Joan D. Vinge by Eyes of Amber

Author:Eyes of Amber
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub, pdf
Published: 2011-12-14T22:27:18+00:00

Shannon slumped back into the embrace of the padded chair, rubbing his aching head. His eyelids were sandpaper, his body was a weight. He stared at the display screen, at T’uupieh’s back turned stubbornly toward him as she slept beside the nitrogen campfire. “Okay, that’s it. I give up. She won’t even listen. Call Reed and tell him I quit.”

“That you’ve quit trying to convince T’uupieh,” Garda said. “Are you sure? She may yet come back. Use a little more emphasis on—spiritual matters. We must be certain we have done all we can to … change her mind.”

To save her soul, he thought sourly. Garda had gotten her early training at an institute dedicated to translating the Bible; he had discovered in the past few hours that she still had a hidden desire to proselytize. What soul? “We’re wasting our time. It’s been six hours since she walked out on me. She’s not coming back… . And I mean quit everything. I don’t want to be around for the main event, I’ve had it.”

“You don’t mean that,” Garda said. “You’re tired, you need the rest too. When T’uupieh wakes, you can talk to her again.”

He shook his head, pushing back his hair. “Forget it. Just call Reed.” He looked out the window, at dawn separating the mist-wrapped silhouette of seaside condominiums from the sky.

Garda shrugged, disappointed, and turned to the phone.

He studied the synthesizer’s touch boards again, still bright and waiting, still calling his leaden, weary hands to try one more time. At least when he made this final announcement, it wouldn’t have to be direct to the eyes and ears of a waiting world: He doubted that any reporter was dedicated enough to still be up in the glass-walled observation room at this hour. Their questions had been endless earlier tonight, probing his feelings and his purpose and his motives and his plans, asking about Robin Hood’s morality, or lack of it, and his own; about a hundred and one other things that were nobody’s business but his own.

The music world had tried to do the same thing to him once, but then there had been buffers—agents, publicity staffs—to protect him. Now, when he’d had so much at stake, there had been no protection, only Reed at the microphone eloquently turning the room into a sideshow, with Shann the Man as chief freak; until Shannon had begun to feel like a man staked out on an anthill and smeared with honey. The reporters gazed down from on high critiquing T’uppieh’s responses and criticizing his own, and filled the time gaps when he needed quiet to think with infuriating interruptions. Reed’s success had been total in wringing every drop of pathos and human interest out of his struggle to prevent T’uupieh’s vengeance against the innocents … and by that, had managed to make him fail.

No. He sat up straighter, trying to ease his back. No, he couldn’t lay it on Reed. By the time what he’d had to say had really counted, the reporters had given up on him.

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