Dreamers used elegant mathematical theories to design their creations. Jato knew his was simple in comparison. The geometry of the facets specified a fugue in four voices, each voice an aspect of his life: loss, of his home and life on Sandstorm; beauty, as in the stark glory of Nightingale; loneliness, his only companion here; and the dawn, which he would never again see.
Holding the statue, he lay down in bed and fell asleep.
The bird sang a miraculous fugue, creating all four voices at once. Jato held it as he ran through Nightingale. The pursuing Mandelbrot drone gained ground, until finally it whirred around in front of him. Fractals swirled off its surface and turned into braided steel coils. They wrapped around his body, crushing his chest and arms, silencing the bird. He reeled under the icy stars and fell across the first step of the SquareCase.
He wrestled with the coils until he worked his arms free, easing the pressure on the bird. It sang again and its voice rose to the stars on wings of hope.
The fractal coils fell away from his body. As Jato stood up, the spacer appeared, walking out of the shadows that cloaked the SquareCase. She toed aside the coils and they melted, their infinitely repeating patterns blurred into pools of glimmering silver. The bird continued to sing, its fugue curling around them in a mist of notes.
The spacer stopped only a pace away. Her eyes were a deep green, dappled like a forest, huge and dark. She brushed her fingers across his lips. Jato put his hand on her back, applying just enough to pressure to make the decision hers; stay where she was, or step forward and bring her body against his.
She stepped forward…
The Whisper Inn was a round building, graceful in the night. Holding his bundle, Jato stood at its door, an arched portal bordered by glimmering metal tiles.
"Open," he said.
Nothing happened.
He tried again. "Open."
Swirling lines and speckles appeared on the door and a holo formed, an amber rod hanging in front of the door. A curve appeared by the rod and rotated around it, sweeping out a shape. When it finished, a vase hung in the air with the rod piercing its center. Soothing pastel patterns swirled on the image.
"Solid of revolution complete," the door said. "Commence integration."
"What?" Jato asked. No door had ever asked him to "commence integration" before.
"Shall I produce a different solid?" it asked.
"I want you to open."
Silver and black swirls suffused the vase. "You must calculate the volume of the solid."
"How?"
"Set up integral. Choose limits. Integrate. Computer assistance will be required."
"I have no idea how to do that."
"Then I cannot unlock."
Jato scratched his chin. "I know the volume of a box."
The vase faded and a box appeared. "Commence integration."
"Its volume is width times height times length."
Box and rod disappeared.
"Open," Jato said.
Still no response.
Jato wondered if the Innkeeper had his door vex all visitors this way. Then again, Dreamers would probably enjoy the game.
"Jato?" the door asked.
"Yes?"
"Don’t you want to enter?"
He made an exasperated noise. "Why else would I say ‘Open’?"
Box and rod reappeared. "Commence integration."
"I already did that."
"I seem to be caught in a loop," the door admitted.
Jato smiled. "Are you running a new program?"
"Yes. Apparently it needs more work." The door slid open. "Please enter."
Muted light from laser murals lit the lobby. As the floor registered his weight, soft bells chimed. Fragrances wafted in the air, turning sharp and then sweet in periodic waves.
The Innkeeper’s counter consisted of three concentric cylinders about waist height, all made from jade built atom-by-atom by molecular assemblers, as were most precious minerals used in Nightingale’s construction. The Innkeeper sat at a circular table inside the cylinders, reading a book.
Jato went to the counter. "I’d like to see one of your customers." He knew the spacer had to be here; this inn was the only establishment in Nightingale that would lodge sun-dwellers.
The Innkeeper continued to read.
"Hey," Jato said.
The Dreamer kept reading.
Jato scowled, then clambered over the cylinders. "The offworld woman. I need her room number."
The Innkeeper rubbed an edge of his book and the holos above it shifted to show dancers twirling to a Strauss waltz.
Jato pulled the book out of his hand. "Come on."
The Innkeeper took back his book without even looking up. A whirring started up behind Jato, and a Mandelbrot globe bumped his arm.
"I owe her," Jato said. "She gave me a dream."
That caught the Dreamer’s attention. He looked up, his translucent eyebrows arching in his translucent face. "You come with Dream payment?" He laughed. "You?"
Jato tried not to grit his teeth. "You know payment has to be offered."
"She is in Number Four," he said.
Jato hadn’t actually expected a reply. Apparently the unwritten laws of dream debt overrode even the Innkeeper’s distaste for talking to large, non-translucent people.
Old-fashioned stairs led to the upper levels. As Jato climbed, holoart came on, suffusing the walls with color. He glanced back to see the holos fade until only sparks of light danced in the air, mimicking the traces left by particles in an ancient bubble chamber.
No one answered when he knocked at Number Four. He tried again, but still no answer.
As he started to leave, a click sounded behind him. He turned back to see the spacer in the doorway, light from behind her sparkling on the gold tips of her tousled hair. She wore grey knee-boots and a soft blue jumpsuit that accented her curves. The only decorations on her jumpsuit were two gold rings around each of her upper arms. A tube trimmed each of her boots, running from the heel to the top edge of the boot, an odd style, but attractive.
"Yes?" she asked.
Jato swallowed, wondering if he had just set himself up for a rebuff. He tried to think of a clever opening that would put her at ease, perhaps intrigue or even charm her. What he ended up with was the scintillating, "I came to see you."
Incredibly, she stepped aside. "Come in."
Her room was pleasant, with gold curtains on the windows and a pretty rumpled bed that looked as if she had been sleeping in it.
Jato hesitated. "Did I wake you? I can come back later."
"No. Now is good." She motioned him to a small table gleaming with metal accents. Its fluted pedestal supported two disks, the upper joined to the lower along a slit that ran from its center to its rim, a style common in Nightingale. The only explanation Jato had ever extracted from a Dreamer was, "Riemann sheets." He had looked it up at the library and found an opaque treatise on complex variable theory that apparently described how the sheets made a multi-valued expression into a mathematical function.
After they sat down, he set his bundle in front of her and spoke the formal phrases. "You gave me a dream. I offer you my work in return."
She watched his face. "I don’t understand."
"A beautiful dream." He wondered if he sounded as awkward as he felt. "This is what I have to trade." Pulling away the wrapping, he showed her the bird. Giving it up was even harder than he had expected. But it was a matter of honor: he had a debt and this was the only payment he had to give.
As she sat there staring at his life’s creation, his face grew hot. He knew the wonders she had seen in Nightingale. The bird was pitiful in comparison.
"It makes music," he said. "I mean, it doesn’t make the music but it tells you how to make it."