “Young people from all over Shorraff are joining me in a common effort. We will create a new community, with new standards. Our goals are noble. Our achievement will be astounding.”
“I will certainly be astounded,” Jenore said.
Foulaine looked Conn up and down. “What is this that you have brought back from the ragtaggle end of The Spray?” Foulaine asked Jenore.
Jenore’s tone was airy as she drew closer to Conn. “This is Conn Labro. We met on Thrais, the gaming world.”
“A gambler, is it?” Foulaine’s condescension showed in a meager motion of his brows and a half lowering of his eyelids. “Many such pitter about my feet.”
“Not a gambler,” said Jenore, “but such as gamblers win fortunes on. Conn is a renowned duelist. How many men is it that you have killed, my dear?”
Conn watched the flush drain from Foulaine’s face. “I prefer not to speak of it,” he said.
“That is probably for the best,” she said.
“You two,” Foulaine said, “are you affianced?”
Conn let Jenore answer. “We have an understanding.”
Conn saw rage and fear contend in the man’s heavy face. He watched until the outcome was apparent: Foulaine would not precipitate a violent confrontation here, breast to breast. But if circumstances should ever deliver Conn and Jenore into his hands the outcome would be unpleasant.
Foulaine retook possession of himself by a visible effort. He appeared to notice someone elsewhere in the room whom he desired to greet and walked away without a parting word.
“I thought that went well,” Jenore said.
Conn watched the man go. “Too much of him would tempt me to anger,” he said.
Jenore gave her head a dismissive shake. “He was always a puffed up fool.”
“Even fools can be dangerous. I would not care to be chained to a wall in his basement,” Conn said.
“I have occasionally thought about how it would be to reencounter Alwan again,” Jenore said. “That was as enjoyable a scenario as many I imagined.”
“So you do not feel that you are here to help him?”
“There are limits to every philosophy,” she quoted. “It’s a wise rule that admits the possibility of exceptions.”
The music they were dancing to came to an end. They stood together on the dance floor, she still in his arms.
“He is of the past. What does it matter?” Conn said.
“The past is inextricably woven into the present. Any separation between what was, what is and what will be is merely a matter of perception.”
“You truly believe that?”
She indicated the faces painted on the walls. “Look about you.”
“I do not see it that way,” Conn said. �
�Each moment is distinct, in and of itself, one in a succession of uniquenesses, to be appreciated while it lasts.”
“On the contrary,” she said, “all existence is a continuum. Yesterday, the substance of our dinners swam in the sea and grew in the sunlight. Today, they have become part of our flesh. Tomorrow, they will be on their way again. We fade into each other, from one to the next, leaving behind memories and mementos to mark our passage. This foranq is such a reminder. There are rooms whose walls are tiled with the milk teeth of hundreds of generations of infants, others tapestried in the woven hair of women who have been dust for centuries. Not all the bone my father carves is from fish or animal.”
He lifted her hand and regarded the bone ring on her finger. “When you said this was your grandfather’s, I took it to mean that he had owned it.”
“Well, it was definitely his,” she said, “for a while. And perhaps it will be his again when it passes to one of my descendants.”
“You believe in transmigration from one life to another?”
“How else could it be? Where else could we have come from, where else could we go? We know that this here exists and we know that we are in it. Any other realms of existence are nebulous and speculative, mere possibilities set against this inarguable reality.”
“I have no sense that I have lived before, nor that I will do so hereafter.”
“Truly?” Her tone was reflective. “You are unusual,” she said. “I sometimes sense that there are more differences between us than our cultures can account for.”
“Perhaps,” Conn said. “While I was experiencing the effects of the whimsy I felt a strong sense that I had spent much time in a kind of limbo. I could not account for it.”
“A womb memory?” she said. “It is not unheard of. The unborn often bring with them an awareness of the timelessness of the life between lives.”
While they spoke, the musicians had agreed on another number. The drums set up a solid rhythm for the other instruments to ride on.
“I am who I am,” Conn said, “whether I probe and prod my inner mysteries or leave them unmolested. But right now I have discovered that dancing is a pleasure. Or perhaps it is just because I am dancing with you. Either way, I wish to do more of it.”
He spun her around and away they went.
Later, when the lights on the last guests’ boats and skimmers were winking away across the still waters, the house’s integrator summoned Eblon and Conn. It was receiving a call from the intercessor Gievel.
“An interesting result,” the face on the screen said. “I filed a preliminary notice of dispute this afternoon, a mere formality. Yet just now I received a message from the other side.”
“What was the message?” Conn said.
“They wish to make an offer of settlement.”
Conn’s voice echoed the surprise in Gievel’s. “Is it not unusual that those who bring an action to offer should settle before we’ve even argued our side of the dispute?”
“Highly,” said Gievel. “Indeed, unheard of in my practice.”
“What is their offer?”
“They wish to present it in person. They will come to wherever you are tomorrow.”
“I will be at a sporting event.”
“The birl?” Gievel said. “I envy you.”
Eblon Mordene said, “He will be with my household and their friends on Five Fingers Key.”
“I will come with the other side’s representative,” Gievel said, “both to protect your interest and to see the match.”
“Who is the Other side? Is it Flagit Holdings on Bashaw?”“
“Another surprise. He is from here. Flagit is now controlled by Lord Vullamir, head of one of the oldest of the old families.”
Conn felt a twinge of coincidence. “Does he have jewels embedded in his face?”
Gievel looked puzzled. “That style passed on years ago. These days, the vogue among the aristocracy is life masks.”
“I have not seen one,” said Conn.
“Then you will tomorrow.”
Five Fingers Key was a long, low tongue of land that barely missed being a peninsula of Graysands Island, and would have been such for half of each day if Old Earth had not long ago lost its moon, and therefore its tides, as an unintended outcome of the hubris that can grip even the most gifted scientific minds. The island and the key were connected by a floating footbridge
One end of Five Fingers Key was dedicated to birl. An oblong playing area had been dug to connect with the sea then ringed with tall, transparent panels to protect spectators on the surrounding bleachers from flying balls and splashes of water. Most of the Mordene household attended the match, only the smallest children remaining at the house with some of the young parents to oversee them.
Eblon led the way to a section of the steeply tiered seats that Conn deduced must have been reserved for Mordenes. Jenore discovered some old girlfriends in an adjacent section and went to sit with them, leaving Conn in the care of her brother Iriess. Conn looked about as the seats filled. Like the Mordenes, other clans occupied their own sections. Even a casual inspection of the crowd showed Conn similarities in facial feature and coloring in the different sections. There also seemed to be some connection between family and team. Every Mordene, he noticed, wore something – scarf, hat, tabard – of sea green accented by white, the colors of the Cresting Wave.
He asked Iriess, “Are teams formed from members of individual families?”
“Not quite,” Iriess said. “Theoretically, anyone can try out for any team and, if possessed of the requisite skills and elan, be enlisted. But over the generations, some families have built up relationships with certain teams. The Wave’s roster is mostly drawn from Mordenes, Folliocks from Flatstone Cove, Rabbaths from over by Mud Bay and a few Grubbers from Boddle.
“Now, the Crabs are interesting because they were formed only a few years back from the remnants of two longstanding teams that broke up – the Terns and the Periwinkles – after neither had come within hailing distance of a championship in decades. They have merged the best of two mediocre teams into a surprisingly potent distillation. Last year they came second in Red Division; this year they may go all the way to the finals.”
Iriess proceeded to discuss individual Crab players and their attributes in detail while Conn strove to form images of a game he had not yet seen played. After a few minutes the Wave forward’s voice was summarily drowned out by a blaring fanfare of trumpets, brassoons and stagehorns from a small orchestra seated on the flat roof of a single-story structure built of coral blocks at the landward end of the pool. The music signaled the emergence of the Jaunty Crabs and Incomparables from their respective preparation rooms at either end of the building.
The Crabs wore electric blue singlets and harness – the latter useful when being hauled out of the water – while the Incomparables favored deep purple slashed with silver. They marched to either side of the playing area and positioned themselves in front of benches between the water and the transparent partitions. The horns blew a different sequence of notes and everyone in the bleachers stood to hear a young woman dressed in flowing white sing an anthem that Conn later learned was called We Strive. Her last notes were buried beneath a rising roar of cheers, handclaps and whistles and the players advanced into the field.
The team captains met on the broad center plat, their forwards arranging themselves as strategy dictated. The arbiter threw the bone-colored ball into the air between and above them and the contest began. Conn watched the play with growing interest, Iriess providing a running commentary broken by shouts of approbation or condemnation as players conducted themselves in manners he approved or disapproved of.
The field was divided into several segments laterally and longitudinally. Passes could not be completed across more than two contiguous zones. Nor could a far forward player legally catch a pass unless there was a member of the opposing team between the receiver and the opposition’s goal. The rules made for a fast-movi
ng game of strategic maneuver, the ball passing back and forth as a team advanced into enemy territory, with plenty of jostling and blocking when opponents met.
Direct checking, whether from behind or head-on, was penalized by the offending player’s removal from the game for two minutes, but players could brush past each other with vigor, and if one happened to end up in the water it was considered fair play. But the real skill was in skipping from the solid footing of the substantial plats onto the smaller floating spots which sank beneath a player’s weight or, even more difficult, onto the rolls which both sank and spun. Each landing must be perfectly executed.
Conn soon saw that any aggressive play required the players to leave the security of the plats and skip from one rolling, sinking footfall to another. He watched as the Incomparables’ first advance carried their left forward into a leap from a plat onto a roll in Crab territory. The man deftly caught a pass in his scoop-shaped basket while spinning the roll beneath his footwear. But as he made to leap to a plat from which he could have taken a shot on goal, a young woman in Crab blue joined him on the roll.
The ensuing contest was brief but full of energy. The Crab defender spun the floating cylinder in the same direction as the Incomparable forward had set it rolling, but faster, the roughened soles of her tightly laced boots seeming scarcely to touch the log’s surface. The Incomparable first matched the pace then edged sidewise down the log toward the Crab, forcing her end deeper into the water. But she countered with a saltation, bending her knees to spring into the air and land back on the spinning roll with enough shock to throw the man off his rhythm. Now he was backpedaling while the soles of her boots controlled the speed of the log.
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