Star's End by Glen Cook

Author:Glen Cook [Cook, Glen]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781597801690
Publisher: Night Shade Books
Published: 2010-10-02T00:00:00+00:00

“Czyzewski,” she observed. “Yes. I read too. It’s from Sister Love. They say he wrote it before he went into space and lost his mind—if a guy who brags about a love affair with his sister isn’t crazy already. What do you mean by it, Moyshe? Is an old love affair bothering you? That’s silly. You’re not fifteen . . . ”

“I’m perfectly aware of that. Intellectually. ‘I was then, stark in the gardens of the moon,’ ” he quoted out of context. “Now I’m a tired old man, far from home, futureless, with no friend but a chess-mad Archaicist triggerman I never see except during working hours . . . ” Hold it, he thought. The mouth is playing traitor here.

“Give me that costume. Let me get ready. Please?”

“All right.” She put a lot into those two words. It reminded him of the professional mother who had taken care of him occasionally while his natural mother had chased ghosts of vanished Earths. She had been able to say the same words the same way, implying that nothing good could possibly come of whatever he planned. She had been able to say almost anything in a way that made it sound like he was condemning himself to the clutches of the Devil, or some equally nasty fate.

“Well. You make a striking officer,” Amy said when he returned from the bathroom. “If you had a beard you’d look a little like Robert E. Lee.”

“Yeah? Can you do something about this damned sword? How the hell did they get around without falling on their faces all the time?”

She giggled as she made adjustments. “What?”

“Just wondering how many Jewish generals there were in the Confederate Army.”

“There’re a lot . . . Oh, you mean that Confederation. I don’t get it. Why should that be funny?”

“You have to know the period.”

“Well, you’ve lost me. I only know it from military history at Academy. I can tell you why Longstreet did what he didn’t do at Gettysburg, but not what religion he was. Anyway, I’m not Jewish. And you know it.”

“What are you, then? Do you believe in anything, Moyshe?”

Poking again. Prying. For her own sake, he guessed. Fisher Security probably would not care about his religion.

He wanted to make a snappy comeback, but she had struck too close to the core of his dissatisfaction. At the moment he did not believe in anything, and himself least of all. And that, he thought, was curious, because he had not had these kinds of feelings since coming out of the line. Not till this mission had begun. “The Prophet Murphy,” he said.

“Murphy? I don’t get it. Who the hell is Murphy? I expected death and taxes.”

“The Prophet Murphy. The guy who said, ‘If anything can possibly go wrong, it will.’ My life has been a testimonial.”

She stepped back, shook her head slowly. “I don’t know what to make of you, Moyshe. Yes I do. Maybe. Maybe I’ll just make you happy in spite of yourself.”

“Blood from a turnip, Lady.

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