Falcon by Emma Bull

Author:Emma Bull
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
ISBN: 9780441225699
Publisher: Ace
Published: 1989-09-15T05:00:00+00:00

* * *

CHAPTER NINE

What matter though numb nightmare ride on top,

And blood and mire the sensitive body stain?

What matter? Heave no sigh, let no tear drop,

A greater, more gracious time has gone...

-W. B. Yeats, "The Gyres"

Vere had left, no more in charity with Chrysander than when they'd stopped work yesterday. It didn't matter; they'd gotten another take recorded. It shouldn't matter. And Niki Falcon was now in Chrysander's employ, committed to going to Lamia. Surely Vere's state of mind was dwarfed by that.

It was, Chrysander foundùBut not in a way he'd expected.

He sat motionless, trying to find a still point in his mind, in the island of light lifted above darkness, the engineer's box in the darkened studio. There was no still point, only specks of light, notes of melody, desperate thoughts spiraling with blurring speed.

He could turn his thoughts into a line of music. But nothing made law of the chaos; the best of his songs only recorded, defined, focused the confusion until it was sharp enough to stab with. He had filled the hearts of his songs with longing, fury, reaching out, and it wasn't enough. The execution didn't match the idea. They didn't resolve.

Still, better to transmute it all into music. The alternative was to kill someone. He'd get a lot of relief out of it, Chrysander thought, if only he could decide who, besides himself, was the right victim.

He'd hunted through the passageways of the magtube station, cursing his carelessness, knowing that if he had lost Niki Falcon, he had lost the game. That had been an abstraction. When his light fell on the man hanging from the ladder, nothing was abstract anymore. Blood washed away abstraction. And Falcon had accepted the commission. Which shamed Chrysander most of all.

Across the dark studio, the door opened. Silhouetted in it was a figure in a long coat.

The box lights went out, and Chrysander cursed, remembering the master panel by the studio door. The green indicators on the control board glowed on the planes of his eye sockets, the underside of his nose, his jaw; the resulting corpse-face stared back at him in a stuttering reflection on the double glass of the window.

He considered his pulse until it steadied, took a long breath, and opened the channel between the box and the studio.

"Chrysander Harris?" The voice was a woman's, low, with the crisp diction of the Hub.

"Here." His reflection seemed to say it, a green ghost painted on the glass between them. "What can I do for you?"

"I'm Jhari Sabayan, cultural attache for Central Worlds Concorde's embassy here. I would…"

"Yes, Lieutenant Sabayan. I'm sure you would."

"Well," she said at last. "I didn't think I was so well known." But she didn't sound surprised.

"You've been fastened to me like a tick for three weeks. Did you think I wouldn't know it?"

She stirred. "I've come to ask if you're ready to consider our offer."

"I told your people I'd let them know at year end."

"That's sixty-five days from now. A lot can happen.

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