Nova by Samuel R. Delany

Author:Samuel R. Delany
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub, azw3
Tags: SciFi-Masterwork, Science Fiction, Adventure, Fantasy
ISBN: 9780375706707
Publisher: Vintage
Published: 1967-12-31T14:00:00+00:00

"You two back on vanes I put. Lynceos and Idas I'll relieve." As humor translated to agony, so concern appeared a grin. "You to your chambers, go."

Lorq took Tyy's arm as she stood. Three expressions struck her face, one after the other: surprise, fear, and the third was when she recognized his.

"For what you in the cards have read, Tyy, I you thank."

Sebastian moved to take her hand from the captain's.

"Again, I you thank."

In the corridor to the Roc's bridge, projected stars drifted on the black wall. Against the blue one, the Mouse sat cross-legged on the floor, sack in lap. His hand molded shapes in the leather. He stared at the circling lights.

Katin strolled up the hall, hands behind his back. "What the hell's wrong with you?" he inquired amicably.

The Mouse looked up, and let his eyes catch a star emerging from Katin's ear.

"You certainly like to make things complicated for yourself."

The star drifted down, disappeared at the floor.

"And by the way, what was the card you stuck in your sack?"

The Mouse's eyes came back to Katin's fast. He blinked.

"I'm very good at picking up on that sort of thing." Katin leaned back on the star-flecked wall. The ceiling projector that duplicated the outside night flashed dots of light across his short face, his long, flat belly. "This isn't the best way to get on the captain's good side. You've got some odd ideas, Mouse - admitted, they're fascinating. If somebody had told me I'd be working in the same crew, today in the thirty-first century, with somebody who could honestly be skeptical about the Tarot, I don't think I would have believed it. You're really from Earth?"

"Yeah, I'm from Earth."

Katin bit at a knuckle. "Come to think of it, I doubt if such fossilized ideas could have come from anywhere else but Earth. As soon as you have people from the times of the great stellar migrations, you're dealing with cultures sophisticated enough to comprehend things like the Tarot.

I wouldn't be surprised if in some upper Mongolian desert town there isn't someone who still thinks Earth floats in a dish on the back of an elephant who stands on a serpent coiled on a turtle swimming in the sea of forever. In a way I'm glad I wasn't born there, fascinating place that it is. It produces some spectacular neurotics. There was one character at Harvard— " He paused and looked back at the Mouse. "You're a funny kid. Here you are, flying this star-freighter, a product of thirty-first-century technology, and at the same time your head full of a whole handful of petrified ideas a thousand years out of date. Let me see what you swiped?"

The Mouse jammed his forearm into the sack, pulled out the card. He looked at it, back and front, till Katin reached down and took it.

"Do you remember who told you not to believe in the Tarot?" Katin examined the card.

"It was my ..." The Mouse took the sack rim in his hands and squeezed.

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