I’ve got my house, he said. I’ve got my crew. I’ve got my ship. I’m happy with all that, Shadow. But there are times when life goes flat and the sun turns black on me and I don’t know whether breathing is worth the effort it takes.
And then he looked around and smiled. He was building chairs now There was one on the bench, lovely in the sunlight, its wood glowing with the rubbing he’d given it, taking in the light and sucking it deep down so it almost seemed to breathe with the air that blew across it.
You found the right world, she told him, with all this wood about.
Your music isn’t enough? he asked her then answered himself No. It isn’t, is it? It’s a grace, but it doesn’t fill the days. You’re right to go with Digby. For a while, anyway. But don’t let your songs and your playing slide. You need both.
“And that’s the truth.” She got to her feet, ran a comb through her curls, then went out to find herself some song and maybe a pinch of trouble to make the long night pass.
The Marratorium was crowded: ship’s crews, servants, and aides of the Meat Market patrons; labor from the factories; off duty guards; buyers and sellers; shimmers; players of all kinds; gamblers; scammers; thieves; smugglers; gun runners; druggies and druggers. Everyone who had occasion to visit a gray market and had a bit of credit to spare was out in the ‘Torium hunting for pleasure. Cousins of every sort; Bawangs stilting along, their heads high over everyone else; Blurdslangs trundling about in their nutrient dishes; Clovel Matriarchs and their cloned attendants, little herds of chattering Jajes; Caan smugglers with their velvety fur and the minimal leather strapping they used for clothes; leathery Pa’ao Teely with eyes like ice and half their merchandise on their bodies, those weapons peace-sealed, a gesture to the peace of mind of the rest of the swirling mix; Ptica-Pterri mostly in molt though several had their mating plumage in full glory; Xenagoa acrobats; gauze-wrapped Nayids, arachnoid Menaviddans dressed mainly in stiff black hair and loops of the shimmering monofilament that was their chief wealth. A small group of Dyslaera moved into view, but she didn’t know them, and they passed her without a glance.
She let a surge of strollers carry her into the casino, eased free of them and drifted past glitter-chitter games with dancing colors programmed to lure and half-hypnotize the watcher into playing, past games so ancient they might have been born rules and all with the universe itself, past dealers and shills, lingering a moment to listen to a flowerlike creature singing an eerie croon, moving on when the song was done. Autumn Rose was there somewhere, but she didn’t see her. Probably in a private room away from this chaos, settled down with serious players.
This was the outer room where riff rubbed against raff, where the games were glitz and small change, the service by ‘droid and ‘bot, the music, such as it was, riffing off a dendron in the vast kephalos that ran the whole Marratorium. Where mezzanines were cantilevered from the walls and tables floated free with seatbelts and catchment basins for those who couldn’t hold their drinks. Where hired men whispered suggestions to anybeing remotely mammalian, and hired women fluttered their lashes and suggested much the same without words, and hired others did what others did.
Shadith watched the avid faces of the assortment of life-forms crowded about the games, curiously alike despite the variety of species. It was one way of walking the edge, but losing money didn’t thrill her much and winning would mean even less. No meaning to it, nothing to engage her beyond a moment’s zazz.
The continual ripple and tremble of lights, the saturated color, and the tension in the gamblers started her head aching and she moved on, following wisps of music that drifted in whenever someone pushed through the silver membrane that slashed the whole length of one wall from ground level to the ceiling ten stories up. The casino’s chief extravagance was the throwaway space. On their collection of enclosed asteroids such expansiveness was a luxury most structures didn’t have.
Shadith shook her head at a man and pushed a woman’s hand away, then followed the bits of music through the membrane.
The room on the other side was nearly as immense, a ballroom of sorts with tables in floating bubbles that drifted dreamily in and out of shadow, spiraling to a ceiling lost in smoke and mist, drifting down again. There were dance platforms that floated among the tables, flat ovals in their own environments that clicked home in sockets in the wall when the tiket-time was exhausted. All round the base floor, there were dressing rooms with costumes for rent if that was to your taste, costumes for every species and culture that came through the Marratorium.
The band on the main floor was an eclectic mix of acoustic instruments, a two-necked guitar from Komugit, a sha-horn from Soncheren, an eight-string banjjer from Hikkerie, two fiddles from Somewhere Else, and an assortment of drums assembled from half a dozen worlds. The music they played was filled with an energy that invaded her body and set her feet to fidgeting.
A man’s hand on her arm, a man’s voice in her ear, “Dance, ‘Spinnerie?”
Shadith started to pull away, then thought watth’hell, I want to MOVE! With caution’s last dregs, she said, “What’s your price?”
He chuckled. She felt it more as warm breath tickling her ear than as sound. “A gelder an hour, fifty the night, a la carte for the rest. First dance is free, just for the pleasure of it.”
Her words breathless and fast, she said, “Convince me, hired man. Dance, and we’ll see how you read me and go on from there.”
He was a small man, a trifle shorter than her with a sharp face, pointed ears, and laughter in his black eyes as he swept her into the swirl of dancers.
At first his dancing was competent, even exciting, but there was an impersonal quality to it that muted her enjoyment, her extra senses reading his detachment, cooling her down to match his chill. Then-change. His pale face flushed as he opened himself more deeply into the music and the moving, reading her body as if his nerves were joined to hers. By the time the set was done and the danc, ing stopped, she knew she wanted this to go on.
She leaned against him, watched while the band fiddled with some minor retuning. “Tell me what I want.”
“Music. Dancing. Talk. Danger. Sex.”
“Then let’s go find them.”
3. Morning after
Head throbbing in sync with the caller chimes, Shadith groaned and groped until she found the shutoff and the wake-up call went silent. She lay a moment, her face buried in the pillow, flickers of memory running through her head. Did I really strip to the skin in that cheechirrie dump and dance with a pack of rats I ‘ticed from the conduits? Oh, Spla Ha!
She moved her legs over the edge of the bed and pushed up till she was sitting with her head in her hands. Her mouth felt like the tail of an old jack’s ragship. She straightened her back, sucked in a long breath. Mistake. The stink of sex and smoke and stale drink and who knew what else churned her stomach into instant rebellion.
She lunged up and reached the fresher just in time.
When she joined Autumn Rose in the lobby of the ottotel, she was neat and clean and ready for business. Rose smiled at the dark blotches under bloodshot eyes, but said nothing, just moved out with a brisk beat of her boot heels on the pavement. Shadith closed her eyes a moment, then grimly followed after her.
Marrat’s OverSec was an ancient Blurdslang; his three rheumy eyes were set so deep in warty folds of tissue that an occasional gleam was the only evidence he was awake and alert. His nutrient dish was larger than most and closed in, his tentacles rested on the cover in contemplative loops. Around him, shut into cubicles of soundproofed glass, much younger Blurdslangs worked over sensor boards or watched plates, the hair-fine fingerlets at the end of their handling tentacles busy at notation and half a dozen other tasks; the Blurdslang mind was more than capable of doing several things at once.